Chapter 11: Written Examination

Chapter 11: Written Examination

Sebastien

Month 10, Day 13, Tuesday 6:00 a.m.

After the raven-assisted conversation with her father, Siobhan went straight to the guest room Dryden had given her. Trembling faintly with exhaustion, she wrote down the Lino-Wharton messenger spell in as much detail as she could remember it, for later study. Her own grimoire, the place where she kept notes on all the magic she’d learned since childhood, was not as well-protected as the book her fath—as the book Ennis had stolen, but it would have to do until she could learn better wards.

She also realized belatedly that she’d forgotten to ask him about her mother’s ring, which had a powerful celerium Conduit in place of a lesser gem. The thick metal band was an artifact that kept people from noticing that Ennis wore it, which he had activated several times to avoid being forced to give the ring up after losing it gambling. Hopefully, he’d had enough foresight to do so this time before being caught. She doubted she would ever see it again if one of the coppers had taken it from him. But he hadn’t mentioned the ring when he was complaining about their treatment. ‘I don’t remember seeing it, but then again I wouldn’t, not if he was hiding it.’

She threw herself into study until the day of the University examination, remaining in Sebastien’s body the entire time—both so none of the servants would notice anything amiss, and to determine the limits of the artifact’s transformation spell.

So far, there didn’t seem to be any limits, other than an inability to choose her alternate form. Two weeks after returning to the male body, she noticed no degradation, either physically or in her ability to cast magic through the foreign flesh.

When she woke in the middle of the night, which she did often despite her dreamless sleep spell, Sebastien would study the artifact and the encrypted book until she could either go back to sleep or the sun rose. She made absolutely no progress understanding either.

She looked for books on ward-breaking or decryption at the certified bookstore attached to the tutoring center, but found only a primer on wards for children. ‘I suppose the Crowns don’t want unlicensed sorcerers learning how to break their wards.’ She considered asking Liza for help again, but doubted she could afford the woman’s services.

Sebastien woke early the day of the examination. She rubbed her burning eyes and stumbled to the kitchen, where she dug out the richest coffee beans she could find and steeped a cup of wakefulness brew. Dryden’s beans were high quality, channeling the wakefulness magic so smoothly it was like drinking fresh silk.

She refrained from any other magic in order to keep her strength up for the exams. Outside the kitchen window, the street grew busy as both the sun and the city woke.

The servants arrived only shortly before Dryden came down, greeting her somewhat familiarly.

The cook, a middle-aged woman named Sharon, tutted at the large steaming mug and the bags under Sebastien’s eyes. “Titan’s balls, child, did you sleep at all?”

“Some,” Sebastien croaked. “As much as I could.”

“Well, I suppose you’re excited for the test. Radiant Maiden knows I probably couldn’t sleep, either, if I were going to become a sorcerer. Well, sit down, child. I’ll make you something to eat.” She raised her palm in a halting gesture and looked pointedly away when Sebastien shook her head in an attempted denial. “You’ll need your energy—for all that thinking. Nothing rich, don’t worry. A couple eggs and some porridge will set easy in your stomach.”

Sebastien found, once she started eating, that the food did indeed help to settle her nerves.

She thanked the woman, who waved off her thanks with a blush. “Always so polite, Mr. Siverling. My kitchen’s open to such a well-mannered boy any time.”

When Dryden came downstairs, fully dressed and looking impossibly fresh, Sebastien offered him coffee with a wave of her hand.

“You seem quite calm. Are you prepared for the examination, then?” he asked, taking her up on the silent offer and sitting across from her at the kitchen table.

Sebastien carefully didn’t react to the sudden clenching of her heart. She took a gulp of tea. “I’m as prepared as I can be, I think.”

Dryden nodded silently, leaning back in his chair without concern.

Sebastien found some comfort in his nonchalance. If he thought she was in danger of failing, surely he’d be more tense.

She’d read through all the textbooks she bought, from cover to cover, but even for her, two weeks was too little time to fully assimilate that much information. Full understanding and easy recollection required her to add associations between the information to other thoughts and memories, and that took time. There was no way to Sacrifice a book to forcefully absorb its information. Her grandfather had told her stories about research that attempted to forcefully impart knowledge, skills, and even strength of Will to people during the Blood Emperor’s reign. Despite the heinous lengths they were willing to go to, they were left with nothing but dead test subjects and broken sorcerers. There was no easy path to mental improvement.

Finally, some questions were simply bizarre, like the page that had a drawing spelled to move as if it were alive, showing a unicorn at the edge of a clearing with a fenced paddock. It instructed her to arrange for the unicorn to enter the paddock, and from there to harvest hair from its mane or tail.

Sebastien stared down at the skittish black-and-white creature. She brought her pen to the page, and the unicorn shied away, as if it could sense the approach of the comparatively gigantic item. She pulled the pen away and took a moment of precious time to think.

Finally, she placed the pen nib in a clear spot on the paper and wrote, “Hello. Would you mind going into the paddock? I promise you will not be harmed. I would like to trade with you for a few of the hairs from your mane or tail. In return, please name your price.”

The unicorn stared at the words forming in its sky for a long while. Finally, it blew a little bubble from its mouth, which grew until words could be read within in. “I wish to become a pegasus.”

Sebastien allowed herself a small, triumphant smile. A pegasus was the progressed form of a unicorn, the wings growing after an intense accumulation of magical energy. Normally, forcing the evolution would be impossible, or be so costly only the richest and most powerful of people could afford it. It was certainly not worth a few simple hairs. In this case, however, it was as simple as drawing wings on the back of the unicorn, for which she was rewarded with little ink representations of its hair.

The five hours passed quicker than Sebastien would have thought possible, but the stack of unfinished questions on the right side of her desk never reached the end. A couple people were forcibly escorted from their seats, presumably for being caught cheating, but Sebastien paid as little attention to them as possible. When the dark-haired proctor at the front of the room pounded the floor with her staff again, this time to announce the end of the tests, Sebastien set down her pen immediately, despite being in the middle of a frantically scribbled sentence. She would not be disqualified for cheating. Her hand was cramped into a clawlike position, and she gingerly massaged it. Around her, the proctors forced a few others to set aside their pens by magically dissolving them within the testers’ hands.

“Please bring the completed pages of your test to the grading Circle,” the woman called, her voice seeming unnaturally loud after Sebastien’s intense concentration.

Sebastien gathered up the pile of scribble-filled paper, which was definitely larger than the initial stack had been. ‘The test must be never-ending. If completion is impossible, I haven’t failed to complete it,’ she thought hopefully.

The proctor motioned for the first student that reached her to place their test in the center of a waist-high pedestal, which was inlaid with stones that looked like small versions of the crystal balls some diviners used.

The student did so, and after a tense moment, the crystal balls shone a bright yellow.

“Fail,” the woman announced expressionlessly. “You may attempt the entrance examination again next year.”

The entire room grew tense as the students realized their fates would be announced so quickly, and for all to hear.

The student stared at her in horror. “Fail? That cannot be, I—”

The proctor waved her hand, and Sebastien caught a faint glow of spell residue from her staff before the student’s words went silent, though his mouth still moved. “Do not hold up the line. You have failed. You may attempt the test again next year.”

One of the other proctors came to lead the young man away by the arm, murmuring to him with a slightly more compassionate expression, though Sebastien couldn’t hear what he said over the sudden clamor of unease among the rest of the test-takers.

The next three tests received varying colors from red to yellow, along with more “Fails,” from the woman.

The first person to pass was a familiar face, one of the girls who had been part of the group that tried to skip to the front of the admissions line. Her stack of completed papers was as big as Sebastien’s, and it caused the crystals to glow a deep blue.

The proctor even graced her with a small smile as she announced, “Pass.” Instead of being escorted out of the building, the girl was motioned to the door at the end of the hall, and carried her test with her.

Watching the results of those ahead of her, Sebastien deduced that the grades were connected to the color scale, like a rainbow. The mid-point between yellow and green, the color of a sickly leaf, seemed to be the edge between passing and failing. Generally, those who had completed more pages scored better, but not always. No one scored better than a rich imperial blue.

‘Is it even possible to score purple? Perhaps if one were able to finish all the questions available, leaving none behind unanswered. Or, perhaps none of us have answered enough questions correctly.’ It was her turn at the front of the line before she knew it. She placed her stack down in the center of the Circle, too tense to try to decipher or memorize its Word array. The wait, though she knew it to be merely a few seconds, seemed an eternity of agony.

When the crystal balls glowed a solid green, she barely heard the proctor announce her pass. She felt dizzy and took a gasp of air, belatedly realizing she had been holding her breath. She nodded her thanks to the woman, took her test papers back, the first page of which had been marked with “green five-fifteen,” and walked off toward the door at the end of the hall, vacillating between immense relief and disappointment.

‘I passed, but only with green. Darkish green, to be sure, but still just green. If I had known we would be graded by a non-human proctor, I would’ve researched best practices for the answer format and attempted to find information about the grading criteria.’ Sebastien worried that she may have condemned herself to failure from shortsightedness. After all, this was only the first half of the examination. ‘I go before a panel of professors, now. The University is renowned for their standards.’

She wanted to stop and put her head between her knees, or maybe scream out loud, but instead she lifted her chin and kept walking. ‘I have no social or political connections, and I scored only green. I’m doomed.’