The Seed in the Brain
Harvey put the Evaluation Paper in the safe and hung the frame back on the wall. Chris clicked his tongue, eyes on the frame.
"So how, exactly, does it work?"
"You hold the Evaluation Paper in your hand…"
Harvey began to answer, then stopped.
"What good is knowing, to a wretch who can't even use one?"
"I can't use one?"
"Of course you can't. I've told you again and again—a mage consumes a great many resources. And resources are always short. We don't spend precious ones on someone who falls short of the standard."
Chris ground his teeth, then spoke.
"I'll meet the standard. I swear I will."
A week later, Chris failed again.
Harvey clicked his tongue.
"The way I see it, you're finished."
The moment he lowered his hand, Chris shouted.
"It isn't over yet!"
He was straining so hard his face had gone scarlet.
"Give up. Give up, and you'll feel better."
Chris snarled.
"I can't give up! I didn't give up in a cell—why would I give up now?"
"Because it isn't working. What doesn't work, doesn't work."
He was right. What doesn't work, doesn't work. Chris had learned that the hard way, long ago in Lion Pavilion. But in prison he had also forced the impossible into being, and that was why he could not quit.
"I'll succeed even if I have to brute-force it."
"Oh?"
"I'll clear the standard standing on my head if I have to. I'll find out what my seed is, I'll reach Thought Formulation, and I'll soar."
Harvey's voice turned sly.
"There is a better way."
Chris brightened.
"You'll give me an Evaluation Paper?"
"Can't. Regulations."
"This may be rude of me, but… you don't strike me as the sort of man who keeps regulations."
He looked like someone who would ignore a rule at the drop of a hat.
"You've read me wrong. No eye for people, have you?"
"Then what are you proposing?"
"Do you know where the seed is?"
"No."
"Our great and glorious master said the seed lies in the brain."
Harvey lifted a hand toward his forehead.
"From the frontal lobe, here…"
His hand slid around to the nape of his neck.
"You draw a line back to the medulla."
Then his hand rose to the crown.
"And you draw a second line from the crown down to the inside of the chin. The two lines meet in the middle. He judged that the seed sits at that point."
The explanation was fascinating. Something about it snagged all the same.
"And so?"
Harvey closed his left fist and rubbed the jutting middle knuckle with his right index finger.
"Pretend this spot on my left hand is the crown of your head, and think of my right index finger as my staff. I'll drive mana into your brain and diagnose the seed for you."
He means to make a test subject of me.
Chris swore inwardly.
You fucking bastard.
Memory came back of the old days, when Harvey had tried to force a memory-extraction spell on him.
People don't change.
Not one of the old sayings was wrong.
The explanation had been almost kind, and Chris's opinion of Harvey had climbed from phlegm to something like snot. Now it dropped straight back to phlegm. Yellow, stinking phlegm.
"What is that spell called?"
"Great Mage Harvey's Seed Diagnosis."
His voice heated with excitement.
"Just imagine if it works! You'd learn the seed's type without burning one of those expensive Evaluation Papers. A jackpot. An enormous jackpot!"
"So it isn't a finished spell."
The excitement cooled. Harvey wilted at once.
"Not yet."
"Botch it, and I'd be left an idiot."
Harvey's lips drew inward, then smoothed flat again.
"The risk of that is small."
Suspicion gathered in Chris's eyes. Harvey had clearly been about to say yes. Then he had thought better of it and claimed the risk was small.
Small risk, my ass.
Nine out of ten would come out idiots. No—nine hundred and ninety-nine out of a thousand.
"Has the diagnosis ever succeeded, even once?"
"It has."
The answer leapt out at once, which only made it harder to believe.
A lie.
Chris was certain of it.
"Did you take the post as head of the Evaluation Office because you wanted to try that experiment?"
"No."
No, my ass.
He had come to sweet-talk slow learners like Chris into being his test subjects.
I'd bet both wrists on it.
Chris ducked his head in a short bow.
"I'll see you in a week."
As he went, Harvey's voice struck the back of his head.
"If you make up your mind, come tomorrow."
Chris walked some fifty paces outside and spat.
Choke on that.
Ordinarily he went straight back to the dormitory to train. Today he turned the other way, toward Hall 3, where the cohort from two intakes ago was housed.
He knocked and stepped into the entry of Hall 3. The supervisor's office sat just inside, much as it did in Hall 1.
He rapped on the supervisor's door. No answer; the supervisor was out. The quiet within suggested everyone had gone off to train.
Uneasy about walking into an empty dormitory, he stepped back outside—and came face to face with the person he had been looking for.
Alice was heading for the entrance with a book hugged to her chest when she saw him, and her eyes went wide. A moment later they shone with tears.
"Chris!"
She ran and threw her arms around him. The rush of it nearly knocked him over. He shot his right foot back and braced. If Iron Body had not strengthened his legs, he would have gone down.
"Chris."
She said his name again. Tears blurred her sight. Alice wiped them with her sleeve and rubbed her palm over his hair, which had come in uneven tufts, like the first shoots of spring.
"How did you get out?"
It had been a very long time, and yet there was no awkwardness between them. Old feeling came back all at once, as if he had met someone he had parted from only yesterday.
"I sensed mana. So they let me out and put me in the Training Wing. I'm staying in Hall 1 with the juniors."
Alice drew back.
"You don't have a belt."
"Ah. They never gave me one. No wonder something felt missing. Where do I get a belt?"
"Usually in the lecture hall, but you came in late on your own, so the hall director ought to be able to give you one."
"There's a director?"
"Of course there is."
"In Hall 1, where I live, there's only a supervisor."
"The director's probably lost in training."
Just then Catherine picked up the book Alice had dropped in the middle of the embrace.
"Alice, you dropped your book."
"Oh—thanks."
Chris looked from Catherine to Alice and back.
"You two go around together?"
Alice answered.
"Yeah. We're Lion Pavilion cohort-mates."
"You weren't that close, back in Lion Pavilion."
"A lot of time has passed."
Standing side by side, the contrast was stark. Catherine looked like a princess. Alice looked like a maid.
Catherine asked.
"When did you get out?"
"About twenty-two days ago, I think."
Alice drove a fist into Chris's stomach.
"And you're only coming to find us now!"
Perhaps because she had reached Spirit Awakening, the punch had a real sting.
"Ow."
"Don't be dramatic."
"I'm not. You nearly burst my guts."
"Listen to him whine."
Catherine said.
"Don't just stand in the road. Let's go to a café."
"There's a café?"
"There is."
The café stood in Clock Tower Square, behind the education wing. Chris looked up at the clock tower in the center of the square. The hands pointed to three in the afternoon.
The three of them went in. The moment Chris stepped through the door, the soft glow of the mana lamps made him shrink a little.
"This place looks expensive."
Alice answered.
"It is."
"I don't have any money."
Catherine said.
"I'll pay, to mark the reunion. Order whatever you like."
They took a table and sat.
"If it isn't rude, I'd rather have cake than tea."
In the cell he had thought of it every day—the sweet taste of the expensive cake he had eaten in the VIP Guest Pavilion.
The dormitory buffet was excellent, but cake never appeared on it, so he had not had any since.
Catherine ordered tea as well.
"Thank you."
Chris set the cake before him and lifted his fork with something close to reverence. He cut a small piece from the edge and brought it to his mouth.
"Ahh."
The cake melted on his tongue. The fork danced, and the slice was gone in no time.
Alice, looking thoroughly fed up, pushed her own cake toward him.
"You eat it."
Chris's face lit up.
"Really?"
"Yes, eat."
"Thank you."
This time he rationed it, bite by careful bite.
"I think you're happier to see the cake than you are to see me."
Alice said it in a sulky tone.
"No. I'm happier to see you."
Chris took a sip of tea. The dry bitterness washed the sweetness from his tongue.
"Ah, the tea's good too. This place is really delicious."
Catherine said.
"Chris, it's been eight years since we learned the incantation. How did you sense mana after eight years? I've never once heard of anyone succeeding that late."
"There was a mage in the cell."
"A mage, in a cell?"
"Yes."
"So a mage locked up for some crime taught you?"
"Yes."
"Why? What for?"
"Is that strange?"
"Of course it's strange. You know how unfriendly the mages in our tower are."
"You haven't lived in a cell, so you wouldn't know. A cell is boring. Truly boring. Try staring at a wall every day. It'll drive a person mad. So he taught me to pass the time."
"Even so, a mage ought to be different."
"Different how?"
"Mages at Thought Formulation and above, once they set their minds on training, go into places like caves and let twenty years, thirty years, slip past like water. Some even spend fifty."
"Ah…"
Chris leaned in and dropped his voice to a whisper.
"So that's why mages have personalities like nuts. Complete nuts."
"What are you talking about?"
"Imagine going into a cave and staring at a wall every day. For decades. That can't be good for anyone's character. Even a born sweetheart would have their personality ruined, living like that."
Chris lowered his voice further.
"The prison has a formation that interferes with magic, so you can't learn any. That's why even a mage goes mad from the boredom."
Jo had certainly been like that. Tom, though, had been able to use magic. So Tom had not taught Chris out of boredom. He had taught with a purpose—the purpose of shattering the fifty-fifth step.
Tom's realm was probably not Seed Cultivation either. He had killed Jo, a Seed Cultivation mage, with ease. Ring Binding was far more likely.
He could not tell her a secret like that. Chris closed his mouth there.
Catherine accepted it.
"Ah. I see."
Alice asked.
"Have you had your attribute diagnosed?"
Chris let out a sigh. The tea went from pleasantly bitter to simply bitter.
"I can't clear the standard."
Alice looked sorry for him.
"Most people clear that."
"I know."
All because of Iron Body.
Damn Tom.
The mood had sunk all at once, and Chris deliberately brightened his voice to lift it.
"What are your attributes?"
Catherine answered.
"I'm Earth."
Alice said she was Water, then added,
"Honestly, what a relief."
"A relief how?"
"Because it falls under the four great elements."
"That's a relief? Does having one of those attributes make the higher stages easier?"
"I wouldn't know about that. It's a relief because the tower only supplies six kinds of Evaluation Paper. If your seed is some other attribute, you can never find out what it is."
Catherine said.
"If all six come back negative, it means you have a seed of another attribute, and to identify it you have to buy the test yourself. Evaluation Papers for rare attributes are insanely expensive. The cheap ones are a hundred gold, and the expensive ones go past five hundred. Even a rich house would struggle to bear that."
"Even your house couldn't?"
"Ours could. How many houses are that rich?"
Alice said.
"If I'd belonged to a rare attribute, I would have trained my whole life without ever knowing what I was. My efficiency would have suffered, and reaching Thought Formulation would have been difficult."