Anne Bishop: Sebastian

Lukene sighed. “No, Nigelle, we’re not. The Instructors considered your abilities very carefully before making the decision, but it is our conclusion that you haven’t, as yet, achieved the skills necessary to advance. Until you have fulfilled all the requirements, you will not be granted a Landscaper’s Badge.”

Nigelle pressed her fists against the top of the table. “I’ve been studying for four years. You have to achieve Level Two or better in five years in order to remain and continue studying for the higher levels. How am I supposed to fulfill the requirements for two levels in a year’s time if you won’t promote me to even the first level?”

You can’t, Lukene thought. And that is a blessing for us all. “What is the Heart’s Blessing?”

The girl’s eyes darkened with anger. “Is this another test, Instructor Lukene? Although I don’t see the point in asking a question every child knows the answer to.”

Guardians and Guides, let me finally explain this in a way she’ll understand. “Then it should be a simple question to answer,” Lukene replied. “Heart’s Blessing.”

Nigelle sneered. “Travel lightly.”

Lukene nodded. “Travel lightly. Because what you bring with you becomes part of the landscape. That is true for every person who lives in this world. It is especially true for Landscapers, because we are the sieve through which Ephemera manifests what is reflected in all those hearts. The resonance of our hearts provides the bedrock through which the currents of Dark and Light flow, keeping people safe from the turmoil of their own feelings while still allowing the true desires of the heart to become real. We are the bedrock, Nigelle. Other people, and Ephemera itself, depend on us to find a balance between the Light and Dark aspects of ourselves in order to filter the Light and Dark currents that are this world’s wonderful and terrible power.”

“I know all that,” Nigelle snapped.

“Up here.” Lukene tapped a finger against her own temple. Then she tapped the finger against her chest. “But not here. You carry too much baggage, Nigelle. You show up for the lessons, but you make only token attempts to practice those lessons. You’re angry and envious whenever other students fulfill a requirement and go on to the next stage, but you won’t do the work they did to achieve the goal. And yet you still expect us to grant you power over our world. We can’t. Open your eyes, Nigelle. Look at what you manifest in your garden. Until that changes, until you change, we cannot allow you to have control of places other people will have to live in.”

The girl’s sulkiness shifted, changing into something sly and ugly. “I know the real reason you won’t advance me.”

Lukene sighed. Why did the “real” reason never have anything to do with the student’s skills?

“You’re afraid of me,” Nigelle said. “You know I’m better than you. Better than all of you. I’m like Belladonna, and you can’t stand the thought of there being another Landscaper who can do things you can’t even dream of.”

Unable to hide the shiver of fear that went through her, Lukene said nothing. Instructors never engaged in discussion once a student mentioned that name.

After the silence stretched out, Nigelle let out a nasty little laugh and stood up. “You better keep that in mind the next time you evaluate my work.”

Lukene waited until Nigelle left the room before whispering, “We’ll keep it in mind. Oh, we’ll definitely keep it in mind.”

She braced her hands on the table to help her shaking legs support her as she stood up. She wasn’t forty yet, but right now she felt ancient.

“I know they’re necessary,” a male voice said from the doorway, “but these thrice-yearly evaluations take more out of the Instructors than the students.”

Tears stung Lukene’s eyes as she looked at the solid man filling the doorway. “Gregor.”

He hurried across the room to reach her. His warm, strong hand rested on her shoulder.

She turned into that strength, that warmth, wrapping her arms around him as his arms closed around her.

“Difficult day?” Gregor asked, resting his cheek against her hair.

“Not so bad…until this last student.”

“What did she do?”

“Spoke the name every Instructor in the school fears.”

Gregor tensed. “Belladonna.”

Lukene nodded. “I broke, Gregor. I showed fear.”

“With good reason if this was more than schoolgirl romanticism of a rogue Landscaper.”

“More like another manipulative ploy to push the Instructors into granting her a status she hasn’t earned.” She eased back enough to look at the man who was the Head Instructor of Bridges—and her lover. “And how was your day?”

“Better than yours. Teaching the young men who have the gift to provide a connection between landscapes isn’t nearly as unnerving as teaching the young women who will control those landscapes.” He studied her, his dark eyes full of concern. “Why don’t you go to Sanctuary for a day or two?”

“Maybe I will. But I think I should be here right now, in case the other Instructors…” She couldn’t finish, couldn’t say the words.

“In case the other Instructors feel this girl is too dangerous and needs to be walled in,” Gregor said grimly. When Lukene nodded, he asked, “ Is she that dangerous? Could she be another Belladonna?”

Lukene thought for a moment, then shook her head. “She has enough anger and…soul muck…to resonate with dark landscapes, but she’ll never be like Belladonna. She doesn’t have the power—or the heart.”

Nigelle glowered at every student she passed as she hurried down the wide flagstone paths that would eventually lead to her walled garden. She should have known from the moment she’d seen how far away her training ground was from the school’s central buildings that the Instructors would be against her. Other students had training grounds that were no more than a five-minute walk from the classrooms. Granted, there weren’t many students who were given a space among the walled gardens reserved for the Instructors, but there were some, and she should have been one of them.

“Cold, heart-rotted bitches,” she muttered. Abruptly, she turned down another path that headed back toward the school. A path that, while as well tended as all the others, always had a dusty, little-used feel to it. A path students were forbidden to follow to the end unless an Instructor was with them. Maybe that was why it intrigued her enough to risk sneaking down that path several times a year to ponder the mystery at its end.

The path ended in an archway that was the only break in a high stone wall. In the center of this garden was another high-walled garden that had a locked wrought-iron gate. The only things that grew on the land between the inner and outer garden walls were large, bloated mushrooms and thorn trees that produced a fruit the color of a putrid wound.

Students whispered that the Dark Guides sneaked into the school during the dark of the moon, harvested those mushrooms and fruits, and cooked them with the hearts of people they had lured into the dark landscapes.

She liked that story. She spent a lot of nights imagining that one of the Dark Guides had come to the school and snatched all those snippy-bitch Instructors who said they were trying to help her learn how to use the power inside her but were really doing everything they could to ensure that she failed.

She’d like to see someone like Lukene face a Dark Guide. Snippy-bitch Lukene would wet herself if she came face-to-face with anything truly dark. But she wouldn’t be afraid.