The Schism (The Broken Prism Book 4) Read online

  And with that she left him alone.

  Hayden slipped out of his House robes and put his pajamas back on, passing off the clothing to the tailor, who had a long night of work cut out for him. He climbed into bed and nudged Bonk off of his pillow, which was still warm from where the dragonling’s belly was resting on it, and let his thoughts float until he was able to drift off to sleep.

  4

  The Trial

  Hayden awoke the next morning to the sound of his bedroom door being opened without knocking. The sun was creeping over the horizon when he looked out the window, startling awake and trying to get over his surprise at having slept so well. Mrs. Trout was setting his robes gently on the side of his bed, a house maid was in to tidy up, and one of the cooks was depositing a breakfast tray on the end table by his headboard.

  Not used to having his room invaded by so many people all at once, Hayden sat up and held onto the covers of his bed while he struggled to wake himself up properly.

  “You have twenty minutes to dress and eat, and then I want you in the antechamber for a final inspection before we head out,” Mrs. Trout greeted him, waving away the others, who were lingering to see if anything else needed to be done.

  Hayden jumped out of bed as soon as he was alone and shoveled oat paste and fruit into his mouth as fast as he could without choking, downing his glass of orange juice in one long gulp and hurrying to get dressed. The tailor had worked his magic, because the robes fit perfectly, and Hayden strapped his belt of magical weaponry over top of the shirt and pants so that when he walked the robes would open and reveal them. He attempted to flatten his hair before donning his circlet, finally pausing long enough to check his reflection in the mirror, adding his Medal of Heroism at the last second.

  For a moment he stood there, stunned.

  I look like a proper mage.

  He hadn’t realized how much difference a well-tailored pair of clothes would make, but it somehow made him look older and more broad-shouldered than he was. He straightened his posture and admired the effect, before calling Bonk to settle on his shoulder and leaving his bedroom at the Trout estate for the last time.

  This was definitely the weirdest winter holiday I’ve ever had.

  He took in his surroundings as he made his way to the main foyer, because he wasn’t entirely sure whether he’d ever be inside this house again, depending on how the trial went and his relations with the Trout family afterwards. He was surprised to discover that there were things he would miss, including Mrs. Trout’s blunt, sometimes acerbic conversation.

  Lorn was peeking around a corner when Hayden stepped into the foyer, eager for a good look at him before he set off. Hayden was pleased to see his schoolmate’s doughy face lift in surprise at the sight of him.

  Magdalene was waiting for him near the front doors.

  “Right on time,” she greeted him with mild approval, looking over his appearance and giving him a faint nod. “I’ll be translocating us to the gates of the mayoral compound, where I’ll leave you. If anyone asks, you were brought to Kargath by Asher Masters,” she informed him.

  “By Asher? But he isn’t even going to be there, is he?”

  Mrs. Trout looked like she was tempted to roll her eyes when she said, “I’ll be very surprised if he doesn’t show up to watch your trial.”

  “I didn’t know it would be open to the public…” Hayden trailed off, suddenly much more nervous than before.

  “It won’t be open to just anyone,” Mrs. Trout conceded. “But those with enough clout in the magical and non-magical communities will be able to work their way in, I expect.”

  That was a daunting thought, but Hayden did his best to ignore it for now. Mrs. Trout held out her hand to him, the other clasped around her Mastery Charm to prepare for the translocation.

  Before Hayden accepted her hand he said, “I just want you to know, no matter what happens today…I appreciate all the help you and Edgar and everyone else gave me for the last few weeks. And if I’m ever an important person in the magical community, I’ll remember that I owe your family a favor.”

  Mrs. Trout graced him with a genuine smile, a rarity for her.

  “I’m counting on it.”

  Hayden took her hand and felt the translocation take hold. He blinked several times and found himself standing all alone outside the main gates to the mayoral compound in Kargath. He looked around, but Mrs. Trout was already gone, so he shivered against the wintry wind and approached the main gate, where two sentries stood bundled up in snow gear, looking miserable in the cold.

  “Do you have an appointment?” the one on the left stopped him as he approached, looking over his appearance.

  “Yes. I’m Hayden Frost, and I’m expected in Chamber Four in a few minutes for a hearing.”

  The sentry made a clucking noise and said, “Bad luck. Who’s suing you?”

  Hayden smirked and said, “Actually, I’m doing the suing….And the Council of Mages, if you’re curious.”

  Both men gawked at him as they stood by to let him pass, and Hayden climbed the hill towards the main building with mounting confidence. He ran through every pep-talk he had received in the last five weeks, every lesson he could remember with Edgar, determined to keep calm and collected and not let the last five weeks be a wasted effort.

  He entered through the front doors and turned to the right, for once thankful for his familiarity with the compound due to his past visits. It didn’t occur to him before now to ask why his trial was being held in the High Mayor’s compound instead of at the capital of the Council itself, since this didn’t really seem to involve the High Mayor. Hayden had never seen the famous Crystal Tower where the Council of Mages conducted their business, but Lorn had described it to him after one of their training sessions a few weeks ago, when he was in a rare good mood and felt up to sharing.

  Maybe Kargath was closer, or else the High Mayor is interested in watching what happens.

  Now that he knew there would be an audience, he began trying to guess who would attend his hearing as he followed the long hallway past the first three chambers and stopped outside of number four. He found himself hoping that Asher was there, for moral support if nothing else, because he’d like to have at least one ally in the room while he was arguing for his rights.

  Well, two allies I guess—Mrs. Trout must want me to succeed more than even Asher at this point.

  He took a deep breath for courage, warned Bonk to be on his best behavior, and opened the heavy wooden door.

  There was a lot of quiet talking and side-conversations going on when Hayden opened the door, but it all stopped as soon as he crossed the threshold. A few gasps were audible, and then a hush fell over the room as he entered and shut the door behind him, his heart pounding painfully in his chest as his adrenaline kicked in.

  The ten members of the Council of Mages were seated at a long curving desk in the center of the chamber, which formed the shape of a ‘C’ facing him. There was no seat laid out for him—supplicants were expected to stand when presenting their case, so the space in the center of the room was otherwise empty. All around that space, tiered rows of benches rose from the floor, and Hayden decided that the room could probably hold a hundred people if it was filled to capacity.

  Fortunately that was not the case today. There were perhaps two dozen other people scattered around the benches to watch the trial, though Hayden only recognized a few of them.

  The first person he saw was Asher, whose eyebrows were lifted in faint surprise at the sight of him, though he recovered quickly enough to give him a cheery wave of two fingers. The High Mayor was also there, along with several of his Fias, who were watching Hayden like he was an infectious disease. Hayden couldn’t really blame them for their dislike, after he managed to get out from under all the charges they laid against him last year and instead became a war hero. Master Willow was also here, along with Master Mandra, the Master of Wands at Valhalla. Hayden was surprised by the latter, who he h
adn’t seen since his second year of school, during the Inter-School Championship, when they’d spoken briefly at Valhalla.

  Those were the only people in the room he recognized on sight, though from what Mrs. Trout told him he figured the rest must either belong to Great Houses or have some other kind of clout in the community to get in here.

  Hayden approached the center of the room calmly, keeping his posture straight and his face relaxed. He glanced over the faces of the different Council members, and was unsurprised when Mrs. Trout didn’t give him even the faintest sign of recognition. It was game time.

  Calahan, the chairperson of the Council of Mages, addressed him first.

  “You dare come before us in House colors?” He sounded incredulous.

  “Is that a problem?” Hayden asked casually. “I was under the impression that I’m entitled to wear my family’s colors, as the heir to the estate.”

  Calahan narrowed his eyebrows slightly and said, “Legally, you are. It’s just surprising that you chose to make yourself look as much like your father as possible when coming before us.”

  Hayden smirked, because both Edgar and Magdalene had prepared him for this. They’ll do anything they can to rattle you, which almost certainly entails likening you to your father in the hope of shaming you.

  “I can’t help who I look like, and I see no point in apologizing for it,” he replied calmly. “I’m his son, so be it. I don’t see what that has to do with this hearing.”

  A few of the Council members exchanged looks at this, the easy smiles dropping from their faces. They clearly hadn’t expected him to show up meaning business and present a challenge to them. Their uncertainty gave him confidence.

  Calahan’s expression darkened.

  “Very well, then present your case.”

  Hayden clasped his hands behind his back to force himself to maintain good posture.

  “Five years ago you declared my father, Aleric Frost, mentally unfit to continue acting as head of the Frost-owned businesses, and you decided to take control of his estate and assets,” Hayden explained the situation as Magdalene and Edgar had relayed it to him weeks ago. “Of course, he kept murdering everyone who showed up at the house to oppose him, so until his death, your seizure was really just on paper.”

  He paused for a moment to see if they would interrupt, but no one did so he continued.

  “Since there were no other known Frosts at that time, you were allowed to absorb his money and property into the accounts controlled by the Council of Mages. But now I’m here, and to put it bluntly, I want my stuff back.”

  A heavy silence hung in the air for several moments before the mage to Calahan’s left spoke.

  “As you said, our claim to the Frost assets was perfectly legal, as there were no known heirs prior to Aleric’s death. You can hardly blame us for not knowing about you before then; you didn’t even know who your father was until after his demise.”

  “I don’t blame you for not knowing who I was before,” Hayden admitted easily. “But you do know about me now. You may have taken everything from my father, but you’re now keeping it from me, his rightful legal heir. Unless you can prove that I am also an enemy of mankind and mentally unfit to run the household, you have no right to keep using my money and land for your own purposes.”

  “Just because you don’t like it doesn’t make it illegal,” another of the mages commented dryly.

  “You’re right. Actually, it’s the Revocability Act that makes it illegal, Clause three,” Hayden agreed.

  Calahan looked like he’d been clubbed over the head.

  “And how would you know something like that?” he asked with unflattering suspicion.

  Hayden smirked and said, “Surprise, I can read.” A very uncomfortable silence filled the room after this, punctuated only by Master Asher, who hastily worked to turn a snort of laughter into a cough.

  If Hayden had any hope of the trial being finished quickly, he was sadly mistaken. The Council members attempted to drag him through every argument imaginable to try and make him slip up. He was immensely grateful for all the practice Edgar and Mrs. Trout gave him during the last few weeks, when they berated him for hours every day over these same conversation points, so he already had his defenses at hand when the Council brought them up now.

  Bonk remained regally poised on his shoulder for the next hour, like an intimidating gargoyle, and Hayden had to resist the urge to ask him to switch shoulders so he could massage the place where the dragonling’s weight had been resting for so long. He didn’t think that would look very professional.

  Hayden almost laughed whenever Magdalene Trout took a turn at questioning him, since most of their dialogue was just a repeated version of a dozen previous conversations.

  “Would you be willing to let us defer repayment of the loans until you come of age?” she asked in a cool voice.

  Since they’d already discussed this very thing three times in the last week, Hayden had his answer ready.

  “No, I would not. You’ve had my money for long enough, now give it back.”

  Calahan scowled at him and asked, “Why are you so eager to get your hands on your father’s assets?”

  “Does it matter?” Hayden shrugged. “Besides, we’ve spent the past hour agreeing that my father is dead, so they aren’t his assets, they’re mine. Stop trying to trip me up in some legal fiction and just tell me whether you’re going to give me my things back, or if I need to begin suing each of you personally to recover the funds.”

  Someone in the audience gasped, but Hayden didn’t turn to look at who it was. There was nothing even remotely friendly in the faces of the Council members now, which gave Hayden a vicious sense of satisfaction, because it meant he was winning. He was sick of them walking all over him just because he was a teenager.

  “You are as arrogant as your father,” one of the Councilmen snapped at him. “You should learn some respect for your superiors.”

  Thoroughly annoyed, Hayden ticked the Medal of Heroism on his chest and said, “So should you. If it wasn’t for me and Oliver Trout, you’d still be in a cage having the magic sucked out of your body while the Magistra governed from your Crystal Tower.”

  The Councilman jumped to his feet and slammed his palms onto the desk in front of him, face purple with rage as he shouted, “You’re nothing but a jumped up little boy who thinks he’s special!”

  “I’m a jumped up little boy who’s about to win this lawsuit,” he corrected, enjoying the man’s anger. “You’ve toyed with me long enough. You haven’t been able to come up with any legal argument yet for why you should still be allowed to hold my property, so you have one month to begin repayment and finish up whatever you’re doing in my estate, or I’m coming after you individually.”

  Magdalene Trout motioned for her colleague to sit down, looking annoyed with his outburst. Calahan exchanged a brief glance with her that Hayden couldn’t interpret, and then he said, “Alright, you’ll get your things back. We’ll have one of our accountants contact—”

  “I’ll be using my own accountant, actually,” Hayden interrupted. Mrs. Trout and Edgar had both strongly encouraged him on this point, to keep him from being swindled by someone that the Council had control over.

  Calahan frowned and said, “I wasn’t aware that you had your own accountant on retainer…” in a tone of polite disbelief.

  In truth, he didn’t. He was about to take a gamble and hope for the best, because Edgar and Mrs. Trout had disagreed about whether his next decision would actually work or not.

  “I’ll be hiring Fia Valay to run the ledgers and get everything set up with the banks, until I have time to put someone on permanent retainer,” he explained as though it had already been decided.

  Fia Valay, who happened to be in the audience, looked momentarily stunned, but he cleared the expression from his face almost immediately and stared curiously at Hayden. The High Mayor glanced over at his Fia like he was wondering why he wasn’t tol
d about this development beforehand. In truth, it was because Hayden hadn’t actually asked the Fia if he would help him yet, and wasn’t at all sure that the man would want to, since Hayden nearly blew him up with an Absorber last year while fleeing Mizzenwald.

  Mrs. Trout had thought it was too risky to gamble on Valay agreeing to help him without speaking to him first, but Edgar thought it was brilliant. Hayden had only thought of the Fia because anyone who could teach him trigonometry was clearly a mathematical genius, and could certainly figure out the mess of receipts and transactions from this loaning business.

  “You’re hiring one of the High Mayor’s Fias to run your personal finances?” Calahan couldn’t have looked more shocked if Hayden had announced he was from another planet.

  “Is that a problem?” Hayden asked cautiously.

  “It’s just surprising that you wouldn’t want a mage to be involved in the process…” he said with a brief glance at the Fias in the audience. Hayden couldn’t have scripted Calahan’s words better himself, because the Fias looked affronted at being called second-rate for not having magical abilities.

  “Why would I need someone with magic to do simple arithmetic?” he raised a questioning eyebrow. He didn’t wait for an answer. “Please provide him with a copy of all your paperwork and receipts regarding the Frost properties and monies, and we can work out a repayment schedule once I’m back at school.”

  The room fell silent again, and Hayden stood there expectantly, attempting to wipe his sweaty palms on his robes without anyone noticing how nervous he still was. He hoped he had done Magdalene and Edgar proud, since he was fairly certain he’d just made some dangerous enemies in the Council of Mages.

  Finally, Calahan spoke.

  “Fia Valay will have all of our documentation within the week.” It sounded like every word was causing him terrible pain, and he looked ready to spit poison.