Steel and Shadow

VI

The days all pass this way, with no contact or acknowledgement from anyone in my family, and then they blur into weeks. I try to make eye contact with Tolly at Lessons, to catch him after Protocol, but he ignores me. I beat Prince Tiberias once in Training; he beat me the other countless times. The constant silence from Mother and Father presses down on me, and I cry almost every night. I miss them.

One Saturday, Elane offers to take me into East Archeon with her family. When I'm not busy, I spend almost all my time with her and Stralian now, since Tolly won't talk to me. "You have got to see the city," she tells me. "It's so cool, and big, and pretty." I agree to go with her. My parents probably wouldn't care, anyway.

We ride a big transport into the city with her parents and older sister. Elane's father is named Lord Jerald Haven. He's tall, but not as tall as Father, and seems to glow. It comes from him being a shadow, I think. Elane's older sister is ten, four years older than she is, and two years older than Stralian. Her name is Mariella, and she's really pretty, but she doesn't talk to me a lot. Elane's mother is stern and serious-looking. Her house colors are blue and gray. I should recognize them, but I can't remember.

Stralian tells me jokes the whole way to East Archeon, which is like five minutes. Elane and Mariella are talking about Hexasprin Theater, whatever that is, and their favorite park. They point out interesting sights to me as we pass them.

"Look," Elane says, as we rattle down a street lined with big houses. "These are all the city estates. There's ours!" She points at a large mansion with black flags hanging from the windows. There are also lots of people walking around the streets—they must be common Silvers. Tolly's mentioned them once or twice, and it sounds like a nice thing to be. I spot a few Reds, too; their clothes are duller and they wear tight red bands around their wrists. Some of them dart through the Silver crowd, in between all the people. Tolly always said that they move like rats, and I never understood why they had to be in such a hurry.

We stop at one of the larger parks. Elane, Mariella, Stralian, and I pile out of the transport. "We'll be an hour or so," Elane's mother says. "Don't get into trouble." She and Lord Haven drive off.

I turn to Elane. "So, what do we do now?"

"We usually play Seeker here. We can hide and you can try to find us," she says.

"Can't you guys turn invisible?" I ask. "How am I supposed to find you?"

Elane and Stralian frown at this, but Mariella speaks up. "I'm wearing a silver necklace, see?" She shows off a simple locket. "And so is El. I can give my bracelet to Stralian, and you can sense it. You are a magnetron, correct?"

I nod. "I guess I can try." I extend my mental hold over all the metal around me. The silver tickles the edge of my mind and I grasp for it. Beside me, the three Havens flicker out of existence.

"You have ten seconds!" I shout. I hear footsteps as they run, but if I concentrate, I can also make out disturbances in the air that their abilities can't cover: a flash of red hair here, a hand there. My mind reaches out for the silver, but my hold on it is growing weaker as they move away. "Ready or not," I call, "here I come!"

I hear a rustle to my left, as if someone had tripped in the grass. As I get closer, my ability pieces an image of the silver bracelet together in my mind. Stralian. My senses tell me that the metal is on the ground right next to me, but I can't see it. It's a weird feeling. I nudge the grass around me with my foot.