Chapter 49 — The Bellringer

Chapter 49: Chapter 49 — The Bellringer

~ Raven ~

"Raven. Raven. Raven."

"I’ll gut you—"

Raven came off the mattress swinging, got halfway upright, and every single thing the Grand Drill Court had done to her arrived at once.

Her ribs. Her leg. Both palms. The long muscle down her back that had taken the black ball.

She sat back down.

"Ow."

"Good morning," Thalia said, from a safe distance.

"How long did I sleep?"

"About three hours."

"That’s not sleep. That’s a nap with ambition."

Her hands were the worst of it. The cuts had closed overnight into stiff red lines across the heels of both palms and they pulled every time she made a fist, which was often, because she kept forgetting.

Across the room, Tessa was fighting a war she was losing.

"Brielle."

She pulled at the blanket. It did not move.

From underneath came a sound like something large turning over in a cave.

"Brielle."

"—touch that blanket again and I’ll take the hand off at the wrist—"

Brielle rolled onto her stomach and went still.

Tessa stood there holding one corner with both hands.

"We’re going to be late," Thalia said. "First proper day. All four of us, late, on the first proper day."

Raven considered the shape under the blanket.

"Maybe three of us."

Tessa let go of the corner.

"Fair."

Getting dressed took longer than it should have. The uniform had more fastenings than anything Raven had ever worn at Blackthorn, and each one wanted a pinch grip, and each pinch grip put pressure straight across her cuts.

"Let me—"

"No."

"Raven, your hands are—"

"I have dressed myself every day of my life," Raven said, and got the collar clasp on the fourth try, and did not swear more than twice.

Then she put her boot on, hopping, and had to catch the bedpost.

"You nearly fell over," Thalia said.

"I did not."

"You held the bed."

"I was checking the bed."

Raven sat down to do the other boot, which proved nothing, and used the time to make an announcement.

"Today is going to be quiet."

Nobody said anything.

"I mean it. No Cardinal heirs. No Blackthorns. No challenges, no fights, no standing in the middle of anything. I’m going to go to class, take whatever points they hand out, eat, come back here and be so boring that people forget they’ve seen me."

Thalia looked at her.

Tessa looked at her.

Under the blanket, Brielle opened one eye.

"What?" Raven pulled her boot on harder than she needed to. "That’s a normal plan. People have that plan. That’s the plan everybody in this academy is already having, apparently without difficulty—"

"We didn’t say anything," Tessa said.

"You were about to."

"I was about to put on a sock."

"Aggressively low-key," Raven said. "That’s today."

A slate chimed on the table.

Then a second one.

Then all four, one after another, sharp little notes that bounced around the room.

Raven picked hers up and held it the way you hold something that might be alive. She had owned the thing for three hours and could operate about two-thirds of it.

Thalia looked at her own screen.

"Oh."

Raven pointed at her.

"No."

"You don’t even know what—"

"Whatever made you say oh. No. Take it back."

"That’s not really how—" Thalia sighed and turned the slate around. "You jinxed us. You said the word quiet out loud in this room and you jinxed us."

A new channel had unfolded across the display, headed by a small ringing symbol.

THE BELLRINGER

"What the hell is that?"

Thalia’s eyebrows went up into her hair.

"The Bellringer? You’ve never—" She stopped. "Are you joking? Everyone knows the Bellringer. First-years know the Bellringer before they get here. My cousin used to read me the broadcasts at dinner."

"I grew up in a kitchen," Raven said. "We had a bell. It meant somebody wanted soup."

"It’s the gossip channel." Thalia was already scrolling. "Anonymous. Students send in tips and recordings and whatever they’ve overheard, and it all goes out to the whole academy. Nobody knows who’s behind it. Nobody even knows if it’s one person."

"And nobody’s stopped it?"

"People have tried."

"Why Bellringer?"

"Because when something happens here," Tessa said, pulling her sock on, "they make sure everyone hears about it."

Raven looked back down at her screen.

She had disliked a great many people in her life and she had never managed it this quickly.

She opened it.

It wasn’t a written column. The slate filled with a recording.

A figure sat behind a small desk in a room hung with dark cloth, arranged with the deliberate ridiculousness of a stage set.

Every inch of them was covered — dark clothes, high collar, gloves. Where a face should have been there was an enormous carved mask shaped like a bell, wide at the jaw, with two neat holes for eyes that showed nothing behind them.

The voice, when it came, had been through a rune. It should have sounded sinister.

It sounded like a boy at a party who has just been handed a microphone.

"Good morning, Valerius!"

Raven flinched and turned the volume down.

"We have survived another First Howl. The academy stands. The walls hold." A gloved hand spread. "Unfortunately, dignity suffered heavy casualties."

The image cut to a corridor. Students walking with their heads down, red paw prints glowing on every forehead. One boy had pulled his hood so far forward he walked into a doorframe.

Then a girl, dragging her hair over the mark with her fingers.

The paw shone straight through it.

The recording froze.

"Excellent disguise," the Bellringer said. "Nobody can see it."

Thalia made a noise into her hand.

"Now." The figure leaned back. "To business. Because this year has produced something genuinely unusual, and I want to be clear that I have checked all of it twice."

The screen changed.

It showed Raven.

"Raven Rivers," the Bellringer said. "Valerius’s newest argument against trusting classification paperwork."

"No," Raven said.

"Arrives with no House, no rank, and a Nascent classification — which, for those of you who slept through orientation, means there’s technically a wolf in there somewhere, best of luck."

Tessa laughed. She tried to swallow it, and failed, and turned it into a cough that fooled nobody.

"She then proceeded to break a four-year Stage One record held by Cassian Blade."

A pause. "On her first day. In front of witnesses. While the examiners’ scans were insisting there was nothing to measure."

"Turn it off," Raven said.

Nobody turned it off.

"At classification, she was contested by Dante Prymont personally — an experience most students describe afterward from a seated position — and passed anyway. And by the end of that same day, her name had appeared on the older board."

The image showed the Cardinal Court list, the twentieth line lit.

"Twentieth Seat. First day. I want you to understand that some of you have been here for three years and your name has never appeared on anything except a punishment roster."

"He’s not wrong," Tessa said.

"Then we come to the cafeteria."

Raven’s stomach dropped straight through the floor.