The Fifth Rung

Nobody at Ember Academy below the Dean had ever reached the fifth rung, and everybody knew it. Tamsin Hollis knew it the way she knew the smell of the lake at dawn, because the Fourth Years said it every morning at the Tidehall tables as if it were a prayer. The fifth rung was for the Headmistress and the Dean and the stone statues in the Founders' Court. The rest of them climbed the rungs below, one at a time, or did not climb at all.

The assembly bell rang across the Founders' Court, and six hundred students in four colours of scarf filed into the Great Hall. Tamsin wore the grey-blue of House Tide. Ahead of her a Third Year in the red of House Blaze was arguing with a girl in the same grey-blue as Tamsin, and the two of them had the same sharp chin and the same black hair cut to the jaw.

"Caius Wren," the girl said, loud enough for half the line to hear, "if you take my seat at the Trials draw, I will tell Mother you cried at the Sorting."

"I was eleven, Cassia," said Caius Wren, and tugged his red scarf straight. "And you cried harder."

Tamsin had learned their names in her first week. Caius Wren was a Third Year, House Blaze. Cassia Wren was a Second Year, House Tide, and his younger sister. The two of them were in rival Houses and they never let anyone forget it. Across the Hall people mixed them up from behind, and both Wrens hated it.

The Headmistress waited on the dais until the Hall was silent. Headmistress Sibyl Grey was a small woman with white hair pinned flat, and she was the head of the whole academy, above the Dean and every Professor and Tutor in it. Beside her stood Dean Mordecai Flint, tall and grey-bearded, who ran the timetable and the discipline. Below the dais sat the Professors in their black gowns, and below them, on plain benches, the Tutors in brown.

"Welcome back for the spring term," the Headmistress said. "The Spring Trials will be held in six weeks. Every House will field eight duellists. The draw will be posted in a fortnight. House Blaze holds the cup. The rest of you know what to do about that."

A cheer went up from the red scarves. At the front of them, a tall Third Year with the Headmistress's own pale eyes raised a fist. That was Dorian Grey, captain of House Blaze and the Headmistress's nephew. He was her sister's son, and the Blaze students liked to say the cup had been in the family for three years running. Nobody said it where she could hear.

"I will remind you of the first rule of this school," said Dean Flint. "There are no duels outside the Ring. Not in the corridors, not on the lake path, not in your dormitories. A duel outside the Ring costs fifty merits and a month of mornings in the kitchens, and a second one costs you your place here. That rule has stood since the Ring Accord of 1410, which was signed eight years after the Old Fire of 1402 burned the east wing to its stones. The Accord exists because the Old Fire started as a duel between two Second Years on a staircase. Remember that when you feel brave."

Tamsin glanced toward the east wing windows without meaning to. The wing had been rebuilt long ago, but the old scorch line still showed in the lower courses of stone, a black band at knee height that no mortar had ever covered.

Dean Flint went on. "First Years. Your mana will be recorded on the ladder this week. For the benefit of those who slept through autumn: the ladder has five rungs. Spark, Ember, Flame, Blaze, Inferno, in that order. Most of you arrived as Spark. A few of you are already Ember. Your affinity grade is a different matter entirely and is not a measure of your mana. Affinity is graded Dull, Clear, Bright or Radiant, and it tells us how cleanly your element answers you, not how much of it you can hold. A Spark with a Radiant affinity is not stronger than a Flame with a Dull one. Do not confuse the two. Every year somebody does."

"And do not," said the Headmistress, "confuse the name of this school with a rung on the ladder, or the name of a House with one. Ember Academy was named for the ember that survived the Old Fire, not for anyone's rung. House Blaze was named for Aldous Blaze, who founded it, and he died a Flame. I say this every year and every year somebody writes an essay that gets it wrong."

Laughter went around the Hall. Tamsin did not laugh, because she was Ember, and the word still felt borrowed on her. She had come up from Spark in the autumn, two weeks before the winter break, with her hands in the lake water and Professor Marsh counting under his breath beside her. She was the only First Year in House Tide to have done it. Her affinity was water, graded Bright at the autumn testing, and that was the part she was proud of, though the Dean had just told her not to be.

The assembly broke, and the Houses split toward their tables. Tamsin found Professor Lysander Marsh at the foot of the dais, a thin man with ink on his cuffs and a grey owl asleep on his shoulder.

"Dean Marsh," said a First Year from House Gale, bobbing in front of him. "Dean Marsh, is it true the Trials draw is rigged?"

"I am not the Dean," said Professor Marsh, without heat. "Dean Flint is the Dean. I am a Professor of water theory, and if you call me Dean again, the Dean will hear of it and neither of us will enjoy that." He turned to Tamsin. "Hollis. Tomorrow at the boathouse, after the first bell. Bring your notes on tidal cycling."

"Yes, Professor."

The owl on his shoulder opened one orange eye. Its name was Ashwing, and it had been Professor Marsh's familiar since before Tamsin was born. Ashwing went where Marsh went and nowhere else, or so Marsh always said. Students in House Tide claimed a single Ashwing feather, held in the off hand, steadied a water-caster's mana better than any crystal focus in the Cinder Library. Marsh neither confirmed nor denied this, and the owl shed about once a year.

A woman in a black gown came down the steps to join them. Professor Aurelia Marsh taught fire theory, and she was Lysander Marsh's wife. They had been married twenty years, had taught at the academy for nineteen of them, and kept a running wager on which House would take the cup. "You promised me you would stop letting them call you Dean," she said to her husband.

"I did stop. They keep starting again."

Tutor Benedek Crane came past them with a ring of iron keys at his belt. Crane was the Ringwarden of Ember Academy, which meant he kept the keys to the duelling Ring and set its wards before every bout, and a brown-scarfed Tutor had held that office for a hundred years. He was broad and quiet and his daughter was a Second Year in House Stone.

"Marsh," he said. "The east wing. Somebody has been in there."

Professor Marsh's face changed. "Show me."

Tamsin was not invited, and she followed anyway, because the east wing was on the way to Tidehall and nobody said otherwise. Crane led them up the rebuilt staircase to the second floor, where the storerooms were, and stopped at a door with the lock blackened.

Inside, on the bare floorboards, were three scorch marks, each the length of a hand, each the shape of a fire-caster's practice stance. Somebody had been drawing fire in the east wing, in the exact place where the Old Fire had started, and had done it more than once.

"That is not a duel," said Marsh slowly. "A duel leaves two sets of marks. This is one person, practising."

"Practising for the Trials," said Crane. "Fire affinity. Flame rung at least, to leave marks that deep. I counted eleven Blaze students who fit that, and four from the other Houses."

"Or it is nothing to do with the Trials," said Aurelia Marsh. "Somebody who wanted to stand where the Old Fire stood."

Ashwing shifted on Lysander Marsh's shoulder and made a low sound. Tamsin stood in the doorway with her notes under her arm and thought that in six weeks she would be in the Ring with a Tide scarf on, and that the first rule of the school had already been bent by somebody with a steadier hand than hers.

"Hollis," said Marsh, without turning around. "You saw nothing. Boathouse, tomorrow, first bell."

"Yes, Professor," said Tamsin, and went to find her House.