“I’ll need to consider your final answers.”
“Yes, Instructor Wivell,” said Merletta, a hint of stone beneath her polite words. “I’ll wait.”
She knew from the other trainees that it was normal to learn the results of your test on the spot, and she had no intention of giving the instructor any opportunity to lose her answers, or change his mind based on input from anyone else. If he was going to falsely fail her, when she knew she’d answered every question, he’d have to look her in the eye right now and do it.
He scanned the answers, clearing his throat again as he looked from her writing leaf to his own. Then, his movements painfully slow, he scratched a mark into the thin slab of stone in front of him, where Merletta could see Jacobi’s name as well as hers.
“Well?” she prompted. “Did I pass—sir?” She added the title as an afterthought.
Instructor Wivell cleared his throat one final time. “Yes,” he said gruffly. “You have passed your first year testing. Congratulations.”
Merletta shot from her seat, giving a cry of delight as she spun joyfully through the water with total disregard for her dignity.
“Thank you, Instructor,” she said, inclining her head to him, unable to hold in a smile.
Wivell regarded her. “You closed your eyes more than once during the test,” he commented. “Were you accessing your mind palace?”
Merletta hesitated only slightly before answering. “Yes.”
Wivell was silent for another moment. “It seems you had success with it at last, then.”
Merletta’s thoughts soured slightly. Her inability to master the mind palace concept had become something of a snide joke for her detractors in her first few months in the program. Wivell had never shown any sign that he’d realized how much she was struggling. As far as she was concerned, the fact that he had noticed only increased his culpability for never making any attempt to help her improve.
Little did he know, her efforts had improved exponentially without his help. It had been many months ago, when she’d decided to ignore his advice and not base her mind palace on her childhood home. She’d taken a risk, and not based it on any building. It wasn’t so much a mind palace now, as a mind journey—specifically, the familiar route from the kelp farms to Vazula. In her mind, she called it her memory journey. She knew every patch of coral, every rocky shelf of those waters, and the journey included the island’s beach, as well as the lagoon. Once the exercise had ceased to be connected with the unpleasant memories that dwelt in the charity home, she’d found it enormously helpful.
None of this she intended to share with Instructor Wivell, of course.
“Yes, sir,” she said mildly. “Am I dismissed?”
He nodded, and she darted from the room, swimming immediately to find Sage. The other mermaid gave such a squeal of delight at Merletta’s news that they earned a reproving look from the senior guard overseeing the third years’ training exercise. To all outward appearances, Oliver was ignoring them, his expression as disdainful as ever. But Merletta could see out of the corner of her eye that his head was inclined toward her as she spoke. She hid a grim smile. They could pretend all they wanted, but the other trainees were undoubtedly all as curious about her test as she’d been about theirs. She glanced at the new trainee who had started first year a few weeks before, and saw that even she was watching intently.
Merletta smiled to herself, feeling a surge of affection for her fellow trainees, the unfriendly as well as the friendly. They would be studying together for another year. Much as they had tried to push her out, she was still here. The two most hostile trainees had both failed, and wouldn’t be troubling her anymore. Some of the others could be unpleasant, but her life here had already given her so much more fulfillment and freedom than the charity home ever had. And maybe the other trainees would come around to her eventually, as Sage had done.
Her friend soon returned to her training exercise, and with nothing else to do, Merletta floated back to the edge of the training yard to watch. Her eyes passed over the various groups, and she started slightly as she confronted a pair of pale eyes fixed on her with pure malice in their depths.
Merletta turned away, her heart beating more quickly in spite of herself. So much for the failed trainees being out of the picture. Ileana was back from her brief break, now officially a member of the guards. She had still never said a word about the incident with the satchel, and Merletta was nervous about it. She hated the feeling of waiting for the blow to fall, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to confront the other mermaid and get it over with. What if, unlikely as it seemed, Ileana really hadn’t looked inside?
But Merletta couldn’t really believe it. The usual smirk was gone from Ileana’s face now, but the look of outright hatred that had replaced it didn’t bode well for any future interactions between them. Merletta supposed she would see much less of Ileana now the older mermaid was no longer in the program, but her position as a guard would ensure she remained in the Center. She had considerable further training still ahead of her.
Merletta felt a twinge of dark sympathy for the failed trainee. If only Ileana had stopped a year before, when she passed the formidable second year test, she would be joining the guards by choice, without the humiliation of failing third year. No wonder she was glaring like that. It was clear she’d followed the gist of Merletta’s conversation with Sage, and she must know her most hated fellow trainee had passed first year. Merletta was going to have to watch her back more than ever.
“What are you going to do with your break?” Sage asked her cheerfully, as they swam for the dining hall at the end of her training. “I’m guessing you won’t go back to the charity home.”
Merletta snorted. “Hardly.”
She fell silent as she remembered her visit to the home. There was a sort of hollow ache that appeared in her stomach whenever she remembered the head’s words. She’d even gone back over the orphan records, willing them to be legible, but it was impossible to make out. She had to accept she’d never know her parents’ names. In a tiny, foolish way, it felt like losing them all over again.
It seemed so coincidental that her entry had been in the damaged section of the record. She couldn’t help but wonder if someone had bruised the leaf intentionally to stop her from reading it. Such a conclusion seemed to require a drastic overestimation of her importance, though. Of course, it might have been just another heartless prank by Jacobi. It seemed the most likely option, since he’d been the one to mention the records to her. But he was gone, and she couldn’t even confront him with it.
She pushed such thoughts aside, trying to speak naturally for her friend’s sake. She hadn’t told Sage what she’d learned about her parents, and she didn’t intend to do so now. This was a night for celebration. She let the memory of her success wash over her. As little as she wanted to be a scribe, at the very least she now had a secure future. She would never have to live on the streets. The thought was hard to take in.
“Will you go back to Tilssted, though?” Sage pressed. “Like you do on rest days?”
Merletta squirmed slightly, guilt niggling at her for the deception. It was true she always went through Tilssted, she reasoned with herself.
“I’m not sure,” she hedged. “I’ll go visit Tish at some stage, tell her I’ve passed.”
“I’m sure she’ll be delighted,” Sage smiled.