Page 17 of Kingmakers, Year Three

“Look at that!” I say to Rakel. “I must have grown. A bit, at least.”

“Wow,” she says, mockingly. “Keep it up and you might hit 5’2.”

“You’re not tall, either!”

“Compared to you, I’m Shaquille O’Neal.”

I scowl at her. “Now I don’t know if I should give you your present. But you did do my makeup pretty nice . . .”

“What present? What is it?” Rakel demands, eyes bright with curiosity.

I dig through my half-unpacked suitcase, finding the painting I made for her, carefully backed with cardboard and wrapped with paper so it wouldn’t crumple or flake on the journey over.

Rakel rips off the brown paper wrapping, eager but careful.

“Oh!” She gasps, face alight. She turns the painting so I can see it, as if I don’t already know what’s on the canvas. “I’ll hang it up on the wall.”

“That’s why I made it for you,” I say. “So we’ll have a little life down here.”

Rakel snorts. The album cover I painted for her is the furthest thing from “life” in the sense that it depicts a Dali-esque sphere of melting skulls, but it’s from Rakel’s favorite band, so I knew it would make her happy.

“This is a good gift,” she says, in her honest and unsentimental way.

I’m sure she would have told me it was shit if she didn’t like it. Which is nice, because now I know for certain that I did a good job.

“Come on,” I say. “We better hurry, or we won’t have time for breakfast before class.”

Rakel and I hustle up the stairs to ground level, dazzled as always by the brilliant burst of morning sunshine after the soft golden lamplight of the Undercroft.

We only have a few minutes to stuff ourselves with bacon and coffee before we have to run across campus to the Keep.

Kingmakers is so large and sprawling that I could stay fit just by sprinting from class to class. Unfortunately for me, that’s not nearly the only exercise I get. My schedule includes grueling conditioning sessions, combat classes, and classes that aren’t meant to be particularly taxing, like Marksmanship and Environmental Adaptation, but which strain my limits all the same because I’m so damn small.

At least I know what to expect this year. I packed plenty of Band-aids for all the blisters that will blossom on my palms and feet, and I’m already well acquainted with the location of the infirmary and the ice dispensers in the dining hall.

Rakel and I find our Interrogation class on the second floor of the Keep easily enough. I spread my notebooks and pens out across my desk, determined to take notes on every single word that comes out of Professor Penmark’s mouth. I want to score well on my exams. In my Freshman year, I was simply trying to survive. This year, I’d like to find out if I might just have what it takes to run with the rest of the mafiosi.

Professor Penmark slouches into the classroom in his creepy, silent way. He looks even thinner than last year, his pallid skin stretched tight over his bones, his many tattoos a jumble of colorless shapes. He has a long, unsmiling face and dark eyes without any glimmer of life, like a dead thing dug up from the ground.

I always found him off-putting. Now I despise him.

I’ll never forget how he dragged the chained-up Ozzy across the floor of the Grand Hall without a hint of sympathy in those black eyes. I almost think he enjoyed it.

Iknowhe enjoys teaching the Torture Techniques class. He forces us to practice non-lethal torments on our fellow students, including electrocution, stress positions, pressure points, and dry-boarding. If we don’t comply with enough enthusiasm—aka sadism—then he “demonstrates” the procedures himself.

Luckily, today’s Interrogation class involves only psychological techniques.

We’ve already covered ego-fragmentation and learned helplessness. Now Professor Penmark lectures us on deception.

“Information is useless if you cannot tell if it is true or false,” he says, in his thin tenor. “How do you know if your subject is lying?”

His dark eyes crawl over us as we sit captive behind our desks.

“Lack of eye contact,” Joss Burmingham guesses. His room is across the hall from mine, but we’ve never spoken because I’ve never seen him outside of class not wearing headphones with the volume turned all the way up. He and Rakel must be in a competition to see who can go deaf first.

“No—toomucheye contact,” Lola Fischer contradicts him.

Dixie Davis gives Lola an approving nod. The two girls share the room next to mine. They’re both from Biloxi, Mississippi, and were already best friends before they came to Kingmakers.

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