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training, she would
introduce us to the rudiments of physical control. “Unsheathe your
prisms,” she said, “and establish a connection with the light.”
    The others already had theirs out, holding
them in cupped palm; children’s tools, simple triangular glass
objects that could fit in a pocket. I had only the dagger with the
prism on the pommel that Edwige had given me during my test: the
two kinds of aristocratic Eclipsian weapons, blades and bent light,
combined in this one lethal object. I had not touched it or looked
at it since, although Edwige had insisted I keep it, going so far
as to give me a sheath with a belt for convenience. “You must have
your own prism,” she’d said, “and you’ll need one suitable for an
adult. As you work with it, you’ll establish a circuit with the
electric impulses of your brain.”
    Everybody was waiting for me. I pulled the
dagger from the sheath and my whole body tensed, remembering the
nausea and repulsion I had experienced during my test. The handle
seemed to nestle into my grip, the right size for my small hand,
neither cold nor hot, but the same temperature as my skin. I
extended my arm to hold the prism a proper distance from my face
and bent a shaft of light from the window into my eyes.
    Far from a shock, I felt a kind of low-level
infusion of power, how I imagined it would be if I could ingest my
food directly into my arteries. It is, of course, an illusion, like
the first effects of drugs or alcohol. The energy comes from us,
not from the prism, which merely boosts our own telepathic
electricity by drawing on the body’s reserves.
This is
good
, I decided.
    Finally
, Drusilla thought to
Rosalie.
    “All right,” Matilda said. “Watch me, but
don’t use your prisms until I tell you.” Much like Edwige during my
test in the ‘Graven Assembly, she performed simple physical
tasks—lifting small objects or controlling the fire that warmed the
drafty room—and guided us through the steps to copy her. This
aspect of my gift came easily to me. Although the other four in the
class had been at La Sapienza for weeks, I was almost as proficient
as any of them.
    Matilda was impressed. “Try this,” she said
to me, shaping a beam of light from the fire and bouncing it off
the walls until she returned it to the hearth. The others watched
while I separated the heat and long-wave red light through the
prism and worked to shape them. Forming the beam wasn’t difficult,
but controlling it was. The light ricocheted from wall to wall,
gaining momentum until it hit a window, which shattered in a spray
of heavy glass shards, many of them blown back inside by the wind.
Everyone ducked for cover, laughing and cursing, as the fire
sputtered and smoked.
    “If that had been a mirror, and not merely a
window,” Matilda said, “the reflections would have caused a real
explosion.”
    I apologized for the damage, but Matilda
waved it off. “I wanted to find out what you could do,” she said,
“and you see it’s nothing that can’t be fixed.” It was as if she
had a magnet that worked on glass. Each individual shard and sliver
lifted itself from the floor and the desks, the windowsill, even
the ground, several stories below, floating in midair until Matilda
had them all assembled. When she gave the command, they flew up to
reform the pane, jostling each other like impatient customers when
a store opens its doors for a sale, fitting themselves into
place.
    Matilda used the occasion to stress a by now
familiar lesson to the little class. “No matter what powers you may
possess,” she said, her face solemn, “until you learn control, they
produce nothing but tricks—worthless, dangerous tricks. And control
comes only with work. Practice and work.”
    The first few days passed quickly. I was so
busy learning new things—interesting, useful things—that the enmity
of a couple of teenage girls faded into the background. Meals were
not segregated by age or grade, and I took