Barclay gaped. “First?But I… I don’t know anything about Lore!”
“I’m not trying to play with you or humiliate you. If you’re not strong enough to place first, then you won’t survive removing your Mark. I will not kill you. So prove to me that, if I help you, I won’t.”
TWELVE
Outside it had begun to snow, and Barclay shivered as he stomped to the town square, Viola tripping over herself to keep up.
“The Exhibition starts tomorrow,” Viola told him.
Barclay’s already terrible mood soured further.
“There are three events, one each week for three weeks.”
Three weeks stuck in Sycomore.
“Runa was right to call the Exhibition dangerous. Apprentices have been known to get injured—even die—”
“Juststop, Viola!” Barclay shouted, whipping around. “You’re not helping. How am I supposed to compete? I don’t know anything about magic—”
“AboutLore—”
“I’ll get myself killed! Or make a fool of myself! Either way, I won’t win, and I won’t be able to go home.”
Barclay’s imagination was already conjuring up terrible futures for himself. He could stay in Sycomore forever, cleaning up Beast droppings along the streets until a Beast accidentally ate him. He could run off to some faraway village, change his name, grow a beard, and speak to no one until the day he died.
“You won’t be hopeless! You’ll probably be the only apprentice in the Exhibition with a Mythic class Beast.”
“I don’t think so,” Barclay said, thinking of Tadg. “Besides, that won’t matter if I’m the first apprentice in Sycomore to be eaten by my own Beast.”
Viola rolled her eyes. “Are you going to enter or not?”
Barclay sighed, his anger already settling into something sharper, harder—like stone forged into steel.
Viola didn’t know him very well. She only knew him as an Elsie, but Barclay was more than that. He was the boy who’d had to work for his every meal. Who’d memorized everything he could about mushrooms before he even started his apprenticeship so he could prove to Master Pilzmann that he was worthy of the job. Who’d never had anyone looking out for him.
“Of course I’ll enter,” he said determinedly. “I could die. I could make a fool of myself. But I’m still going to try to win.”
At that, Viola took him by the shoulder and marched him around to the back of the Guild House, where kids lined up in front of a registration table. Barclay recognized a few ofthe faces from earlier, including Tadg. He was, once again, surrounded by a crowd of admirers. He kept his sleeves rolled up to show off his massive snakelike Beast Mark, even though it was bitterly cold.
Viola untucked her scarf from her coat and wrapped it around her head like a makeshift hood, then yanked it down so that it nearly covered her eyes. It looked a bit funny, though, as her hair buns made it all lumpy.
“What are you doing?” asked Barclay.
“I don’t want to be recognized.”
“Afraid people will dote on you?”
“No,” she snapped. “I’m afraid people will thinkI’mentering. There will be gossip.”
Her words reminded him of what the three Lore Masters had said earlier, that Viola was the apprentice to a man named Cyril Harlow.
“You’re already a Guild apprentice, aren’t you?” he asked.
“Yes,” she squeaked, ducking behind his shoulder. She clearly cared a lot about what people thought about her.
“Do apprentices often travel without their Masters?”
“Um, yes. All the time.”
