One Door Opens

Figures emerged from the darkness between the torches, robed in deep crimson that seemed to drink the light. Their faces were hidden behind masks. Not the delicate festival masks Cassia had seen at parties, but something older and stranger. Porcelain, she thought, or perhaps bone, painted with expressions of grotesque ecstasy, mouths open in silent O's, eyes rolled back, faces caught in the moment of some profound and sacred pleasure.

There were perhaps fifteen of them. They circled the row of bound students in a slow procession, their bare feet silent on the stone floor, their chanting building in intensity. The incense smell grew stronger, headier.

Don't panic. Don't panic. Assess.

The robed figures stopped. The chanting ceased, cut off with such suddenness that the silence felt like a physical weight.

One of them stepped forward, taller than the others, broader in the shoulders, the crimson robe doing little to hide the powerful physique beneath. The mask was different too, painted gold rather than white, the expression of ecstasy somehow more commanding, more demanding.

"Daughters of Futoria." The voice was female, rich and resonant, altered by the mask into something that seemed to come from everywhere at once. "Students of Maidenhead Academy. You have been brought here tonight for a purpose."

Cassia glanced at Antonia. Her friend's face had gone very still, that calculating look firmly in place. She's thinking the same thing I am. If we're going to die, we're going to die fighting. But Cassia didn't think they were going to die. Something else was happening here, something she didn't yet understand.

"You have been selected," the gold-masked figure continued, "from among your peers. You have been observed, assessed, and deemed worthy. Tonight, you are offered an invitation. What you choose to do with that invitation is your own affair, but know that the door being opened before you now does not open often. And once closed, it remains closed forever."

The other masked figures had begun to move again, but differently now. They stopped behind each bound student, one per captive, standing silent and watchful. Cassia felt the presence of the one behind her like a warm pressure at her back, close enough to touch but not quite touching. She resisted the urge to turn her head.

"You know this Academy as a place of learning," the gold-masked figure said. "Politics, philosophy, combat, and commerce. The education of minds and bodies. But there are older truths taught here, deeper currents that flow beneath the surface of lectures and examinations. There is knowledge that cannot be found in any scroll, cannot be earned in any classroom. Knowledge that must be experienced."

The figure began to pace along the row of bound students, crimson robe trailing on the stone floor. "The Order of the Sacred Shaft has existed since the founding of Futoria. We have counted among our number senators and scholars, warriors and merchants, the greatest and most powerful citizens this Republic has ever produced. We do not recruit the weak. We do not recruit the unworthy. We recruit only those we believe have the potential to become more, in power, in understanding, in influence."

Cassia's mind was racing. She'd heard rumors of a secret society at the Academy, everyone had. It was rumored to be extremely exclusive and ancient, throwing lavish parties, and holding phallic rituals.

"You will have questions," the gold-masked figure continued. "Some will be answered tonight. Others must wait until you have proven yourselves worthy of the answers. Such is the way of all mysteries, they unfold to those who persist."

The figure stopped in front of the girl at the end of the row, Aelia, Cassia saw, the quiet one from Politics. She was trembling, her usually composed face pale with fear. The gold mask tilted, regarding her.

"What say you, daughter? Will you accept the invitation to become an aspirant of the Order of the Sacred Shaft? Or shall we return you to your bed, oath bound not to reveal anything you have seen here tonight, and the door will close?"

Aelia's throat worked. She looked at the masked figure, at the other robed forms standing behind the other students, at the torches and the shadows and the cold stone floor. When she spoke, her voice was barely a whisper.

"I... I accept."

"Speak clearly, daughter. The Order has no use for those who cannot commit."

"I accept!" Louder this time, with something almost like defiance buried beneath the fear.

The gold-masked figure nodded. The robed figure behind Aelia stepped forward and, with a knife that seemed to appear from nowhere, sliced through the ropes binding her wrists and ankles. Aelia gasped, rubbing her chafed skin, but made no move to flee.

The figure moved down the row. Next was a girl Cassia didn't recognize, wearing a plain woolen shift. She accepted almost before the question was finished, her voice steady, her eyes bright with something that looked like excitement rather than fear.

Then Portia. Then two others Cassia had seen in the dining hall but never spoken to. One by one, they accepted. None refused.

Now the gold-masked figure stood before Antonia.

"Antonia Laeta, daughter of Valeria. Your instructors describe your mind like a steel trap beneath a smile like summer sunshine. You have been watched, and you have been found... intriguing."

Antonia's green eyes didn't waver. "That's a lot of flattery for someone who tied me to a chair in the middle of the night."

The mask didn't react, couldn't react, but Cassia could have sworn she heard amusement in the voice that answered. "The binding serves a purpose sister. It reminds you that you are not in control. That you are being offered something, not promised something. That the choice to accept is a choice to surrender, not your will, but your certainty. Your assumption that you know what comes next."

Antonia was quiet for a long moment. Cassia watched her friend's face, saw the calculations happening behind those bright eyes. Antonia was never impulsive, no matter how much she pretended otherwise. Every decision she made was the result of rapid, ruthless cost-benefit analysis.

"What are the benefits?" Antonia asked.

A ripple went through the assembled masked figures. Not laughter exactly, but something like it, a shared amusement, a communal appreciation for the question.

"Power," the gold-masked figure said. "Influence. Knowledge. The kinds of connections that cannot be made in any other forum. And something more, something you cannot yet understand, but which you will come to value above all the rest."

"Vague."

"Yes." No apology in the word. "The mysteries are not revealed to the uninitiated. That would defeat the purpose. You must decide based on trust, or based on curiosity, if trust is too much to ask."

Antonia's eyes flicked to Cassia. Held for a moment. Then returned to the gold mask.

"I accept."

The ropes fell away. Antonia rubbed her wrists, but she didn't stand, didn't try to leave. She stayed in the chair, watching, waiting.

And then the gold-masked figure was standing before Cassia.

"Cassia Longwood. Daughter of Senator Demetria Longwood. You have your mother's pride and her stubbornness. You have her ambition and her sense of justice." The mask tilted. "You also have her enemies. Did you know that?"

"I'm aware that my mother has political rivals," Cassia said carefully. "I'm also aware that she's taught me to assess offers before accepting them."

"And what do you assess about this offer?"

That I'd be throwing myself into a viper pit. Was her immediate reaction, however another feeling was stirring. Something that felt suspiciously like... opportunity.

Her mother had warned her about the Academy's dangers, yes. But, she'd also told Cassia that the Academy was where she would discover who she truly was. "Not who you think you should be," Demetria had said, "but who you actually are. The difference between those two things is the most important lesson you will ever learn."

A secret society. Ancient, powerful, exclusive. A chance to prove herself, to distinguish herself, to forge connections that could serve her for the rest of her life.

"What do I assess?" she said aloud. "I assess that you went to considerable trouble to bring us here. That you selected us specifically, which means you have resources and information. That you're offering something you believe we want badly enough to endure humiliation and uncertainty. And I assess that despite your theatrics, the care in which you have already taken handling us suggests that whatever comes next, it isn't lethal."

"Perceptive."

The golden mask was impossible to read.

"What happens if I say no? Truly? Do I really wake up bound in oaths?"

"You do. The door closes. You continue your studies at the Academy, and you never know what you might have become." A pause. "But you also never know what you might have lost. Ignorance is its own kind of safety. Some prefer it."

Cassia thought about her mother. About Demetria's strength, her power, her five wills. About the way people moved aside when she walked into a room, the way even Senator Decima Aurelius treated her with a certain grudging respect despite their rivalry.

She thought about her own body, her own nature, the constant battle between who she wanted to be and who she feared she was.

She thought about the door the figure had mentioned. Open or closed. Chosen or unchosen.

"My mother," she said slowly, "once told me that the only thing worse than making the wrong choice is making **** at all. That indecision is just decision by cowardice."

"Your mother is a wise woman."

"She's is." Cassia was smiling now, just slightly. "I accept."

The ropes fell away. Cassia didn't rub her wrists, she refused to give the assembled figures the satisfaction of seeing her discomfort. She sat straight in the chair, chin lifted, and met the gold mask's gaze as best she could without being able to see the eyes behind it.

The figure stood before the row of newly freed, and excited aspirants, arms spread wide, crimson robes falling like a harpy's wings.

"Yes, well done, well done. Our scouts seem to have chosen well. However, accepting the invitation is merely opening the first step towards membership. If you would like to cross the threshold of our Order, then there are three trials that you must pass tonight. My sisters, the lights if you'd please. "