THE CHALLENGED:
Juniper Bell will be a spectacle the city of Arkspire will never forget! Uhhh . . . so little you gotta write this pamphlet about me? Absolute pro
Juniper Bell, a girl of little note.
Suspected pickpocket and relic hunter.
• Leader of the Order of Misfits and ruler of her bedroom.
• Power of untouchable roof-running skills, mad tricks and mind-blowing wisecracks.
• Has a small order and no district, but who needs one when you have Cinder, Thea, Everard and Madame Adie on your side?
Has Ms Bell truly been blessed by The Visitor, or is she nothing but a brazen liar? One thing’s for sure – the Trials of
You got that right!
1
A VIEW TO DIE FOR
‘Would you look at all that gleaming goodness?’
Juniper Bell said, smiling. She paused mid-clamber high atop an archway, gazing out at the incredible view before her.
Thea, Juniper’s best friend, nodded. ‘I would.’
Much like Juniper, she’d painted black charcoal marks across her cheeks, a flowery headband pulling back her cropped black hair. Black flowers, of course; they were on a stealth mission, after all. ‘Without all the manufactory smoke the light looks kind of clean. Like the sun’s had a bath.’
‘Behind the ears an’ everything,’ Juniper agreed. If you wanted to be anywhere in Arkspire, it was in the Uppers. Held high above the lower city upon massive metal plates, the only things that rose higher
were the Arcanist towers they were attached to: colossal structures that reached up to the clouds. The Uppers were places of luxury, where laws were made and the city was governed.
That said, it would be fair to say the Uppers of the Iris District had seen better days. The once gleaming white plaster crumbled from the walls of its lofty buildings. Its domed roofs were speckled with bird droppings. Its magnificent stained-glass windows and ornate observation towers were dull with grime.
The district had struggled over the fifty years since the disappearance of its leader, The Watcher, that was for sure. Her Order had become lazy, neglecting its citizens, shutting themselves away in their headquarters, waiting for their leader to return. Despite all this, the Iris Uppers were still a darn sight nicer than the pile of rust and ruin that were the Dregs far below.
Especially when the sun rose. Its rays glinted off the windows, igniting them with colour and for a brief, wonderful moment returning them to their original glory. It washed over the dirty walls, turning the faded white to a vibrant peach.
‘Sure is something,’ Juniper said.
She was in a good mood. Her second trial had been announced the day before. Machines had appeared all over the city, like bugs crawling from under a damp log.
Giant insectoid things, all pipes and wires and more legs than they knew what to do with. But instead of faces, they had curved glass displays, shiny and blank.
It wasn’t hard to guess who’d sent them. Strange contraptions, inventions beyond understanding? This was The Maker’s doing. Surprise, surprise, his image had flickered on to the displays, grainy and dull green. As always, his face had been lost in the shadow of his wide-brimmed hat, his eyes peering out from the darkness like lamplights.
‘Three days,’ he’d said, ever the chatterbox. ‘Juniper Bell’s second trial will take place in three days, within the confines of my Invention Tower. There we shall see the truth of who Ms Bell claims to be.’
Most people would get a little jittery knowing they had to compete with an all-powerful Arcanist. A sensible few might even be frightened, especially if they’d known the terrible secrets Juniper and her friends had discovered. The Arcanists hadn’t created
the trials because they wanted to give Juniper a chance to prove the truth of her claims. They wanted an excuse to kill her.
Who knew what could happen in the heat of a magical trial? An unfortunate accident here, a cheeky beheading there. The Arcanists couldn’t allow some girl from the Dregs to put silly ideas in the people’s heads that someone else could become as powerful as they were.
The Arcanists weren’t the divine saviours the city believed them to be. They hadn’t been passing their powers on to noble Inheritors each generation so that the legacy of the Arcanists could live on. They were the very same souls who’d been gifted magic a thousand years before. Instead of benevolent rulers, they were evil ancients who stole the bodies of children to prolong their unnatural lives.
And as the only ones who knew the Arcanists’ dark secret, Juniper knew it was up to her Order of Misfits to stop them.
Two days to go.
And here she was, feeling pretty hyped, all in all, despite the ominous threat of death.
Juniper hated sitting around doing nothing, not knowing if the Arcanists would challenge her to another trial or just grow tired of playing games and kill her in
her sleep. It made her feel defenceless and . . . trapped.
But now the second trial had been announced? She could act. She could finally bring the fight to the Arcanists! She wasn’t going to hide away, cooped up inside reading all the dusty books Everard had brought down from his district’s libraries. He kept blabbering on about the importance of research, but what was the point when she had someone as powerful as Cinder at her side? He had some of The Shrouded’s shadowmagic now, for Visitor’s sake! Juniper had never felt more confident about her chances.
Cinder was her secret weapon, the ace up her sleeve.
That didn’t stop the flashbacks of her last trial, though.
The darkness.
The clawing, skeletal hands.
And, worst of all, the sight of Nyx Neverbright, a girl only a little older than Juniper, fighting to keep control over her body as The Shrouded’s spirit attempted to wrestle it away from her. Yeah, two weeks later Juniper still had nightmares about that one.
But out here, up in the heights of the city, Juniper felt like she could breathe. She couldn’t wait until her district woke up and saw what the Order of Misfits had done that night.
‘The only sight I’ll stop to admire is that of my
enemies, broken and defeated at my feet,’ Cinder grumbled, looking at the sunrise as if it had insulted him. Pretty much how he looked at everything, to be fair.
‘Whoa, I had no idea you could be so poetic, Cinder,’ Juniper teased.
He sneered, revealing a row of needle-sharp fangs. ‘If you two are quite finished admiring something that happens every single morning, can we get on with this petty misadventure you have us on?’
Juniper fell into a bow. ‘Sorry to keep you waiting, m’lord.’
To say that Cinder could be difficult was an understatement. He could be downright nefarious at times. But he was kind of growing on Juniper. They were quite literally magically bonded together for a start, that always helped. He’d also saved her life too, shielding her from being pancaked by a falling bronze bell. And he’d helped her convince the city she was magic. All this for the low, low price of a simple promise to help Cinder get revenge on the Arcanists who’d imprisoned him.
Cinder’s tufted tail swished back and forth, something he’d really taken to since becoming a physical being rather than an incorporeal shadow-thingy. His blue eyes gleamed bright against the mask-like patches of black fur that contrasted with the white colouration of his face. He was strangely cute for a mysterious, otherworldly creature. Cute in a ‘look at me wrong and I’ll bite your nose off’ kind of way.
The girls peeked over the edge of the archway and signalled to Everard who was in the cobbled street below. Before climbing back down, they needed him to give them the all-clear. They were already treading on very, very thin ice. If the Arcanists caught so much as a whiff of her being arrested for trespassing, Juniper reckoned her jail cell would be the last thing she ever saw.
Everard looked left to right, his blond, perfectly
messy hair almost as pale as his wide-eyed face. You’d think he’d be happy to be back in the Uppers, the world he came from, but he looked considerably uncomfortable with the whole situation.
He gestured with a hand still pinned to his side, a movement so small and subtle, Juniper wondered if she’d imagined it. He was trying his hardest not to look suspicious but succeeded in looking as trustworthy as a mouse whistling in the corner of a cheese shop.
‘Such a natural,’ Juniper murmured.
‘Is that our signal or is he just playing air cello again?’
Thea asked.
‘Let’s go with the first one. I need some breakfast!’
Thea smiled. ‘“A day without a good breakfast is a day waiting to slap you round the face,” as Grangran always says.’
‘Too true,’ Juniper said, swinging herself over the side of the archway. She used the crevices between the stone slabs as holds to climb down.
‘Please focus on getting us down safely rather than the ramblings of a mad woman,’ Cinder said, leaping on to Juniper’s shoulders and digging his claws into her dark grey sweater.
‘Madly brilliant,’ Thea said under her breath.
The archway was incredibly tall, but as expert roofrunners the girls had scaled far worse. As they scrambled
down, a high-pitched whine shattered the peace of the morning, the phonograph speakers in the nearby plaza doing their very best to wake up those still trying to sleep.
‘To be disloyal is to walk the same path as the Betrayers!’ said the well-spoken announcer. ‘Remember what your Order has done for you! It has kept you safe. It has protected you from the horrors of the Betrayers’ curse and the desolation of the outside! Stand with your Order! Anything else is a betrayal!’
‘As if the boy wasn’t bad enough, we have to listen to his father’s incessant voice too?’ Cinder hissed.
Magister Amberflaw, Everard’s father, was the voice of Arkspire, the official announcer of all the lies the Arcanists wanted the city to believe. And, boy, did he like to talk. These messages came every half-hour, emphasizing the countless posters that had been hastily pasted up since Juniper’s victory in The Shrouded’s trial, encouraging Arkspire’s citizens to remain loyal to their district’s ruling Order.
‘They really don’t want anyone supporting us, do they?’ Thea said, securing her footing in a gap between the stonework. ‘Which is a shame, as we’ve worked so hard on our branding.’ She indicated the patch she’d sewn on to her jacket shoulder showing a rat circling round towards its tail. It was the symbol of Juniper and
Thea’s old gang, the Misfits, now rebranded as the emblem of their new self-made Order: the Order of Misfits. Sure, the Order might only consist of a few children, a spiteful critter and an old lady but at least they could rest safe in the knowledge that Juniper, their leader, wasn’t an evil, parasitic sorcerer. You had to be grateful for the small things.
The stone wall became sheer and featureless near the bottom. The girls would need to slide down a lamp post for the last stretch. They looked to Everard before they made their final descent, just in case he could see anyone they couldn’t.
He peered into the plaza on his one side, a covered walkway to his other, then gave them another small hand signal to come down. But as Juniper reached for the lamp post, he began waving his arms around frantically. Juniper held her breath, caught between the post and the wall, her body dangling precariously above the two wardens who’d just appeared.
2
NEW ROLES
Everard smiled at the wardens, though he was so nervous it looked more like a pained grimace. They glanced at him as they passed, rifles slung behind their shoulders, eyes hidden behind the goggles they wore.
Keep it cool. Just let them pass, Juniper urged Everard in her mind. Just say nothing and they’ll go away, just say nothing and they’ll go away . . .
‘M-morning, brave wardens!’ Everard blurted. ‘Keep on fighting the good fight and, um . . . and acting as the sword of the Arcanists themselves!’
The wardens came to an instant stop.
Juniper held in a groan. Brave wardens? Sword of the Arcanists? Who even speaks like that?
‘A little early to be out on your own, isn’t it?’ one of the wardens asked.
Everard looked like he’d just swallowed something particularly horrible. ‘I – I was on my way to the Academy! All that training to become an Inheritor, got to get there early to fit it all in sometimes, you know?’
‘Especially when you’re this far from the Radiant Academy,’ the other warden said, pointing at the emblem on Everard’s Candidate uniform, the one he’d insisted on wearing despite Juniper suggesting something less conspicuous. The emblem showed a jellyfish, the symbol of The Tempest’s Order of Radiance, whose district was on the opposite side of the city. Juniper wished he could bear pretending to be a nobody like the rest of them just for once.
Everard laughed hysterically. ‘Oh, ha ha! Oh yes! I, erm, well, I appear to have taken a wrong turn . . .’
Just stop talking, just stop talking, Juniper prayed. The wardens shared a glance. ‘What’re you hiding, Candidate?’
Juniper’s hand slipped. She pushed outwards as hard as she could, only just stopping herself from falling. She could feel a bead of sweat trickling down her forehead. Everard was fumbling, struggling to think of an excuse, desperately trying not to look up at Juniper dangling above them. ‘N-nothing! It’s just . . . these roads can be so windy, and – and my hair got in my eyes for a bit back there and –’
‘Time for Operation Desperate Death-Defying Distraction,’ Thea whispered, still clinging to the archway. She rummaged through her satchel with her free hand and produced a large bouncy ball, rested it in the crook of her elbow and then pulled out a jar of wriggling worms.
‘Please, spare us,’ Cinder muttered. His eyes flared with light, the connection he shared with Juniper making hers do the same. The sigils their bond had magically scrawled over her arms began to glow as they always did when Cinder used his powers. Sigils were the language of magic, the alphabet of the Other Side, arcane symbols that could imbue otherwise normal objects with power. They pulsed across Juniper’s brown skin like rivers of starlight. The wardens’ shadows began to warp and writhe, secretly moving independently from their owners. A ghostly shadow-hand reached for one of the warden’s hats, knocking it from his head with a swift swipe.
‘Whoa!’ the warden cried, spinning round just too late to see the shadow slink back to the floor. He reached for his hat, thinking it had blown off in a freak gust of wind. It slipped out of his grasp, the warden’s own shadow pushing it further away still, its movements barely perceptible. The warden chased after it, but every time he tried to pick it up, his shadow would move it again, just out of his reach.
‘Come on, man, just grab it!’ the other warden said, just as his shadow lifted his own hat and threw it after his companion. ‘What the –’ He dashed after it and the two wardens, who had looked so intimidating moments before, suddenly looked ridiculous, tripping over themselves as they tried to reclaim their runaway hats.
‘Thank The Visitor!’ Juniper gasped out, sliding down the lamp post once the wardens were safely out of sight. ‘Nice work, Cinder! Sure could’ve used this kind of help back when we were relic-hunting for a living . . .’
‘If only I’d known!’ Cinder said sarcastically, leaping down after her. ‘There was me, locked away in a pocket-dimension prison for centuries while you needed my aid.’
‘I guess we could see my new distraction another time?’ Thea said in a small voice, looking longingly at the bouncy ball and jar of worms in her hands before putting them away.
Juniper felt bad that her best friend hadn’t been able to strut her stuff, but she couldn’t deny she was happy Cinder had dealt with the whole situation so quickly. With minimal collateral damage to boot, which was more than could be said for some of the girls’ past ruses.
‘C’mon, we gotta split before they catch their hats,’ she said, leading the group towards the plaza, which was growing busier as the district awakened to a new day.
‘Oh, they’ll be chasing those hats for a while yet,’ Cinder snickered.
‘Thank goodness that’s all over,’ Everard said, looking back over his shoulder to make sure they
weren’t being followed. ‘I’ve received far too much high-level training to be wasted as a mere lookout.’
‘Good thing too, cos you’re the worst lookout ever!’
Juniper said.
‘Well, excuse me for my lack of experience at being a lying little sneak! You know I hate all this lurking about the shadows like some common brigand.’
Everard was the girls’ new friend. Well, perhaps friend was a bit of a strong word. Acquaintance, perhaps? Accomplice was probably closer to the mark. Until a few weeks ago, he’d been an adversary, a Candidate from a powerful family in the Order of Radiance, training to become The Tempest’s next Inheritor and sent to spy on Juniper. But unwittingly he’d learned the secret the Arcanists kept from the rest of the city. His sense of justice had forced him to become an undercover ally to the Misfits, whether he wanted to or not. Juniper found it hard to know where she stood with him. Sometimes he could be totally selfless, like when he’d put his future on the line to publicly support her when she went up against The Shrouded. Other times he was . . . well, a spoiled little pain in the butt.
‘I don’t mind being the lookout if you want to get up above the streets now and then?’ Thea offered.
‘As I said before, I would’ve, had I brought the right shoes for climbing,’ Everard replied.
‘Then why didn’t you?’ Juniper asked.
Everard looked at her, aghast. ‘What, and risk being seen with those ugly things by someone important?’
Juniper shook her head. ‘If you’re going to be part of our gang . . . I mean, Order, you have to pull your weight!’
‘I got you those books about the Invention Tower, didn’t I?’
‘Oh yes, how could I forget . . .’ Juniper mumbled, stifling a yawn just thinking about the bone-dry books about architectural layouts and engineering that she didn’t understand.
‘I used my impressive credentials to gain access to the restricted section of an esteemed library, need I remind you?’ Everard said. ‘Who knows how useful those’ll be, come your trial?’
‘Actually, I do know,’ Juniper said, ‘and it’s not very useful at all.’
‘Reading them would be a far better use of time than this little escapade.’ Everard sniffed. ‘I’m doing my best with what very little I have to work with!’
Thea touched his hand with hers. ‘You don’t have to be good at everything, you know?’
‘I – I am good at everything!’ he replied, snatching his hand away.
‘Right, I’m sure you’re a veritable spider with the
right shoes on,’ Cinder said, fading into a shadow. He’d been more careful since The Shrouded’s trial. Taking her powers had somehow transformed him into a new flesh and blood form, but there’d been so much going on that night he’d forgotten to hide himself. Thankfully no one but The Shrouded seemed to have noticed him, though they couldn’t take chances. People believed it was only the Betrayers who’d bonded with beings from the Other Side, even though Juniper now knew there was no such thing as a Betrayer.
Not any more, at least.
The terrible enemies of Arkspire the Arcanists had
everyone scared of – they were all dead. They were simply other Arcanists who hadn’t discovered how to live forever by stealing the bodies of children, killed by those that had, in a terrible civil war fought centuries ago. Juniper had seen their bodies buried deep beneath the city. Another lie to add to the Arcanists’ impressive collection.
‘I’ll have you know I received the highest training at the Radiant Academy!’ Everard protested.
‘Top of your class, right?’ Juniper muttered, Everard’s many boastful stories already ingrained in her memory.
‘The skills you bring to the table do offer us hope, however,’ Cinder said.
Everard blinked. ‘They . . . they do?’
Cinder nodded. ‘If you’re the gold standard of Academy training, perhaps the Arcanists won’t be such a challenge to defeat, after all . . .’
3
POSTER PERFECT
The crowd was growing in Fairview Plaza, all attention on the huge billboard hanging from the soaring archway at its entrance. These town squares usually had a large poster of the district’s Arcanist leader, showing them in all their glory and splendour. Despite her decades-long absence, you could barely move in the Iris District without seeing The Watcher’s cloaked image, her face always hidden within a deep hood, or the owl imagery of her Order.
But this square was different.
Cinder’s shadow chuckled, as if his success wasn’t tied to Juniper’s. ‘I suppose this means you’re yesterday’s news.’
She’d learned to ignore his snarky remarks by now, and instead looked up at the huge poster. Illustrated
with an expert hand, and larger than life, was the city’s new hot potato, the freshest talking point in town: Juniper’s twin sister, Elodie Bell.
Elodie was The Watcher’s chosen Inheritor, the one who’d receive the Arcanist’s powers once she died, who’d become the leader of the Order of Iris and Juniper’s home district, and one of the five rulers of the entire city, the last bastion of safety in a world ravaged by the Arcanist civil war. Or at least that’s what the people were told.
The part where Elodie’s soul would be snuffed out like a candle by The Watcher tended to be left out.
Juniper felt like she was looking in a mirror, her own features staring back down at her. The twin sisters shared the same round face, the same brown skin, the same large eyes and dark hair. And yet Elodie managed to be everything Juniper wasn’t. Composed. Noble.
Modest yet triumphant.
‘Great moustache too,’ Juniper said. Some resourceful types had taken it upon themselves to climb all the way up the poster and paint a
glorious curly moustache on Elodie’s face. The red paint was still wet and dripped down the billboard.
‘I’m quite jealous, to be honest,’ Thea added.
‘Pretty fetching, huh?’ The fact that Juniper’s clothes had splotches of dried paint in the exact same shade of red didn’t prove anything. Juniper just so happened to also like making moustache-themed red art too, that’s all.
Everard sighed, shaking his head. ‘To think we risked arrest for such a petty reason.’
‘Doubt the power of art at your own risk,’ Juniper said.
Everard evaluated the improvised facial hair, raising a brow. ‘It’s hardly going to change the world, is it?’
‘What else should we be doing?’ Juniper asked him. ‘We can’t get Cinder close to the Arcanists before the trial, and The Maker’s not exactly being super talkative about what that might be, is he?’
‘Perhaps something useful,’ Everard said, lowering his voice, ‘like research? Like making a solid strategy, a plan of action?’
‘Pfft, you sound like Elodie,’ Juniper said. ‘Besides, we have a plan, an’ a good one too! Not to mention Adie, who’s busy cookin’ us up some special concoctions. Might as well try to cause a little chaos while we wait, right?’
‘The “M” in “Misfits” stands for “Mischief”, didn’t you know?’ Thea said.
‘Attempting to take the Arcanists’ powers away from them during the trials is one thing,’ Everard said, ‘but vandalizing public property is quite another. I find it all a bit much.’
Cinder rolled his eyes. ‘Of course you do. You find mayonnaise a bit much.’
Everard sniffed. ‘I don’t trust anything that gloopy.’
‘For someone as cultured as you, Moneyclumps, you sure have bad taste in art,’ Juniper teased.
‘Nothing’s not improved with a moustache,’ Thea agreed.
A large portion of the crowd seemed to agree too, laughing and pointing at the graffiti. Of course the gathered magisters, officials who worked for the Orders, were red-faced with disdain. Wardens from the Order of Iris were barking at the onlookers, demanding to know who was responsible. The crowd jostled and heaved, insults being shouted and curses received as the wardens grabbed and shoved their way through the throng.
‘Everyone’s a critic,’ Thea said.
‘We should probably make ourselves scarce,’ said Juniper. She turned, about to shove her paint-stained hands into her pockets, when someone grabbed her wrist.
‘This was your doing, wasn’t it?’ snarled a warden, getting so close to her face she could smell his stale morning breath.
Juniper faked a gasp, hiding her other paint-covered hand behind her back. ‘Good sir! As if I’d ever deface an image of my dear sister!’
‘The very idea!’ Thea said, pretending to be just as appalled.
Everard simply backed away, doing his very best not to be seen with such rabble-rousers.
‘Course you would,’ the warden spat.
‘You’d take any chance
you got to disrupt the peace! Well, it isn’t gonna fly, not here with us maintaining order!’
‘Maintaining order – after all these years?’ Juniper said, acting surprised. She gestured at the crowd around them. ‘Here we were thinkin’ you’d forgotten about us!’
The Dreggers in the crowd laughed and jeered at the wardens, backing up Juniper.
‘Who needs the Order of Iris when we have the Misfits?’ a brave person shouted.
Many of the workers who’d come up from the Dregs to help make the Uppers run smoothly began chanting: ‘Arcanist of the Dregs! Arcanist of the Dregs!’
Juniper’s heart swelled. It was what the people of the Iris Dregs had taken to calling her. They had spent half a century coming to terms with the fact that The Watcher appeared to have abandoned them. But with Juniper’s rise to infamy and her burgeoning Order of Misfits, the
