Chapter 31 #2
An idea had itched in the back of my brain at the sight of Mr. Conine’s obvious relief.
An idea that involved another instructor who seemed too frightened to speak out against the Good Council in public but who, according to my unearthed memories, liked to sneak in tiny moments of resistance behind their backs.
“Did you enjoy your ride?” I asked Rodhi.
“Oh, yeah.” He winked at the dolphins still poking their elongated mouths out of the water. “I’ll see you four later.”
They gave final clicking cackles and slid back under the surface, and his eyes slipped to the flurry of birds surrounding Emelle.
“I’m guessing it’s good news by the look on her face?”
“Yeah, good news.” I steeled myself to keep talking naturally. To loosen my shoulders and pop out a hip as if this abrupt turn in conversation I was about to make wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. “So… you know how you’re obsessed with Ms. Pincette?”
Rodhi’s eyebrows shot up.
“Well aware, darling, well aware.”
“Do you, like, know where she lives?” If I was going to employ Ms. Pincette’s help again, I wanted to ask her in the privacy of her own home, not a classroom where anyone could hear us.
Rodhi’s eyebrows couldn’t have gone any higher.
“Do you mean to tell me you’ve lived on this campus for a year and half and you’ve never wondered where our instructors sleep at night?”
He waited. I didn’t answer, because no, I hadn’t. Not until now, when my mind was imagining cold dungeons dug into the ground beneath the Testing Center.
“They live in their sectors, of course!” Rodhi had never given me such a look of exasperation before. “For instance, you know that tall building with the sharp, curved roof and the gangly drainage pipes between Mr. Conine’s classroom and the arboretum?”
“Yeah?”
“That’s Mrs. Smetlar’s house.”
I blinked. I’d thought that building was just another classroom, perhaps for upperclassmen to practice advanced magic in.
“Are you telling me you know where every instructor lives, Rodhi?”
He shrugged. “Just the ones I love or hate. Love Ms. Pincette. Hate Mrs. Smetlar.”
“She is pretty horrible, isn’t she?” Just this Monday, she’d made us feed the rotting carcasses of animals to a family of vultures, telling us that those carcasses would be us if we didn’t pass our Final Tests. “Okay, so which building is Ms. Pincette’s?”
Rodhi narrowed his eyes at me.
“You’re not trying to win over her romantic affections, right?”
“What the hell! No! One, I’m not into women.” Though it would probably make life easier if I was. “Two, she’s an instructor, Rodhi.”
Rodhi shook his head, his voice dropping into a silky quiet despite the squawking, cheeping cloud of birds still surrounding our classmates up ahead. “Oh, but she’s so much more than an instructor. Okay, so here’s where you’re going to go.”
Up the stone staircase, through the alleyway where crab-eating racoons liked to loiter, and down the cobblestone lane cracked with moss, I finally found Ms. Pincette’s house crammed against a jutting piece of mountainside.
Cottony white cobwebs clung to the windows like exterior curtains.
Moths perched on the roof like fluttering shingles.
Cracks in the stone walls crawled with ants carrying leaves up and down.
I couldn’t say I was surprised, but the sight of it all gave me the feeling that I was intruding upon a space that wanted to blend in.
When I moved to step up to the door, something silky and thin tickled against my chest.
“What…?”
I looked down and swiped away a single strand of silk.
Weird.
Trying not to get spooked before I’d even knocked on the door, I stepped forward again, but another tickle against my arms and legs had me scrabbling at the rest of me, too.
Then something brushed against my neck, and I clawed at it to rip away a braid of silk nearly as thick as a noose—just as more flung around my body and I finally saw the culprits flying past my eyesight from every direction.
Spiders.
“Hey, stop.”
I ripped away handfuls of thickening cobwebs as they wound tighter and tighter around me, but the spiders didn’t answer me. More and more came flying from the trees, from Ms. Pincette’s rooftop, from nowhere and everywhere all at once, until I couldn’t tear their strands off fast enough.
“Stop,” I said again. “I’m not going to hurt you!”
Even before I’d finished that last word, though, I was ripping out my crescent knife to hack at the ropes of webs careening around me, and the spiders hissed in unison. They spiraled around me so fast I could barely keep track of them, pinning my arms to my sides until I dropped my knife.
Oh, I was going to kill Rodhi for not warning me about this.
I tried to backtrack, figuring I’d talk to Ms. Pincette another time, but my foot caught on a gnarled root and I fell, landing with a painful thump on my ass.
Heart thumping, I looked down to find my body completely encased in a web so tight around my ribs that I could barely scrape in deep enough breaths.
Several dozen spiders scurried up to where I had fallen, still attached to their strings and ranging in size from a marble to a dinner plate.
The largest of them, a birdeater, rubbed its hind legs against its abdomen in a hissing rattle.
“Who are you and what do you want?”
“Well, you could have asked that before you tied me up!” I cried. The birdeater hissed again, and I amended quickly, “I’m Rayna. Rayna Drey—” My mind tickled with the thought that according to Dyonisia, I was Rayna Reeve… but I wasn’t going to accept that as reality until it was proven.
“Tessa wasn’t expecting a visitor of that name,” the birdeater said, “so why are you here? To spy on her? Kidnap her? Kill her?”
“What? No! I’m her student! I just wanted to talk about…an assignment.”
“Lies. You brought weapons.”
“Yeah, in case stuff like this happens.” I could feel the rest of my knife handles pressing against my thigh in the suffocating cocoon around me, and wished for the first time in my life that I had the power of Object Summoning to conjure them out of their sheath.
The spiders were crawling closer, their hundreds of eyes reflecting my terrified face, and I sucked in a breath to send a cry of help to the jungle.
“Leave her be.”
I could have cried in relief at the sound of Ms. Pincette’s voice.
My Spiders, Worms, & Insects instructor had appeared in her doorway, folding her arms across her chest.
“Leave her be,” she repeated. “She is not here to spy, kidnap, or kill me. Though I am certainly interested to hear why she is here,” she added, arching an eyebrow at me.
Reluctantly, the spiders unwound their webs from around me. As soon as it was thin enough, I ripped my way out and scooped up my crescent knife, locking it in a tight fist until the last of them had scurried away.
Finally, I sheathed it and returned my gaze to Ms. Pincette.
“To what do I owe this very unexpected visit?” she asked, lips pursed.
I hesitated, still trying to gather my breath. Knowing that the jungle would have helped me get out of that predicament didn’t stop my skin from prickling all over as if in preparation for spider venom.
“Ms. Drey?”
I unleashed a breath and asked, “May I come in?”
Just because I’d seen what Ms. Pincette had done for me in my memories didn’t mean she’d be willing to help me again, especially now that she knew Dyonisia had a closer eye on me.
Plus, her own memories had been wiped clean by Steeler last year and she didn’t have her own recollection of any type of past relationship with me.
But unless there were more vicious spiders inside her home, it wouldn’t hurt to ask—even if I was ninety-nine percent sure she was going to say no after what had just happened.
To my surprise, Ms. Pincette only glanced over my shoulder once before swinging open the door and ushering me in.
“Come in, then.”
Trying not to appear too shocked, I followed.
The interior of her home couldn’t have been more different than the outside. Neat, polished bookcases lined the walls. Two identical loveseats glimmered with velvety sheens. Flickering candles filled the space with warm, buttery light that revealed clean, dust-less air.
Not a hint of a single insect inside.
“Apologies for the spiderweb thing,” Ms. Pincette said, shutting the door behind us and striding into a small kitchen around the corner.
“It’s just a precaution. I usually don’t take visitors—especially students—but I can see by your face that this must be something serious.
” Her voice carried to me even after she’d disappeared from sight. “Would you like a muffin?”
“Oh.” I startled. “Oh, no thank you.”
“Good.” Ms. Pincette reappeared with drinks with lemon wedges stuck on the rims. “Because they are stale and I am not the best at making muffins.” She handed me a glass. “What seems to be the matter?”
I sat in one of those velvet loveseats and clutched the glass in two tight hands, hoping the cold bite of the drink would prevent them from sweating. “The first quarterly test of the year is next week…”
Even saying that out loud felt sour on my tongue. To think that we all existed in a bubble of an exiled princess’s wrath and were still being made to take tests like the experimentation subjects we were…
“Go on, Ms. Drey. Surely, you are not here to remind me that a test I have to give you is right around the corner.”
I cleared my throat. “Right. You have to give it. Which is why I was wondering if you can get Dyonisia Reeve to assess my Spiders, Worms, & Insects portion. Tell her that my power is suspicious, that I’m exhibiting too much of it, to get her to come observe.”
Now that I knew how much interest Dyonisia held for me, I doubted she’d kill me over a secret piece of information she already probably suspected—whether she was my mother or not. Like Dazmine had said earlier, I’d already be exiled by now if she didn’t have other plans for me. Whatever they were.
Ms. Pincette straightened her spine for a moment before sinking into the armchair opposite me and leaning forward with flared nostrils.
“Any attention from Dyonisia Reeve is too much attention, Ms. Drey.” She brushed her free hand over her stomach absentmindedly, shuddering at the touch. “Why would you possibly be wanting more of it?”
I held her gaze, refusing to break.
“You were there in the Testing Center last year. You handed her the spider that helped the pirates escape by forewarning them of her plan to trap them. You know that my memory was severely altered after that occasion—and I suspect you know yours was, too.”
Ms. Pincette didn’t break my gaze either.
“What are you trying to get at, Rayna?”
She’d never said my first name like that before. I glanced at the locked door and shut windows draped in cobwebs from the outside. Then leaned forward.
“What would you say if I told you that you and I used to be closer than we are now? That you helped hide some of my more… concerning characteristics from the Good Council?”
Silence.
Then—
“Go on” was all Ms. Pincette said.
“And what would you say if I need that same level of… help from you because I…” My throat stuck on a lump as dry as the pills Steeler still gave me every weekend. “Because I have found some of my memories since that day in the Testing Center, and all is not what it seemed back then.”
“Go on.”
“And what would you say if one of those things that is not what it seems requires some further digging that involves me getting as close to Dyonisia Reeve as physically possible… sooner rather than later?”
Ms. Pincette leaned back. She sipped on her drink, seeming to mull over all my questions with each one. A steady pitter-patter on her roof told me it had started to rain and drip through the canopy.
Finally, Ms. Pincette lowered her glass.
“What I would say to all of that is that I do indeed have holes in my memory, and I am not surprised to hear that you may have once filled them. I would also say that rebellion is dangerous and often leads to senseless tragedies, tragedies that could have been avoided if the rebel had just kept their head down… unless they play it smart. And I would ask if this—whatever this may be—is truly the only path forward for you.”
Now it was my turn to mull it all over.
Was this the only path forward?
No. I could choose to forget what Steeler had told me in the lighthouse, could choose to pretend that Dyonisia Reeve was not the mother I’d always craved to know.
I could refrain from investigating, live in ignorance, know I could never step foot on Steeler’s ship because his Fated General could very well use Old Veracious to slice through my neck if the truth-telling sword saw through the lies.
Maybe by telling me to go figure it out, Steeler had been giving me that choice. Go figure out if you really want this or not.
I nodded at Ms. Pincette and lifted my chin.
“It is the path I would like to choose.”
She gave the barest hint of a smile.
“You know, I do remember one thing very clearly about you from last year, Ms. Drey: you were abysmal at talking to insects. They simply wouldn’t respond to you no matter how hard you tried.
” She stood and tucked a strand of chestnut hair neatly behind her ear.
“So imagine my surprise when you walked into your first day of second-year class and demonstrated perfectly average insect communication? As if the thing—or person—who held you back last year is now gone?”
Kimber Leake. The person who had held me back last year was Kimber Leake, by commanding all the insects to cease all communication with me.
I could feel that little piece of memory dislodge itself from the ice of my foundation with little effort on my part.
Maybe my mind was beginning to melt of its own accord.
“Nevertheless,” Ms. Pincette continued with a sigh, “I will send a message to Dyonisia Reeve saying that her most… suspicious student is still performing abysmally and needs further assessment.”
I blew out a breath. “Thank you, Ms. Pincette.”
She inclined her head. “I hope you find what you’re looking for, Ms. Drey. Now please leave before someone discovers you here.”
I was halfway to the door, leaving my glass on a sparkling glass coffee table, when I paused with my back turned to her.
“You didn’t say ‘leave us’.”
“Come again?”
I half-turned to her, my hand floating to the doorknob as those cobwebs outside her window darkened with trickles of rain.
“Those spiders back there—they’re the first ones I’ve seen on campus in six months. You would think they’d be eavesdropping on us right now, ready to turn us in. You would think you’d have to tell them to leave us for a conversation as forbidden as this one.”
Ms. Pincette’s eyes glimmered with something restrained and muffled. Something that hinted of a layer she’d long ago buried.
“You would think.”