Chapter 28
Mollandra
Year Five
Mollandra could taste the elixir all day.
The stuff burned on her tongue through one class after the next, through dinner, and through the cleansing of her teeth.
Whatever had been in the liquid had found a home in her, tingling along her bones, colouring her sight with invisible shades.
Something, some single ingredient, had changed them all.
Mollandra’s certainty brooked no argument.
This wasn’t the work of an alchemist, a cunning mix of rare substances, open to anyone with enough gold, time, and cauldrons to reproduce.
But what it was, and why it should have immolated one girl, made another spark with holy fury, and had almost no effect at all on her, she couldn’t say.
Later, in the darkness of the dormitory, more empty after the day’s losses, Mollandra lay in her narrow cot, staring up at nothing.
Quiet sounds reached her, the soft conversation of survivors seeking to make sense of the day’s slaughter, the gentle noises of those girls who could find comfort and distraction in each other’s bodies.
Sharp would be one of them, danger always gave her that particular need, and she had never been in more danger than today.
Though whose bed she might be sharing, Mollandra didn’t know.
Some, like Jemna and Takki, were sweethearts, lovers, always in each other’s company.
Mollandra envied them their closeness though she would never give the world such a weapon to hurt her with if she could help it.
Others, like Sharp, were careless with each other’s hearts.
Perhaps like Mollandra, they feared the wounds that true affection could open.
It worried Mollandra, though. Would Sharp one day discard their friendship as easily as she shrugged off the girls with whom she shared her passion?
Tmanga came to sit at the foot of Mollandra’s bed, startling her from her thoughts. She vowed to be more alert. Her next visitor might not be a friend.
“Something happened with you today. You saved Sharp and you saved yourself. Sharp won’t remember, but the Kindnesses will.”
“We saved Sharp.”
“The elixir was going to burn her up whether she got to her feet or not. You stopped her burning.”
Mollandra hadn’t tried to do anything, except foolishly hold a girl who was about to burst into flame. The flames hadn’t come. No doubt the Academy would give both of them many opportunities to wish that they had.
“I…don’t know what happened.”
Anyone else would have pressed harder. Tmanga’s weight left the bed and she retreated to her own blankets.
Mollandra lay on her back, eyes open, seeing nothing.
The darkness that had spoken lived at her core, in the marrow of her bones.
It was something she had brought with her to the Academy—the only thing she’d owned, save her scars and the thin smock she’d been wearing.
She didn’t think it had been born into her.
Not all of it at least. It had been done to her, like the fury in the vault today.
And now it ran through her veins, battling this new invader.
She wouldn’t sleep before dawn—she knew that much. Maybe she wouldn’t sleep again.
The visitors came two days and no sleep later.
“Visitors!” Sharp careened into the practice hall, casually side-kicking a punch-dummy on the way through.
Constant terror had squeezed such frivolities as play, enthusiasm, and curiosity out of most of the acolytes, but Sharp behaved much as Mollandra imagined a “real girl” would.
Except for all the killing. It sometimes felt as if she saw an entirely different world to the rest of them, and Mollandra envied her that.
“Visitors!” Sharp briefly took the edges of Mollandra’s robe in both fists and shook her before discarding her and slinging an arm around Tmanga’s shoulders, steering her away from Freeda, careless of both acolytes’ swords.
“We don’t get visitors,” Tmanga said.
Several of the girls were looking up from their various exercises now. Mollandra imagined that behind their narrowed eyes, thoughts of the parents who had sold them into this place were twitching, hope—ever cruel—springing from the salted earth of their regret.
“We do now.” Sharp folded her arms, triumphant.
“The Kindnesses get visitors,” Mollandra said. “Couriers come with the black scrolls.”
“Deliveries aren’t visits. And these aren’t couriers. I saw them. They look like a king and a queen, and they’ve got a prince with them. A handsome one. I expect he’s come to marry me. We’ll have lots of babies and I’ll get fat and eat cake all day.”
“You want to marry a prince?” Tmanga shot Sharp a sideways glance.
“Did you not hear the part about cake?”
Tmanga picked up her whetstone again and returned to honing her blade.
“That’s it?” Sharp looked around.
“We’ll know if they want us to know,” Tmanga said. “Handsome, was he? Might be Prince Sunder, one of the king’s nephews. They say he’s breaking highborn hearts in the city.”
“How would you know?” Mollandra stamped her foot. “And if you say ‘Einsa told me,’ goddess help me, I’ll make you eat that sword!”
“I heard Twendri talking about it. You should practise your espionage more.”
Mollandra grunted. Twendri was one of the six Year Nines and got to go out into the world on practice missions.
It was plausible that Tmanga had got it from her.
Though Mollandra still suspected her friend of having secret channels.
Certainly, with the exception of the elixir, there didn’t ever seem to have been anything she hadn’t known about in advance.
The call came less than an hour later. Year Ones, being most plentiful, were dispatched to summon every acolyte to the courtyard. A red-faced child, nearly drowning in her robes, hammered on the door of the practice hall.
“Parade! Parade!” And she was off.
“Were we ever that small?” Sharp frowned.
Tmanga flicked a bit of fluff from Sharp’s sleeve. “Mollandra was.”
“Parade” simply meant lining up by year in the courtyard.
There were no flags or special uniforms or ceremonials.
Mollandra had heard that in the city in high season there were dancers in the streets, priests of many faiths decked in silver chains, carrying jewelled staffs, foodstuffs sold from stalls, and colour everywhere.
The Academy eschewed colour. The only way to see more than grey was to bleed.
The acolytes lined up beneath a dark-bellied sky, the blanketing cloud pregnant with rain.
All six instructors strode around imposing order with sharp looks, loud commands, and the occasional slap.
The full complement of servants stood in a grey wall by the entrance gate as if ready to block any bids for freedom.
When the three royals came through the main gate led by Kindnesses Marta and Terra, and trailed by Undu, the vivid hues of their costumes—Mollandra could only think of them as costumes donned to play a role—were an assault on the senses.
Plush blues deeper than any sky, green velvet no leaf could match, the sparkle of gems. The people too looked more than real, as if their current bleak surroundings might be scenery in some play, Mollandra and the rest of the acolytes merely a supporting cast in drab.
“Who are they?” Sharp had ended up standing in the front rank of the Year Fives even though they were supposed to be arrayed by height.
Her whisper reached over her shoulder, carried on the chill breeze to Mollandra in the second rank with Tmanga at her side.
Receiving no answer, she continued with her potentially suicidal indiscipline.
“Treecie would have known. She was rich. But no, Mollandra had to go and kill—” Even Sharp had the sense to shut up when Kindness Terra’s gaze swept the courtyard from beneath a frown.
The royals moved with infuriating sloth.
Much as Mollandra didn’t want to get back to the business of frequently fatal training, she also didn’t want to stand in silence in the courtyard for hours, alone with her thoughts.
She imagined there would have to be more lessons in being silent and alone as the class shrank further and the survivors came closer to being sent out into the world.
She doubted Kindnesses were welcome guests… anywhere.
It seemed unlikely that the older pair were in fact the king and queen of the nation.
Surely someone would have recognized them and sent the whisper round.
But clearly, they were important enough to command the attention of three Kindnesses, not to mention the entire academic body.
Whoever they were, they seemed to have a million stupid questions and to enjoy staring at acolytes.
Quite a few of the aforementioned acolytes, Sharp among them, were staring back when they felt they could do so unobserved.
Not at the older couple doing all the talking but at the young man slouching in his finery behind them.
His colours were less garish, primarily black and silver, his hair a dark gold, falling between his shoulder blades to a length few of the acolytes dared to match for fear of handing classmates—or their tutors—a weapon to use against them.
Mollandra had seldom had the time to reflect on qualities such as “handsome” or “pretty,” and couldn’t say with confidence whether the prince’s even features were one or the other or neither.
But she had no trouble describing him to herself as “striking.” Even from a distance.
Sharp was fond of saying that she wasn’t sure if she wanted to fight someone or fuck them, concluding with “first one, then the other,” and Mollandra was pretty sure from the intensity of her stare that the girl was thinking it now.
Especially as boys were in rather short supply in the Academy and Sharp always liked to try new things.