Chapter 31
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Sleep is a gift here, not a certainty, and I should grab onto it with both hands and give thanks to the gods that I’ve found myself in my bed at lights out.
I should drift away, restless or not, and let sleep heal my newest spattering of bruises, cuts, and aching muscles.
Instead, I toss and turn in my little cot, trying to block out the reek of unwashed bodies—why these boys don’t bathe regularly, I cannot fathom.
Kiernan says he’s too exhausted at the end of the day, but to me, the warm water of the baths and the lavender soaps Elowen has started making for me are a balm on my aching muscles and bruised soul, even if I have to wait until all the men are done before I take my turn.
As always, I have one dagger strapped to my thigh, and another fisted under my pillow. My grip on it is tight until Tyrston’s glares stop as his eyes close, as his breath evens out and he starts to snore. Normally, that snore is my lullaby and eases me into a restless, dream-filled slumber.
But not tonight.
Tonight, I slip out from under my thin blanket, careful not to shift the frame of the cot.
The cold stone floor shocks my bare feet, but I don’t put my boots on—they’d wake every man and boy in this room.
Instead, I silently grab the book Ryot gave me and make my way out of the barracks.
I lift the hinges of the door, barely, to stop the creak.
I figured that out weeks ago, experimenting with both opening and closing it while all the boys were at dinner.
I move through the hallways like a whisper.
The torches are out, but moonlight spills through the arrow-slit windows that guide me to the Reckoning Hall, the room where old scrolls go to die.
It smells like parchment and forgotten things.
I open this door silently, too, but this time I push down on the hinges.
I sneak in here as often as I can, sifting through scrolls and maps and leather-bound books.
I’ve not found much that’s interesting, really.
Most of the real library, I’ve been told, is locked away with the priests in the temple at the base of Elandors Veil. Here, they left us the military texts—things that teach you how to die better.
Tonight, though, I don’t dig into Aish or study the maps.
I move between the shelves, careful not to bump the warped wooden cases.
A single stub of a candle waits for me in the corner under a window, tucked beside an overturned crate of brittle scrolls no one’s touched in years.
I crouch beside it and strike flint against the wick.
I don’t need it, not really. Even without the light, I could read the pages—one of the perks of being an Altor.
But it helps me focus on the book that’s been burning a hole through my thoughts this entire week.
I tuck myself behind the crate and start reading the Treatise on Tactical Collapse.
It’s not like any book I’ve seen. The pages feel like they’re older than this room, like they should be brittle, but they’re not.
I’ve made my way through the first chapter, though it took me longer than I care to admit.
Each sentence feels like a heavy stone I have to turn over.
Making it through Chapter One—Of Force Applied Indirectly—was a triumph.
I was bored at first, with the cold, academic way it’s written.
I prefer my mother’s kind of stories. Stories of warriors who loved fiercely and died well, or myths of when the gods walked the earth wearing mortal skins in a time before the mountains shoved out of the earth, ragged and broken.
This book is nothing like that. The words are large and cumbersome—many of them altogether foreign—and I have to piece together the meaning. It’s a kind of reading that gives me a headache and leaves my pride bruised.
I keep reading, though, because it’s working.
Chapter One talked about finding pressure points, not only in war but in people.
An explanation of why we are weakest in the moments before decisions are made; a lesson on leveraging the weight of silence; a passage on how to shift the ground beneath your opponent until they fall without ever being touched.
Timing. Manipulation. Moving a stone to cause an avalanche.
Transferring your weight and letting your enemy break themselves.
This morning, I’d tried one of the principles sparring with Leif. I’d pretended to trip, and when he’d come in for the advantage, I’d put him flat on his back before he’d even realized I’d moved. He called it luck; I called it chapter one.
So, tonight I move on to chapter two: The Illusion of Strength. I know this chapter. I’ve lived this chapter in a hundred sideways glances and a thousand too-casual sneers.
Every time someone calls me quick instead of dangerous; or they say I’m lucky instead of good. When the villagers called me loud or bossy instead of a leader. When grandmothers would ask, “why don’t you smile? You’d be so pretty if only you would smile.”
When I was little, I watched them tell my mother don’t be so sensitive —like her breadth of emotion wasn’t her greatest strength, her softness the very thing that kept our family together. And then, after Levvi died and she made herself hard, the villagers said she was a cold bitch.
When the soldiers who came for Seb looked at me like I was too small, too nothing at all, to be a threat. And now? It’s every time I’m dismissed with a smile—like I should be flattered the men at the Synod noticed me at all.
I run my finger down the first line. “Power is loud. Control is quiet.”
That makes me smirk, thinking about the men who shout when they fight, who roar when they win. The masters who yell constantly and the archons who drone on and on at wardcall. They think the noise makes them stronger.
I’m still smirking when my finger runs over ink scrawled in the margins—text in a different hand than the original scribe.
I tilt the candle so that the light spreads more evenly on the pages and catch the dripping wax with my other hand.
The heat is searing, but if I ruin a single page of this book, I’ll never forgive myself.
The words are frantic, the ink pressed hard into the page. “If a blade breaks into shards, do you fear the pieces? You should.”
I read it once. Then again. And again. I don’t know why it bothers me so much.
No, that’s not true. … I’m that way, aren’t I?
Haven’t I shattered, splintered? I know what it means to be broken into pieces and still be dangerous.
I lean closer, fingers brushing the edge of the ink like I can feel the pressure of the hand that wrote it.
And that’s when I realize—unlike the rest of the book, this little note is scribbled in the old tongue, the one my mother taught us. The one the soldiers don’t know.
But then the door of the Reckoning Hall creaks open. I close the book gently, coming to my feet, one hand on the dagger sheathed at my thigh and the other grasping the book as the treasure it is.
I’m not sure what or who I expected to see when I peek around the crate, but it wasn’t the Elder.
He doesn’t speak at first. Just stands in the doorway with his cane and that cloudy gaze that sees parts of me I haven’t discovered yet.
“You’re not supposed to be here at this hour.” His voice is as dry and old as the parchment lining these shelves.
“We don’t have any other hours for me to be here,” I tell him. I’m not snarky about it—or I don’t intend to be, anyway. It’s the truth.
He huffs, not quite a laugh, not quite a sigh. His cane clicks against the stone as he steps into the hall. I don’t move from behind the crate. I’m still holding the book like it might vanish if I let go.
“No,” he agrees. “I suppose you don’t.”
He comes further into the room and settles himself heavily onto a wooden chair positioned near a chaotic table—it’s covered in maps and unbound scrolls.
It’s the only piece of furniture in here lacking a layer of dust. He lights a lantern sitting on the table, and the additional light makes me squint.
He doesn’t look at me when he speaks next, already engrossed in the map that he’s unfurled, small stones holding the corners down. “It’s rare for a ward to give up sleep to study. What are you doing in here, Leina of Stormriven?”
I stare at him, furiously trying to figure out how he can see anything with his cloudy eyes, much less a complex map in a dimly-lit room. I thought he was blind. I take a cautious step forward, pulled by curiosity.
“It’s considered rude to ignore your Elder. Ruder still to ignore him to satiate your own morbid curiosity.” He lifts his head now, staring directly at me, one brow quirked.
“I wasn’t ignoring you.” I step out fully from behind the crate. “I was deciding if you were real.”
That earns me a sound—half-chuckle, half-gravel caught in his throat. “I’ve been accused of many things, but being a ghost is a new one.”
I cross the floor, drawn toward him despite myself. I’ve never seen his table this close—I’ve never wanted to disturb it. The map is marked in so many colors it’s like a battle raged across it.
His gaze is still on me, waiting.
“I come here for answers,” I answer him. “I have many questions, and few answers.”
He nods firmly before he turns back to his map. He picks up a protractor and lays it across the map, measuring something out.
I take another step closer. “Why are you here?”
He doesn’t look up. “I, too, have questions.”
“Really?” I don’t disguise the surprise in my voice. There’s something about him that inspires honesty.
His lips press together. He’s either withholding a laugh or a biting remark. “You think because I’m old, I shouldn’t have any more questions?”
I flush. “No, of course not.” It’s a lie, though. That’s exactly what I thought.
He laughs, and the sound is even dustier than the shelves, like he hasn’t used that sound in a long time.