Chapter 5
Five
Idon’t usually give a roach’s ass how I look, as long as I don’t look any way that’s going to make people notice me. So the urge to catch glimpses of myself in the reflections on the shop windows we pass is strange both because it’s unfamiliar… and because of what I see looking back at me.
I can’t help eyeing the swooping hairstyle I assembled my reddish-blond waves into with my ghostly passenger’s coaching after my dip at the public bathhouse. Or the way the berry juice I turned into makeshift rouge brings out my cheekbones and my lips.
Between all that and the faux-silk dress that’s the one noble-ish item in my small wardrobe, I’ll be drawing a lot more eyes than I’d normally be comfortable with.
I’m not going to kid myself that I’m any great beauty with these knobby arms and the pallor to my skin that looks more sickly than creamy, but I need to pretend I think I’m something special.
Because if I show how ridiculous I feel, this con isn’t going to last more than the time it takes me to walk through the college’s gate.
People believe what you show them. I’ve learned that time and time again.
I just have to put on my best noble-esque airs and act like nothing could be more natural than my strolling through the city center toward the Sovereign College.
Julita’s voice peals through my head, full of her own self-assurance and more upbeat now that she’s gotten her way. You look fantastic. No one would ever think that just yesterday you were scrambling around in the muck.
I bite back half a dozen snarky remarks I could make, because talking to one’s self while taking a stroll is going to draw an even worse kind of attention.
I’ve tried thinking back at her, but while she’s obviously aware of what my body is doing, my unbidden guest can’t seem to read my mind even when I want her to.
Maybe I should be grateful for that small mercy.
It would make having a conversation in public a damn sight easier, though.
We’ll get there right in time for the meeting, Julita goes on in a bright voice I think is meant to be reassuring. You’ve conned people like this before—no need to worry about it.
I have, which was why I own the dress, but never for more than a few minutes. Just popping into a business or approaching someone on the street to pilfer a bit of information I need or set the stage for a more surreptitious comeuppance.
I’d rather be lurking under the charm merchant’s blasted wagon than taking this walk.
At least I won’t need to deal with laying the heaviest news on Julita’s friends. When we worked out the plan, she insisted that she doesn’t want me telling them that she’s dead.
Neither of us has any idea exactly who murdered her. She suggested that telling them would only distract them from the bigger picture. Even if her body has been found and her friends have heard about it, she wants me to act as if it’s a surprise to me.
I’m going to claim I’m one of Julita’s friends, visiting from her hometown. I’ll say she was embarking on a more in-depth investigation and suspected she wouldn’t make the meeting, so she gave me the means to turn up in her place.
Then I’ll recite whatever information the ghost in my head instructs me to and walk away.
The idea of leaving her friends in the dark about just how far the scourge sorcerers have gone still makes me uneasy. But it’s not as if I could tell them I’m hosting her soul without sounding mad.
And it does take the pressure off. I won’t have to deal with any anger or grief over her loss from these strangers.
Noble strangers, whose grief could overflow with pompous indignation or hysterical panic for all I know.
Almost there! Julita declares with unrestrained eagerness.
A growing tremor of divine energy is seeping over my skin from the Temple of the Crown. As the pale marble building comes into view, I give it a quick glance.
The body of the riven sorcerer hangs where it’s been suspended next to the main doorway, a display that typically lasts a day or two until the clerics decide the statement has been made thoroughly enough.
I yank my gaze away from his swollen skin and pick up my pace just a little.
My boots rap against the wide cobblestone road that leads around the grand temple farther up the slope to the walls that surround the college.
The school’s builders decided to go for a much more ominous vibe than those who built the temple—or maybe they felt that its inhabitants should be focused on learning rather than pretty architecture. Slabs of dull gray limestone loom before me.
Not that the college is exactly ugly. There’s something unnervingly breathtaking about the dark towers that jut up over that wall, dotted with narrow arched windows.
And the frame around the broad wood-and-iron door holds an intricate carving: a rearing horse on one side, and a glowering gargoyle on the other.
This is where you need my bracelet, Julita says. Hold your wrist up so the flat part faces the gargoyle’s eyes.
She didn’t admit it when I mentioned the stolen bracelet earlier, but I have the sneaking suspicion that she was responsible for nabbing it. Taking a momentary snatch of control over my body while I reeled with the initial impact of her soul.
It definitely serves her purposes for me to have it, because apparently I can’t enter the college without the bangle.
I hold the bracelet to the level of the gargoyle’s bulging stone eyes. For the space of a few heartbeats, nothing happens.
A bead of sweat trickles down my back at the thought that Julita might be wrong—whatever magical security this vaunted place possesses can tell I’m not the proper owner of her bracelet.
Then the door creaks open.
The second I step past the threshold into the shadowy space beyond, Julita’s presence stirs in my head. Stop there. Just a second.
What now?
I definitely can’t ask her here. I freeze in place, peering into the darkened space around me.
I expected a short passage into the courtyard around the main college buildings. Instead, I’m in a dim, branching hallway that stretches a short distance ahead and on either side of me with no exit in sight.
Magic courses through the air, raising goosebumps on my arms. It doesn’t feel as vast as the power that emanates from the Temple of the Crown, but gods be sure there’s a damned lot of it in this small, silent space.
Julita murmurs as if to herself. What was the cursed password of the week? Lively fleas fly… No. Lively fleas rip from royalty like ribbons.
As I raise my eyebrows at the vaguely insulting phrase, she chuckles to herself and then explains.
The entrance is a conjured maze to make sure no one actually enters who isn’t meant to be here.
The password gives the current directions.
Head left, then forward, then right, forward, right, left, right.
I’d have had an easier time striding ahead with confidence if she sounded more certain of the password. Willing my hands to stay loose at my sides, I turn toward the lefthand passage.
A few steps along it, more halls open up at either side of me. I keep going forward, then veer right when the hallway branches again. Forward, right, left, right…
As I take my third step into the final passage, an open doorway glimmers into being in front of me. The air there shimmers with a warble of magic I can hear as well as feel.
Go on through. If you have any harmful gift-magic attached to you, it’ll wash you clean.
That’s actually a pretty genius security mechanism.
All the same, I have to suppress a shudder at the ripple of sensation that passes through me as I step over the threshold. It feels as if I’ve been doused by a transparent, glittery waterfall.
Good. Looks like you didn’t attract any malice recently. The hard part is done.
Thank all that’s holy.
I walk on into the bright late-morning sun—and my pulse hitches with an unexpected smack of recognition.
I’ve never seen the main college building before—not up close without the walls hiding the lower reaches. Except I have.
The vast stone face with its immense towers blazed into my mind amid the flood of images that hit me when I blanked out over Julita’s body.
When her soul slammed into my brain.
I was catching glimpses of her memories, apparently.
The same effect hasn’t happened since, but the thought still unnerves me. I wet my lips and propel myself forward despite my uneasiness.
A cobblestone path leads to the castle-like building’s main entrance, with fields sprawling all around it within the college’s high walls. Not far away, a group of students are exchanging practice blows with swords.
In the other direction, I spot a few women on horseback, trotting around the side of the building. Of course the college would have its own stables as well.
I suck in a deep breath, taking in the scent of trampled grass and seeking the whiff of sweet hay and horsey musk that’s one of the few things I miss from my family’s home.
Straight ahead, right into the building, Julita says. That’s the Quadring ahead of you, where they hold the classes for the four divisions. Leadership, companionship—
“Scholarship and martial service,” I can’t stop myself from murmuring. “I’ve heard.”
Julita pauses for a moment as if taken aback. Well. Even better that you’re prepared. We’ll go through the entrance ahead of you, right down the main hall, along the walkway, and into the Domi.
Walking on, I cock my head just slightly. Hoping she’ll catch the implicit question in the movement.
Julita picks up on my intention, although maybe it’s not surprising that she’s become attuned to me when she’s been living inside my head for the better part of a day.
There’s a smaller courtyard in the middle of the Quadring, and in the middle of that is a building that’s officially called the Domicile.
But we usually just say “the Domi.” That’s where you find all the dorms, the dining hall, the ballroom…
and the library, which is our destination.