Chapter 11
Eleven
It takes me approximately five minutes to start regretting my boldness. Right at the point when Stavros shoves open the door he’s led me to on the fourth floor of the Domi and says, “These are my quarters. You’ll be staying here.”
My mouth opens and closes and opens again. “What? Assistants don’t get their own rooms?”
I’m going to be living in the same space as the man who’s hunted people like me?
He ushers me inside with a tap of my back that I dart forward to escape. We step into a living space about the same size as the common room Julita shared with nine other students.
The space is laid out with a sofa and two armchairs around a hearth, an expansive marlwood desk surrounded by matching bookshelves, a small but elegant dining table with four chairs around it, and a cabinet that holds several expensive-looking liquor bottles.
A tiny private shrine to Sabrelle stands in the corner, the table laid with a scarlet cloth. A wooden carving placed in the middle shows a stallion and a stag holding up the godlen of warfare and might’s sharply curving sigil.
I’ll be keeping far away from that.
Stavros kicks the door shut behind us and gives me one of those inscrutable looks as if I’ve both amused and pissed him off.
“Assistants who are also students live in the student dorms. Assistants who go through the standard official process to get hired on by the college administration share two-bedroom apartments on the staff floor. Assistants we don’t want anyone looking too closely at get the sofa. ”
I wrinkle my nose at his dry tone. “And no one’s going to find that suspicious?”
“I’m allowed a few whims. I’ll just tell them I so desperately needed someone of your talents as my assistant that I required your presence from daybreak onward.”
One corner of his mouth crooks up in a grin, which annoyingly makes him even more imposingly attractive than before. “That means I’ll need to put you to work shortly. Around students and other staff, you’ll need to remember to refer to me by my proper professorial title—Ster. Stavros.”
“Because you’re obviously a paragon of wisdom,” I say cooperatively. Although maybe it suits him—it is pretty arrogant of professors to call themselves by a shorter form of Estera, the godlen of learning and knowledge, as if they’re lesser divinities themselves.
Stavros ignores my understated sarcasm. He sweeps his gaze over me, making my skin itch in awareness of his assessment. “And I’d better find some training clothes so you won’t look totally ridiculous.”
He spins on his heel and reaches for the gleaming doorknob. “I’ll be back in an hour or so. Try not to steal anything in the meantime.”
“I wouldn’t—” I start to protest, but he’s gone before I can make an effective retort.
That’s just Stav for you, Julita says in mild consolation. You don’t have to worry about staying here. He can be both a brute and an ass, but when it comes to anything more intimate, he’ll behave like the gentleman he is.
Does she think I was worried about him coming on to me?
“I’m used to having my own space,” I say. “I don’t love that he could barge into the room at any moment.”
Ivy, your previous bedroom was a dust-choked attic you had to flee every morning before the legitimate inhabitants caught you.
“I know. But it was just me at night.”
I think you’ll find a way to survive.
Now she’s taking on that dry tone with me, as if I’m being absurd to have standards of privacy.
I can’t say what I’m really worried about, which is basically that he’ll kill me. Or rather, drag me off so the king can have me killed.
It amounts to the same thing.
Although with the way this situation is going, the greatest risk might be that at some point he’s going to irritate me so much that I kill him—which’ll put me up for execution anyway, so there’s no point in debating the details.
I venture a little farther into the room. With each inhalation, the smell of the place seeps deeper into my lungs: the polished wood, a faint lingering tang of fancy alcohol, a more acrid note that I think might be the oil nobles use to protect their swords.
Lovely.
And there’s also, when I step closer to the door left ajar that I assume leads to Stavros’s bedroom, a whiff of the smoky pepper scent that comes from the man himself.
I’m going to be steeping in him. I’ll take the dusty books any day.
Julita gathers herself in a way I can sense before she speaks.
Ivy… What’s really going on with the pain you feel?
You were obviously in significant physical distress after Stavros grabbed you in the archives room, and it wasn’t anything he did directly.
I’ve felt it a little bit here and there before, but that was… unnerving.
Oh, it’s unnerving for her?
I bite back a snarky reply, my stomach knotting as I consider my answer. Even if I control everything she can tell the outside world, I don’t really want her knowing exactly who—and what—she’s ended up tied to.
She could definitely make my life more difficult.
“I’ve got a bit of a nervous condition,” I improvise. “Chronic pain. It acts up the most when something particularly jarring and threatening happens, that’s all. Most things don’t faze me like that.”
No, I suppose not.
My uninvited guest doesn’t sound totally convinced. I decide a change in subject is in order.
“How did you end up roping the man who was recently the most exalted general in all of Silana into helping you?” I ask, pausing by the built-in bookshelves.
My fingers skim over the spines of historical treatises, military philosophy and strategy, and a few on equestrianism that I itch to pull out and flip through.
Stavros would probably consider that theft.
It wasn’t that hard, Julita says in a familiar coy tone. He’d fallen from grace, and what better way to prove he can still defend the country than by routing out a bunch of scourge sorcerers who’ve already threatened the royal family?
And she felt comfortable walking up to him and pitching her case just like that?
Well, probably not just like that. It isn’t hard to picture the woman whose image lingers ephemerally in my head slipping over to his side at some school event and making a few leading remarks.
Reeling him in around her finger the way Anya accused her of doing regularly.
I cock my head. “You wanted him on your side because he has the best chance of stopping the sorcerers once you figure out who they are?”
He has the king’s trust and respect. When we’re sure of the details, he’ll ensure the problem is dealt with swiftly and effectively. She pauses with a short laugh. And I did hope that having him around would make me a little safer, but obviously that benefit didn’t extend outside our meetings.
I lean against the edge of Stavros’s desk, careful not to displace anything. “What about the others? How do they fit in?”
Oh, you should find all of them even easier to handle than Stavros.
Benedikt’s on the outskirts of the royal family, as I’m sure he’ll tell you about sooner rather than later.
He pretends he doesn’t care, but he’s still tempted by potential glory.
And he’s friendly with just about everyone in both the college and the palace, so he picks up a wide range of gossip.
“Alek is a scholar,” I fill in. “You wanted someone who could access all the records and delve into research when necessary.”
There, you’re catching on quickly. Julita titters again.
Alek was an easy choice. He barely speaks to anyone, so he clearly got into the scholarship division based on actual work and not social influence.
And he’s insecure enough that it only took a little flattery for him to jump at the chance to help.
My stomach twists at the way she speaks about the masked scholar’s weaknesses. Would he be so concerned about her if he knew how she actually sees him?
Would any of them?
I swallow down my discomfort. They made their own decisions to get involved, just like I did.
“And the courtesan?”
Well, Cas can find out other kinds of gossip, the sorts of things his patrons might only babble about while they’re feeling particularly…
content. He’s good at picking up on people’s intentions—when they’re lying and things like that.
The companionship division is keen on attentiveness.
And he’s so eager to please that he couldn’t resist yet another way to do that.
“Quite the team you’ve assembled, then,” I mutter.
Before Julita can respond, a soft knock sounds on the door.
I freeze, unsure whether I should admit to being here. It’s obviously not Stavros—he wouldn’t have knocked.
Is anyone else supposed to know he has a new assistant yet?
I’m saved from that dilemma by an equally soft voice carrying through the thick wood. “Ivy, it’s just Casimir. I brought you a few things.”
My skin prickles as if my conversation with Julita might have somehow summoned him. What would he have brought me?
I push away from the desk. “Oh, er, all right. Come in.”
The courtesan breezes inside, swiftly but with a presence so warm it’s hard to feel wary. There’s a bundle of a few different colored fabrics in his arms, silk by the sheen of them.
Casimir flashes one of his bright smiles at me. “I know Stavros can get you equipped for the official work you’ll be doing as his assistant. I suspected he might neglect the real work, which is blending in during leisure time. That’s when people let down their guards.”
It is true that I’m unlikely to be invited into any conversations around the dining hall or strolling in the gardens while I’m dressed in fighting gear. And no noble lady could get away with wearing the exact same dress every day.
Casimir ambles over to the sofa and unfurls each of the gowns he brought over it in a row. Turquoise silk, then icy gray, then a forest green nearly the same shade as his eyes flow across the cushions like vibrant waterfalls.