Chapter 34 #2
She lets out a rough chuckle. Stavros needed glory. Alek needed to be chosen. Benedikt needed someone to see him as more than a joker. Cas needed to do something bigger than catering to patrons’ whims.
There’s a weird tenderness in her tone, not like her usual amused condescension. She did know them well.
I offered them what they needed, and they gave me what I needed in return, she goes on. It isn’t as if… Even if I had wanted… They wouldn’t have really wanted me, just as myself.
My throat constricts. Maybe the things I told the men weren’t completely true after all.
Because all I hear in Julita’s voice now is affection and doubt. I’ve seen signs of her concern for them in the past too.
Just how much did she care about the four of them underneath? How much might she have wanted and simply refused to let herself acknowledge?
I know what it’s like to put up walls to keep yourself safe from people so they can’t hurt you. Hers just might look different from mine.
What else did she need when she went looking for help? In a way, she already told me.
She needed to be able to refuse.
“I don’t know about that,” I say softly. “And I was a little unfair in what I said. I know they mattered to you.”
Julita seems to gather herself. Well, it hardly makes a difference now. You’ve done a lot more than just step into my shoes, Ivy. They should respect that and you.
I’m less comfortable with this subject the more it turns back toward me. There’s one very large reason the men should never respect me just as myself.
I grasp for a change of subject. “What happened to your locket?”
Oh. I… When I first found myself in you, I managed to get you to slip off my bracelet. Your hand was already resting by my arm. But before I could prompt anything else, you took over again. It would have been in my pouch.
To either be snatched up by scavengers or disposed of by the outer-ward criminal kingpins.
It’s hard for me to be angry about her admission when we didn’t know each other at all in that moment. But thinking about it reminds me of the other unnerving intrusion in my head.
“After I was stabbed, before the men found me,” I say. “Did you hear the other voice?”
The voice?
“Someone else speaking to me. Trying to get me to help myself.”
I can hear Julita’s puzzled frown in her response. I felt the villain who attacked you hurt you more and then leave, but they didn’t say anything. There was no one else, and then you must have blacked out, because I did without trying to. Did you hear someone else?
“I—I don’t know.” Did I only imagine that overwhelming voice and its urging? Was it some new trick of my riven power to encourage me to use it?
But as far as I can tell, I didn’t even do that. Not in the way it’s worked before.
I rub my eyes and sit up again to grab the glass of water Casimir left with my food. I could simply be going mad with all the chaos that’s been whirling around me.
The cool liquid coursing down my parched throat only leaves me restless. A third tremor nudges me out of the bed.
I test my legs on the floor, pacing the room in the knee-length shift the medics left me in.
Stavros’s wardrobe isn’t particularly interesting, but there’s a small bookcase tucked away next to the bed that holds several volumes that look like fictional adventures rather than the dry texts he keeps in the main room.
Resisting the urge to peek through them, I walk to the window next. The view only shows me a squad of blue-uniformed soldiers marching past.
I jerk back from the glass with a hitch of my heart.
I haven’t really resolved anything. I’ve only got more problems now. How can I lie in bed hoping those will somehow solve themselves?
I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I’m not going to figure it out while napping.
Someone—probably Casimir—has left two gowns spread over the back of the sofa in case I want to get properly dressed: my favorite turquoise one and a new one that’s a pale green. My knives and the straps I use to hold them beneath my clothes lie on the cushions, a pair of slippers on the floor.
I reach for the green dress, since it’s less flashy. Right now, I don’t particularly feel like drawing attention.
But even in that one, as I fiddle with the laces behind my back, the layers of light silk weigh on my limbs like bindings.
I’ve been trapped from the first moment I stepped into the college. From the moment I ran to try to save Julita, really.
Fixing a knife in place on each of my thighs should make me feel better, but the constricting sensation doesn’t ease. I ignore the slippers in favor of my old leather boots that I shoved under the sofa and tuck my favorite knife into the left one.
Are you going somewhere? Julita asks. We should wait until one of the men—
“I don’t need a guardian,” I interrupt, but I do go back into the bedroom to grab the locket. Just in case. I’m not throwing caution completely to the wind.
When I glance down at myself, even the pale green fabric looks too bright. I make a face and dig out the dull brown cloak I also stashed beneath the sofa.
It ripples down over the gown, hiding most of the vibrant color. With the hood up, I could pass for a messenger or some other servant if no one looks closely.
A little of the tension in my chest eases. Gods above, I’ve missed my old invisibility on the streets.
I practice a little of that stealth slinking out of Stavros’s rooms. A few students pass me in the hall, but none of them give me a second glance.
Nor does the soldier who marches by on patrol, although his mere presence makes apprehension prickle down my spine all over again.
If I did use my magic and the powers that be simply haven’t discovered the consequences yet… I’m hemmed in from all sides.
I dart down the stairs, not knowing where I’m going until an unfortunately familiar voice reaches my ears from the landing below.
“I took a whole week’s wages off him, just like that.” Even Anya’s laugh takes on a sneering tone. “The lower staff should know better than to wager with the rest of us.”
There’s a muffled clink. I peek down the central spiral and make out the side of her haughty face.
A couple of her friends are standing with her. She tosses a modest leather pouch that must hold her winnings in one hand before tying the strands to her belt.
As her friends giggle about how the kitchen boy she wagered against has been taught his lesson, my teeth grit. Resolve wells up inside me, so sure and potent I can’t ignore it.
Yes. That’s it—that’s what I need.
I ease down the stairs until I’m just out of view. Anya turns to step out into the hall, one of her friends pushing the door open for her, and I dart silently down the last flight.
As I brush past her so subtly my cloak barely rustles, a flick of a knife releases the pouch into my grasp.
As I slip on down to the ground floor, I squeeze the leather surface hard to stop the coins from jingling. The fading laughter behind me tells me that Anya hasn’t noticed the loss yet.
By the time she does, I bet I won’t even be on campus.
Ivy? Julita says in a doubtful voice, but I don’t let her shake my conviction. I stride past the guards patrolling the courtyard, restraining a shiver at a brief trembling of the ground, and hustle out through the gate.
I’ve draped myself in silks and coiled my hair and painted my face to become one of the nobles. If I’m going to make it through whatever the next day holds, I need to remember who I really am beneath all that frivolity.
I take the quickest path I can to the outer wards, dodging other pedestrians, darting down alleys. With each mile I cover, the buildings shrink and slant, until they’ve transformed from stone mansions to wooden hovels.
This neighborhood wasn’t next on my rotation as the Hand of Kosmel, but I’ve lost track in my absence anyway. The massive family of fringe-dwellers I abandoned will appreciate my contribution all the same.
Normally I’d wait until dusk, but I don’t need Julita’s men flying into a panic again. At the first residential street I reach where the fences sag and the houses are held up with a mixture of overgrown vegetation and sheer will, I veer into the row of scruffy back gardens.
Because it’s full daylight, I have to stop more often than usual to flatten myself against a refuse bin or a shed. But for the most part, the inhabitants are busy in their houses or off at work.
Halfway down the row, I pause to wait for an elderly woman to finish tending to her scruffy garden. She plucks up the last few weeds and moves her hand down her front in the gesture of divinities, maybe making a silent prayer to Prospira for good growth.
The motion reminds me of Alek making the same gesture—and Stavros over my bloody body yesterday, and other nobles a dozen times over the last couple of weeks.
How strange is it that they and the people here are so far apart from each other, but in at least one way, they’re the same?
While I linger on the outskirts in both places.
A brief sense of melancholy drifts over me, but it fades when I get on with my task. Another window and another gets its “blessing” of silver.
There aren’t all that many coins in the pouch I lifted from Anya. I’d have thought the college could afford to pay even kitchen boys more than this.
As I set down the last pile, the pouch gone light in my hand, a sweeping sense of release washes over me.
No matter what else happens, I gave back a little more. I helped someone.
Maybe it won’t count for much in the eyes of the gods, but it matters to me.
Now what? Julita mutters as I step out into the wider street. Don’t tell me we’re going back to the cloth factory. You can’t just leave—
“I’m not,” I say, setting off again. “I’m going back. I just needed to—”
A towering figure steps from the shadows to intercept me, and my voice dies in my throat.
Stavros sets his hands on his hips, his head cocked to the side and his mouth set at a slanted angle I can’t decipher.