Chapter 35 #2
Julita sounds even more bewildered. Ster. Lezek? I’ve never even had a class with him. I went to his office one time because I got a note asking me to, but when he met with me, he was confused about it too. We had a little laugh, and then I left…
A note. Like the one that had me following Romild but apparently went nowhere too?
A shiver runs down my spine. Oh, no. Oh, please, no.
“Esmae,” I say, soft but steady, “who’s ‘he’? Who told you that Julita was out to get in your way?”
Not Ster. Torstem. No, it would have looked strange for a professor to insert himself into student affairs.
But Torstem was never who made me look at Romild either.
It was…
“Wendos,” Esmae declares with an emphatic slash of the letter opener. “Wendos of Nikodi. He should know her, shouldn’t he? He said they grew up together, and she told him things; he didn’t think it was fair not to warn me. To point me in the right direction to do what I had to do.”
That bastard, Julita snarls. When we’re through with him—
I raise my placating hand higher. “Esmae, you need to listen to me. Wendos had his own agenda. He wanted you to hurt Julita. Did he point you toward me too?”
She scoffs. “He didn’t need to. You told me what you were about the moment you came in here looking through her things. For a little while, I thought maybe I didn’t need to worry after all, that you really didn’t care… but then it became obvious.”
There’s nothing but determined ferocity in her eye now. Wendos must have seen it in her—the insane dedication behind the quiet front, the fanatical need to ensure her future place.
He pointed her at Julita—why? Did he realize his former victim had picked up on the scourge sorcery being practiced at the school? He wanted her gone without any clear way of tracing the crime back to him?
And he distracted me by drawing my attention to Romild. She probably has nothing to do with the conspiracy.
He wanted me watching her rather than him—or whoever else he realized I was suspicious of. Or maybe it was a test to see whether I’d taken up Julita’s investigations.
It doesn’t really matter.
“I had no idea you had anything to do with her death,” I say honestly.
“I thought—” I thought she really was being my friend, but that sounds far too pathetic now to say it out loud.
“We can figure this out. Wendos is the real criminal here. If we go to the Crown’s Watch with what we can both tell them—”
Esmae’s mouth tightens. “You’re just trying to save yourself any way you can. Why would Wendos want Julita hurt?”
My mind goes totally blank.
Curse it all. I’m so sick of lying.
“Because he’s trying to cover up a conspiracy of scourge sorcery,” I spit out.
Esmae gapes at me. Then she starts to laugh in a halting, humorless way. “You really will say anything. It isn’t going to work. I’ve come too far. I swore to serve the gods with my gift, and I’m going to ensure I can do that as grandly as they deserve.”
Without warning, she springs at me.
You’re always going to be at a disadvantage when you’re sitting and someone attacks you from a higher position. Less ability to maneuver, more easily knocked down.
But for all the desperate force in Esmae’s lunge, it’s obvious the noblewoman has never really learned to fight. Not against an opponent who’s had to scrape her way to survival on the streets of the fringes.
I yank myself to the side, rolling off the chair and across the floor to the bed. As my shoulder bumps the bedframe, I’m whipping my knife from beneath my dress.
Esmae’s stab digs the letter opener’s blade into the chair cushion. She wrenches it out and whirls toward me.
“Yesterday should have been enough. I heard you dying. I made sure.”
“Take it as a sign,” I say. “It isn’t meant to happen like this. Esmae—”
She hisses through her teeth and launches herself at me again. I jerk to the side and shove, propelling her onto the bed.
I had some vague idea that I could trap her, wrap her up in the sheets so she couldn’t lash out anymore, but she’s faster than I expected. She swings around and slams her heel into my gut before I can grasp her arms.
The letter opener rakes across my forearm. I wince and snatch at her wrist, but I’m better coordinated with my knife hand.
I unsheathed the weapon as a defensive measure. I don’t really want to use it.
Esmae might be insane, but she was a tool rather than the instigator.
She’s the only concrete proof we have that Wendos orchestrated Julita’s murder and my attack. That Julita even was murdered.
My unwillingness to fully commit to the fight is the bigger disadvantage. Esmae slashes and strikes again. Every feral movement shows she doesn’t care about how she hurts me, only that she does as much damage as possible.
Meanwhile I’m dodging this way and that, trying not to hurt her.
I manage to grab one of her wrists and pin it down, but I have to jerk sideways when she rams the letter opener right at my face. When I shove her against the wall, she only reels for a second before throwing herself at me again.
I have Casimir’s locket in a pocket by my thigh, but there’s no time to grab it. Every second I hesitate, Esmae gets in another scratch or smack.
My magic starts to squirm within my ribs, begging for notice. But either the brief bit I used it yesterday or the fact that it can tell I’m far from out of my depth keeps it from outright wrenching at me.
Esmae grasps my hair and yanks hard enough to make my scalp scream. I claw at her face with my free hand, and she spins me around.
And then my feet slip on the rug.
I tumble onto my knees, and Esmae is on me. My power flares, demanding I let it intervene.
Her hand rams down with the letter opener, straight at my throat.
In that split-second, I know I might be able to deflect her blow. I might be able to send the blade into my shoulder rather than my throat.
I also know it’s only a matter of seconds before my magic digs its punishing claws into me all over again, leaving me crumpled in agony… unable to block any stabs after that.
Every future ends with me as dead as Julita in the Slaughterwell alley, except—
Despite the twisting of my gut, my fighting instincts guide my hand. I whip my arm up to stop Esmae the only way I can.
An instant before she’d have rammed her blade home, my knife plunges into her chest, straight to her heart.
Esmae lurches, her blow glancing off my skin instead of digging in.
“You,” she rasps as she teeters above me. “You—”
She slumps over sideways, still sputtering breath. I grope at her chest, afraid to move the knife, afraid not to.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t want to—”
My pleas and my frantic hands can’t save her. A few more furious wordless sounds rasp from her lips with flecks of spittle. The letter opener drops from her slackening fingers.
“No!” I protest. “Esmae, come on…”
Blood seeps in a growing stain across the bodice of her dress. Her head lolls onto her arm.
Her eyes roll up, vacant as an unmarked page.
No medic can help her now.