Chapter 38
Thirty-Eight
No one’s left in the stairwells. I make it out of the Domi unimpeded.
All the way across the inner courtyard and through the Quadring’s central hall, I keep my cloak tucked tightly around me to conceal both Esmae’s blood and Stavros’s royal sword.
Then I burst from that entranceway with only a hundred paces between me and the main gate and find Anya standing directly in my way.
In that first instant, she has her back to me. But as I move to dodge, one girl in the pack of friends that’s grown since I saw her earlier today notices me and raises her eyebrows.
Anya whirls around with a swish of her ample skirts.
At the sight of me, she makes a disdainful scoffing sound. “Where are you scurrying to so fast, country girl? You have the warrior skills to earn a spot working for General Stavros, but you run for the hills at the first sign of trouble?”
I bite my tongue against reminding her that the current catastrophe is more like the thousandth sign. “I have something to do in the city. Pardon me.”
I move to veer around her, but Anya sidesteps gracefully, beckoning her friends. The clot of them closes in a semi-circle around me.
Heads all around the courtyard have turned our way. The back of my neck prickles with the awareness of their gazes.
They’re all watching, evaluating how this confrontation goes down. And Anya is as aware of our spectators as I am.
Her lips curl in a sneer. “Oh, no. I think you’d better stay right here. You’ll make an excellent shield if we happen to need one.”
I glare back at her. What I’d like more than anything is to whip my favorite knife out of my boot and hold it to this wretched woman’s throat. But a deeper instinct holds my aggressive urges in check.
I don’t know how the next few hours will go down. I might have to come back here, might have to face all these blasted nobles again, move among them, learn more secrets.
If I threaten her with violence, I’ll look like an outright criminal. I can only imagine the murmurs that would spread from all the witnesses around us.
I could draw back my cloak and flash the royal crest on Stavros’s sword, but what kind of rumors would that display provoke? I’d be shining a spotlight on just how closely he’s working with me, pinning a target to his back.
I’m not sure Anya would believe the crest enough to respect it in my possession anyway.
My hands clench. I’m so tired of this harassment.
So tired of knowing that she and the rest of them would treat me ten times worse if they knew how lowly in status I actually am.
Take her down, Julita urges. Toss her right on her ass and show her who she’s messing with.
I give my head the slightest shake. I don’t for one second think there’s anything I could do to Anya that would frighten her into leaving me alone without setting tongues wagging all across the college.
Not anything forceful, at least…
A glimmer of an idea lights in my head. Esmae nearly had me at her mercy without a single cutting word or blade.
Without letting myself second-guess the inspiration, I let out a light laugh and step toward my harasser.
“Oh, Anya, let’s stop jerking our poor schoolmates around. They’ve got plenty of other things to worry about beyond us pretending we’re at each other’s throats. It’s been a lot of fun while it lasted, but I think the charade has run its course. You’ve been fantastic at it, friend.”
Anya stares at me as if I actually did stab her. Probably she’d have had a better idea how to respond in that circumstance.
Ignoring the revulsion twisting through my body, I grasp her arm and pull her into a friendly hug. With a bob on my toes, I bring my mouth close to her ear.
“Play along and make nice,” I murmur so only she can hear, “or I’ll let Ster. Stavros drag you in front of the royal family as a traitor like he’s been itching to ever since you poisoned me. Even assistant teaching staff are delegates of the crown, you know.”
Anya’s posture stiffens. Then she lets out a chuckle that’s only slightly strained and brings her arms up to return the embrace.
Ah. So I gambled right, and she was the one who tampered with my dinner that night.
I can feel that she’s hating every second of the clinch, but that’s all right. So am I.
I draw back from her with a triumphant smile.
“I really do have an errand to take care of, but we’ll have to catch up properly soon. Take care of yourself!”
“You too,” Anya says in a dazed tone. She eases to the side, and I stride on to the gate with nothing following me but several dozen startled gazes.
By the time I reach the wall, the students behind me have already fallen back into their previous buzz of conversation.
There’ll be a bit of talk about the con Anya and I supposedly pulled, pretending to be strangers and enemies, but people who like each other is not that interesting. The mutterings should fade soon.
Julita makes a noise of disbelief. I think that ploy actually worked. But you had to hug her.
“We all make sacrifices for the greater good,” I mutter under my breath as I slip beneath the archway.
I skirt the side of the Temple of the Crown where it stands just ahead of the college walls, through the thrum of its ever-present magic. The sensation is even more unnerving than usual now, while the knowledge of what I’m about to do simmers inside me.
I come around the front of the temple and gaze up the short flight of broad marble steps to the grand public doorway that’s open as always to worshippers. A few are ambling out right now, their expressions soft with peace in the fading daylight.
A lump rises in my throat. My heart is already thumping hard against my ribs.
Peace is the last sensation I’m going to feel stepping into that building.
I fled to the streets the morning of my twelfth birthday specifically so my parents wouldn’t fulfill their obligation to bring me to my dedication ceremony.
Going into Inganne’s temple was bad enough. The structure before me is the most exalted place of worship in the country, blessed by all nine godlen and perhaps the All-Giver as well.
Will the divinities see me the second I step through that doorway? See me all the way down to my broken soul?
My hand comes to rest on the folds of my skirt. I pull out the locket, flip it open, and press my thumb to the inner surface.
A tingle of magic tells me it’s worked. The men will know I’ve found something—they’ll follow the call here.
I could simply wait outside and let them do the rest. Stavros—and maybe the others too—might even prefer that.
But as I stare up at the sublime building with dread pooling in my gut, a tremor shakes the ground all the way to the cobblestones I’m standing on.
One of the nobles who just exited the temple startles with a little gasp. My chest constricts.
The trouble is spreading. Whatever the scourge sorcerers are doing, their influence is creeping far beyond the college walls.
How much more might be destroyed if I just stand here when I could have tried to stop them?
You don’t have to do anything else, Ivy, Julita says, although she can’t possibly know the full reasons for my hesitation. No one would blame you.
I exhale in a rush. “I would.”
Girding myself, I raise my chin and march up the steps into the temple.
Some part of me expects a lightning bolt to careen out of the sky and strike me dead before I cross the threshold. But of course that’s not how the riven usually die.
The gods rely on mortals to carry out the actual executions. Out there where I was just standing, with a rope coiled tight around a neck.
I swallow thickly and propel myself across the polished marble floor. The thrum of divine power deepens, crawling through my veins.
I pass magically lit sconces and carved scenes of the godlen emerging from the sea, sky, and earth. Then I step from the entry hall into the vast worship room.
The rasp of my boots echoes off the ceiling arcing above my head, as high as the dome over the college’s ballroom. Lingering rays of sunlight streak in through divine scenes captured in stained glass across its surface.
The multicolored glow beams down over the nine sculptures arranged in their alcoves around the room, each decorated with symbols of their strengths, both artful and real.
Elox, the peaceful healer, bows his head of wispy curls over a sleeping lamb cast in marble. Someone has laid a spread of cut willow branches and lavender around his stone feet.
Sabrelle, the domineering warrior, stares fiercely from beneath her helm as she brandishes a spear. A carved hunting hound stands by her side amid a scattering of dried bloodfruit, a favored snack of soldiers.
My gaze snags on Kosmel next. The godlen of chance and trickery peers across the room with a sly smile curving his thin lips, a crow perched on one shoulder and a rat nestled against his opposite forearm. Dice lie around his booted feet.
I’ve heard that people weighing the risks of a particular decision will roll one under his watch and take guidance from the numbers turning up odd or even.
I have the urge to walk up to him and study him more closely, as if I’ll find answers in a devout’s stone rendition. With an itch of discomfort, the memory rises up of the unsettling voice that came to me while I lay dying.
If any of the godlen would not just look the other way but outright encourage my monstrous magic, it’d be the guider of gamblers and protector of rascals, wouldn’t it?
Or maybe that voice had nothing to do with the gods. Maybe I did imagine it, and I aimed the backlash of my magic at Esmae myself.
Maybe it was the gift of some mortal figure I hadn’t realized was watching over me.
I’m not sure any of those options are exactly good.
I yank my eyes away and hurry to the thick column in the center of the room. It contains a spiral staircase that winds all the way up into the central spire, the tower of the All-Giver.