Chapter 22
Twenty-Two
Ivy
When Stavros returns to his quarters just after the tenth bell, it’s with a plate holding three of the flaky, custard-filled pastries the nobles call “moon rolls.” I glance up from the sofa and have to pretend my mouth doesn’t water at the sight of them.
As he stops across from the sofa, looking at me, my silence starts to feel awkward. “Needed a late-night snack?” I ask.
His gaze drops to the plate. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen the former general act hesitant before.
It’s a little unnerving.
“They’re meant to be for you,” he says, in the careful, faintly beseeching tone he’s taken with me ever since he sicced one of his students on me this afternoon.
Oh. I stare at him. “I was just in the dining hall a couple of hours ago. I ate plenty of food.”
“I’m sure. But you like these, don’t you? I saw there were a few left and thought you might want to fortify yourself for whatever’s coming tonight.”
Julita shifts within my skull. Did you break Stavros? This morning he couldn’t glower at you enough, now he’s tripping over his feet to cater to you. I’ve never seen him so rattled.
So it’s not just me unnerved by the change.
Of course, if Stavros is broken, I don’t know what she’d call what’s happened to me. He rushed me to the infirmary as soon as my magic had finished lashing out at me and claimed the red mark around my neck was the result of a training mishap, but my throat still stings faintly when I swallow.
The medic repaired the encroaching bruise, but the damage went deeper than that. Possibly not just in my neck but various internal organs as well, thanks to my magic’s frustration.
I take the plate and simply hold it, not sure what to do with it. My taste buds might be eager, but my stomach is clenched tight both in anticipation of yet another trial with the scourge sorcerers tonight… and however the former general might react to me next.
Will he take a rejection of his generosity as a sign of malicious intent? Should I choke down one of the rolls to prove I appreciate the gesture?
His mood has shifted so much in the course of the day that I have no idea what to expect.
“I’m quite full,” I say tentatively. “But it might be nice to have them to come back to, after everything.”
I set the plate on the small table by the arm of the sofa. Stavros’s gaze follows its descent with an odd air of sadness.
Well, he’s not shouting accusations at me, so I guess I’ll call that a win.
It was horrible, what he did today, Julita says. He shouldn’t have gone that far—he shouldn’t have felt he needed to. I wouldn’t forgive him just yet, but I don’t think he really wanted to hurt you, Ivy.
Does it matter what he wanted? He was willing to hurt me anyway to get whatever proof he needed, since apparently he judged that I wasn’t offering enough evidence of my loyalties on my own.
Who knows what else he might feel he needs to do?
Stavros’s head ticks as he studies my face. “Is there anything else that might help you prepare for your meeting with the scourge sorcerers tonight?”
I splay my hands. “Hard to say when I don’t know what that meeting will entail.”
His presence in the room and the weight of what he put me through this afternoon is becoming increasingly suffocating. I turn away and reach for my cloak. “I was thinking I’d stop by the temple and see if Kosmel has anything else to say for himself.”
“Ah. That seems worth trying.” Stavros pauses. “Will you come back here before you’re expected in the woods?”
I shrug as I fasten the cloak around my neck. Stavros tracks the movement of my hands, maybe thinking as I am of the rope that wrapped across the same spot just hours ago.
“I suppose that depends on how talkative the godlen is and whether I can find anything else to pass the time,” I say. “But you shouldn’t be waiting up anyway.”
“Of course.”
There’s another pause, the silence so awkward I practically flee for the door.
Once I’m walking down the hall, the pressure lightens, if only a tad. I still have my impending foray into the woods to worry about, and that’s no small thing.
I really don’t have any idea what to expect from the scourge sorcerers either.
One of the guards by the college gate stops me briefly to check where I’m headed at this late hour, but when I tell him, he waves me on. I hurry along the cobblestone road and slip through the temple’s grand doorway.
In the thick of the night, the only illumination in the massive worship room flickers from sconces set above each of the godlen statues.
The glow catches on swaths of red silk that’ve been fixed to several of the columns and two immense gold swords now crossing each other over the entrance to the central tower.
I’ve been so distracted it takes me a moment to remember the reason for the adjusted décor. Sabrellia, the festival for the warrior godlen, is coming in a couple of days.
Each of the godlen get one day a year when everyone celebrates their contributions to our world. I can’t say I’m looking forward to honoring the violent divinity Stavros dedicated himself to, though.
I doubt I’ll be in a festive mood.
A couple of devouts pass through the worship room with subtle dips of their head toward me. The temple is open at all hours—they must be used to worshippers arriving at random.
I approach Kosmel’s alcove with a sense of trepidation. The godlen of luck and trickery insisted I stay alive. He must have some purpose for me.
It’d be nice to get a clearer idea of what that is.
But the thought of hearing his divinely overwhelming voice in my head again makes every part of my body tense up.
The one thing both of the clerics whose journals I read agreed on is that you can’t dictate when or how you’ll receive messages from the gods. You have to extend your question into the universe and watch for some indication it’s been heard.
Kosmel probably loves keeping us mortals on our toes.
I kneel before his statue, ignoring the dice this time. A simple yes or no doesn’t feel like enough to satisfy all the uncertainty inside me.
I’m doing the best I can, I think at him. Is there anything I’m missing? Do you have any advice at all? I want to take down the scourge sorcerers soon—I don’t know what else they’re going to ask of me.
I close my eyes, thinking maybe images will float up from my mind the way the cleric of the Temple of Fruitful Abundance sometimes described. When all I get is an ache forming in my knees from the hard floor, I glance upward at the statue.
At the same moment, the sconce above Kosmel flares. The shadows on his marble form shift—and I swear I catch a shape like a gowned figure leaping headfirst into a thicker clump of darkness.
A chill settles over me. Maybe I only imagined that.
But even Casimir said that’s how he feels Ardone guides him sometimes—drawing his attention to meaningful details in the world around him.
I raise my eyebrows at the smirking godlen. “Just dive farther in?” I murmur.
He doesn’t say anything, naturally. In frustration, I pick up a die and toss it by his feet.
It lands five up. The most emphatic yes.
Swallowing thickly, I pull myself to my feet. My innards feel all jumbled up.
Until the last few weeks, I’ve avoided the notice of the gods. I don’t really like the sensation of one of them dabbling in my life.
Is that really better than being left to my own devices?
My skin creeping, I stride out of the temple. There’s nothing more for me in there at the moment.
The apparent message nags at me all the way back to the college. I pause in the outer courtyard, marking the eleven peals of the bell, and veer around the Quadring to make for the woods.
Isn’t it awfully early? Julita asks.
I let out my voice in the barest mutter. “He wants me to dive in; I’m diving in. They can ignore me until one o’clock if they want.”
Or maybe we can get the next trial over with, and I can take a break from the precarious balancing act I’ve been performing for a day or two.
I count out my fifty paces into the woods and sit down on the forest path, settling in for what might be a long wait. The warble of the breeze through the leaves and the periodic buzz and chirp of forest life are becoming familiar.
There’s nothing in this darkness I really need to fear except the human beings venturing into it alongside me.
I breathe in and out at a regular pace, absorbing the sounds around me, the shifts in the cooling air. I might even drift into the sort of meditative state the clerics sometimes talk about, though I can’t say any great insight comes with it.
Apparently Julita can’t do the same. She stirs restlessly within my head. Of course they’d have to pick the creepiest time and place to conduct their initiation tests. I’m sure they simply want you to be as off-balance as possible.
As if to prove her point, a voice abruptly breaks through the quiet. It’s distorted by the same magical effect as usual, but this once I have a definite impression of it coming from somewhere ahead of me and a bit to the right.
“Why are you here already, Ivy of Nikodi?”
Interesting. So there are probably at least two conspirators who’ve been conducting these trials, only one of whom is able to project their voice widely.
Determining that fact doesn’t get me any closer to knowing who those people are, though.
I consider what sort of answer the scourge sorcerers would most want to hear from a potential recruit. “What’s been happening out here feels much more important than anything I could be doing in the college. I thought I’d see if I can get more in tune with the All-Giver.”
Julita gives a chuckle of approval. Buttering them up. Very nice.
I can’t hear any hint of movement in the forest. Either the speaker has been standing wherever they are for a long time without moving, they’re propelling their voice from quite far away, or they’re incredibly stealthy.