Chapter 25
Twenty-Five
Ivy
I’m not sure what time it is until the bell rings three while I’m darting across the outer courtyard. The conspirators have never summoned me out to the woods this late before.
They’ve never summoned me with no advance notice before.
Well, this is a rotten trial, Julita grumbles, as if she’s suffering from the lack of sleep too.
I give my tired eyes a brief swipe, allow myself a moment to long for the comfortable sofa I left behind, and then train all my attention on the task at hand.
Who knows what other tactics the scourge sorcerers might have up their sleeves tonight, designed to rattle me and betray any lack of commitment?
I have to stop by the far side of the equipment building when a patrolling guard swings into view around the corner of the Quadring. As soon as she’s marched well past me, I sprint through the shadows with barely a rustle of the grass.
I take a little comfort in having exchanged my nightclothes for my linen combat shirt and breaches rather than a gown. Casimir chose my dresses well, but I can’t move while smothered in layers of silk the same way I can when my limbs are unencumbered.
If the conspirators think there’s anything odd about my choice in clothing, I’ll simply tell them that I wanted to follow their instructions as swiftly as possible, and it takes much longer to lace up a gown than to pull on a shirt.
I’ve worn these clothes around the school plenty of times, so the outfit shouldn’t come as a total surprise.
My racing pulse only starts to slow once I’m swathed in the thicker darkness between the trees. I hurry along the path with my chin raised high, putting on my best noble airs alongside my haste.
Forty-eight, forty-nine, fifty.
I plant my feet on the path and peer into the blackness around me. You’d think after they dragged me out of bed, my evaluators would be prompt about greeting me.
There’s a faint crinkle somewhere behind me to my right, like a foot stepping on a dried leaf. I can’t tell whether it was a human foot or some animal passing by, though.
The hairs rise on the back of my neck.
The air stirs right behind me. I move to whip myself around when a sharp edge digs into my scarred back.
My muscles freeze instinctively. My breath halts in my throat.
“Turn left and walk into the forest,” a magically-distorted voice says, no more than a pace behind me. I can’t tell whether that’s a sword, knife, or spear against my back, but any of those options would be equally fatal if rammed deeper. “Keep going until I tell you to stop.”
Drawing more air into my lungs, I force myself to obey.
Twigs snap under my feet as I tramp onto the uneven ground off the side of the path. Leaves brush my arms.
My magic unfurls in my chest, tugging at me to let it bowl over the person who ambushed me. To melt the blade. To send it rampaging through the woods after every comrade who approved of this plan.
No. This is probably just another test, not an actual threat.
I will my power to stay coiled and quiet—not attacking them or me.
After letting it out to play a few nights ago, I find it easier to settle the restless energy. But the farther we walk in tense silence, the harder it gets to suppress my worries.
Gods smite me, have the scourge sorcerers figured out I’m a monster after all? Or maybe someone noticed my trick with the hounds during the festival.
But why would they have waited two more nights to do anything about it? It’s not as if they could even have been sure I meant to interrupt Ster. Torstem rather than merely creating trouble for the royals, which would be a mission I’d expect this bunch to approve of.
Or this really could be just another trial. Make me think they’re upset with me, see if I babble any excuses, reveal errors they didn’t actually know about.
I guess I’ll find out.
Ivy, Julita says, her presence contracted at the back of my skull, this could be really bad. If you need to use your magic… I think you should.
My mouth tightens. My automatic reaction is to refuse, with all possible vehemence, but I’m no longer completely sure that’s the right answer.
Only as an absolute last resort. Only if it’s clear there’s no other way to escape—and that escape is worth the consequences.
The second I start treating these people like the enemies I know they are, everything I’ve put myself through to make it this far will be for nothing. We’ll lose the one small foothold we’ve gained.
My power continues to roil within my ribcage, but it doesn’t lash out too forcefully. It’s waiting like the rest of me to see how this situation will play out.
Whether I’m facing actual danger or only a staging of it.
I step into a small clearing that might be the one where I tore up the rabbit or a totally different spot—it’s all vague shapes in the night. The figure behind me says, “Enough.”
I jar to a halt.
More forms move in the darkness between the trees, shrouded in black like the knife-wielding healer was before.
Most of them I only catch vague glimpses of. I think there are four or five people lingering at the outskirts of my limited sight.
Two of the figures step closer, to the edge of the clearing where they stand side by side with a narrow tree trunk between them.
“You accuse this woman?” says the figure on the left. His voice is distorted like the one behind me but deep enough to definitely be male.
The other new arrival wasn’t given the same benefit of magical warbling. “I do,” he says, in a gruff but clear voice that sends a quiver through my nerves.
I don’t recognize it exactly… but I have the sense that it shouldn’t sound that way. That there’s something unnatural about its tone.
“Accuse me of what?” I demand, keeping my head high and peering at the unknown man through the darkness.
My nerves jitter with the sense of the presences around me forming a circle to pen me in. They’re afraid I might run for it.
This definitely isn’t good. But if it’s an accusation from an outside source, I might be able to turn the tables on my opponent.
Who could know anything all that incriminating about me?
The first figure, directly in front of me, draws himself straighter with a pompous air. As I note the way the black fabric shifts against his broad frame, the suspicion tickles through my head that I might finally be face to face with Ster. Torstem in his scourge sorcerer guise.
When he speaks again, I listen hard for traces of the law professor’s voice through the magical distortion.
“Another of our number claims you’re a traitor to our cause.
That you have courted our favor not to serve the All-Giver and see the world returned to its former divine grace, but to undermine everything we’ve worked for. ”
A chill trickles through my veins. How could any of Torstem’s people have guessed that much? Are they simply fishing to see if it’s true without really believing it?
Presumably they don’t actually know, or I’d already be dead.
Julita mumbles a string of curses and then speaks up in an urgent tone. I know how to play this. Act all sweet and innocent, like you have no idea how anyone could think that of you. Like you’re a na?ve twit who’s too brainless to have even considered that these fiends deserve to be undermined.
I’m sure that’s how she would have played it, but the idea of acting like an idiot doesn’t sit right with me. It isn’t as if it’ll match what Torstem and his followers have seen from me before.
Innocence, though, I’m totally on board with.
I knit my brow. “Why would I want to undermine you? I’ve kept everything to myself, as you’ve asked.”
“Lies,” my accuser says in the gruff voice that feels even more wrong with each word it speaks. “She’s an excellent pretender. You can’t believe anything that comes out of her mouth.”
What rot. Go on and simper like you’re shocked by his claims.
My body balks. I can’t shake the sense that me simpering would come across just as fake as my opponent’s gruffness.
There are other ways to show I have nothing to hide.
I set my hands on my hips and hold my voice steady. “Has my accuser brought any proof? As far as I can tell, he’s the liar. He must think he has something to gain by turning you against me.”
“I heard her,” the shrouded figure insists. “I heard her plotting with that lout of a failed general she works for, talking about how they’d bring the Crown’s Watch down on you all.”
He flicks his hand beneath his concealing robe, and the fragments of recognition crash together with a sickening certainty.
His gruff tone faltered with the urgency of that last claim, more of his natural voice coming through. And something about his flippant phrasing, about the gesture he just made…
Is that Benedikt hiding beneath the shroud?
I try not to react, but I have to stiffen against the cold rush of nausea that floods my body.
What would he be doing out here? Why would he—?
The scourge sorcerers are waiting for my answer. Maybe I’m mistaken.
I wrench my scattered mind back to the most vital matter at hand and manage to let out a snort.
“I can barely stand to discuss the weather with my employer, let alone get involved in some ridiculous scheme. I accepted your invitation to discover what more I could be in this world partly for a chance to get away from that man.”
Ivy… I don’t know… Julita squirms inside my skull, but she must realize I’ve decided to ignore her advice.
She’s guided me well so far, but I’m the con artist between us. I’ve handled tricky situations with everyone from the lowest street rats to the highest nobility.
If I’m going to get through this mess, and without my magic tearing me and who knows what else apart, it has to be my way.
The figure who might be Ster. Torstem crosses his arms over his chest with a ripple of his shroud. “We are only going by hearsay.”
He turns his head toward the man I don’t want to believe is Benedikt. “And you did have a motive. You were trying to make up for your failure tonight.”
His failure? At one of the initiation tasks?
Since when was Benedikt even aiming to get recruited? That was my job.
I want to think that means I was wrong, but with my accuser’s next protest, even more of his familiar voice, taut with strain, shows through. “If I were making this all up, how would I have known she’s been sneaking out here in the first place?”
My stomach has tied itself in a dozen knots, but I can put on an even better performance than he probably expects.
I roll my eyes skyward and let a sneer creep into my voice. “I can’t imagine it’d be all that difficult if you know what to look for. What, were you watching the woods every night to see who’d sneak out here so you’d have someone to point a finger at if your loyalty was too shaky to keep up?”
Make the scourge sorcerers see him as the potential traitor. Take the heat off me and aim it back at him.
A sour tang of bile creeps up the back of my throat, but I don’t know what else to do.
And if that’s Benedikt, then he is a traitor. To me, to Stavros, to Julita—to everything we were supposed to be working toward.
“You question my loyalty,” he starts to sputter, but I’m ready for him. Ready to fight.
I fix him with a glare. “I do. How selfish can you be to try to compensate for your own weaknesses by dragging someone else down with you? Someone who actually wants to see the All-Giver return and create a world the Great God would be proud of.”
I sense a shifting in the circle of figures around me. I’m sowing doubt in their heads.
One thing Julita’s made more than clear to me is how arrogant the scourge sorcerers are. They think they deserve greater power than anyone else; they think they have some special calling.
Like every upper class prick I’ve ever dealt with, the fastest way to win them over is to stoke their horrific egos.
I fix my attention back on the possible Torstem.
“The nights I’ve spent out here, immersing myself in your teachings, are the most alive I’ve felt in my whole life.
There’s so much more I want to learn. So much I can tell I could accomplish with your guidance.
If I’ve failed you in any way—if I’ve given you any reason to fault me—then I’m not worthy of this opportunity.
I’ll accept whatever judgment you’ll give. ”
“Don’t listen to—” Benedikt says.
The other man cuts him off with a jerk of his hand. I feel his gaze on me. “I have only your word too, Ivy of Nikodi.”
I bob my head in a slight bow. “And whatever you’ve seen of my acts in service of your cause. But if that isn’t enough…”
Julita breaks in with an urgent whisper. I know! Borys and Wendos—when they couldn’t agree on a course of action—they’d call on their powers to decide who was right.
Hmm. I’m not going to invite my riven magic into the mix… but there is another, higher power I can appeal to.
My pulse stutters at the idea, but I don’t have a better one.
The words tumble out, no chance to fully think them through.
“Why not let the godlen show their favor? Everything we’re doing is to bring back their full glory and the world they’d want, isn’t it?
Test us together, and let the gods support the one whose heart they know is faithful. ”
Which would be me, wouldn’t it? Seeing as I’m the one who’s had a godlen talking to me, when he can be bothered to?
It’d better fucking well not turn out that Kosmel is playing a big prank and the lesser gods are all in favor of scourge sorcery after all.
Possible-Torstem is silent for several moments. When he speaks again, I think I can make out a pleased smile in his voice.
“That may be a reasonable suggestion. We’ll need to discuss exactly how to proceed. Both of you, come along until we can settle this matter once and for all.”