Chapter 39
Thirty-Nine
Ivy
Ihave the vague idea that I can grab my cord and my locket without rousing Stavros, leap off to the palace meeting room, and summon the others so maybe I’ll have company before I have to face the former general again.
No such luck. I shoulder open the door to find him standing by the sofa in the thin dawn light that’s seeping past the curtains.
His stance stiffens at the sight of me. “Ivy—”
“There isn’t time,” I blurt out, at least as panicked about the thought of having to discuss what we did earlier tonight as about what I’ve learned from the scourge sorcerers. I snatch my cord from the drawer and brandish it toward him. “We need to talk to the mirror.”
I haven’t had a chance to make sure there’s no conjured creature lurking around this room, so I’m not going to mention the king outright.
Stavros can clearly tell what I mean. He tenses even more, his eyes flashing. “What happened? You’re swaying.”
I am. I grasp the shelf beside me, steadying myself as well as I can, and toss my cord on the floor. It takes a few jerks before I can get it in a full circle. “I’m fine. Just go.”
I hop through the makeshift portal before he can argue.
What exactly happened between the two of you? Julita murmurs, sounding as though she isn’t sure she wants to know.
“Nothing I feel like discussing,” I mutter as I wobble into the meeting room.
In the seconds it takes the former general to set up his own means of supernatural transportation, I conduct my usual survey of the space. No quivers of magic penetrate my lingering dizziness.
The scourge sorcerers don’t even know this room exists. We should be safe.
My heart keeps thudding. I slump into one of the chairs so the room will spin less.
Stavros emerges a few paces away, already gripping his locket. As he presses the inside to signal the others, he looks me over with a grim expression and a twitch of his head.
“You got the summons for the initiation,” he says. “They drugged you again. You need to rest.”
I shake my head and grip the arms of the chair harder against the vertigo the motion provokes. “This is important. The royal family has to start preparing right away, for everything. For anything.”
I’m babbling like before. I shut my eyes and focus hard on the set of my feet against the floor, the arms of the chair in my hands.
Julita’s presence shifts inside me. I’m sure the Melchioreks will be all right for another hour or two. You need to look after yourself, Ivy.
That’s what I’m doing, as much as I can justify.
The grounding makes me a little more coherent. “I’ll explain to you and the others, and you can explain to the king. In a way that’s more organized. I’m sure I can get it all out.”
Stavros mutters something under his breath, but he isn’t going to jeopardize the king’s safety just so I can take a nap.
The second Casimir steps from his own cord, Stavros whirls toward him. “The courtesans must know all kinds of hangover cures. What can you mix for Ivy quickly that’ll help take the edge off any kind of intoxication?”
Casimir’s gaze flicks to me with a widening of his eyes.
“I’m fine,” I insist. “Just… just hazy. Fucking sorcerers.”
The courtesan turns back to Stavros. “I can grab a couple of things that might help. Give me a few minutes.”
He vanishes, and now I’m alone with the last person I wanted to see again.
Stavros’s jaw works. “Ivy, about—”
To my immense relief, Alek springs into the room before the former general can do more than start that sentence. “Did the initiation happen already? Ivy, are you all right?”
“Fine, fine,” I mumble, but affection swells in my heart at his concern.
I am okay now, aren’t I? I’m back with the few people in this world who care about what happens to me.
And maybe I can stay here. King Konram will have to take action after he hears what Ster. Torstem said, won’t he?
No more playing scourge sorcerer. No more gritting my teeth and forcing myself through trials and celebrations I find equally awful.
Although, what will I do with myself after that? It’s not as if there’ll be any reason for me to stay on as Stavros’s supposed assistant once our investigations have concluded.
I guess I’ll go back to my old haunts… The king implied he’d give me a reward, which’ll mean I can distribute even more silver than usual to the people of Florian who need it most…
“Ivy,” Alek says from right beside me, and I give a little start. I got so wrapped up in my wandering thoughts that I hadn’t noticed him approaching me.
The scholar sets his hand on my arm, and I smile up at him with a sudden tightness in my throat. He can’t follow me to the streets. Does everything we’ve shared end here too?
I don’t want it to.
The scholar peers down at me with his piercing gaze. “You look upset. What did they do to you?”
A ragged laugh slips from my mouth. “Not much. Shitty refreshments. Clay masks.”
Stavros speaks up from farther down the table, where he’s wisely keeping his distance. “I think they forced her to take even more of that drugged drink than last time. She definitely seems more affected, but she insisted that she needed to fill us in right away.”
I thump the chair arm. “Yes. It’s important. When is Casimir coming back? We need him too.”
As if conjured by my request, the courtesan appears in his ring of cord just seconds later. He’s holding a steaming mug between his hands.
“Here,” he says gently, bringing the mug to me. “This should help settle your mind and ease the disorientation. If you don’t feel much better afterward, I brought an herb you can chew as well.”
I sniff the hot liquid, which gives off a creamy nutty sort of scent that isn’t unappealing, and accept the mug. The first tentative sip sends a flood of warmth straight to my gut.
Cas always knows just how to look after a person, Julita murmurs.
The men watch, radiating tension as I down the drink as quickly as I can stomach it. By the time I’ve drained half of the mug, my thoughts are managing to stick in place rather than floating off through my mind before I can totally set them in order.
I keep sipping while I gather those thoughts. More sobriety could hardly be a bad thing.
“The scourge sorcerers had a huge bonfire more than an hour’s cart ride east of here,” I say.
“A few of us new initiates and around twenty established members. Everyone wore masks with magic to totally cover their faces, so I still don’t know most of them.
Ster. Torstem was leading things, and I ended up seeing Olari from the bug club and one of the dining hall chefs—the dark-haired woman who focuses on the desserts. ”
“Willone,” Casimir supplies. Of course he’d know everyone’s name. He grimaces. “I never imagined… Well, I haven’t spoken to her much at all.”
I nod in general acknowledgment. “We drank the drugged stuff and repeated some things Torstem said about the Order of the Wild, and there was a lot of weird dancing—but what’s important is what he said.”
I shift my attention to Alek. “You told me before about the kingship trials they used to hold in Silana before the empire took over. Torstem said outright that he wants to destroy the current royal family and hold new trials so we can have ‘worthy’ rulers. And other things about going back to the old ways. They seem to think that all this wildness they keep talking about is how it used to be in Silana. That’s why they think the gods would prefer it—because we behaved like that back then, but we stopped. ”
Alek frowns. “They can’t have a very definite idea of what anyone did all those centuries ago.
It’s my main area of study, and even with all the books I’ve had access to, I’ve still only come across fragmentary mentions of what ordinary life was like.
What’s survived the empire’s purges is mostly references to major events like the trials. ”
“The scourge sorcerers took a few pieces they liked and ran with them,” Stavros mutters, “making the rest up to suit themselves.”
I let out a rough chuckle. “Probably. I have no idea how they justify the scourge sorcery element—they haven’t mentioned that part to me yet.
But I asked Torstem how they were going to eliminate the current rulers, and he said they’re almost ready.
That they’ve been gathering their ‘forces,’ whatever exactly those are, and he thinks they’ll be striking at the entire royal family in just a few weeks. ”
Even Stavros draws up short at that announcement. “A few weeks? How?”
I shake my head miserably. “I couldn’t get him to tell me any more detail, only that we’d hear about it when it’s going to happen.
But I don’t know how much advance warning a new initiate would get.
I don’t know if he might have been making a cautious estimate and it could be as early as a few days.
The Crown’s Watch needs to take some kind of action right away. ”
Casimir comes up at my other side and brushes a few stray strands of hair back from my face in a soothing caress. “You’ve done fantastic, Ivy. You went through all that, and you were able to find out the part of their plans we needed to know most.”
I rub my face. “I just hope it’s enough.”
“It has to be!” Alek says. “You can’t go back to them when they might drag you into an assassination attempt next.”
Julita’s voice turns tart. I should certainly hope not.
Stavros has started to pace. “Did Torstem or the others say anything else? I need to know everything, even if it didn’t seem relevant.”
I pry back through my muddled memories of the night.
“Before he sent me back here, Ster. Torstem told me to come to the next entomology club meeting, which is tomorrow evening, and that from now on I’ll come to the Order of the Wild activities through them.
So we got definite confirmation that the club is a front.
I’d bet the half of the group that Olari is in supposedly went on a field trip last night. ”