Chapter 14
FOURTEEN
GWENNA
On Saturday, I let Morgan talk me into going into Sarrasford.
“God, it’s cold as my tit out here,” she grumbles, wrapping her arms around herself and stuffing her gloved hands into her armpits.
A little howl of wind down the canyon of the Main Street works its way through the front flap of my jacket, making my teeth chatter. I nod and pull my scarf further up over my face. “Hilarious.”
It is cold, bitterly cold, in a way that’s crossed the line from “cozy New England winterscape” to genuinely Siberian.
A hard winter we’re having. Reminds me of home.
Moroslav’s words from the reception room echo in my mind as I follow Morgan through the swinging door of the Oracular Curio, and I shiver in a way that has nothing to do with the cold.
“Hi, Lucinda.” Morgan throws a look over her shoulder. “They’re…with me.”
I give a little wave. Lanz—my bodyguard of the moment—gives Lucinda a polite nod.
“Hello, hello,” the shop owner singsongs. Her hair’s a deep turquoise instead of the vibrant red I remember, and she’s wrapped in a chunky knit shawl of nearly the same color. “I have something in for you, don’t I, Morgan?”
Morgan nods and bustles over to the counter, leaving me
“Cold out there,” Lanz remarks.
The weather. I guess that’s…something to talk about.
“Mm.” I look up from the replica Aztec calendar disk I’m idly examining and acknowledge the existence of the snow.
Reminds me of home.
“Lanz.”
“Hmm?”
“What’s the deal with the…Russians?” I lower my voice just a little, not that I think Lucinda’s eavesdropping, or can even hear us over the Enya CD she seems to have on permanent loop. “Moroslav, and all of them.”
“Oh.” Lanz nods. “St. Ignaty’s? They’re our rivals. Always have been, as far as I know.”
I’m not…quite convinced my his answer. “Fencing rivals.”
Lanz waits a beat before answering. “Yes.” Another beat. “Well…”
Now I’m the one to wait. Patiently.
But nothing comes.
“Yeah.” Lanz is suddenly preoccupied with a glass chess set on display in front of him, fiddling with the tiny blue queen. “It’ll probably be us and them in the final.”
“A fencing rivalry,” I say slowly. “That’s why Moroslav destroyed millions of dollars’ worth of irreplaceable historical artifacts.”
Lanz bites his lip. “Um. I guess…yeah.” He nods a few times.
I let out a sigh. I look down at the chess set myself, pick up one of the horse-headed knights and roll it between my fingers.
“Figures,” I mutter.
Lanz frowns. “What?”
I don’t look up at him, just keep staring at the little knight. “Kingston. Kai. Now you.” I shrug. “Those two I get. But I’d never pegged you as an outright liar, Lanz.”
It’s a little manipulative. I know it is. But if he can…if he can kiss me once and act like nothing ever happened, then I can jab at his self-esteem right back.
“No. No. I’m not—it’s not like that.” Lanz takes a step closer, which I’d prefer he not do, but I hold my ground. I set down the glass knight and look right into those stark blue eyes.
“It’s not?”
“It’s…” He blinks, blows out a breath. Swallows. Darts a glance right, then left.
And then leans in even closer.
“They’re after the same…thing as we are, Gwenna. The same quest.”
The air goes still in my lungs. “What?” I hear myself say.
“They have been for…I don’t know. Centuries. St. Ignaty’s—it’s some splinter group of the Russian Orthodox Church. More or less the same as the Consistory, I guess. We don’t really know what they do or what they believe, exactly. Just what they want. And that’s…”
He trails off, because both of us know how that sentence ends.
The Grail.
Me.
“So…yeah,” Lanz goes on. His eyes are back on the little glass queen, his long fingers slowly spinning it one way, then the other, on its square. “As far as most people know, it’s just a sports rivalry. But the schools are just, like, covers. In a sense. Both us and them—those go back way further.”
My head is spinning. I clench my fist around the knight, letting its corners dig into my hand. “So when he came to—” My eyes flutter shut, thinking back to the reception room, to the confounding fact of Alexei Moroslav coming to visit me.
Surely you didn’t…come here to talk about the weather.
Of course he didn’t. Of course he didn’t.
I open my eyes again, stare at Lanz.
“When he came to see me,” I say again. “If you guys hadn’t shown up. What would he have done? Does he—do they know?”
Lanz shakes his head firmly.
"We don't think so. I mean, if they knew what you were, they would have tried something already. Taken you, not just shown up to chat. From everything we can tell, they think the Grail is some kind of…object. But we still have to be…”
He doesn’t have to finish the sentence. We still have to be careful. Still have to guard me. Just in case.
My heart pounds inside my jacket. I’m desperate to know more, to ask another question, yet I can’t even seem to articulate one, to pin down all of what this could possibly mean.
“Boom.” Morgan strides back over from the counter, now laden down with two large white shopping bags. “Mission accomplished.” She gestures at Lanz, proffering the bags forward. “Would you be so kind?”
“I’m not your…” Lanz glances at me. I just stare back. He swallows. “Um. Sure.”
“What’d you get?” I ask Morgan, grateful for the change of subject.
“So much.” She beams, happily dropping the bags to Lanz, who gives a soft oof of surprise effort as their contents click and roll around. “Candles, candlebras, tea lights, tapers…anyway. Hot beverages?” She looks between the two of us. “I’m dying.”
Lanz stays motionless. “Um. Up to Gwenna.”
I shrug. “Sure.”
Five minutes later, Morgan and I are peeling off our coats in a booth at Eclipse Coffee Lab while Lanz waits in line to order. And I have to say, as suffocating as the whole constant-bodyguard thing is, it’s nice to have someone who can provide table service.
Or defend me from the guy who’s out to get me.
Who almost did get me.
“…and then there’s this,” Morgan says, sliding out a long, thin taper that’s an almost pearlescent white, save a line of evenly-spaced green dashes marching down one side.
I frown, willing myself to concentrate on shopping instead of anything else. “Don’t you have a lot of candles already?”
“Well, yeah. But not the right ones.” Gingerly, Morgan sets the giant candle back in the bag.
“Different candles have different energy. You can’t just swap them around and get the same results.
It’d be like putting paprika in your banana bread instead of cinnamon, you know?
You could still complete the recipe, technically, but it’d defeat the purpose of what banana bread is supposed to be. ”
Weirdly, that makes sense—especially considering Morgan’s. “So what are all these for?”
“Next week,” Morgan says. “It’s Imbolc. Or, as the rest of you would have it, Candlemas,” she adds, at my confused expression. “February second?”
I shake my head.
“I’ve…heard of it,” I venture. And I think I have. One of those Christian holidays like Epiphany or Pentecost that was definitely covered in CCD and I retained just enough about to pass the quiz and then immediately forget.
“Oh. Well, it’s a deal around here,” Morgan says briskly. “At Caliburn, I mean. There’s fencing invitational and a formal hall and everything.” Her forehead wrinkles. “I’m surprised no one’s mentioned it to you.”
My mind flashes to Emrys’s classroom, my first day back with Kingston.
I won’t be in class for Candlemas week.
“It’s come up,” I say shortly. “I just didn’t know it was all that.”
“Ah,” she says. “Well, here it certainly is. You know the saying: if Candlemas day be fair and bright, winter shall have another flight.”
I glance out the shop window at the thick white globs of snow flying almost sideways. “No thanks.”
“Exactly,” Morgan says. “So I’m taking the opportunity to get some craft practice in and try a proper Imbolc ritual in. Hence”—she spreads her arm over all her shopping loot—“the candles.”
Lanz arrives back bearing two cups, looking a little bewildered.
“Okay, so…peppermint chai?”
Morgan lifts a manicured hand and accepts her cup.
“Which means—”
“Coffee’s mine.” I’m careful not to let our fingers touch as I take my drink from him. Meanwhile, Morgan finishes her first sip and fixes Lanz with a look.
“None of you told Gwenna about Candlemas?”
Lanz’s expression is blank. “We…” He looks at me.
“I’m not hanging out with them,” I point out. “It’s not like we’re sitting around and shooting the breeze.”
“Okay, okay,” Morgan says, setting down her chai. “So, fine. There’s a Candlemas tournament where you guys face down another school—”
“Two other schools,” Lanz interjects. “Mountstuart and Villa Loyola. Over two days.”
“Whatever.” Morgan waves a hand. “And then there’s the Candlemas Ball. Like a formal hall, but bigger. Dinner, dancing. The other schools come too.”
At that, I make a face. “Have fun,” I murmur.
Lanz blinks. “What do you mean?”
I tilt my head at him. “I mean…have fun? I hope it’s fun.”
“But you…” He frowns. “You say that like you’re not going.”
“I’m not going.” I look at Morgan. “Why would I go?”
Lanz, too, looks at Morgan. Then back at me. Gives an awkward cough.
“Because…we’re going.”
We’re going. The four of them, presumably. And if they have to be there, and they also have to watch me, then…
…then I have to be there too.
“You’re going?” Morgan says, incredulous. “As in the four of you are? But you don’t go to stuff like this.”
“Right,” Lanz says, “but this is…didn’t Kingston tell you?” He looks from Morgan to me. “That they’re coming to campus?”
Both of us shake our heads.
“Who?” I ask, heart pounding.
Lanz sets his jaw. “The White Brothers,” he says. “The Consistory.”
“With all due respect, I don’t think it could be any clearer.”