Chapter 3
3
S ENSING THE PRESS of time, Nyx returned along the same path that brought her home. Only now she wielded her spare cane ahead of her, a worn staff from when she was years younger. Its length was nicked and pitted from long use. It was also slightly shorter in length than the newer one she had abandoned in the classroom. Still, it felt like a comfortable old friend in her hand. She swept it along ahead of her. Though she knew the path well, the cane’s assurance and weight helped steady her.
She quickened her pace. It would not be good to be late, not after this morning’s travails. Once past the school gates, she dashed up along the six tiers. She was breathless upon reaching the seventh, but she made it before the second Summoning Bell.
Relieved, she hurried to the left, away from the shame of the astronicum dome. She intended to collect her other cane later, when no one was looking. Each morning, their studies were devoted to the matters of the world: the riddles of arithomatica, the dissections of biologica, the applications of balances and measures. The latterdays were spent in the scholarship of histories, the orders of religions, and the literata of the ancients.
She preferred the mornings, mostly due to the amount of reading involved later in the day. Though her fingertips were deft, they were not sensitive enough to read the ink impressed into the sacred tomes. To help her with her studies, a young acolyte had been assigned to her as an aide. Jace had failed in his fifthyear, but rather than being sent home, he had been offered a place at the school in the scriptorium, mostly copying texts, but also serving as her eyes. During the day, he softly recited what she needed to understand, sometimes continuing in her dormitory cell at night.
She rushed to where he usually waited. While Jace could have made her life even more difficult, he was kind and patient with her. She also suspected he might be fond of her in ways more than tutorial. Jace was four years older, but he was far more boyish than even her fellow seventhyears. To help compensate, he grew a scruff of beard to roughen his round face. His sedentary life contributed to a wide belly and a slight wheeze when he hurried to keep up with her. But he, more than anyone, could make her laugh. In many ways, he was the reason she could tolerate her latterday studies.
She headed to the archway outside the scriptorium. As she rounded a corner, she heard her friend’s telltale huff, heavier and pained, as if he had run all the way here. She smelled the odor of lime on his clothes, indicating he had spent the morning preparing fresh vellum for his work.
“Jace, I’m sorry I’m late. We should—”
Then a new note struck her nose. Bitter and rich in iron. It wafted off of him with each exhale. Blood. Startled, she tripped over something on the ground. Even her cane had missed it. She fell and realized quickly it was one of her friend’s legs. Why was Jace sitting under the archway? Her hand patted up his body.
“Jace, what’s wrong?”
Her fingers found his face, earning a gasp from him. She felt the hot blood under his nose, all swollen and crooked. He winced from her touch and pulled her hands down.
“Nyx… they mean to hurt you.”
“Who—?”
But even she could guess the answer. A scuffle of leather on stone sounded from all around her. She heard a hard snicker behind her.
“Run,” Jace urged, and pushed her up.
She hesitated in a crouch, frozen by fear.
“Don’t let her get away!” Kindjal shouted.
The words broke her panic. Nyx searched for a way to escape. She extended all her senses, reflexively filling the world around her with each rasp, whisper, and scuff. She shied from a shift of shadows to her right and fled the pall of sweat and breath swelling behind her. As she headed away, she sought succor from the school, from any sister or brother who might be nearby.
With her heart hammering in her throat, the reach of her ears stretched. They piqued and fixed to the familiar tones of Sister Reed around the next corner.
“… proper place. She’ll wish she was merely switched.”
Another responded, his voice a high-pitched grate. It was Hieromonk Plakk, who led the latterday studies. “And the prioress?”
“What happens between bells, especially between vexed students, cannot be laid at my feet. I shall claim—”
The second Summoning Bell clanged across the tiers, cutting off her words.
Gasping, heart pounding, Nyx felt herself near to fainting with terror, almost lifting out of her body. For a moment, a strange new sense overwhelmed her. The echoing of the bells shredded through the shadows, pushing them back, revealing with greater clarity the walls, stairs, and paths around her. She could even make out shapes closing upon her.
One neared, and she spun away from it. Fingers snatched at her sleeve, but she kept free.
A curse blurted out behind her.
Byrd.
She followed the path revealed by the ringing echoes, leaning upon this newfound sense to make her escape. Still, as she fled, she confirmed this new sense with her cane as best she could. The hunters quickly fell behind her, but they did not give up their pursuit, gathering like a storm at her back.
She reached the stairway that led up to the eighth tier. As a seventhyear, she did not know that level all that well. Still, she swept up the steps, leading with her cane. Her awareness strangely split as she climbed. Her chest burned, her heart pounded, but she also felt as if a part of her were floating above, looking down at herself. But she had no time to dwell on the strangeness.
At the top of the steps, she dashed across the tier. With the bells fading, the world closed around her again. She sank back into her body.
“There she is!” Kindjal shouted behind her.
Nyx fled in terror from the approaching slap of sandals on stone. With the eighthyears already ensconced in their classes, there was no one else about. Panicked, she tried to go faster. Her shoulder struck a corner and spun her a full circle. Still, fear kept her upright and moving.
But where could she go?
Having lost that momentary new sense of the world, she headed along the only path she knew well. Every student eventually crept up to this level and made a secret pilgrimage. The journey ended where their hopes were either dashed to the ground or lifted high.
Nyx was no exception. She had crossed the eighth tier several times each year to reach this spot. She sped toward that goal. It was the only route she had memorized.
The hunters followed, laughing darkly, chasing her with threats.
She finally reached another set of steps. These were no steeper or longer than the ones she had climbed to reach this height, but she skidded to a stop at their base. This set of stairs led up to the ninth and final tier. Only those deemed worthy of Ascension were allowed to traipse these steps. It was a path forbidden to all others. Its mysteries were for those chosen few. To trespass meant immediate expulsion from the school.
She trembled at the bottom. She had spent her first seven years in Brayk, the next seven here at the Cloistery. At this moment, her life teetered between a bright future and a shameful fall. Though she could not know her final fate, she had always strived for her best and hoped for the same.
But now…
Behind her, the others closed in. Byrd noted her hesitation. He guffawed, but there was no amusement, only threat. He punctuated it with his next words. “She’s trapped. Just you watch. I’m gonna take her cane and whip her arse good. Till she can’t sit down for a fortnight.”
Laughter burst out as the others closed off any escape.
Her cane was suddenly ripped from her grip. She tried to snatch it back but was shoved away.
Another voice, maybe Rymal, urged Byrd to greater harm. “Crack it across her hands instead. Good’n hard. Shatter ’em both. Like she broke the orrery. Only fitting, I tell ya.”
Nyx clenched her fists, her heart pounding in her ears. Over the years, she had broken a bone or two from the occasional misstep and bad fall. Pain did not scare her, but her hands contributed as much to her vision as her clouded eyes. Her palms knew every vibration in her cane. Her fingertips revealed details that her eyes could not. What was threatened here wasn’t just the snap of a few bones, but a crippling that would leave her all the more blind.
Still, there were even worse fates.
Kindjal found her brother’s ear. “You should go ahead and ruin her instead,” she said with menacing glee. “Make sure she’s cast out of the school forever.”
This earned more laughter, only now veined with nervousness. They all knew the menace behind this new threat. For a girl to reach Ascension, she had to be a virgin, untouched and pure. For some reason, this did not seem to apply to the boys. Not that there weren’t fervent trysts in the dormitories, involving everything but the final act. To cross that last line meant exile—not just from the school, but from Brayk itself. Such was the shame.
“I think a beating is good enough,” Byrd said, his voice struggling to sound firm. “That’ll put this swamper in her proper place.”
His sister scoffed. “She deserves worse. She doesn’t belong here. We all know it. You’re just scared.”
Nyx heard the acid in Kindjal’s voice. The highmayor’s daughter had always struggled in her lessons. It was whispered that her father paid for her climb up the tiers with chests of silver eyries and gold marches. No one dared say such in her presence. For some reason, Nyx had always drawn her ire, perhaps because of the high marks Nyx had earned in their classes.
Byrd sputtered against his sister’s aspersions of cowardice. His voice strained with fury and embarrassment. “Ansel, Merkle, grab her. Lackwiddle, help them, too.”
He intended to involve as many as possible to ensure no one spoke. Afterward they could easily blame her violation on some random tryst in the village.
Nyx backed away, her heels striking the first step behind her. With that touch, anger erupted inside her, driving back her terror. A coldness snuffed the heat from her body.
If I’m to be cast out, let it be by my own action.
She lifted her leg and backed onto the first stair. This small act drew shocked gasps. She ignored them and took another step, then another. She refused to give Byrd or Kindjal the satisfaction of ruining her.
Byrd must have recognized the same and growled his fury.
She did not flee from his anger, but instead she used it like a wind to fill her sails and push her upward. Behind her, the heat of the twin pyres grew with each step. The smoky incense washed away the reek of the threat below.
Byrd cursed. “Don’t think you can escape that easy.”
Though she couldn’t see him, she heard him rush the stairs. Startled at his boldness, she froze.
Kindjal called to her brother, panic in her voice, perhaps only now realizing she had pushed him too hard. “Byrd, no! You can’t.”
He stopped long enough to growl back and reassure his twin, “Don’t worry. Father will clear my debt if it comes to that.”
The exchange cut through Nyx’s shock. She turned and fled up the steps, running toward her doom.
A LREADY ADDLED, N YX fought to keep her footing as she reached the school’s summit. With only rumors and stories to guide her, she was lost.
According to Jace, the ninth tier was nothing like the others. It supported a circle of towers, each holding various levels of study. The western half—its towers built of dark volcanic stone mined from the foundations under the school—held the classes in alchymy. On the other side spread an arc of blazing white turrets constructed of limestone hauled in from the cliffs of Landfall to the east. Among those white towers, the mysteries of godly orders and ancient histories were revealed to the ninthyears.
Knowing such knowledge would be forever forbidden to her, Nyx ignored both sides and fled toward the twin pools of brightness at the summit’s center. The two pyres glowed like the very eyes of the Father Above. For centuries, the pair had stared down at the students below, daring them to come closer, to gaze deep into the wonders and terrors contained therein.
Above the pyres, darker shadows roiled into the sky, stirring with bitter alchymies and sacred incenses. As she drew nearer, the scents overwhelmed Nyx, erasing all detail around her. The roaring fires deafened her. Even the flames cast aside all discerning shadows into one continuous blaze.
It was as if the world had vanished, leaving her floating in a brightness of stinging smoke and grumbling flames. So be it. Knowing she could go no farther, she stopped between those pyres, ending her frantic flight.
She put her back to the fires. She refused to cower.
Steps away, a harsh panting cut through the roaring.
Byrd.
“I’ll drag you back by your hair if I must,” he threatened.
He punctuated his threat with a hard smack of her cane against the stones. She heard the wood crack with the impact, sounding like the break of a bone. It felt as if he had shattered an old friend.
Both despairing and angry, Nyx considered tossing herself into the flames, to thwart him even now. But she had been raised by a dah who tamed bullocks, alongside brothers who never relented. She lifted her arms, prepared to do as much damage as possible before it was over.
As she readied herself, her dah’s last words returned to her: Remember the Mother is always looking out for you. She wished that were true, most of all now. But she held out little hope. Still, she prayed with all the strength inside her.
And an answer came.
Only it wasn’t the Mother Below.
As Byrd rushed at her, the tiny hairs along Nyx’s arms and neck shivered. Then she heard it. A screech split the sky. The cry crashed into her, washed through her, shook her bones and teeth. Then her body ignited into a torch. She felt her skin blister, her eyes boil. She imagined the flames of the pyres had struck her, buffeted into her by the sweep of large wings overhead.
Despite the pain, she ducked low.
Ahead, a scream—not a beast, but a boy—carried toward her.
It cut off in mid-cry.
Then a body struck her, knocking her onto her back between the two pyres. The fire inside her instantly died, as if snuffed out by the bulk atop her. Knowing it was Byrd, she fought to free herself.
As she did so, a gush of hot blood washed over her neck and chest. Her fingers tried to stanch the flow—only to discover torn flesh, the stump of a neck. She gasped and struggled in terror. Byrd’s head was gone, ripped from his body.
Tears burst along with a sob.
No…
She struggled to get free of his weight—then it was ripped off of her and tossed into the alchymical pyre. On her back, she elbowed and kicked her way deeper between the fires. Flesh and blood sizzled and smoked to her left.
No…
Through the brightness of the twin blazes, a dark shadow grew before her. Her left leg was grabbed, pinned to the stone. The shape crested over her. A bony knuckle crushed into her belly, another into her right shoulder. She had once been trampled by a panicked hundred-stone bullock heifer. What held her trapped now was far heavier, its purpose more deliberate.
No…
The shadow covered her fully, ensconcing her in the darkness of wing and body. A hot breath, reeking of meat and iron, blew across her face. Wet nostrils snuffled her from her crown to her neck and settled there.
No…
She felt bristled lips part—then the icy press of daggers into the tender flesh of her throat.
No…
Fangs stabbed deep, bringing a flash of sharp pain, followed by a cold numbness. The press of muzzle choked her. She could not breathe. The icy chill spread outward, pumped into her body, tracing through her blood.
Then shouts cut across the roaring fires.
The ninth tier had finally woken to the assault.
The mass atop her burst away, crushing her worse, then carrying her aloft for a breath, before finally letting her go. She crashed to the stones. On her back, she felt the heavy beat of wings, the roil of heat from whipped flames. Smoke swirled, bringing the smell of sweet incense and burning flesh.
For a moment upon the stones, she again had the strange sensation of both staring up at the sky and down at her body at the same time.
Then it was gone.
As she lay there, the coldness continued to spread. It numbed her limbs until she could not move, barely breathe. She felt the ice, like poisonous claws, dig into her heart and clench. The world immediately went dark, far blacker than any blindness. All sound dissolved to silence as if she were diving into the deepest pond.
All that was left was her heartbeat.
She bore witness to each slowing spasm.
No…
She fought to hold, to will another beat.
As she did so, a new noise rose from the dark depths. It distracted her focus. Screams and shouts filled her head—hundreds, then thousands, then more. The ground trembled under her, then bucked wildly. It all ended with a thunderous cracking that left her hollow and barren. In the aftermath, all that remained was an awful silence, far emptier than anything she had experienced.
If she could have, she would have wept.
Only then did she realize the truth.
In that empty silence.
Her heart had stopped.