25. Leith
Leith
Ihear it before I see it.
Raised voices carry up the stairwell from the lower landing, followed by the crack of magic against stone and the dull impact of a body hitting the wall. Students are already gathering at the bend in the corridor because SilverGate breeds spectators as efficiently as it breeds problems.
I step out of my lecture room and take in the scene below.
Hale has one male by the throat and another on the floor at his feet. The one in his grip is purple-faced and flailing. The one on the floor is trying to get up with blood on his lip and a look in his eyes that says he still hasn’t learnt the lesson. Idiot.
Asha is a few feet from the mess with Tobin beside her, her expression bright with the kind of interest that usually ends in structural damage. Her hair is a little wild, her mouth swollen, and Tobin looks far too composed for someone who has clearly just been inside her.
“What did he do?” I ask casually, stepping up beside Asha.
She looks up at me with an expression I can’t quite place.
“He disrespected my mate,” Hale growls.
“M-mate?” the guy currently in Hale’s fist stammers. “What?”
Hale gives the boy a shake that knocks his head back against the stone. “You heard me.”
The corridor goes quieter. But the whispers from the watching students thin out as the word lands and starts doing its work.
Mate.
Interesting choice from him. He has decided, and that is it.
The male on the floor spits blood onto the step and glares up at Asha. “She’s a freak.”
Hale’s smile turns vicious. “And you’re still breathing. We both have disappointments to live with.”
Tobin steps past her before he can improve the situation with more violence and drags the male up by his shirt front. “I’d recommend shutting the fuck up while you still have a jaw.”
The idiot in Hale’s hand claws at Hale’s wrist. “We didn’t know she was claimed.”
“Well, now you know,” I say and give Asha a slow smile.
Asha’s gaze flicks to Hale and stays there for one beat too long. Then, she narrows her eyes at me, but has the good sense to keep her mouth shut. Now isn’t the time for her to run her mouth off, and she knows it.
It’s not acceptance or refusal, simply calculation, irritation, and something hotter under it that she’d probably stab me for naming.
A staff member rounds the landing below us, takes in the scene, and stops dead. Professor Dain. Battle Casting. Broad shoulders, thinning patience.
“Mr Hale, release him.”
Hale doesn’t.
The boy in his grip makes a wet choking noise.
Dain steps down another stair. “Now before the bell. You are already walking a thin line this week.”
Tobin releases the male he has in his grip, and he drops again. Hale finally lets go by shoving the male backwards into the wall hard enough to rattle his skull. The male crumples to the floor next to his friend, both of them suddenly very interested in staying down.
They’re alive, which means Hale showed restraint. Barely.
Dain’s eyes move over all of us and settle on Asha. “What happened?”
“They called Asha a freak,” Hale says, voice low and lethal. “I don’t accept insults about my mate.”
Dain does a very good job of ignoring that word, and his eyes flick to Asha. “And where were you?”
“On my way to lectures,” she lies.
Tobin gives her a quick smirk.
The chill in the air is only noticeable by me, it seems, as the confrontation doesn’t suddenly stop. With Hale arguing his case, I grasp Asha’s hand and pull her backwards.
She frowns at me, but moves without complaint.
I turn and keep walking before Dain realises we have left.
“What?” she asks.
“Blackridge,” I murmur and keep going, pulling her into an alcove as silence hits when Blackridge shows up at the altercation.
“How did you know?” she whispers.
“I can sense him.”
“Oh?” she raises an eyebrow. “Since when?”
“Since always. Sometimes it’s more obvious than others. Depends on his mood.”
“Does that make you connected to him?”
“In what way?” I ask, not annoyed, but curious what she thinks. I peer around the corner and then start moving again. “Library. Safest place for now.”
She gives me a look as we cut through the side corridor. “In the way where you’re secretly his long-lost son, his heir, or something equally annoying.”
I glance at her. “That would be disappointing for both of us.”
“Hm.” She doesn’t pull her hand from mine. “So what way, then?”
“I don’t know. I’ve always felt him coming before he arrives. His magic carries a cold pressure to it.” I guide her down the narrower stairs beside the old archive wall instead of the main route. “Most people notice when he’s in the room. I notice when he’s about to be.”
“Useful.”
“Usually.”
She studies me for another second. “What is he?”
“Who, Blackridge?”
She nods. “Obviously.”
“No idea. No one does.”
“But you have a theory.”
I take that in and wonder how much to tell her. Enough to keep her interested. Not enough to put a knife in my own back.
“I have several,” I say. “None of them are comforting.”
“That sounds promising.”
“It shouldn’t.”
We pass through a stretch of corridor nobody uses unless they are trying to avoid notice. Old portraits line one wall.
One of them, an old crone, hisses at Asha as we pass, “Goddess.”
Asha freezes for a second before she turns her head to the painting. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me, Goddess.”
Asha steps closer and glares up at the crone, dressed in a navy blue cloak pulled up high over her head, the forest her backdrop. “How can you tell?”
“I know power.”
“I have no power.”
“Not here.” She gestures with her head. “Find the gate.”
Asha and I exchange a glance.
“What gate?” I ask.
The crone’s painted eyes fix on me, then slide back to Asha with unsettling certainty.
“The gate beneath the silver,” she says. “The one that remembers storms.”
Asha goes very still beside me. “Storms.”
The portrait ignores her and talks to me. “It woke when she fell.”
My grip tightens on Asha’s hand before I release it. I don’t like how the words land. Too close to what we already suspect. Too close to what Blackridge might also know.
“Who are you?” I ask.
“Dead,” the crone replies. “And busy.”
Asha steps nearer, blue eyes hard. “You recognised me. Do you know my name?”
“Forbidden. Wrong. Doesn’t work in this realm.”
“Sounds about right,” Asha mutters. “Got anything else useful to tell us?”
“Blackie is coming.”
“Blackie?” Asha asks with a frown, and then her eyes widen as the painting goes still.
“Move,” I mutter and grab her hand again, dragging her away.
“She knows me.”
“I’m not sure if that is good or bad.”
The ward-lines here run quieter than in the central tower. That is why I chose it. SilverGate likes its hidden arteries. So do I. It appears this was a more useful route than simply escaping Blackridge.
I don’t stop until we reach the side entrance of the library and slip inside.
The doors close behind us with a soft thud. The noise of the academy drops away. Candlelight floats over the central hall. The wards hum in the stone and wood, older here, more selective. They know me well enough not to fuss.
Asha turns to me as we head up the stairs to the third floor. “That portrait knew too much.”
“It did. It knew a lot more than I would’ve expected.”
“How?” she murmurs, going straight over to the stacks and staring at them. “These have moved.”
“Ah, yes, so they did,” I murmur. “There is a hidden passage. I wanted us all to go through it.”
She spins to me. “A hidden passage?”
I nod.
“How do we open it?”
“We wait for Tobin and Hale,” I say, and she glares at me. “We have bigger issues right now.”
“Like the crone who knew too much,” she says, accepting that we are all going down the secret passage or none of us are.
She is more reasonable than I gave her credit for.
“It begs the question if SilverGate and your realm—”
“StormGate.”
I pause. “—StormGate are inextricably connected. How can you say the name of your realm?”
“Good question and not one I’m going to argue with.”
“Fair point. ‘The gate beneath the silver. The one that remembers storms.’ It has to be connected. It has to be the way back to your realm.”
“You look far too excited about that, and I’m asking you now to dial it down a notch. If this is all a big hoax and it leads nowhere, I will be… upset.”
“I’ll take that to mean murderous.”
“Good call.”
“But I think we are onto something. We need to figure out who that crone is. There was no name on the painting, and she adorns the back hallway, where hardly anyone ever goes. She is either trouble or a pain in Blackridge’s arse.”
“Both, probably.”
“Come. We need to ask Verne for the section on SilverGate’s portraits.”
“And Verne is?”
“The librarian. She will know exactly where to point us.” I lead her down the curved staircase that coils through the centre of the library, past drifting candles and shelves that know when to move out of my way.
They do it now with quiet deference, sliding half an inch to open the aisle before I even reach it.
Asha notices but doesn’t comment.
Verne is exactly where she usually is, unless she’s lurking, behind the central desk on the lower level, surrounded by stacks of catalogues, ledgers, and one aggressively twitching pen that looks moments from stabbing itself through the wood. She doesn’t look up when we approach.
“That one is not borrowing anything else unsupervised,” she says.
Asha stops beside me. “Rude, but to be fair, that book is a bit of a pain. It keeps vanishing.”
Verne says nothing and the silence grows awkward for a moment before I say, “Right then. We need the archival records on SilverGate’s portrait network.”
“You need many things. Better judgement, for one.”
“Still, I suspect this request sits higher than judgement on the list,” I say.
That gets her attention.
Verne lifts her head at last, irritated, as if we’ve interrupted a feud she was enjoying in private. “Why?”
“Academic interest.”
She glares at me to see if she can sense that I’m lying. Seeing as I’m not exactly, she purses her lips. “Back left corner.” She waves her hand at us, and we step back.
I incline my head in thanks and steer Asha towards the indicated corner before Verne decides to reconsider.
The archival section sits in its own pocket of silence. The shelves are taller here, darker, bound with silver strips and ward tags that pulse when I pass. Asha keeps close enough that her shoulder brushes mine once when the aisle narrows.
“Portrait network,” she mutters, scanning the labels. “This place really does make everything sound more dramatic than it needs to.”
“It is a dramatic place.”
“It’s an annoying place.”
“Also true.” I stop at a shelf marked Archival Conscious Constructs and trace my fingers over the spines until one hums under my hand. “Here.”
I pull out a ledger the size of a paving stone and set it on the reading stand built into the wall. Asha looks at the title and scoffs.
“SilverGate Sentiences, Vol. II. You creatures catalogue your own hauntings.”
“We catalogue everything,” I say, opening it. “That’s how institutions survive.”
“That and repression.”
The pages are thick, edged in silver dust, each entry cross-referenced in a tight hand that makes my eyes ache. Portraits. Stairwell listeners. Window watchers. Door guardians. Memorial anchors. The entries run on for pages.
I skim the index columns and ignore the entries for chattering cornices, memorial glass, and corridor residue. None of that matters.
Asha plants one hand on the stand and leans in close enough that her hair brushes my arm. “Please tell me the old bag is listed under something obvious.”
“Old bag is not an approved archival category.”
“It should be.”
I stifle my snort, and then something catches my attention. My finger stops on a heading halfway down the page.
North Archive Spur. Unnamed Seer Portrait. Restricted conversational history. Relocated by order of Headmaster Blackridge, seven years prior.
“That sounds promising,” Asha murmurs, reading over my shoulder.
I flip to the page reference and find the entry.
The portrait was recovered from the old northern gatehouse after a magical fire that apparently killed the original donor line.
There is a bullet point list: Medium unstable.
Prophetic deviation noted. Converses selectively.
Known to identify foreign currents and latent divine signatures.
Reclassification denied. Destruction request denied. Relocation approved.
Asha goes very quiet.
I keep reading.
The portrait’s working designation is Matron Yseld. Former keeper of boundary rites. Pre-Founding adjunct to SilverGate estate. Advisory status revoked after repeated disputes with the first ward council. Subject demonstrated an unusual affinity with threshold events and transitory phenomena.
Threshold events.
I tap the line with one finger.
“She’s a gatekeeper,” I say. “Or she was.”
Asha reads the next lines with me, her voice low. “Boundary rites. Threshold events. Foreign currents.” Her jaw tightens. “Divine signatures.”
“She recognised you because she was built to.”
“She knows exactly what I am.”
“Which means SilverGate and StormGate have to be connected, somehow. She is of this land, not some global network realm seer.”
Asha looks at me, her eyes sharp with hope and fury, which she keeps trying to bury under sarcasm. “What does ‘relocated by order of Headmaster Blackridge’ mean?”
“It means he found something inconvenient and moved it somewhere less visible.”
“That sounds very him.”
“It does.”
“When was it moved?”
We lock gazes before mine drops back to the page. “The day you arrived.”
“Oh, fuck off,” she mutters.
“Pretty much,” I agree.
“He knows who I am.”
“Who or what?” I inquire as there is a massive difference between the two.
She inhales deeply and releases it. “Both.”
“We need to get into that hidden passageway later tonight, and we should also have another conversation with Matron Yseld.”
“She’s gone. Blackie was coming for her, not us.”
“Not necessarily,” I say. “Portraits tied into the network can be silenced, moved, veiled, not destroyed. If Blackridge wanted her hidden fast, he’ll have shifted her anchor, not smashed it.”
Asha stares at the ledger, then drags a hand through her hair. “So he runs around this academy moving inconvenient old bags into cupboards the second they start telling the truth.”
“It does fit his management style.”
Her mouth curves, but it doesn’t hold. Too much tension under it. Too much need. “It doesn’t bode well for me.”
“You consider yourself an old bag?”
She catches the glint in my eyes and giggles. “Bag, no. Old, yes.”
“How old?”
She turns to face me directly. I can sense Tobin’s magic on her. “Can you handle the truth?”
I don’t look away. “Always.”