Chapter 40 #2
Chatelaine Lirelle stood on the dais, her pale oval face composed in an expression of measured pride, and gave a brief speech congratulating us while the herald handed each of us a small velvet purse containing twelve gold aurei and fifty denarii.
The purse settled into my palm with a satisfying clink. It was the largest sum I’d ever held. Enough to buy a fishing boat back home, or a year’s worth of new boots for our entire family.
Not enough, not nearly enough, to pay the impossible set of fines the academy had saddled me with.
Next came the finalists’ badges, pinned to the collar of our academic gowns by Chatelaine Lirelle’s own hand.
Each was a gold disk the size of a silver denarius coin, circled with tiny diamonds that caught the winter light and fractured it into miniature rainbows. The academy’s seal was engraved inside the circle, along with the words AURELIAN TRIALS FINALIST and the year.
I stroked it, feeling the cool smoothness of the gold against my fingertips. It was just a bit of metal and some stones. And yet it meant something that the purse full of gold didn’t. That I belonged here at the academy, whatever Assistant Chatelaine Julissa might think.
“Do I look sufficiently illustrious?” Elio asked, smirking, as Chatelaine Lirelle moved over to the other side of the dais, where Cresta and Bernardo stood.
“Like a merchant’s son who’s in over his head,” I told him, and the grin he gave me was worth more than the pin and the purse together.
Cresta accepted her awards with the bored grace of someone collecting a tax that was rightfully hers.
“The final match will commence tomorrow morning,” Lirelle announced. “I expect both teams to comport themselves with the discipline and dignity befitting this academy’s most prestigious competition.”
With the ceremony concluded, Elio and I stepped off the dais and headed for the arena exit.
“Miss Fishwife.”
Cresta’s voice hit me between the shoulder blades like a thrown knife, dripping with venom.
She stood six feet away, one hand resting lightly on Bernardo’s forearm, her glossy helmet of braids catching the light like polished obsidian. Her gaze moved over me with the slow, assessing disgust of someone examining a stain on a brand-new gown.
“Lady Cresta,” I said. Her title tasted like metal on my tongue.
“I wanted to congratulate you on reaching the finals.” Her smile didn’t reach her eyes. “Though I confess, I’m puzzled by the chatelaine’s decision to allow you to advance. Someone’s playing favorites, it seems to me.”
Rage rolled over me in a slow, thick wave that started in my belly and climbed my spine vertebra by vertebra.
“If by ‘favorites,’ you mean someone upheld the victory we won fair and square?” Elio asked pleasantly. He stepped half a pace forward, putting himself between Cresta and me.
Cresta’s gaze shifted to him, dismissive and cold. “Merchant boy, how charming that you’ve appointed yourself her defender. It must be exhausting pretending you belong here.”
“It’s less exhausting than pretending to be pleasant,” Elio replied. His smile was wide and utterly false. “We all have our burdens, my lady.”
Bernardo snorted. He stood a half-step behind Cresta, his arms crossed. “It’s embarrassing,” he said, addressing the air somewhere above my left shoulder. “Making it to the finals of the Aurelian Trials only to face a pair of commoners. It tarnishes our accomplishment.”
“Does it?” I asked. My voice sounded strange to my own ears—flat in the same way Mama’s got when a patient refused a treatment for illogical reasons. “Will winning against you tomorrow prove us worthy? Or will you throw a tantrum, too, and claim you only lost because you were sabotaged?”
Surprise flickered across Cresta’s face. She hadn’t expected me to push back. Good.
“Worthy,” she repeated. She took a step toward me, and the breeze brought me the scent of the perfumed oil she used in her hair. “Let me remind you what happened when your sisters faced us. I could have killed her, you know. But I was merciful.”
Merciful. Is how she remembered driving a young girl into a stone slab hard enough to break her bones and cause internal injuries?
My temper crested. I felt it in my throat, in the pressure behind my eyes, in the way my vision narrowed until Lady Cresta of Pomerado was the only thing in it—her perfect braids, her sharp blue-green eyes, the diamonds on her new pin catching the light.
I opened my mouth. I don’t know what I would have said. Probably something that would have gotten me expelled immediately.
But Elio spoke first. His hand found mine, his firm grip anchoring me.
“Lady Cresta. Lord Bernardo.” His tone was conversational, almost friendly. “You’ll have to judge our worthiness for yourselves tomorrow. And if you think merely facing us is embarrassing, just imagine what it will feel like when lose to us after all your posturing.”
The sheer audacity of his words clearly caught Cresta off guard. She blinked a few times, then cleared her throat.
“We’ll see tomorrow, Miss Fishwife, Mr. Merchant’s Boy,” she said.
She turned and strode away. Bernardo followed, falling into step beside her with the easy loyalty of a well-trained hound. I watched them go with anger still burning in my chest like a banked fire.
Elio drew me against his side and wrapped his arm around my shoulders. “Breathe,” he murmured.
“They’re going to try to hurt us tomorrow,” I said. “Not just win, but hurt us like they hurt Juno.”
“I know.”
“And I won’t let them.”
Elio turned to look at me. His smile was stripped of its usual mischief. “That’s the spirit. Let’s crush them and show the chatelaine’s very important guests that we commoners aren’t just surviving here. We’re winning.”