Chapter 49
Talisa
Three days later
Alara sat next to me, her shoulders hunched, her coppery hair hanging loose around a face blotched and swollen from crying.
“Assistant Chatelaine Julissa called me in again today,” she said.
“This was the third time. She made me sit in her office and she asked me the same questions over and over, mostly if I’d seen anyone enter your rooms around the time of the theft, and had I ever wished I had pretty, expensive things like your stole and badges?
Every time I told her I hadn’t seen anything, and I’d never, ever steal anything from anyone, she looked at me like I’d just told her the sky was green. ”
Her hands twisted in her lap. I reached over and covered them with mine. “I’m so sorry this is happening to you, Alara. I know you did nothing wrong, and I trust you. We can all guess who’s behind this.”
Sniffling, she nodded and continued, “She asked if I resented you for winning all that money. If I’d ever considered taking something that wasn’t mine because everyone else here has so much and I have nothing.”
“Julissa said the same things to me!” my Montelenese neighbor Benno da Vercelli exclaimed.
Alara’s voice broke. “I told her my parents had raised me to be honest and to work hard for anything I got! But she kept asking, and she wouldn’t let me leave to go to class, and—” she stopped and gulped, color rising in her face.
“I started crying. I couldn’t help it. And she just sat there and watched me cry and told me to stop being such a baby. ”
“That woman is just plain evil,” Elio declared. He was sitting on Alara’s other side.
Indignant murmurs of agreement rose from the other members of the Circle of the Open Hand.
Tonight’s meeting was packed again, just like every evening since Elio and I had made it to the quarter-finals of the Aurelian Trials.
We need to find another place for our tea circle, I thought as I counted forty-seven students crammed into a space built for twenty.
On her own, Mavia had collected small donations from our members to purchase Western Isles red tea and crystallized honey in bulk from a tea merchant in the city to keep up with the demand.
I was secretly relieved, because I’d feared my limited fund of pocket-money wouldn’t stretch to meet the increased demand for nightly pots of tea as our membership ballooned.
I would never refuse to make tea for anyone who wanted a cup, but I dreaded the possibility I might have to draw on my banked aurei intended for Papa and Jacinthe back home.
Dante said, “She questioned me for an hour this morning. Wanted to know if I’d noticed anyone acting ‘suspiciously’ in the Western Tower on the day. I asked her to define ‘suspicious’ and she told me not to be insolent.”
“She just wants to prove that commoners can’t be trusted with nice things because we’ll just steal them from each other,” Varrix said flatly. His hands were clenched into fists on his knees.
The room seethed with a low, angry murmur of agreement. The current of collective rage made the hair on my arms stand up.
“I’m so sorry that you’re all being put through the wringer because of what happened,” I said. “Just remember that we can’t let her—or anyone else—turn us against each other. Elio and I know none of you would do something like this. If you hear otherwise, it’s because certain parties—”
“You mean those bloody Custodians!” Elio interrupted with a glower. His bruises were healing, but he still looked intimidating.
“Certain parties,” I repeated, “would be happier if we were fighting amongst ourselves instead of standing up to them in a unified front. Remember not to go anywhere alone, and believe nothing you hear from aristocratic students.”
∞∞∞
But the thing that truly unsettled me was happening in my classes.
Lukhan FitzMurad and his friends were now suddenly treating me with perfect, measured courtesy in our shared classes and labs. Most notably, he took pains to address me as “Miss Bernswick.”
His usual contemptuous looks and sly insults vanished entirely the day after our awards were stolen.
He intercepted me after Mundise’s lecture, cornering me before I could slip out the door. I stiffened warily when I saw he was alone. Even Damien was missing.
“You impressed me with your ability to use those Earth spells on the fly during the Aurelian Trials finals,” he said, shocking me.
I stared at him in disbelief, waiting for the inevitable twist of the knife. But Lukhan’s beautiful voice was level, his tone respectful, and his green eyes met mine with no trace of mockery or disdain.
Just the flawless manners of a well-bred nobleman holding a knife behind his back while he offered you his other hand to kiss.
Warily, I thanked him for his compliment. He nodded gracefully, his impossibly long black lashes sweeping down to veil his eyes.
“I’m sure there’s a lot we can all learn from you,” he said, still without his usual malice or sarcasm.
Then he turned away and joined Lady Beatrix and her friend Lady Helene, neither of whom looked my way.
I stood there for a long moment, my heart hammering against my ribs and the taste of copper in my mouth. What in the Trickster’s name just happened here? Is he possessed?
“What did he say to you?” Juno demanded as she and Mira joined me.
I shook my head. “You won’t believe this… but he actually said something nice.”
Mira screwed up her face. “He’s planning something!”
“Definitely,” I agreed. “I just wish I knew what.”
∞∞∞
From that point on, Lukhan FitzMurad was unfailingly, impeccably, terrifyingly civil. He held doors open for me. He deferred to my opinions with a courtly half-bow that made my skin crawl. And never referred to me as “Miss Fishwife” in my earshot.
No one sabotaged my lab work anymore. None of his friends whispered insults when I passed them.
And the whole time, his eyes looked dead. Empty of all emotion.
I thought of Damien Corvellan’s warning in the dining hall line. Take someone with you. Always.
And I noticed something else: Damien was openly avoiding his friend these days. No longer was he Lukhan’s devoted bodyguard and faithful shadow.
The other aristocratic students seemed confused by this sudden coolness between the formerly inseparable pair. Rumors flew, but neither Lukhan nor Damien spoke publicly about what might have happened between them.
The other thing that changed was that I suddenly noticed more students wearing thorn rings.
I’d seen them here and there before, mostly worn by fifth-years and sixth-years, the polished silver catching the light in sharp, malignant glints.
Now I saw them on third- and fourth-years too.
And if Lukhan and his friends were suddenly, inexplicably courteous to me, everywhere I went, I felt hostile eyes watching me.
Elio felt it too. I saw it in the set of his shoulders and the way he’d taken to walking slightly behind me, positioning himself between me and the open courtyards of the quads.
He didn’t talk about it. He didn’t need to.
Whatever was happening, Damien had been right. It wasn’t just Lukhan and his friends anymore.
I couldn’t lie to myself. I was afraid. A kernel of fear lodged in the pit of my stomach and woke me sometimes in the dark and sat with me until dawn.
But mostly, I was angry.
Angry that Alara was being singled out as a scapegoat for the thefts. Angry that my neighbors in the Western Tower were being treated like criminals. Angry that the awards I’d earned had been stolen, and the academy had shrugged and offered to sell me new ones at an unaffordable price.
I had defeated their attempt to expel me by winning the Trials. But I knew Julissa and the others wouldn’t give up easily. Something else was in the works.
I wished I knew what I needed to defend myself against.
∞∞∞
A week passed without incident, which should have worried me more than it did.
I even started to wonder whether Damien’s warning had been sincere, or whether he had intended to unsettle me and make me see threats where none existed.
The worst thing for me was that our protective measures meant that Elio and I had no chance for a private moment together.
I couldn’t risk leaving Mira and Juno alone and vulnerable, and Elio had taken Alara and another first-year under his wing, escorting them to their classes, the dining hall, and any errands the two needed to run.
On the eighth day, I walked back to the Western Tower together with other members of the Open Hand.
We climbed the stairs to the third floor, Juno taking the steps two at a time, Mira following at a more sedate pace. The corridor leading to our room was deserted. Mage-lamps burned at intervals, casting just enough light to navigate by.
I bid Elio goodnight with a quick hug and a frustratingly brief kiss and unlocked our door. I’d started locking up in the wake of the theft, but hated the need to do so.
The smell hit me first, metallic and wrong, a scent instantly identifiable thanks to my years of helping Mama and Papa in our village clinic: the reek of blood beginning to clot.
Then I saw them.
Three bodies lying on the floor of our sitting room.
With a shock, I recognized myself. And Mira and Juno.
The three magical constructs lay in a rough triangle, limbs splayed at angles no living person could achieve without broken bones.
My replica’s left arm bent backward at the elbow, the end of a broken bone jutting through torn skin and the ripped fabric of my best chemise.
Blood shone in a dark, glossy pool on the worn floorboards, so real I could see the individual droplets where they’d spattered the leg of our battered table.
Mira’s double lay on her back, her eyes wide and fixed on the ceiling, her mouth open in a soundless scream. A deep, ragged slash across her throat gaped like a second mouth, the edges of the wound crusted with drying blood.
Juno’s replica corpse was the worst. It looked as if something immensely strong had battered it.
Both legs bent the wrong way at the knees.
One hand had been crushed to a pulp of bone and tendons in raw meat.
Its face was a mask of blood, Juno’s features barely recognizable beneath it, but her unbraided hair spread around her head in a dark halo, the same way it did when she slept.
I heard Juno make a sound behind me—a small, choked noise like a wounded animal.
“Don’t come in!” I ordered them. Despite my wildly pounding heart, my voice somehow sounded steady. “It’s not real. They’re just constructs with glamor. Very good constructs, but not real,” I repeated, trying to convince myself as much as my sisters.
The blood-smell was subtly wrong. And the blood pooled on the floor looked fresh-spilled, despite the crust of dried blood rimming the edges of the replica-corpses’ wounds.
Illusion, I told myself. A glamor, nothing more.
But knowing it was fake didn’t stop my heart from trying to hammer its way out of my chest. Cold sweat broke out across my back and acid rose in my throat. The part of my brain that recognized our faces on the replicas wanted to scream.
I stepped into the room. My boot came down on the edge of the blood pool, and I felt nothing—no wetness, no resistance, just the solid thunk of my soles on wood.
Yet, the illusion held. It was seamless. Professional mage-level craft.
Which meant it wasn’t Lukhan’s work.
I’d seen his spells in our labs over the past few months. His work was technically impressive for a second-year, but this layered, complex magical construct was far beyond his skill level.
From my reading, I knew that creating the blood illusion alone required a mastery of Water and Air magic working in tandem, as well as advanced spellwork to craft a lasting construct.
Someone with years of experience had cast this. Someone who understood anatomy well enough to recreate the specific ways a body broke. Someone who’d studied injuries and blood closely enough to replicate both.
I spotted a paper pinned to my bodice and crouched beside the replica of myself. I reached out gingerly, not sure if it was real or an illusion, and my fingers closed on paper.
Heavy cream-colored paper, the same expensive stock as the notes left in my room on the day of the theft.
I pulled it free and read the words written there in a handwriting so perfect it might have been engraved.
Swim back to your island, peasant. Or next time, the blood will be for real.
Behind me, Juno made another sound. This one was not wounded. This one was pure, distilled rage, a low growl that started in her chest and vibrated through her entire body.
“They killed us,” she snarled. “They put us on the floor, and they killed us, and they left a note.”
“Juno—” I began.
“No.” She pushed past me into the room, stomping through the illusory blood as if she could destroy it through sheer force of contempt.
“No. This is—this is—” She was shaking, her hands curled into fists at her sides, tears of fury streaking her flushed cheeks.
“They don’t get to do this. They don’t get to put me on the floor like—like I’m nothing, like I’m already dead—”
Mira was still in the doorway. Her face had gone the color of old parchment, her eyes huge and fixed on the thing wearing her face. She didn’t speak. She didn’t need to. The terror radiating from her was a physical thing.
I thought of the mannequins from last autumn—crude things, carved from wood, their faces painted with our features in childish, exaggerated strokes.
That had been upsetting, but this… this was beyond upsetting.
I looked at my sisters—Juno vibrating with fury, Mira rigid with fear—and I knew our enemies had crossed a boundary.
Don’t go anywhere alone. Damien had been right.
I folded the note with shaking hands and tucked it into the pocket of my skirt.
“Juno. Mira. Go to Elio’s room. Now. Tell him what happened. Then find Dante and Mavia. Tell them to spread the word: no one sleeps alone tonight. Everyone pairs up. Everyone stays together.”
Juno opened her mouth to argue. I cut her off with a look—the one that said I am your older sister and I am not negotiating—and she closed it, nodded once, sharp and furious, and grabbed Mira’s hand.
They left. The door closed behind them. I stood alone in the room with three disgusting fake corpses and the reek of blood filling my nose.