Chapter 13.5 The Detour
The Trove? It takes the name a moment to register, subsumed as the memory of hearing it has been by recent events. The Trove. The sometimes-always home of the wyverns and dragons. But why is that something that I couldn't do without him?
"You know where it is?" I'm stunned.
He shakes his head again, and my heart falls. "But I was thinking...of the place where the knowledge might be."
"If we could find another dragon or wyvern in the Werewood," I consider, "they would probably know. If we could make them tell us."
Marton scowls. "I think we've ruled that out as an option already." He gestures at my throat, and I tip my chin down to hide it.
"Then what—"
"The Dawn Academy," Marton says, grimacing.
"Your...your school? You think they would have information on the Trove? A location?"
"I think if the knowledge exists anywhere in the human realm, it would be there." He does not seem happy about the idea. But I sit forward. As I do, I notice his dinner forgotten over the fire, blackening, and quickly rescue it.
"Here," I hold the kabab out to him, and he accepts it mechanically. "So how far is it to your Academy from here?" I know he told me before, but now I can't recall.
"By dragon flight? Probably a few days. Northwest of here." He stares down at the meat in his hands, expression distant as he spins the stick in his fingers.
A few days. Then however long it takes to find the information we need. Then a few days or maybe even weeks more of travel before we make it to the Trove. And what will happen to our friends in the meantime?
I do not like the thought at all. But what alternative is there? Fly in circles here in the Werewood for days only to find no sign of them? Head north and dig through the mountains for a place that might be the Trove and still, likely, find nothing?
Even less time than we have for a detour, we do not have time for helplessness. We need to know where we're going, and what we may face when we get there.
"Will you be prepared to leave in the morning?" I ask Marton.
He nods without saying anything.
We fly northwest, leaving the Werewood Forest behind and heading into Philostia proper. We avoid major thoroughfares, keeping to the sparse woodlands and empty plains between settlements and farms.
Philostia, Marton tells me when we stop for the night, is a nation known for its book learning and innovation. They are not a warlike people, nor a superstitious one. A man who speaks of dragons in Philostia gets laughed out of the tavern by his neighbors.
The next day, he talks my ear off about crops irrigated by aqueducts and the breakthroughs being made with similar technology in the sewer systems of the foremost cities.
It is not the first time I have seen him get excited about a topic of niche intellectualism.
He was the same way when he spoke to me about globes—a million lifetimes ago, it now seems.
But I can't shake the feeling that Marton is acting rather odd, even for himself. There is almost a feverish light in his eyes, which seems to grow worse the closer we come to his academy. And he ignores the questions I ask about it as if he hasn't heard me.
Most unusual. Marton loves to be asked things, and I've yet to run across a subject he wasn't ready to chatter on about for hours. He's even spoken to me of the Academy before—many times, in fact—but now he seems to wish to avoid the subject at all costs.
Despite the fact that we are headed there at this very moment.
On the last night of camping before we will come to Yarrow, the city in which the Dawn Academy is located, I decide it is time to demand an explanation from Marton about his behavior.
We camp on a high ridge looking down into the lights of the city. With no fire, we huddle under our separate blankets, eating a cold dinner of lunchtime leftovers.
As they always do in moments of quiet and silence, my thoughts drift to Cherry and Vakhrin. What are they doing now? Where are they? Are they alive, safe, warm, fed? Frightened, hurt, hungry, desperate? Waiting for us to come and rescue them?
But I grab those thoughts by the reins and redirect my attention to the situation at hand. Marton picks at his food and alternates frowning down at the dirt and frowning out at the city below us.
I swallow the last of my dinner and wipe my hands on my already soiled blanket. "Marton?" He doesn't react to me at all. "Marton?" I say more sharply.
He startles as if waking from a dream. "Huh?" He glances over at me.
I scowl at him. "What is the matter with you?"
"Nothing." He looks away again, dismissing me. "Just thinking."
"Dammit, Marton." I fling my blanket off my shoulders, searching around for something to hit him with. There's nothing, so I ball up the blanket and chuck it at his face. He lets it hit him with an oof, and then frowns at me when it slides into his lap.
There's a definite chill in the air, but the fire in my blood keeps me from really feeling it.
Marton seems to realize the same thing. Instead of handing me my blanket back, he just shrugs and looks away from me.
I sigh. "Marton." My voice comes out gentle now.
No other recourse. "What's going on? What's the matter with you? You're acting...not like you."
Marton's lips press into a firm line. He swallows. "I need to tell you something."
"Oh...kay?"
He exhales shakily. "It's about the Academy. About me," he corrects. "I don't—that is—I'm not sure—"
I'm almost relieved to hear him stuttering like always. A smile pulls at my mouth, unfamiliar after days of worrying.
"The particulars of my departure from the Academy," Marton grits out, "are perhaps not—that is they are not—and I am unsure about the type of welcome we may receive if—"
Now I'm worrying again. "Marton?"
"Yes?" He asks with relief.
"What are you trying to say? 'The particulars of your departure'? Did you stab someone before you left or something?"
"No," he almost laughs, but not quite. "Nothing so...gruesome. But I—I may have—I may not have been completely honest—before—"
"You lied about something?" I prompt. It seems my best bet at getting information out of him. "To me?"
"No!" he says hurriedly. Winces. "Not directly, anyway. But I may have led you to believe that I left the Academy on better terms than I...did...in actuality."
"You left on bad terms," I conclude. "And you're not sure what your welcome will be upon coming back now."
"That's right." His face stays tense.
"What did you do?" I can't imagine the Marton I know having done anything really terrible.
"I—well—I told you before that my peers did not approve of my attitude towards myths and legends.
They said I took them too seriously, too literally.
That I was a fool for believing that they could be true.
" I nod, and he goes on. "Well, it was not just my peers who felt that way.
The elders, the librarians, the lecturers.
..they all felt the same. And the headmaster forbade me from going in search of magic, when I proposed the idea for my practicum study.
He didn't absolutely threaten my place at the Academy—admittance is purchased, after all, not earned.
And my parents have already paid for my entire education there, so he'd have to answer to them if he wanted to revoke my admission.
And they don't care what I do, so long as I'm out of their hair.
" Marton is shifting restlessly in his seat, babbling like he's talking around the real thing that concerns him.
I lean over and touch him on the arm, and he falls still. More braced than relaxed.
"Just tell me what happened, Marton."
He heaves a sigh. "I went anyway. And I—The school is meant to fund study trips for students who go out to pursue their practicum study—at foreign libraries and museums, or at historical sites.
So I...broke into the Academy treasury, and I stole the coin to fund my travel to Ithyma.
And I left in the dead of night, so that no one could try and stop me.
" His face hardens with resolve at the end of his story, as if he is ready to defend his actions if he must.
And I...have to smile. And then I have to laugh. And then I'm falling backwards in the dirt, wracked with helpless laughter.
"Stop it," Marton says miserably. "It isn't funny, Tarah."
I keep laughing, though I make an effort to sober myself, to catch my breath. It doesn't help. Nothing does, until I feel Marton growing tenser and tenser beside me. I manage to quell my laughter then, breathing shakily. I sit up.
Marton's mouth is a flat line, his hands white knuckled where they grip his knees. He isn't looking at me.
"Hey," I say. "I wasn't laughing at you.
It's just—" A chuckle slips out of me, and he all but flinches.
"It's just that I'm readjusting my worldview," I say seriously.
He turns towards me slightly, listening.
I touch his arm again. "I had thought that you were the most impossibly good person who I had ever met.
That you would never do anything wrong—" Marton's shoulders curve inward, and I realize he's taking this the wrong way.
"And I thought—I thought that you were so far above me, that being around me could only corrupt and hurt you.
Get you killed at the worst, which could still happen.
But turn you into a liar and a criminal, at the very least. I hadn't realized that you were already a rebel and a thief.
" The thought makes me grin, and Marton regards me with a crease in his forehead.
I shake his shoulder lightly. "It is a joke, Marton, but I am also serious.
This...makes me feel a little better. A little closer to deserving you.
A little less like a...monster." He opens his mouth to protest, and I hurry on.
"Of course, you are still far better than I have ever been.
But you also...really wanted this." I lift a hand, and let my claws push to the surface, skin glinting with the sheen of scales.
"You wanted proof of magic, bad enough to fight for it, to steal and lie for it.
You chose this. And maybe I haven't ruined your life by existing in it. "
"Never," Marton rasps. I let myself smile again, forgetting everything outside of this moment. This strange bit of consolation in the midst of all that has gone wrong.
It dissolves far too quickly, and my mind turns to the future. To the city down below us, where the Academy awaits. "So will they try to toss you out the moment you show your face?"
Marton sighs, scrubbing at his face. "They shouldn't go that far, no. Not for me leaving without permission, at least. I imagine my reception will depend on whether or not they discovered my thievery after I left."
"Do you think they will have?"
"Maybe not?" He doesn't appear certain. "They have no reason to catalogue the contents of the vault on a regular basis."
"Vault?" I repeat, fascinated. "You robbed a vault?"
A shrug. "It was just a Weston-Waith. That's one of the most rudimentary vault locks in existence. And in a school full of highly educated students, really—" He scoffs.
And I am smiling so hard it hurts my face. This is an entirely different picture of the mild-mannered scholar I thought I knew. I don't dislike it. In fact, I sort of...like it. A lot.
"So what's the plan when we go down there? How will we play it?"
Marton eyes me uncertainly, and I am preparing myself to hear him say that I cannot go with him. I intend to firmly disagree. But when Marton speaks it is to say, "You will have to pretend to be my wife."
I choke on the spittle in my throat, on the breath in my lungs. Shocked. I try to understand the electric thrill that does through me at hearing the words my wife in his practical voice.
"What?" I wheeze out.
Marton chews on a lip, eyes unhappy as he studies my reaction. "If you're not comfortable with—" He shakes his head. "But it is the only way. Women are not permitted in the Academy, except for guests visiting specific students. And you do not look enough like me to pass as a near relation."
I take a moment to wrap my head around this. Women not permitted? In a school? "But why?"
Marton's forehead wrinkles. "I have blond hair. You have black. My eyes are brown. Yours are...yellow-green. My skin—"
"Not that!" I cringe. "I know that we look nothing alike. I meant why are women not permitted at the Academy?"
"Oh." Marton thinks for a moment. Shakes his head. "I don't know. It is an old rule. Something about them being a distraction from rigorous study? That's the reason visitors are only permitted twice a year for each student."
"A distraction to rigorous..." I mutter, baffled. "But what if women want to study rigorously?"
"I don't know." Marton frowns. "I think there are separate schools for women..."
"You think?"
"I don't know!" he says. "I've never been a woman. I haven't thought about it."
"But you think about everything!" I accuse.
Marton sighs again, palming his face. "I'm sorry.
I can tell this is important to you. I'll think about it, try to remember.
I'm sure they have schools where..." He trails off as he peaks up at my glare.
"Look, I hope there are schools where women get to study as rigorously as they please.
There should be. But I don't know what you want me to do about it if there aren't..."
I huff, crossing my arms as I turn away from him. Women not permitted at schools studying magical legends. It's mystifying. Women can be magical legends, and I'm one sitting here right now. Why on earth wouldn't they be allowed at this silly academy?
Women can be princesses, and they still do not get to live in finery or marry who they want. Because the men are in charge.
I think of my mother, working her fingers raw to put barely enough food on the table. Because my father, whoever he was, left before I was even born.
I'm having a moment, suddenly, similar to what Cherry complained to me for hours about that night in Olio, when we first met Vakhrin. A man-hating moment. I thought Cherry was overreacting then, projecting her issues with her own father onto the entirety of the innocent male population.
Am I doing something like that now? Possibly related to Inobar, or the king, or my own father, or the stupid school below me that doesn't allow women?
Nope, I think I'm being perfectly reasonable.
"So we'll talk more about the plan in the morning?" Marton asks.
I grumble something wordless at him.