Chapter 32 #2
“Good evening, Lory.” Jarek gave her a brief smile and stifled a yawn.
“What are you doing on guard duty?” Not that it mattered, but since when did thornlings stand watch in the middle of the night?
Jarek shrugged. “My foot still isn’t completely healed, and Ycken considers it a fitting punishment to suffer through hours of standing on my injury. Better than being whipped, right?” He flashed his teeth, but there was no humor in his voice.
“They do that here?” Not that it would surprise her.
“Not to the students.”
But to the prisoners, the traitors, the people they considered threats. Lory heard his message loud and clear.
A silent wince formed on his golden face as he shifted his weight, and Lory knew the smile he gave her was as much for show as her own. “I’ll go to Nahrit first thing in the morning and get you something for the pain,” she promised.
Jarek nodded his thanks, and Lory turned to walk away, the reason she’d approached him forgotten.
“Hey, Lory?” Jarek said as she started walking. “Lenya came by here almost an hour ago. He told me to send you straight to his office if I see you.”
Lory turned back to him, and a silent exchange passed between them that Lory had no words for, but she understood something was going on—something Jarek would rather not put into words.
“On my way.”
Grin turning into a wary smile, Jarek returned to his watch.
It took Lory more effort than it should have to reach the Master of Whispers’ office, and a lot more time than she had hoped.
It didn’t matter how often she told herself that she’d done what she had to; she still felt like a murderer.
Because she was. She’d never put Niely in that position had she not approached him to lure him away.
And he’d never interpreted her words as an open invitation.
She wouldn’t have killed him. She might have never seen the man again.
Now, his death would be a new constant on her firmament, one where the stars were blotched out by the deaths she’d cause.
When she stopped at Lenya’s door, she could hear the Master of Whispers’ voice rumbling through the blackened wood, but his wasn’t the only one.
“… outside of Dunai,” a female voice said—Nefetari Brunn, the Master of Veils.
“But not at the border. It’d be too dangerous,” Ycken responded. She would recognize his voice anywhere. The man who had captured her.
“Are you there, Khayrivven?” Lory asked in her mind, reaching for him with her power.
No answer.
“We should deploy him for a few weeks; that will put the necessary distance between them. After what I’ve witnessed, their one-on-one training might have nurtured more attachment from his side than initially intended.
Now that she’s proven her loyalty and made her first kill, she will need to undergo special training, and the captain will not be pleased if we take her to the dungeons for resilience practice. ”
Resilience practice—
Lory had the distinct impression that she would soon come face to face with Lenya’s legendary interrogation techniques—aside from a few days of starving, which was standard procedure in the military training.
At least that was what Khayrivven had mentioned in the rare moments he’d spoken about his past. Resilience—against weather, hunger, thirst, and … pain.
Retreating a few steps on quiet feet, she took a steadying breath, then deliberately made her boots drag across the stone floor so the Triad would be warned of her approach. No need to let them know she’d been eavesdropping.
“Come in,” Lenya called as she knocked.
Lory entered, praying her expression was still blank as she faced the Master of Steel, of Whispers, and of Veils seated around Lenya’s polished wooden desk. All three of them glanced up at her, but none offered her to sit on the empty chair a few feet from the desk.
So Lory stood, bracing her boots a casual distance apart and locking her hands behind her back. With an incline of her head, she addressed the Master of Whispers, “Here I am.”
“Here you are,” Lenya repeated, leaning back in his chair while his hand closed the book in front of him.
Lory briefly caught a glimpse of the title before he stored it in a drawer. A History of the Worlds.
Lory had never heard that title, let alone come across it in the library. Whatever was in that book seemed to be important.
“You’ve done well tonight, Thornling Vednis,” Lenya said with less taunting than he had at the palace.
“We have decided to advance your training and pair you with some of the older students. You’ll be training with the tested effective next week.
As for now, take tomorrow off to recover from your first kill.
” There was nothing kind in his dark eyes, despite the leisure he offered with his words. “You may leave.”
Lory was about to do exactly that when she remembered the ring in her pocket. With the nimble fingers of a street thief, she fished it out and placed it on the edge of the desk, earning Lenya’s inquisitive look.
“What’s this?”
She shifted her weight, trying not to fidget under his scrutiny. “Brady Niely’s ring, sir. I thought it best to collect it before I tossed his corpse over the edge of the secret walkway, just in case anyone bothers to walk all the way around the rock and check behind the premises.”
A grizzled eyebrow rose on Lenya’s forehead as he picked up the gold ring, the light reflecting in the large, pale gemstone.
“Good thinking, Vednis.” He didn’t look up as he dismissed her once more.
“Go straight to the Medica quarters and get those wounds taken care of. You’re bleeding through your uniform. ”
Lory noticed with a wince that he was right. On her thigh, blood was soaking her pants, and at her wrist, the hem of her shirt was sticking to her skin where the blood must have been dripping down her forearm.
“Thank you, sir.” She didn’t draw a full breath until she was out of the room, already rushing to the other end of the pyramid and down the stairs as fast as her injuries allowed.
After the bath, the blood had clotted enough to make her believe a thin bandage would suffice, but now, her blood was flowing heavily, and her head was starting to spin.
At the end of the stairwell, Lory needed to take a break, bending over to gather her breath. The torches on the walls blurred before her eyes.
“If you’re anywhere nearby, Khayrivven, now would be a great time to let me know.”
She didn’t really expect him to appear out of the shadows, and so the disappointment was mild when the hallways remained quiet and Khayrivven didn’t magically appear.
She could do it. Only five more turns, three stairs with a hundred steps each. She could do it.
But darkness tugged on her vision, and her hand slipped on the banister of the stairs as she stumbled down, down, down. Blindly, she grasped for something—anything—to hold on to, her footing lost and the world fading…
“Lory.” The voice was familiar. Fierce. Female. Rich. “Wake up, Lory.” The owner of the voice pinched her side. “I’m not going to carry you all the way to the Medica quarters,” the voice said.
Lory blinked away the haze inside her head to open her eyes to Nefetari Brunn bending over her at the bottom of the stairs. She blinked again.
Yes, the Master of Veils was still there, but she wasn’t the one who’d spoken. Beside the woman, Tabitha Ngala knelt by Lory’s hip, pressing her hand into the wound on her thigh.
“You’ve got quite the cut there,” Tabi commented. “I thought you were bleeding out when I found you, but you just hit your head really hard.”
“What happened?” Lory croaked, her throat so dry all of a sudden.
Was Brunn really there, or was she a figment of Lory’s imagination?
“You slipped on the stairs on the way to the Medica quarters,” Brunn informed her.
“One flight of stairs too soon, or you’d have ended up right in front of Hand Nahrit’s door.
” Was that humor in her voice? It certainly didn’t show on her mildly lined features.
“Thornling Ngala, help Thornling Vednis up and take her to Hand Nahrit. He should still be awake and in his office.”
Tabi’s arm slid under Lory’s shoulder, and as she pulled her to her feet, a world of pain exploded in her head, in her ribs, in her leg.
The apologetic expression on Tabi’s face didn’t help when Lory hobbled pace after pace at her side.