by Caitlin Seal
Naya sat down at the base of the tree, considering her options. At least Celia had been telling the truth about Ela Hest having an office at the academy. Dav had said the office was on the top floor of something called Main. She hadn’t dared risk making the two scribes suspicious by asking for more details. The cover story she’d given them would only have gotten thinner the longer the conversation wore on.
Naya turned her attention to the academy walls. She closed her eyes and reached out through the aether. Here and there it swirled with eddies of emotion. From this distance she couldn’t judge how many people were inside the complex, though she guessed the number was small. She sat frozen by indecision, drawing in aether until the bones of her hand seemed to buzz with pent-up energy.
Eventually she stood and started cautiously toward the wall. She might not get another chance like this. She would get in, search Hest’s office, and get back to the ship. Even if the journals weren’t there, perhaps she could find something else that would confirm Hest’s connection to Valn. Naya paused by the wall, double-checking that no one was watching, then began to climb.
Naya pressed her fingers and toes into the cracked white stone of the academy’s wall. Her body felt light and strong as she moved from one handhold to the next. It reminded her of all those nights spent up on the rooftops of Belavine. Those rooftops had felt like a secret world only she and Corten shared. As she climbed the tension slid from her shoulders. For the first time since she’d arrived in Lith Lor, the world felt simple again. In the dark she didn’t have to worry about what other people thought of her. And it didn’t matter if Celia was right and the guards carried wraith eaters. No one here knew who she was. If she did this right, they wouldn’t even know she’d been here.
At the top of the wall, she paused, crouched between a pair of rusted iron spikes. Her eyes were drawn to the largest of the buildings spread across the grounds, a massive four-story structure set in the center of the academy. Dav had said Hest’s office was in Main. That was probably short for Main Building. Talmiran institutions were never known for creative naming, and the building in the middle of the academy certainly looked important. If Naya were a high-ranking scribe, that was where she’d put her office.
She wrapped one hand in her skirt to keep it from billowing as she jumped off the wall. Her feet slapped against cool paving stones, the vibration humming up her legs and into the bones of her hand. As soon as she had her balance, she ran toward the nearest building, pressing her back against the wall. She checked the aether again. No spikes of alarm nearby. She hadn’t been seen. Good.
She peeked around the corner just in time to see a guard leave the central building. He locked the door behind him, then started walking along the building’s edge. Naya waited until he rounded the corner and disappeared, then she hurried across the twenty feet of open ground between her and the building. There were lights on in some of the windows. Just in case anyone happened to look out, she kept her head down and tried to move like someone who had important places to be.
No cries of alarm rose as she reached her goal. Naya wanted to laugh with relief when she made it into the shadow of the stone walls. After all the uncertainty she’d faced getting here, this felt almost easy.
Before her stood a large wooden door carved with flowing patterns that almost looked like runes. It was locked, but that was no trouble. Naya checked to make sure there wasn’t anyone on the other side, then picked the lock and slipped inside. She found herself in a hallway with polished floors and doors leading off to either side. Naya checked the doors, all of which led to what looked like empty classrooms. At the end of the hall, she found another door that opened onto a dimly lit spiral stairway.
She climbed the stairs, ignoring the doors leading to the lower floors. She could distantly sense other people in the building. But from the mingled frustration and exhaustion in their aether, it seemed clear they were all focused on their own tasks. When Naya reached the fourth floor, the stairs ended and she found a locked door barring her path.
A sharp prickle of apprehension came through the aether on the other side of the door. Tension coiled in her stomach. Had someone noticed her? No, that couldn’t be it. The emotions felt distant, like they were coming from a long way down the hall. Naya brushed her finger against the lock. Instead of opening it, she concentrated, then pressed her head through the doorway. The wood felt icy as she pushed past it, and then she jerked back quickly before anyone lurking on the other side could have a chance of noticing her.
The glimpse had shown her a long, empty hall with doors along each side. Whoever was there must be inside one of the rooms. Naya slipped her finger into the lock. This one was more complex than the one on the front door, but after a few minutes she felt the tumblers slide into place. She eased the door open and peeked into the hallway. Still empty.
Every door was marked with a name, and Naya found Ela Hest’s office halfway down the hall. Excitement and fear warred inside her. The tension she’d felt in the aether was coming from the other side of the door. Someone was inside.
Should she find somewhere to wait until the person left? Naya considered the idea for a moment, then reached for the door handle. She didn’t know where she could safely hide or how long she’d have to wait. It was easy enough to move around the academy now, but that would change when morning came. She couldn’t risk getting trapped. Besides, no one in Lith Lor would recognize the face she now wore, and they shouldn’t have any reason to expect she was a wraith.
Naya opened the door.
The office looked like someone had already ransacked it. The walls were lined with bookshelves, save the back wall, which held a large window. Gaps showed like broken teeth where books had been torn out of place. They were strewn across the floor, papers scattered, and a large pack sat atop the desk, half-stuffed with more papers. A broad, gray-haired woman stood frozen behind the desk, glaring at Naya. She wore fine-cut robes now rumpled and stained with sweat, and around her neck hung five heavy medallions scribed with runes.
The woman reached for something next to the pack. “Who are you? Get out of my office!”
Naya stepped into the room and shut the door behind her. She felt strangely calm as she surveyed the office, then met the eyes of the woman standing before her. “Ela Hest?” Naya asked. The woman didn’t answer, but from the way she twitched, Naya knew she’d found the right person.
Naya’s body tensed with excitement as she tried to make sense of the scene before her. Jagged anger spiked Hest’s aether, but under it she stank of fear. She looked like she was packing to leave. The disarray all around her spoke of desperation. Why would someone obviously important not have a servant here to help her? Maybe because she didn’t want anyone to know she was leaving?
“You were planning to run,” Naya guessed.
The fear grew stronger in Hest’s aether, stinking like sour sweat and bile. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Whoever you are, you’re not supposed to be here. Leave this instant or I’m calling the guards.” She gestured toward a rune disk sitting on her desk.
“I don’t think you will,” Naya said, her mind racing. “I’m guessing you heard about Valn’s death, and now you’re scared someone is going to come after you. So you were trying to slip away quietly in the night.” If Hest called the guards, then it would be much harder for her to get away unnoticed.
Hest’s hand settled on the rune disk, but she didn’t turn it. Instead she glanced at the bag. “My nephew’s death has nothing to do with me.”
“Of course it does. You’re the one who gave him the secrets behind the reaper binding.”
Hest’s eyes widened just a fraction and her grip tightened on the rune disk. A cold thread of determination mingled with her fear.
“Wait!” Naya said, sensing Hest was about to act. “I didn’t come here to kill you. Those runes came from a journal, part of a set. Give me the oth
ers and I’ll let you leave.”
Hest stared at Naya. “Who are you?” she asked.
“Resurgence.”
Hest shuddered at the name, though strangely the determination in her aether only seemed to grow stronger. “Were you the ones who killed him?” she asked.
Naya didn’t answer, and Hest drew her lips together in a thin line of anger. “He wouldn’t have talked, you know. Dalith had his faults, but he wouldn’t have said anything at the trial.”
“He told you,” Naya guessed.
Hest shook her head. “He told me he’d found a way to finally end this conflict for good, to make Talmir safe. His views on the undead might have been too soft, but at least he was more of a patriot than all those sniveling politicians who’ve named him traitor. They all lost their stomachs after the war. At least some of us here at the academy haven’t forgotten who our real enemies are.”
There was a light in Hest’s eyes that bordered on madness. It reminded Naya of her father, and she had to fight down a shudder. “Do you have the other journals?” she asked again.
“Why should I give them to you?” Hest asked.
“Because I’ll let you live.” Naya filled her voice with as much venom as she could muster.
Hest laughed bitterly. “What proof do I have of that?”
Naya tried to channel some of Celia’s ruthless calm. Her thoughts raced to put together a lie Hest might believe. “We value silence over needless killing. Valn had to die because he was stupid enough to get caught. But you’ve managed to avoid any official suspicion. If you call the guards, I’ll kill you. If you refuse to give me the journals, I’ll kill you. But if you hand them over quietly and speak to no one about what you know, I’ll let you live.”
“And I’m supposed to do all this on your word alone?” Hest asked.
“What other choice do you have?” Naya forced herself to meet Hest’s gaze. If Hest was like her father, then her hate might be enough to blind her to other risks. “You said you haven’t forgotten who your real enemies are. You should be smart enough to see that Resurgence’s goals align with yours. Valn’s failure wasn’t the end of our plans. Isn’t it better to live on and see those plans fulfilled?”
Hest’s lips drew together in a thin line as she seemed to consider the offer. “The journals are in a compartment in the floor, under that rug by your feet.”
Naya held back a sigh of relief. “Show me.”
“Look yourself,” Hest said. “I won’t go down on my knees before one of my nephew’s killers.”
Naya watched Hest for a tense, silent moment. Then she reluctantly crouched to push back the rug. Under it, she could just barely see the outline of a trapdoor hidden by the grain of the wood. “How do I open it?” she asked.
“There’s a keyhole, hidden in a knot in the wood,” Hest said. “The key is in my desk. One moment.”
Naya brushed her fingers over the trapdoor until she found the keyhole. It was cleverly hidden, barely visible even after she knew where to look. She heard a drawer open, then close. When she looked up, Hest was pointing a rune pistol at her.
“This is for my nephew,” Hest said. Then she pulled the trigger.
The crack of the pistol’s rune plate was deafening in the small room. The room’s aether twisted toward the weapon and something pierced Naya’s chest like a jet of ice water. Wood splintered as the bullet wedged itself into the door behind her. Naya looked down at the round hole in the front of her dress. The bullet had come nowhere near the bones in her hand, and already the cold of its passing was fading.
“How?” Hest whispered. She stared at Naya, then her eyes narrowed. “You’re one of them. A wraith. You tried to trick me!”
“Wait!” Naya began.
Hest lunged across the desk and activated the rune disk sitting there. “Wraith!” she shouted. “Spies! Intruders!”
Naya cursed, then slammed her finger into the keyhole on the trapdoor. No sense in looking for the key now that Hest had realized what she was. The disgust and anger in the woman’s aether surrounded Naya like putrid smoke. She tried to ignore it, concentrating on the feel of the lock’s tumblers.
Naya heard pounding footsteps from somewhere below. She felt the first pin catch, but the second one slipped before she could get it into position. She clenched her teeth. Somewhere to her right she could hear Hest moving. The footsteps outside were getting louder.
Naya closed her eyes and blocked it all out. The pins were the only thing that mattered. She had to focus. After what seemed like a lifetime, she felt the second, then the third pin click into place. She wrenched the lock open and hauled up the trapdoor. Old books were stacked inside, along with several sheets of loose papers covered in rune diagrams. Naya shoved aside books until she saw two with the same thin black covers as Lucia’s journal. She pulled them out and flipped them open. Yes. The handwriting was the same.
Naya stood, clutching the journals to her chest. Hest had extracted a strange metal cube from her desk and there was something eager in her aether now. Whatever that cube was, Naya wanted nothing to do with it. She ran into the hallway, then froze as a man in the uniform of the university guard burst through the doorway to the stairs. His face was red and he was breathing hard. But as he saw her, he drew his sword. Runes glowed along the length as aether rushed into the wraith eater’s blade.
Naya glanced over her shoulder. There were more office doors behind her, but after that was a dead end. Could she get past the guard to the stairs? The hall was narrow and the guard held his sword as though he knew how to use it. The journals felt like hot glass against her chest. She clenched her teeth. She refused to be trapped here, not when she was so close. She ran back into Hest’s office.
The window. If she couldn’t get down the stairs, she’d just have to take a faster route and hope it didn’t do too much damage to her bones.
As she stepped into the room, something wrenched at her aether. Naya stumbled and gasped. She felt like she was drowning. Her whole body was burning with the need for air—no, for aether—but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t pull any in. Hest was holding the small metal cube, and the runes covering it now blazed with aether. The air around it writhed like the edges of a necromancer’s portal.
What in creation was that thing? Naya could hear the roar of the tides of death filling the office, could feel the icy water rising around her legs.
She stumbled toward the window. Her body faded in patches as her aether reserves drained. She had to concentrate to keep her hold on the journals as the tips of her fingers threatened to fade away. The bones in her hand burned with icy fire.
Naya reached for the window, fumbling with the latch. She distantly heard Hest shout something, and the sound of footsteps behind her. Naya willed every last scrap of energy into her arm, forcing the window open. It felt so heavy. She opened a gap a few inches wide before the window stuck. It would have to do.
Naya half jumped, half fell toward the gap. She kept her hands tucked in close to her chest, holding on to the journals.
Her shoulder went cold as it passed through the window and her body jerked as her dress tore. She had a brief sensation of falling, then everything went black.
The world returned with abrupt and painful clarity as Naya’s back slammed into the ground. She gasped and aether rushed into her body. Her hand burned with the pain of cracked bones. The night swirled around her, burning stars above and cold paving stones below. Somewhere people were shouting. She wished they would stop. She wished they would all stop and just let her lie here and rest a while and—
The journals. Naya sat up with a groan. The right sleeve of her dress was badly torn, but she’d managed to hold on to the journals through her fall. More lights were coming on in the building behind her, and she could hear someone shouting from above. The guard in Hest’s office couldn’t follow her out the window, but th
ere might be more coming. She had to get away.
She drew in more aether despite the throbbing in her bones and ran toward the academy’s wall. Her head spun with the first few steps, but soon she was sprinting. Once she got to the wall, she stuffed Lucia’s journals down the front of her dress and climbed. It was nothing like the easy climb earlier that evening, and Naya felt a bitter pang at how confident she’d been only moments ago. Her vision went wavy around the edges. She could feel her fingertips fading in and out, making it harder to grip the cracks between the stones. When she finally reached the top, she slid through the spikes, then dropped down to the other side.
Outside the academy, Lith Lor’s pulse rose to meet her. Its steady thrum was the sound of soldiers’ boots as they marched after her. Naya ran, darting through alleys and hiding in doorways or behind trash piles whenever anyone drew near. By the time she reached the stairs leading down to the docks, she wanted to weep with exhaustion. She half expected to find soldiers blocking the way, but this part of the city was quiet.
Despite the quiet, Naya didn’t have any illusions about the consequences of what she’d just done. Hest had realized what she was. In Ceramor that might not have been so bad. But this was Talmir. So far as Naya knew, there was exactly one wraith in Lith Lor. Her. The city guards and palace soldiers knew that too. So did Queen Lial. If Hest or the guard reported what they’d seen, it would only be a matter of time before someone came after Naya.
Stupid. Naya had assumed that, like her father, Hest would be willing to sacrifice anyone for the chance to aid in Ceramor’s downfall. But either Hest had seen through Naya’s lies or her anger at her nephew’s killers had been stronger than any desire to work with Resurgence. Naya shouldn’t have taken her eyes off Hest like that. If not for that pistol, she could have gotten out without Hest ever realizing what she was. Naya pushed the thought to the back of her mind. She didn’t have time to worry about what could have been. She had the journals. She would deal with the consequences later.
