There could be no question, and he was only surprised that it had taken him so long to reach the obvious conclusion—and that Tia had made so little effort to cover her tracks. Then again, she'd probably imagined there could be no possible consequences for her. What, after all, could Durren do?
He could confront her, that was what he could do. He could tell her to her face that he knew she'd given him up, and what sort of a person that made her.
It was the kind of foolhardy plan that he could easily have talked himself out of. Durren could feel, in fact, the counterarguments already buzzing about the corners of his mind like angry wasps. All else aside, hadn't Borgnin explicitly cautioned him against just such an act?
Rather than risk paying attention to those dissenting voices, Durren jolted to his feet. He didn't care what was sensible, or even what was right. All he wanted was to hear from Tia's own lips why she'd betrayed him—and he wasn't about to let anything stand in his way.
12
T
here was no specific rule to say that students from one class couldn't go into areas set aside for the other three. On occasions, in fact, as when Durren went to Hieronymus's transportation room, doing so was unavoidable. However, there was without doubt an unspoken agreement against entering certain areas, those deemed private or personal. And, of those, the dormitories were the most implicitly restricted.
So maybe it was just a spirit of bloody-mindedness that made Durren start there of all places.
Except that, because he had no idea of the layout of the rogues’ wing, things weren't quite that straightforward. For a start, it soon became evident that the place had been designed for rogues by rogues: there were no signs, no names on doors, no directions of any kind. Nor was there anybody around to ask. Though Durren occasionally heard faint sounds of activity, he saw no one. It was as if any students he might have encountered faded away an instant before he could set eyes on them.
Luck, then, more than sense, brought him finally to the room he'd been seeking. And though there were clear rules against students harming other students, nevertheless Durren felt a moment of alarm as he glanced around the dormitory and saw so many lean, cloaked figures, each of them watching him back.
“What do you think you're doing, Durren?”
Tia's voice came from behind him. Durren spun, words spilling from his mouth before he'd even set eyes on her: “I think you know damn well why I'm here.”
Tia considered him coldly. “No, I don't.”
Would she really deny the truth? That made it worse, somehow. “You told Borgnin about me,” Durren snapped. “You told him my secret.”
“Of course I didn't,” Tia said, as though her innocence was the most obvious thing in the world.
Durren paused, mouth gaping. Of all the possible outcomes, he simply hadn't considered that she would refuse to admit what she'd done. All he could think to say was, Yes you did, and he had just enough sense left to realise that the two of them standing here contradicting each other wasn't about to achieve much.
Fortunately, Tia broke the stalemate. “Follow me,” she demanded.
She brushed past him and led the way out of the long room, leaving Durren no option but to follow. In the passage, she opened the first door she reached, which happened to belong to a storage cupboard filled with pails, mops and brooms. When Durren only stared at the cramped space in puzzlement, Tia caught hold of his sleeve and hauled him inside, dragging the door closed behind them.
It crossed Durren's mind that he was trapped in a closet with a rogue, and that similar situations had ended badly for many across the centuries. Then, when no blade sank into his guts, he recalled that the particular rogue he was trapped in a closet with was Tia, who, as much as he hated to admit it, was definitely attractive—and all the more so at close range. Durren was annoyed to realise that his heart was beating more rapidly, that his palms felt clammy. He insisted to himself that he should be anxious to get out because the girl before him was training to dispose of people in precisely such circumstances, not because she was a girl—but insisting didn't much help.
“Durren,” Tia said, “listen to me carefully, because I don't want to have to say this more than once. Whatever you think I've done, I didn't. If someone told on you, then it wasn't me. And I think that if you'd take a minute to calm down, you'd realise that.”
Durren did his best to bring his errant thoughts to order. “But if it wasn't you…” Only, he realised, he already had the answer to his question. “Why would he do it?” he asked. “I mean, I know we don't exactly like each other…” Once again, Durren trailed off. Fine, he and Hule weren't entirely friends, but he'd never have imagined that the block-headed fighter would do something like this.
Tia was watching him steadily. “Do you pay attention to anything besides yourself?”
“What's that supposed to mean? Of course I—”
“I don't think so,” she interrupted. “If you did, you'd have known a long time ago just what Hule's up to. And you'd also have realised that there are more important things going on here than whether or not you get expelled.”
Durren didn't understand. What could possibly be more important than that? Did she really not appreciate what being here meant to him? No, it was only that she didn't care. His presence at Black River didn't matter to her, so of course Tia couldn't realise how much it would matter to him.
As for what she meant about Hule, that was another mystery—and another knot Durren had no interest in unravelling. Hule was an idiot, and worse, he was an idiot who didn't know when to keep his mouth shut. Well, that was one lesson Durren could teach him, at least. Maybe a fist to that square jaw of his would make him think twice the next time he was about to destroy someone's life out of sheer stupidity.
“I'm sorry I blamed you,” Durren said grudgingly. Then, not waiting for an answer, he pushed past her, was through the door and marching down the corridor beyond in what he judged to be the direction of the fighters' wing.
He hadn't expected Tia to follow, so he was surprised by the tap of her feet upon the flagstones behind him. “Durren, will you listen to me for a minute?”
What could she possibly want? Was she really going to try and dissuade him from giving Hule the beating he so richly deserved? Well, Durren wasn't about to let her. Instead, he stared straight ahead and picked up his pace.
“No,” Tia continued, “obviously you won't. Still, I'm telling you this anyway. There's something not right about these quests we're being sent on, and I think you know it. That unicorn wasn't some murderous beast; those priests weren't conspiring to corrupt the unbalance and bring about the end of the world. One of those might have been a mistake, but two? No, something's badly wrong here.”
Hearing her words, Durren felt that there were two versions of him warring inside his mind. One had heard what Tia had told him and knew that probably she was right: yes, there were questions to be asked about the quests they'd been sent on, and probably he should be trying to reason out the answers. Yet the other Durren insisted that the academy's problems had nothing to do with him, because after all he'd been expelled, and the reason he'd been expelled was named Hule Tremick, and so how could anything be more important than planting a fist right between Hule's eyes? Moreover, that version of him was by far the louder; there was no ignoring it, even had he wanted to.
Tia sighed. “Do you even know where you're going?”
Durren hadn't the faintest idea. He was choosing corridors at random, but he wasn't about to admit as much.
Regardless, Tia strode past him. She turned into a side passage and beckoned for him to follow. “Then let's get this over with,” she said, “and maybe once you've got it out of your system, you'll listen to some sense.”
Veering after her, Durren struggled to fathom how one minute he'd been trying to lose his temper with Tia and now here she was, leading him through the maze that was Black River. Still, there was no denying that she knew her way around a hundred time
s better than he did. She seemed to have no trouble picking her route, and after a while, Durren began to suspect that she must have taken time to study and memorise the academy's entire sprawling layout—presumably from maps and charts, since a lone rogue wandering the halls would surely have drawn attention.
Just who was this strange girl? What could have driven her to do such a thing? Durren had spent a great deal of time with her over the last weeks, and only now did it occur to him that he barely knew the first thing about her—really, nothing more than her name.
Not long after she'd taken charge, he realised that at some point they'd transitioned from the rogues' wing into the fighters' block. The walls, which had been unadorned, were now decorated with an assortment of shields and weapons, some of types Durren had never seen before: strange variations of flails and glaives, and axes with altogether too many heads.
Just as there had been something alarming about intruding into an area filled with students trained to sneak and backstab, so here Durren was uncomfortably aware of an air of suppressed aggression—as though at any moment these passages might erupt with bellowing warriors and senseless violence.
Tia stuck her head into one room, and then another. They passed a couple of fighters, a tall boy and a burly girl, and it struck Durren that the thing to do might be to ask if they knew where Hule was—but Tia only ignored them and pressed on. Though Durren doubted she'd ever walked these corridors before, her sense of direction still seemed certain. She turned a corner, marched to the end of that passage, where a heavy door stood open. The word DORMITORY was carved into the lintel.
Unlike the sleeping quarters of the rogues or rangers, the fighters' dorm had bunk beds and a broad central aisle. Most of the room's occupants were clustered into groups and shouting over each other about one subject or another. Some were taking the opportunity offered by any patch of clear space to practise wrestling, boxing, or even duelling with wooden swords. A few of the more studious—the minority by far—had books spread over their knees.
Only Hule seemed to be alone and unoccupied. That fact made him all the easier to pick out. He was sitting on his bunk, eyes half closed, and didn't look round at their arrival until Tia said, “Hello, Hule.”
Hule's expression told Durren everything: if he'd needed a confession then there it was, plain to see. It took all of Durren's self-restraint not to hit him in that very moment, and if Tia hadn't been there, then perhaps he would have. Yet even the briefest glance around the hard faces suddenly watching from about the room told him that to attack one fighter would be to attack them all—perhaps not because they cared about Hule himself, but as a matter of principle, or maybe just as an excuse for a good ruckus.
Hule's mouth was slowly opening and closing, making him very much resemble a snared fish puzzled at the sudden lack of water.
“Outside,” Tia told him.
Hule looked as though he'd have liked to argue, perhaps to be indignant at being ordered out of his own dormitory. Instead, he nodded sheepishly and trailed after as she led the way.
Here there were no convenient storage cupboards that Durren could see. Instead, Tia carried on, taking turn after turn. Durren felt certain that at any moment Hule would finally resist, would refuse to go any further—but he didn't, and nothing could have persuaded Durren more of his guilt.
They came out, finally, in one of the many small open areas that littered the academy's interior. This one appeared to be an herb garden, crammed into a narrow rectangular space by windowless walls, and with the door they'd entered by serving as both entrance and exit. Unsurprisingly, no one was tending the garden at this late hour.
Before Hule could descend the three narrow stairs to the path that wound among the beds, Durren rounded on him. He caught the fighter by the scruff of his shirt and shoved hard. Hule managed to keep his footing, but only by colliding hard with the wall; the breath left his body in a loud huff. However, that didn't stop him getting his fists up before his face. Rather than try and grapple with him, Durren snarled, “Tell me why, Hule.”
“Hule doesn't have to answer you.” But he sounded less defiant than he'd obviously intended to. Perhaps it had occurred to him that the odds were two against one, and that—with Tia having closed the sturdy door behind them—no one would be coming to his aid.
“You can stop that now,” Tia said.
The look of surprise on Hule's face turned rapidly to something that bordered upon panic. “Hule doesn't understand—”
“Hule,” she said impatiently, “no one really refers to themselves by their first name all the time. And, frankly, it's long past the point of becoming annoying. You can start talking normally, or I'm going to let Durren settle this with his fists. Maybe I'll even hold you down for him.”
The mix of emotions in Hule's face grew more complex. So far, Durren had never seen the fighter's expressions range much beyond bored and aggressive. Now, however, he appeared genuinely conflicted, as though weighing up the odds of some difficult conundrum.
Eventually Hule gulped hard and said, “All right look, I'm sorry.”
“Are you apologising to me for being annoying,” Tia said, “or are you apologising to Durren for ruining his life?”
“Well…both.”
“Because if you're apologising to Durren, then you should say so to his face.”
Hule looked as though, if he could have escaped by crawling out of his own skin, he gladly would have. Yet, his eyes drifted towards Durren. “I'm sorry,” he said. “Telling on you was a terrible thing to do. I knew the moment I left Borgnin's office. I think I even knew at the time. It was lousy of me, and I'd take it back if I could.”
Durren had no idea how to respond. Hule's was by far the most earnest apology he had ever received, and what made it all the more strange was that he barely recognised this version of Hule who'd given it. Could he really be the same person who'd barely been able to string a sentence together mere minutes before?
“Fine,” Durren said, “you're sorry. But being sorry doesn't change anything. I'm still going to get expelled. And why would you do it? Do you really hate me that much?”
“I don't hate you,” Hule said. He sounded surprised at the very suggestion. “I mean, I don't particularly like you, but I don't hate you. I just…there was an opportunity and I took it. It didn't have anything to do with you.”
Durren had been beginning to calm a little, disarmed by Hule's penitence—but that set his blood boiling once again. “Explain to me,” he growled, “how you telling the Head Tutor that I tricked my way into Black River doesn't have anything to do with me.”
For the first time, Hule appeared genuinely nervous. “I didn't mean it like that! I just mean, I hardly gave you any thought. Like I said, I see now how wrong that was, and I'm sorry. But it seemed like such a good chance, and I knew that if I thought too hard, I'd never be able to go through with it.”
Durren felt a hand on his shoulder, drawing him back—and only then did he realise just how close he'd been standing to Hule, how he'd been leaning in with clenched fists. Reluctantly, he took a step back, forcing some of the tension from his body. Tia gave him a look that said, That's better, and stepped into the gap between them.
“Hule,” she said, “I think Durren would like a proper explanation for what you did. And I'd like to hear it, too. After all, we're supposed to be a party.”
Hule, having begun to relax when Tia hauled Durren away, had clearly had time to realise that having her interrogate him was no improvement at all. “I don't know where to start,” he mumbled.
“Perhaps with why you've been referring to yourself by your own first name all this time, and now, just because Tia called you out on it, you've stopped?” Durren suggested. Objectively he knew that there were more important matters to be addressed, but that was the one currently bothering him the most.
Hule sighed. “Do you know what it's like to grow up in the Borderlands? I don't mind a good scrap every so often, but where I come f
rom, it's the only thing that matters to anyone. Once, when I was six years old, I lost a fight with a boy from a neighbouring household and my father refused to speak to me for a month. A month! And you know what I said about having troll blood? There are people in my family who really, genuinely believe that. I mean, have you seen a troll? The smallest ones are twice the size of any human, and they're about the ugliest things imaginable. Just looking at one for five minutes would make you want to poke your own eyes out; you certainly wouldn't be thinking about taking it home to meet the grandparents. But some great, great ancestor started the rumour and no one ever thought to ask the obvious questions, and so here we are—and everyone just accepts it for a fact. And that's what it's like to grow up in the Borderlands.”
“None of that explains,” Durren pointed out, “why you've been calling yourself by your own name all this time.”
Hule gave a broad shrug. “It was just something I started on the first day; it seemed like a thing that a trainee fighter from the Borderlands would do. I had a cousin who talked that way. His name was Thunk. It was always Thunk wants this, Thunk says that—and all he ever had an opinion on was who or what needed punching and how hard. Anyway, once I'd been doing it for a while, I realised I couldn't just stop.” Hule looked disconsolate. “And can you imagine what that's been like? I mean, I've never claimed to be the smartest of people, but acting like a total idiot really starts to get you down after a while.”
“I hope you don't expect me to feel sorry for you,” Durren told him. However, he found that he couldn't put much bite into the words. Hule's self-inflicted plight was so ludicrous that it was hard not to feel at least a little sympathy.
The Black River Chronicles: Level One (Black River Academy Book 1) Page 15
