She glanced around. “Think of a way before someone really gets hurt.”
“I’ll try.”
“Are you crazy?” Delmin somehow managed to yell without raising his voice.
“Rather,” Veranix said. Looking back to Kaiana, he couldn’t help but notice how uncommon it was to see her wearing a dress like that. The pale yellow of the dress complimented her rich, tawny skin, and he had to admit it looked very good on her. “What are you cleaned up for?”
“I’m going to the church, to drop off your donation,” Kaiana said.
“Keep your ears open, then.”
“Always do.” She flashed a quick smile and went off.
Veranix suddenly found his heart pounding and his face flushed, and he was very glad she wasn’t looking at him.
“Tell me you aren’t a little bit smitten,” Delmin said.
“Shut it,” Veranix said.
“Well, if you’re not, I can tell who is.” He pointed over to Phadre, who now sat alone on the grass, all his focus on Kaiana as she walked down toward the south gate.
“Shut it, I said.” Veranix got to his feet. “Let’s go take that history exam, get that torture over with.”
Deena walked like she expected people to get out of her way. Colin liked that; it was exactly the attitude he needed at his right arm. They walked through Cantarell Square, which was crowded, most people bustling about the makeshift marketplace of carts and stands. None of the companies were performing on the stages today, and a few kids were goofing around up there. Plenty of opportunity for hands to find their way into purses, if that was the intent.
Colin had better things to do, which was a shame.
A small group of Waterpath Orphans were taking the opportunity, mostly young ones. The bird who was a captain—Colin remembered her from the church meet last month when Veranix first started getting noticed as the Thorn—she hung back along one of the low walls, eyes on all her boys. What was her name? Yessa, maybe.
Colin and Deena walked past her, and she hissed.
“Not looking to cause trouble, Orphan,” Colin said.
“Best not.”
Normally he might want to get into it with the Orphans over working Cantarell. Especially with the bosses ceding a block to the Knights. But he had enough on his mind. Clearly one of the other captains could step up and make something happen. They didn’t have to leave everything on him.
They walked over to the corner of the square right across from the Trusted Friend.
“How you want this to go?” Deena asked him. “I presume you don’t want a rumble.”
“No, I don’t.” A few Rabbits were hanging outside the Friend, sitting on the walkway curb and being the useless layabouts Rabbits usually were. Colin gave a whistle.
“Oy!” he snapped, not moving from his spot. “Any captains among you, or you all too damn lazy to bother being in charge?”
“Gonna eat your teeth!” One of the Rabbits got to his feet and took a couple steps, but still kept his distance.
“Standing right here, no one has made me lunch,” Colin said.
“What you say he was gonna eat?” Deena taunted.
“Your teeth,” one of the other Rabbits said, cool and calm, sitting on a wooden chair on the small stoop of the Trusted Friend. She slowly got to her feet, and Colin could see the chevrons inked onto her neck. “He still might. You making a rattle here, Tyson?”
So she knew who he was.
“Might be, might be,” Colin said. “Word I hear is you’ve got your hands full of rattle. Someone came and shook you real good, Setch.” That should raise her fur up.
“It’s Sotch.”
“If you say so,” Colin said. So easy to hackle. “My boy says the Thorn came and slapped you around.”
“Did your boy lose a knife?” Sotch asked. “Maybe he should come and get it.”
“I don’t know anything about that.” Colin rested his hand on the hilt of one of his knives. Just rested it there. All the Rabbits went crazy, getting on their feet.
“Looks like you want to start a rattle,” Sotch said.
“I don’t need to start anything with you. The Thorn, apparently, already did.”
“What’s it to you?” Sotch asked.
Colin pointed down the street in the direction of Dentonhill. “Because the Thorn usually is over there. Other side of Waterpath, knocking skulls owned by Fenmere goons. But then last night he’s here, knocking Rabbit skulls. What’s that mean?”
“What’s it to you?” Sotch repeated. Clever, she was not.
“That tears it!” shouted the one Rabbit who had stepped forward. He drew a knucklestuffer and jumped at Colin. Colin didn’t even move, since he saw Deena was right there at his arm. Before the guy even got within five feet of Colin, Deena had the Rabbit down on the ground, face pressed on the cobblestone.
“There’s your lunch, Rabbit! Who made you your lunch?”
“Ease it off!” Sotch snapped. “Let him up.”
Deena pushed him away, and gave him a kick for good measure.
Sotch chuckled and stepped over, pulling her boy up to his feet. “You seem nervous, Prince.”
“Hardly,” Colin said.
“You should be, causing a rattle just a few feet from the Friend. With just one bird by your side.”
“You won’t try anything, Sotch. Even you are smarter than that.”
“Won’t I? Maybe not right now. But maybe pretty soon, Rabbits are going to own Cantarell. And then what will you do?”
“Rabbits own Cantarell? That’ll be the day. Us and the Orphans will push you back, like we do every time.”
“Things change, Prince. They might just change a lot tonight. Never know what we’ll get.”
“Big drop?” Colin asked.
She moved in close, her pudgy face closer than Colin would ever want. “Real big. Right here. Then you’ll see, Prince.”
“Deena,” Colin said curtly.
And then Sotch’s face wasn’t close at all. Deena peeled the girl off and threw her back to her crowd of Rabbits.
“You’re both gonna pay!” Sotch wailed. “Just you wait!”
“It’ll be a long wait,” Colin said, tapping Deena on the arm. “Always a pleasure, Setch.”
“Go to blazes! You’ll see!”
Colin went back across Cantarell, Deena at his heels. So they were going to get the effitte from Fenmere tonight, most likely. Now that he knew that, he had to figure out what to do with that information.
“Do we get more Princes?” Deena asked.
“Nah,” Colin said. “Not yet, not without the bosses signing on to it.” There wasn’t much he could do without risking his stars, just like Dennick. Only way to stop the Rabbits was to get every other gang to turn the screws.
That or the Thorn.
Out of the corner of his eye he spotted someone standing out in the crowd, striding up Hedge Lane. A girl, with honey-dark skin and a yellow dress. She would have caught his eye regardless, but after a moment he knew it was Veranix’s Napa girl. Couldn’t remember her name, but she had iron and vinegar to her. From what he had seen, she would make a blazes of a Prince, had that been her calling.
She could tell Veranix about the Rabbits drop, get him out here.
All he had to do was figure out how to tell her without letting Deena know.
“Need to clear my head a bit,” he said, flashing a wry smile at Deena. “Hey, Napa girl, where you going so quick?”
She spun on her heel, narrowing hard eyes at Colin. He gave her a quick wink, and hoped to the Saints and Rose Street that she would recognize him. She should, she had come to him before, but that didn’t mean she still would.
“Don’t call me that,” she said, looking him up and down. “Not unless you feel like eating the street.”
“I’d like to see her make you,” Deena said, coming up at his elbow.
“Oh, you have a friend!” the Napa girl said. She gave him a flash of attitude. “But you never know who my friends might be.”
“Should I be afraid of your friends?” Colin asked mockingly.
“I’m just saying a piece of street trash like yourself might want to think twice before crossing my path and calling me names.”
“That’s because I don’t even know your name, girl. Or how a girl like you walks through here and can call me trash. You come from campus or something?”
“That’s right,” she said.
“Colin, why are you even messing with this girl?” Deena asked. “Not like you’re gonna toss her for her purse. And she sure isn’t going to roll you.”
“No, I’m not. Why would I waste my time with someone like you? Causing trouble, probably dosed on effitte.”
She winked, just barely, just enough for only Colin to see. She had given him an opening.
“Hey, now, I don’t mess with that effitte stuff. That’s poison. You want to get that junk, you’d have to bug the Red Rabbits?”
“Oh, would I?” she asked.
“Blazes, they were just bragging to me that they’re getting a whole big drop of it tonight. Tonight, like they’ve got no shame about it. Right over at the Trusted Friend.”
“You don’t say.”
“Shameless, isn’t it? Looks like they’ll be selling plenty soon.”
“Someone ought do something about that,” she said.
Colin threw up his hands, “You said it, not me. I’m not gonna start a brawl in the street about these things.”
“We’ve got better things to do,” Deena said. She was glaring at the Napa girl.
“Well, they better not come near me with that,” she said. “Like I said, I’ve got friends.” She started walking back toward the Uni campus. After a few steps she said, “By the way, street trash, next time you see me, call me ‘Kai.’ Else you will eat the street.”
And off she went.
Then Deena’s hand smacked him across the back of his head. “Stop your gaping. Do we have a plan?”
“Yeah, we’ve got a plan,” Colin said. “It’s called the Turnabout. I need to cool my throat.”
The towers were ringing five bells when Veranix stumbled out of the history exam. His head hurt, his eyes hurt, and his hand was cramped up from writing seven essays. He had had no idea, before right now, that he was capable of writing seven essays on Druth history in three hours.
He would rather have spent the time brawling with every single Red Rabbit at once.
Delmin was waiting outside, looking harried but nowhere near as bad as Veranix felt.
“Which ones did you do?” Delmin asked as they started walking to Almers. They had been presented with twelve questions, with the instructions to answer six, and the option of a seventh for extra credit. Veranix knew damn well he was going to need every bit of credit he could manage.
“The one about the Quarantine Wall, since I’ve actually seen it, that helped. Queen Mara, since I know the play . . .”
“I told you—”
“It helped, I swear. What else? The rediscovery of the Maradaine line, Chamberlain Maxwell, Prince Fultar and Lady Demea, Battle of Fencal, and the Kellirac Invasion in the fifth century.”
“You went for the extra credit?” Delmin seemed genuinely surprised.
“I couldn’t pass up the opportunity. Am I wrong, or was that uncommonly generous of Besker?”
“I think he was rewarding those of us who took the exam despite the pranks.”
“You’re calling them pranks now?”
Delmin shrugged. “It’s as good a word as any.”
“‘Attacks’ is a better word.”
“Maybe. Anyway, I did most of the same ones you did, except for not Maxwell or Queen Mara. Took River Wars and the Incursion of 1009.”
“Saints and sinners,” Veranix swore. “Those two made my head spin just thinking about them. Too big, especially the River Wars.”
“It’s Besker’s favorite topic!” Delmin said. “I thought he’d like it!”
“I thought it was an opportunity to make too many mistakes.” Veranix didn’t mention the question they both passed on, about the initial formation of Mage Circles in 1023. Mostly because how Besker taught it was radically different from how Alimen and the other magic teachers did. Veranix would have written an essay on the early Parliament acts that gave mages protection from unseemly persecution, and allowing for the formation of Circles to train and take responsibility for the mages in their care. While that was entirely accurate, Besker would have given that essay failing marks.
Likely some of their fellows in the exam wrote pieces to match Besker’s opinion—that mages of the eleventh century created a system to make themselves immune to any legal action, overcompensating for aggressive, inhumane treatment of mages in the early centuries.
Untrue, but that’s how Besker saw it. Veranix could tweak an essay to match a professor, but he couldn’t do that, and he imagined Delmin couldn’t either.
They found Phadre sitting on the steps to the main entrance to Almers, nose buried in one of his notebooks. “Ah, you’ve finished,” he said as they approached.
“Have you been waiting here for us the whole time?” Veranix asked.
“No, no,” Phadre said. “I worked on some of my calculations, based on our work this morning. I think I’ve fine-tuned exactly what I need to demonstrate, but we’re going to need to finalize the calibrations of the instruments. Quite a lot of work.”
“Lovely,” Veranix said. “All right, let us go in and wash up, then we’ll go to dinner . . . presuming we can.”
“Right, no,” Phadre said. “At least, not in Holtman. The whole thing is being scrubbed after the attack.”
“See?” Veranix said. “Attack.”
“Well, that’s what the officials are calling it now, after the one up in Faishin Hall.”
Veranix stopped. “Where is Faishin Hall?”
“It’s one of the buildings of the girls’ college,” Delmin said. “They’re sure it’s more of the same?”
Phadre looked surprised. “I’m not sure of the details, exactly. I hear that this time bricks came flying out of the wall. Just popping out and launching across the lecture hall. And then words appeared on the slateboard, like they did in Holtman.”
“The same words?” Veranix asked.
“I don’t know that,” Phadre said. “Though three students and Madam Henly were taken to the hospital ward. Injured by flying bricks.”
Something didn’t sit right about that at all. Veranix couldn’t put his finger on what he was thinking.
“But what about dinner?” Delmin asked.
“Oh, right,” Phadre said. “Professor Alimen wanted to make sure we didn’t waste any time, so he made arrangements so we can eat while we work. Plenty of food waiting for us in his workroom.”
“That’s excellent,” Veranix said. “Just give us a few minutes, we’ll be right there. Come on, Delmin.”
He grabbed Delmin by his coat and dragged him into Almers before he could protest at all.
“Were there any taunting words that appeared in here?” he asked Delmin as they went up the stairs.
“I’m not sure,” Delmin said. “Not that I heard, but . . .”
“It doesn’t matter. We saw them in Holtman. Fools will see, or something like that.”
“Right,” Delm
in said. “This isn’t our business.”
“Except for the fact we heard someone else say almost the exact same thing to Professor Alimen just a few minutes before that. Jiarna Kay.”
“Oh,” Delmin said. “I suppose she did. But that would have to be a coincidence.”
“Maybe.” Veranix reached their room. “Except that she said something else, and I just remembered. Professor Alimen said she should be dealing with Madam Henly, and she said—”
“That Henly is an idiot! Wasn’t that who Phadre said was hurt?” Delmin almost squealed. “You don’t think she’s behind this?”
“Maybe someone should talk to her about it,” Veranix said. “Cover for me while I go to the carriage house . . .”
“No, Vee,” Delmin said.
“I’ll just get the cloak, and pay her a visit . . .”
“First of all, I keep telling you, that isn’t your job. School officials, prefects, the cadet squadron. The Th—” He glanced around and lowered his voice. “The Thorn shouldn’t show up for something like this.”
“Why not?” Veranix asked. “I mean, I said I was going to protect the campus . . .”
“From what’s his name and his drug peddlers. This is different!”
“It’s a threat.”
“Humor me in this. Let’s say you get suited up and go traipsing into the girls’ college. Do you know how to find Jiarna Kay? Where she lives? Where she might be? Or are you going to spend hours skulking about their dormitories, like some sort of reprobate? And if you get caught doing that, you will get kicked out of here.”
Veranix didn’t like it, but Delmin had a point.
“Fine. What do you think we should do?”
“Get ourselves sorted out right now, and join Phadre so we can help him get his letters, and help us pass our Magic Practicals.”
“Fair enough,” Veranix said. “Let’s get moving.”
Minutes later they were back outside and walking with Phadre to Alimen’s tower. From the walkway, as they approached, Veranix could see the carriage house, where Kaiana was hanging a lamp outside the main door. She only did that when she had news for him. He glanced over at Delmin, but immediately sensed that he would not approve of even going to talk to her right now. This was exam period, time for work.
The Alchemy of Chaos: A Novel of Maradaine (Maradaine Novels) Page 8
