Page 3 of Crime & Punishment
“Iamsmart,” I tell him dryly, swallowing against the sudden cavity in my chest. I have to remind myself that, in spite of appearances, Tye’s casual familiarity is simply a function of his personality, not a true kinship. This Tye doesn’t know me—not really—and the sting of that keeps taking me by surprise, rising in sudden sharp waves. “And I also don’t let my friends take the blame for my choices. You followed me over the wall, not the other way around. If you’d like our stories to match, I recommend you stick to that one.”
Tye’s humor disappears, the beautiful angles of his face going from mischievous to hard in an instant. “Trust me, lass. I’ve been down this road before. Do what I say.”
I raise my chin.
Tye curses, turning to Arisha, who is still clutching her sheet, brown hair frizzing around her sharp cheekbones. “Can you talk some sense into the lass? Explain how she’s just arrived, which paints a bloody bull’s-eye on her back.”
“River and Coal do make a habit of encouraging newer cadets to depart,” Arisha says with a wince. Now standing beside her clothing chest, she appears to be having trouble working out a way to rummage through it without releasing her sheet. “It’s their solution to the fact that, for political reasons, the headmaster won’t allow any expulsions.”
Hopping off my bed, Tye strips out of his jacket and lays it over Arisha’s shoulders, the large man’s garment easily falling below her backside. “Don’t get excited, braids. I’m not looking.” That done, Tye turns his back to my roommate and studies me unabashedly as I lay out my own clothing, a new drab gray uniform that fits me only marginally better than yesterday’s did. Other students will be able to wear whatever they want on their liberty day, but I’m heading into the opposite of liberty.
“I imagine killing and maiming students carries little political good will either, so no matter what Coal has in mind, I’ll survive it with my limbs intact.” I hold my hand up, cutting off Tye’s protest. The necessary secrecy and tale the veil amulets spin can force me to do many things—but I will not allow it to make me shrink away from my males.
I only hope that whatever Coal has planned leaves me with enough energy to go right back over the wall tonight. Between the soft interior of the cracked tablet and the fleeting nature of tracks in spring soil, I’ve little time to find and reassemble the magic-charged rune before the weather takes it. And after that, once the males have their memories back, we can get back to working out what allowed those morphed sclices into the human realm to begin with—with River back in charge.
I put my hands at the hem of my nightgown and am about to pull it up, so used to disrobing casually around my males, when I catch myself with a flush. Another small stab of pain. I can’t let Tye’s easy way confuse my senses.
I look from my clothes to Tye, who is still standing with his back to Arisha, eyeing me with a coy kind of mischief, as if the quieter he is, the greater chance I’ll have of forgetting he’s there. “Are you going to watch me dress?”
“I could help you,” Tye drawls. “Though in full disclosure, I’m somewhat better at thedisrobing part when it comes to females.”
“Get out.” I point to the window. “Now.”
3
Lera
Gavriel is so excited to hear the details of last night’s sclices when I visit him in the grand library, I can’t help thinking of Autumn, who takes a child’s delight in any and all information. Then I look down at the neat rows of pens, inks, and books guarding the man’s desk, and the difference between him and chaos-thriving Autumn becomes so stark that my eyes threaten to sting. I focus on the rough sketches of the mole-covered beasts the librarian and I are working on.
“Fascinating,” Gavriel says, writing notes as quickly as his hand can dip pen into ink, his gray-streaked brown hair flopping over his forehead. “Would you say these sclices were bigger or smaller than average? Was their stench closer to that of vegetable rot or was it more a latrine-like scent? It may behoove us to have you walk past both the compost and refuse piles for an accurate comparison.”
I’m all right, Gavriel, thank you for asking. Tye took a nasty slice on his shoulder, though; River is furious with me; Coal intends to make me regret ever stepping foot here; and Shade shifted without any knowledge of it.“They just stank. As for size, it was more that they were disproportional to their own bodies. Like the sclice version of a five-legged cat or something.” I rub my face. The grand round room of the library, with its soaring red-and-gold dome, cheery warmth, and ever-present scent of paper and binding, has a surreal type of comfort. “How could Shade not realize that he shifts?”
“Hmm?” Gavriel works out quick arithmetic that I can’t follow on the corner of his parchment, then adds measurement estimates to his notes, which he tosses sand over while speaking. “Oh. Shade. I imagine the veil affects only the fae in him, not the animal. So the instant he shifts back, the veil spins a plausible explanation for missed time.” The man trails off, tapping his hand against the drawing. “Can you describe the mole pattern again? How many moles would you estimate there were?”
My jaw clenches. “I was fighting for my life. I wasn’t counting bloody moles.”
“No, of course not. That’s only to be expected this early on.” Gavriel smiles in what I think he thinks is reasonable encouragement. “We can work on training your attention to such details.”
We can work on my not breaking your neck.I take a deep breath. Gavriel is the only one I can talk to about my reality, my mission. And that means taking his educated idiocy together with what insights and company he offers. I motion toward the stack of books detailing various runes. “Have you found anything more on the origins of the tablet I broke on the way here?”
“I’m afraid I’ve had no success in that as yet.” The apology in Gavriel’s tone is sincere, which does make it difficult to hate him just now. The man takes off his glasses, wiping them on his thick olive robe. “I know you are eager to reassemble it, but I can’t recommend toying with magic like that without understanding the ramifications. For all we know—”
“For all we know, River, Coal, Tye, and Shade are in danger of losing themselves forever if I don’t fix this quickly.” My hands curl around the table’s edge, my jaw tightening. This has to work. There is nothing else. I’ve nothing else.
Gavriel sighs. “I realize you little want to hear this, Leralynn, but it is possible the males are exactly where they are supposed to be.”
“You’re right.” I rise, sliding my chair back so hard that it topples. Comparing Gavriel to Autumn is like holding a lantern beside the sun. “I don’t want to hear it.” I spread my hands on the table, leaning forward into Gavriel’s space. “If you want the mortal world to survive, you need River, not me, to lead the charge. He’s the only one in this realm with a full understanding of the Citadel’s reports and the only one with a plan in place for how to approach it. The centuries he’s spent leading the fight against rogue magic don’t hurt either. Except right now, River is a bloody deputy headmaster of an isolated school. My quint commander doesn’t know his own sister’s name, let alone that he holds all of humanity’s fate on his shoulders.”
The doorbells chime a ridiculously happy tune as I pull the library door open and slam it behind me.Bells on a library door?Gavriel’s strangeness rears its head in new ways each time I meet him. A quick glance at the sun says I’ve an hour to eat something before Coal takes his turn at making my life miserable. After that… After that, all bets are off.
* * *
I walkonto the training grounds a few minutes before the Academy’s bell tower strikes two in the afternoon, the place deserted except for a single blue standard flapping at the far training court. In the emptiness of a liberty day, the Academy’s towering stone walls and broad cobblestoned courtyards take on an echoing eeriness. The ominous gray-skied murk of the afternoon doesn’t help. Corral after corral of neatly raked sand greet me as I pass, my attention on the lone shirtless figure fighting ghosts in the farthest of the rings. The dullthud thud thudof Coal’s training sword hitting rope-wrapped posts echoes through the yard, my immortal eyes tracking the warrior’s deadly dance from a hundred paces away.
High strike, low, middle parry, step.High parry, roll over the shoulder, middle strike.Repeat.I know this pattern as well as Coal does, just as I know he hates it. The thin sheen of sweat covering his bare muscled back says he’s been here for some time—as surely as the two broken practice swords lying in a pile of discarded shards. In the odd overcast light, the long tattoo twisting down Coal’s spine and his many scars draw little attention to themselves, though I doubt I’ll ever not see them on him.
My chest tightens. Stepping up to the fence enclosing the training corral, I brace my forearms against the wood, watching the wooden post shudder and rock beneath the mighty blows, Coal’s sword a blur as he dances across the sand. Even in the mortal realm, Coal’s strange inward-facing magic saturates his body, honing it for survival. Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised. Coal’s magic had flourished even during the centuries he spent as a slave in the dark realm of Mors. The male may not manipulate the elements like River and Tye or mend broken bones like Shade, but between his own training and the strength, speed, and faster healing his strange magic grants him, Coal is one of the greatest warriors the realms have ever seen.
