Page 62 of The Ordeals
‘Look, Sophia, wouldn’t you protect a friend, if you could? Wouldn’t you have protected Dolly? Alden has a terrible inclination for playing the hero. He neared burnout in the last Ordeal, I hear.’ Knox chuckles humourlessly. ‘I want to see my friend survive the Ordeals, not form an attachment to a walking corpse he thinks he can save. You may get through and become a scholar, but the cold ones are returning, and I don’t fancy your chances. They’ve marked you.’
I pull in a shuddering breath. ‘Harsh, Knox.’
‘I am nothing if not truthful. Distance yourself from Alden, keep the attention of the cold ones on you and you alone, and perhaps you won’t be the cause of any more untimely deaths.’
I close my eyes briefly, the scent of warm blood tingling like tin in my nose. A memory, but not a distant one. If Knox is right and more cold ones have been stalking me, then perhaps they were in the Morlagh picking off other hopefuls before catching me. Nausea claws up my throat. I would not wish that fate on anyone. ‘I’ll keep my distance.’
‘No hard feelings, I hope?’
‘None,’ I say, drawing my eyes up to meet his. ‘I would have demanded the same promise if it was someone I wanted to protect. Probably at knifepoint.’
‘Good. Then we understand each other,’ Knox says with a half-smile. ‘Good luck in the next Ordeal, Sophia. You’re going to need it. I’ll be watching.’
I waste no time when I’m back in Hope. Using what I canfind, I fashion not only a holder for my switchblade, but also for a wooden stake that I can strap to my body. They’re after me. Those vampiric monsters are afterme.
And if they breach the wards, I can only rely on myself.
The day before the Ordeal of Lies, a hopeful, Marcus, is found dead on the rocks. Crooked and cold, the man is just a pile of broken limbs by the time he is found beneath a second-floor window of Gantry Hall. It’s been long enough since a hopeful has died outside an Ordeal to have made me think that the problem had just gone away. Or the murderer was someone killed off in the last Ordeal. But apparently not, apparently the murderer is alive and well, and none of us are any safer at Killmarth.
‘Best masquier in our year …’ Tessa says as we sit huddled together in the library. ‘Well, after me.’ We’re on edge, flinching at footsteps, and scholars have been roped in to patrol the halls after dark. Now we move around in pairs or threes once more, and I only feel safe sleeping with my switchblade in my fist, the wooden stake under my pillow.
Naturally, I told Tessa everything about Knox Darley and why he’s really here, so now we’re poring over newspapers and journals in the library, any article or essay we can get our hands on that mentions murders in Theine, the cold ones, vampiric creatures or the surname Darley. We’ve got far more to go on now, but there’s still the puzzle of exactly what happened eight years ago, and why they all seem so very scared of it occurring again. ‘Did he give any other clues? Any other keywords we can use to search quickly?’
‘None that I can think of. I told you everything,’ I say with a sigh. ‘He wouldn’t tell me who he works for. But he knew exactlywho I used to work for and what happened on the last assignment. Gods, don’t look at me like that. It’s a long story and I paid the price, didn’t I?’
She shrugs. ‘Did I say anything? I’m not judging you. In fact, I’mgladyou told me. Greg and I couldn’t work out why you hadn’t attended a school and yet still knew of Killmarth, so we—’
‘You looked into me?’ I say, jaw dropping.
‘What? You had no ties that could in any way lead you to study at Killmarth.’ She shifts in her seat, spreading her palms. ‘You seemed suspicious.’
‘Thanks?’
‘For good reason, apparently,’ she says, raising an eyebrow under a curl of black hair.
‘I thought you weren’t judging me?’ I think back to Alden’s words, how he knows I’m hiding something, and sigh through my nose. It’s what I’m afraid of, his judgement. About what I did for the Collector, finding marks, people who sometimes wound up dead. I’m afraid he won’t look at me the same way. That he’ll want nothing to do with me. ‘Alden suspects I’ve got secrets as well. I guess I have more of a sign on my back than I thought.’
‘I’m not judging you. But it’s perhaps less subtle than you imagine, joining a cohort of hopefuls here,’ she says face cracking into a smile. ‘Let’s draw a line under it and get back to researching what the fuck is going on with this monster lurking around. He definitely called them cold ones or vampires, like the professors we overheard in Darley? No other names?’
‘No. Just those.’
‘Well,’ she says, rubbing a hand down her face. ‘The plot thickens, I guess.’
When I need a break from reading, I take a walk past the masquier scholars as they practise. Godolphin is where most of them are assigned after the Ordeals, and I have a theory I want to satisfy. If I can see an illusionist’s work, ripples and strangeness and sometimes even voids in the world around me, might that mean I could also see the true person beneath a masquier’s wielding?
I spend an hour slowly trawling the corridors of Godolphin, eyeing the scholars as they pass, but realise that none of them wield magic outside a classroom. So I tap on the door of a classroom on the first floor. Nine sets of eyes home in on me. Have I fucked up by interrupting a class so brazenly?
‘Hello, professor?’
‘Yes? I’m Professor Silver,’ the woman at the front says, tall and elegant, hair in black braids piled atop her head, fingers laced together as she regards me. She was at the welcome dinner for hopefuls over a month ago, but I haven’t seen her around so much since. ‘Any reason why you’ve stumbled into my class, hopeful?’
I force a smile. ‘I was wondering if it’s possible to observe your lesson.’
Her eyes flash, a slow smile spreading across her mouth. ‘Please do,’ she says, indicating a seat at the back. ‘You’re the first to be bold enough to ask this year. No talking, no distracting my scholars, and you can stay for the duration.’
I thank her and skirt around the gathered scholars for the vacant seat at the back, delighted that I’ve got away with it, and now I have the perfect opportunity to observe more advanced masquiers at work. Professor Silver discusses techniques for altering clothing, and I lean forward, observing each scholar as they’re called up to try and change what they’re wearing.
The hour ticks down swiftly as I squint at the scholars, trying to discern the changes they make, whether I can detect the subtleshimmer of magic as they use it. And what I find is interesting. If I focus, if I use my own magic to pare back the changes they’ve made to their tailoring, the colour of a blouse, the pattern on a suit jacket, I find I can just pick out a slight ripple. I can see their true outfit, limned in gold beneath. The knowledge and the practice gives me an extraordinary boost and I feel some of my angst from the unproductive morning in the library slip away. Now I have the knack, this could change everything in the next Ordeal. Everything.
