Five
1522 Words
Orren
The mirror was already awake when I entered the room.
I disliked it when it did that. It meant my father had been waiting, which meant he had either heard about the headmaster or wanted to remind me that he could hear about anything else he pleased.
The mirror hung above the fireplace in my rooms, tall and narrow, its silver frame blackened at the corners. It had belonged to my mother. She used to stand in front of it while braiding her hair, and I remembered sitting on the floor beneath it, building little towers out of playing cards while she talked to people in other rooms.
I had not thought about that in years.
The glass clouded.
King Aldren appeared in it, seated behind the desk in the palace war room. He looked exactly as he always did. Dark hair going grey at the temples. Straight back. One hand resting on a stack of papers like he had personally arranged every page in the kingdom.
I called him Aldren because Father belonged to a time before the crown, before the curse, before he started speaking to me like I was another weapon in his armoury.
He did not ask whether I was hurt.
“Report.”
“The headmaster is dead.”
“I know.”
“Then you have the report.”
“I want yours.”
There were several ways to answer that. I chose the one least likely to get me sent back to the capital before breakfast.
“A spell exposed forbidden magic during the entrance examination. Sable Venn altered it. The wards reacted. Sorn caught fire.”
“Did she kill him?”
“No.”
The answer came too quickly.
My father noticed. He noticed everything that could be used later.
“She was closest to him.”
“She was also standing in the middle of a ward eruption.”
“Is that your defence of her?”
“It is a fact.”
“Facts are often the first place people hide their loyalties.”
The curse stirred beneath my ribs.
It had been quiet since the hall. Quiet in the way a hunting animal was quiet when it had caught a scent.
Sable Venn.
The name moved through my mind and the black mark around my heart tightened.
Not tenderness.
Possession.
I knew the difference. I had to know the difference. The curse had taken tenderness from me three years ago and left something else in its place. A hard, ugly need to keep what it considered mine. To close doors. To remove threats. To decide first and explain never.
It made a person efficient.
It also made a person unbearable.
“You are distracted,” Aldren said.
“I’m tired.”
“You are thinking about the girl.”
I said nothing.
That was answer enough.
His mouth tightened. “You will expose her magic.”
“She has already exposed it herself.”
“Not enough. I want to know what she is, not what she can do in front of a crowd.”
“She may not know.”
“Then make her find out.”
I looked away from the mirror, toward the tall windows overlooking Thornvale. The academy courtyard was still lit by the pale lamps along the paths. Students were moving in groups, talking too loudly. News travelled quickly here. Faster than fire, sometimes.
A white ribbon had turned black in the Great Hall.
By morning, everyone would have a version of why.
“Keep her away from the lower academy,” my father said.
I turned back. “Why?”
“Because I gave you an instruction.”
“That was not an answer.”
“It was not meant to be.”
The curse tightened again.
Obey.
The command came from nowhere and everywhere. It was not my father’s voice. It never sounded like his voice. It sounded like the part of me that had stopped asking whether obedience was deserved.
My fingers curled against my palms.
Aldren continued. “She is not to access Maelin Venn’s records. Not the public archive, not the sealed archive and not any record held below the academy.”
“She is here because the crown offered her access to those records.”
“She is here because we allowed her to be useful.”
The words sat badly in my stomach.
I had been taught that usefulness was mercy. My mother had said it once, years ago, when I asked why the court kept sending people away from the palace with their hands shaking.
Everyone has a use, Orren. That does not mean they are being used.
She had smiled when she said it. I had believed her because I was six and she was my mother.
Later, I learned that she had been standing beside Maelin Venn at the time.
I remembered the room in pieces. My mother near the west window. Maelin beside a table covered in silver instruments. A boy lying on the table with a crown of black ink around his chest.
Me.
The memory never stayed in the same order. Sometimes Maelin was holding my hand. Sometimes she was holding a knife. Sometimes my mother was crying. Sometimes nobody was crying at all, which was worse.
Then came the fire.
The officials dead.
My mother gone.
Maelin named a murderer.
The curse remained.
I had spent half my life believing the simplest version because the simplest version gave me somewhere to put the anger.
Aldren’s voice brought me back. “Are you listening?”
“Yes.”
“Say the order.”
I felt the curse move before I spoke.
“Expose Sable Venn’s magic, find out what she can do. Keep her away from the lower academy. Prevent her from accessing Maelin’s records.”
“Good.”
The mirror darkened for a moment. My father leaned closer to the glass.
“And keep her alive.”
That part was not in the command.
I looked at him.
“Why?”
His expression did not change, but the room behind him seemed to blur. “Because dead girls tell us nothing.”
The mirror went black.
I stood there with the last of his words hanging in the room.
Dead girls tell us nothing.
There were footsteps outside my door. I did not answer. The footsteps continued past.
A knock came a minute later.
I still did not answer.
The door opened anyway, and Joryn slipped inside with two cups of tea balanced in one hand. He was seventeen and had the unfortunate confidence of someone who had never been punched properly.
“You look terrible, brother” he said.
“I am dressed.”
“That has never stopped you from looking terrible.”
He handed me a cup. I took it because refusing would have required energy.
“Did Father call?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Was he awful?”
“Yes.”
“Good. I was worried he might be becoming pleasant.”
I drank the tea. It was too sweet.
Joryn leaned against the desk. “The new girl is in Sorn’s office.”
“I know.”
“They say she murdered him.”
“She did not.”
Joryn tilted his head. “You sound very certain.”
“I was there.”
“So was she.”
I looked at him.
He raised both hands. “I am only saying that being present at a murder does not usually make someone innocent.”
“Is there a point?”
“I wanted to know if she really has shadow magic.”
“You wanted to know if she is going to murder you.”
“That too.”
I thought of Sable standing in the hall with black lines under her skin and a joke ready before the pain had even left her hand. She had looked at me as if the curse around my heart was an inconvenience I had personally arranged for her.
No one looked at me that way.
It should have annoyed me more than it did.
Joryn watched my face. “You’re doing it again.”
“Doing what?”
“Thinking about her.”
I set the cup down harder than necessary. “Go to bed.”
He grinned. “That means yes.”
“Joryn.”
He left before I could throw anything.
I walked to the window.
Across the courtyard, the headmaster’s office was dark. Sorn’s portrait hung somewhere inside it, still watching the girl who had arrived with a white ribbon and turned the academy black.
Sable Venn was dangerous. That was the truth I could use.
The other truth was harder to look at.
When she had touched my spell, the curse had not shown me possession first.
It had shown me fear.
Aldren’s voice returned in my memory, low and without warmth.
If the girl reaches the crownstone, you will lose more than another emotion.
I did not know what he meant.
I hated that I wanted to find out.
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