Hands Like Secrets, page 6
“I must warn you, students.” The Priestess’ expression turns grim, and the room quiets again. “This Cowl is not the sort to accept failure. He may try again.” She lifts her hands. “But if he does, we will be ready. Meanwhile, he and his raiders are surely holed up like gila lizards somewhere in the city.” Her voice rises. “Rest assured, we will hunt down Jeroen’s murderer, and all who mourn today will have absolution.”
The Priestess presses her hands together and holds them up again, palms inward this time. A collective sigh whispers across the Temple.
I wince as a sharp twinge flashes between my temples, even as my shoulders relax under the Priestess’ calming energy. Yan also makes a face, but Fien doesn’t seem to feel anything other than the expected calm.
“Fear not, students.” The Priestess continues to project waves of tranquility through the crowd. “Stay on campus, but otherwise, go about your activities as usual. Make productive use of this day off. Your professors will assign an Anjahel student to each dormitory and classroom sorarc tower, and curfew will be a watch earlier for the next half-moon.”
There are a few groans at that, but not many. The need is clear enough.
“Lord Isasar protect us all. You are dismissed for your midday meal.”
She bows the customary three times to the altar and disappears behind the altar screen.
Students rise and begin to inch their way out of the pews, their whispering swelling to a dull roar again. I remain seated, staring at my hands in my lap, thoughts whirling.
Should I tell the High Priestess the real story? It’s her life I saved, after all, and she’ll surely demand an account from me about why I’d been there and why I lied about it. Those penetrating gray eyes had all but promised that.
I didn’t have a choice, bargaining with him the way I did. I run hands through my hair, nails dragging lightly against my scalp. The ironic part is if I’d earned my Mantle years ago, I could tell the truth and not worry about being branded a traitor. Except if I had earned my Mantle years ago, I probably would have done exactly what Jeroen did, and we’d all three be dead.
A hand touches my shoulder; I startle and then relax. It’s only Yan, of course, still sitting next to me.
“Do we need to go somewhere quieter?” he asks in a gentle voice.
“It’s not the noise,” I murmur. “I just hate having my hands tied for being who I am.”
“Hey, don’t worry so much,” Fien says. I glance up, not realizing they’d hung back, too.
“I mean, you heard the Priestess.” They glance around the emptying Temple and lean closer. “It won’t matter that you had to let a gila escape this one time. There are only so many places to hide in Aschera; they’ll find him and make him face justice. Our Anjahel are the best.”
Beside me, Yan nods.
I feel a rush of affection for them both in that moment, for sticking by me and worrying over me, even though they wear the Silver and I still don’t.
“Thanks,” I say, smiling.
And good friends that they are, the two walk with me on my usual route to the dining hall, make sure I eat, and don’t bring up Cowls again for the whole meal.
Chapter 7
The sun casts long afternoon beams through the tall, narrow windows of the Ingrid Hall infirmary, illuminating specks of lint in the air. Taking a break from my work shift, I massage my lower back and watch the shadows stretch across rows of white beds. Blackbirds outside scold each other in the meditation garden, but Ingrid’s thick walls block out most of the raucous noise.
After midday, Yan had promised to catch up later and went to the arena to train. Since our usual routine was already hopelessly thrown off: no classes, no homework with exams coming up, and no going off-campus, Fien decided to spend the day working with the Healers in Ingrid Hall. As a senior teal cord, they spent plenty of watches per week here anyway, supervising healing sessions and mentoring younger students.
I’d tagged along, so the Healers put me to work washing linens and putting sheets on the beds. I didn’t mind. The quiet of Ingrid and the mundane work provided plenty of mental space to mull over last night.
Most of the beds here are occupied, and not by students. Our fighters, stationed in the southern mountains, ‘port their injured into Aschera every quarter-moon or so, and the city’s two hospitals never have enough room. Ingrid Hall takes the overflow. These soldiers bear injuries that can’t be fixed by Healers on the battlefield: extremities taken by frostbite or black rot, internal bleeding, mangled limbs.
The battlefield. The war. I sigh, blowing the sharp scent of disinfectant from my nose.
Aschamon exists to train young majahel in the use of their qi, “officially” to benefit the larger Mantle community, but everyone knows the truth. We are little more than the next wave of opposition to the Crimson Cowls. We are the next front line.
Our combat students wear red around their waists; the message is not exactly subtle.
Everyone has a specialty.
Red cords, like Yan, learn hand-to-hand combat, hexes, binds, military strategy; they compose the brunt of our offense. Those who wear the teal, like Fien, learn to treat the injuries inflicted upon us by specializing in Flow. Theory students, purple cords like me, study the seven strands of creation in depth, developing new qi techniques to employ in the ongoing struggle. Gray cords focus on Binding, technology, and especially the weaving of qi patterns into marindar glass. Yellow cords work with the red and gray, concentrating on large-scale warding, glamours, and defense.
And those few students singled out as Anjahel trade their colors for the white and oversee us all.
“Some might take pride in being different.”
Rafel’s flippant words from last night echo through my head, mocking me.
Arrogant Cowl.
I sigh again and flip a clean sheet across an empty bed. Smooth and tuck the corner, three steps, smooth and tuck the next. My hands move almost automatically at this point.
I know I’m different. I have always been different, even before I started failing, year after year, to be selected for the Silver. I am too logical, too literal, too set in my ways, and even for a Mantle, I’m told I shut too much of myself away from the world.
In all my nine years of schooling, I’ve never fit into a tidy Mantle hierarchy. I have tried...Isasar knows I’ve tried. I work hard, and I am gifted in qi, both of which have earned me high marks in class and a reputation for being as much fun to be around as a rock.
As smart as Rafel is, he surely knows Aschamon well enough to know there is no place here for “different.” Without a Silver Mantle on my shoulders, I am nothing, no matter that the High Priestess praised my talent in her office the night before. My current situation only proves it.
What I ought to do is go to the High Priestess right now and tell her everything. That’s what a Mantle would do.
But even if she believes me, the school will still be honor-bound to expel me for letting one of them escape unopposed. And wouldn’t that be the ultimate irony, I muse bitterly. Tammar’s failure of a daughter finally gets expelled for, of all things, aiding and abetting a Crimson Cowl.
I haven’t written to my mother in moons. The longer the school puts off my dedication to the Silver, the harder it becomes to ignore the fact that I am related to one of the most skilled Mantle tactician-turned-technicians of all time.
Privately, I’m convinced the only reason Aschamon has allowed my undedicated self to stay for so long is to preserve Tammar Kei’s precious reputation. Being an outcast at the school my famous gray cord mother graduated from is bad enough. Living in a Mantle dormitory named after the woman makes it worse.
Expulsion would pluck the last feather from the dead krait, or so the saying goes.
A warm hand touches my shoulder, the gesture so familiar I don’t even have to look to see who it is.
“We need to talk,” Yan says by way of greeting.
“Uh.” I count my stack of linens. “I only have two more beds to do.”
He plants himself on an empty bed and waves at me to continue. I eye him in puzzlement as I make the next bed.
Yan never comes to the infirmary. He’s a gentle soul, despite his love of everything military, and I suspect he can’t bear to be around people he doesn’t know how to help. He picks at his nails and seems reluctant to meet my eyes; normal behavior for me, but utterly out of character for him.
Not only that, but he came straight from practice and didn’t even change first. He’s still in his sparring uniform: stiff blue-gray trousers and tunic belted at the waist. Sweat has darkened his chest and makes his unruly hair stand up in spikes. I have no issue with seeing him unkempt, though some Mantles might.
He’s a distraction from my useless worrying, at least.
“What happened to practice?” I ask.
“We ended early. Some of the guys wanted to bribe the gate guards, dodge curfew, and hit the brewery district tonight.” He shrugs. “I told them they were idiots, but they never listen.”
I smooth the wrinkles out of the last bed and straighten up.
“I know you didn’t come out here just to complain about your floormates.”
He rakes a hand through his messy hair, making it stick up even worse.
“Here’s the thing,” he starts, but his eyes focus somewhere behind me. “Can we talk somewhere private?”
I follow his gaze and see a gruff soldier with a bandaged head watching us from the next bed. I glower in his direction, which he dares to smirk at, and take Yan’s hand. The meditation gardens are just outside, but I decide there’ll be too many people there studying on a day off.
A pair of doors on the far side of the hall catches my eye. “There.”
We move out of the infirmary proper and into a small clerical room, merely a white space with a desk and a wall full of file cabinets. Patient records are kept here, and as I’d hoped, the room is empty. Yan starts to close the door, but then he glances at me and leaves it open, just a crack.
I chuckle.
“You think that’s going to save us from demerits if that soldier reports us?” I ask in a wry voice.
He lifts a finger.
“Statute 17 of the Aschamon Student Code of Conduct states that two OGA students of opposite genders shall not loiter together behind closed doors,” he recites. “Technically, that door is still open, and we are having a conversation, not ‘loitering’.”
I shoot him a bland look, which he returns with raised eyebrows.
“You are so bad,” I say at last, grinning.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He puts on an affronted expression. “I know every rule in the Code, and I haven’t broken one in years.”
The scary part is, Yan does have the Code memorized, including all the caveats and loopholes. Luckily for him and our teachers, he’s earned his place among the most honest and well-behaved students on campus a hundred times over.
I’m probably one of only a few who can remember when he wasn’t so strait-laced.
“You’re in a strange mood.” I fold my arms. “What’s going on, Yanka?”
“Nothing,” he says quickly. Too quickly. “Well, not nothing, exactly. I mean, nothing’s wrong or anything. Nothing in particular.”
I raise an eyebrow. “You came all the way from Trian Hall to tell me nothing?”
“No!” He raises his hands.
“So, there is something?”
“Yes.” Yan glances at his sandals. “Kind of.”
Straight-to-the-point Yan is not usually this exasperating. He winces at my sour expression.
“Okay,” he sighs. “I’m not sure you told Fien and me the whole truth this morning.”
My heart skips. “Are you accusing me of lying to you?”
“No! Well, maybe—”
“Don’t,” I warn. “Don’t equivocate. You know I hate that.”
“Fine. That Cowl, last night.” He folds his arms. “What did he do to you?”
“Isn’t threatening to kill me enough?” I attempt a smile. Inside, my thoughts race ahead, trying to figure out where Yan is going with this.
Does he think I’ve turned?
He shoots me a dark look, intense even for him. “You know what I mean.”
“Don’t do that either! If I knew, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.” My hands creep toward my hair, my worst nervous tic. With an effort, I return them to my side. “Yan. Just...spell it out.”
“An infamous Cowl assassin decides, for some reason, to leave you and the Priestess alive?” Yan says. “If he’s as powerful as they claim, there’s only one thing a woman could offer that might make a Cowl hesitate to kill her.”
I frown, parsing this.
And my jaw drops when I figure it out.
If Silver Mantles are the epitome of reserve and decorum, Cowls are exactly the opposite. They are rumored, in particular, to enjoy taking certain...liberties with people’s bodies, willingly or not. Yan’s reasoning makes a kind of sense, even if it had led him to an entirely false conclusion.
Had I not admitted to “bargaining with” the most dangerous Cowl on Verre?
In a dark tower?
Alone?
It wasn’t my allegiance Yan thought I’d compromised last night! This is why I hate innuendo; if people would just say precisely what they meant, instead of dropping hints and hoping the other person will figure it out, so many misunderstandings could be avoided.
Case in point, he apparently takes my speechlessness as an admission of guilt.
“Look, it’s not your fault if you were, you know, forced,” he continues. “There’s nothing you could have —”
“Yan,” I interrupt through clenched teeth. “I was not sexually assaulted last night, nor did I offer my body to him of my own volition.”
He cringes at my bluntness, but he really should have known better. I plow on.
“How could you even think that’s what I meant by ‘bargaining’?”
Yan throws his hands up.
“I don’t know! Because most people are embarrassed to talk about that kind of thing?”
“I am not most people.”
“Well, why else would he have let you go? You even said you made some sort of deal with him. It doesn’t take a genius to put it together.”
“Except that you’ve put it together all wrong!” I clench my fists and take a breath. Anger sounds like denial to most people. And worse, an image of Rafel’s sly, seductive smile flits through my mind, which only throws my thoughts into more turmoil.
Yan does not look convinced. There’s an unfamiliar hardness to his dark brown eyes, one that unsettles me.
“Please, Yan.” I run both hands through my hair. “I wouldn’t lie about something like this.”
The expression on his face grows aggravated. “Then why didn’t he kill you?”
“I don’t know!” I dig fingernails into my scalp. “Gods, I just...I don’t know. Okay?”
I slump back against a cabinet and cross my arms, putting a shoulder between Yan and myself. How can my best friend think I’d do something like that, with one of them...or that I’d let it happen and then lie about it? Why confront me like this?
“All right, Sae,” he says after a painful silence. “I believe you.”
I refuse to look at him.
“Did it ever occur to you,” I force out through a tight throat, “that maybe Fien would have been the more appropriate person to bring this up? Being my roommate, and all?”
“I needed to know.” His jaw clenches.
True anger fills my chest.
“Why is my body your business? Are you the morality council?” I demand. “Does the idea of me lying about something potentially horrifying bother you so much you just had to wring the truth out of me?”
“No.” He tries to meet my eyes; that strange edge has returned. “It’s just that the thought of a gila touching you makes me sick.”
I gape at him, stung almost beyond words. “Because I’d be tainted?”
“What? No!” His dark expression softens to horror. “Because you’d be hurt.” He looks down at his feet. “I couldn’t bear the thought of that happening, and then you feeling like you couldn’t talk to anyone about it.”
The admission is so sincere and pained and unexpected that it pulls the plug on my anger. It’s then that I finally see in his eyes what probably would have been obvious to anyone else.
His cheeks flush, and he looks away again.
And I know that’s probably all the confirmation I’ll get out of him.
Why else would his mind have defaulted to such an assumption? That hard, puzzling expression is protectiveness, specifically for someone he likes as more than a friend.
The part of me that isn’t floored wants to scream in frustration. I cannot deal with my best friend crushing on me right now. A terrible hopeful expression pulls at his face, as he realizes I must have figured it out. It steals any words I can say because I don’t want to hurt him, and I fear now that I must.
I love Yan like the brother I never had, and to be honest, in the past, I’d toyed with the idea of us being something more. I don’t think an OGA girl can have a male best friend and never have that cross her mind. But I’d never felt a spark, and since he never said anything, I assumed he didn’t feel one either.
Discovering my mistake now makes me wonder if our Lord Isasar has a sick sense of humor, or if he simply just hates me.
As the weighted silence stretches on, Yan finally seems to guess that I don’t feel the same and can’t figure out how to say it. The knot in his throat moves as he swallows, and he tousles his hair again. Watching him stew in his sweaty uniform, jaw clenched as the realization crashes down on him, I feel like the cruelest woman on Verre. I’m sorely tempted to say the words he wants to hear, but for the sake of our friendship, I hold them back.
If I say them now, he’ll know I’m lying.
“We should go,” I manage, finally. My voice sounds raspy in my ears. “Someone will report us in here.”
“You’re right.” He gives a weak smile that doesn’t reach his eyes.
