19

Cordaelae's final words settled over the hall, and the crowd stirred into motion, students moved one by one toward the long tables set along the far wall, where clerks waited to hand each of them their admission letters, sealed with Aethoria's own crest pressed deep into the wax.

The coat was cut from plain white cotton, falling to just above the ankle, sleeves ended a little above the elbow, closed below the chest by two buttons set two fingers' width apart. Across the back, Aethoria was stitched in fine brown thread. An armband strap was stitched on left sleeve on each coat, woven in whatever colors marked a student's chosen discipline, a small announcement to any passing eye exactly what path a soul had chosen to walk beneath these particular walls.

"You heard about the boys," Erynae wore her blue-strapped coat and adjusted coat's button. "They are saying it was her."

“They are saying a great many things," Rhovyn tightened his grip upon his coat. "That does not make any of them worth repeating.

“I do not believe in the torments of civilians.” Erynae brushed back her wind-tossed hair. "Whatever their allegiance, had she been a soldier of Viana, I might have thought otherwise."

“What would you have thought?" Rhovyn sighed. "Aethoria takes none younger than seventeen, none older than twenty. Whatever she was, a soldier she could not have been, not by the laws of Amara."

“I bear her no hostility," she glanced back at him. “She does not appear ill-mannered.”

“The uniform suits you well,” Rhovyn steered the conversation elsewhere.

“And what of me?” Bram walked to them with Kohl.

“Oh, good heavens,” Rhovyn said with dramatic astonishment. “You look splendid.”

“I was born to be a student of Aethoria.” A broad smile spread across Bram’s face.

“Let us be off to Vaerhold,” Kohl interjected.

Rhovyn glanced once toward Ryska where she stood with Valere and then turned and headed to Solmaere with Erynae.

Valere held Ryska's admission letter for her while she worked her arms into the coat, settling it over her shoulders. "It suits you," he said, once she had it on.

I have dreamt of this coat since I learned consciousness, she thought running a hand on golden strap. What use is all of it, now that the ones who made it possible aren't here to see me finally wear it.

Valere caught the sadness before she could smooth it from her eyes, and he knew exactly what it was, because it lived in him too.

If only you were here to see me wear it, he thought about that specific memory, you would have been proud.

He smiled a little and said nothing, instead they walked to Aelthara and reached lecture hall, Ryska spotted Faelen near the middle rows and crossed to sit beside her.

"Made it," Faelen said, shifting over to make room. "The first official seat at the greatest archery academy in Myris."

The hall settled, low conversation trailed off as everyone waited for the guru to arrive, though instead a steward in university livery appeard, he scanned the room once before his eyes found her.

"Ryska Aen," he called out. "You are summoned to the office at once."

Every head in the hall turned toward her at once. Faelen had heard the same whispers everyone else had and now the steward was here calling her name in front of the entire hall. She wondered what would happen now looking Ryska who had already got up to follow steward.

Valere understood it for what it likely was, office wanting a statement about the attack made on her, but he had no idea how they would interpret the murders that had occurred.

Cordaelae's office was neat in a way that felt deliberate rather than habitual, everything in it was placed as though it had earned its position and would not be moved without cause. Cordaelae sat behind his desk. Bowkeeper Amaeren stood across from him.

Ryska stepped inside, and the door closed behind her with a sound that felt louder than it should have. She kept her spine straight and waited to learn what she had been brought here to answer for.

"We need your signature," Amaeren said without preamble, gesturing to a pair of papers laid upon the desk. "One, to enter your name for patronage, should you wish it. The other, a formal complaint for the attack that was made upon you."

Ryska waited a beat longer for some second reason dressed up as the first to arrive, but nothing arrived. No mention of the boys found in the sewer, no careful phrasing meant to lead her somewhere she wasn't ready to go. Just paper, and a pen, and a summons that had turned out to be exactly what it claimed to be.

She signed both, her hand was steadier than she'd expected it to be and wrote the complaint naming what had happened without softening it and without asking for anything she didn't already believe she deserved.

Cordaelae finally looked at her. "Four boys attacked you," he said. "If those were the same four found this morning, you will be required to identify the bodies, so that Paendrage's court may proceed further," his voice came little softer. "Head there with your Guru and speak the truth as it is."

That's it?

Something in her chest loosened and it caught her off guard more than the summons had; she couldn't remember the last time she'd felt anything close to relaxed. It was strange, the realization, like a word in a language she used to speak fluently and had since half-forgotten.

Amaeren guided Ryska through the courtyard, where familiar eyes noticed her again but quickly shifted upon seeing Amaeren at her side. A waiting carriage stood nearby; they stepped in and began the long ascent toward the Savale range.

The road wound upward, and the wheels found a steadier rhythm the higher they went. Ryska looked out sideways as the city fell away below them on her left, rooftops and river and the university's dark cliff-face shrinking into something she could have covered with one hand, and on her right the Blackstone Forest rose thick and dark against the mountain's shoulder, unbroken for as far as she could see.

Ahead, the palace waited at the very peak grown out of the mountain rather than built upon it, the way Aethoria's own buildings had seemed grown from their cliff.

This is Valere's home, she thought, and found the thought stranger than it should have been, that somewhere behind those white walls was a boy who felt strangely familiar for reasons she couldn't name, who laughed at himself, who claimed he tripped on his own shoelaces and blamed the universe's sense of timing for it, who spoke strangely, and who had a whole palace waiting for him and chose instead, to sleep in the Inn for a reason she doesn't know or perhaps she does.

The carriage stopped in a small courtyard behind the main palace, away from the grand steps and the banners, and guard led them through a side door into a corridor too plain for a place this white.

The room past the corridor was colder than the rest of the palace, kept that way on purpose. Four tables stood in a row, each with a sheet drawn over what lay upon it.

Ryska stepped forward, soldier drew back the first sheet, then the second, the third, the fourth, one after another, until all four faces lay bare beneath the cold light.

She looked at each of them in turn, death had taken the cruelty out of their faces and left something almost ordinary behind.

Her jaw ached where the first one had gripped it, she could feel his fingers again exactly as they'd been, thumb and forefinger closing on either side of her chin, tilting her face up to the light like something he had every right to examine.

Her hand rose without her deciding it, brushed once against her own jaw, and fell away again.