8

“It does not matter," she turned ever so slightly and covered the wound with her hand as much to shield it from his eyes as to hide the fact that she had no idea what to do with a stranger looking at her like that, as though the wound mattered more than what she was.

“A blade laid upon an Aethoria student within Aldaene matters very much."

“Four names without bands are hardly information worth having,” she met his gaze. “You speak as though you could do something about it.”

“I could...” Valere opened his mouth but seeing her expression change, he let the matter fall. “Take you to a healer.”

"I do not need..."

“Let someone tend to it,” he interrupted gently, pointing across the grounds towards the spires of Merrath Academy. “The healer is there.”

Ryska followed the line of his hand, and a small smile found her face at the sight of Merrath, it belonged to a memory she had not yet decided to share.

Valere caught it, the smile, while he regarded her for a long moment, the way a man regarded something rare enough to deserve patience.

"Ryska," Nehara called gently and the sound of her name pulled both Valere and Ryska back from wherever they had wandered.

Valere blinked, and the courtyard returned all at once, first the voices, then the light, then the crowd, and only then the realization that another girl had been standing beside Ryska the entire while.

“Ryska,” Valere repeated softly, and the name knocked upon a door in his heart, one he had never known existed until that moment.

Then came the realization that she was the same Ryska whose name he had seen upon Rank Two, and he had almost been shocked to see it there for her name was written among the casualties of the Great War Third of Myris. But seeing her name there, all he had thought was whether she was safe, for her being alive meant she was a threat to the Vialthor Empire, and that alone could bring chaos to Aldaene.

Needless to say, he had been right, for here she stood, with a blade cut upon her arm, and it was going to be a real problem for the Crown.

Ryska, however, was only thinking about whether he was to be trusted, but she said nothing and began walking toward Merrath. Valere fell into step beside her. Nehara followed, and together the three of them crossed the ground, moving through the crowd. Ryska passed Rhovyn so close that scarcely the breadth of a breath remained between their hands, the faintest whisper of distance where their fingers might have met, but the next step carried her beyond him, and he did nothing except turn and watch her walk away from him with another man.

“She has already found friends,” Erynae said, watching the two figures beside Ryska. “The world delights in impossible surprises.”

“I am glad she has friends,” Rhovyn said.

“Rhovyn," Erynae turned to him. "A name is usually where most people begin.”

“Am I to go and ask her what her name is?”

“Then are you to go and ask her to marry you?”

“But what am I to say?”

“Might as well let me marry her for you,” Erynae sighed, already knowing the battle had been lost before it had even begun.

“Stop jesting,” Rhovyn took a deep breath for even the thought of speaking to a stranger girl without Erynae beside him made him anxious.

“Let us return to the inn,” she said, turning away, and he followed, though not before casting one last lingering glance toward Ryska.

Erynae knew precisely where his thoughts had wandered, and she found herself wondering whether Rhovyn would ever gather the courage to walk up to that girl and speak to her, and, if he did, what it would be like to have a Draconian for a sister. Ugly at its root, and she knew it, but she feared losing her one and only friend if the girl turned out to be the kind who makes a man choose. She had always liked Rhovyn’s hopeless inability to speak to women, for it had kept him for her, her only friend in a world that had never truly accepted her kind.

She too glanced at Ryska once, offering a quiet prayer that, if fate ever carried the two of them to Rhovyn's home, the girl would accept her as she accepted him and prayed too, perhaps even more dearly, that her nature would prove gentle rather than cruel for cruelty's own sake.

Is she kind? the wind wondered too and wandered through the grounds of Aethoria until she found Ryska seated upon a cot, while Healer Shalmali examined the wound upon her arm in silence before reaching for clean instruments, and a roll of soft white bandage cloth.

“Your blood nature?” Shalmali asked.

“Torrid.”

“Any aversion to medicine?”

“Alkali root.”

Shalmali gave a silent nod, reached for a different jar among her medicines, and finished cleansing the wound before winding a fresh bandage around Ryska’s arm. Then she handed Ryska the medicine with water and reached for a fresh sheet of parchment.

“This incident falls under the Preface Charter,” Shalmali said. “I will require your name, the hour at which the attack took place, the number of those who were involved, whether you know them or possess any knowledge of their identities."

“I am Ryska Harini Aen,” she replied, and at once the quill in Shalmali’s hand came to a halt above the inkpot.

She lifted her gaze to Ryska, then turned it toward Valere, who answered with the smallest of nods. Gathering her composure with practiced haste, Shalmali lowered the quill once more and began to write, setting down each detail as Ryska recounted the events of the attack.

Valere and Nehara’s postures faltered as she spoke, though the weight that bent them was born of different visions. Through Ryska’s words, Nehara was seeing the world as it truly was, vivid and terrible in its immediacy, as though she had been granted sight through the eyes of another; Valere, keenly aware of the world that lay before them, saw instead the landscape within himself.

He realized then that this was the same girl who had run into him at the gate, the very one he had so hastily deemed rude. In the restless chambers of his mind, he had fashioned a hundred arguments to convince himself that she owed him at least some measure of gratitude, if only because he had caught her when road had stolen her balance and she had nearly fallen, but now the more she spoke, the more plainly he understood how little he had grasped of what had truly happened, and shame settled within him for he had thought himself a clever man, yet he had judged the whole of her circumstances from the smallest fragment, and the realization left him deeply ashamed.

“I have filed the preliminary report,” Shalmali said, her voice pulled both Valere and Nehara back from the depths of their thoughts. “You will be summoned to make a formal complaint once the examination is concluded and the office resumes its work for the new academic year.”

“Thank you,” Ryska replied, before crossing the room to gather her belongings.

Shalmali, meanwhile, collected her own things as she prepared to depart for the Administration Wing. “Come and find me if the pain becomes severe,” she offered and Ryska answered only with a quiet nod, before stepping out into the corridor alongside Nehara.

“She is going to become considerable trouble for everyone, is she not?” Shalmali asked, looking toward Valere.

Valere's eyes followed Ryska, she was Draconian and the Draconians had been branded war criminals by much of the world, feared, hated, and, in many lands, hunted for nothing more than what they were. Yet none of that hatred had ever found a place within his Empire. There was no room for prejudice beneath its banners, and meeting Ryska had given him one reason more to make certain there never would be.