Memories of Ash (The Sunbolt Chronicles Book 2) (21 page)

The path ahead curves around a fountain. Crouched among the bushes that grow alongside the far side a trio of boys gather around something on the ground. They keep looking up, over their shoulders, talking to each other in explosive whispers. One of them spots me and grins, surprising me from my train of thought, but he looks away again just as quickly. As I near them, a small black thing flies out of the bushes straight toward me.

Skreeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

I shout, diving to the side as it screeches past. It turns at the touch of a slight breeze, sailing high over the gardens and slamming into the stone face of the building behind us. With a barely audible whine, it bounces down off the arcade.

I lie on the ground, my ears filled with its echo, and remember … being cornered. I know this memory, but in this moment it is fresher, more detailed than what I pulled from the ashes under Stormwind’s guidance…. Guards with black armbands surrounded me, and then another such charm shrieked past us, distracting them. I close my eyes, not caring that I’m lying in the middle of a path at a mage-ridden school of sorcery. I slide into the memory, running pell-mell through a busy marketplace, down back alleys between stalls, and then bursting through the back of a fruit stand, the old woman there offering to hide me, a young boy on the other side of the counter watching wide-eyed as I climbed into a crate of green coconuts, the close darkness of my hiding place. And that’s all.

I take a shuddering breath and push myself to my feet, even though I want nothing more than to stay in that memory, catch hold of each detail while it pulses fresh in my mind. The boys shout with laughter, the bushes they hid in shaking and rustling as they give voice to their amusement. I catch a scattering of noise as those journeymen and apprentices along the arcades realize what has happened, laughing behind upraised hands.

I grab my pack and bundle it up again as the boys mock the way I’d cried out. If I could, I’d march over there and throttle them. My plan was to walk unnoticed through the grounds. Instead, I’m the center of attention. All I can do now is make as little fuss as possible, and get
away
.

I get no more than three feet down the path before a guard in leather armor rounds the corner of the fountain at a sprint, his boots crunching against the gravel. I plow to a halt. His gaze cuts between me and the boys, taking in the scene at once. He raises his hand to me, palm out in a silent command to wait, and crosses to the bushes. Catching the nearest two boys by their ears, he brings them to their feet with yelps of pain. The remaining boy scrambles up, his laughter wiped away by surprise.

“You’ll be apologizing to the young miss now,” the lycan orders.

“Apologize?” says the elder of the two boys he holds, as surprised as I am. He cannot be more than thirteen, though from the way he tries to brace his feet and hold up his nose, despite his captive ear, he thinks himself a grown man. “To a servant?”

“No,” the guard says. “To the young woman you insulted. I’m not concerned with her occupation.” The third boy backs away. “You as well,” he says sharply. “Don’t think I don’t have your scent by now.”

The boy hurries toward me, followed up by the guard still holding his two flinching captives. He is built tall and lithe, with a long thin face and tawny brown wolf’s eyes. I would estimate him to be perhaps twenty-five, certainly no more than thirty years. He smiles as he meets my gaze, his teeth preternaturally sharp.

I look away, my heart pounding, my mouth going dry. He looks nothing like James, and yet I cannot think past the memory of the wolf-headed man who attacked me in Kol’s tower, the way Val had breathed from him, aging him decades in a matter of moments. How terrified and
grateful
I’d been to watch James die.

The boys come to a stop some feet away. “Sorry, miss,” one of them mumbles.

“All of you,” the lycan says, and the boys at his left yelps. I almost feel sorry for their ears.

I nod at the chorus of apologies that rise up.

“And you won’t do it again,” he prods, letting the two boys go. They back away, the third with them, shaking their heads emphatically. “Because if I hear of anything happening, I’ll know who to look for,” the lycan adds, giving them a sharp-toothed smile.

“No sir,” one of the boys gibbers. “We’ll be good, we will.”

The lycan nods, and the boys bolt down the path. The other witnesses who so enjoyed my fright have gone on their way by now. But there are four more lycan guards standing silently a few paces away.

“All right, miss?” the lycan asks.

I jump. “I— yes, fine,” I mumble, terribly aware of the keenness of his gaze, the silence of his movements. And the fact that I am surrounded by guards.

The lycan nods at the other guards, and they move off at once. He must outrank them. “Will you allow me to walk you where you’re going?” He gestures vaguely toward the garden, the buildings on the other side.

“Susulu Hall,” I say, trying not to clutch my pack too tightly. Hopefully, the skirt is doing a good enough job of hiding it — checking would only draw his attention.

“Of course.” He starts forward and I fall into step with him. This is bad. I was supposed to be the invisible serving girl going about my business. Now I have a high-ranking lycan escort. Could I be any more conspicuous?

“Have you been working long at the Mekteb?” he asks as we leave the garden. We cross a wide cobbled walk and step under an arcade. The mosaic beneath this arcade is all blues and greens, sea creatures twining along the edges. At the center swim water maidens, their long hair spread about them.

“Just started,” I mutter, keeping my head bent. He’s probably taken a good look at my face by now, but the less he remembers, the better. In fact, the more I sound like an embarrassed maidservant, the better.

“Ah,” he says knowingly. “That explains why you’re wearing someone else’s clothes.”

I stumble slightly. His hand whips out, steadying me. I go still at his touch.

“And why you’re afraid of me.”

I pull my arm free, glaring straight ahead at the doors of the hall. “I’m not afraid.”

“She has a voice,” he says, eyes twinkling. I feel myself flushing and have to purse my lips from replying. I’m supposed to be a no-one. The less I give him, the better.

“We don’t bite, you know,” he adds.

No, I don’t know,
I think, but I don’t say it. He thinks me harmless, and I want him to forget me as soon as possible.

“I must go. I’m late,” I tell him, keeping my voice steady.

“Then go.” He dips his head and takes his leave, grinning.

I roam the building until I find a young woman polishing the second floor stair railing. She’s dressed in the same garb I am, though the ends of her sleeves have two embroidered diamonds, as white as her
selvar
.

“Oh, hello,” I say with undisguised relief. “Can you help me? I’m new and I’m supposed to help with the cleaning, but I’ve gotten turned around.”

“You’re supposed to be cleaning here?” Frown lines crease her forehead.

“I think so,” I say with a grin and shrug. “Yesterday was my first day, and everything’s a bit of a jumble. Can I help you?”

The girl brightens, any concern for whether I’m in the right place evaporating. “Sure. I’m Esra.”

“Rehan,” I reply, happily stealing the name of Jabir’s helper.

Esra takes me to a supply closet, and is only slightly surprised when I ask if I can leave my bundle there while I clean. “I don’t have a room yet,” I explain. “Once the Festival is over they’ll find me a place.”

“Oh yes,” she says knowingly. “There are always a few servants who miss work and lose their positions. You’ll have a room within a couple days.”

She outfits me with a bucket and brush, and sets me to scrubbing stairs. I start near her, and within a few minutes I have her chatting about working at the Mekteb — and then about the shocking events of the day, and what she found out from her friends a little while ago.

“A rogue mage, can you believe it? Must have been a mage, rather than a wild Promise, to have everyone in such an uproar. Walked right in here and healed a high mage and then walked right back out.” She sits back on her heels and shakes her head. “The Council wanted to shut down the whole campus, but Headmistress Jeweltongue wouldn’t have it.”

“Why not?” I ask curiously.

“Because it’s the Council,” Esra mutters under her breath. I ease back on my heels as well, waiting expectantly. “They’ve been causing trouble all year. Anyhow, Jeweltongue said the mage was probably long gone, and all a lockdown would do is strand most of the students outside the walls, and she couldn’t do that. She’s posted extra guards and mages at all the entrances instead.”

“So they’re still letting people out?”

“Last I heard.” Esra flexes her fingers, then picks up her brush again. “Least ways,
I
don’t intend to miss the Festival over some mage who goes about unexpectedly healing people. There’s much worse in the world, you know.”

I have to agree with that. “Are there other ways out?”

She sighs. “Not with all the trouble we’ve had today. But they’ll get an earful from me if they don’t let us out!”

By the time we reach the third floor, my arms ache, my fingers feel like they’re going to fall off, and we have finally reached what I came here for.

“What’s that?” I ask, pointing my brush at the single arched doorway at the top of the stairs, the wooden door a work of wonder, carved with flowers and trees, animals of all sorts peeking out from behind them. I blink as a monkey drops down from the branches of a tree, sending up a flurry of butterflies that come to rest on the leaves carved across the top of the door.

“First Mage Talon’s rooms,” Esra says. “She had that done her first week here.”

There is no way I would dare try to enter on my own. As much as I need to get in, as little time as I have, I can’t risk doing something stupid and getting caught. It’s likely warded against all attempts at entry, both magical and mundane. I’ll have to find another way in.

“It’s beautiful,” I say, and bend down to scrub the next stair. “I bet she has some amazing things. Wish I could clean in there.”

Esra laughs in agreement. “She’s very particular. Only Housekeeper Yilmaz is allowed to clean her rooms. And they’re always locked when she’s not in, so it’s not like we can just peek in.”

I make a face. “Are all the mages that picky? I can’t imagine they each have a housekeeper assigned.”

“No, just First Mage Talon and Arch Mage Blackflame.”

My fingers convulse on the scrubbing brush. “Blackflame?” I echo. “I’ve heard of him.”

“Haven’t we all,” she agrees. “He’s down a floor. He won’t let anyone into his rooms, though. Brought a servant with him to do his cleaning. And his own source slave.”

I flinch.

She nods, though she can’t know what I’m thinking. “It makes the apprentices really nervous to see source slaves walking around. Although, for the most part, this one stays in his rooms.”

“What do they look like?” I ask, against my better judgement. “What’s so different about them?”

“There’s something about their eyes,” Esra whispers. “And of course they have those tattoos on their arms, the ones that bind them.”

“What about their eyes?” I press. I already know about the ink spells used to bind source slaves’ magic so that they can only funnel it to their masters. Stormwind made sure I understood that much. But she never mentioned anything about eyes.

“I don’t know how to describe it. You’ll see,” Esra says with a slight shudder.

I nod, but I hope I won’t. I don’t want to know what my eyes might look like if I get caught.

Once we finish, we stow away our cleaning supplies in the large basement closet and I collect my skirt-wrapped bundle.

“Are you going out to the Festival?” Esra asks as she stretches her back, hands on her hips.

“Not tonight.” There is no way I’d risk going through even the servants’ gate today, no matter how helpful it might be to speak with the Degaths. At her look of disbelief, I add, “I promised my uncle I’d go straight back to his house. He might let me go out with my cousins a bit.”