Chapter 160: Watch His Feet

Casper ate eleven rolls at breakfast.

I counted. I wasn’t trying to. It’s just that when somebody’s marked as the fifth seat at a god’s dinner table, you notice what goes into his mouth.

"These are *amazing,*" he said, spraying crumbs across the table. "Why didn’t anybody tell me the rolls were this good?"

"They’re the same rolls as always," Pollux said. He looked like he hadn’t slept. "You said they tasted like gravel."

"I was wrong! I was young and stupid!"

"That was last week."

The dining hall was loud this morning. Every table buzzed. I sat at the end of ours with a mug of tea I wasn’t drinking, a cracked rib I was ignoring, and the very specific headache of a man who’d spent three minutes borrowing power he wasn’t supposed to have.

"Did you hear?" Castor leaned in. For a man his size, he was terrible at whispering. "Someone found the granary this morning. Five dead. Cultists. All cut up neat, like somebody wanted it quiet. And the head cook’s missing."

"Master Pell?" Lyra said.

"Yeah. His oven burned all night. They found him on the floor. Smiling."

"Smiling," Pollux repeated, sounding sick.

"It was the Ghost," Castor said, with the happy horror of a boy who’s decided something is cool and can’t help it. "It’s gotta be. Who else?"

"I like the Ghost," Casper said around a mouthful of roll.

"Everybody likes the Ghost," I said, "until he’s at their door."

"You say that like you’ve met him."

"I read."

I ate a bite of toast. It tasted like ash. Under the table, Aurelix’s tail curled around my wrist, the way it does when she’s trying very hard not to say *I told you so.*

*You don’t need to say it,* I told her.

*I didn’t say anything.*

*You’re thinking it loudly.*

*Perhaps,* she admitted. *Perhaps I’m thinking that the boy just ate a pound of bread and his thumbprint is warm.*

I looked. Casper had scratched at his eye. The ash mark pulsed under his fingers like a tiny, fond heartbeat.

---

I’d decided to tell no one.

That lasted until the training yard at noon, where Mirain was waiting for me by the stacked crates, arms folded, hawk on her shoulder, looking like a cat that’d found a very nervous mouse.

"Valen. A word."

"I’ve got archive duty—"

"It’ll keep." She nodded toward the yard. "Walk with me."

Nobody else was close. Lyra was fifty feet off, sorting practice staves. The rest of Cell One was over by the barrels, arguing about something.

"You look tired," Mirain said.

"Long night."

"Mm." She didn’t look at me. "I didn’t sleep either. I kept thinking about the hall. About the loaf." She tapped her coat, right where it lay. "I’ve been trying to decide what I’m supposed to do with it."

"You could give it to me."

"Why? So you can throw it away?"

"Yes."

"No."

I’d hoped. I’d really hoped.

"Here’s what I think," Mirain said conversationally. "I think you know more than you say. I think the way you moved yesterday wasn’t a clerk’s. I think the way you talked about being a spare wasn’t a clerk’s either." Her eyes flicked to my face. "And I think there’s something in my pocket that likes you."

I felt my pulse in my throat.

She took the vial out. The black drop was inside it, small as a seed, pulsing slow and even.

"It does this near you," she said. "Only you. And last night, when I walked past the east granary on my way back from the infirmary, it was pounding like a drum." She smiled, thin and sharp. "Funny, isn’t it? Right where a lot of people died."

"Mirain—"

"I’m not accusing you." She tucked the vial away. "I’m *testing* you."

"Testing me how?"

She didn’t answer. She only lifted one hand, very slightly, toward the stacked crates behind Lyra.

*Oh no,* Aurelix said.

The thread caught the top crate with a bright red snap, and it tipped.

I’d like to say I stayed still. I’d like to say I kept my face blank and my body calm, like a man who’d never moved fast in his life.

Mirain had read me better than that. It’s the oldest trick there is. *Put someone in danger. Watch his feet.*

The crate fell.

Lyra didn’t even see it. She was bent over a rack of staves with her back turned, humming.

My left foot slid forward before my brain caught up. My weight dropped. Two lifetimes of weapon-master training took over my whole body, hips low, shoulder cocked, scythe grip already half-formed in my right hand.

Then I caught myself.

I stopped. I made my body stop. I let my foot slide backward, stumbled like a clerk, and yelled, "LYRA! BEHIND YOU!"

Lyra looked up, shrieked, and dove sideways. The crate hit the dirt and burst into splinters six inches from where she’d been standing.

Mirain’s thread snapped back into her hand.

"Huh," Mirain said, watching me.

"What was *that?!*" Lyra screamed, scrambling up. "Who threw that? WHO DID THAT?!"

"Wasn’t me," Mirain said blandly.

"It was *you!*"

"Loose crate. It happens."

I stood there with my heart hammering and my hand shaking, and I knew I’d failed. Not completely. I’d stopped my arm in time. But my feet had already moved, and Mirain had watched them go.

"That’s one," Mirain said, quiet, as she walked past me. "Don’t worry, Valen. I’m not telling anybody. I’m just *collecting.*"

She went to help Lyra up. She was very sweet about it.

*Darling,* Aurelix said, *I really think you ought to stop collecting enemies who keep lists.*

"I’m not collecting them," I muttered. "They’re collecting me."

---

I told Lyra that night.

I found her in the potions loft at the back of the library, surrounded by jars, leaning over a boiling flask with her sleeves pushed up. She didn’t look up when I came in.

"If you’re here to tell me it was salve, I’ll hit you with this."

"It wasn’t salve."

"I *know* it wasn’t salve."

"It was something else. I can’t tell you what. But Casper’s in trouble, Lyra. The thing in the hall left a mark on him, and it’s not gone." I sat on a stool. "I need somebody who knows poisons, and curses, and things that are neither."

She stared at me for a long moment. Then she put down the flask.

"The thumbprint," she said.

"You noticed."

"It *moves,* Valen. When he’s asleep. I check on him between classes." Her voice shook. "I haven’t told anyone because I thought it was only me."

"Not only you."

"There’s an old binding in the apothecary texts," she said, pulling a cracked book off the shelf. "Hunger-marks. The cultists in the border villages used them. Feed a person, mark them, and they stop being a guest and start being *furniture.* The book says it takes seven nights." She swallowed. "He’s had three."

"Four more, then."

"Four more. If I’m reading it right." She looked up. "And if I’m wrong, we don’t find out until it’s too late."

"We find out what it is. Then we figure out how to cut it off him." I held her gaze. "Without telling anyone else. Not yet."

"Why not?"

"Because the last time somebody tried to help him, it made things worse."

She flinched. She knew I meant me.

"Fine," she whispered. "But if it hurts him, I’ll end you."

"Deal."

We shook on it. Her hands were small, calloused, and ink-stained, and I thought, absurdly, *I hope she lives.*

---

Pollux found me at the foot of the stairs, a few minutes past midnight.

He was in his nightshirt and one boot. His hair was wild. He was out of breath.

"Valen. Valen, have you seen Casper?"

Everything in me went cold.

"He’s not in bed?"

"He was asleep. I was *right there.* I closed my eyes for a second and he was gone, and the window was open—" He swallowed. "He’s been sleepwalking all week. But he’s never gone out."

*Valerian,* Aurelix said, in the small voice she only used when she was afraid.

I was already running.

We tore across the courtyard, past the library, past the east gatehouse. The night was dead still. Every lamp was out. At the far end of the lane, the Sector B gate rose up in the dark like a mouth.

Casper stood in front of it.

He was barefoot, in his shirt, arms hanging loose. The two guards posted on either side of the gate stood perfectly rigid, swords drawn, eyes open and glassy. Neither of them blinked. Neither of them moved.

The gate stood wide open.

"Casper!" Pollux started forward. I caught his collar and hauled him back before he’d taken two steps.

"Don’t. Look at the floor."

Pollux looked. A thin line of white salt ran from the gate across the cobbles, straight to Casper’s bare feet. It hadn’t been there at sundown. Somebody had been laying it all night, one grain at a time.

Casper turned his head, slowly, the way a sleeper turns, and smiled at us. The thumbprint under his left eye was open now, a thin dark seam, wet and shining.

"Hi, Valen," he said, in a voice that was almost his. "It’s setting the table."