Chapter 69: The Pact of Enemies, Part Twelve: The Second Body

The first thing I did upon hearing the scream was count doors.

Mine. Lianza's. Three steps. Pushed without knocking, which is something any etiquette tribunal on this continent would have flayed me for, and she was already standing in the middle of the room with a dagger in her hand and her hair down.

"I'm fine," she said, and lowered the dagger, though she didn't let go of it.

"I didn't ask."

"You were going to."

We stayed like that for two seconds, her barefoot on the stone and me in the doorframe, and I think we both understood at once that this was the closest we'd been in four days.

Then came the second scream. And behind the second scream came the east wing bell, which at Mayorka is only rung for fire or death, and which nobody had rung since the day after a certain white cat led me to a greenhouse.

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The east wing of Mayorka has a service staircase that goes down to the storerooms, narrow, windowless, with a tight turn halfway.

By the time we arrived there were already people. There are always people. It's one of the things I learned this term about the dead: more people gather around a corpse in three minutes than around a living person in three months.

Going down the steps with Lianza behind me and a hand on the arm of a first-year student to move her aside, and at the tight turn of the staircase I saw what I had come to see.

Naral Docaror was against the wall.

He was against the wall the way Dayne Ascalar was against the wall of the greenhouse, which is a posture that doesn't exist. The stone had sunk behind him in a fan of open joints. His chest was caved inward. The bones of his arms had decided, at some point in the last hour, that they were going to bend in abnormal places, places where a normal arm would never bend. His skin had turned blue.

And in the center of his sternum, a clean hole the width of a thumb.

Naral Docaror could harden his skin until it was like steel. He did it several times in class, in front of everyone. I watched him take a practice hammer from Professor Duralianne standing up, laughing.

And there he was, folded like paper from a letter.

I didn't like Naral Docaror. That's the first thing I thought, and it embarrasses me, but it may be just as important to mention. I didn't like him because he laughed with Ardwyn at the things Ardwyn laughs at, and because on Tuesday morning, when a girl from House Sandahll knocked him face-first into the sand, he didn't take the hand she offered him.

Three days. From Tuesday to Thursday.

That night, on that staircase, it didn't cross my mind for a second.

Someone behind me started vomiting. Someone else started praying to the Mother Night under their breath. Looking around and counting heads, because that's what I do when I can't bear to look forward.

Nineteen people on that staircase.

Durania Sandahll was on the topmost step, hands crossed over her skirt, very pale and very proper, looking at the body with a kind of discretion and sorrow.

Nodded a greeting to her. She returned it and lowered her gaze, the way polite people do when they don't want to look too long at a dead man.

And I forgot she was there before I reached the bottom of the staircase.

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The first to arrive were Mayorka's knights, and the first of all was Gaeldor, the one in the unadorned black armor, who climbed the stairs three at a time for his age and weight and cleared the corridor with two sentences.

The second group to arrive were not from Mayorka.

You see, I want you to pay attention to this, because it took me all night to notice and it still irritates me.

Eight men in white and amber capes entered through the north door of the east wing. Eight. Armed, with swords at their belts and Empero lit at half power, lighting the corridor gold. At the front came Kaen and Dalah, who are Ardwyn V of Jahke's personal guards and who until that night I had always seen two steps behind their prince.

They didn't ask anyone anything. They spread through the corridor like people who know the floor plan.

"By order of House Jahke," Kaen said, without raising his voice, "this wing is closed."

"This academy does not belong to House Jahke," Gaeldor said.

"This academy houses the heir of House Jahke, and it has had two corpses in two weeks." Kaen smiled with perfect manners. "Your headmaster has already signed."

And there the conversation ended, because when someone says *your headmaster has already signed* what they're saying is that the discussion happened hours ago, somewhere else, without you.

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The curfew was announced at one in the morning in all four courtyards at once.

Nobody leaves their wing between sunset and sunrise. Hallways are closed. Classes continue, because at Mayorka classes continue even if the roof falls in, but you go to them in groups and escorted. The library closes at sunset.

The library closes at sunset.

Staring at that line on the notice posted on the door for a long while, while beside me thirty students read the top part and I read the bottom. The entire conspiracy I was part of happened at night and happened on the third floor.

"It's over," Layda said, appearing at my side the way she appears, without noise and without permission.

"It's not over."

"It's over at night." She pulled up her hood. "And don't even think about playing the hero with this, Elcronne. We have seventeen days left and you're no use to me detained."

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We walked toward the west wing with the rest of the flock, past white and amber capes every twenty steps.

And halfway there it occurred to me.

"Layda."

"Mmm."

"The Treaty of Ashes prohibits weapons and Empero in civilian zones."

She kept walking exactly the same way. Three steps. Four.

"Yes," she said.

"There are eight Jahke knights with swords and Empero lit inside an academy full of students. Right now. At twenty meters."

"Yes."

"That's the same thing they did in Valah."

"It's exactly the same thing they did in Valah." She stopped under a torch and turned toward me, and for once there was no trace of the shy scholarship girl in that face. "And it's no use to you."

"Why not?"

"Because Mayorka is on the border and is no one's civilian territory, it's academy territory. Because the headmaster has signed, and with the signature of the authority there's no violation, only invitation. And because to take that before the Three you'd need exactly the same three things you need for the other." She started walking again. "They just showed you how it's done, Elcronne. Right under your nose, with all the calm in the world, and perfectly legal."

"Then why are you telling me."

"So you understand who we're playing against. They get the signatures before they dare break the law."

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That night I didn't sleep.

Sat on the floor with my back against my door and Lianza's door three steps away, listening to a patrol that wasn't from my kingdom pass every half hour, and thinking about a boy who could harden his skin into steel and whom something folded as if he were made of letter paper.

One student dead in week one. Another in week two. In the original novel the first corpse appeared halfway through the second volume and it was a second-year boy whose surname I couldn't even remember, and there was no second corpse, because in the original novel by this point Lianza had already rejected Jahke's proposal and this whole story was going somewhere else entirely.

Two dead. Same marks. No signs of struggle.

And a clean hole in the center of the chest, in both.

Garchi came to sleep on my knees and trembled, the way he always does, and I put a hand on his back and stayed looking at the empty hallway.

So far, finding the culprit had eluded me. I had, however, managed to rule out a few. After all, not every Empero is capable of doing what was done to those two corpses. And the longer it took me to find the killer, the more bodies would pile up. After two deaths, the case crossed into serial killer territory... and that thought refused to leave me alone. What if, at some point, I dropped my guard long enough and Lianza ended up...?

I couldn't finish the sentence.

Sometime before dawn, the System appeared without my calling it.

Without any of its annoying emojis, and without dressing things up. Just white letters on black.

[Don't look at the strong ones.]

"What?"

[You're looking for someone capable of doing that to a boy with steel skin. That's what everyone does. What the Council did. What those eight in white capes are doing right now.]

[I told you once and you didn't listen: you know the killer.]

"Tell me the name."

The emoji came back.

[And miss the look on your face when you figure it out? Not a chance. 🎭]

And it left.