Chapter 71: he Pact of Enemies, Part Fourteen: Sixteen Days

Professor Cordevan began Friday afternoon's class by writing a number on the blackboard.

16

"This is the only relevant piece of data today," he said. "Everything else is decoration."

Nobody took notes. Everyone understood.

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽ ☆ ☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

That afternoon he didn't talk about seals. He talked about chairs.

"A state wedding is judged by who sits and where. You are going to go to that cathedral to stare at the bride and groom like peasants at a fair. Make that mistake once in your life and let it be there." He knocked the blackboard with his knuckle. "In a ceremony of this caliber, what matters is never at the altar. It's in the second row."

He drew the nave. A long rectangle, the altar at the top, two blocks of pews.

"House Jahke on the right. House D'Tariel on the left. The invited houses behind, by rank. And here." He marked a transverse band, in front of everyone, level with the altar. "Here sits the Empero Council."

My head came up so fast my neck cracked.

"The Council attends?"

"The Council attends, young Elcronne, and not as a guest. A blood seal is deposited in a god, but it is registered before men. When two great houses unite seals, the Empero Council is present in full to bear witness to the registration." Cordevan leaned on the desk. "Nine of twelve minimum, or the union is not attested. It's one of the very few things on this continent that forces those people to be in the same room."

Nine of twelve.

Wrote that down and underlined it three times, and spent the rest of the explanation with my mind somewhere else and my pulse ridiculously high.

Because an impugnation is brought before the Three Gods, and the Three Gods don't come down to sign papers.

Men judge it.

The same men who are going to be sitting in a transverse band, level with the altar, on the first of February, watching.

Hand went up again.

"Professor. Who are the twelve?"

"That list is known by anyone with ears in a tavern." Cordevan counted on his fingers, bored. "Four Bookforgers from Galia. The commander of the Squadron. The head of Investigators. Four Rank S professors, one per academy. And two kings."

"Which two kings?"

Cordevan looked at me, and by the way he took his time answering, I knew he already knew why I was asking.

"Zaleador D'Tariel," he said. "And Varanian IV of Jahke."

And just like that, in four words, the entire building I'd spent ten minutes constructing crashed down on top of me.

The tribunal comes to the wedding. Wonderful. And in that tribunal sit the bride's father, who can't sign anything without starting a war, and the groom's father, who is the house against which everything would have to be proven.

Nine of twelve.

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽ ☆ ☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

Layda caught up with me at the exit without looking at me, at the exact distance of two strangers.

"You understood."

"They're all there."

"They're all there," she repeated. "Nine of twelve, in the same room, forced to listen. Elcronne, I've spent three weeks trying to figure out how to get those people together and the answer was that they gather on their own, that day, by protocol."

"The tribunal comes to the wedding."

"The tribunal is the wedding." She pulled up her hood. "We're missing the usual. The evidence, the signature, and the blood."

"With Varanian sitting on the bench."

"With Varanian sitting on the bench," she admitted, unfazed. "An interested judge is still a judge, and an interested judge in front of eight others has to pretend much better than one alone. That cuts both ways."

"That's optimism."

"That's arithmetic." She shrugged. "Though I'll admit today they sound similar."

"We're missing everything."

"We're missing less than yesterday." And she split from me at the first hallway junction, the way we always do.

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽ ☆ ☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

You see, that feeling lasted exactly forty steps of hallway. Forty steps walking faster than I should, being for the first time in three weeks a man with a plan.

On the forty-first he appeared.

[Romeo! 🎺 What a week you're having. Two corpses, eight foreign knights, and a princess who won't talk to you. And still there you go, head held high.]

Didn't answer. Sometimes it works.

[Yeah, yeah. We need to talk about the mission.]

"I haven't failed anything. Sixteen days left."

[Nobody said you failed. It's an administrative update. Very boring. Hardly worth mentioning.]

Stopping in the middle of the hallway.

[The penalty for non-compliance no longer falls on Lianza D'Tariel.]

And there, for the record, I felt relief. Half a second of pure stupid relief, like setting a heavy box on the ground.

"Why?"

[Because it doesn't work.] [I've spent three months threatening you with her and three months watching you do exactly what I want for fear something happens to her. And that doesn't amuse me anymore, Romeo. You've gotten the face of someone who knows how much everything costs.]

"Then put it on me."

[On you it can't work. We've been over this. You're the subscriber.]

"Then on who."

There was a pause.

The System pauses when it's about to enjoy something, and I'd spent three months learning to distinguish the entertaining pauses from the others.

That was one of the others.

[Astara Elcronne.]

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽ ☆ ☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

Leaned against the wall.

You see, you already know her a bit. She's the woman who scrubs the pot when the other cooks go out to serve. The one who passed my father three bowls of stew without a word. The one who received a cat with wet hands and pursed lips and told me eat something when you get back.

And the one who is going to be in the kitchens of that cathedral on the first of February. Full shift. Wilda read it yesterday morning, out loud, from a list.

"My mother has no combat Empero. She has compression. It's good for fitting an entire pantry into a cupboard."

[I know.]

"My mother is not part of this."

[Alexia Vane wasn't part of this either and you broke her ankle, if I recall correctly. Well. I broke it. For you.]

"And if I complete the mission?"

[Then nothing happens and everyone's happy. It's a very simple mission, Romeo. A lady. A phrase. Out loud. There are thirty in this academy who'd say yes just to see Princess D'Tariel's face.]

"You know exactly what you're asking me."

[I'm asking you to give a girl your arm to walk into a cathedral. You're the one who's decided that means something.]

"You're a disgusting thing."

[I'm a mandatory-subscription entertainment system, Romeo, and I've spent three months trying to make this story good. You've gotten very comfortable. You knew the princess was protected by me for my own interest: she's half the show. Your mother is of no interest to anyone.]

My throat closed.

[And that's why she's worth it.]

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽ ☆ ☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

Stayed a long while in that hallway, back against the stone and people passing in groups of three, because in this academy nobody walks alone anymore.

Went over the entire week looking for the exact place where it had gone wrong.

Monday I had a word: impugn. Tuesday I had three impossible things. Wednesday I had a sealed file with fresh ink and a cat that gets warm. Thursday I learned what my cat is, and that same night they folded a boy with steel skin against a wall. Friday I discovered the tribunal comes to the wedding.

And now I had my mother on the list.

Sixteen days.

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽ ☆ ☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

That night, with the curfew already sounded and the hallways full of white and amber capes, I did two things.

The first was write a letter to my father. Tore it up. Wrote another. Tore that up too. On the third I stared at the blank paper for a very long time, because I realized the only thing I wanted to write him was a question he wasn't going to answer.

The second was much worse.

Went down to the first floor, where you can still stay until the bell, and looked for Alexia Vane among the crowd, and found her by the fireplace with the baby harpy asleep in her lap.

Sat down beside her.

Asked her how the little thing was. She told me it had bitten her three times and she'd named it Duchess, and that her father was going to hate the name, and that that was largely the point.

I laughed at something she said, and it took me no effort to laugh, and that was the worst part of all. Alexia Vane is funny. Alexia Vane was the first person this System hurt because of me, and that night she was sitting beside me, with an animal asleep in her lap, being funny with me.

And when she looked at me with those freckles of hers and said hey, I meant what I said the other day, I didn't say no.

I didn't say yes either.

I stayed quiet just long enough for her to understand whatever she wanted to understand, which is the most cowardly way of lying I know, and I went to my room before the bell.

Garchi was waiting on my pillow.

"Don't look at me like that."

He looked at me like that.