Simmon brought his hand down hard on the tabletop, causing several students to look in our direction. “Dammit!” he hissed. “I grew up thirty miles from Gibea! From my father’s hills you can see the ruins on a cloudless day!”
That stilled me. If Sim’s family lands were that close, his ancestors must have been fealty-bound to Gibea. That meant they might have been forced to help him gather subjects for his experiments. Some of his family might have ended up in the pits of bone and ash themselves.
I waited a long while before I whispered again, “I didn’t know.”
He regained most of his composure. “We don’t talk about it,” he said stiffly, brushing the hair out of his eyes.
We bent to our studies, and it was an hour before Simmon spoke again. “What did you find?” he asked too casually, as if not wanting to admit his curiosity.
“Here on the inner leaf,” I whispered excitedly. I opened the cover and Sim’s face twisted unconsciously as he looked down at the page, as if the book smelled of death.
“. . . spilled it all over.” I heard a voice as a pair of older students strolled into the hall. By their rich clothes I could tell they were both nobility, and while they weren’t shouting, they weren’t making any effort to be quiet, either. “Anisat made him clear up the mess before he let him wash off. He’ll smell like urea for a span of days.”
“What’s here to see?” Simmon asked, looking down at the page. “It’s just his name and the dates.”
“Not the middle, look up at the top. Around the edges of the page.” I pointed at the decorative scrollwork. “Right there.”
“I’d wager a drab the little pug poisons himself before the term’s through,” the other one said, “Were we ever that stupid?”
“I still don’t see anything,” Simmon said softly, making a baffled gesture with both his elbows on the table. “It’s pretty enough if you like that sort of thing, but I’ve never been a great fan of illuminated texts.”
“We could head to the Twopenny
.
” The conversation continued several tables away, drawing annoyed looks from surrounding students. “They’ve got a girl there who plays the pipes, I swear you’ve never seen anything like her before. And Linten says if you’ve got a bit of silver she . . .” His voice dropped conspiratorially.
“She what?” I asked, butting into their conversation as rudely as possible. I didn’t need to shout. In the Tomes a normal speaking voice carries the whole room. “I’m afraid I didn’t quite catch that last bit.”
The two of them gave me affronted looks, but didn’t reply.
“What are you doing?” Sim hissed at me, embarrassed.
“I’m trying to shut them up,” I said.
“Just ignore them,” he said. “Here, I’m looking at your damn book. Show me what you want me to see.”
“Gibea sketched all his own journals,” I said. “This is his original, so it makes sense that he did his own scrollwork too, right?” Sim nodded and brushed his hair back from his eyes. “What do you see there?” I slowly pointed from one piece of scrollwork to another. “Do you see it?”
Sim shook his head.
I pointed again, more precisely. “There,” I said, “and there in the corner.”
His eyes widened. “Letters!
I
. . .
v
. . .” he paused to puzzle them out,“
Ivare enim euge.
That’s what you were rambling about.” He pushed the book away. “So what’s the point, aside from the fact that he was nearly illiterate in Temic?”
“It’s not Temic.” I pointed out. “It’s Tema. An archaic usage.”
“What is it even supposed to say?” He looked up from his book, his brow creasing. “Toward great good?”
I shook my head. “For
greater
good,” I corrected. “Sound familiar?”
“I don’t know how long she’ll be there,” one of the loud pair continued. “If you miss her you’ll regret it
.
”
“I told you, I can’t tonight. Maybe on Felling. I’ll be free on Felling.”
“You should go before then,” I told him. “The Twopenny’s crowded Felling night.”
They gave me irritated looks. “Mind your own business, slipstick,” the taller one said.
That got my back up even more. “I’m sorry, weren’t you talking to me?”
“Did it
look
like I was talking to you?” he said scathingly.
“It
sounded
like it,” I said. “If I can hear you three tables away you must want me to be part of your conversation.” I cleared my throat. “The only alternative is that you’re too thick to keep your voice down in the Tomes.”
His face flushed red and he probably would have replied, but his friend said something in his ear and they both gathered their books and left. There was a quiet scattering of applause as the door closed behind them. I gave my audience a smile and a wave.
“The scrivs would have taken care of that,” Sim reproached softly as we leaned back over the table to talk.
“The scrivs weren’t taking care of it,” I pointed out. “Besides, it’s quiet again, and that’s what matters. Now, what does ‘for greater good’ remind you of?”
“The Amyr, of course,” he said. “It’s always the Amyr with you lately. What’s your point?”
“The point,” I whispered excitedly, “is that Gibea was a secret member of the order Amyr.”
Sim gave me a skeptical look. “That’s a bit of a stretch, but I suppose it fits. That was about fifty years before they were denounced by the church. They were pretty corrupt by then.”
I wanted to point out that Gibea wasn’t necessarily corrupt. He was pursuing the Amyr’s purpose, the greater good. While his experiments had been horrifying, his work advanced medicine in ways it was almost impossible to comprehend. His work had probably saved ten times that many lives in the hundreds of years since.
However, I doubted Sim would appreciate my point. “Corrupt or not, he was a secret member of the Amyr. Why else would he hide their credo in the front cover of his journal?”
Simmon shrugged. “Fine, he was one of the Amyr. What does that have to do with the price of butter?”
I threw up my hands in frustration and struggled to keep my voice low. “That means the order had secret members
before
the church denounced them! That means when the pontifex disbanded them, the Amyr had hidden allies. Allies that could keep them safe. That means the Amyr could still exist today, in secret, pursuing their work in subtle ways.”
I noticed a change in Simmon’s face. At first I thought he was about to agree with me. Then I felt a prickle on the back of my neck and realized the truth. “Hello Master Lorren,” I greeted him respectfully without turning around.
“Speaking with students at other tables is not permitted,” he said from behind me. “You are suspended for five days.”
I nodded and the two of us came to our feet and gathered up our things. Expressionless, Master Lorren reached out a long hand toward me.
I handed Gibea’s journal over without comment and a minute later we were blinking in the chill winter sunlight outside the Archive’s doors. I pulled my cloak around me and stomped the snow off my feet.
“Suspended,” Simmon said. “That was clever.”
I shrugged, more embarrassed than I cared to admit. I hoped one of the other students would explain I was actually trying to keep things quiet, rather than the other way around. “I was just trying to do the right thing.”
Simmon laughed as we began to walk slowly in the direction of Anker’s. He kicked playfully at a small drift of snow. “The world needs people like you,” Simmon said in the tone of voice that let me know he was turning philosophical. “You get things done. Not always the best way, or the most sensible way, but it gets done nonetheless. You’re a rare creature.”
“How do you mean?” I asked, my curiosity piqued.
Sim shrugged. “Like today. Something bothers you, someone offends you, and suddenly you’re off.” He made a quick motion with a flat hand. “You know exactly what to do. You never hesitate, you just see and react.” He was thoughtful for a moment. “I imagine that’s the way the Amyr used to be. Small wonder folk were frightened of them.”
“I’m not always so terribly sure of myself,” I admitted.
Simmon smiled. “I find that strangely reassuring.”
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Penance
S
INCE STUDYING WASN’T AN option and winter was covering everything in drifts of blowing snow, I decided this was the perfect time to catch up on a few things I’d been letting fall by the wayside.
I tried to pay Auri a visit, but ice covered the rooftops and the courtyard where we usually met was full of drifted snow. I was glad I didn’t see any footprints, as I didn’t think Auri owned shoes, let alone a coat or hat. I would have gone searching for her in the Underthing, but the iron grate in the courtyard was locked and iced over.
I worked a few double shifts in the Medica and played an extra night at Anker’s as an apology for the evening when I’d had to leave early. I worked long hours in the Fishery, calculating, running tests, and casting alloys for my project. I also made a point of catching up on a month of lost sleep.
But there is only so much sleeping one person can do, and by the fourth day of my suspension, I’d run out of excuses. As much as I didn’t want to, I needed to talk to Devi.
By the time I made up my mind to go, the weather had warmed just enough so that the falling snow had turned to sheets of freezing sleet.
It was a miserable walk to Imre. I didn’t have hat or gloves, and the wind-driven sleet soaked my cloak within five minutes. In ten minutes I was wet through to the skin and wishing I’d waited or spent the money on a carriage. The sleet had melted the snow on the road, and the damp slush was inches thick.
I stopped by the Eolian to warm myself a bit before heading to Devi’s. But the building was locked and lightless for the first time I’d ever seen. Small wonder. What noble would come out in this weather? What musician would expose their instrument to the freezing damp?
So I slogged my way through the deserted streets, eventually coming to the alley behind the butcher’s shop. It was the first time I could remember the stairway not smelling of rancid fat.
I knocked on Devi’s door, alarmed by how numb my hand was. I could barely feel my knuckles hitting the door. I waited for a long moment, then knocked again, worried that she might not be in, and I’d come all this way for nothing.
The door opened just a little. Warm lamplight and a single icy blue eye peered out through the crack. Then the door opened wide.
“Tehlu’s tits and teeth,” Devi said. “What are you doing out in this?”
“I thought—”
“No you didn’t,” she said disparagingly. “Get in here.”
I stepped inside, dripping, the hood of my cloak plastered to my head. She closed the door behind me, then locked and bolted it. Looking around I noticed she’d added a second bookshelf, though it was still mostly bare. I shifted my weight and a great mass of damp slush dislodged itself from my cloak and splattered wetly onto the floor.
Devi gave me a long, dispassionate looking over. I could see a fire crackling in the grate on the other side of the room near her desk, but she made no indication that I should come any farther into the room. So I remained where I was, dripping and shivering.
“You never do things the easy way, do you?” she said.
“There’s an easy way?” I asked.
She didn’t laugh. “If you think showing up here half-frozen and looking like a kicked dog is going to improve my disposition toward you, you’re terribly . . .” She trailed off and looked at me thoughtfully for another long moment. “I’ll be damned,” she said, sounding surprised. “I actually do like seeing you like this. It’s lifting my spirits to an almost irritating degree.”
“It wasn’t really my intention,” I said. “But I’ll take it. Would it help if I caught a terrible cold?”
Devi considered it. “It might,” she admitted. “Penance does involve a certain amount of suffering.”
I nodded, not having to work to look miserable. I dug into my purse with clumsy fingers and brought out a small bronze coin I’d won off Sim playing low-stakes breath several nights ago.
Devi took it. “A penance piece,” she said, unimpressed. “Is this supposed to be symbolic?”
I shrugged, causing more slush to spatter to the floor. “Somewhat,” I said. “I thought of going to a moneychanger and settling my entire debt with you in penance coin.”
“What stopped you?” she asked.
“I realized it would just irritate you,” I said. “And I wasn’t looking forward to paying the moneychanger’s fee.” I fought the urge to looking longingly at the fireplace. “I’ve spent a lot of time trying to think of some gesture that might make a suitable apology to you.”
“You decided it would be best to walk here during the worst weather of the year?”
“I decided it would be best if we talked,” I said. “The weather was just a happy accident.”