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“I had daughters, not sons.” Rue surprised herself by speaking. “Three of them. Triplets. Came closer to killing me than the Academy did.”
Senna’s caw sounded more like an old woman’s than a crow’s.
“One died young, so I know a mother’s loss.”
“Ain’t the same. Kids die young. Babies die like flies. Can’t love them till they’re—”
“Don’t spoil it, Senna. We’re having a moment here. And you know that ain’t true. We love the babies just as much. More maybe, because they’ve never had a chance to disappoint.”
The crow shrugged, like crows don’t. “Still got two then.”
“One’s as good as dead. Left her with the convent. I doubt they’ve managed to keep her alive this long. The other, Cela, hates me. She’s probably dead too. Never could back down from a fight…”
Senna wiped her beak on the fence post. “Sebrin was an arse. Got that from his father. But he loved his mother and his children. I will miss—” She cawed low and long. “It’s done. Burned. Tomorrow it will be ashes.”
“So, what did you see?” Rue still didn’t trust the bird but she felt she understood the woman now.
“A man in black. I think it was a man. Walking alone on the Trevvan Road, coming this way.” Senna shook as if trying to rid her feathers of dirt.
“What was special about this one man?” A chill of premonition ran the length of Rue’s spine. “Did he have a bigger axe than the rest?”
“Couldn’t see a weapon. But he looked like he knew exactly where he was going, and he’s heading our way.” The crow glanced to the north. “And…when I looked at him…”
“Yes?”
“I felt like I was falling. And not just because my wings failed me or something. More like I didn’t have wings. Like I’d never had them, and I was back in that market, falling backwards, not understanding what had hit me or even where.”
“Shit.” Rue turned south and began to walk off swiftly.
“Wait!” Senna took to the air, cawing. “Where are we going?”
“I don’t know where we’re going, but me, I’m running away.”
25
Mollandra
Year Five
In Year Five when the class had shrunk to three dozen, Kindness Undu introduced the survivors to the elixir.
Mollandra had been expecting another session with the mouldering bones of former acolytes. Some of the girls could work wonders, though none were as good as Treecie had been. Sallay could tell you whose bone she held, and maybe something about them. Brooth could make a little homunculus from the smallest bones of fingers and feet, and set it walking the perimeter of the table. The things had something of the insect about them and made Mollandra want to scream.
Instead, Undu took them down a spiral stair they had never seen before, unlocking heavy iron gates at four different places, and waiting in a small alcove for all the girls to pass so she could lock all the gates after the last acolyte.
The girls expected some new atrocity to be waiting for them in the depths. Some method to thin the herd still further, born from the sickness of a diseased mind. A strange stink entered the air as they circled downwards. Not the pervading rot of the catacombs but something almost spicy—such flavours being known to Mollandra only from Instructor Jane’s poisons, some of which needed to be hidden behind a strong taste.
“So, did Einsa tell you about this one?” Mollandra posed the question to the back of Tmanga’s and Sharp’s heads, still not entirely reconciled to the idea that Einsa had shared things with either of them that she had not spoken about to her.
“Not me,” Sharp said.
The scent grew stronger the deeper they went, setting Mollandra’s teeth on edge and filling her with restless energy. And suddenly she knew what strange perfume filled her nostrils. She had mentioned Einsa and perhaps it had been the scent—ever the path to memory—that put the girl’s name on her tongue. This had been what she’d smelled in the steam above Einsa’s watery grave. This had been what lingered in the aftermath of her final fury.
Farther back, infected by the secondhand anger in the air, Sallay began bickering with Gane, which was always a stupid thing to do in Undu’s classes even if she was at the other end of a spiral.
The stairs terminated against the side of a vault with a high roof and circular floor. An extensive mosaic covered the ground, its design unfurling and colours deepening as Undu walked the perimeter lighting candle after candle in niches around the walls. Decoration was almost unheard of in the Academy.
The Academy, via the Kindnesses, claimed whatever took their fancy from the corpses of the guilty, as well as one tenth of any wergild paid under their supervision. Those riches were not spent on the fort, at least not where the acolytes could see it. Whether that wealth flowed back out into the world to fund secret projects, or lay heaped in neglected piles in the Academy vaults, Mollandra had yet to learn.
