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Twenty

SATURNA

The first thing I do when I open my eyes is check the beam above the bed. The moth still isn’t there.

“Hello?” I call out. “Is anyone there?”

The silence pulls at the thread around my heart. I just woke up and yet I’m already feeling like I’m about to be unspooled. All the thoughts of yesterday, of Baz, come flooding through my head and into my chest, making it hard to breathe.

The light outside the window is a thick, dark grey, a sign that it will rain later. I lay there for a long time thinking about staying in the bed. I missed dinner last night, I’ve already missed breakfast again, perhaps I’ll just miss the rest of the day. After all, I’ve got Bone Work, which is the absolute last place I want to be.

If you don’t go, then he wins, I remind myself. You’ll make it easier on his conscience if you’re not there. You should go. Be a menace.

I decide to listen to myself. After I get ready, I head down to the refractory and grab a late breakfast or late lunch, whatever you want to call it. I don’t see any of my friends but Hester is there eating and she motions for me to join her. I like Hester, even though she’s very quiet, and that’s exactly the person I need to be with today because I don’t feel like talking much either and she’s the type to be okay with that.

After I’m done with my rye bread and chestnut soup, I head to the library. This time I’m hoping I don’t run into Baz because I’m not sure what I would do if I saw him up close and alone. I’m not a violent person, but there’s a part of me that thinks I could slap him. Just a little, just once. It might even feel good.

But he’s thankfully not in the library and I keep myself busy until Bone Work by going through books about Hollows. I think about what Baz said (because it’s impossible to not think about the bastard): it’s interesting to me that it saw you and then chose to go another way. It’s the choosing that’s strange here. Not only did it not attack you, but it chose to ignore you and go elsewhere.

If Hollows can’t choose, then why did it? Or is our understanding of them completely wrong?

But it doesn’t matter how many books I read, no one seems to know much about them. The only person who does is Professor Renata, and whatever books she lectures from aren’t here in the library. I suppose I could finally admit to her what I saw but something deep inside me, some witchy instinct, tells me that’s a bad idea.

Eventually I close up the books, put them back on the shelves and head to class. I’m a little early this time, mainly because I want to be in my place at the slab before he comes in. I want him to walk in and see me already there, so he doesn’t get the chance to rearrange his face.

The crypt is lit but the slab is bare. Just as it was the other day—it’s creepy when there’s no one here.

The others trickle in slowly, Harken and Nelle, then Ambrose and Avelene. Avelene gives me the look she’s been waiting all weekend to give me, the one that says we are going to talk about this later and you don’t get to pretend we aren’t, before she takes her place. I notice Nelle is giving me a similar look, though hers is a little more gentle, perhaps because she can read something on my face, see that I’m actually close to dying on the inside. Eventually Sable and a few other stragglers come in and the class is ready.

But there is no Baz.

He’s never late. He’s either here early, with a look on his face that makes one feel like they’re interrupting him, or he appears from the passage, right on time. The candles flutter and Harken murmurs something I don’t catch and Avelene’s eyes keep going to the door at the back. Someone coughs and clears their throat. Another asks for the time.

Suddenly an attendant appears at the door in their robe, a lantern in their hand.

“Professor Vale isn’t here,” the attendant says. “Class is dismissed.”

Nobody moves. Then Nelle picks up her satchel and goes without a word and Harken follows her. Ambrose puts a hand on my arm as he passes and I don’t know what he thinks he knows but the kindness almost undoes me.

Avelene stays and looks me over.

“Saturna, you look like something crawled out of the lagoon and died on your face. Where have you been? You’ve been missing dinners, breakfasts. I’ve knocked on your door several times and you don’t answer. What happened?”

“I know,” I say, grateful for her concern but still needing distance. “I’m sorry. I will…I’ll find you later, I promise, I just need to do something first.”

“Later as in today, because tomorrow I’m coming through the door whether you’ve unlocked it or not. Fair warning. I have ways. And by ways, I mean Ambrose. He knows how to pick a lock.”

“Today. I promise.”

She looks at me for a long moment, like she’s deciding whether to push and then she decides not to, and leaves.

I stand in the empty crypt and look around, trying to think.

My first thought is that Baz is gone, that he left, that he took the ferry to Sogliano and the simplest way to finish what he started was to put water between us and let the term bleed out.

But that doesn’t ring true. He even said his career was more important than me, he made sure to tell me that. So if his career is that important, why would he miss class?

Maybe you scared him, I think to myself.