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He snorts. “Leave Renata’s class early? She’ll have your head on a pike. No, let’s think this through.”

So we make a plan. It’s a rickety one, but it’s the only one we have. He will tell Caranthis, since he is his boss, that he caught a bad flu in Sogliano over the weekend, took to his bed, missed Monday class because he was too sick. He’ll ask to be on reduced duties while he recovers, so he’ll still be at the school, because he has to be or the tether will fail. Or we assume it will fail. I just know that if he actually goes back to Sogliano and I stay here, I don’t think he’ll survive. Can he die twice? I don’t want to find out.

“Alright, but when I’m in class, where will you be?”

“I’ll go to the lounge.”

“That’s a little far away from where I’ll be.”

“It will be fine,” he says, as if he knows that. “The illness is my cover, so if I start falling over and breathing strangely, no one will think much of it, except to perhaps start wearing plague masks around me. Besides, the lounge means other people. If someone comes for me again, there are witnesses.” He pauses. “And I can’t sit still in this room forever. You know that.”

I do know that. I just don’t like it.

“Well, the lounge is about the same distance to Renata’s classroom as this room,” I say. “But promise you’ll try to stay in bed if you can, at least at first. You need to get your strength back. You need to sleep.”

He grumbles in response.

“Promise?” I add.

More grumbles.

“Oh, but wait,” I say. “You said you’re going to Caranthis?”

“I must at some point. He’s the one who pays me. Why?”

I take in a deep breath and I tell him about what we overheard when we were hiding in the corridor on the night of the Veil Trial. Then I tell him about the flashes I saw when I grabbed his hand after he had died. That he was somewhere with Caranthis, having a heated conversation about something or other.

“Why didn’t you tell me this earlier?” he asks when I’m done.

“Well, I’m sorry, if you haven’t noticed there are a lot of pieces to pick up after you bring someone back from the dead.”

“Fair,” he says with a nod, looking somewhat grim. “Well, I will keep all of that in mind.”

“The fact that when you talk to Caranthis, he might be surprised to see you alive? Are you not worried about him literally stabbing you in the back again?”

“Oh, I’m worried,” he says, flashing me a stiff smile. “But I’ll think of something. At least if he tries to kill me again, we’ll for sure know it was him.”

“And we’ll know that your research got dangerously close to something he was involved in.”

We think about that for a moment. Could it really be Caranthis? I suppose if anyone fits in the role of villain at Mortis, it would be him. I have a feeling that man has done some terrible things before he graced these halls. We know nothing about his past.

“One more thing,” Baz says. “The ward around the bed. You said last night nobody can see what you’ve placed on the bed. Do I count as placed?”

“Not yet.”

“Then place me, please.”

“Lie back,” I say.

He does as he’s told and lies back on the pillow. I kneel on the mattress beside him. I put my hand on his chest, right over his breastbone, where I can feel his heartbeat (at least that is back to normal), and I say the word in my grandmother’s tongue that means mine to keep hidden, and the chartreuse flares at my hand for a second, bright enough that his eyes catch it even though he can’t see the tether itself, and then calms.

“And so it is,” I say.

Now he is in the ward.

“That’s it?” he asks.

“That’s it. Stay on the bed and nobody will see you. Get off the bed and you’re back to being a professor caught hanging out in a student’s room.”