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“Duly noted.”

I pull my hand off his chest and go to my wardrobe to pick out a dress. I grab my teal one and make no move to cover myself. I don’t care if he sees me strip naked at this point.

But ever the gentleman, he turns his head so he’s looking at the wall.

I get dressed in my undergarments, then step into the dress and put on my boots, half-leaning against the wall so I don’t topple over. When I’m done, I’m about as presentable as I’m going to look today.

“Be careful,” he says to me, still looking the other way. His courtesy is cute, though in some ways I wish he would have looked at me. Maybe he would have remembered that we slept together. The fact that the graveyard tryst hasn’t surfaced in his memory is just a trifle insulting.

“You be careful,” I tell him. “And stay on that bed and sleep as much as you can.”

“What if I need to use the bathroom?”

I laugh. “You’re a big boy, I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”

Then I grab my satchel and go.

By the time I reach the second floor where Renata’s classroom is, the tether is thinner than it was in my bedroom. Not fragile but noticeably thinner, as if the color of it has been diluted. I feel it inside my chest more than I see it. A thrum, slightly offbeat with my pulse.

Avelene is in our usual seats and the moment she looks up at me, I can tell I really must look awful. Her brows go to the ceiling, her face riddled with concern and something else. Maybe annoyance, because she’s being kept in the dark and she hates that.

I pass by Renata’s desk, hoping she doesn’t look at me and ask the questions Avelene wants to ask, but instead she’s looking down at her books. Her usual scent is strong today, sweet lilac over something older, a greasy note underneath like a shawl that has been worn for years without going into the wash and mothballs. The lilac is laid on thick enough that I think she has refreshed the perfume right before class.

I sit down beside Avelene, ignoring her questioning eyes, and Renata begins the lecture without her usual theatrical opening, going straight into a dry account of the second plague wave and the records that survived it. Instead of pacing the room and reading from memory, she reads from her notes rather than looking up. When one of the first-years in the row ahead of me asks a question, she answers it without looking at him.

I do my best to concentrate and take what notes I can, but I’m also watching the tether thin and thicken by the smallest degrees as it goes straight out of me and through the wall and into the rest of the school, presumably connecting to Baz in my room.

When the bell rings, I’m hurrying out of the class to get back to him in time, worried about the state I will find him in, when Avelene reaches out and grabs my arm.

“Oh no you don’t.”

“Avelene,” I warn her as she pulls me to a stop in the hallway.

“You promised,” she says with a pout, and even though I know she’s exaggerating her expression, I can tell there’s some real hurt underneath. “You promised last night you would come to my room so we could talk about what on earth is going on with you. And now you come into class looking like you spent the night in a well, and Professor Vale isn’t anywhere to be seen, and nobody will tell me a thing. So you are going to tell me all the things, Saturna, or I am going to make the rest of your day very, very annoying.”

“He was sick,” I say, conceding just a little. “He is still sick. He caught something in Sogliano over the weekend and he spent Monday at his apartment. I was at Fernhollow for family. Mother had a bad day. I came back late and I was too tired to come to your room. That is the whole story.”

Lying feels terrible.

She looks at me for a long moment and I know she knows I’m lying.

“You look like hell,” she says instead.

“I know.” I was kind of in hell.

“Family was bad?”

I nod. I especially hate lying about my mother. I feel like I’m jinxing her by doing so. Not to mention that this is revealing the guilt I’ve kept buried over not having visited her recently, or written any letters. Then again, Gibson hasn’t sent any.

“I’ll give you until the end of the week,” Avelene says, and her voice has gone softer than it was a second ago. “I won’t ask how you know all that information about Professor Vale, either. As a favor. After this week, however, I expect wine and the actual story in my room, not the sanitized version.”

“Deal.”

She lets go of my arm, reluctantly.

I walk away faster than I should walk, and I do not look back, and by the time I am on the ramp up to the professors’ wing, the tether is a cord I can feel pulling past my room and toward the teacher’s lounge. That bastard, I thought I told him to stay in bed.

The lounge is a long room at the far end of the second floor with worn leather settees and a fire that is always roaring and the particular smell of old pipe smoke that has been baked into the walls over decades. Professor Hetch is at the window with a cup of something, speaking quietly to a professor I don’t know by name. An attendant is passing with a tray of biscuits.