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King Julius had taken power through nefarious means, which meant he would have no scruples about doing horrible things to keep that power.
“If all those soldiers really did die for nothing,” Justus said, “then we might be looking at a revolution of some sort, and soon.”
It was a huge thing to say, and all seven of us that stood in a circle, amidst the splatter of showers and the fragrant steam of the baths seemed at a loss for how to react. After the short time I’d spend in the palace during the harvest festival, I had no love lost for King Julius at all. He might have been Magnus’s brother, but he was as far from the sort of leader Magnus was that it was possible to be.
At the same time, I knew how bad it could get. I knew what we were all in for if there really was a revolution.
“I don’t think anything is going to happen tonight,” I said at last, letting out a sigh. “And whatever does happen, the only thing we can do is wait for it.”
“And I, for one, just want to sleep in my own bed tonight,” Leander said.
“Hear, hear,” Darius agreed.
“I’m sure there will be plenty of time to worry about revolution tomorrow,” I said, stepping back like I would pull the cord to send more shower water down on me.
“Are the students here at the college in favor of a revolution?” Lucius asked, his eager expression making it far too obvious that he would take up a sword and join that cause if he had half a chance.
Justus, Appius, and Virgil exchanged another round of worried looks.
“All I know,” Appius said slowly, looking at me again, “is that my father enrolled me in the healer’s course so he wouldn’t have to send me off to war. He thinks it’s an unjust and foolish cause, and that we’d all be better off just letting General Rufus go and seeing to our crops and livestock.”
I suddenly remembered that Appius was from Aktau. How he managed to gain admission to the healer’s course instead of being made into a soldier was a mystery. If I’d learned anything in the last few months it was that country folk in the Old Realm were viewed in a similar way that forest-dwellers had been viewed by the cities in the frontier. I wondered if his father had money, or if he had gone into the army in Appius’s place, or if the man had been one of the ones crushed under the mountain.
“We all need to sleep,” I said, a little firmer than I wanted to. I hesitated, then added, “I’ve seen revolutions. There was a revolution of sorts on the frontier last year. It devastated cities, halved their populations, turned friends in to enemies.” I paused to swallow the sick feeling that remembering the Dying Winter gave me. “The only people on the frontier who emerged from the Dying Winter unscathed were the ones who kept to themselves and focused on bringing in the harvest and sharing resources.”
Magnus had been a genius to be able to get us all through that time in one piece. I could see that now more than I ever had while still in the frontier.
But Magnus wasn’t here, in the Old Realm. His brother was.
“I don’t think we can stop what’s going to happen,” Justus said. “Our loved ones are already dead. The damage has already been done.”
“And the king isn’t the sort to give up his crown just because people are angry and want him to,” Virgil agreed.
“If he won’t give up his crown voluntarily,” Lucius growled, “then I bet he’ll be forced to give it up, along with his head.”
Another prickling wave of silence fell over us all. No one had anything more to say, so after a few guarded glances, we all went back to what we were doing. I soaped my body up again, if only to see if I could rid myself of the feeling that the road ahead was about to get rocky.
I managed to dry off and get back to our house and into my own bed without anyone else stopping me to ask questions. I’d expected the troubles to keep me up, grinding through both the problem of a potential revolution and the anguish of how I would ever get back over the mountains to Dushka, but within a handful of minutes, I was out.
I was awoken the next morning by Mara shaking my shoulder as sunlight poured in through the window.
“Get up,” she told me, shaking me until I started to move. “You’re going to be late for class if you don’t get up and get a move on.”
“What the bloody hell?” I mumbled, sitting and rubbing my eyes.
I blinked when I saw that Mara was dressed in her school clothes, and that her hair was shorn to a boy’s length again.
“They expect us to attend classes right after coming back from where we’ve been?” I asked, throwing back my bedcovers and swinging my legs around to get up.
Mara didn’t bat an eyelash at the fact that I was naked and walked right past her to my bureau without bothering to cover myself. She’d seen it all before.
“Yes,” she said. “King Julius has ordered the entire city to continue on as if absolutely nothing is amiss, and Magister Titus is currently trying to balance the need to obey an unpopular king with the image of the college and the infirmary being loyal to the people of Royersford.”
I stopped midway through stepping into my trousers, nearly stumbling as I did. All I could say was, “Shit.”
And that was exactly the right reaction to have, too. Before the end of the day, I had all too much of an idea of how things were going to be for the foreseeable future. Mara and I made it to class on time, and I saw through one of the windows that the gates had been opened so people could come and go from the fountain and the infirmary, but half a dozen guards were posted inside and outside of the college grounds.
Lessons proceeded normally that morning. My group was learning how to distil tinctures and what the medicinal properties of each one was. That was the easy part. I could sit back and pretend that everything was perfectly ordinary and that the Old Realm hadn’t been tipped on its head.
