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If it happened.
I just hoped that I would see Dushka again.
Someday.
My throat started to close up with sentiment and grief and fear, all while another part of me considered nudging Appius awake so I could fuck with him to make myself feel better, when a trumpet blast, of all things, sounded from somewhere outside.
I thought it was my imagination at first, but when it sounded again, I sucked in a breath and tensed.
The third time it sounded, Appius jerked instantly awake and clung to me, as if I could save him from whatever was happening.
“Shut the fuck up!” a shout came from the other side of the wall, either Leander or Darius, when the trumped sounded again, closer to our house.
“All students are to report to the front courtyard immediately,” a strong, unfamiliar voice called between continued trumpet blasts. “All students. Immediately.”
I sat up, bringing Appius with me. Both of us gasping with instant panic. On the other side of the wall, I heard one of the twins curse, followed by thumping as they got up.
“We’d better get up too,” I said, scrambling out of bed.
There was no time to think about politeness or modesty as Appius and I got up and dressed. We didn’t have a chance to face each other or talk about how it felt to sleep in the same bed, or whether we wanted to do it again, or even make a habit of it. We could only dress as fast as our limbs would move, then hurry out to the common room.
I was vaguely surprised to find both Lucius and Mara coming out of Lucius’s room. The two of them had as much of a right as anyone else to carry on during what might have been our last night on earth. Leander and Darius didn’t make a single joke about Appius still being with me, or about our disheveled states.
None of us said anything about anything as all we donned our coats and boots and shuffled out of the dormitory to join the flood of other students making their way to the front courtyard. We’d been told the day before that we’d have to go to the main hall for a census today, but it already felt like things weren’t going to plan.
We were all terrified. That much was obvious. Too terrified for casual conversation, or even to whisper “What’s going on?” We all knew what was going on. We knew it from the moment we were grabbed by soldiers as we stepped through the administration building and into the front courtyard, then shoved into lines.
“Stay where you are put,” a middle-aged man, who must have been the commander, said, walking up and down the lines we were bullied into. “No one is to speak, no one is to move.”
Appius stood on my one side, and Mara made certain she was positioned on my other, but we were too far apart to reach out and hold hands. We were too far apart for stolen whispers too. The general—if that’s what he was—knew enough about organizing prisoners that he’d positioned us so that we were each on our own, in spite of the entire school being spread out in the courtyard. Alone in a crowd so that each and every one of us would understand that we couldn’t help each other, not when the king wanted to have his own way.
And it was the entire college. Everyone, students, magisters, staff, and aides, were brought out and lined up. It took over half an hour from the time my friends and I had made it to the courtyard until everyone I knew at the college had been pushed and manhandled into silent lines that stretched the length of the space.
Once we were all in place, the general said, “You will wait here, your hands held where they can be seen, while the college is searched.”
That was it. That was the only instruction we were given. And all we could do was follow it.
I was glad I’d taken three seconds to use the chamber pot in my bedroom before leaving the house, because we ended up standing in those lines for hours. Long, silent, freezing hours. So long that the snow started to gather on our heads and shoulders as we stood there, shaking with cold and with fear.
It would have been bad enough, but every now and then, we’d hear shouting from behind us, in the main part of the college and beyond. I thought I smelled burning on the snow-filled wind now and then too, but it could have been my imagination, born from the memory of everything that had been burned the night before.
A few times, men dashed out to the courtyard, bringing papers to the general, or just approaching him to say something. They always stood too far away for me to hear, though I supposed anyone at the far end of the lines might have been able to hear what was going on.
After what must have been three hours, when the light was bright enough to suggest it was near noon, a dozen soldiers spilled out from the administration building together. Most of them carried boxes of papers or other things I couldn’t see from where I stood. One of them ran over to the general for another word.
The two consulted, then the general marched to the front of our group.
“Elias Vulci and Calebe Nobre, step forward,” he announced in a terrifying voice.
I glanced up and down the line, looking for Elias and the other man, whose name I’d never heard before. After an eerie pause, in which I could hear the whistle of the wind through the tops of the college buildings, Elias slowly stepped forward, and so did one of the clerks who worked in the main building.
“Seize them,” the general said in an almost off-hand way.
My eyes went wide, and I sucked in a breath as several of the soldiers rushed to grab Elias and the clerk. Without so much as blinking, the general drew his sword and walked up to Elias. He swung hard and sliced Elias’s head right off his body. A moment later, he ran the clerk right through the heart, sending him sprawling to the snow-covered ground.
I was glad I hadn’t eaten since the night before. My stomach rebelled, like I would be sick, but I held myself together. I’d see worse during the Battle of the Coronation, but I’d been prepared for that.
I was in no way prepared for this.
