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The answer seemed to be more than enough for Justus, though.
No one asked too many questions about who was sleeping where and why over the next few weeks. We quickly learned that Appius wasn’t the only one who had switched from one house to another to be closer to friends or lovers. The houses reshuffled on their own, without orders or interference from the magisters.
I felt like it said something that the magisters turned a blind eye to their students jumping into each other’s beds as the winter wore on. Maybe it had something to do with the college keeping its gates closed for the next six weeks, until the snows stopped.
I didn’t ask whether the decision to keep the college closed to patients was Magister Titus’s or if it was an order of the king. The plus side to that was that the tenuous feeling of peace and safety that we all had within the walls. Within a week, we all relaxed enough to continue learning, rather than just sitting and staring blankly ahead in the auditorium while the magisters tried to keep up the appearance of teaching.
Granted, the fact that our instruction suddenly consisted of how to combat infection from wounds left too long without treatment and ways to deal with starvation and poor nutrition was both worrying and engaging. Every single student had a vested interest in learning to treat every one of those things, because we knew we would need that knowledge.
Soon.
The one thing that convinced me the college wasn’t in immediate danger of obliteration was the fact that we were still receiving deliveries of food from outside the city. From my experience of the Dying Winter, I knew we would have run out of food within a week after Solstice if we hadn’t been receiving regular deliveries.
But it wasn’t until a month after Solstice that I actually saw a delivery being made, and when I did, I was surprised to see a friendly face at the college’s back gate.
“Horacio?” I called out at the sight of my old—well, I couldn’t exactly call him my friend, but we knew each other and were friendly.
Horacio glanced up from where he was unloading sacks of what must have been grain of some sort. He looked thinner than the last time I’d seen him and haggard. I had a feeling it was from more than the usual winter pallor.
“Conrad?” he called back to me, squinting a bit against the bright sunlight reflecting off the snow. “Oh, thank God,” he said once he was convinced it was me. “I was hoping you were still alive.”
That was not an encouraging way to start a conversation.
“I’m glad you’re alive too,” I said, breaking away from Appius and Mara—who had been walking with me from the auditorium to the infirmary, where practical lessons were being taught, even though we didn’t have patients—and heading over to him. “What are you doing here?”
It was a stupid question, but Horacio took it beyond face value.
He glanced warily to the other men who were helping with the delivery, then came closer to me to say, “The only work for a man with a wagon and his own team of oxen these days is transporting supplies from the country to the cities. So that’s what I’m doing.”
There was a look in his eyes that begged me to ask him what was going on because he needed to talk about it.
“Is there enough for everyone to eat?” I asked the question that was most on my mind.
“Marginally,” he answered in a quiet voice, bending close to me and speaking fast. “The king’s first priority is himself and the nobles, of course. Then the army, then the cities after that. He is less concerned with the country folk. The quotas that have been imposed on them to deliver their stores to the cities have been punishing, but you know how country folk are.”
I wasn’t sure I did. I’d been raised in a city, then ended up in the Wolf River Kingdom. Neither place was remotely like the agrarian countryside in the Old Realm.
Appius had walked up to stand with me, as had Mara, and he knew the countryside well.
“Country folk will look after each other,” he said in a low voice. “It’s interference from the king that worries me.”
Horacio nodded to him as if he understood what Appius was talking about. “So far, there’s been enough to keep everyone alive,” he said. “But there are no luxuries to be had anywhere. Everyone is holding their breath and praying just to make it through the winter. In the country, they believe everything will be better once spring comes.”
“And in the cities?” I asked, arching one eyebrow. I glanced at Mara, then back to Horacio as I said, “The college has been tightly isolated. None of us have been outside the gates since before Solstice. I don’t have any idea what’s going on ten feet beyond the college’s walls.”
Horacio raised his eyebrows at that. “It’s bad,” he said. “The king has allowed very little movement of people. Anyone seen in the streets is approached by the soldiers that patrol the entire city. If they don’t have a legitimate reason to be out and about, they are arrested and taken to the palace dungeon.”
Mara made a grim sound and scowled, but she didn’t say anything.
“What about markets and supplies for people within the city?” I asked. “Are people starving, or do they have enough?”
Horacio seemed surprised at that question. “They really have kept you isolated, haven’t they,” he said. He shifted his weight, then went on with, “There are no markets anymore. King Julius has decreed that all necessities will be delivered directly to people’s homes.”
“Who decides what those necessities are?” Mara asked.
Horacio laughed humorlessly, as though she’d guessed the problem exactly. “The king, of course. Well, the senators he’s put in charge of rations. Every individual within every household gets the same provisions, and every person is required to accept those provisions personally, or the entire household gets nothing.”
“Which is an ideal way to keep track of every citizen of Royersford, especially the ones who are suspected of being revolutionaries,” I said with a sigh, rubbing my face.
