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As if conjured by my request, the courtesan appears in his ring of cord just seconds later. He’s holding a steaming mug between his hands.
“Here,” he says gently, bringing the mug to me. “This should help settle your mind and ease the disorientation. If you don’t feel much better afterward, I brought an herb you can chew as well.”
I sniff the hot liquid, which gives off a creamy nutty sort of scent that isn’t unappealing, and accept the mug. The first tentative sip sends a flood of warmth straight to my gut.
Cas always knows just how to look after a person,Julita murmurs.
The men watch, radiating tension as I down the drink as quickly as I can stomach it. By the time I’ve drained half of the mug, my thoughts are managing to stick in place rather than floating off through my mind before I can totally set them in order.
I keep sipping while I gather those thoughts. More sobriety could hardly be a bad thing.
“The scourge sorcerers had a huge bonfire more than an hour’s cart ride east of here,” I say. “A few of us new initiates and around twenty established members. Everyone wore masks with magic to totally cover their faces, so I still don’t know most of them. Ster. Torstem was leading things, and I ended up seeing Olari from the bug club and one of the dining hall chefs—the dark-haired woman who focuses on the desserts.”
“Willone,” Casimir supplies. Of course he’d know everyone’s name. He grimaces. “I never imagined… Well, I haven’t spoken to her much at all.”
I nod in general acknowledgment. “We drank the drugged stuff and repeated some things Torstem said about the Order of the Wild, and there was a lot of weird dancing—but what’s important is what he said.”
I shift my attention to Alek. “You told me before about the kingship trials they used to hold in Silana before the empire took over. Torstem said outright that he wants to destroy the current royal family and hold new trials so we can have ‘worthy’ rulers. And other things about going back to the old ways. They seem to think that all this wildness they keep talking about is how it used to be in Silana. That’s why they think the gods would prefer it—because we behaved like that back then, but we stopped.”
Alek frowns. “They can’t have a very definite idea of what anyone did all those centuries ago. It’s my main area of study, and even with all the books I’ve had access to, I’ve still only come across fragmentary mentions of what ordinary life was like. What’s survived the empire’s purges is mostly references to major events like the trials.”
“The scourge sorcerers took a few pieces they liked and ran with them,” Stavros mutters, “making the rest up to suit themselves.”
I let out a rough chuckle. “Probably. I have no idea how they justify the scourge sorcery element—they haven’t mentioned that part to me yet. But I asked Torstem how they were going to eliminate the current rulers, and he said they’re almost ready. That they’ve been gathering their ‘forces,’ whatever exactly those are, and he thinks they’ll be striking at the entire royal family in just a few weeks.”
Even Stavros draws up short at that announcement. “A few weeks? How?”
I shake my head miserably. “I couldn’t get him to tell me any more detail, only that we’d hear about it when it’s going to happen. But I don’t know how much advance warning a new initiate would get. I don’t know if he might have been making a cautious estimate and it could be as early as a fewdays. The Crown’s Watch needs to take some kind of action right away.”
Casimir comes up at my other side and brushes a few stray strands of hair back from my face in a soothing caress. “You’ve done fantastic, Ivy. You went through all that, and you were able to find out the part of their plans we needed to know most.”
I rub my face. “I just hope it’s enough.”
“It has to be!” Alek says. “You can’t go back to them when they might drag you into an assassination attempt next.”
Julita’s voice turns tart.I should certainly hope not.
Stavros has started to pace. “Did Torstem or the others say anything else? I need to know everything, even if it didn’t seem relevant.”
I pry back through my muddled memories of the night. “Before he sent me back here, Ster. Torstem told me to come to the next entomology club meeting, which is tomorrow evening, and that from now on I’ll come to the Order of the Wild activities through them. So we got definite confirmation that the club is a front. I’d bet the half of the group that Olari is in supposedly went on a field trip last night.”
Alek’s mouth flattens into a pensive line. “Did they say anything about the clay? Did you find out what the drug is?”
“No. I didn’t want to question them too much about things someone who’s actually invested in the cause wouldn’t care about—or that I shouldn’t know about anyway.”
Casimir squeezes my shoulder. “That’s fine. You needed to protect yourself while you were out there at their mercy.”
I strain my mind, but nothing else comes to me. “The rest was all more of the same—vague statements about removing corrupt undeserving people from power, honoring the gods properly, blah blah blah.”
“All right.” Stavros stalks over to the mirror. He presses something on the back of it, and a faint thread of magic grazes my skin.
As he steps in front of the mirror, Stavros glances over at me. “I’ll do the talking, but you might as well stay here in case the king wants to speak to you directly again. For now, relax and recover.”
Casimir teases his fingers over my hair again. “When we’re finished here, I think you need a more enjoyable escape. I can book a bathing room like the one we used last time.”
I open my mouth to protest, with a pang of guilt both for the rejection I need to make and the fact that I didn’t reject other overtures last night.
But the courtesan holds up his hand to stop me. “Just for you, Kindness. I’ll see which rooms are available and give you the instructions for accessing it. You can have a soak and a sleep, in whatever order you wish.” He aims his attention at Stavros. “As long as your ‘employer’ won’t begrudge you taking a day off.”
