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My gaze settles on the dice scattered around the feet of the statue. Gambling falls under Kosmel’s purview, and his dedicats often make their appeals or ask their questions with a roll that may convey his answer.
A tumbling die feels a lot less intimidating than a divine voice ringing through my skull.
I pick one up and squeeze it against my palm, thinking as loud as I can at the stone figure before me.Am I on the right path? You want me to take down the scourge sorcerers—is infiltrating their conspiracy a sound strategy?
Then I flick the dotted cube across the marble base.
It taps against one of Kosmel’s boots and rattles a short distance to the side, landing on a three.
The standard interpretation is that odds are yes and evens are no, higher numbers indicating a more emphatic response. If I believe the godlen had any hand in how the die fell, I could take a little comfort from that result.
IfI believed it. Sometimes I still have trouble believing I haven’t hallucinated Kosmel’s interference with my life altogether.
I stand up, giving one last addition to my performance. “Thank you for watching over me and all others who don’t quite fit expectations.”
Without glancing around, I head out of the temple.
My stance doesn’t start to relax until I’ve left the last marble step behind. I meander across the cobblestone courtyard, taking a few moments to simply breathe before I barge back into the equally judgmental atmosphere of the college.
An urge niggles at me to rove farther into the city—to slip into Crow’s Close and find out the latest shady street gossip, to check in on the outer-warder families who haven’t been visited by the Hand of Kosmel in weeks now. To snoop around the brothel where Torstem hid some of his accomplices or the orphanage he plucked them from in case the Crown’s Watch has missed something.
But I don’t know how closely the conspirators might be watching me. I can’t do anything that could suggest I have other, suspect motives for acting like a good scourge sorcerer candidate.
As I amble into the lane around the side of the temple that leads to the college, raised voices catch my ears. I pick up my pace and spot several guards milling about outside the palace wall farther down the lane.
My magic quivers in my chest with a hitch of my pulse. What’s going on?
I slow down to give me time to study the guards as I continue toward the college gate, and a well-built figure falls into step beside me. I have to suppress a twitch of surprise at Benedikt’s boldness, approaching me here in public.
“Don’t worry,” the bastard’s bastard says from the corner of his mouth, strolling along at a matching pace with his hands slung carelessly in the pockets of his embroidered trousers. “I’m using my gift of distraction to divert curious eyes.”
It can’t be that strong a gift when his dedication sacrifice was nothing more than the lobes of his ears. But there isn’t much traffic coming in and out of the college along this road anyway, and the guards now hustling into the palace grounds aren’t paying us any mind.
“What was so urgent you had to see me right away?” I ask, keeping my gaze ahead as if I’m walking on my own.
Benedikt pauses. His jaunty tone turns strained. “Those guards have a lot to answer for. Wendos is dead.”
I flinch before I can rein in my reaction. Julita lets out a cry of frustration in my head.
With a deep inhalation, I regather my composure. “What? I thought he was recovering.”
“From what I’ve heard, he seemed to be. He was starting to move, to murmur—more like he was in a dream than unconscious. The medics left him for the night—supposedly guarded, of course—and this morning they found his spirit had… departed.”
The scourge sorcerers murdered their own to cover their tracks,Julita mutters.No surprise at all.
The same thought had occurred to me. My jaw tightens.
I drop my voice to the faintest murmur. “It must have been his ‘friends.’ They realized he might talk.”
“Agreed.” Benedikt lets out a rough laugh. “Although how they breached the security of the palace prison… Well, I suppose if they have even rats on their side, we’re doomed.”
Not doomed. Just out of hope that we can count on anyone other than ourselves.
Anyone other than me and my precarious plan.
As my stomach knots, Benedikt risks a glance over at me. He seems to hesitate again.
“Ivy… Did something more happen up in the temple’s tower than what you all have shared with me?”
