Chapter 13 The Rival's Bargain

The morning after the Forbidden Wing, the academy looked different to Maya. The corridors she had walked a hundred times now seemed to lean toward her, to watch her pass. The blue light in the lamps seemed lower, the shadows between them deeper, and more than once she caught herself looking at the faces of students she had known for a term and wondering which of them was not what they seemed. The summons was still pinned to her door when she came down, and she took it down and folded it small and put it in her pocket, where it seemed to burn against her leg all the way to breakfast. He was waiting for her in the dueling yard before first bell, sitting on the low stone wall with his coat collar turned up against the eternal dusk. "You were in the Forbidden Wing last night," Cassian said. Not a question. Maya's shadow flickered. "I don't know what you're talking about." "You have dust on your shoes," he said. "The kind of dust that only settles in places nobody goes. And your shadow is different this morning. It's standing taller. It knows something you don't want it to know." He slid off the wall and landed in front of her, and he was close enough now that she could see the pale scar that ran from his temple to his jaw, the one he never explained. "I've been waiting two years for someone to go into that wing. I just didn't think it would be you." "Maybe it wasn't me." "It was you." He said it flatly, without cruelty. "I saw the light in the window. I've been watching that window every night since I came here. Nothing ever moved in it, and then you did." Maya studied him. Cassian was the best duelist in her year, and the least liked, and the two facts were probably related. He had arrived at the academy the same term she had, with no family, no record, and no explanation, and he had spent the whole time collecting secrets the way other students collected grades. He was not cruel. He was just hungry for something, and he had never told anyone what. "Why do you watch that window?" she asked. He did not answer at once. He looked past her, at the far wall of the yard, where the blue academy lamps were guttering to life, and when he spoke his voice was quieter. "My father was a Curator," he said. "His name was Alaric Vale. He was on the Council that sealed your mother's record. He was one of the ones who voted to bury the truth about the Deep Shadow, and about the thing beneath the school, and about what happened to your mother. And then he changed his mind." Maya went very still. "What do you mean, changed his mind?" "He started writing letters. I found them after he died. He wrote to Seraphina, mostly, but she never answered, because by then it was too late. He had figured out what Voss was really doing, why the Council had really buried your mother's Working. He said the seal was failing and that Voss knew it, and that Voss had a plan for what to do when it broke." Cassian's jaw tightened. "My father was found in the Deep Shadow three weeks after he wrote the last letter. The academy called it an accident. A Curator, testing a boundary, careless. They gave me a place here as compensation. A scholarship for the orphan of a good man." "Was it an accident?" "My father was the most careful man who ever lived." Cassian met her eyes. "He taught me that the dark is a tool, not a threat. He never made a careless move in his life. And three weeks after he found out what Voss was planning, he was dead. You tell me if that was an accident." Maya's mind was moving too fast to hold on to any single thought. She thought of the journal under her mattress, of her mother's face in the mirror, of the kind-eyed man who smiled at the students. "There's a paper," she said slowly. "Among his things. Is there a paper about a key? About a seal keyed to a bloodline?" Cassian's expression did not change, but something in it sharpened. "You found something. Last night. In that room." "I found my mother." The words hung between them. For a long moment neither of them moved, and the practice yard went on around them, other students arriving, shadows stretching and contracting, the ordinary machinery of a school morning rolling over the two of them like a tide over a stone. Then Cassian held out his hand. "Show me." "Show you what?" "Whatever you found. I'll show you my father's letters. You show me what your mother left you. We trade truth for truth, and we don't stop until we know what Voss is planning." His hand stayed out, steady, waiting. "I know you don't trust me. I don't trust you either. But I have been alone in this school for two years, watching a window that never moved, and you are the first person who has ever made it light up. I am not going to waste that." Maya looked at his hand. She thought about all the reasons to say no. She thought about her mother's voice in the mirror, warning her about people who would use her. And then she thought about the footsteps in the corridor last night, the ones she had run from, and about the kind-eyed man who was coming for her at the Turning of the Veil, and about how very alone she had felt, carrying the journal back to her tower room in the dark. She took his hand. "Tomorrow," she said. "After dark. My room. Bring the letters." "I'll bring the letters," he said. "And you bring everything you're hiding. If we're going to be fools, let's be fools with the whole picture." He turned and walked away without looking back, and Maya watched him go, and she had the strangest feeling that she had just made either the best decision of her life or the worst one, and that she would not know which for a very long time. At the door of the yard, Cassian paused. He did not turn around. "One more thing," he said. "Voss has eyes in this school. Students who watch other students and report back. I know three of them by name, and I'm fairly sure I don't know them all." He looked over his shoulder, and his face was unreadable. "Whatever we find tomorrow night, we find it fast. Because I have a feeling he already knows you went into that wing." He left. Maya stood alone in the middle of the emptying yard, and she realized, slowly, that her shadow was not where she had left it. It was standing at the far end of the yard, at the door Cassian had just walked through, as if it had been listening to every word. As if it had already decided whom it trusted. ---