Gods & Thieves

19. Rune and Gold

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With everything going on this morning, I even forgot I had no breakfast. Wow. This doesn't happen often.

I spend over an hour in cafeteria, lunching, buying time as long as I can, refilling my glass of juice three times, pretending to choose and tasting different sorts of wine, which nobody stops me from tasting like parents at home usually do. I toy with the food on my plate and glare at the shamans who glare at me for eating for so long, but--my mentor never appears.

Worry swells on my chest.

Could Maricela do something to faer? But I don't know who to ask, so once people start crowding the cafeteria at dinnertime and the place becomes too noisy for the quietness I've got used to in Loretto's apartments, I quietly slip away through the garden bordering the terrace, plucking an orange from the tree on my way.

Whatever spell Loretto uses to lock the door of faer apartments, it is set to let me in and out anytime. I leave the orange on Loretto's desk, then wash, change my clothes, pick one of the textbooks on spell-casting I'm supposed to read, and return to the cool twilight loggia, which all apartments' doors on the second floor face. The sun begins to sink behind the horizon, pinkish light stretching long on the west, heavy clouds bruising the skies on the east. With the book open in my lap, I sit on the floor, cross-legged, the loggia railing behind by back, Loretto's door before me, growing concern inside me. Where the hell are you, Your Cocky Divinity?

Trying to distract myself from another hasty decision of rushing to the empress's quarters to find the answer to that, I flip through the pages. I promised Loretto not to go anywhere near Maricela's rooms, and I don't really wish to test my luck again. The textbook is full of runes, which are kinda fun and remind me of lace patterns my moms adorn the robes they sew.

Every rune works for shaping aura energy, the book says, giving magic different purpose and power: lock doors, melt ice, open portals... The problem is, you need to channel aura first. Fill your mind and body with magic, and then redirect it into a rune, it says. And my body is not made for magic. How unfair.

But I guess I could try drawing runes anyway, once I get the aura ring Ian promised me. What's the difference between performing magic with your hands or by using a charm for it, really? You can eat with a fork or your hands, no difference but etiquette someone made up a long time ago. And who defines etiquette? You can eat like a pig with a fork in your hands, too...

I can even ask Loretto to charge the ring's gem with aura properly, I realize, not by a drop of power as plainbloods usually get--enough to open a quick portal or boil a kettle, but not enough to do real magic, affect nature or people's emotions. I can ask if I dare tell Loretto I'm no shaman.

"Elisey!"

Startled by my own name, my head jerks up. I look around the loggia, but there's no one.

"Look down, dammit." Twisting around, I peer between the railings, down the narrow alley almost hidden between the Great Temple's wall and the grove. Jaya. She's alone, no Yaling I usually see her with, no mentors. And her expression is tense and morose, the lips pressed together. "Get down, I wanna talk."

"You wanna talk, you get up."

Her eyes flash angrily in the sun. "You're a dead man, Elisey."

I blink. "What do you mean?"

"I've heard my mentor talk to your mentor. They want you dead."

I freeze midbreath. This is not what I expected to hear from her. I didn't expect to hear from her today at all, but this is the worst kind of unexpected. Maybe one day I'll start believing I'm immortal if my life hangs by a thread every day, but today is not today. Shutting my textbook, I climb to my feet and hastily cross the loggia, taking the small winding stairs carved in the corner wall, which leads into the grove. The grove is enclosed by the Great Temple walls, which stand like a square of columns and arches and stones, like a giant patio, or an open atrium. Big enough to have a walk after lunch, but not enough to hide. I don't think it's a good place to talk, but Jaya doesn't seem to care.