“Good morning, my dear sister.” If my reply fazed her in any respect, she didn’t show it.
Affectionate terminology gamble: unsuccessful.
We continued our staring contest until I very deliberately smiled, speared a potato with my fork, and turned to bite it. “Mm. The food here is shockingly delicious. Think it’s a trap?”
“You’ve always been so suspicious of everything.” She raised her own fork, then speared one of my potatoes with it. My eyes flared in indignation, but she paid them no heed. “Even when we were children. Sometimes, you know, a potato is just a potato.”
I nodded. “Except that one. That’s the one I laced with a deadly toxin. I meant to serve it to one of my enemies later, but alas…”
She reached up, putting a hand over her chest. “I fear I can feel my heart’s last rapid thrums even now.” She contorted her lips. “Or, wait, they’d probably be slower, not faster, wouldn’t they? Alas, I feel the last glacial pulses of my frozen—”
“Both glacial and frozen? Seems a little excessive.”
“Not when your heart is as cold as mine. Frigid with the frost of betrayal, by my own, dear, darling, brother. Who is also my sibling.”
I stabbed another potato. “On second thought, I think this was the poisoned one. Goddess, thanks for everything.” I popped it into my mouth. “Mm, delicious. Tastes like eternal suffering.”
She raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t think you were a believer in the Punishments.”
“Oh, I’m not, but it was too good of a line for me not to say it.”
“That’s your idea of a good line? Please, Corin. I know you haven’t been to a school in years—”
“That’s low, ‘sister’—”
“—but even you should have higher standards for dramatic monologues. You never know when you might need one.”
I paused, cutting into my chicken. “Okay, that last part actually managed to sound vaguely ominous. I’ll give you credit for that.”
She gave a mocking bow over the table. “Thank you. It feels so good to be appreciated on occasion.”
“But I’m confident you had more of a reason to be here than just to engage me with displays of your scintillating intellect.”
“Scintillating? My, now I almost suspect you want something from me.”
I took a bite of the chicken. “I thought I was supposed to be the suspicious one.”
“Touché. Well, as it happens, your ‘confidence’ has at least some degree of merit. I wanted to ask if you’d read what was in the morning paper.”
I shook my head. “I barely ever follow the news. Rarely anything of interest.”
“Ah, but if you don’t read the paper, you’ll miss the occasional intriguing bit that’s buried beneath the rumors, gossip, and advertisements.”
I knew she was baiting me, but the hook sunk. “And this intriguing bit would be…?”
“Two unconnected pieces that paint an interesting picture, if one imagines they’re connected. One is a report of Edrian troop movements along our southern border.”
“They’re posturing. They do that all the time. Edria likes to keep us nervous, flex their military muscle.”
She continued, ignoring my interruption. “The second is a rumor that Tenjin hasn’t attended the last three Council meetings.”
That caught my attention.
Tenjin, the visage responsible for overseeing the Serpent Spire, the one in which I’d taken my own trial, and the only tower local to our kingdom. As our local visage, he frequently interacted with the local government, serving as an advisor to the queen and the Council of Lords.
But it wasn’t Tenjin that I’d seen in the tower; it was Katashi, the visage normally associated with the Tortoise Spire and the Theocracy of Dalenos.
The visages did travel, of course, but that was supposed to be rare. Missing one Council meeting would have been understandable, but three in a row did strike me as odd. Adding in another visage being inside her tower while foreign troops marched nearby?
That sounded a lot like a warning flag for an invasion.
Sera saw something in my expression. “You caught it, too, then. If Tenjin is missing, something may be amiss. Maybe Edria is finally ready to march.”
“People have been saying that for years.” I spoke the words, but my mind was racing in other directions.
I might be the only person who knows about Katashi’s presence in our tower — other than Vera, I suppose, and Keras if he survived. Vera said he was a foreigner. Is Keras from Edria, or off the continent entirely? Could he have something to do with Tenjin being missing?
It was a disconcerting thought. Aside from the visages and the god beasts themselves, I couldn’t think of any entity I’d ever heard of that could pose a threat to a visage. The goddess herself didn’t count, of course. She’d never been known to directly intervene in mortal affairs.
Of course, Katashi could have been the reason that Tenjin was missing, too. That was a far worse scenario.
“I know, but their constant troop movements generate complacency, which makes us vulnerable for when they do finally decide to strike.”
I nodded, too wrapped in my own thoughts to give her a coherent reply. “Hm.”
We ate quietly for another minute.
“You know something.”
I frowned, looking up at her. “What makes you say that?”
“I know you, Corin. The years haven’t changed us that much.”
Or, at least, you don’t want to admit they have. That’s why you keep teasing me, prodding me, testing me.
You’re not going to like what you find.
But she was right on one count, of course. I did know something. “Later. I can’t talk about it here.”
She wrinkled her nose. “You’re always so careful. Just tell me!”
I shook my head. “Not about this. It’s serious, Sera, and I’m serious.”
Sera paused her eating, tilting her head to the side. “Hm.” After a few moments, she nodded. “All right, but we’re going to talk about this again later.”
“I can’t make any promises.” I could have just lied to her, but it didn’t feel appropriate. I didn’t like the idea of deceiving someone who was sincerely seeking knowledge.
She rolled her eyes. “Fine. So, what’s your first class?”
My first class, fortunately, was not with Sera. As much as I liked her, I knew she wasn’t going to stop bothering me about my “secret” until I gave her hints, and I’d put together enough to know that it could put her — and me — in actual danger.
It only occurred to me while I walked that Sera might have been in danger regardless of whether or not I told her what I knew. If anyone knew we were related, they could easily assume she knew whatever I did, or simply try to take her for leverage.
I put “find a way to convince Sera to protect herself” as a high importance item on my mental checklist. I’d need to do it discretely, in a way that didn’t draw too much extra attention toward her.
We both had General Magic Theory as our first class of the day, but we were assigned to different lecture halls; there were about two dozen of them across the campus.
The teacher was an unfamiliar one. She was a young, black-skinned woman with the distinctive poise of a combat mage. She walked with the assistance of a cane, which helped to conceal a limp. A dueling wound, or a war wound, maybe? It took me a moment to realize that the cane she used was a dueling cane. A normal dueling cane might barely reach from elbow to wrist in length; the longer style that could double as a walking cane had fallen out of fashion a century earlier. I’d never trained with one, but I’d seen my great-grandfather’s on display at home.