Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 73154 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 366(@200wpm)___ 293(@250wpm)___ 244(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73154 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 366(@200wpm)___ 293(@250wpm)___ 244(@300wpm)
“So,” Akilah murmurs over the rim of her teacup. “Silvius is coming back.”
It doesn’t feel right that my stomach hops, but it does. Wildly. The market, the day after tomorrow. I dart my gaze out to the neat rows of herbs in the vitaliary courtyard. Stop being so happy. He’ll be grieving. “Let’s think about something else.”
She checks no one else is in earshot and pulls a folded notice, ripped from the market noticeboard, from her pocket. “The examination begins soon. First, a test of theoretical complex magic, then presentation of an innovative spell, and on the last day, the locked-room mystery patient.” She bites her lip. “How’s the innovative one going?”
I duck inside and come back with a small box. I open it towards her. Inside sit two glittering blue balls on a bed of wadded cloth.
She clasps it, drawing it to her nose. “This is what you’ve been secretly working on for months?”
“Figuring out how to capsulise it was”—I recall the Mistress-Dog-Quin incident—“troublesome.”
She sets the box on the table, the sparkle blinding in the sun.
“I call it ‘Poison Halting Miracle’. It should stop even the fiercest poison in its tracks, and clashes with very few other treatments.”
“Is one of these for . . .”
I nod.
“Why make it portable?” she asks.
“Megaera’s going through her own grief. She’s angry.”
“Maybe she’d forgive you if you treated her father in person?”
“Maybe she wouldn’t allow it at all.”
Akilah looks unconvinced, but I haven’t told her about the times Megaera has passed me in the streets. How she walked away without acknowledging me, eyes dead cold. I’m just another person who has abandoned her. “I’ll get someone to deliver it to the manor.”
“I’ll do it.”
“Better not send someone from the Amuletos household. She may not accept it.”
“So . . . we hire someone?”
I shake my head. “It’s too valuable.” I shut the box and inspiration hits with its snap. “River. I can trust him with it.”
Akilah hums and takes another look at the glittering balls. “Do they have to be round?”
“Easier to swallow.”
She shuffles closer to me on the bench. “What about our bigger problem? How will you enter the examination without being recognised? Your daily disguises are fine for walking through town, but interacting, talking, looking eye-to-eye . . .”
We need something more substantial. It’s a problem that’s been on my mind for a while. “How about we take a page out of Maskios’s handbook?”
“Hide our faces?”
“With magic masks that we also won’t let anyone take off. We’ll be just as composed,” I say sourly, and then quickly smile. “But let’s not infuriate anyone.”
She sighs, shaking her head with a soft groaning laugh. “I really think you need to reflect on who infuriated whom. Anyway,” she hurries on, “I thought the ingredients were too expensive?”
“For putting it on and off every day. But as long as I maintain it for the duration of the exams . . .”
“No one will recognise us,” she says, laughing.
“Us?”
“Pretty, pretty please? Me too?”
I count my money.
The lie is simple: a six-week pilgrimage to pay homage to the violet oaks. Father allows it, what with the Amuletos house being unusually quiet this warm autumn—few patients, few duties, mostly idle days. A perfect opportunity.
He’s sceptical, but I’ve honed my excuses well. With the silver I’ve scrimped over the year, Akilah and I claim a cramped room near the Pavilion Library, just steps from the examination grounds. For two weeks, it will serve as our base.
Now, the moonlight spills over the pavilion rooftops as Akilah and I sit by the window in my favourite nook. She sorts through piles of books, mumbling about what may appear in the examinations, while I skim a text.
She pauses mid-grumble, her fingers clamping on a stack of pages. Her voice turns sharp with worry. “Won’t your father figure it out when you return empty handed?”
I glance up from the page, a grin tugging at my lips. “No. Remember the violet oak branch I got when I saved Prince Nicostratus in the woods?”
“That was a decade ago.”
“A dry leaf is a dry leaf.”
“Cheeky.”
“You love me.”
“Keep telling yourself that,” she drawls with twitching lips.
“We’ll need a backstory.” I bow. “Maskios from Hinsard. If anyone gets curious, everything he told me about himself is embedded in my brain.”
“Ah. Unforgettable.”
“Precisely.”
“Maybe use his actual name? Who would call their precious child Maskios? You made it up to poke fun and it sounds like it.”
I give her a dry look. “We don’t know his actual name.” I incline my head again. “Fine. Scholar Calix Solin of Hinsard.”
She just shakes her head.
“As for you,” I say, “something similar to your own name so I don’t trip up. Ilios?”
She blinks drily. “Your mind truly works in mysterious ways.”
Taffy’s white fur brushes against my leg as she slinks by, her tail curling possessively around my ankle. I scan the shelves. “Skriniaris Evander?”