There was only one bedchamber in their suite, but it had two large beds, and strangely, a baby’s crib. Odessa helped Cognac hobble into bed, then settled herself into the other one. A bit after they turned out the lights, Cognac’s face grew hot, and she couldn’t help herself breathing harshly, and soon she was sobbing unevenly into her bedding. She tried not to cry out while air wheezed out of her and tears drowned her sheets. She couldn’t help letting it all escape her. She’d clamped it all down all day long—all of the pain of death and abandoning home. It was rushing out of her, now that the lights were off and no one was looking at her, asking her what happened. Now that she could finally settle, she couldn’t reign herself back in.
Odessa listened for a little while. She felt empty, herself. Like she was floating around without experiencing the actual fallout of what had happened. She couldn’t have cried if she tried. Instead of becoming filled with sadness, she had simply been stripped of everything else. Cognac hiccupped from the other bed. Wordlessly, really without even thinking about it, Odessa rose to lay with her, and held her against her chest until everything Cognac had was let out. Distantly, she felt more at ease like this. It seemed unnatural to be alone, now.
They woke up on opposite sides of the bed, to the sound of Sedan loudly calling, “Oiyo little ones, time to rise now.”
He stood at the foot of their bed with Prince Lark laughing lightly into his own shoulder just behind him. Sedan held a large carry tray with a couple of plates of food on it, as well as the tea set that he’d used the night before. He set it at the base of the bed before moving the tea pieces to a table behind him.
Groggy, Odessa and Cognac stirred. Cognac rolled over first, rubbing at her eyes while trying to sit up. She made a vague noise as she stretched and tried to wake and then looked over to where Odessa still had her face buried in bedding. It struck her as strangely funny to see her rudely ignoring the crowned prince and his guard in favor of sleep. Still, she reached over and shook at Odessa’s shoulder to rouse her. Sedan and the prince waited patiently.
The prince was weighed down in twice the formal clothes than he had had the day before, and his hair was done up more carefully. The top was drawn together in a small looped bun that was pinned to faced up, and a number of small braids were wound together around it. The night before he had looked rather lithe in his tunic, but now under so many robes, he just looked small. The outer duster was even pulled down and gathered around his elbows, only there as decoration. He looked like a child overdressed for winter because his parents were overcautious.
Odessa groaned and pushed herself deeper into her pillows.
Cognac cleared her throat a bit and shook her again, mumbling, “Odessa, the prince has come.”
Odessa groaned again before pushing herself up and shuffling onto her knees. She turned around and looked leadenly at the prince while moving around until she was comfortably cross-legged on top of the bedding with a pillow in her lap. She yawned loudly.
Having finished arranging the tea set, Sedan turned to them and asked, “Would you like coffee or tea?”
Before Cognac could open her mouth, Odessa flatly said, “Coffee.”
The prince smiled softly at them. “Forgive us,” he said, “for we didn’t intend to wake you this day, and truly wanted you to rest. But it’s drawing into the afternoon, and I’d like to speak to you about what has happened so that I can act quickly against any threat that is present.”
Sedan added, “I’d like to hear every detail you can remember.”
Odessa shifted. “Well,” she said, her voice cracking and low from sleep, “I didn’t see any of it.” She stretched forward to take a plate off of the tray Sedan had left. It had a few pieces of flatbread and a healthy variety of fruit on it. On the tray, there were also a few vials with honey, sugar, and cyan pepper.
Cognac looked sideways, feeling nervous and shy. “I saw them when I went to ring the noon bell.”
To match the table Sedan was making coffee at, there was a chaise-and-desk against the wall and an armchair kitty cornered with it. Lark sat himself delicately at the chaise-and-desk.
“You were at the top of the tower?” he asked. He opened the desk’s top drawer and took some stationary from it. There didn’t seem to be a pen with it.
Cognac shook her head lightly. “A bit below. It would be too loud to ring on the top level, so there’s a pulley that lets out beneath it. The room is designed to block out sound, so it’s all closed off with grand windows instead of the open-air style the rest of the tower has.”
While she spoke, Sedan quietly went into the drawing room.
“The way the stairs let out you’re faced right away with the northern window. So I saw the academy entrance right away. It was, uh…”
Cognac’s face twisted up a little. She had been looking at the prince, but she nervously put her hand in her hair and looked down. “It was. Um.” She was choking around her words. She swallowed, and forced them out. “The groundskeeper had been shot. Through her neck. I think there were about fifteen or twenty people there.” She scrubbed at her face a little and took a breath, looking back up miserably. “I could tell right away they were outsiders, because I didn’t recognize the kind of clothes they were wearing.”
Sedan entered again. He set a pen on the prince’s desk. “What did they look like?” he asked. “The clothes, I mean.”
She tried to think. “It wasn’t like what we wear at school. And it wasn’t like what you would see in the capital, like the clothes official visitors wear. It was something like…like formal robes, but not done up right. Or missing pieces, maybe. I just remember it didn’t look right at all.”
Sedan cleared his throat a little and leaned to mutter something quietly to the prince. The prince nodded and said a word back, then wrote something down.
Awkwardly, Cognac added, “They were also, uh. They were shooting fire at the roof. I think I saw some of us getting tied up, too. But that’s all I remember. I only saw them for a moment.”
“Can I ask what you did, when you saw this?” The prince asked.
“I rung the bell twice, and I ran away. I wanted to warn everyone somehow, but I couldn’t think straight. I don’t think I thought at all. I just ran away, and when I saw Odessa in the garden, I told her to run as well.”
Wordlessly, Sedan passed Odessa some coffee, and then Cognac. He had already given the prince his, made up with cream and sugar. He twirled the last empty cup in a full rotation with his finger, filled it, and then drank it himself.
Odessa touched her forehead and brought her palm down in thanks. “I had heard yelling, but brushed it off as sports playing or something similar. Then when I heard the bell, I thought it was quite odd,” she said. She took a sip of her coffee, but it was too hot. She tried to hide the error. “Then she came running. I knew something had to be wrong, so I ran along. We were already facing the western wood, so it occurred to me immediately to come here.”
The prince was looking off at something, pensive. “It must’ve been terribly frightening.”
Cognac was trying to keep herself from crying. She sweetened her coffee and swallowed it thickly.
Odessa leaned back against the headboard. “It was worst when we stopped running, I think,” she told him. She sounded far away. “While we were going, I would think, if we just make it to the estate, we’ll be okay. Nothing can happen to us there. And while we were running, we were just getting closer and closer to being safe. But we had to stop to sleep. I really thought we would die, even after we tried to hide. I didn’t want to sleep, because I thought I wouldn’t wake up.”
While Odessa spoke, Cognac’s eyes welled up and she brought her sleeves to her face to hide it. She soaked the fabric with her quiet tears.
Sedan set his coffee down. “Please know, we intend to do everything we can to find any of your classmates who have been taken, and to punish the people responsible. I already have someone on his way to the academy to see what remains.”
Trying to compose herself, Cognac scrubbed her face with her sleeves and asked, “What about us? Where do the two of us even go from here?”
Odessa looked sideways at her and sighed, “Home, I guess? To our families?”
The prince stopped what he had been writing. He looked hesitant. “For the moment, you’re welcome to stay here,” he said. “Don’t forget that you’ve been wounded. I’d like to put off sending you home until after you’re better healed and rested, to prevent infection or needless strain.”
Odessa hummed. She turned to look at Cognac. “Where is your family, anyway? I don’t think we’ve said ten words to each other before all this.”
“Baya, in the mountains.”
Sedan, who had been generally hard to read, perked at that. “I’ve been to that town, many times. Do you remember, Lark? It’s a shortcut to Panshu.”
“Beautiful town,” the prince agreed. “Are you from that region, Odessa?”
She shook her head. “Opposite direction. Gingham Lake Town.”
The prince let out a light, amused sound. “Gingham? I used to go there whenever he was on leave,” he mused, nodding over to Sedan. “Lovely little place, very green. Have you ever been, Sedan?”
Sedan had started gathering dishes back onto the tray at the foot of the bed. “You’d have to show me on a map,” he said absently.
The prince stood to help, holding his sleeve back while he reached to grab cups from Odessa and Cognac. “If you follow the little river that feeds out of Brakdog Spring northward, it connects into Gingham Lake. There’s a smaller lake just next to it, on the east.” He handed off the cups and held his hands up to mimic the lakes, then pointed at where the city would be. “The town is right between the two. There’s another just north of it.” He pointed again, near the top of his left hand, then drew a line with his finger. “If you keep going, you’ll run into the border town at Lanmar.”
Sedan made a noise of recognition. “Those two little water towns that lead to Crosspoint.”
“Yes, Gingham is the bigger of the two.”
“Ah, well, I’ve never been.”
It was strange, how the mood had changed from being so somber. The two girls watched them talk, blankly. It was like a white noise, to just hear two people chatter pleasantly with each other. Sedan faced them, his tray now full of their used dishes, the prince hovering around him. He left a plate of bread for Cognac, who hadn’t yet eaten.
“Well, little ones,” he said, “I’m afraid there’s quite a bit of paperwork that your prince needs to attend to in preparation for what’s to come. From the earth and skies, thank you for speaking with us about what has happened at the academy. More food will be brought to you in a few hours, if you need anything before that, a guard will be outside the door to your suite. We’ll be leaving first, then.”
Like he had the day before, the prince bowed shallowly.
Together, Odessa and Cognac bid them goodbye, saying, “We’re happy to remain here.”
Effectively alone again, Odessa went back to sleep. She napped for a few hours. Cognac tried to walk around the suite a bit, but her feet still stung quite badly. She settled down on the drawing room couch, not wanting to hobble back to the bed chamber, and not caring to bother Odessa. She sat there, just thinking, for a long time. It wasn’t even thinking, really—she was just there, staring blankly at the wood paneled walls. Her brain had turned to static, firing on all cylinders without actually churning anything out.
After Odessa had woken and started milling about, the doctor from the day before came to visit them and check their bandages. Their feet could take more than a week’s time to heal, with the condition they were in—it seemed more than general wear and fabric burn, their ankles had been completely skinned in spots, and needed to scab over and scar before they could be safe from infection. It was especially dangerous for Cognac, who had blistered open large patches on the bottom of her feet, where it was easy for a wound to become very dirty.
Dinner was cold tea and stuffed bread. Pin rewrapped their feet and left them to their meal.
While they were alone, a strange tension had started to develop. They passed time idly playing word games, but they didn’t talk much otherwise. It seemed to really set in that they didn’t actually know each other. They’d met before, but that was the extent of it. To be suddenly so close to a stranger, and suddenly so aware of it, was unsettling.
They had started at the academy in the same year. They shared the same area of the dormitory, and had started off with a number of classes together. That was years ago, though. They were completely split, academically, and hadn’t had common classes in a long time. Odessa started in on botany almost right away, whereas Cognac bounced around, excelling in mathematics and theoretical sciences. Their course tracks didn’t intersect whatsoever. They were familiar faces to each other, but not much else.
That night they slept separate, as they had intended to the night before. Cognac dreamt she watched an estate guard get shot in the neck while she stood in the gardens. The flowers grew so high that she kept tripping through them and getting stuck, stems wrapped around her legs. She woke up before she could get to where he laid.
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