Chapter 15 – A Plan

Step one of the plan involved starting rumors. This was something Mirian had, funnily enough, almost no experience doing. Lily was a lot better at it. On Seventh day when they visited the dining hall again for lunch, Lily joined a table with several other sixth year students.

“Hey, do any of you have maintenance requests in?” Lily asked.

One of the girls at the table said, “No.”

“Okay, sorry for bothering you. It’s so weird though, it’s been days and nothing. And then I was talking to my friend who had one in, and he hasn’t gotten his filled in a week. And then someone told him that someone killed a maintenance team and the city guards are covering it up, and I was like, there’s no way that’s true, that sounds like something that bearded guy who keeps ranting about end times in the Market Forum would say, so I’m trying to… I dunno, make sure that isn’t true. Well, enjoy your meal.” And then she was off, before they could respond.

“Nice,” Mirian said as they walked away from the table. “You made that look easy.”

“Well, it is easy. You try the next one.”

They visited five tables, spread across the dining hall, trying to make the encounters seem casual. One of the tables, a fourth year boy piped up with, “Wait a second, yeah! There’s this broken door in the dorm and no one’s fixed it in a week. Is that what’s going on?”

They might have been rumors, but it wasn’t like they were untrue.

“So do you think it will work?” asked Lily as they walked back to the dorms. “What even gave you the idea to do that?”

“No clue. There was… well, this is embarrassing. There was a book I liked about a Deeps agent who had to stop a conspiracy, and if she wanted to get information out to the public, she would go to taverns in a disguise and start talking. I mean, that’s got to be based on something, right?”

“Maybe,” Lily said. “If everyone’s talking about it, someone who can do something about it has to pick up on it, right? There’s all these rich students, and some from the old nobility. If people in Torrviol are getting killed, they have the power to stir up a fuss.”

“Yeah. I feel like I’m missing something, though. Like, Archmage Luspire is in charge of the Academy, and he has to know about the break-ins. And certainly that his staff are going missing! When Platus died, they canceled classes, and there were all those announcements about safety and….” Mirian stopped. “Oh shit, that hasn’t happened yet.”

Lily had gone pale. “When does this happen?”

“It was a few days before the invasion.” She thought. “It was right before the weekend, so it must have been the 23rd of Solem. I still can’t… like, did he stumble on something? Why would they kill him?”

Lily shook her head. “I still can’t believe this all. It’s all so… it’s crazy!”

“Tell me about it,” Mirian said, and again she was glad she had her friend.

***

That evening, when Mirian listened to the sermon at the Luminate Temple, she was in a different place. When she’d heard it the first time, she hadn’t been paying attention. She’d been so focused on exams, and the flooding in her room, and had been so tired. Now, a different kind of exhaustion suffused her, but her ears were open. In the cavernous hall, amidst the tall pillars and the huge reliefs of the Gods looking down on them, she sat meditatively as the priest spoke.

“…and it was Ominian whose hand sheltered the people of Enteria from the Cataclysm. Not for coin. Not for worship. They demanded no price. They laid upon the people no debt. When the prophets asked why, Ominian said, with Their dying breath: ‘You are of life. The cycle of souls is sacred to Us, as it should be to you.’ We must remember this, and remember Their sacrifice. For it was Ominian’s body that shielded us. Though many died, some live, and here, we must remember another lesson. As They bore Their heart to Enteria, we must remember the tides of heavens are not a simple stream, but full of riddles and currents that we may never fully understand….”

As the priest spoke, he approached and put his hand on the statue of Ominian behind the altar. The God looked ominous in the flickering candlelight, looming above the congregation. No two statues of the God were quite the same, and the one here in Torrviol looked very different than the one in Mirian’s temple back in Arriroba. Some features were the same, though. Ominian was always depicted with a crown of burning laurels, sitting upon a throne, Their chest split open so the heart was visible. Unlike her home temple, the statue here had several knives sticking out of the God’s torso. The last knife pierced Their hand, which was raised, palm up, as if to ward away something. The stone of the statue was marble, and as Mirian looked on it, she got the strange sense of recognition. The black, white, and pink stone was full of swirls and whorls that reminded her of eyes.

The priest’s sermon continued. Sacrifice and the unknowable figured prominently, but the one that most resonated with her was the code of ethics: Doing what was right, because it was right, and no other reason. That was the code that her mother and father had instilled in her. It was what drove her now. The easy thing to do would be to flee, she knew. She still might have to resort to that.

Why did you choose me? she wondered, and looked around the chamber. From every wall, Gods looked down, part statue and part relief so that it looked like they were emerging from the solid stone. Which one had seen fit to give her a second chance? And why? What did they see in her?

She had never thought of herself as particularly worthy of anything. She worked hard, and tried to do what was right. The sermon ended, but she stayed seated, lost in thought, until the thin sunlight bleeding through the windows began to dim, and the shadows in the temple grew even deeper.

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***

The next morning, Mirian found to her surprise that the Myrvite Ecology exam had changed. This one was all about decomposition and scarce resources, though it had the same basic format as last time. Again, Professor Viridian had rings around his eyes, and Mirian could see his exhaustion. Midway through the exam, she looked up, and saw that Valen was looking at her from across the room.

Creepy, Mirian thought. She narrowed her eyes, and for once the girl actually had the decency to blush before she looked back to her exam and got to work.

Distracted, Mirian considered her plan. She decided that as aggravating as Valen was, she needed her. After all, she was the only person she knew of who had actually seen one of the cloaked figures running about.

After class, Mirian waited until the other students left, then went up to Viridian. “Professor? I know the quarter is over now, but could I meet with you during your office hours?”

Without looking at her, Viridian said, “Unfortunately, I’ve just become quite busy recently,” and nodded at the pile of exams on his desk. “And, after all, what’s done is done.” It was not his typical warm response.

Mirian chewed on her lip, then worked up the courage to say what she had planned to say. “Well, if I may… I think you’ll want to hear what I have to say. If I’m right, it’s related to why you’re so tired.”