Page 45 of A Tower of Half-Truths

Twenty-Seven

As the week progressed, Leyport became caught in an endless storm, as if a petulant raincloud had parked itself over the city and refused to budge.

Middisday was an exceptionally gloomy day, made worse by Alain’s sullen mood.

Even though the High Council presentation loomed closer than ever, Alain seemed to have lost all motivation to work.

He’d spent most of the day standing by the window, transfixed by the view that hadn’t changed over the past three days: an ominously gray sky over a gray churning river.

Mavery, however, had devoted much of the day to learning a new incantation.

The Sensing spell, once complete, would reveal the colors of the five primary types of wards: protective, detonation, resonating, soundproofing, and fireproofing.

Out of the four types she had yet to master, she’d been most eager to learn the incantation for fireproofing.

She gripped the sides of a wooden box—the same one that had once been overflowing with Alain’s mail—and recited the incantation again.

It was only fourteen syllables but a touch more complicated than the others she’d learned so far.

She stumbled over the final rune, almost forgetting to roll the ‘r,’ but the pulsation beneath her fingers told her the Ether had responded to her words all the same.

She gasped. “I think I did it!”

Even her excitement couldn’t distract Alain from the window—or, more accurately, whatever thoughts were plaguing him. He continued to watch the downpour.

Mavery hoisted herself off the floor with a creak from her bad knee, and it continued to ache as she crossed the room.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Hmm? Oh, nothing,” he said, finally acknowledging her for the first time in hours. She threw him a penetrating look, and he hung his head with a sigh. “Today is…not a good day.”

“I can see that.” She placed a hand on his shoulder. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

“No, it’s nothing to concern yourself with.” He cleared his throat. “Er, did you need something?”

“I think I managed the fireproofing spell. Come look.”

Her hand trailed from his shoulder to his elbow.

She pulled him away from the window and to the center of the room, where the box sat on the floor.

She grabbed a match from the tea table. The scent of sulfur filled the air as she struck it.

She dropped it in the box, and the flame extinguished with a tiny puff of smoke.

“Two down, three to go,” Alain said, nodding, though his voice lacked a shred of enthusiasm. “Why don’t we call it a day?”

Mavery glanced at the clock. “It’s not even one-thirty.”

“And yet, it seems you’ve already put in a full day’s work.”

“I could get back to practicing augmentations. I still haven’t mastered the compass—”

“Don’t worry about that. Leave the augmentations to me.” He placed his hand against her upper back and nudged her toward the door. “Go on, take the rest of the afternoon off.”

She shrugged away from his grasp. “Alain, what’s going on? Are you worried about the presentation?”

He laughed humorlessly. “I’m constantly worried about the presentation, but no. This time, it’s…” He hesitated, then gave her what she assumed was his best attempt at a smile. “As I said, it’s nothing to concern yourself with. I’ll be better come morning, I promise.”

She met his gaze with another probing stare, though she knew any attempts to force the truth from him would be in vain. She could only hope her evening plans would prove more enlightening.

The Lettered Gentleman was a much higher-end establishment than Mavery had expected, though she probably should have known better, based on the name alone.

The walls were paneled with dark-toned wood, and adorned with world maps, oil paintings of the University’s towers, and other scholarly paraphernalia.

And, as the name implied, the patrons were predominantly male.

Nearly all of them wore the plum robes that marked them as University faculty.

Mavery could see no female professors as she surveyed the room.

She didn’t know what time classes ended for the day, so she’d left the boarding house at seven o’clock, immediately following the evening meal, though she now worried she’d missed Nezima’s group altogether.

The air was thick with the slightly sweet and leathery aroma of cigar smoke. Mavery crossed the gleaming parquet floor to the equally gleaming bar along the right-hand wall. As she began to signal the bartender, a familiar face from the other end of the bar looked in her direction.

“You’re here!”

Wren rushed over. Mavery raised her eyebrows, too startled to react further, when the younger woman threw her arms around her middle and pulled her in for a hug.

“Oh, I’m so glad you made it!” Wren said. The ale on her breath explained her overt friendliness.

“Er, glad to be here.” Mavery patted Wren’s shoulder before taking a step back. “I take it I’m not too late.”

“No, no, not at all. Everyone comes and goes as they please. Selemin and Anneke arrived not even half an hour ago.”

At least Nezima and Wren wouldn’t be the only familiar faces.

Wren gathered up the four tankards the bartender had just finished pouring.

Mavery offered to carry a few; from the way Wren was swaying, half the ale would end up on the floor.

That freed one of Wren’s arms, which she immediately hooked around one of Mavery’s.

Wren led her to a private room in the back of the pub, where there was no cigar smoke—only lively conversation.

The scholars were split between two tables, with assistants seated at one and professors at the other, and there were far more of the former than the latter. Most of them were still wearing their robes.

Nezima and Selemin sat at the professors’ table. They were joined by two women Mavery didn’t recognize. Before she could get a good look at either of them, Wren steered her to the assistants’ table.

Wren passed around the tankards, then pulled up an empty chair and urged Mavery to take a seat. Upon doing so, Mavery understood the snide comment Nezima had once made about her age. None of the other assistants looked a day over twenty-five.

“Everyone, this is Mavery,” Wren said. “Aventus’s assistant.”

Wren went clockwise around the table, pointing at each of the six women as she rattled off the assistants’ names, wizards, and academic departments.

All of it slipped immediately from Mavery’s mind.

Only Selemin’s assistant, Anneke, stood out from the rest. With her straw-colored hair and thick spectacles, she looked somewhat familiar.

“I remember you,” Anneke said dryly. “You once called me and my friends ‘weirdos.’ ”

“Oh, right,” Mavery said. “Sorry about that.”

“When you walked in, I was certain you were a professor,” said the mousy-haired assistant sitting beside Anneke. “How old are you?”

Anneke elbowed her in the ribs. “Gods, Nellie! Where are your manners?”

The group then returned to what they’d been discussing before: no less than three distinct conversations. Since Mavery had nothing to contribute to any of them, she quietly observed and caught fragments of crosstalk.

“First-years get worse every term.”

“As if sixth-years are any better. Some couldn’t so much as transmutate water into piss.”

“—but the second reviewer said my writing ‘lacked a distinctive authorial voice.’ It was a godsdamned literature review!”

“Well, one of my reviewers recommended a dozen papers that have nothing to do with fabrication magic.”

“—the meeting was on the day I went dress shopping in Durnatel. I told him I couldn’t attend because I was on deadline.”

“But aren’t you always on deadline?”

“Exactly! So, I wasn’t lying, was I?”

Mavery’s attention then wandered to the other table, where Selemin’s voice had risen above all the others.

“—pulled the funding for my research trip! He gave me some drivel about budgetary constraints, but Safiya reserved the train tickets a fortnight ago. No, I’ll bet anything he’s still mad about my Marya worshiper joke.”

“The one you made at his Yvernal party?” asked a professor with sleek raven hair. “He wasn’t even in the room at the time.”

Selemin nodded. “One of his sycophants must have told him about it.”

“Regardless, that was months ago!”

“Kazamin’s memory these days may be faultier than a cracked bloodstone, but not when it comes to his precious Marya.”

“I believe it,” said a white-haired woman. “A decade ago, he denied an interdepartmental trip to a burial site along the southern border, on the off-chance any Maryans had been buried there. And that was merely an anthropological study; we had no intentions of exhuming any graves.”

“He’s always had difficulty separating his religion from his profession,” Nezima said, shaking her head.

“You would know better than anyone,” Selemin said. “Is it true that he’s never been resurrected?”

“Yes, like all Maryans, he doesn’t believe in interfering with death.”

Selemin scoffed. “How the High Council considers him worthy of leading our department, when he’s never even experienced all the perils of research—”

“If I remember correctly, you have never been resurrected,” the dark-haired professor said with a smirk.

Selemin waved a hand. “Sure, but he’s a Gardemancer, I’m a historian. What lethal dangers am I going to expose myself to? Paper cuts?”

Nezima laughed, and it took all of Mavery’s resolve not to gape at her. Granted, Nezima’s version of it was far from mirthful—it was no more than flat, clipped chuckles—but it was laughter all the same.

“How much do you need for your trip?” she asked Selemin. “Perhaps we can pool our resources.”

“Much appreciated, but as I’ve done for the last three, I’ll fund this one from my own pocket.” Selemin took another swig from their tankard, then groaned. “Why can’t he retire already? He’s been dean for, what, a hundred years?”

“Forty-seven,” the white-haired woman said. “Not that anyone is counting.”