Chapter 114: I Have Been Audited
( Somewhere a very long way from Zenith...)
The temple had been dead for four hundred years before they arrived, which Greed considered a personal inconvenience.
"Nothing." He drove a hand through what remained of an altar and watched the pieces fall through the floor into whatever was underneath it. "Fifteen years. Fifteen years of nothing, in a realm that smells like old paper."
Pride did not answer.
He was standing perfectly still in the centre of the ruined hall with his head tilted slightly, the way a man stands when he has heard a sound that has not repeated.
"Are you listening to me."
"No."
Greed turned. "Then what."
Pride raised one hand.
Something moved across his palm. Not light. The absence of it, arranged in a line, turning slowly.
"Two days ago," he said, "something opened."
"Opened."
"For approximately one and a half seconds." The line on his palm folded in on itself and vanished. "In the mortal realm. It left no trace behind it, which is why we did not find it immediately, and which is the only interesting thing about it."
Greed’s expression changed slowly.
"No trace."
"None."
"Nothing leaves no trace."
"One thing does." Pride lowered his hand. "You have seen it leave no trace before. So have I. We spent eleven years of that search standing in rooms exactly like this one, looking for the absence, and finding rooms."
The wind moved through the broken columns and found nothing to take.
"Where," Greed said.
"I don’t know yet."
"Then what use is..."
"It will happen again." Pride was already walking. "Things like that do not happen once. We wait, and the second time we will know where to look, and then we will stop searching temples."
Greed stood a moment longer in the ruins of a place that had been dead for four centuries.
Then he laughed, once, and followed.
***
(Alash Vortex’s POV)
Two days after the Headmaster’s office, Elizabeth Aurelius was standing outside Sanctuary.
In the open.
At midday.
Where approximately forty people could see her doing it.
"Vortex."
"Aurelius."
"Walk with me."
"I have cultivation at the fourth bell."
"You have cultivation at the fifth bell. Selene moved Class Five two days ago because half of you were in the infirmary visiting a class leader who had been standing in front of a Force detonation."
She had not raised her voice at any point.
"...Walking sounds good," I said.
***
She had chosen the long path around the residential courtyard, which is exposed on three sides, which meant that anyone who wished to observe the First Princess of the royal family walking beside the boy the entire school had been discussing for four days was welcome to do so.
That was, I understood immediately, the point.
This conversation was going to be public.
Not its contents.
Its existence.
Whatever I said, I would be saying it to someone who had already arranged for everyone to know we had spoken, which meant lying carried a cost it had not carried in the Headmaster’s office.
She had done that on purpose, and she had done it before saying a single word to me.
"You’re very good at this," I said.
"I’m aware."
"I meant it as an observation, not a compliment."
"I took it as neither."
Yellow eyes, forward, posture immaculate.
She walked at exactly the pace of someone who has decided the other person will match it.
"I’m going to say several things," Elizabeth said. "Most of them you already know. I would appreciate it if you did not interrupt to tell me so, because I have arranged them in an order and the order matters."
"That’s an unusual way to open a conversation."
"It’s an efficient one."
She began.
"Lena Arkwright. First day of classes, in a corridor, after cultivation. Sophie Trohan, second day, on the practical field, in front of seventy-four people, without physical contact, which Sophie mentioned to nine separate individuals within an hour because Sophie mentions everything to everyone."
’System.’
[I have nothing useful.]
"Roland Mercer, fourth evening, in your own common room, immediately after you assigned him a residence duty. Mira Ellowen, fifth evening, on a back stairwell where nobody goes. James Vellaroux, the sixth day, in the lower training hall, in front of seventy-five students and Professor Darius, at which point the floor produced a light that four separate people have described to me in four incompatible ways."
She stopped walking.
"Five people. Six days. One per day, and never two, which suggests a limit rather than a preference."
I did not say anything.
"That last part," Elizabeth said, "is the piece nobody else has. Everyone is talking about the light. Nobody is counting the days."
"You counted the days."
"I counted the days."
"That’s..."
"Please don’t say impressive. I’m not attempting to impress you, and if I were, I would have started somewhere better than arithmetic."
We started walking again, mostly because standing still was drawing more attention than moving.
"You skipped me," Elizabeth said.
"I didn’t skip anyone."
"You used it on Trohan. You used it on Vellaroux. Both of them are class leaders, both of them are SSS, both of them are people you had no particular reason to approach and every reason to avoid, because you avoid everyone." She glanced sideways. "There are five class leaders. You have now used an unexplained skill on two of the other four, and not on the third, and not on Spinster."
"That’s not a pattern. That’s a schedule."
"It is a pattern with two entries missing, and I am one of them, and I would like to know why."
And here was the actual problem.
Because the honest answer was that I had been avoiding her specifically.
Not out of dislike.
Out of an entirely accurate assessment that Elizabeth Aurelius would work out more from one bond than the other three had worked out from four, and that I had been saving her for last in the hope that I would understand the skill better before she got the chance.
I had, it turned out, saved her for last and gained no understanding whatsoever, which is the worst possible combination of outcomes.
"It’s a healing skill," I said. "It increases natural recovery for an hour. I’m required to use it. That’s how attributes grow."
"Required by whom."
"By the attribute."
"Attributes do not issue requirements, Vortex. They grow through use. There is no mechanism in any text in the Zenith library that instructs a student to reach a specific number of people, and yet you are moving through this academy at one person per day like a man working from a list."
She let that sit for three full paces.
"Which is fine," she said. "You are allowed to have a list. I have several."
"Then why are we walking."
"Because of James."
She stopped again, and this time it was not tactical.
"He hasn’t slept properly since the training hall."
"He was injured. He shifted twice across forty feet with no preparation. That does damage to..."
"I know what spatial overuse does. I’ve watched him do it since we were ten." Her voice did not change, but something underneath it did. "This isn’t that. He’s sleeping. He’s simply not resting, and when he wakes up he cannot account for the difference, and James Vellaroux is not a person who fails to account for things."
"What does he say about it?"
"He says nothing, because he is James, and because admitting that something is happening to him would require admitting that he does not understand it." A pause. "He told me one thing, four days ago, and then refused to discuss it again."
"What."
"He said that when the light happened, he felt it somewhere that wasn’t his body."
I stopped walking.
Elizabeth noticed, which she was always going to.
"You’ve heard that before."
"He said it to me. In the training hall. While Lena was shouting at both of us."
"And what did you tell him?"
"Nothing. I didn’t have anything."
"Do you have anything now?"
"No."
Elizabeth looked at me for a long moment, and it was the first time in the entire conversation that her expression did anything at all.
"That’s the answer I was afraid of."
"I want to be precise about what I am and am not doing," she said, as we came around the last curve of the courtyard, where Concord’s door was visible at the far end. "I am not threatening you. I don’t have anything to threaten you with, and if I did I would consider using it vulgar."
"Noted."
"I am also not asking you to explain what the light was. I have spoken to Professor Darius, who is not permitted to discuss it, and who therefore discussed it for eleven minutes in a manner he believes was discreet. If he does not know, I don’t expect you to."
"He’s right that he doesn’t know."
"I assumed."
She stopped at the edge of the path.
"Here is what I am doing. I am telling you that you have used something you do not understand on a person I have known since I was ten years old, and that it did something that has not stopped. And I am telling you that the next time you consider using it on someone, you should be aware that there is now evidence it does not end when the hour does."
That landed somewhere I had no defence prepared for, because I had not known it.
Five people. Lena had taken four pages of notes and pronounced it clinically boring. Sophie had been delighted. Roland’s shoulder had stopped aching. Mira had slept.
I had checked on precisely none of them after the hour ended.
Not one.
’System.’
[Yes.]
’Does it stop when the hour stops.’
[The effect stops.]
’That is a very specific sentence.’
[Yes.]
"You’ve gone quiet," Elizabeth said.
"I’m thinking."
"About whether I’m right?"
"About the fact that I never checked."
She tilted her head slightly.
"You didn’t."
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because it was working." I heard how that sounded approximately half a second after saying it. "Because the people I used it on were fine, and pleased, and the quest..."
I stopped.
Elizabeth’s eyes did not move off me.
"The what."
"The question," I said. "The question of whether it worked was answered, so I stopped asking it."
The silence lasted slightly too long.
"That is not what you said."
"It’s what I meant."
"That is not what you said, Vortex."
I have, in fifteen mortal years and an unmeasured number of celestial ones, told a great many people a great many things that were not true.
I am reasonably good at it.
It is not a skill I am proud of, but it is a skill.
Elizabeth Aurelius stood on a path in the middle of a courtyard and let the silence run until it was obvious to both of us that I was not going to fill it.
"Very well," she said finally.
"That’s it?"
"For now. I’ve told you what I came to tell you, and you’ve told me considerably more than you intended, and pushing further today would only teach you to be more careful."
She turned toward Concord.
"Aurelius."
𝗳𝚛𝚎𝚎𝘄𝕖𝕓𝕟𝕠𝚟𝚎𝕝.𝗰𝕠𝐦
She paused.
"I’ll check on them," I said. "All five. Today."
Elizabeth considered that.
"Start with Ellowen," she said. "She’s the one who won’t tell you if something’s wrong."
And then she walked away across a courtyard where approximately forty people had watched the entire conversation and heard none of it, which had been the arrangement from the beginning.