“How are we to eat?” Darius asked. “Last I checked, the kitchens were running low on stock.”
“Everyone in Royersford has been running low on food stocks,” Leander pointed out.
Darius sent him a look, then asked Magister Titus, “Do we have enough food to isolate ourselves?”
“Does the city have enough food for prolonged isolation?” I asked, remembering the condition of the cities during the Dying Winter a little too well.
I’d counted myself lucky to have spent last winter in Kettering and not Yacovissi, or any of the other cities. Maybe I’d been a bit to smug. I had a feeling I was about to get a glimpse into what happened when cities ran out of food personally.
“We have enough for now,” Magister Titus said, “but there can be no waste. As I understand it, the king has instituted quotas for the amount of food that the countryside must supply to the cities, so we should be alright until the spring at least.”
“And what of the people in the country?” Appius asked, going downright pale. “Will they have enough if they’re forced to send a certain amount to us?”
I could hear the underlying question Appius was asking. Was his family safe or would they starve to death on their farm out in the far reaches of the Old Realm because the king was trying to save himself?
Magister Titus sighed, looking deeply defeated. “I don’t know,” he said, shaking his head and shrugging. “I don’t know anything. I’ve never found myself in a situation like this before. I accepted the post of Dean of Royersford Healers’ College because I am passionate about saving lives. I never dreamed I would be in a position where I had to choose which lives to save on this scale.”
My chest squeezed in sympathy with the man. He wasn’t remotely like Dushka, but like Dushka and the other leaders of the Wolf River Kingdom, he had to make decisions that would have ripple effects for thousands.
“All I can do is preserve the lives of the men—and women,” he said, nodding to Mara, “who can save the lives of others in the future. And I will,” he added with some vehemence. “I will do whatever it takes to keep my students alive until we turn the page on this chapter of history.”
He turned to go, leaving me with a sense of admiration I hadn’t known I had for the man, and the feeling that he would make an extraordinary contribution to the Wolf River Kingdom and the frontier.
If only there were a way to get him there.
“Classes will resume tomorrow,” he said as he reached the door. “I’ve made the decision to combine all students into one body, and since there is no infirmary at the moment, you will all be given class instruction in the large auditorium.”
I tried to think about the implications of that after he left, but my mind was so exhausted and blurry with the surreal situation I found myself in that all I could do was sink into a chair at the table to eat the meager meal we’d been brought.
It wasn’t lost on me, as I ate a simple hand-pie, that I wouldn’t have been stuck where I was, in a situation so dire I might not survive, if I hadn’t grown so ambitious that I’d left a safe and secure home where my remarkable and caring, older lover was the ruler. I wouldn’t have left my fellow Sons, men who were like my brothers, behind, perhaps never to see them again, if I hadn’t gotten it into my head that I deserved the very best healing course the old kingdom could provide.
But here I was, trapped by my own pride and ambition. If I ever made it home, I swore I would devote myself to the Wolf River Kingdom, my friends, and my lover without a single thought for myself ever again.
IfI ever made it home.
“Are you alright?” Appius asked quietly as he ate his pie with his chair inched almost too close to mine.
I finished chewing my bite, then studied him for a moment. I don’t know what possessed me to come clean in that moment, but I said, “Appius, you know I come from the frontier, don’t you?”
Appius nodded, swallowed his bite, then said, “Yes.”
“And you know that I intend to try to get back there in the spring, once the snow melts in the mountains and it’s safe to climb them,” I went on.
Appius’s eyes went wide, and he seemed speechless for a moment. “But the mountain pass is gone. There’s no way to get to the frontier anymore.”
I shook my head. “I’ll get there the same way people did before they built the pass or the bridges. I’ll climb the mountains.”
I was aware of Mara and Lucius listening in from the other side of the table while Leander and Darius continued to straighten the rest of the common room. They were listening too. But my housemates all knew about my plan to return to the frontier in the spring or die trying. And they knew why.
“I’ve been mountain-climbing before, many times. You know it can be incredibly dangerous, right?” Appius asked, once again looking younger than I assumed he was.
“I know,” I nodded, braced myself, then went on with. “But my lover is in the frontier. He’s the leader of a settlement in the Wolf River Kingdom. I love him more than anything in this world, and I have to go back to him, no matter what it takes.”
I stared hard at Appius, willing him to understand what my words meant where he was concerned.
Sure enough, Appius’s face flushed, and he looked awkward and panicked. “But we…but I know you…but if you have a lover….” He reached for the glass of water at his place and drank about half of it, then asked, “If you have a lover in the frontier, why did you do those things with me last night? You sleep with a lot of people.”
I grinned in spite of myself. I’d forgotten how provincial some people’s opinions about sex and enjoyment could be.