“Conrad Kettering,” Magister Marcellus stopped me in the dining hall as my friends and I were leaving after supper a few weeks after my interlude with Appius, two months after Solstice.
“Yes, Magister?” I stopped and addressed him respectfully.
Magister Marcellus deserved the respect. He was one of the handful of magisters—which, fortunately for all of us, included Magister Titus—who was bending over backwards to keep the students safe from King Julius’s soldiers and the occasional bizarre mandate that was issued from the palace to keep people in line.
Magister Marcellus walked right up to me, his expression serious with a hint of danger in it. He glanced to my friends as they hung a few feet back from me, then focused solely on me…to a degree that sent a chill down my spine. I’d always felt as though he liked me, but he’d never been so intense before.
“We’ve had a request for healers to visit the south hill estates,” he said. “Apparently, there’s been an outbreak of ague, and they want the college to send their finest to tend to them.”
I gaped for a moment. That wasn’t what I’d expected him to say. None of the students had been allowed out of the college—or wanted to leave it—since Solstice. A very small segment of the population of Royersford had been granted special passes to seek the help of healers at the college, but no one had been permitted to stay in the infirmary overnight.
Now, to be asked to leave the college felt like a gift. Or maybe a curse. Especially since ague was easily treatable with tea and staying in bed.
“Do you wantmeto go, Magister?” I asked, blinking and glancing over my shoulder at my friends.
“I think it would be best,” Magister Marcellus replied, still studying me with sharp intensity that I couldn’t figure out. “The college needs its finest representatives to visit the outlying hill estates and to assess the condition of Royersford’s noble families.”
I knew he was trying to tell me something. Something of monumental importance. I could guess that he wanted me to be some sort of a spy for the college, to learn what I could about how people outside of the college were getting on. It had been months since we’d had much more than rumors or second-hand information about what was really happening in the city and beyond.
But I couldn’t tell for certain what Magister Marcellus wanted from me. His eyes held too much intensity for him to simply want me to take a look beyond the college’s walls.
“I’ll do whatever you need me to do, Magister,” I said with a respectful nod.
“Good,” Magister Marcellus said. He glanced to my friends, narrowing his eyes in thought. “I believe Mara and Appius should accompany you.”
My brow shot up. I could understand Mara coming with me, if, indeed, I was being sent on some sort of spy mission, but not necessarily Appius. Mara knew the aristocracy of the hill estates like the back of her hand. She was well-versed in all the intrigue and turmoil. Appius was a country boy who had never set foot in a city until being sent to attend the healer’s course.
“The three of you will leave at dawn tomorrow,” Magister Marcellus went on, raising his voice. “I’ve been told there will be an escort of soldiers waiting for you at the gate at first light, so don’t be late.”
I didn’t know what else to say. There was nothing to say, really. The three of us had been given an order, and whether it was Magister Marcellus or someone else behind that order, I had to obey it.
“Yes, Magister,” I said.
Mara and Appius echoed me. “Yes, Magister.”
Magister Marcellus nodded, then turned and abruptly marched off. Almost as if he didn’t want to be seen giving us the order, or like he didn’t want whatever would happen once we were outside of the college to come back on him.
“Why would Magister Marcellus choose the three of you for something so important?” Lucius asked the question I was certain we were all thinking as we made our way back to the house.
“It’s obvious why he chose Mara,” Leander said with a shrug, kicking aside a clump of slush that had washed into the path. The snow had started melting two weeks ago, but the weather was still bitterly cold. “Why would he be so keen on sending Conrad up into the hills, though?”
“He was unusually keen,” Appius said, clearly worried for me.
I had a different sort of worry. Appius swayed close to me, his hand twitching as it brushed past mine, like he wanted me to hold his hand while we walked through the college, with everyone watching.
I really liked Appius, and we worked well together as temporary partners, but every day that passed convinced me more and more that he understood the “temporary” part of our attachment less and less.
“I guess we won’t know what Magister Marcellus has in mind until we’re actually in the south hills,” Mara said with a typically dispassionate shrug.
Icy though she might have been, she was right. We spent the rest of the night speculating about why the three of us, me in particular, had been chosen for the mission. Appius and I even talked about it in bed in the dark instead of fucking to relieve the stress and bring on the oblivion of sleep.
In the morning, we were up, dressed, and on our way to the college gates, just as Magister Marcellus had told us we should be. Magister Marcellus was nowhere in sight, but two fully-armed soldiers lingered near the gate, as though already impatient and on edge with our mission.
“You’re the healers that are heading up to the hill estates?” the taller of the two soldiers asked with a suspicious frown.
“We are,” I answered, standing with my shoulders squared and pretending I wasn’t intimidated.
The tall soldier nodded to the leather satchels we all had slung over our shoulders. “What’s in those?”