“Tess, it’ll be ok,” Jez said.
“No, it won’t! I’m already so behind!”
“You can catch up on your reading,” Flea said.
“It’s not…” my voice began to waver and I hated the sound of it. I looked up into the night sky, trying to scour the dark shapes in it for signs of my dragon. I coughed and tried to clear my throat. “It’s not enough.”
“Look,” Keel said, “I have a couple of classes first up, but I can come by in the afternoon if you like. I could do those introduction units in my sleep.”
“I guess that’ll have to do,” I said.
“Good, now feed her up and put her to bed,” Keel said. “She needs food, fluids and lots of rest. She’ll be much better in the morning.”
“I’ll be better when my dragon’s back,” I mumbled.
“Expect me around one,” Keel said over my head. “If she’s asleep, just leave her. She needs the rest to recuperate.”
“Not a child,” I said.
“Well, stop acting like one and get into bed after you’ve eaten.”
19
I saw it as soon as the others helped me inside. The table was covered in a pretty hand-embroidered cloth and on top of that was a dizzying array of dishes. It was antipasto Aravisian style: lots of small plates of pickled and preserved vegetables and meats along with cheeses. “I’ll clear some space for you,” Flea said, moving to start putting the food away.
I looked over at Jez who nodded quickly. “This was a date,” she said in a whisper as she passed by me. “You want me to leave?”
“Look guys, just sit down. It’s been a big day and I need to eat and catch you up. Did anyone from the VCs office come by today?” We all sat around the table and began to pick at the food. Flea got up and grabbed me a drink, not Shay thankfully. It tasted like some kind of juice, a bit like a combination of mango and guava.
“You mean the people trying to catch us red-handed with poison? They came, Jez’s boyfriend had planted something under the bathroom sink at some point in the night, but thank Christ, Miazydar removed it just before they turned up
. Wouldn’t have found it without him either.”
“Sorry,” Jez said sheepishly. It was a weird look on her, she never felt guilty about anything. “I thought he was here to get laid. I had no idea he was going to go all Game of Thrones on me.”
“We need to be extra careful,” I said. “Did he come back after disposing of the poison?”
“I think so? We were kind of busy cleaning up here, so I didn’t really take any notice,” Jez said. “He usually sits up in the eyrie, so we never know unless we go out to look.”
“We found another nest of those spiders in one of the wardrobes, so we were mostly focussed on that,” Flea said.
“Which wardrobe?” I said. No one answered me. “The one in our room?” Slowly, they nodded. “Why didn’t you just use Miazydar?”
“He doesn’t listen to us. Anyway, the mother was easy enough to dispatch, it was the…” Jez said.
“The what?”
“She had a massive sack of babies and they went through all our clothes,” Flea said. Jez shot him a look, but he just shrugged. “We spent most of the day washing everything by hand to get rid of the little bastards.”
“God, I hate this place,” I said with a shudder. “They don’t have massive spiders in Damorica. So, Miazydar took off with the poison. How much was there?”
“A fair amount,” Flea said, showing me with his hands a rectangle about the size of a paperback.
“God, what if that was enough to hurt him? It might have been really concentrated and seeped into his skin while he was carrying it, or he might have inhaled some.” What had I fucking done? I’d led everyone into danger again. We were being persecuted irrationally by some dickhead in power, again. People I cared about were going to get hurt, again. Why did I go through that bloody portal? Why didn’t I fight the dragon riders on my home turf? How useful would a plasma spear be against a human SWAT team? What would’ve happened if the guys had been caught with the plant of poison? How did they have that big a package to plant on us in the first place? Was this all part of some scheme? The university kills or hurts a third of the student population, then blames it on us? The parents baying for my blood would’ve pulled the sundering sword off the wall and done the job for Bhechro. A hand grabbed mine, giving it a squeeze. I looked up to see Flea watching me, obviously worried, and under my fingers was a shredded piece of bread.
“If you’re anything like Ash, right about now you’re blaming yourself,” Jez said. “Don’t. We all came here, including Miazydar, by our own choice. Admittedly, those spears were really fucking scary. Are they like some kind of lightsaber or something?”
“Similar.”