Chapter 48 - Something Different (Patreon)

There was no hiding what just happened. Mirian had already attracted a few strange looks when she’d started casting in the alley. Then there was the loud crack of the body hitting the paving stones, and then the contents of the spy’s satchel had spilled out across the pavement into the street. Now Mirian was standing next to a very obviously dead body, with a crowd of students staring at her, gaping.

Mirian thought fast. She needed to act surprised. That was easy, she was surprised. “Holy shit!” she said. Brilliant, she thought.

“I was… I was just trying to… I was trying to….” she stammered, and she was only half-faking it. Her brain was racing with what do I say, I can’t fuck up the cycle this fast! She could kill herself; it was an option. But if the cycle only truly reset when the Divir moon fell—she couldn’t do that to Lily. She needed an excuse that made sense.

By now, the guard from the plaza had run over. “Move aside,” he commanded, pushing a first year who was too slow to react out of the way.

“My friend—uh, my friend said they put my bag on the roof, as a prank, and so I was getting it with lift object but the—and it just fell! I swear it wasn’t me!” Mirian blurted out. It wasn’t a great lie, but it was plausible. Was it plausible?

The guard wasn’t even looking at Mirian though. He was better at hiding his shock then the students gathered around, but his gaze was fixed on the dead spy, and his eyes were wide. He knows him.

Then, to Mirian’s surprise, Professor Seneca joined the crowd. “Bertrus, what’s going—oh my,” she said, noticing the body. But before that, she’d been talking to the guard. Wait, how does Professor Seneca know the plaza guard?

The crowd around the alley was growing. Mirian could hear that more guards had shown up near the back and were trying to get a clear path through it. Mirian felt the panic rising. Just a moment ago, she’d been thinking that logically there weren’t any consequences to the break-in, and then she’d gone and felt the worst pain of her life. That memory would live forever in her now. Worse could happen to her now if she didn’t get this right.

“Professor! Someone put my bag on the roof because—well, anyways, it was on the roof. And when I pulled it down with a spell, there was… he just came down! I didn’t—you have to believe me!” She had to get Seneca to believe her. If it was just up to the guards, they’d cover it up like they did when that other spy was captured.

Professor Senca said, “It’s okay Mirian. I’m sure the investigation will—wait. Bertrus, those are Academy glyph keys. Why did this man have Academy keys?” Sure enough, when the satchel had disgorged its contents, it had scattered the three keys too.

“I… I don’t know, Sefora. But I’ll get to the bottom of this.”

“Like the other investigations?”

That’s right, Mirian remembered. There’d been loads of break-ins. Every professor probably knew about them, and knew they weren’t getting properly investigated. She needed to leverage that this cycle.

But as she was contemplating what she needed to do next, Mirian realized she wasn’t the focus she thought she was. The guard—Bertrus, apparently—and Seneca were staring at each other. Then Seneca picked up the scroll that was next to the glyph keys and also unrolled it. She blinked, no doubt recognizing the Eskanar script.

“This might explain… quite a bit,” Seneca said, handing it to him. “If you need someone to assist on the cryptography, I know someone who can help.”

The Akanans probably know too, Mirian thought. I have to make sure Professor Jei is protected this cycle. Somehow, she’d stumbled on a new path she’d never considered. Perhaps she’d spent too much time looking for magical solutions to problems better solved by people.

Surreptitiously, Mirian inched away from the body and closer toward the crowd.

“Alright everyone, move back. Move back!” Bertrus called. By now, three other guards had arrived to the front, and were none-too-gently urging students along. “You all have classes to get to. Move along! Not you,” he said to a group near the front, and he grabbed onto Myrian’s cloak. “I need witness statements. You all saw it?”

To Mirian’s surprise, Seneca stayed there, even though the belltower was chiming on the hour. “Tell the class I’ll be delayed,” she told one of the students as they headed inside.

With four guards and four students, they all gave their statements simultaneously, repeating what they’d seen in a big jumble. From what Mirian could hear, they’d all seen her channeling a spell, then the body falling, but not much else. One thought they’d heard a yelp before he fell. Three didn’t. Then Mirian repeated her own story to him, heart still racing, but projecting some semblance of calm.

“I’ll need to take you to the guard post,” he said when Mirian had finished, almost apologetically.

It was Professor Seneca who said, “No you don’t.”

“Pardon?” the guard said, and his companions didn’t seem to know how to react either.

“You know her name and description. You know where to find her. There’s only one way out of Torrviol—issue her a travel ban if you’re worried she’ll become a fugitive, but I highly doubt it. Right now, a bit of normalcy might be good for her. Mirian, go to class. Bertrus, we need to talk.”

Whatever Mirian had expected, it hadn’t been this. The guards stayed by the body, but they just watched as she walked into the Alchemistry building. The last thing Mirian saw, Seneca had raised a sound-nullifying barrier and was talking animatedly with Bertrus, gesturing at both the scroll and the keys.

Mirian sat in the back of the lecture hall, trying to ignore all the whispering and glances her way. With Seneca still outside, the whole group of students had nothing to do but gossip. Scanning the room, she saw that Calisto had managed to sit next to Nicolus, who seemed to be doing his best to dissociate from the present. Mirian could empathize.

It was likely her trainings with Xipuatl wouldn’t happen this cycle. That was fine; she could routinely examine her soul even without the four harmonizing pillars in Xipuatl’s meditation room. What else would change? It’s likely the spies work together to ambush Jei in a normal cycle. Valen and I didn’t see anyone else, and if there is, I need to learn about them anyways. If it’s only one spy attacking Jei, I might be able to help her win. She needed to save Jei. That meant pausing her Applied Spellcasting work and taking Artifice Design again. But if she did it right, she could learn the contents of the cipher-scroll, learn more about the secret project, and learn how Professor Jei did artifice. All invaluable.

I need to stop the second spy too. Given that that spy would leave for the Myrvite Studies building soon, it was likely that news of the first spy’s death wouldn’t reach him in time. The guards may have been willing to take bribes and cover for each other, but none of them had seemed eager to go report the incident to Captain Mandez.

Thankfully, no one in class seemed to be able to work up the courage to talk to the weird loner girl who might have killed a man, so Mirian didn’t have to muddle through any awkward conversations before Seneca showed up to teach.

“Apologies,” she said once she reached the front of the room. “I’ll skip the introductory material from previous classes, though you should not skip it in studying. Today I will only focus on the content from this class. As is tradition for events that may require it, the Academy will inform the Luminate Order, and should you wish to talk to a priest, they can lend both a listening ear and advice. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, don’t worry. Now, the review.”

Mirian left as soon as the class got out, immediately heading over to get a handful of brass filings from the student crafting center, then rushed to her next class.

Valen was the only one to talk to her. “Woah, it’s Miss Murder. Anyone else on the hit list?” she said, which was both amazingly callous and quite impressive. How the hell had she heard about what had happened that fast? The girl was better informed than the Akanans.

“Shut up,” she hissed at Valen. “And please don’t talk directly at me. I don’t want to die of poison.” That insult she’d stolen from last cycle’s Valen, so it felt right to dish it right back at her.

When class was over, she ‘discovered’ the spy, whose key predictably jammed in the lock.

“Watch out! He has a lightning wand!” she screamed, which made the spy’s eyes go wide, because he hadn’t even pulled it out when she said it. When a dozen students and Professor Viridian rounded the corner, he also realized how fucked he was.

When Bertrus and two other guards showed up, he saw Mirian and started. “You again!” Then he looked at the  spy—who was sitting down and bound by a force rope spell—and Professor Viridian—who had the glyph key the spy had just tried to use. He blinked, looking back and forth between the spy and Mirian.

Mirian was sitting in the corner with her head in her hands pretending to be miserable. “Why does this keep happening to me? I’m just trying to pass my exams!”

The spy, for his part, was gazing intently at Bertrus.

“Alright, well, I need witness statements,” he said. Under his breath he muttered, “Again.”

***

The next day, after the Alchemistry exam, Professor Seneca motioned for Mirian to join her as she turned in her exam.

First, she glanced over the exam. “This is… I wasn’t even planning on grading section four because we didn’t get to it in the review, but these transformations are all right. I wouldn’t have believed it was you if I hadn’t just watched you take it right now. Something clicked?”

“Thank you,” Mirian said, smiling. “Yeah, I guess. Also I studied. A lot.” That was true, at least.

“Are you doing okay?”

“I’m trying not to think about it,” she said. Then she added, “No.” It wasn’t the death of the spy she was talking about, though. A day ago she’d fallen into a pit trap. She’d been shot to death, sliced apart, and watched her friends die horribly. But what else was there to do but bare it? The worst part was, it would all happen again.

“Do… you want to talk about it?”

“Maybe later,” she said. After I save Professor Jei.