ChaoticArmcandy

  I hurtled down the narrow, dimly lit service corridor, gasping for breath. My vision was blurry with haste, my lungs burned, my blood sang in my ears with a thunderous cadence, but I didn’t dare to slow or tarry.

  My thoughts blew around like dead leaves caught in a whirlwind. No doubt Monarda’s knives would make quick work of my messy knots. She could already be up and hunting me with a vengeance.

  I winced internally, remembering the furious parting gre she’d shot at me, before the door had smmed shut between us. I’d have to face that unwelcome reunion eventually—hell’s dread gods, I pnned on returning myself as soon as I warned Mi.

  Was that a mistake?

  There was an intersection ahead—one I recognized. I careened around an unassuming corner of drab brick and through an open doorway, into a long, low-ceilinged room crammed with draped furniture. This was part of the basement level of Stormcroft dormitory.

  Panting, I stumbled forward and began picking my way through the jumbled mess. I had lost track of what bell it was, but the undry was going—I could smell it from here. Probably still second shift. Hopefully I could slip in and out without bumping into anyone else, least of all Jaques herself.

  I hurried through two more dusty rooms, trying to fend off my swirling thoughts, but I couldn’t hide from the sweating, looming guilt cwing its way up my spine from my stomach.

  If I hadn’t lied to Mi, if I hadn’t hidden my connection to Aralia from her in the first pce, perhaps none of the compounding disasters of today would have happened.

  I came to an abrupt halt at the bottom of a broad stone staircase and leaned against the wall, panting.

  This was likely all my fault.

  I gritted my teeth and shook my head. There was no time to dwell. The only thing that mattered right now was warning Mi of all that Aralia had just revealed to me. If there was a kuffa witch hunt happening and Ministry inquisitors were on the way, she needed to know, now.

  I began creeping upward, then froze as the sounds of chatter and ughter drifted down from the nding above me. After an interminable minute of tense waiting, I heard the main doors ctter shut and the voices cut off, leaving only silence.

  I drew a careful breath, willing my racing pulse to calm. At this point, there was no need to sneak. If anyone saw me, I told myself, I was just another student, just another girl. Swallowing hard, I straightened my back and lifted my chin, and began ascending the stairs of Stormcroft.

  Mercifully, I made it to the third floor nding without drawing attention, and fervently thanked all the stars that the corridor was empty in both directions. Gncing nervously around, I approached the door of Mi and Roxa’s room and hesitated on the threshold. My pulse was beginning to spike again—what was I even going to say? How could I expin?

  Low, familiar voices murmured on the other side of the door.

  There was no time.

  I closed my eyes and forced myself to knock.

  After a long, taught moment, the door cracked open to reveal Roxa frowning through the gap. Her green eyes widened at the sight of me.

  “Um, hi,” I blurted. “Can you let me in? It’s important.”

  She hesitated only fractionally before the door swung wider. I slipped through with a quick murmur of thanks.

  Mi was sitting on the couch by the window. “Ellie?” I saw her mouth tighten. “This isn’t a good time. We’re in the middle of something.”

  My heart, already struggling precariously with the weight of all I’d been through today, fell a little more.

  “Anyway,” Mi continued, her eyes reproachful. “You shouldn’t come looking for me here anymore, remember? It’s too dangerous.”

  I opened my mouth to apologize, just as a sensation of dull warmth blossomed over my colrbone.

  In the fraction of a frozen second that it took me to realize what was happening, Roxa locked the door behind me with a loud snick.

  I startled, suddenly twice as on edge as before, all my half-considered words flying right out of my head. Aralia’s coin—hanging around my neck and barely hidden by my blouse—was growing hot.

  Monarda must have got the word out, or else Aralia had returned already and found me missing. Either way, my time was nearly up.

  “Ellie?” Mi cocked her head at me. “What’s wrong?”

  I stared back, nauseous with nerves, my mind as bnk and empty as the windswept surface of a frozen ke, and forced my tongue to stumble forward. “Mi, I, um…”

  “Yes?”

  “I-I need to ask you, um, something,” I muttered, casting around desperately for the right words. “Something urgent.”

  “What?” She shared an impatient gnce with Roxa.

  I hesitated, dithering suddenly on the verge of the fatal precipice. “It’s, um, because you were also in Apomasaics, a-and I realized that when Roxa bribed me,” I swallowed. “You were, ah, probably taking stuff for making…well—”

  “Ellie,” said Mi slowly. “Why are you asking me this question?”

  I closed my eyes, wincing. I was making a mess of this already. Just say the thing. “I came here to warn you that the Ministry is going to unch a full scale investigation of everyone who took Apomasaics, including an audit of the alchemical stockrooms,” I said very rapidly, in a small voice.

  Mi and Roxa exchanged an armed look.

  “How do you know this, Ellie?” Roxa said, rounding on me.

  I took a reflexive step back. “Because…a boy recognized me today—saw me in my staff uniform, I mean—and chased me,” I rambled, focusing on Mi, willing her to understand. “Someone who knew me from Oakridge, my old dormitory—and I got away but I know he’s going to tell everyone there’s kuffa here—”

  I could hear the brittleness in my voice, the tightness in my throat. Everything inside me felt precarious and unstable, like a steep clearcut slope just before a ndslide. “And since he knows I was working in the alchemy bs—”

  “Woah, slow down, girl.” Mi was on her feet now. “You were just outed? Did he hurt you?”

  “Yes,” I said miserably. “But that’s not—”

  “Who is this boy,” interrupted Roxa grimly. “What does he know, and where can we find him? Start from the beginning.”

  I opened my mouth to expin, then snapped it shut and shook my head fiercely. “That’s not—listen, Mi, I don’t know how much you took from the stockroom, or what tracks you left, but now that they know someone was making halia here, they’ll know what to look for! They’ll go down the list of everyone who took that css and—” I broke off, gesturing wildly.

  “Wait,” Mi was looking at me with a strange expression on her face. “What did you just say?”

  I shook my head in frustration. “I’m saying anyone who took that css is in danger, but Mi, you’re Opali—any social hygienist cross-checking the css roster will suspect you. You’ll be first in line for—”

  “No,” Mi cut me off sharply. “Not that. You said halia, Ellie.”

  I froze.

  Mi took a step towards me, her eyes dark, fierce, intent. “Where have you heard that before? I haven’t told you that word.”

  I scrambled for an expnation, my heartbeat beginning to bound unsteadily, but Mi was already marching towards me.

  A horrible helplessness and dread, long-feared and now finally here, slithered in my stomach like leaden snakes. I took another faltering step back, towards the door, and Mi reached out and grabbed me by the shirtfront.

  Time thickened as I saw the realization hit her—the exact moment she felt the hard, hot disc of Aralia’s coin bzing through the fabric, the slow, shattering colpse in her eyes as she looked at me.

  She shook her head slightly, as if willing it not to be true.

  “Mi—” I pleaded, shaky with shock and despair. But I could think of nothing else to say.

  Her face went stony as she watched me flounder and stammer.

  “What. The. Fuck, Ellie?” she interrupted fiercely, fishing the coin from the front of my blouse and holding it up.

  There was a murmur of surprise from Roxa. “Is that—?”

  I shut my eyes, feeling incandescent shame bubble up all over, itching and boiling under my skin. The sensation was actually unbearable. Please let this be a dream.

  It kept stubbornly refusing to be a dream.

  I winced as Mi brandished the proof of my guilt.

  “She’s wearing Aralia’s coin! Look at it! She’s one of Cordivar’s creatures!” She turned back to me, lip curling. “And now it’s heating up—is that because your report’s overdue?”

  How does she know? I was dizzy with shock. “N-no, I—”

  “You lied to us,” Mi interrupted forcefully, her eyes bzing. “Didn’t you, when you told us how you became a maid here.”

  “Y-yes,” I stammered miserably. “Aralia set it all up, on the condition that I work for her.”

  “Of course she would put you here.” Mi muttered, then cocked her head as a thought struck her. “Did she tell you to spy on me?”

  I hesitated.

  Roxa looked at me sharply, then. “She did, didn’t she?”

  “Ellie, are you serious?” Mi exploded. “How could you not tell me that?”

  This was going so, so badly.

  “Mi…I-I can expin.” My hands fluttered helplessly at my sides as she dropped the coin and turned away from me. “It’s not what it looks like, please! I was going to tell you.”

  Mi made a sound of unmitigated disgust and I flinched as if I’d been spped. “And I suppose she ordered you to steal my secrets so she could ravel me further into her web? Use them to bckmail me with?”

  “I-I’m not sure, but—listen, I haven’t told her anything!” I blurted, looking wildly between them like a wounded animal. “About either of you!”

  Mi stared hard at me for a long moment, her gaze sharp and bare as a scalpel. I looked back, hating my own naked desperation, willing her to believe me.

  “Does Aralia Cordivar know about me, Ellie?” said Mi quietly. “Does she know I’m a tea girl?”

  I hesitated. “M-maybe…she said that there were others subverting Apomasaics, besides me—so I assumed she meant you—but I promise, if she does know, it wasn’t me who told her.” I stopped, wincing with dread at how suspicious that sounded.

  She looked away, shaking her head, and something inside me died a little more.

  “Mi, please believe me…” I begged brokenly.

  Mi looked back at me and now the sharpness in her eyes was as raw as broken gss. “I’m sorry, Ellie, but how do you expect me to trust that?” She paused to take a shuddering breath. “Everyone back home told me, again and again, never trust an Imperiati, but then I met you and I thought, she’s a tea girl. A sister, stranded on the wrong side of the sea—”

  She broke off, turning away from me.

  I wanted to die on the spot. It felt like I was being boiled alive in a cauldron of shame.

  “And that’s why you couldn’t tell me, isn’t it? Why you couldn’t afford to defy Cordivar? You, more than anyone, can’t risk her turning you over to the social hygienists.” Mi swallowed painfully, shaking her head. “Everything is so different over here. I should have known. The same vulnerability we share, the reason I trusted you, is the very hook she has you on. Tiny gods, what a fool I was, to look at your chain and take it for a bridge. Twice a fool, to step out onto it myself. And now I can’t even be sure you haven’t handed me over to her too.”

  I shook my head soundlessly, pleading her with my eyes. All ground was dissolving under my feet, tilting me into the yawning, hungry abyss below. The worst part was, I knew I deserved to fall forever. “Mi, I-I did defy her—I came to warn you,” I whispered hoarsely, then cringed at how cheap and brittle my protest sounded to my own ears.

  “And what am I supposed to do with that, Ellie?” she said bitterly. “If you’re right, and I run right now, at the opening of a kuffa hunt, how will that look? I won’t make it five leagues before I’m dragged out of a carriage, will I? Shall I stay, and wait for the boots to come stomping to my door? Or would you have me go to your mistress for protection, no matter the terms, as you have? Come to think of it, that would be very tidy for her, wouldn’t it?”

  I stared at the ground, wishing it would open up and swallow me.

  Mi sounded scornful. “Did she promise to protect you from the social hygienists?

  The coin fred hot against my skin, but it was nothing compared to the shame inside me. I nodded brokenly, hating myself.

  She threw up her hands. “Congratutions! Good for you! It seems the only one left without a shred of cover here is me!”

  I winced as her meaning smmed me dully in the chest like a draft horse kick.

  —Only if someone takes the fall will anyone else gain some measure of safety—

  It had to be me.

  “Mi.” That was Roxa, shifting uncomfortably next to me. “We need to do damage control, now.”

  Mi nodded shortly, and I flinched as her gaze met mine again. It was like being raked over hot coals. “Well, we can’t talk freely in front of her. We’ve already said too much.”

  “She has information. She might be able to give us something we can use to apply leverage to Cordivar. We can’t just turn our backs on her.”

  They were talking to each other, about me, as if I wasn’t there. A bleak numbness was seeping into the marrow of my bones.

  “As if we can afford to trust her word.” Mi’s voice was acrid. “Face it, Roxa, Cordivar’s got her in an impossible position. You warned me long ago and I should have listened. There’s too much at stake for her. She’d do anything to stay out of the hands of the social hygienists.”

  —Only if someone takes the fall—

  I blinked rapidly. Could I actually do it?

  “It’s a fate worse then death for us,” Mi continued, cuttingly.

  Roxa gave me a cold stare of appraisal, as if she didn’t recognize me, and I withered inside. I gnced desperately to Mi, but she wouldn’t even look at me.

  “Not to mention, she’s expected elsewhere,” she said caustically. “She’s been summoned.”

  The meanings were straggling further and further behind the sounds. Every chisel blow to my heart spiraled me deeper into numb withdrawal.

  “We can’t just send her back to Cordivar. What if she—”

  “Let her go back to Cordivar!” Mi’s face was drawn and pale. “It doesn’t matter! If she’s lying about not being a snitch then it makes no difference, the damage is done. If she’s telling the truth then let her prove it! Right now I can’t even think with her in the room. Being around her is making me sick to my stomach.”

  I had slipped so deep into muted depths of endless despair that her words hardly made me flinch, this time. I stared sckly at the floor, feeling remote, distant from myself.

  Then Mi’s hands were yanking me towards the door, and swinging it open. Roxa was trying to say something to her but neither of us were listening. Mi stared at me like she didn’t know me at all. I stared back in bleak, helpless agony.

  “Go,” Mi said to me with the grim unyielding certainty of a stone retaining wall. “Go away. We’ll dowse you if we want you. I have to think.” She propelled me out the door.

  It smmed shut behind me.

  ChaoticArmcandy