“But why am I cured now?” Nyx asked.
The prioress turned to Nyx. “In fighting off the poison, we believe your body shook off this old taint, too.”
“If true, it has made us wonder,” Oeric added. “If perhaps the present might offer insight into the past.”
She furrowed her brow. “What do you mean?”
Ghyle patted her blanketed leg. “As you might suspect, I am not one to put much stock on fen-witches who read the future in a toss of bones. Instead, I look for patterns hidden in plain view. If the venom of a M?r bat cured you, it perhaps portends that what afflicted you as a babe was also somehow connected to that same denizen of the swamps.”
“Another bat?” Nyx frowned. She wanted to dismiss such a claim, but she also remembered the abject terror she had felt—far worse than her fellow students—whenever such a creature screeched past overhead.
Could it be true?
Ghyle wondered the same. “Do you have any recollection of such an encounter? If you had sight back then, perhaps you might have seen such a creature.”
Nyx glanced down. She pictured her dah’s discovery of her as a babe and his words a moment ago: ’Twas as if she fell straight out of the sky. She closed her eyes, imagining herself lying on her back in a bed of fenweed, staring up through the moss-shrouded branches. She was again blind, abandoned, angry, scared, squalling, searching those skies through clouded eyes. A brighter patch marked the sun—then a dark sickle-shaped shadow cut across the glow and vanished into the shadows.
She stiffened.
Ghyle noted this. “What is it?”
Nyx opened her eyes and shook her head. She did not know if what she saw was a true memory or one born of the prioress’s speculation. “Nothing,” she mumbled.
Ghyle continued to stare at her, her gaze as piercing as any fang.
Nyx kept her face lowered. She didn’t know what to make of that flash of memory—if it was memory. But she could also not dismiss it, especially with the feeling that had accompanied the recollection. As she imagined herself as a baby, Nyx hadn’t felt even a flicker of terror at the sight of that sickle shape passing over the sun. Instead, in the darkest recesses of her heart, she knew what she had felt at that moment. It made no sense.
She glanced to her dah.
It had felt like home.
9
“FOR NOW, LET’S leave this matter for another time,” Ghyle said. “When you’re better rested and further recovered, you might remember more. Instead, I’m sure you have many questions about your current circumstances. I’m not oblivious to the concerns and fears you’ve attempted to voice over the past day. Mayhap we should also put those to rest as best we can.”
Nyx was more than ready to set aside her past and address her present—but she was also frightened to do so. There were questions she needed to ask, but she remained fearful of the answers.
She licked her lips. She knew she needed to address the aftermath of the attack atop the ninth tier of the school, to face the condemnation that was sure to come. To start with, she voiced her foremost fear. It was a boy’s name, a fellow seventhyear.
She closed her eyes to speak it, finding strength in the darkness.
“Byrd…” she whispered.
Ghyle’s answer was blunt. “Dead. But I suspect you already know this.”
She did not deny this. “And what of the others?”
“Your fellow seventhyears?”
She opened her eyes and nodded, remembering the throng chasing her heels.
“They attempted to hide the truth of that day, but Jace spoke up on your behalf and broke their impasse.”
Nyx sighed in relief, silently thanking Jace. The young man—ever her eyes when she was blind—proved yet again to be her most stalwart friend here at the Cloistery. And he had suffered for that friendship. She remembered his bloody nose.
“Journeyman Jace fares well,” Ghyle answered, as if reading her concern. “He’s been anxious to see you, but we’ve encouraged his patience.”
Nyx swallowed. “And how does Kindjal fare, Byrd’s twin sister?”
Ghyle sat back slightly. A deep line formed between her brows. “She returned to Fiskur with her brother’s remains, or at least the little of his body that the pyre had not consumed. But she will be back once the midsummer break ends in a fortnight. I tried to discourage her return.”
Ghyle stared at Nyx, silently adding what remained unspoken. Kindjal would not suffer the death of her twin brother without consequences. Neither would their father, the highmayor of Fiskur.
“What’s to become of me?” Nyx asked, shying over to a more immediate fear. “I trespassed onto the ninth tier.”
It was an inviolate rule of the Cloistery. To tread that tier before being accepted to the ninthyear was punished by immediate banishment. There were no exceptions—not even if one’s life was threatened.
Ghyle pointed a finger at Nyx’s chest. “That was not you who trespassed.”
She scrunched her face in confusion. “But it was. I can hardly attest otherwise. Many bore witness.”
Oeric spoke up. “And as many bore witness that you died. Both alchymists and hieromonks. Your heart had truly stopped. For half a bell, maybe longer. None thought you’d survive.”
“Yet, you came back from the dead,” Ghyle added. “You were reborn anew, purified of your past. All have come to believe that the Mother doubly blessed you. First with your life, then with your sight.”
Oeric chuckled under his breath. “A conceit well seeded by the prioress.”
Ghyle shrugged. “And who is to say I’m wrong?”
“I’d love to see someone try,” he mumbled.
“But it surely was the Mother’s hand,” her dah pressed. “I have no doubt. She has always smiled on my daughter.”
Hope rose in Nyx’s breast. “Does that mean I can stay at the school? Finish my seventhyear studies and continue on to the eighth?”
“I’m afraid not,” Ghyle said dourly. “It was put to the Council of Eight, and they cast their stones against such a plan.”
Her dah stood up. “That’s not fair, I tell you!”
Nyx reached over and grabbed his hand, which trembled in her grip. She squeezed him quiet, ready to accept her fate but no less despairing. “It’s all right, Dah. What’s done is done.”
“You both misunderstand me.” Ghyle’s gaze focused on Nyx. “It’s been decided that you should not proceed to the eighthyear with your fellow students. As you were clearly blessed atop the ninth tier, none would dare cast a stone against the expressed wishes of the Mother.”
“I don’t understand,” Nyx said.
Ghyle explained. “In a fortnight, you’ll ascend straight to the ninthyear.”
It took three full breaths for Nyx to even comprehend what the prioress was saying. She tried to blink away her shock.
Ninthyear …
Her dah was quicker to respond. He whooped loud enough to make them all jump. “What didda tell ya! I knew it all along.” He let go of Nyx’s fingers and dropped to his knees at her bedside. He clasped his palms together and raised his thumbs to his forehead. “Thank the Mother Below for her glory and blessings upon us.”