Could that be the answer?
Certainty grew.
She spoke as she continued her own path around the sun. “As the Urth turns, its axis spins at a slight angle, rather than straight up and down. Because of that, for a time, the top half of the world leans toward the sun.”
“Creating our bright northern summer,” the prioress confirmed.
“And when that happens, the bottom half is left leaning away from the sun.”
“Marking the southern Crown’s gloomy winter.”
Nyx turned to the prioress, shocked. “So, seasons are due to the Urth spinning crookedly in place, leaning one side more fully toward the sun, then away again.”
Murmurs spread among the students. Some sounded distraught; others incredulous. But at least Byrd offered no overt ridicule, not in the presence of the prioress.
Still, Nyx felt her face heating up again.
Then a hand patted her shoulder, ending with a squeeze of reassurance.
Startled by the contact, she flinched away. She hated any unexpected touch. Many a boy—even some girls—had come of late to grab at her, often cruelly, pinching what was most tender and private. She could not even accuse and point a finger. Not that she often didn’t know who it was. Especially Byrd, who always reeked of rank sweat and a sour-yeasty breath. It was a cloud that he carried about him from the stores of ale secretly sent to him by his father in Fiskur.
“I’m sorry—” the prioress said softly, plainly noting Nyx’s reaction and unease.
Nyx tried to retreat, but one of her fingers had hooked through the Urth’s ring when she had flinched. Embarrassment turned to panic. She tried to extract her hand but twisted her finger wrong. A metallic pop sounded, which earned a gasp from Sister Reed. Free now, Nyx withdrew her hand from the orrery and clutched a fist to her chest.
Something tinged and tanged across the stone floor near her toes.
“She broke it!” Byrd blurted out, but there was no scorn, only shock.
Another hand grasped her elbow and yanked her back. Caught off guard, Nyx stumbled and tripped to her knees on the floor.
“What have you done, you clumsy girl?” Sister Reed still clutched her. “I’ll have you switched to your core for this.”
“No, you won’t,” Prioress Ghyle said. “It was an accident. One for which I’m equally at fault for startling the child. Would you have me tied to the rod and beaten, Sister Reed?”
“I would never…”
“Then neither will the child suffer. Leave her be.”
Nyx’s elbow was freed, but not before those same fingers squeezed hard, digging down to the bone. The message was clear. This matter was not over. It was a bruising promise. Sister Reed intended to exact payment for being humiliated in front of the students, in front of the prioress.
Ghyle’s robes swished as her voice lowered toward the floor. “See. It is just the Urth’s moon that has broken free.” Nyx pictured the prioress collecting the bronze marble from the floor. “It can easily be returned to its proper place and repaired.”
Nyx gained her feet, her face as hot as the sun, tears threatening.
“Sister Reed, mayhap it’s best that you end today’s lesson. I think your seventhyears have had more than enough celestial excitement for one morning.”
Nyx was already moving before Sister Reed dismissed the class to break for their midday meal. She raced her tears toward the brightness of the door. No one blocked her flight, perhaps fearing to catch her humiliation and shame. In her haste to escape, she left behind her cane—a sturdy length of polished elm—which she used to help guide her steps. Still, she refused to go back and fled out into the sunlight and shadows of a summer day.
2
AS OTHERS HEADED to their dormitory hall, where a cold midday repast awaited the students, Nyx hurried in the other direction. She had no appetite. Instead, she reached one of the four staircases that led down from the seventh tier to the one below, where the sixthyears were likely already eating in their own hall.
Though the world around her was only shadows against that brightness, she did not slow. Even without her cane, she moved swiftly. She had lived half of her life in the walled Cloistery. By now, she knew every nook and crook of its tiers. The number of steps, turns, and stairs had been ingrained into her, allowing her to traverse the school with relative ease. At the edge of her full awareness, a silent count ran in the back of her skull. She instinctively reached out a hand every now and then—to a carved lintel, to a wooden post of a stall, to a stone flogging pillar—continually confirming her location and position.
As she descended through the tiers, she pictured the breadth of the Cloistery of Brayk. It rose like a stepped hill from the swamps of M?r. At its base, the school stretched over a mile across, built atop a foundation of volcanic stone, one of the rare solid places among these watery marshlands and drowned forests. The school was the second oldest in the Kingdom of Hálendii—the oldest being on the outskirts of its capital, Azantiia—but the Cloistery was still considered the harshest and most esteemed due to its isolation. Students spent their entire nine years in Brayk, beginning at the lowermost tier where the young firstyears were instructed. From there, classes were winnowed smaller and smaller to match the ever-shrinking tiers of the school. Those that failed to rise were sent back to their families in shame, but that did not stop students from arriving here by boats and ships from all around the Crown. For those who succeeded in reaching the ninth tier at the school’s pinnacle, they were destined for honor and prominence, advancing either to the handful of alchymical academies where they’d be instructed into the deeper mysteries of the world or into one of the religious orders to be ordained into the highest devotions.
When Nyx reached the third tier, she glanced back to the summit of the school. Twin fires glowed amidst the shadows at the top, bright enough for even her clouded eyes to discern. One pyre smoked with alchymical mysteries; the other burned with clouds of sacred incense. It was said the shape and fires of the Cloistery mimicked the volcanic peak at the heart of M?r, the steam-shrouded mountain of The Fist. In addition, the infused smoke rising from the top of the school served to keep the denizens of those cave-pocked slopes—the winged bats—from approaching too close. Still, in the gloom of winter, dark wings occasionally shredded through the low clouds. Screeches would send first-and secondyears cowering and crying for reassurance from the sisters and brothers who taught them—until eventually one grew to ignore the threat.
Nyx could not say the same was true for her. Even at her age, the hunting cries would set her heart to pounding, her head to burning. And when she was younger—a firstyear new to the school—terror would overwhelm her, sending her into a dead faint. But she had nothing to fear now. It was the middle of summer, and whether from the brightness or the heat, the massive bats kept away from the swamp’s edges, sticking close to their dark dens in The Fist.
By the time she finally reached the lowermost tier of the Cloistery, her shame and embarrassment had waned to a dull ache in her chest. She rubbed her bruised elbow, a reminder that there would still be repercussions to come.
Until then, she wanted reassurance and aimed for the only place she could find it. She headed out through the school gates and into the trading post of Brayk. The ramshackle village hugged the walls of the Cloistery. Brayk fed, supplied, and maintained the school. Goods were carted upward every morning, accompanied by lines of men and women who served as chambermaids, servitors, sculleries, and cooks. Nyx had thought this to be her own fate, having started at the school as a housegirl at the age of six.