I expected to fall asleep in moments. Close my eyes, lights out. A skill that I’d had to learn.
Back when I was in the orphanage, I used to dream of the Kertharian attack more, pace around in the common room to avoid falling asleep until someone started to complain. Gave me an excuse to start a fight about it.
I hadn’t thought about those times in ages, but I also couldn’t get to sleep so I had time for my thoughts to wander.
The wind howled. The sound wasn’t that bad, not up here. There was an oppressive pressure in the air, but nothing I couldn’t handle. It was bit like the Conspice had felt, but less localized, like being weighed down by a blanket lined with lead. Almost soothing.
“Lina!” I heard someone shout. Could have been Grit or Minnelil. Hard to say, over the howling.
I hugged my knees tighter to my chest. I was too tired to really care. If they ended up finding their way up here, I’d have to talk to them. But if not, I would sleep here, consider things again in the morning.
She shouted something again, a longer sentence. I didn’t hear what. I let my eyes close, waited for the sleep.
It didn’t come.
My eyes ached behind the eyelids, but that was it. I lay down, pulled my legs inside the robe. I didn’t like to sleep lying down. Made it slower to get up and get away, but maybe it wouldn’t matter here.
I just wanted to get to sleep.
Maybe an hour later, maybe two, I gave up and sat on the edge of the platform. The night was pitch black. The fire that had burned in the middle of the merchants’ wagons had gone out or been extinguished. Nothing moved, only the wind kept up its incessant rushing through the hollow black building. It had to be the stupidest possible shape for a building to be in a place like this.
Some hours later, I noticed the horizon start to lighten. I blinked. Had I fallen asleep? It didn’t feel like it, but I was so tired that I had to have. The black was fading to dark blue. I watched as the sun rose, pale and pitiful. It looked smaller than it should have. Or maybe it was obscured by all the flying snow? I moved my thumb to cover it, the coin-sized spot of light on the gloomy sky.
A dead guy walked up the stairs. It carried a bucket and a mop. Not paying any attention to me, it got to work. The water trickled off the edge and rained as small icicles to the walkways and the ground, somewhere far below. They really should put down some railings, I thought, looking down.
I forced myself up. I wasn’t going to stay and get frozen by a dead guy splashing water around. I descended the stairs, tried to keep from falling off the walkways.
Some students walked past me, greeting me with yawning faces and puffy eyes. One suddenly stopped and waved at me.
“What?” I asked, eyes half closed.
“Lina? Where did you go?” she asked. Minneln? The name had been something like that.
My head was hazy, but she was one of the people from the dorm. I forced down the yawn. “Here and there.”
“You… did you spend the night out?” she asked, eyes opening wide.
“Yeah, I guess?”
She licked her lips. Her whole face was so smooth, like a baby’s, but now frowning for some reason. “Ah, ok. Let’s… let’s get you to bed.”
She was surprisingly strong. She looked like she weighed less than me, but I could only stumble behind her as she dragged me along the walkways.
She opened the door and wrapped an arm around my shoulder, pulling me inside the dorm.
I was about to shake the arm off, when my knees wobbled and my vision darkened. I yawned so hard I couldn’t make it stop. “W-what?” I mumbled between the yawns.
She led me to the bed, sitting me down on it. “You can’t sleep outside.”
“I sleep outside all the time,” I said. The pillow looked really comfy.
“What’s going on?” Fek asked from somewhere under his covers.
“Lina tried to sleep out there,” Minnelil said.
“Oh,” Fek said, turning over. “Oh!” he then said, bouncing up. “How is she?”
“Sleepy, I’d wager.”
A pretty safe bet. My eyelids pressed down, even though I tried to pry them up. Maybe just a little nap?
The thing swam in the darkness. It wasn’t like the grinning skeletons, not dumb and robotic. It grasped at the air, but something kept it back. It reached closer, forcing its porcelain-white bony hand toward my face.
It gripped my shoulder. I whipped my arm, swinging to drive it away.
“Aa!” Grit shouted, stumbling back. “Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you.”
I rubbed at my eyes. They were sticky, my face wet with drool. I rose slowly, pushing myself up.
“You looked like you were having a nightmare. I brought you something to eat. They were cleaning up the breakfast and it’s still three hours to lunch, so I thought it’d be better to bring you something.”
Something smelled good. I sniffed at it and blinked away the last remnants of sleep. “You have three hours between breakfast and lunch? Damn.”
“Yeah, I know. I’m always famished when it’s lunchtime,” Grit said. “I put the stuff on the table. Dig in.” She waved at the food. She acted nice, but I watched her hands. Jonungaard palms were hard as stone. They could break bones with a slap.
There was a large plate of eggs, meat and a huge loaf of bread on the table, a clump of butter half the size of my fist on the bread. A large cup of steaming coffee stood next to the plate.
“I tried to be quick, but the food might have lost some of its taste outside. I reheated the coffee with a bit of magic, but it usually suffers more than the food, so don’t get your hopes up.”
I chuckled at that. Get my hopes up? Heh. “Thanks. Why couldn’t I sleep outside?”
Grit was already at the door, hand wrapped around the handle. “You just can’t. It’s all the magic.”
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“Sorry, got a lecture to catch. I’ll see you at lunch!”
I waved a hand at her as she ran out of the door. I guess… I guess it was nice that she brought me food. I ripped open the bread and stuffed everything else on the plate inside it. It was ok. Not as good as it looked, but better than most things I had eaten in Tenorsbridge. I washed down the bread with a gulp of coffee.
I didn’t really like coffee, but I was still groggy and the stuff was supposed to help with that, right? That’s what all the adults always said.
Well, I was an adult now, but this coffee still tasted thin and bitter.
Best kitchen on the continent? Hah.
I breathed out, pinching the bridge of my nose hard. The moment I had walked out of the dorm room and back into the warmth of black walls and the howling of the gale, the sleepiness vanished. My head felt like it was padded with wool, but the urge to yawn and lie down vanished.
Weird.
I pushed my face over the edge of the walkway, into the cold wind. The Bursar had told me to come back after orienting myself. I didn’t feel very oriented yet, but I figured she was a thing that didn’t like waiting.
The door creaked as I pushed it open.
She spun behind her desk, all three of her hands snatching papers, piling and filing them. Blue glowing liquid flowed in transparent tubes running below her metal plates. She really ran on ambrosia? That couldn’t be cheap. Her head was a bare metal ball, the thin plates of metal hanging around her neck.
“It’s me, Lina,” I said. “I came, as we agreed.”
Her eyes, set on separate thin metal rails, rotated freely around the ball. They snapped to focus on me. The plates around her neck screeched as they followed the eyes, spinning upward and forming a face around the metal ball. “Good,” she said.
I flinched at the voice, a papercut of a word. “What should I do? Do you need something organized?”
Her gaze slid off me. The metal plates held the face pointed towards me, even as they shifted to let the eyes peek out from between her jaws and through her cheek at the papers. “I will organize. Myself.”
I nodded, swallowing at the sight. She did seem pretty efficient at it, arms cutting through the air in a whir. “Well… what then?”
“I require the handling of. Tasks. Outside. The walkways are too frail. The snow gets in everywhere.”
Hah. Tasks I could handle. Had handled a lot of tasks back on the streets. I still frowned. “You wanted me to count, though?”
“Yes. You will do both. When a merchant leaves. You will tally up the stay. Bring me the proceeds. And the paperwork.”
There was no question which she considered the important part. “The proceeds?”
“The Academy’s share. We shelter. Allow them to stay. The privilege is not free.”
I chuckled. This was starting to feel more familiar by the minute. “So they come to sell you stuff, and you make them pay you for it? Nice.”
Her eyes swiveled back into the metal eye sockets. The plates scrunched together, forming a grin on her polished face. “It is nice,” she hissed, the glee in her voice metallic and sharp. “I have high hopes. For your performance.”