I missed second period.
Not intentionally. I had fully intended to go, sit in the back, and spend fifty minutes doing the academic equivalent of loading a screen that never finishes. But I got as far as the corridor outside the classroom and stopped because there were two boys in the hallway having an argument that was technically quiet and actually very loud, and one of them was crying in the specific way people cry when they're trying extremely hard not to, and the other one kept saying Cedric's name.
I should have walked past.
I stood there like an idiot.
"He didn't come back last night," the crying one said. He had the look of someone who'd been handsome recently and stress was actively working on reversing that. Tall, broad-shouldered, a bruise on his left knuckle that was two days old and yellow at the edges. "He always comes back. Even when he's drunk he comes back."
"Rowan." The other one, shorter, neat in a way that suggested effort, put a hand on his arm. "You need to stop saying his name in the hallway."
"Why?"
"Because someone will hear you."
"I don't care if someone hears me, Fenn, I care that my brother is missing."
Brother. Cedric Mallow had a brother.
The System had not mentioned this. The System was going to hear about this.
I walked past them with my eyes forward and my face doing nothing, which I have been told by multiple people across two different lives looks unsettling when I do it. I went to second period. I sat in the back. I did not retain a single word.
[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION]
Update: Rowan Mallow (First Year) has filed a missing persons report with Dormitory Warden.
Estimated time to official investigation: 36 hours.
Your Infamy projection has been revised.
Projected Infamy at Scene Discovery: 19
Additional note: Rowan Mallow was present near the east forest at approximately 11:40 PM last night.
This is not relevant to your assignment.
This is not relevant to your assignment.
It said it twice.
I looked at that notification for a long time. The System repeating itself was new. Either it was glitching, or it was doing the computational equivalent of a person saying "no reason" in a very specific tone of voice.
Rowan Mallow had been near the east forest at 11:40 PM. Cedric died somewhere between 11:00 and 11:30 based on the temperature of the scene and the way the blood had started to set at the edges. Rowan hadn't been there when I arrived. Hadn't been there when I left.
But he'd been close.
The bruise on his knuckle was two days old.
I told myself to stop.
Lunch existed. I went to it because the body was apparently the type that got headaches when it didn't eat, which I discovered by not eating and then spending twenty minutes with a specific pain behind my left eye that felt like someone pressing a thumb into a socket.
The dining hall was long, older than the rest of the academy, with tables that had initials carved into them going back at least a century. The acoustics were terrible in the way that stone rooms always are, which meant the noise landed on you all at once when you walked in, a wall of it.
Pell was already there. He had claimed a corner seat with his back to the wall, which was either anxiety or tactical awareness, and was eating something beige with the focused disinterest of a man completing a maintenance task.
I sat across from him because there was nowhere else that made geometric sense and I didn't want to navigate the social topography of a room full of people whose names I didn't know.
He looked up. Looked back down.
"You missed Doctrine Theory," he said.
"I heard it's not important."
"It's extremely important. Instructor Vael assigns a cumulative exam worth forty percent of the final grade." He turned a page of the notebook he had open next to his tray, the kind of casual multitasking that meant he was paying more attention than he looked. "You also look like you didn't sleep."
"I slept fine."
"Your left eye is doing a thing."
I stopped doing the thing with my left eye. "Do you know a student named Rowan Mallow?"
Pell's hand paused on the page. Very small pause. The kind most people wouldn't catch.
"First year," he said. "Why?"
"His brother's missing."
"Half the academy goes missing on a given Tuesday, they're just usually in someone else's dormitory." He turned another page. "Cedric Mallow is not a good person. Was not. Whatever."
I looked at him.
"Everyone knows he cheats at cards," Pell said, still not looking up. "And that he owes money. The list of people who'd want Cedric Mallow to have a bad night is long and includes at least two instructors."
"You say that very specifically."
"I say everything specifically. It's a character trait." He finally looked up, and there was something in his face that was doing a very good impression of nothing. "Are you asking because you're curious or because you're the kind of person who makes it their business?"
The bread roll was rosemary. He had opinions. He also, I was now noticing, had ink on his left thumb and a callus on his right index finger from holding something much thinner than a pen, and the notebook he kept turning pages of had no writing in it that I could see from this angle. He was turning blank pages.
I picked up my fork.
"Neither," I said. "Rowan was upset in the hallway. I noticed."
Pell looked at me for three more seconds, which was becoming his established rhythm, and then went back to his blank notebook.
"Rowan cries at things," he said. "He cried at the end of year ceremony last spring because a third year dropped her certificate. He is not a reliable emotional barometer."
"Did you know Cedric well?"
"I knew of him. There's a difference." A pause. "Stop asking questions about it."
Not why are you asking. Not that's a weird thing to wonder about. Just: stop.
I ate my lunch.
Pell turned another blank page.
Outside the dining hall windows, I could see the edge of the east forest from here, just the treeline, dark even at midday because of the density. Somewhere in there, Sable Vane had a clock running. Rowan Mallow had been near there last night. And a person who arranged hands across a chest had a four-case head start on everyone.
The headache behind my left eye came back.
I had not done anything to deserve this. I had been on a plane. I had been minding my business and reading a novel that deserved maybe three stars out of five and I had died of what I could only assume was an economy class blood clot, and now I was here.
Pell closed the blank notebook.
"Rosemary," he said, nodding at my untouched bread roll.
"I know," I said. "It's good."
He almost smiled. Didn't.
Neither did I.