Chapter 24
Eleanor had forgotten what day it was until Sebastien reminded her, as they finished their morning combat session, that she'd better get cleaned up quickly – it was the day after the equinox, this year's new students would already have arrived, and they were expected to introduce themselves over lunch. Eleanor washed as fast as she was able and ran down to the dining hall with her hair still dripping, but despite her best efforts she was last to the table and had to settle for a seat with her back to the door.
She was looking forward to seeing the new faces, hoping their awe and excitement would remind her how she'd felt a year ago. Things were starting to feel serious for the academy's older students, with contests looming just over the horizon and the shadow of Jon and Victor's failure still hanging over them. A little fresh enthusiasm might help her to stop worrying about the challenges ahead, at least for a while.
The door clicked open almost silently, and several sets of footsteps came to a halt. "And here we have the second years," said a voice which Eleanor recognised as Victor's. She wondered how different it must feel for the new intake, coming into a room full of older students compared to only two when she'd arrived.
"I'd recognise that hair anywhere," said a second, equally familiar voice, and Eleanor felt a hand rest lightly on her shoulder.
She turned, her eyes widening in recognition.
"Raf!" she cried, jumping to her feet. "You're alive!" Instinctively she threw her arms around his neck, but withdrew quickly and awkwardly when she realised everyone was watching them. She felt the heat rise in her cheeks, and saw he was also blushing. "Sorry," she muttered.
"Don't be," he said, suddenly beaming at her. "I'm alive. Better than that – look at me, I'm doing great!"
Obediently, she studied him. He had the same dark features, the same choppy black hair, and he was still stick-thin though he'd grown even taller in the last year. And he looked much better, naturally, now that he wasn't bruised and bleeding and starving. Only a couple of thin scars, snaking across his cheek and along his jaw, remained to show the pain they'd been through together.
She wanted to reach out and run her finger along the scars, remembering the way she'd tended those wounds, remembering the feel of his skin under her hands. But she was already conscious of the way the others were staring.
She beckoned him to sit beside her, but he shook his head.
"I have to catch up with Victor – and little Jorgie and Freddie were only kids last time I saw them." Seeing the look of disappointment on her face, he winked at her and added, "Better for us to talk later, privately."
She found herself blushing again as he went to take a seat with Jorge, Fred, Victor, and a couple of other newcomers. All through the decadent five-course meal she found herself watching him out of the corner of her eye, leaving Mikhail and Sebastien to carry the conversation with the new students who sat beside her.
He's alive!
As she played half-heartedly with her food, listening to the jocular exchanges between the Venncastle boys, she told herself she was just relieved that he was okay – that her burning desire to talk to him was mere curiosity about what he'd been up to over the intervening months. But that would have to wait.
Eleanor hadn't even caught the names of all the new students by the time they got up to go to the afternoon's poisons lesson. They had a new instructor for the second year, a towering, broad-shouldered man, his copper hair flecked with grey, who introduced himself as Albert.
Eleanor struggled to pay attention to the class, and he got very frustrated with her lack of focus, but somehow she just couldn't bring herself to concentrate on slow-acting venoms.
She was relieved when the end of the lesson finally arrived. Remembering the structure of their own introductory day the previous year, Eleanor guessed that Raf would be free until dinner – hoping he'd be using the time to settle in and unpack, she set off to find him. There weren't many student rooms at the academy, so she tried one common room at random, where puzzled first-years pointed her along the corridor to the next suite. She felt sick with nerves as she pushed the door open.
"Hey! It's Raf's girl!" The lad who called out was one of those who'd sat with the Venncastle group at lunch; from his confidence, Eleanor wondered if he was also from the same school. "Come in, we'll fetch your boyfriend."
He didn't need to do anything, though – hearing the commotion, Raf emerged from his room.
"What are you kids up to?" he asked, then caught sight of Eleanor hovering by the door. "Ellie! Come in! They haven't been bothering you, have they?"
"No, it's fine," she said, but she shot a fierce glare at the younger lad as she followed Raf into his room.
He steered her into the only chair, grabbed a bottle and two glasses from his shelf, and settled himself on the bed. "Sorry about earlier," he said, pouring out two helpings of bright red juice. "Here, try this, you'll love it. Venncastle's famous spring nectar."
She took a mouthful, then coughed as the drink caught her throat unexpectedly; it was not merely juice, and the alcohol burned.
"Didn't mean to brush you off," he continued. "But the Venncastle crowd are a bit of an institution here, you'd probably noticed – two new kids this year as well as me. So I thought I'd best get that bit out of the way first, and we can talk better here."
"You guessed I'd come and find you?"
"I'd have tracked you down if you hadn't come – I'm not scared of venturing into second year rooms! Do you like the drink?"
"It's strong," she said, sipping at it again.
"Oh, that's just because you're not used to it. I've been drinking this at school since I was ten – I finally managed to find a stall in town that sells it."
"So..." Eleanor took another cautious mouthful of the drink. "So how are you?" It was the question she'd wanted to ask all day, but she was scared of what the answer might be. She'd never quite stopped feeling guilty for leaving him in Taraska.
"Oh, I'm fine. Seriously," he said when he caught her worried expression, "I've been absolutely great. Got back to the Empire, nipped round all the clues again to get the new numbers, and I've been living in Almont for half a year just waiting for that blasted door to open."
"I thought you were dead!" she cried, half-sobbing. "When you weren't here – I thought they must've found you. I thought... horrible things. Too horrible."
He moved to put a comforting arm around her shoulder as she dissolved into tears. She clasped desperately at his collar, wondering why everything she'd felt over the last couple of years had to come flooding out now, after she'd managed to hold herself together for so long. It should have been a happy reunion, but she couldn't stem the tears.
"It's okay," he said, stroking her hair. "I've been worried about you, too – there was no easy way to find out if you'd made it through, from out there."
Even as her tears subsided she clung to him, nestling comfortably against his chest, his arms resting reassuringly across her back. She could feel the throb of his heart against her ear, a tangible proof that he was still very much alive, and she didn't want to let go. She didn't know how long they sat there but eventually he prised her away from him, noting that they'd probably already missed dinner.
"I'm sorry," she said, swallowing down the last of her juice in one gulp and wiping her eyes on her sleeve. "I didn't mean to cry on you."
"It's okay. Really. But you see why it's better to catch up on our own."
She nodded, blushing, ashamed to imagine what her classmates would have thought if she'd cried like this over lunch. "Let's go and see if the kitchen has any leftovers," she suggested.
They found a pot of soup bubbling gently. Eleanor filled bowls for both of them, lit a candle from the embers of the fire, and led Raf to sit in the deserted dining hall. It felt even bigger than usual as the flickering candlelight magnified the shadows.
They ate in silence, both delighted to know the other was alive, but neither of them wanting to spoil the
evening by starting the only conversation they really needed to have. The painful stories could wait.
"Tomorrow's free," Eleanor said as they were finishing their soup. "We could do something – maybe a walk? I could show you round."
"Well, I have to see the smith and the tailor, I think, but otherwise..." He smiled broadly at her. "Yes, that'd be nice."
They washed out their bowls and walked back to the sleeping quarters together.
"Come and find me tomorrow?" Eleanor suggested, trying to sound more relaxed than she felt. "Just as soon as you're done with the fittings."
"I'll do that."
He gave her a brief hug before they went their separate ways for the night, and she almost skipped back to her room. Considering how long she'd spent simply crying, the evening hadn't turned out too badly. Raf was alive, he didn't hate her for leaving him in that state, and he was going to spend the next day with her... yes, it could have been much worse.
The next morning she got up for breakfast as early as usual, but a combination of eating slowly and going back for second and third helpings enabled her to loiter in the dining hall for much longer than she normally did, hoping she'd happen to run into Raf. By the time everyone else had been and gone, however, she had to accept that maybe he wasn't actually going to bother with breakfast. Feeling a little disappointed, she headed back to her room.
"You're running a bit late this morning," Mikhail teased when she finally reached the common room. "Do you want to get outside and do some target practice?"
"Not today," she said, though she would have loved to experiment with her throwing stars after the latest techniques Ivan had demonstrated. She'd already decided that she'd have to settle for the practice board in the common room this morning, and hopefully Raf would be along soon enough.
"You are being strange," Daniel said, staring at her. "Are you ill?"
"No, I'm fine." She was reluctant to explain; somehow she didn't think they'd understand. For the first time since she'd left school, Eleanor caught herself wishing for some female company. The girls would have known how she was feeling with barely a word of explanation necessary.
Once the others had gone outside she combed her hair, and stained her lips with a few berries from the fruit bowl in the common room – a trick she'd learnt at school, though she'd never had much use for it before.
She spent the morning flinging stars carelessly at the target board, quickly growing bored with the limited options of indoor practice. She tried to entertain herself by taking shots under her leg, backwards over her shoulder, or with her eyes closed, but her heart wasn't really in it. She looked towards the door at every sound, waiting, but Raf hadn't appeared by the time the others came in for lunch and she felt silly as she joined them in the dining hall. She'd missed a whole morning's practice, and for what?
"Did you have a good morning?" Daniel asked, looking intently at her.
"Very productive," she lied. "I've been catching up on poisons."
"Do you need some help this afternoon?"
She realised she'd picked the wrong lie to tell; Daniel wouldn't want to miss the opportunity to show off.
"No, thanks," she said. "I think I'm getting there, and I'll understand it better if I manage it on my own."
"Are you sure?"
"Certain," she said shortly. Poisons might not be her strongest subject, but she didn't want to give him any more reasons to be smug.
They sat in awkward silence through lunch, then Eleanor returned to the common room while the others headed outside again. After her thoughtless lie she was going to be under a lot of pressure in the next poisons class, so she sat down to flick through her notes. Why did Daniel have to be so outstandingly brilliant at her worst subject? She wouldn't have cared if it was anyone else, but he'd been insufferable lately.
She flicked first to the list of common natural venoms, which she'd copied out alongside their antivenoms where any existed. Those with no known antidote had always struck her as the most interesting, but there was also less to learn: know the effects, handle with caution, and administer with subtlety. Knowledge of antivenoms and their interactions, on the other hand, could be handy in a tight spot – though Eleanor maintained a silent conviction that it was better to avoid being poisoned in the first place.
She'd read nearly all the notes she'd ever made – and it was almost time for dinner – by the time Raf finally let himself into her common room.
"I'm so sorry," he said as he closed the door behind him. "I feel awful, I've wasted your day. I just got caught up in practice." He held up a shiny throwing knife by way of an explanation. "I wasn't expecting to actually get a new knife today. I'm really sorry."
She gave him a reluctant smile; she did understand, she'd have felt the same with a new blade. She went over to examine the knife. Unsurprisingly for one of Harold's, it was well made: very solid and well-balanced, though it was boringly plain in its design.
"Nice," she agreed. Though not as pretty as the ones they'd bought in Taraska; she wondered if he still had those weapons.
"Shall we have that walk before dinner?" He opened the door to let her pass.
"You must be hungry," she said, looking up at him as they started down the corridor. "You missed breakfast and lunch."
"I just got carried away. Besides, we know what hunger really means, and 'only' one hot meal today doesn't qualify."
It was true; she realised with a pang of guilt that she'd become spoilt since moving into the academy. In some ways it was just like being at school again, with three meals cooked for them each day and all their laundry and cleaning taken care of. She knew she was getting lazy and pampered here, despite the rigorous training schedule.
They walked twice round the outside of the academy buildings, mostly in silence, just enjoying one another's company.
"Tell me what happened," Eleanor said as they began their third circuit.
"It's not much of a story."
"Tell me anyway."
"Well." He hooked his arm through hers as they walked. "You know the state I was in when you left me."
"Sorry," she murmured.
He shook his head, and squeezed her arm. "No need to apologise. We did exactly what we needed to do. I passed out after you left – I'd lost a lot of blood. The landlord fixed me up, and he bought me some herbs that were very good for the pain, but not so good for my mind. I must have spent a few months stupefied by whatever it was, before the money ran out and supply, unsurprisingly, dried up."
"That's why you missed the equinox? You were drugged?"
"It was good stuff," he said. "Couldn't feel a thing... made it very hard to tell when I was better, and no-one else was bothering to tell me, so long as they could keep taking my money. Bloody Tarasanka profit-mongers!"
"So how did you get back, if you'd run out of money?"
"Oh, just stowed away. Not that hard, really – loads of space on those smuggler ships, there's always some gap ready for the next haul, they just took a somewhat roundabout route home. Now come on," he interrupted himself as they reached the door of their living quarters again. "We'd better go inside or we'll miss dinner."
When they reached the dining hall, they found that most of the others had already been and gone; they sat with one of Raf's Venncastle colleagues, the younger lad who'd teased Eleanor the previous day, who turned out to be called Greg.
"So when did the academy start taking girls?" he asked almost as soon as they sat down with steaming bowls of sausage casserole. "Or are you just an exception because you're Raf's girl? Where did you pick up a girl like that from anyway, Raf?"
Raf and Eleanor looked at each other, exchanging raised eyebrows and amused smiles.
"We met on the other side of the world," Raf said. "Where we had a thoroughly enjoyable time being tortured."
Greg looked at Eleanor and she nodded her confirmation, enjoying the astonishment in his eyes as he realised it wasn't a joke.
"But still," he blustered, tr
ying to recover himself. "Girls at the academy? When did that happen?"
"When I arrived and let myself in."
His expression froze. "So it really is just you?"
"Just me."
He considered this for a moment, then broke into a broad grin. "Raf, you're a jammy sod! Well done!"
Raf laughed, and Eleanor wondered if he was ever planning to correct the assumption that she was his girlfriend. Maybe he wanted it to be true? She wasn't even sure how anyone knew whether they were going to be girlfriend and boyfriend – though she was fairly sure that Raf was the closest she'd ever come to it. But being locked in a cell together had hardly been a matter of choice for either of them.
"Well, I'll leave you to it," Greg said with a wink as he got up from the table.
Once Eleanor and Raf had both eaten their fill of the casserole – to her amusement, he went back for second and third helpings – they started back towards their sleeping quarters.
"Was that true?" he asked as they climbed the stairs. "Or were you just teasing Greg?"
"What?"
"That they only started accepting girls because you arrived."
"Oh, I'm sure that's true," she said. "They weren't expecting me."
"Well done!" He clapped his hand onto her shoulder. "I'm impressed."
"Why?" It was a silly thing to be impressed by. "You knew I was coming here. And you've seen me hold my own in a fight."
"I'm not surprised you got in! But I warned you they might be a bit old-fashioned here – and they've let you stay, and by all accounts you're doing great."
"Not everyone likes it." She didn't want to say that it seemed to be some of his old schoolmates who were the most hostile towards her, particularly Jorge – and she certainly wasn't going to mention her earlier crisis of confidence.
"Well, you just have to win the contests, don't you? Once you've got that council seat, there's nothing anyone can do."
She couldn't help smiling; it was sweet of him to so blithely assume that she could win.
"So I've told you what I've been up to – when do I get to hear the rest of your story?" he asked, pausing as they reached the end of his corridor.
"You're going to be so busy for the next few days – like this morning but worse!" She'd felt lonely while she was waiting, but now she could joke about it without any bad feeling – and his rueful smile said he understood.
"I don't even have my timetable yet."
"So why don't you just drop in next time you happen to have a free evening?"
He nodded his agreement, and she gave him a quick hug before running up the next flight of stairs to the second year rooms. She knew her slight breathlessness as she reached the common room wasn't down to the exertion of climbing the steps.
"Eleanor!" Daniel called out to her before she could let herself into her bedroom. She turned to face him, annoyed to have her thoughts interrupted. "You have been talking to that Raf again?"
"Yes."
"You should be careful."
"Of what?" she asked, beginning to wish she'd just ignored him.
"He is one of them," Daniel said. "Venncastle. They are not to be trusted."
"Raf and I faced death together in Taraska."
She moved to leave the conversation but he stepped across in front of her, blocking her way.
"Nevertheless..."
"I trust him. Okay?"
"It is not okay, Eleanor, he is..."
"You can't tell me who my friends are!" she interrupted, furious now.
"I try only to protect you."
"Well, don't!" She glared at him, silently daring him to tell her that she needed protecting. Just because she was the only girl at the academy – did he really think she was so weak? He'd never have tried to 'protect' the others.
He gave a casual shrug. "You do as you wish," he said, then turned and strode from the room before she had chance to respond.
"I will," she muttered, glowering after him as he walked away.
Mikhail's door opened, and he peered out into the common room. "You okay?" he asked Eleanor.
"He needs to stop interfering."
Mikhail grinned broadly. "Aw, he only does it 'cause he likes you."
"Really?" Eleanor's voice was icy. She didn't even want it to be true. "Well, he needs to learn to show it!" She turned and walked purposefully into her room, slamming the door behind her.