“In less than a day?” Ru groaned, lying back on the settee, wondering if she’d ever stop being in pain. “Can’t you delay it?”
Obralle gave her a sympathetic look. “Now that the artifact is here, we can’t simply allow it to lie around without guidelines. There must be rules.”
Too exhausted to reply, Ru closed her eyes for a moment. She would have to speak tomorrow then, lay out her plans clearly, even if it meant dredging up old humiliations.
An afternoon breeze from the window washed over her, cooling her hot forehead. She lay quietly for a while, and when she opened her eyes again, Professor Obralle had gone.
Not wanting to fall asleep on the settee, conscious of her already stiff muscles, Ru tottered over to the bed, carrying the artifact and her bottle of ointment. Then she stripped to her undergarments, crawled into bed, and dreamed of blood and darkness.
CHAPTER16
Ru woke before sunrise. She had slept, un-waking, from afternoon to morning. She went blearily to the window, bare feet padding on hardwood, to look out over the courtyard below. Birds sang a cacophony in the trees, and dew clung to the windowsill where she pressed her fingers. She had left the window open all night, the northern winds cooling her as she slept.
Even though the sun was still just behind the horizon, there was no point in going back to sleep. She felt rested, though her bruises and scrapes were still a pattern of aches across her body. Hartford had done his job well, even her rib no longer sending jagged spikes of pain through her torso.
Going back to the bed, Ru pulled the covers over her legs, sitting up against a pile of pillows. She reached for the artifact, swaddled in its blanket at the far side of the bed. It hummed against her thoughts, a steady vibrating presence. She felt a great, inexplicable surge of fondness for the thing. It was volatile, it had to be. A weapon. A magic object. A focus of unspeakable destruction.
And yet…
Slowly, delicately, she unfolded the blanket. In the work of a moment, the artifact was free. For the first time since the dig site at the Shattered City, she was able to look at it, to drink it in, with no distractions. She ached to touch it, to draw her finger gently along the black-on-black whorls that curved across its surface. She marveled at its smoothness — there were no edges, no breaks where molten stones would have snapped apart, no signs of erosion.
It wasn’t a naturally formed mineral, then. No stone dug from the earth looked like this, felt like this. There was one explanation for such a thing. A thing that spoke treasured curses at the base of her skull, caressing at the edges of her mind.
Magic.
But there was no proof, no way to tell. And while she yearned to pick it up with her bare hand, to cradle it in her palm, a voice in the back of her head told her no. It wouldn’t be safe.
And yet…
Ru extended her fingers toward it slowly, thoughtlessly, half awake in the gloom of early morning, almost intoxicated by it. The artifact wasn’t insistent, not like it had been at the dig site. It was quiet, soft, as if it was breathing. As if her lungs were shared between the two of them, Ru and the dark stone.
Closing her eyes, fingers hovering above its surface, she imagined it in her mind's eye. A humming pulse around the end of a thread, from stone to woman.Yes, it seemed to say.I’m here. As if it knew her, had been waiting for her. Forher,Ruellian Delara. No one else.
How she wanted to hold it.
Thoughts of Fen rose unbidden then, his clear gray eyes and rugged features. Hair lifted by a gust of unseen wind.
Her eyes flew open, and she caught herself, her fingers millimeters from the stone. Breathing hard, she wrapped it snugly in its blanket.
She would have to be more careful, wary of the effect it had on her. Yet, while fear lanced through her in response to the artifact’s stupefying influence, her limbs and mind almost alcohol-heavy, she also felt a thrill of connection.
The artifact had chosen her, and she had chosen it.
A gentle knock sounded at the door, and Professor Obralle poked her head around it. “Awake already?” she said.
Startled, Ru turned to look out the window. The sun had already risen, the birdsong so loud she could no longer hear the wind in the trees. How long had she been staring at the artifact?
“I just woke up,” said Ru, not even sure what time it was. “Is the deliberation soon?”
“Very,” said the professor, coming into the room. There were few true formalities in the Tower, and little need for professors and academics to maintain distance when it came to Tower life. They were friends and colleagues — the rigid boundaries of Navenian society were meaningless at the Tower, where science and progress of thought reigned supreme.
“Get dressed,” said Obralle, bustling about, starting a fire in the small hearth even though it was the height of summer. She wore trousers and a waistcoat of navy blue wool, her neckcloth held in place with a large gold brooch — her version of the utmost formality. “I’ll collect the artifact.”
Ru froze. “The artifact?”
Obralle gave her a look as if she were being willfully ignorant. “Of course, Delara. The artifact. It must be taken somewhere safe, somewhere isolated, until the deliberation has concluded.”
She understood the need for it, but the thought of handing over the artifact to someone else, someone who didn’tknowit like she did… a pale flicker of something like panic moved through Ru. Just as quickly, she tamped it down, knowing that the professor was right. Grudgingly, she gathered the bundled stone and handed it to Obralle, who took it with slight hesitance.
