Sybeth’s lips pressed together in obvious annoyance.
“Can’t you tell us what’s at the other dig site?” asked Archie, speaking Ru’s thoughts.
“Short answer?” said Lyr. “No.”
“Long answer, we don’t know,” said Sybeth, clearly eager to leave. “Miss Delara, you will receive a full explanation upon arrival at the other site. I can promise you that.”
“You’d be useless without one,” said Lyr.
“Thanks,” said Ru, voicing the word like a curse. She was hungry and tired from being in the sun all morning, and a strain threatened at the edges of her eye sockets. Bending over pottery, staring at small things up close, did a number on the eyes.
Yet despite her embarrassment, her anger, and everything else, she couldn’t help but wonder why she had been summoned. What was at the other dig site? A flare of possibility was kindled in her momentarily. If the Regent sent for her based onthatpaper…
But no, she shouldn’t hope. It was impossible. Magic, if it did exist, wasn’t so easily spotted. If it was, she would have been able to show it to the world, write it down in ink. Surely, if something clearly magic had been uncovered, they wouldn’t have sent for a single academic from the Tower.
No. It was too much to hope, even to consider.
“We need to hurry,” said Sybeth, her hand flexing at the pommel of her sword. “We have a full day of riding ahead of us.”
“Where’s the site?” asked Ru, grasping at threads of reality. Anything to keep her grounded. Could she really just… up and leave? With no planning or notice at all?
“It’s new,” said Lyr.
“It’s new,” said Sybeth, “And we can’t tell you. You’ll have to come with us.”
Ru felt like arguing out of stubbornness, but there would be no point. This was a summons from the regent. The King’s Riders themselves had come to collect her. There was no arguing, no refusing. She would go.
“Fine,” she conceded. “I’ll come with you, but this had better not be an extremely elaborate trick to make me look stupid.”
Archie walked with them to the tents. Most of the academics had gathered there to watch as Ru was escorted between the pair of shining riders. Even the professors were clustered together where four horses stood tethered. A third rider stood with the horses, looking harried as the professors plied her with questions. It was obvious to Ru from the glints in her peers’ eyes, the frowns on the lips of her professors, that they had been told the reason for the riders’ arrival.
When they heard Ru and the other riders coming, the professors all spun around as one.
“Delara!” cried Professor Obralle, shoving her way to the front. Short in stature but no less intimidating, she glared at anyone foolish enough to be in her line of sight. Pale pink hair was piled artfully on her head, vaguely resembling a pudgy swan, and her eyes sparked with accusation. “Are these people mad? Have they told you where they’re taking you?”
Lyr and Sybeth bristled at this.
“Now, let’s all take a breath,” said Professor Cadwick. In contrast to Obralle, he was tall and spindly with a shock of white hair puffing up from his skull, a pair of tiny pince-nez perched on his arched nose. “There’s no need to imply that Lady Sigrun’s riders are taken by madness. We know the regent has nothing but respect for our work at the Tower.”
“True,” said Lyr, his hat’s plume ruffling in the wind. Everyone ignored him.
In that moment, her peers chattering around her, the professors exclaiming incredulously, Ru wanted nothing more than to disappear into the earth. To be engulfed, like one of her vases, buried and hidden.
“Wait,” said Grey Adler, dark-haired and sneering. Ru would have called him her nemesis if she was a more dramatic person. He, too, had come in from his excavation to witness the commotion. Like the rest of the gathered academics, he was windswept and covered in dirt, his expressive mouth curved in a self-righteous smirk. “Delara, are they beingserious?”
Scattered laughter erupted from the gathered academics. The professors attempted to shush them with no success. Ru picked up a few choice words and phrases amongst the cacophony: …magic…can’t believe…foolish…they’d pick her?
“I don’t even know what I’m being pickedfor,” snapped Ru, at nobody in particular. Avoiding the gaze of everyone around her, she felt her cheeks reddening and hated herself for it. She shoved her hands in her trouser pockets, fists clenched, and stared at her feet.
“Oh shut up everyone,” said Archie, his clipped upper-class accent cutting through the laughter and confusion. “Aren’t we supposed to be adults? Consider behaving accordingly.”
Ru shot Archie a look. He shrugged as if to say,you weren’t going to do it, so…
She wished he wouldn’t stick up for her, not like that. It made her look weak, and it made him look even weaker. Academia was a lions’ den of competition and animosity, everyone vying for an upper hand in any possible situation.
“He said if you can’t say something nice,” snickered Grey.
“Don’t say a thing at all,” finished Buford Hennes, who had come away from his ancient toilets to join in the fray. “I guess we’re bound by nursery rhymes now.”
