As Annev continued to lay the false floor, he watched Duvarek head towards the dais at the front of the nave and then return with a few scraps of black cloth. The master briskly stitched them to the cloth panels hanging over some of the holes in the western floor, and soon the western section of pews looked much like the central and eastern sections.
The work was finished half an hour later. Annev walked between the long black curtains with Duvarek and surveyed the room. He gave one of the cloth panels a tug and watched as it swayed soundlessly in the air.
‘Are we supposed to climb these?’
Duvarek grinned and wiped his hands on his stained tunic. ‘Maybe.’
Annev raised an eyebrow then studied the planks resting on the pews. He pushed on a few and noted that some still wobbled or tilted if he put his weight on the wrong side.
‘These aren’t very secure,’ Annev noted, wandering towards the centre of the nave.
‘You noticed.’ The Master of Shadows followed Annev. Every now and then, he would shift a board a few inches.
Annev walked to the other side of the room and gazed up at the nave’s rune-covered walls and large glass windows. Light shone through the still-dusty panes, but much of it was blocked by the dark cloth hanging half a dozen feet from the windows. Towards the centre of the nave, where the middle row of pews had been covered, it was much darker; even in the areas where something could be seen, the black panels obscured vision beyond a few feet in any direction.
Annev circled around to the front of the chamber and, as he left the rows of pews, he saw the dais was largely unobscured by the hanging panels. Annev climbed the steps and, unthinking, made his way to the stone altar at the centre of the raised platform. He cringed when he saw that the water trough surrounding the altar had dried up, and he wondered why the ancients had let the chapel fall into disuse.
As he circled the holy table, Annev saw the differences between this altar and Sodar’s. The sacred moat encircling it was set into the floor of the raised dais and was huge – wide enough for a priest to stand at the altar in the centre, yet deep enough for a man to lie down in the empty trough. By contrast, the moat surrounding Sodar’s table hugged the altar itself and was only an inch or so deep. Likewise, where Sodar’s altar was only lightly ornamented, the Academy’s had been carved with a dazzling variety of runes and symbols, including pictographs and a small mural. It was almost as if the craftsman building the altar had not wanted to be outdone by the one who had decorated the nave’s walls, so he’d taken every symbol from the walls – every glyph and rune in the room – and found a way to cram it all onto the altar.
Annev stepped away from the altar and stumbled into a heap of black fabric piled near the dais. He poked it with his foot and saw it matched the cloth panels suspended throughout the nave, though these were only scraps, unfit for hanging.
At the far end of the room, the portal to the nave creaked open. Annev looked up, but his sight of the nave’s entrance was obscured. Instead, he heard the soft thump of dozens of booted feet pouring into the room.
Annev hopped down from the dais and made his way around the perimeter of the nave. He reached the open area by the entrance just in time to see Duvarek clasp wrists with Edra. Annev’s reap now surrounded the two masters. Annev scanned the boys’ faces and saw several with fresh bruises – Brinden even sported a bloody nose – but none seemed to require the attentions of Master Aran or the Academy’s witwomen. Lemwich even seemed recovered, to Annev’s relief. He spied Titus and Therin at the back of the group.
‘You look like hell, Dove,’ Edra said as Annev walked past.
Duvarek shrugged. ‘Drank too much. Overslept. The usual.’ The Master of Shadows pushed his way through the crowd of boys and closed the door to the grand nave.
‘The usual,’ Edra repeated, nodding. He spotted Annev. ‘Have you been helpful?’
The Master of Shadows answered for him. ‘He was. Made up for ploughing me over this morning.’
‘What?’
‘Nothing,’ Duvarek said, nodding to Annev. ‘It’s in the past.’
Edra looked from Duvarek to Annev then sighed. ‘Fine. Annev, I’ll let Brother Sodar know you missed the last half of today’s sparring. You can make it up with him this evening, before tonight’s sermon.’ Annev bowed his head but Edra wasn’t finished. ‘I’ll also tell him you saved Lemwich’s life during training. Maybe he’ll go easy on you.’
Annev looked up and forced a small smile. It was Edra’s way of closing the issue with Lemwich on the rooftop; though Sodar would never go easy on him, no matter what Edra said.
‘Thank you, Master Edra.’ Annev rejoined his friends and lowered his voice. ‘How’d you do after I left?’
‘Terrible,’ Therin mumbled around a fat lip. ‘Better than Titus, though.’
Titus nodded his agreement. ‘They paired us up. Therin waited till I’d thrown all my spikes then put his knife to my throat. Course, then he was beaten by Kellor.’
Annev laughed in spite of himself. ‘So who got the advantage in tomorrow’s test?’
‘Who do you think?’ Therin pointed in the direction of Fyn and his friends. ‘Brinden, Jasper, Kellor, Fyn. They all got it.’
‘And Kenton,’ Titus added. ‘Janson was best of the losers, so he got the sixth spot.’
Worse and worse, Annev thought, realising it would have been his if he hadn’t been disqualified. Edra walked past again, a small chest under his arm. Annev frowned, wondering at its contents. Before he could ask Titus or Therin about it, though, Edra spoke.
‘This afternoon you will be combining your combat training with your stealth skills,’ Edra said, looking over the assembled students. ‘Dove and I decided to do something special today since, for many of you, this will be your last class with us.’ He looked at Duvarek. ‘Where are the witgirls?’
Duvarek shrugged just as the nave doors opened to admit two witwomen. The first was stout, middle-aged, and wore dark red skirts; the second was thin, mid-twenties, with a severe expression.
‘Witwoman Nasha,’ Duvarek said, inclining his head. ‘We were just talking about you.’
The plump woman with the motherly face wrinkled her nose at the master’s stained robes while her companion surveyed the hanging curtains and plank-covered pews. She nodded slowly.
‘This will do.’
Nasha sniffed then clapped her hands twice in quick succession, and a group of young women entered the nave.
Annev stared, dumbfounded, as the girls began filing into the room. When he recognised their faces, his heart picked up its beat.
This is her class, he thought. This is her class.
The other avatars and acolytes fared little better. The reap was, to a boy, dumbstruck to be joined by their female counterparts. The strict separation between the ancients’ male students and the witwomen’s female charges was rarely breached, so even in this innocuous setting the room felt charged with electricity.
For Annev’s part he tried to catch a glimpse of each young woman as she entered. He recognised Malia with her black braided hair. Lydia with her cool grey eyes and purple skirts. Faith, with hair like flax and skin flecked with freckles. And behind her, in a pale yellow dress and white apron, was Myjun.
Chapter Seven