Her body had been making decisions on its own, again.
“What is it, Tethie?” Pathka was saying. His irritation seemed to have been swept away by concern for her. “Are you sad? Angry? Sick?”
“Are you checking off a list?” said Tess, trying to joke but only managing to sound bitter.
“Yes,” said Pathka. “You’re wearing a negative face I haven’t seen before, so I’m trying to narrow down what it might be.”
Indeed, what was it? Something akin to panic. Realizing she was in Will’s village (she peeked again; it was still there) had rent her mind from body, right in two. All she’d done to put herself together—walking, swimming, hay turning—undone in a lightning strike of fear.
She owed Pathka an explanation. “That’s Will’s village. I— It took me by surprise.”
It had reminded her that Will still existed. He was somewhere in the world. He was real.
It was a frightening thought.
“You never talk about him,” said Pathka. It wasn’t a question (Quootla made questions clear with an interrogative particle), but Tess felt a dozen questions pressing behind it.
“I don’t want to talk about him,” said Tess. “I don’t want to remember those days.”
She’d crammed every memory into darkness, the oubliette of her mind’s dungeon. It did no good. The past was never really past if being in Affle could bring it all rushing back.
Pathka laid his head on her lap, and they sat like a parody of a unicorn tapestry. “Did you thluff him?” asked Pathka, using the Goreddi word love. “You humans prefer to thluff your mates.”
“As opposed to what?” asked Tess.
“Answering the call of the pheromones,” said Pathka breezily, as if it were nothing. “They call, we pile on. It’s fairly uncomplicated.”
“No,” said Tess, appalled. “It’s not like that at all.”
She was lying, though, a little bit. She swatted that thought away as if it stung her.
And then she told Pathka a story.
* * *
Her most vivid, shining, Will-ful memory was the evening they’d tried to steal Spira’s notes.
Tess had been sneaking out of the house for about a month at that point. Kenneth had quickly gotten serious about Lord Rynald, so it was Will who met her at the shrine of St. Siucre, and Will who walked her back again at the end of the night. He sneaked her into lectures and the faculty library, introduced her to scholarly luminaries, and let her participate (over some grumbling) in the raucous debating around his table at the Mullet.
It was more like a scholarly drinking game than a proper debate. Tess loved it, and not just because she often won. It made her feel like one of the lads, bold and adventurous.
It had emboldened Will, too: he’d kissed her beside the fountain in the old cloister courtyard, the stars dancing overhead. It had been a perfect jewel of a moment, and she had felt in her heart that all her hopes were coming to fruition.
If she couldn’t be Dozerius—she’d accepted this at some point—there was still adventure and some semblance of freedom to be had at his side, as his ladylove.
The night in question—the adventure of Spira’s notes—she and Will had been coming out of a geology lecture. Will was doing an impression of Saar Fikar, the female dragon geologist, saying naphtha hungrily, like it was something to put on toast. Tess took his arm and laughingly called him naughty.
Roger Ivy was waiting for them in the corridor, pamphlet in hand.
“Roger, favored nest-comrade of my youth,” cried Will, continuing his impersonation. “Won’t you accompany us to the Mullet for a flaming jar of naphtha?”
Tess smiled at Roger and leaned her head against Will’s shoulder.
“You need to see this,” said Roger unhappily, pressing the pamphlet into Will’s hands.
It was called Part 3 of 4: On the Folly of Relying upon Quigutl Falsehoods and Children’s Imaginings, by Scholar Spira.
“Damnation,” said Will. “Not another one.”
Roger took off. Will drifted up the corridor, skimming Spira’s treatise; Tess at his elbow read as much as she could before he turned each page, feeling increasingly alarmed and humiliated on his behalf.
Will noticed her reading. “Don’t bother, Therese,” he said, tugging her braid in gentle admonishment. “It’s rubbish. Spira’s out of arguments and now resorts to ad hominem attacks, publishing as quickly as possible in order to bury me while I’m still rebutting the first one.”
Will rolled up the pamphlet and smacked it against his palm, mouth flattened in frustration. “There’s a fourth part coming. I need to stop it.”
Tess read his tense jaw, his distant gaze; these pamphlets hurt him deeply, though he feigned bravado. She said, “Could you anticipate Spira and have a rebuttal ready to go?”
Will’s blue eyes darted toward her; he wagged a finger slowly, like the tail of a cat about to pounce. “That is not a bad idea. ‘Children’s imaginings,’ indeed. Spira can go pound sand.”
He grabbed Tess’s hand and, with customary quickness, ducked upstairs to the faculty wing. Tess bumped along, trying to keep up, like a kite on a string. “Spira’s notes are in a locked cabinet,” Will was saying. “I can’t say I’ve ever picked a lock, but how hard can it—”
He stopped short as they turned a corner. Ahead, a patch of light stretched across the darkened hallway; Spira was up late working.
“Saints’ flippers!” muttered Will. “But no, this could be good. I might not have to pick a lock after all. I’ll need your help, though, little bird.”
“Anything,” said Tess stoutly.
His smile in the semidarkness grew sly. “Even sit on Spira’s lap and flirt with him?”
Tess’s face fell. She’d said “anything” without considering that he might ask something so repugnant of her. She hated to break her word, hated to disappoint him, but how could she…
Will chuckled lightly, as if her inner tug-of-war was transparent to him. “I know you’re not that kind of girl. But I won’t think less of you—it was my idea, after all—and you couldn’t be safer. A sexless organism like Spira won’t take liberties. He’ll be mortified and, more importantly, distracted while I rifle through his cabinet.”
“Isn’t there something else I could do?” Tess began weakly. “This seems mean.”
Will circled his arms around her waist; his jerkin was perfumed with some Zibou scent full of spices Tess couldn’t name. “You’re right, it would be mean,” he said, warm breath in her ear, “if Spira could feel it, and if he didn’t abundantly deserve it. You are such a sweet, sensitive little bird, correcting me and being my conscience. Of course you should never have to do anything you don’t feel comfortable with. It’s all right. I’ll break his lock tomorrow.”
He still held the rolled-up pamphlet. Its title was obscured, but Tess remembered it—an insult not only to her but to Pathka and all quigutl. Dragons were always kicking their smaller cousins around, killing them, using them. Saar contempt for quigutl was far worse than Will’s contempt for saar; dragons had corresponding power to hurt. It wouldn’t hurt Spira in the least to be taken down a peg while Tess stood up for quigutl in a small way.
And it would mean so much to Will.
“Fine, I’ll do it,” she said reluctantly. “But I’m no good at flirting.”
“That’s patently untrue,” said Will, kissing her ear. Tess pushed him playfully away.