Chapter 30 CHAPTER THIRTY: Up the Mountain
CHAPTER THIRTY: Up the Mountain
The service track was not a road.
It was a cleared path through the rock shelf on the western face of the mountain, wider than a person and narrower than a cart, with the stone wall close on the right side and nothing on the left except a steep slope down through the dark. Sable knew it because he had walked it twice in the first week, which told me he had been mapping exits from the moment he arrived.
I had not done that in this life yet.
I should have.
I stored the mistake and moved on.
We went up in single file. Sable led. Then Sera. Then Ren. I went last, which put me at the back where I could read the air behind us and make sure nothing was following.
Nothing was following. Not that I could feel.
But Fenn had come down this mountain and she was somewhere between us and the summit, and she had a head start going back up.
I kept moving.
The track was harder going up than the road had been coming down. The angle was steep and the surface was uneven, more loose stone than packed earth in sections, and the dark made every step a small decision.
Ren slipped once and caught himself on the rock wall with his palm.
"I am fine," he said, before anyone asked.
"I know," I said.
He kept moving.
Sable did not slow down for the terrain. He moved through it with the focused efficiency of someone who had been raised to treat physical difficulty as a variable to account for rather than a problem to complain about. Sera moved just as smoothly, which did not surprise me. Seven years of moving through difficult spaces without being noticed had built something in her.
We reached the academy wall in just under an hour.
Not the main gate. The service track came out on the north face, behind the maintenance structures, where a low stone wall separated the outer grounds from the academy building proper. The maintenance door in this section was locked but not Aether-sealed. Sable had the same facility key that had opened the south gate.
It worked.
We went in.
The academy was quiet and dark. Students asleep. Staff on their regular rounds.
But something felt wrong.
I felt it as soon as we were inside the wall. Not a specific thing I could point at. A pressure in the building's Aether that had not been there when I lived here. Like the difference between a room at rest and a room where someone is sitting very still and not breathing.
I pressed my core outward, gently.
The academy Aether was disturbed. Not everywhere. Concentrated in one area.
The sub-level.
I caught Sable's arm.
He stopped. He looked at me.
"She is already moving," I said quietly. "The sub-level."
His expression did not change. But his eyes sharpened.
"Davan is in the sub-level," Sera said.
"Yes," I said.
"How far ahead of us is she?" Sable said.
"I cannot measure distance through Aether disturbance," I said. "She is there now or she was very recently."
Sable looked at the dark building in front of us. His jaw was tight.
"Split," he said. "Sera and I go to the sub-level. Zane and Ren to Lysa Crane. Upper dormitory wing, third room from the east end. That is where Thane's files placed her when she arrived."
He had memorized the room placement from the archive folder.
Of course he had.
"If Thane is already in the sub-level," I said, "and Davan is there—"
"Then we need to move immediately," Sable said. "Not discuss it."
He was right.
"Go," I said.
He and Sera moved. Into the building, down toward the lower levels, fast and quiet.
I looked at Ren.
"Third room from the east end," he said. "Upper dormitory wing."
"Yes," I said.
We moved.
The upper dormitory wing was on the second floor of the main building. A corridor I had been in only once, during my first week, when I had taken a wrong turn looking for the library. Wide, better lit than the east block corridors, with larger doors and the particular warmth that came from having better heating in the walls.
We went up the stairs and along the corridor, counting doors.
Third from the east end.
I knocked. Soft but clear.
Nothing.
I knocked again.
A pause. Then movement inside. Then a voice, young, alert in the way people are alert when they have been woken by something unexpected and are deciding whether to be frightened.
"Who is there."
Not a question exactly. A check.
"My name is Zane Ardell," I said quietly. "I am a student at this academy. I need you to open the door. It is urgent and it is about your safety."
A longer pause.
"I do not know you," she said.
"You are Lysa Crane," I said. "Your core assessment at entry was silver with a white edge. You have been feeling it move faster in the last three weeks and you have not told anyone."
Complete silence.
Then the door opened.
She was small and dark-eyed with the kind of face that went very still when it was thinking hard. She looked at me. She looked at Ren. She looked back at me.
"How do you know about my core," she said.
"Because there is a file in the restricted archive on the third floor with your name in it," I said. "And I have read it."
She stared at me.
"Get dressed," I said. "Bring what you need. We need to leave this building."
"Leave," she repeated.
"Right now," I said. "Quickly."
She disappeared back into the room.
Ren looked at me.
"That went better than I expected," he said.
"She already knew something was wrong," I said. "She has been feeling it for three weeks and had nobody to tell."
Ren was quiet for a moment. Then he said: "That is a very lonely way to know something."
He was right about that.
And somewhere below us, in the sub-level of this building, Sable and Sera were either finding Davan or finding something much worse.
I pressed my carefully core outward one more time.
The Aether disturbance in the sub-level had not stopped.
I was standing in a corridor on the second floor waiting for a girl I had met thirty seconds ago to pack a bag.
Time was moving faster than any of us wanted.