Anima knew that she had almost certainly sent her two most promising students to their deaths. It felt like knife wounds in her heart when she thought on it, so she tried against all hope to keep her mind occupied. She had been reading the same page of a book for nearly an hour now. By the time she reached the end of the page her mind had wondered so far that she had no idea what she had read. It was torture for her, and yet she felt selfish for being so miserable herself when Mirael and Jacob certainly were in much more serious distress.
But one cannot go against the will of the elders. Their word is law and to oppose it, treasonous. So she held her tongue when the two told her they had been sent on their first mission. She put on a fake smile and told them how proud she was of them, which was the only true thing she could think to say at the time.
They were such brilliant and good hearted children. What could possibly have brought the elders to sentence them to such a horrible fate. They would die, she knew. As surely as a flower will die once it is removed from its stem, they would die. It would be a slow death. Judicars did not kill their prey quickly. They relished in it. They found ecstasy in the pain of others and they would prolong it for days if the opportunity presented itself. And it certainly would in this case. No one was coming to their rescue. They were going where no one within a hundred miles had magic strong enough to even distract a Judicar. And she could have saved them.
She could have warned them, taken them away from the order. They could have changed their names, their appearances, their accents. It was a big world, and though the order's reach was wide, they did not control all of it. They could have lived. But she was too much of a coward. She was too afraid of losing her own life. If she let them go then she would live. It was a certainty. If she helped them, then they would hunt her down, and she was too old and too weak to be running from the order.
She hadn't realized it until just then, but she was crying. A knock on the door brought her back to the present, but there was no way she could hide the swelling around her eyes or dampness on her sleeve from having hastily wiped away the tears. She answered the door anyway.
"Yes, yes, what is it?" She spat out at the unsuspecting messenger.
"The grand master requests your presence," The young servant girl replied, trying her hardest not to notice the tears that still clung to Anima's chin. "I am to bring you immediately, but if you wish to take a moment to collect yourself I will say you were in the privy."
"Thank you, Child." Anima's voice was softer now. This girl did not deserve her anger, that was reserved for the elders. "But we mustn't make him wait. I will compose myself on the way. What is your name, girl?"
The girl's tension eased a bit and she breathed a visible sigh of relief. "It's Matilda, but everyone calls me Matty."
"One moment, Matty." Anima stepped back into her room, opened up a drawer in her dresser and pulled out a small chocolate. "This is for you." The girl's eyes lit up like stars. Chocolate was expensive, and it was likely that Matty had never tasted it before, but clearly she knew what it was. "I'll give you three more if you do me a small favor."
Anima hated using children to do her dirty work, but certainly the elders would be watching her like a pack of hungry wolves stalking a wounded antelope. She had no other choice.
No comments:
Post a Comment