No, Bekkit, I thought. I'll accept your help, but I don't trust you any further than Ket can throw you. I'll be watching you.
Bekkit continued to expound upon the merits of the ark, heedless of my wandering attention. Nor did he notice Ris'kin down in the lumberyard. She was standing, arms folded, watching every movement of the gnomes as they began hewing wood and measuring planks for the ark. When she caught my train of thought, she glanced up at Bekkit, narrowing her eyes and making the same two-fingered gesture she'd made at Benin earlier.
I smiled.
We'll be watching you.
Nineteen
Professor Knox
Tiri
After a day of research, Tiri was preparing to head out to meet Coll and Benin when she caught snatches of a conversation through an open window.
"... some of the sloppiest sigilwork I've ever seen. Poor Professor Holloway must be rolling in her grave right now."
"I'm surprised there was enough of her left to bury," muttered the student, clearly unhappy with the reprimand. "They say her quarters were burned to ash so fine you could pass it through a silk cloth."
"Insolent child! Professor Holloway was one of the finest high mages this Guild has ever seen, even if she was a pyromancer. Now repeat these sigils again twenty times. If I find even a single line out of place..."
The fresh air outside was revitalizing after sleepless hours among dusty books, but still Tiri struggled to focus, racking her brains to recall why the name "Holloway" sounded so familiar. She'd walked twice around the grounds before it hit her.
She fumbled in her satchel for the piece of paper from atop the bundle taken from Lila's room, but she already knew she was right.
Mhegana Holloway was one of twenty or so names on a list, written in Lila's handwriting. Tiri scanned it again, and sure enough, there it was, just a couple of entries from the bottom. Somewhat ominously, Holloway's name had been struck through with a single horizontal line, as had the other names on the list, with the exception of the last two.
Now she stood in a moonlit corridor in an isolated wing of the fifth floor. The plaque on the door in front of her read "Professor H. Knox."
Harald Knox—the second-to-last name on Lila's list.
Tiri's knock seemed to echo down the empty hallway as though her knuckles were battering rams. She managed not to flinch.
How would Harald Knox react to this midnight intrusion? It was hard to imagine her reception being favorable, especially when she inevitably had to explain the flimsy pretext on which she was here. “Sorry, Professor, but my friend wrote your name on a list and nearly everyone else on it is dead. Any idea why?”
But she'd rather breach protocol and incur the professor's potential ire than risk coming in the daytime when her inquiries were more likely to arouse suspicion from watchful eyes.
She knocked again, more firmly this time. "Professor Knox?"
The heavy elderwood door creaked open slightly. Tiri withdrew her fist as though it had bitten her.
It wasn't closed properly. Odd.
Even after everything she'd done these past few weeks, she still hesitated. She was about to go from simple disturbance to outright trespassing—into a senior faculty member's private quarters, no less.
I've come this far. I can't afford not to go further. Especially with so much still to learn.
She pushed the door open and stepped inside the office.
A foul aroma instantly enveloped her and she fought to keep from gagging. What is that?!
One hand covering her mouth and nose, she reached into her bag with the other and pulled out a chemsphere.
Bookcases lined the walls. Their shelves were jammed with tomes, binders, piles of parchment and stacks of scroll cases, many of which had spilled over onto the surfaces of several desks. The glass beakers and flasks of alchemy equipment glinted in one corner, while a door in the left-hand wall presumably led to the professor's bedchambers. It was all very predictable.
Except for the corpse.
It was sprawled over the desk as though sleeping, but its absolute stillness said otherwise, as did the trickle of dark blood from a corner of the open mouth.
Breathing shallow, Tiri leaned over and placed two fingers gingerly on the man's neck. His skin was still warm, but the only pulse she felt was her own, throbbing within her fingertips and pounding in her ears.
If the stillness of Knox’s heart wasn't proof enough, the odor certainly was. This close, the stench of bodily effluence was almost unbearable.
But the contents of Professor Knox's recently evacuated bowels were not the only thing testing the strength of Tiri's gag reflex. No, there was something else.
She stepped away from the desk, but something crunched beneath her foot.
The shattered fragments of another cup lay on the rug beside the dead man's chair. Without really thinking about it, she bent to pick up one of the pieces while glancing around the office for the source of the other smell.
One of the desks held no fewer than seven teapots, along with several trays and scattered cups and saucers in various states of staleness. To anyone else, that might have indicated the office had been abandoned for some time.
Tiri, however, was more than familiar with the conventions of academia. She'd once had a lecturer who drank from the same cup every day, and which other students claimed had never been washed in all of thirteen years. Professor Rinpane had been a firm believer in the cleansing properties of tea leaves. To her, there was no need to ever wash her cup, because the combination of tea and boiling water were sterilization enough.
Unlike Professor Rinpane—or Rimstain, as became her unfortunate nickname—Knox's stomach lining clearly wasn't made of steel. And his cup had contained something much deadlier than bacteria.
Witchwort? Nightshade? Tiri sniffed
