CHAPTER SEVEN
When Six got back to the Towers, he kind of wanted to go straight to sleep. Unfortunately, he was a bit too busy trying not to visibly panic about the fact that Livia was in a whole lot of danger. Also, it was still way too early to actually go to bed.
Instead, he would probably hide in his room and try to drown his emotions in an interesting book. Or maybe a useful book. He had a book of information that had been gathered about the assassin which he was supposed to have read over a week ago.
As Six passed by the apprentices’ common room, he took stock of who was in there. Almost everyone was, as it turned out. This included Avilus, which was rather fortunate, since Six really did not want to deal with him right now. On the other hand, it would be somewhat weird to go be alone in his room when everyone else was being social.
Unfortunately, before he could go avoid everyone anyway, someone grabbed his wrist. Six twisted his arm sharply and pulled away from his attacker. He wasn’t the biggest fan of touching people on the best of days, and this definitely was not the best of days.
“Sorry! Didn’t mean to surprise you,” said Petronia, who he realized was not actually attacking him. “I’d just like to talk about something.”
Six did not want to talk about something. “What is it?”
“Something private. Follow me.” She walked through the doorway, pushing past Six without giving him time to get out of the way.
Six was pretty sure Avilius had been trying to flirt with Petronia lately, so she was probably going to ask something about that. It would be reasonable to assume that Six knew anything about Avilius, after six years as roommates. Of course, if Avilius’s updates were anything to go by, the only thing Petronia would want to know about Avilius was how to make him leave you alone. Six wished he knew how to do that.
“Okay, this’ll probably do.” Petronia ushered him into what was definitely a broom closet and shut the door. “So, you’re a rebel spy, right?”
“Nope,” said Six, whose internal panic level had just gone from absurdly high to about triple that. He couldn’t be discovered. He couldn’t fail at the one job he was half competent at. He couldn’t let Livia down twice in one day.
“Well, then, where were you just now?” Petronia sounded far too cheery for the subject at hand.
“Just doing my duties.” He tried to smile. It felt far too fake, so he switched to a calm expression instead. That felt fake too, but it was marginally better.
“Sixtus. You went to the Third Tower for your duties, then left less than five minutes later. You then went straight into the city. Why?”
How did she know all that? She wasn’t a guard or anything. She shouldn’t have been paying attention to his comings and goings. “I had to buy the assassin a book. Did you know he actually likes those awful cheap novels they sell everywhere?”
“You didn’t go into any stores. You went to someone’s house, which you’ve visited before. Several times.” She grinned. “Don’t even try lying to me.”
Everything was officially terrible. “Why don’t you explain why you were following me?”
“Curiosity, suspicion, all sorts of things. That’s enough deflecting.”
“Fine. I was visiting my sister. Not a crime.” Mages weren’t actually supposed to stay in contact with their families, but technically he wasn’t a Mage yet. Anyway, he knew a few of the other apprentices broke that rule too.
“Nobody in that house looks like you. Also I may or may not have literally overheard a conversation about bringing supplies to another rebel safehouse. I hope that other safehouse has thicker walls.”
That meant she had followed him. Possibly more than once, since she knew that he had been there multiple times. There was no way he was going to be able to avoid telling Livia about this. Well, unless Livia died before he got a chance to tell her, but he refused to acknowledge that possibility.
“She’s adopted,” Six explained, not sure why he was still trying to make any sort of excuse. “But-”
“No, no, no,” Petronia interrupted, “You don’t need to lie; I’m not mad at you! I’ve been looking for a rebel spy.”
Six muttered something under his breath about how one of the rebels actually was his adopted sister. This was not the direction he had expected the conversation to go in, but it was certainly a better direction.
“Why?”
“I have my reasons.” She grinned again. “Those reasons mostly being the fact that the Mages are terrible and deserve to be destroyed.”
Well, Six could certainly work with that.
“I’d love to help, but unfortunately my main contact is going to be out of commission for a while.” Possibly permanently. “Also I think you might be a better spy than I am.”
He phrased the last bit as a joke, but it was true. He hadn’t found anything that would actually be useful in six years, but she had found out plenty in much less time. Of course, it was possible he was just far worse at hiding his secrets than the Mages.
“Hey, I bet you’re a perfectly good spy. But two heads are better than one, right?”
Six wondered why an apprentice Mage would harbor rebel sympathies. He hadn’t really had a choice about whether or not to join the Mages and he’d basically been raised as a rebel, but most apprentices got to decide for themselves, right? Actually, he didn’t know much about their recruitment procedures. He was pretty sure his recruitment hadn’t exactly been typical. There would be a lot more house fires around Floria Zrin if it was.
It was perfectly possible the Mages had ways to strong-arm people into joining that didn’t involve killing their family.
“Sure.” Two heads were not always better than one, especially when you were trying to be quiet. “I can introduce you to my contact sometime, but things are a bit busy right now.”
“Alright! I’m gonna head back into the common room now so nobody wonders where we went.”
Before Six had a chance to reply, Petronia was already gone. He wasn’t entirely convinced she was actually on his side, but it was hard to disagree with someone that energetic and cheerful. Well, at least it meant he had something to think about other than Livia’s impending doom.