Page 28 of The Duke and the Disciple

Rahn swallowed a hard lump. “I don’t know. I haven’t had enough time with my thoughts.”

“And when we have nothing to send to the Reliquary in a fortnight, when the next report goes out, what do you think will happen?”

“I said I need time with my thoughts.” He dusted his hands along her tense shoulders, sighing. “But Iwillthink of something. I promise.”

“There is one answer,” Aesylt said with a proud tilt of her chin. Her eyes seemed to shake in their sockets, narrowing in a challenge issued. “The question is whether your commitment to the science is bigger than the man inside of you... whether you’re capable of removing emotion and moral and ethical inhibitions from the equation.” She rose higher on her toes. “But most of all, it comes down to whether you have the courage to defy my brother for the greater good of the realm.”

Rahn’s heart pounded against his ribs, ready to burst. What she seemed to suggest, it went beyond scientific boundaries. If he could find his words, he might explain it in a way she would understand, but he couldn’t speak at all.

“I’ve died a dozen deaths while starwalking. I’ve kissed. I’ve hunted. I’ve climbed mountains. I’ve killed. I’ve done things I never could or would do in this world, and I am who I am because of it. Sometimes I think those experiences are the reason I’m still alive at all.”

Aesylt lowered back to the ground with a light sigh that was quite the opposite of her charged delivery. “So I can put the emotion, the ethics, the morals aside for the sake of the research, Scholar, because I’ve been doing it my whole life. Can you?”

The Darker Side of Learning

Chapter6

Stirring Lecture

Two days had passed since Valerian had returned under frightening circumstances. Two excruciatingly long days since Drazhan had swept out of Rahn’s room, brimming with vengeance and rendering Aesylt a veritable prisoner in the hands of Scholar Tindahl.

But what really had Aesylt’s nerves on edge day and night was the silence. The lack of news, of any kind. She’d tried probing the kitchen staff when they passed meals through Rahn’s service gap, but they either knew nothing or would say nothing. Maia was no more forthright. The only thing she could offer was that Imryll and the others were still in the same situation as Aesylt, sequestered in their apartments and waiting for the same news.

The world beyond their row of fogged panes was snowy and quiet. Dusk had descended an hour ago, darkness imminent.

If there was a skirmish underway, it wasn’t happening at Fanghelm.

Aesylt unenthusiastically stabbed at the congealed remnants of her stew. She’d eaten as much as her sour belly could tolerate, and only because she’d need her energy for what she had planned.

Rahn sat in a rickety wooden rocker at the corner window, one leg propped over the other, his notebook resting against his trousers. His quill tapped the paper as he divided his attention between the night sky and his notes. His spectacles, the ones he needed for reading and writing, balanced on his nose, and there was something about the man in those moments that?—

“Aesylt. Come look at this.”

“I’m fine over here,” she said crossly, slopping her spoon through the sludge in her bowl.

His sigh was delayed. “Were you not the one who proffered a stirring lecture on putting emotion aside for the betterment of science?”

Aesylt flickered her eyes upward, her muscles clenching. He wanted to talk about herstirring lecturebut not the reason she’d given it?

She braced against the chair and pushed to her feet, cursing under her breath as she shuffled toward him. He glanced up with a gentle smile that made her feel unreasonable for her anger. But it didn’t go away either.

“What am I looking at?” she asked, lifting a hand to the side in poorly acted disinterest.

“You see that cloud cover over the range?” He pointed his quill and glanced up to make sure she was following. His tenderness with her was maddening, but it was also an unexpectedly warm hug. “If I could get to the observatory, I’d be able to confirm this, but...” He rifled through his notebook, flipping page after page. “That cluster of stars we’ve been studying. The bowman?”

“Mhm,” she said when he waited for her confirmation.

“You know how we’ve been puzzling over its appearance on some nights and not on others? How our predictions have all been wrong?”

“I suppose,” Aesylt replied with a dismissive shrug, but her curiosity was officially piqued. She could turn her nose up at anything else, but not the research. Months their cohort had been charting the elusive bowman, and they’d found no discernible pattern or cycle to its waning or waxing presence in the sky. It was seemingly random, but randomness, as Rahn had explained, though not unheard of in nature, should never be used in lieu of searching for the truth.

“Bonfire nights.” He waved his quill at the sky, grinning back at her. “In the village.”

“And?”

“All that smoke... It goes somewhere, doesn’t it?” He adjusted in excitement. “I read a pamphlet once on smoke and fire, and well, I won’t bore you with all of it, but what I found fascinating was the revelation that the reason smoke and heat rise is that they’re both less dense than cold air. The decreased density allows them to spread apart and move faster, thus rising—at least if the surrounding air is cooler.” He paused, his look reminding her of a little boy showing his parents something he built.

Her mouth hooked into a half smile despite her temperament.

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