Chapter 84. Credit Office
I woke, tangled in an elf. Her hair was on my face and her body was hot, leg lifted on top of my waist and wrapped around one of my legs.
I made a satisfied noise and moved my shoulders to wiggle closer to her. I pulled my arm out from under the covers because I was so warm. I’d need a shower.
“Did you wake up?” Fek asked, close behind my back.
“Aa!”
Minnelil twitched and groaned. “Go away, Fek.”
“Nuh-uh, you’re going to miss breakfast soon. Don’t you need to go to Jextor again?”
“I do,” Minnelil said and sighed. “I haven’t slept this long in a while.”
“I slept way too little!” Fek said happily. “Your pants are on the table. They’re damp, though.”
“Why… do you know that?” Minnelil said.
“I put my towel on them when I came home, sorry! It was pretty dark and I didn’t want to wake anyone.”
“Fek,” I said, finally waking up enough to form words.
“Yeah?”
“Go away.”
“Oh, right, yeah. Need to catch breakfast anyway! The janitor wants us back in the boring corridor, so you should get up too. I’ll see you there. I hope Grit is okay.”
“She’s not here?” Minnelil mumbled, nuzzling her nose into the back of my neck.
I murmured.
“Nah, haven’t seen her. You both look like you had a great night too. Fun!”
“Go away,” we both muttered at the same time.
“Oh whoa,” I said when I stepped into the Breakfast Hall. “Grit does not look like she had a great night.”
“She looks like a corpse,” Minnelil said, walking and holding my hand.
“Girls!” Frederik shouted from a table near the door.
“Make it snappy, buster,” I said. “I want to hear what happened to Grit.”
He chuckled, a look of astonishment on his square face. “She’s working with Falar? That’s cool, but yeah, phew. Never knew Jonungaard can look pale, but she manages it somehow.”
“We’d love to stay and chat, Frederik, but we really do need to eat,” Minnelil said.
“And you’re working with Jextor! But right, right, sorry.”
Fahn sat on the other side of the table, glaring at us. The corners of his mouth were tight, but at least he understood to keep quiet. A week ago I would have said something to him, reminded him about his place, but a lot had happened since then. I had more reason to hate him than ever, but I’d also been reminded of my place.
Frederik glanced at Fahn and licked his lips, tongue darting out. “I heard about what happened, but anyway, you must be in a hurry. You better go eat before they clean up the food.”
I blinked at him and nodded. Minnelil tugged on my hand and we continued walking toward where Fek and Grit were sitting.
“What was that all about?” I whispered after we had gotten far enough away.
“Frederik wants to get involved,” Minnelil said softly. “As for his reasons, those are a separate question. We’ll talk about it later.” She let go of my hand and walked to stand behind Grit’s back. She wrapped her arms around Grit, leaning her cheek to rest against the top of her head. “How are you holding up?”
“Bit tired,” Grit mumbled.
“We could see all the way from the door,” I said. “You look like living death.”
“That’s sort of the point of being here, though?” Fek said.
“Muh,” Grit said.
“Poor thing,” Minnelil said and tousled Grit’s hair with her fingers. “What did you do to your hair? I’ll try to clean it up. Drink some coffee.”
“She already had some,” Fek said. “I found a piece of bone from her hair. It was sticking straight up. People were staring.”
“Seems she’s eating well, anyway,” I said, glancing at her empty plate. It looked like it had been licked clean. “So not heartbroken, I guess?”
Grit shook her head, but Minnelil shh’d her, all of her fingers stuck in the tangled mane of white hair.
“She was smiling when she stumbled in,” Fek said. “Great nights, four out of four!”
“What’s he on about?” Grit said, perking up.
“Don’t mind Fek,” Minnelil said. “Tell us what happened? You spent the night there?”
“I got to take a nap in the armchair,” Grit said, eyes unfocused.
“Whoa,” I said.
“That seems like the bare minimum for working through the night,” Minnelil said, frowning. “Will you be going back?”
“Right after coffee,” Grit said. There were two empty cups before her and she was cradling a third one in her hands.
“You can’t keep this up,” I said.
“You’re right,” Minnelil said. “You’ll collapse soon.”
“That’s not what she meant,” Grit said, then turned to me. “Watch me.”
I groaned and rolled my eyes. “Well, at least make him let you sleep properly.”
“I really should, shouldn’t I?” she said.
Fek reached out and pushed the coffee cup straight as she was just about to tip steaming coffee into her lap.
“We prepared for half a day and stood the other half watching the scales balance and jitter based on the movements of the ether,” Grit said. “It sounds boring, but it’s not.”
“I was just about to say it sounds boring,” Fek said. “Has to be.”
“No, no,” Minnelil said, waving a hand to silence Fek. “He’s really trying to figure out if the Academy building ablates more mana than Null? How does he factor in the artifact?”
“No one has told me what the heck it’s supposed to be doing,” I said.
“Well, you haven’t told me how you did the challenge!” Fek said. “Frederik talks to me about it every time I see him. All the girls at the Beach wanted to know as well.”
“How was I supposed to know it was such a big deal? I thought people would have forgotten by now already.”
“Shush, you two,” Minnelil said. “I want to hear more about the experiment. It could revolutionize casting necromantic spells here and elsewhere.”
“I think Grit fell asleep,” Fek said, poking her in the shoulder. She leaned to the side, before twitching and taking a sip from her coffee, eyes still shut.
“I really should get going to Jextor,” Minnelil said. “I thought I had it rough, but at least I got to sleep. A bit.” She flushed and looked away.
Grit’s eyes shot open and she looked from Minnelil to me. “What did I miss?”
“Nothing,” I said.
Minnelil smiled and stood up. She leaned down, cradling my head in her hands and planting a kiss on my forehead. “Indeed. Good day, everyone.”
“Bye!” Fek shouted.
“I was gone for one night,” Grit groaned.
“Do we really have to go back?” Fek asked.
The janitor dragged on his cigarette once more, holding the glowing stub gingerly with two fingers. He flicked the stub into his bag as he blew a cloud of smoke from the corner of his mouth towards the empty air over the platform. “Don’t have to do anything in life, but I’d appreciate it if you did.”
“Of course we’ll go,” I said. “But what would have happened if we didn’t? I mean, Falar would come scowl at us and all that, but you would still need to clean the corridor, right?”
“They’d send someone else eventually. I guess I could burn everything down if it got really bad. Fire is good for getting rid of almost everything, you know.”
“How would it get really bad?” Fek asked. “It was just sort of sad in there.”
I shivered, remembering how thick the Null had hung in the air. Could a corridor become undead? “Let’s just go.”
“Suits me,” the janitor said, kicking the latch off the wheels of his cart. “As I said, I appreciate it. It’s fun to have some help that talks back.”
“You talk to the skeletons?” Fek asked as we stepped back into the corridor. “I know you complain to the zombies all the time.”
“They are very dumb,” the janitor said. “We’ll see how much we have to do. You can sniff out the place and see how things are.”
I nodded. “Sure.” Even with Fek blasting the one room, the Null kept creeping in from the corners, from the dark beyond the reach of the glowing orbs. The orbs looked dimmer than they really were. “It’s still pretty grim.”
“Can we go through the door this time?” Fek asked.
“No,” the janitor and I said at the same time.
“Aww,” Fek said.
“All in the day’s work,” the janitor said, closing the corridor door and immediately picking up a cigarette from his pocket.
The corridors had started to look almost presentable. He had somehow made the floors look clean enough that the scraped and worn wood shone. Fek had babbled without pause for a couple of hours, while burning the Null, driving it before his blazing runes.
The door at the end of the corridor was the only place that had remained unnerving. Something worse than Null trickled through the cracks around it. Any time I looked at it, it felt like I was falling toward it, the world falling away from me. Hector had left a sign on the floor that said “Better keep away from the door” and signed it with “the janitor”.
I had a nagging feeling that it would be the most effective sign a place as stupid as this could have.
“You still have an hour before lunch,” the janitor said, puffing out clouds of smoke as he spoke. “Good job, kids.”
“Thanks!” Fek said. “It was fun!”
I had tried to use the runes again too. I had managed to keep it up for maybe ten minutes before feeling winded and famished and like I wanted to lie down and never get up again. My head still ached.
“Want to head to the Beach?” he asked.
“I have an exam coming,” I said, “and I want to finally figure out all the credit stuff. I’m not even sure how many I have. Someone mentioned a Credit Office at some point?”
“Boo, but yeah, it’s two floors up from our dorm and in the corner. Take all the slips there and she’ll sort you out.”
“Who? Not another angry war machine?” I asked.
“Nah, Lian works there. She’s officially a student, but Chancellor roped her into running the office. She mostly does that and mingles.”
“Mingles? Actually, never mind. Thanks.”
The Credit Office was a small room with a desk. A girl sat reading a book, with her feet up on the table. She looked like she had been here longer than me, filling the robe more than I did.
“Hey,” I said. “You’re Lian?”
“Oh? Yeah. You’re Lina?”
“Huh?”
“I heard the new scary student wears boots, so you must be it,” she said, smiling and dropping her feet to the floor. “Welcome to the school and all that! Have credit slips or questions about the credit system in general?”
I pushed a handful of the slips onto the table. I had brought what I had stashed in my chest before we went to the mountain. “I have these. I don’t have anything about the reanimation workshop, but I made a skeleton cat myself.”
“I heard! That was pretty cool. Don’t worry, Ferne brought the slip for that and the Chancellor sent one over for the field trip. He had crossed out what Falar had written on it, so you’re getting four for that.”
“Nice,” I said. “Have to thank Grit for that one.”
“Right, you know Grit? She’s fun,” Lian said, grinning and sorting the slips. “Oh, whoa, that’s 24 in total. There’s a council challenge to get 25 in a single semester. You’re really close!”
I huffed. “Figures. I’ll be back soon enough. Thanks. By the way, your badge is upside down,” I said, pointing at her robe.
“I know,” she said, winking at me.
I hurried out of the office and headed back to the dorm. The credit office girl unnerved me. Way too peppy and familiar. A skeleton stood before our door, knocking on it. It had a book clutched under its other arm, pressed against its ribs.
It grabbed the door handle and pushed the door open without waiting, like the skeletons always did. It was stepping in through the door, when something white flew at its skull.
The skeleton’s skull exploded with a dry crack. The top part of the skeleton shattered into shrapnel and dust, the arms falling away from where its shoulders had been. Shards of bone ricocheted off the black walls, raining down and swept away by the wind.
“Clickens!” I shouted. “Naughty cat!”