Chapter 59: The Enemies’ Pact, Part Two: Seals
Professor Vauxol Aliandys walked into that afternoon’s class without a book and without notes.
He always had the tip of his index finger stained with that rainbow ink. Nobody in Mayorka seemed to notice that minuscule detail, but not only had I noticed it — I also kept wondering what exactly he did with rainbow ink that powerful. I’d spent days wanting to ask him what it was for, but I never dared; that was the kind of relationship I had with that professor.
"Today we’re not going to talk about the war," he said. "Talking about the War of the Three Seals is dreadfully boring. Three hundred years of people dying over veins of crystal. You all already know who won."
He sat down on the edge of his desk.
"Today we’re going to talk about the seals. That’s where the interesting part is."
He raised one finger.
"Seal of Word. Given with the voice, before witnesses, and broken by paying. The seal of merchants and of cowards." He raised the second. "Seal of Gold. Signed, weighed, and stored away. Broken by paying considerably more. The seal of the lesser houses."
He raised the third, and left it there, still.
"And the Seal of Blood."
"That one doesn’t break," said Layda Alaranne, from the front row, in that little scholarship-commoner voice of hers, which by now didn’t fool me in the slightest.
"That one doesn’t break," Vauxol noted. "And why not, Miss Alaranne?"
"Because there’s a third. A Seal of Blood is signed by two houses... and a god."
"Exactly." Vauxol smiled with his whole face. "The Seraph of Twelve Wings is witness and guarantee. A Seal of Blood is more than an agreement between men: it’s an agreement deposited with a god. That’s why the blood. Blood is the essence of our being. Our tribute to the gods."
He leaned against the blackboard and looked at us one by one, unhurried, like a shepherd counting sheep.
"You believe a seal is a piece of paper." He shook his head. "But you’re wrong. A seal is a debt owed to something eternal. For instance, when House Elcronne swore itself to House D’Tariel, someone opened his own arm, and what came out of there was more important than any signature on paper: blood was given as a show of loyalty. And it will still be given when the man who offered it is dead and his son is dead, unless someone does something about it."
He didn’t look at me as he said it. I was grateful for that, and it seemed to me he did it on purpose, which is even worse.
Why was he using my house as an example? It was clear he still harbored hostility toward me.
Someone asked the obvious.
"Then how did Jahke break it?"
"He didn’t break it." Vauxol stepped down from the desk. "That’s northern propaganda, and they’ve been repeating it for three hundred years. Jahke did something far worse."
He wrote one word on the blackboard. A single one.
IMPUGN
"The only way to break a Seal of Blood is by impugning it. It’s brought before the Three, and it’s proven that the pact it guarantees was already violated by the other party. If it’s proven, the god withdraws his guarantee, and what’s left lying on the floor becomes simple paper." He wiped the chalk dust off his robe, ruining it a little further.
Layda answered the next seven questions. All of them. Dates, names, the exact number of vassals who changed masters that year. Vauxol stopped addressing the class and began addressing only her, which is what teachers do when they find someone who keeps up with them.
My eyes were somewhere else.
You see, there’s one thing Lianza D’Tariel has done in History class since the very first day, and that’s answer before anyone else. Not to show off; she didn’t need to. She does it because she can’t stand a question hanging in the air for more than two seconds. I know because I’ve been keeping count since the first day of class.
That afternoon, I counted up to twelve seconds on three questions in a row.
She didn’t raise her hand once. She kept looking toward the window. Her notebook was open to a blank page, her pencil resting on the same spot since the start of class, and she hadn’t made a single mark, not one underline, nothing. Lianza underlines what matters to her three times. That page stayed clean until the bell rang.
What surprised me most was that she let Layda answer the questions. Had she set their rivalry aside? Lianza D’Tariel was not the kind to give up, certainly not like that. And that was what worried me most. What was going around in her head, that she wouldn’t take part in History class, one of her favorite subjects?
At some point Vauxol asked for the exact year the Treaty of Ashes was signed — one of the few dates even I know by heart — and she went on looking at the window.
Layda answered. Vauxol said, "Magnificent."
And it occurred to me, for the first time, that perhaps the king’s question was badly phrased. Perhaps it didn’t matter so much why Lianza had accepted the engagement; after all, what really mattered was the wedding, where the oath would be sworn to the three gods.
And besides, what mattered now was what had happened to Lianza since then, for her to be this distracted.
⋅⋅⊰∙∘☽ ☆ ☾∘∙⊱⋅⋅
"Elcronne. Stay behind."
Before leaving, Lianza turned back toward me; I returned a nod that said: "Don’t worry. When I’m done, I’ll come back to your side."
The classroom emptied. Vauxol erased the blackboard slowly, with the palm of his hand, until the word disappeared and his hand was left white over the rainbow.
"You’ve copied down a single word in the entire class," he said, without turning around.
"I’ve copied more than one."
"You’ve copied one. You’ve faked the others." He turned around. "I don’t know what you’re doing, and I’ll be honest with you: I couldn’t care less. I only want to tell you one thing, because I’d take it badly if you died this month."
"I’m listening."
"Impugning a Seal of Blood requires three things. Young people always get their hands on the first, wrestle with the second, and discover too late that the third was the only one that mattered." He tucked his stained hands into his sleeves. "Off you go. You look like a man in a hurry."
I reached the door.
"Professor."
"Hm?"
"Why are you telling me this?"
Vauxol Aliandys genuinely thought it over. It’s the one thing I’ve always been grateful to that man for: when you ask him a good question, he thinks about it.
"Because I’ve spent twenty-one years teaching the same class," he said, "and this afternoon, for the first time, I had two students truly listening to me. One of them was you." He turned toward the empty blackboard. "The other one was not Miss Alaranne."
"Then who?"
"The girl who spent the whole hour looking out the window without writing down a single thing." He shrugged. "Our esteemed Lianza D’Tariel. Either way, off you go, Elcronne."
I went out into the corridor with the word in my notebook and
a new question.
Three things.
And it wasn’t until Tuesday afternoon that I found out what they were.