Free Gravity's Revenge by A.E. Marling

Feasting, you’ll be strong.”
    Hiresha had mastered her composure in her dream. Her indignation only showed in the sharp turns as jewels zigzagged through the air of the laboratory. “I have no intention ever to begin Feasting.”
    “Truth.” The lady tapped a black-sapphire claw against the inside of the mirror. “You’ll not let me out until you see no other way. So Feasting always is, and it is freedom. Even if Lord Tethiel finds it fashionable to claim regrets.”
    “‘Claim?’” Hiresha asked. “This is even more amusing. Do you not trust Tethiel?”
    “Of course not,” the Feaster said. “He’s tricked you from the beginning. Now he’s come to your domain to take your everything.”
    “No!” The reflection peeked out from the corner of her mirror, fingers of one yellow glove pressed against the glass. “Tethiel cares for us.”
    “He only visited,” Hiresha said. “Likely, he has already left.”
    “Would you care to make a wager?”
    Hiresha scoffed at the Feaster. “Don’t tell me you want him murdered as well.”
    “Pointless.” The lady tossed her midnight hair and gazed away. “You would never listen to me even to save yourself. That is obvious.”
    “I would if you ever spoke reason.” Hiresha blinked, which ended the dream. Even as the laboratory dissolved upward into blackness, she realized exactly what she had said, and she was frightened.

 

    9
    Ceiling of Elders
    Enchantresses craned their necks to watch the elders ascend on six wallways, black and white paths leading between columns of blue marble. Each elder enchantress towed a train of gowns. The ceremonial dresses were woven into each other, Lightened so they swayed and shifted behind the elders like multicolored tails of sea serpents. Hiresha had armored herself with her full entourage of dresses. To be taken seriously, she had even donned the official golden hump.
    She had decided she had no choice but to voice her concerns for the Academy. The chancellor would denounce her for it, Hiresha assumed, and she rather hoped the Ceiling of Elders proved her wrong, even if it meant public embarrassment. Hiresha’s tongue curled in distaste. Her worries sat rancid in her mouth, and she had found no appetite for food that day.
    Alyla would be one of those to see Hiresha’s disgrace. The enchantress had given the novice the fennec and the amethyst bracelet to hold. The fox chirped in rapid succession at Alyla, but even his antics failed to bring a smile to her deadened face. She could not stop blinking, and Hiresha had noticed the skin around her eyes was puffy and veined.
    Minna scared her terribly last night. Alyla, a girl who finds speaking in public frightening.
    With their swaths of clothing, the elders could not sit down with any degree of certainty. To avoid the awkwardness of having to reposition a store’s worth of gowns, no chairs awaited the elders. Instead, coiled silk hung between gilt posts, harnesses for the enchantresses to lean forward on in comfort. Hiresha stayed standing, as she feared to fall asleep.
    On second thought, she gripped the rope. She hardly wanted the embarrassment of falling in front of all these women.
    The chancellor, too, kept to her feet. Within the grotto of her oiled wig, her lips contorted in an expression directed at Hiresha that seemed to say the chancellor already knew what the provost intended and was thinking how best to ridicule her for it.
    “This meeting,” the Chancellor of Precious Enchantables said, “was called to discuss the tragic, unfortunate, and undoubtedly self-inflicted deaths of Enchantress Miatha and a visiting lord.”
    “Lord Tethiel died?” Hiresha’s hold on her purple lanyard tightened, the cord clumping into knots between her hands. She imagined Tethiel traveling down from the Academy, losing connection to the Skyway, and tumbling over the limestone cliff.
    “The Ceiling does not yet recognize the Provost of Applied Enchantment,” the chancellor said.