Nada's Escape

71- Curious.

Silence broken, Darcell continues, "So did you want me to show you how to use one of these?" He turns to survey the back wall of the training room, a dimly gleaming wall of panelled wood and stacked weapons. This stretches from the door I entered through to the bottom steps of the stone tower opposite. I approach cautiously, taking real note of its contents for the first time.

Closest the door is a rack of short wooden batons and above it one of small, nicked knives. This pattern continues as I walk along, the knives and batons increasing in length with each step. The neatness of it reminds me of a pegboard in my fathers shed, where he'd hang hammers and screwdrivers, all with a proper place. I shake this fragment of memory away and focus on my observations. Which will be most useful in the time I have until my escape?

The pattern of racks stutters out as I reach the halfway point of the room, where the full-length swords gleam sulkily against the wood. Weapons are arranged in triplets or twins, with increasingly complex handles. Little axes, whose appropriate name escapes me, dot the wall as well. I slow, glancing onwards towards the archway into the tower. The dull grey stone of the bottom step looks like the relic of a medieval castle.

I take a tiny glance under my hair at Darcell, waiting quiet but curious behind me. A short flat blade catches my eye, high up on the wall. It doesn't have a handle per se, the edges of the metal just narrow and round off towards a metal loop.

"Why hasn't Finley ever trained with you?" Darcell asks. I turn, eyebrows raised at the spontaneity of the question. Then I think back over my slow walk of the weaponry wall, with Darcell's startlingly insightful gaze eating up my hesitation. He can tell the weaponry's unfamiliar to me.

"I, yumm," I stutter over my answer. It would never work. Finley and I can barely converse without being infected by distraction. If we were actually trying to touch each other in a fight, we'd accidentally still be here by dawn. I can't tell Darcell this, of course.

"It's complicated. I don't really want to talk about it." I leap the last few steps to the base of the tower stairs. The walls of the spiral staircase are decorated with increasingly exotic blades.

"Okay," he says after a second of pause. Undiagnosed silence pools behind me and so I turn, head cocked, trying to think how to move the conversation on. But Darcell is gazing through me, lost in thought.

"Curious," he mumbles.

"What?" I ask, bewildered.

"You had the chance once to ask me any question." He pauses, running a finger absently along the haft of a stave. "And yet you asked a question I couldn't answer."

I catch up with him then. "In the hedge paths," I whisper. I'd asked him if anyone could be enthralled by touch instead of eye contact. He'd seemed a sinister, mysterious character at that point. Well, he's still mysterious. I have no idea what he does all day. Probably nothing the council would consider productive.

"I don't suppose you ever found an answer?" He asks and looks up suddenly, catching my eye. My heart jumps into my chest, but I shake off his gaze without threat of enthralment. Darcell's not Finley, I remind myself. Darcell's lips part again briefly but he says no more. Had he been about to ask about Finley again?

"No." I rub my thumb along my arm, nervous at his line of questioning. "Questions like that just tend to get more complicated the more time passes..."

A grimace chases across his face, crinkling his prettiness for a second, and I wonder if I've said too much. We're not real friends yet, after all. You can't lie about fundamental things like ideals and still be friends. Finley and I might be complicated but at least he understands my need to escape the Huntsmen.

"I don't suppose you still want to know the answer?" Darcell hedges. He follows my previous path along the wall, touching the hilt of every second weapon.

I chuckle, "Yeah I wish I did." I shrug. It's not going to be that easy, though. I'd helped Amy and Macie search the academy's library last night and we'd found nothing for it. Now we have more important things to do.

"Well," Darcell says, finality ringing in his tone as shifts into my space. The air between us buzzes as I wait for a surprise attack. He just dances around me onto the first stone step, "I have something to show you then."

Fascinated by the mystery, I tail him up the spiral staircase, dark but for a fluttering lamp beyond the curve above. The steps are languorously shallow, and I follow close enough to brush my fingers across his back.

We reach the entrance to the labyrinth library through a heavily stocked stone room. Stained glass windows and dark polished wood reflect the fluttering lamplight. The feyflies here whisper my name but Darcell doesn't seem to notice.