#scholasticate

Ysia’s ear itched. She scratched at the smooth, curved edge of it, so unlike the elegant points of her peers two stacks over.

“Rumor has it he was pushed,” said the first student, a smirk in his tone. “Toppled down the stairs like a sack of popotoes and left crying like a woman at the bottom.”

Ysia pursed her lips in annoyance. Like a woman... the phrase chafed at her as much as the sneering self-satisfaction of her fellows. Who laughed at the misfortune of others? Who found such an accident funny? She didn’t really have to ask, considering how often she’d been tripped, tricked, and mocked to tears, surrounded by laughing, jeering scholars.

“Rumor has it he was acting strangely. Speaking gibberish and waving his arms and legs about like a man possessed.” The boy gasped. “... mayhaps he was?”

Ysia’s brow snapped downward. This really was getting to be too much. She stood quietly, having a care not to scrape the feet of her chair against the polished marble flooring. Arming herself with the thick tome she’d been leafing through, the girl strode among the shelves, searching for the source of the noise. As she approached the end of one stack, she slowed, listening.

“Don’t be a prig, Mereaux. 'Tis clearly some sort of plot,” the first voice replied, lowering slightly. “I’ve heard from my sister, who heard it at one of Comtesse du Voleaux’s salons, that he’s been up to something.”

Ysia froze entirely. A name she recognized... but Amra’s employer was known as a prime conduit of mostly-accurate gossip among the nobility. She strained to hear as the voices diminished again, scooting to the end of the row and peering down among the books at the two young men standing there.

“’Up to something’ could mean anything, idiot,” his companion snapped. “I heard from my cousin, who heard from his manservant, who heard from his lover, who’s a maid who cleans Father Raitmeaux’s chambers, that he was found with papers on him... one being a warning, the other his resignation.”

Ysia held her breath nervously, clutching her overlarge book to her body like a shield. Her stomach was twisted in knots, and somewhere, in the back of her mind, she knew something was dreadfully, terribly wrong.

“His resignation? Finally! I know nary a soul who needed him to continue wasting such space. All it took was an ‘accident’ to persuade the old man to finally walk away!” The first scholar looked smug, fingering a sprout of facial hair that disgraced his upper lip proudly.

Ysia felt tears prick, hot and sharp, at the edges of her eyelids. Don’t say the name, she thought. Don’t say...

“Ledigne wasn’t that bad. I say, you’re awfully bloodthirsty today, Fincault,” the second young man replied, a little more loudly than he meant. “Show a little more respect, I mean, the man very well may be dying!”

Ysia dropped her book on the floor in shock. The loud thud on the marble echoed against the bare stone walls, barely muffled by the presence of so many books. A prefect two rows over let out a perfunctory shush against the noise, missing altogether the fact that Ysia had slid down the end of the shelving. The nun clutched desperately at her mouth, stifling her sobs as her grasping fingertips rendered the flesh of her cheeks a mottled red-and-white. Tears streamed from her eyes, hot and sticky, leaving streaks of salt on her face and unevenly down her knuckles.

She was ejected from the library moments later by the same irate prefect, livid that the “charity case” student Lemieux would have the audacity to begin wailing like a newborn in the very middle of the Scholasticate library.