Impossible Things by Kate Johnson Page A

hand she had tucked into his arm.
    Eirenn took her to an office smelling of paper and coffee where he charmed a rather brusque woman into assigning Ishtaer, ‘a good room. Not one above the training yard where she’ll get no sleep, not one where the water pump is leaky, one with a good bed. Ah, you’re a star, Augusta.’
    Next he took her to a large laundry, where he held up various garments against her until he had a collection he deemed suitable. When a tired-sounding woman asked him what he was doing, he said, ‘I’m outfitting Lord Krull’s protégée. You have heard he has a protégée? Well now, who wants to get on his bad side?’ And the woman left them alone.
    ‘Whose clothes are these?’ Ishtaer asked as he bundled them into a basket and led her away.
    ‘The Academy’s. You’re lucky, both Warriors and Healers get through a lot of dirty clothes, so there’s a constant supply to change into. I’ve no doubt you’ll want to go shopping for your own soon, but this’ll do you for now. Don’t worry, it’s all standard stuff, I won’t make you look weird.’
    I have hair an inch long and a tattoo on my face,
Ishtaer thought,
I can’t see where I’m going and I weigh as much as a small bag of feathers. I’m pretty sure I already look weird.
    He led her back to the main courtyard and then through a set of doors to a smaller quadrangle.
    ‘There are a couple of sets of accommodation around the place, but they all have the same layout. Three atriums leading off a central courtyard. Each atrium has a lounge, study area and eight bedrooms on the ground floor, and then upstairs there are twelve more on each storey. You’ve got a second floor room,’ he explained as he led her through the atrium, ‘which means more stairs to climb but fewer people thundering past your door at all hours.’
    He told her about the central fountain which rose from a square pool open to the sky, and took her past it to a passageway leading back further. ‘There’s a lounge there to your left, and a study room to your right, but if the girls’ accommodation is anything like the boys’, they’re just hang-out clubs for the popular kids. Best avoided until you’ve found your feet.’
    Eirenn led her up two flights of stairs and along a corridor, allowing her to count the doors until they reached the right one. He put a key in her hand and guided it to the lock.
    ‘Housekeeping will have a key to the room,’ he said, ‘but no one else. If you want you can bolt it from the inside, okay?’
    He let her go into the room and explore it by herself, silently, carefully, moving about in her own private darkness. There was a rug to muffle her footsteps. A bed touching her shins. It was already made up with blankets and pillows. Beside it was a small locker, and at the foot a chest for clothing. There were also shelves and hooks on the walls. A small fireplace was already laid, with extra coal beside it, and hooks to heat the warming pan and kettle she found on the washstand, beside a large ewer and jug.
    ‘There’s a water pump at the end of the hall,’ Eirenn said. ‘I’ll show you.’
    Ishtaer nodded, dumbstruck. There was one bed in here. She had the only key.
    Was this really her room?
    ‘I know,’ Eirenn said softly behind her. ‘I couldn’t believe it either when I first came here. I’d never had my own room. Never even had my own bed.’
    ‘And it’s so … it’s so …’
    ‘A palace compared to the dark little cottage I came from. Dunno what houses are like in the Saranos, but only rich people live like this where I come from.’
    Flashes of memory hit Ishtaer like slaps. Lady Samara’s huge bed, hung with silks and velvets; the tiny, covetable cubby where her personal servants slept; the bare floors and dirty straw for the rest of the slaves; the freezing cell …
    … and more memories, tumbling over each other, jumbled and incoherent. A small dark room with two clean, comfortable beds; the frills of