“You’re in the wrong room, boy,” he informed Arram lazily. His accent was pure Sirajit. “This is the Upper Academy. You won’t rate a bed here for years.” He grinned at the other youth.
Arram was silently complaining to whichever god had inspired the house staff to place an arrogant Sirajit mage with Ozorne. “Actually, there’s my bed,” he replied, pointing to it. “And I am a student in the Upper Academy.”
The black youth sat up. “Not amusing, my lad. Find your mother and have her move you where you belong.”
Arram looked at them. They had to be at least sixteen. They had more muscle and greater height than he did, but he couldn’t let them chase him from his own room.
“Ask the proctor,” he replied quietly.
“Just because you’re better at twiddling charms than your local grannywife, it doesn’t make you as good as us, youngster,” the Sirajit youth said. His Gift began to spread beyond his skin until he cupped it in his hands. “Start packing.”
Arram could hardly believe his ears. Who did these newcomers think they were? As always when he was angry or scared, he spoke more formally. “The rules were in the documents placed on your desks,” he told them both. “Didn’t the person who signed you in say to read them immediately?”
“Do it,” the black youth told the Sirajit boy.
Arram had called up a basic protection spell, seeing the sloppiness of the older boy’s magic. Now the Sirajit thrust the ball straight at Arram. These two might be older, but like most Upper Academy newcomers, they had not taken the very thorough courses in protective magics in the Lower Academy. The Sirajit’s spell sank into Arram’s guard, strengthening it. Out of the corner of his eye Arram saw the black youth fling a tight, fiery whiplash at him. It was better controlled than the Sirajit’s spell, but Arram knew the right counter. He yanked the whip, pulling its wielder to the floor.
“I’ll have whatever charms you’re using, and then we’ll try again,” the Sirajit boy snapped, advancing on Arram.
The door flew open to reveal the floor proctor. “Mithros’s shield, I am working on notes, and someone is using his Gift to fight in here. I know poxed well it’s not Draper—stop using your protections, Draper.”
“Yes, Master Muriq,” Arram said, and obeyed. He was shaking with the addition of such unfamiliar magic. No wonder the books said that most mages directed other Gifts into the ground rather than keep them, if this was the result.
Muriq was saying, “Thank you. Draper knows playing with magic in here is forbidden, so it must be you two. Did you not read the academy rules?” He pointed at the black youth, heat shimmering around his finger. He was angry. “Name, infant?”
Arram winced. He had forgotten that nickname for beginners.
“What did you call me?” demanded the black youth, bunching his fists.
“Draper, do me a service. Explain things to these two infants before I lose my temper,” Muriq said.
“We’re all called infants for our first terms in the university,” Arram told him. His own infant days were years ago. “No matter how old someone is.”
“Now, answer my question, you. If I ask again you will scrub floors for a week. That’s in the rules, too,” Muriq said, fixing the black youth with his eyes.
Arram gulped. He really didn’t think it was a good idea for a war mage like Muriq to have a temper.
“Diop Beha,” the black youth replied. “Who are you?”
“A mage learns to size up a situation before he opens his mouth,” Muriq said tartly. “I am house proctor Master Muriq, and you, my friend, will be scrubbing floors for the next week in this wing, after supper.”
“You can’t make him do slave work!” cried the Sirajit youth.
“If you had read your directions as ordered, you would know that I can,” Muriq replied.
“Do you know who my family is?” the Sirajit demanded.
“Your family means nothing here. That bed”—Muriq pointed to Ozorne’s quarter of the room—“belongs to a Tasikhe prince. The only difference it makes is that he attends a palace funeral at present. You may join Diop at scrubbing, after you give me your name.”
Arram saw rippling fire rise from the Sirajit youth’s skin, then sink. “Laman Hamayd.”
Muriq pointed his index fingers at each youth’s desk. Sheets of parchment shook themselves free of other items and rose into the air. “Take those,” he ordered. Neither Diop nor Laman moved. Muriq sighed gustily. Arram wished he were anywhere but here. “If I have to repeat myself, I will place you on report for term. Any section proctor with chores to do will place your names at the tops of their lists.” He eyed Laman’s clothes. “Those pretty things won’t last very long.”
Slowly the older boys shuffled forward and took the papers from midair. “Read them. I’ll wait.” Muriq glanced at Arram. “If you want to go to a library, tell the hall proctors I gave you permission. It may be a little while before these two and I understand one another.”
Arram nodded and made a grateful escape. Rather than go to a library, he fled to the aviary. A few hours spent helping the evening students settle their charges and feed the nocturnal birds helped to calm his nerves.
He returned to find his new roommates had gone. Rather than stay for their return, Arram decided to take advantage of the fine weather. He rolled up a blanket and pillow and went in search of the rooftop stairs. He wasn’t the only one seeking cooler air outside. Other students were there as well, talking softly or making themselves comfortable. Arram found a spot to place his blanket and stretched out on it, resting his head on his pillow. A slight, cool breeze came in from the river. With all the torches below the roof’s height, he enjoyed a fine view of the bright constellations. Once, to his delight, a shooting star flashed by.
He wished that he would do well in the coming year, and slept.
The new roommates were snoring loudly when Arram crept into the room the next morning. He grimaced. Would he have to put up with that noise all year? He hated wax earplugs.
He dressed quickly, not wanting to deal with the older students so early on a free day. Of course, it was free for him. They had to go on the first of several tours of the university, learning the layout of the schools, and then their way around the different parts of the School for Mages. They had forms to fill out and tests to take to give the instructors a better idea of where to place them.
Once dressed, Arram trotted off to the dining hall. He halted in the doorway, seeing no sign of Varice. “She isn’t here,” said one of her friends who was standing nearby. “She asked me to tell you they’re letting her work in the kitchen during breakfast and lunch this week.”
Arram smiled at the older girl, a plump brunette with dimples. To his surprise, she smiled back before she walked off to her table. Arram spent a moment admiring the sway of her hips before he decided there was no point in eating indoors and alone. He gathered a napkin, fruit, cheese, and bread, and then ate his meal in one of the lemon gardens, surrounded by the trees’ scent. Once finished, he decided it was too fine a day to remain indoors.
In a shocking waste of hours, he spent his day wandering from the menagerie to the university’s many small museums. Agreeably weary, he was on his way to supper when someone grabbed him by the arm. Instantly he brought up a hand, a spell for stinging nettles on his lips. Then he recognized his black-clad attacker: Ozorne.
Arram’s spell evaporated as he grinned. “What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be at the palace. I almost got you with a stinging spell, you dolt!”
“You were quick with it, too,” Ozorne said with approval. He and Varice had plagued Arram to have small, hard-to-detect spells for self-protection ready at a moment’s notice, rather than trust to his unreliable fisticuff skills. “What has you on alert? Never mind that. My mother’s here. She’s invited you and Varice to supper.” He spotted Varice and waved her over to them.
Arram was confused. Ozorne wasn’t due back for at least another week. He also wasn
’t kitted out in full mourning. Of course he wore black ribbons and beads braided into his hair, black pearl earrings, and onyx bracelets. Black embroideries were stitched over his cream-colored linen tunic in the signs for family, loss, death, and the Black God, but he should have been wearing a solid black tunic and a black headcloth. Most important, he should still have been in the imperial private quarters of the palace, observing the family rituals.
Varice frowned when she reached them. “Ozorne? I thought…”
“Everyone thought,” he said, grabbing her by the hand and thrusting Arram out the door ahead of them. Students got out of their way as Ozorne towed Varice a short distance down the hall. “When my illustrious uncle meditated on the circumstances surrounding Qesan’s murder and took counsel of the priests, he decided that elaborate mourning for a man killed in the act of adultery had, as he told us, ‘a stink to it.’ There will be no days of seclusion, Qesan will be buried on his home estates with only his father and some distant cousins to mourn him, and the rest of us may return to our lives. Before Mother goes home, she wants to see you two.”
Varice balked at that. “I’m not properly dressed to meet Her Highness!”
“You’re dressed like a student, so’s Arram, and that’s all that matters. I’m begging you, show her your best faces.” Ozorne halted before the ebony-inlaid door of one of the private dining rooms and tapped on it. The door swung open, releasing the scents of mint, thyme, cinnamon, ginger, and fresh-baked breads. Slaves in black tunics stood against one wall of the room, staring directly ahead. Arram looked away from them. These wore metal collars with the round emblem of House Tasikhe in front. Men and women alike wore their hair cropped very short. All were dark brown or nearly black in skin color, as if they’d been chosen to contrast with the ivory skin of Ozorne and the lady who sat in one of the room’s well-cushioned chairs.
She watched them with eyes that were the same striking shade of hazel as Ozorne’s, but far more weary and sad, framed by shadows above and below. They shared the same mouth, nose, and strong chin, but there was unhappiness at the corners of her mouth. Her dark brown hair was coiled and pinned in a gold net and covered with a light veil of black silk. Her black floor-length gown was belted at her waist with a gold chain set with gray and cream-colored pearls. Unlike her son, she wore no rings or bracelets other than a gold wedding band. Her sandals were plain leather dyed black.
Arram took all this in quickly. Sebo, when she didn’t walk him in the river or set him to learning the creatures and plants that lived there, insisted that he learn to describe things he saw only at a glance. Master Cosmas was the same. “You may be called on to save lives from fires as well as start and stop them,” he’d said when Arram and his friends began the spellcraft side of their lessons. “Your ability to do so may rest on what you see inside a room when you only glance into it.” Arram would not put it past any of his private teachers to demand that he describe Ozorne’s mother perfectly.
He bowed as Ozorne said, “Varice, Arram, I present Princess Mahira Lymanis Tasikhe, my honored mother. Mother, may I present my friends, Varice Kingsford and Arram Draper?”
Varice curtsied deeply. Neither of them straightened until the princess lifted her hand, indicating that they might do so. Once he was upright, Arram saw that Ozorne’s mother was inspecting him very carefully.
“My son tells me that you are good friends to him. For this I am grateful,” she said with a soft, wistful smile. “He needs such friends, so far from his sisters and me.”
Ozorne mentioned his younger sisters so rarely that Arram often forgot that he had any. It was his mother he talked about, when her letters arrived, and his father.
“He is a very good friend to us, Your Highness,” Varice replied. “We’re fortunate to have one another.”
There was a flinty glint in the woman’s gaze as she looked at Varice. “Are you still a kitchen witch, girl?”
Remembering that he and Varice were supposed to like one another, Arram stepped close to her and clumsily took her hand, trying to make it seem as if he did not want the princess to see him do it. Varice looked up at him and smiled, squeezed his hand, and let go.
“She is far more than that, Mother, as I have explained,” Ozorne was saying. His voice was tight with irritation, and there was flint in his own eyes as he told his mother, “She is excellent with medicines, herbal magic, and purification magic, as well as hospitality magic.”
Varice laughed, though Arram noticed her cheeks were flushed with anger, or was it hurt? Her lips trembled slightly as she replied, “No, Ozorne, it’s fine. I am a kitchen witch, if you think about it. My own father believes so!” She smiled at the princess. “It is true, Your Highness. But as I have told my honored father, consider how much a well-placed, talented person might do with the meals for warring clans who join to cement a marriage. Or what if a kitchen witch purchases the cooking supplies for a ship or a merchant caravan? Even a middling kitchen witch could turn such things for good or ill, and I am not a middling kitchen witch.”
The princess regarded Varice for a long moment. Neither Ozorne nor Arram dared to move. Arram wondered if the princess understood that when Varice spoke in that pleasant, perky tone, she was actually angry. He wasn’t even certain that Ozorne had figured that out about their friend, even though he’d known Varice longer than Arram had.
At last Princess Mahira gave Varice the thinnest of smiles. “You know your worth, it seems,” she murmured.
Varice bobbed a slight curtsy. “Your Highness, like your son I have entered the Upper Academy at the age of fifteen,” she said. “The university has already informed me of my worth.”
Mahira nodded and turned her regard to Arram. A small frown creased her forehead. “How old are you, boy?”
“Thirteen, Your Highness,” he replied. Heat crawled up the back of his neck.
Mahira sat back in her chair. “Thirteen? You are but a child!” She looked at Ozorne. “You said he is equal to the two of you, starting advanced training as you will this term!”
Ozorne grinned at his mother. “All three of us are advanced students,” he told her. “Arram has five masters teaching him privately—we each have four. Only a quarter of the third- and fourth-year students can boast even one master as an instructor. Most here study in classes until they graduate only with the certificate that places them just above hedgewitches and goodywives.”
Again the lady frowned the careful frown of a woman who did not want to incur too many wrinkles. “But not you, my son. Surely you will do better.”
“Your Highness, all mage students hope to do better,” Varice explained. “Success is very different. Ozorne has Master Chioké in battle magic. Master Chioké is very highly regarded.”
The princess looked past them, as if she saw things outside the private dining room. “My lord husband also told me success is different than what one hopes, not long before he was so foully slain,” she murmured. She looked at her hands, neatly folded in her lap. Silence stretched among them. It had begun to grow uncomfortable when Ozorne rested a hand on his mother’s shoulder.
“Did I tell you what Arram here did right before we met him, Mother?” he asked. “It was the talk of the whole school. He was supposed to raise a little bit of water from a bowl—”
“Ozorne, please, no!” Arram cried. When the princess turned her regard on him, Arram bowed, his hands over his face. “Your Highness, it’s a stupid story.”
“Not to hear our masters tell it,” Varice teased.
“And what happened to interest the masters?” Mahira inquired.
Politely, because good manners were thoroughly taught in the Lower Academy, Arram told the princess what had taken place that day, in Girisunika’s classroom. Ozorne interrupted occasionally to say what he had heard about it in the general university, but Varice kept silent, the picture of a well-behaved maiden.
Mahira raised her eyebrows when Arram finished. “And you were rewarded for such misbehavior, Ar
ram Draper?” she inquired softly. She let Ozorne urge her gently from her chair and lead her to her place at the table. This was a dining room furnished in the Carthaki style, with very low cushioned couches and low tables. Once the princess was seated with Ozorne at her right hand, Arram and Varice were placed on her left.
“Your Highness,” Arram said, “if extra classes and more lessons were a reward, then I was very well blessed.”
The princess smiled and nodded. Apparently the nod was a signal. The slaves began to serve beef cooked with mint, cold chicken with pomegranate juice, and side dishes of salads and vegetables, each with its own unique blend of herbs and spiced vinegars. Arram hid a smile. He could see that as Varice did her best to keep up with the talk, she also tried to work out how each dish was made. Normally the university kitchens were more than able to cater to any guest, but Ozorne had once mentioned that the princess had her own cooks, since her health could be fragile. These dishes were very different from the school’s familiar ones. Arram ate heartily. Any weight he ever put on only went straight up to add to his height.
The lady’s requirements for conversation rested largely on Arram’s studies. He tried to explain that he often made mistakes and he wasn’t even sure that he belonged in the Upper Academy. She chided him for that.
“Your masters know far better than you, young man,” she said gravely. “They are great in learning and magecraft, respected throughout the Southern and Eastern Lands for their wisdom. You must accept their judgment. Work hard to prove worthy of it.” She had that distant look in her eyes again. “My son, you choose your friends well. I approve. Strong mages will be a great asset when you avenge your father’s murder by the Sirajit dogs.”
That struck Arram like a bucket of cold water. “Your Highness, surely…the Sirajit rebels who fought His Late Highness were defeated. We’ve been taught that there is no armed rebellion left.”