Fray Page 20

  He returned moments later, looking calmer. “Now then. You have the appearance of someone who may have some pressing matter to consider. Shall we sit down and begin?” He led me to the Pellian building, to the same sunny corner we had used on my previous visit. “One of the benefits of my rank in the system,” he said with a smile, “is that I am permitted a cart to store my books.” The cart still held the scrolls we had used before, along with a new pile of volumes.

  “That’s strange,” murmured Corvin as he lifted a book. “I had these in order and—well, someone must have rifled through them. Curious initiates, no doubt,” he said, but his smile seemed a bit forced. Someone meddling with his books—especially priceless ancient scrolls—was sure to annoy him as much as having someone paw my best silks would aggravate me. “Now. What did you wish to investigate?”

  I hadn’t considered how to frame this particular research topic. I was sure that the Serafan casting was a secret, and one that I couldn’t risk myself, Theodor, or even Corvin by divulging. I took a breath, weighing carefully what to say. “There is temporary casting. Through music. At least, I know for certain it can be done with music…” I was rambling, realizing as I spoke how little I knew. “I want to know more about that.”

  “Temporary casting, with music.” Corvin pursed his lips. “The Serafan court sorcerers are rumored to use true magic,” he said. “Which I have interpreted to mean, possibly, the application of the thirati as you do with physical objects. Yet those who have seen their work indicate nothing to me of charms or curses.”

  “What is their… work?”

  “As far as I can tell, entertainment,” Corvin said. “The sort of display of illusion one might see from a street magician or a harlequin, but elevated in its artistry.”

  “Do they use music in their… entertainment?”

  “So I understand. I have never been invited to court, personally,” he added with a wry smile.

  “Then that would be a good place to start,” I said.

  “I’m afraid it would lead to a dead end very quickly,” he replied. “The secrets of the Serafan court and especially its sorcerers are closed even to the most highly ranked of our scholars.”

  “Doesn’t that make anyone even a bit suspicious?” I asked. “That is, I can’t imagine the Galatine nobles in the delegation being willing to subject themselves to magic.”

  “If anyone believed anything of it, surely. But it’s old superstition wrapped in tradition. You must realize, Miss Balstrade, that very few people here believe in magic. Of any sort, even your charm casting. They would see it as a quaint novelty, if that.”

  “I suppose that’s true in Galitha, as well. It’s only the efficacy of my charms that convinces anyone. Even then…” I hesitated. Though my work had plenty of advocates, I also had the sense that some customers, especially more recent ones, didn’t truly believe in the charm they were paying for, but that they saw owning one of my pieces as a faddish indulgence.

  “So you see. The mystery of the Serafan sorcerers is understood by most as a tradition that must be maintained in order to avoid revealing the—how do you say it?—the charlatan’s trick of the whole thing.”

  “Do you think—there might be something in the old Pellian texts on casting like this?”

  Corvin considered this. “We have found nothing in our search thus far, have we?”

  I stopped. Of course—we had already delved deeper than I ever had into Pellian theory. If the kind of casting I wanted to learn about had been explored by the ancients, we should have stumbled across some mention of it by now. And Pyord, who had spent at least some time investigating the practice of casting, had given no suggestion that he had known anything about the temporary, musical casting Theodor had witnessed. If he had, the temporary casting might have worked better for his means. A singer at a public appearance of the king, a musician hired to play at court?

  My imagination’s quick assessment of the sinister applications of musical casting made me shiver, and added urgency to the question of why there had been casting in the compound at all.

  “I am, of course, willing to continue the search, but I do wonder—” He stopped. “It’s worth considering, of course, that the ancient Pellians were not terribly musical. Their music tended toward simple percussion for liturgical dance, and work songs that were more like chants.” His smile was slow, like opening a window to discover that flowers had bloomed overnight. “But the ancient Serafan nomads were highly musical. Troves of recorded songs, lyrics, treatises by later scholars on ancient music, instruments on funeral pyres—oh, yes.” His smile culminated in a grin. “This might be something.”

  Corvin took a few notes in a notebook suspended from the belt of his robe, the tools of his trade close at hand in the same way I carried a needle case and a pinball in my pocket. “I’m afraid anything we need will be in the Serafan building, rather than here. It will take me some time, but I can send you a message, I suppose?”

  “Yes, of course!” I paused. “You’ve been of more help than I can explain.”

  “It is my duty,” he said with a bow. “Knowledge is meant to be used, not hoarded.”

  I returned to the atrium, looking for Jae, but he was nowhere to be found. I was ready to give up when a wiry woman with an untidy kerchief tying back her dark curls found me. “The man you came with is outside.”

  I thanked her and left to look for Jae on the loggia, but I saw Dira first. She faced away from me and appeared to be talking to a large potted palm, which I quickly realized hid Jae from my view. Her Tharian was rapid and she was clearly upset.

  “You do not disagree, do you, Duana?” she said, abruptly switching to Galatine, the language they shared. I craned my neck to see the East Serafan woman standing next to Jae. “We should cease our interests in the Lady Annette and allow the East Serafans to pursue the match with Ainir Aidlo’s son.”

  “But, sister,” Jae said, anger wrangled into tenuous submission, “we had agreed that a favorable match would advance my fortunes—I appreciate our alliance with East Serafe, but I do not wish to let this opportunity pass.”

  Duana edged back. “This is a family matter, and not of my concern. But with your understanding, and the understanding of your family, Lady Dira, I will approach the Merhaven woman with our bid.”

  I bit my lip—Annette’s future was being haggled over like any other negotiation here. Was this the sort of intercession Viola had asked me for? I couldn’t very well interrupt this conversation without looking like an eavesdropper, and moreover, there wasn’t much I could say that would change anyone’s plans.

  “Then I don’t see a need to continue chaperoning her cousin’s doxy,” Jae muttered. My cheeks burned—how could I have thought he might have some interest in my company, not only access to Annette? I should have known better. In this perfectly manicured but ever-cold society, there were no alliances for friendship’s sake alone.

  “Very well,” Dira said, waving him off. “I’ll stay and find the poor girl.” Dira’s pitiful poor girl was almost worse than doxy. “Duana, thank you for your assistance in this matter, and I do apologize for dragging you all over the city—I felt we needed more privacy than the compound allows, yes?”

  I slipped back inside before Duana could answer, evading Dira as she entered the front atrium by snaking through several aisles of scrolls. Her condescension was the last thing I needed at the moment, and there was no need for a chaperone, save Lady Merhaven’s sensibilities. Isildi was not only safe, but any idiot could navigate the carefully gridded streets. Dira made a perfunctory search for me, then left by the same way she’d entered. I was alone, and relieved that, for a scant couple of hours, I was beholden to no one’s alliances—nations or scrabbling individuals.

  30

  I LEFT THE LIBRARY AND STROLLED EASILY THROUGH THE UNIVERSITY grounds. The jewel-colored coronet fowl skittered over the flagstones, pecking at insects and occasionally flapping their bright wings to lift themselves into
perches in the palm trees. I watched their aerial dance, delighted, even if I looked like a gap-jawed tourist. I had little time to spend in Isildi and had barely explored the broad avenues and wide marketplaces of the city.

  I walked past tea shops and hatters, drapers and cheesemongers, guessing at their names from the unique signs hung above each establishment. An angry ewe glared at passersby above a cheese shop, and dueling swordfish marked a fishmonger. A pair of silver shears signaled a draper’s shop, and I ventured inside.

  Bolts of fabric lined the walls. As in Galitha City, drapers sold cloth to buyers who took it to their seamstresses or tailors. I always kept a private selection of fabric, as well, mimicking the practice of the most elite, noble-catering seamstresses. I let my fingers wander to fine cottons and silk gauzes, delicate taffetas and the lightest weight wools, testing the hand of each. The familiar action of assessing fabric, considering its uses, and weighing its value as an investment was comforting. Even stranded in a foreign country, I could find where I belonged.

  I owed Corvin a kerchief, and I fell into long-practiced confidence as I fingered featherlight silks and deftly block-printed cottons. I could command enough Serafan to purchase a small length of fabric. Something genteel but not stuffy, special but not foppish. I considered a vibrant saffron silk before questioning if academics, with their strictly graduated robe colors, were permitted to wear such hues. Something less showy, I decided. A fine cotton printed with simple gray diamonds caught my eye.

  I found the shop owner and stumbled through the few Serafan phrases I knew—“So sorry, I am Galatine” and “I do not speak Serafan” established our limits, but “How much?” and a gesture to the cotton produced a swift transaction. I was sure that finagling over price was as common here as it was in the markets in Galitha, but I didn’t have the language to attempt to haggle and simply counted out the silver Serafan chips of coin into the woman’s waiting hand.

  I put the fabric in my pocket and returned to the avenue. As I passed a milliner’s shop, silk-covered hats displayed in the window not unlike ones I had recently made and infused with love charms and protection spells, I caught an image reflected in the window. I turned quickly, glimpsing before she ducked down an alleyway the figure of a rather familiar Kvys nun. Her deep gray gown faded almost immediately into the shadows of the narrow street.

  I started. Had she followed me? Or was her presence here mere coincidence? Perhaps she hadn’t seen me at all; if she had, her quick disappearance was suspicious, so I preferred to believe she had business of her own in the markets of Isildi. I didn’t like the cloying misgivings settling into my thoughts, making the broad street feel too close, the bright city almost claustrophobic.

  I left the market and wended my way through the careful grids of Isildi, back to the compound. It was quiet; meetings were still in progress in the large drawing rooms and the small parlors. I lingered outside open doorways and listened at closed ones, searching for a sign of the magic Theodor had spotted, but there were no musicians and no bright threads or stains of shadow.

  A long day with no obligations stared at me, unflinching, but I had one tiny project I could fill the time with—Corvin’s kerchief. The breeze outside was pleasant and the sun not too hot. I fetched my housewife from my room and found an open terrace, empty of guests but full of potted palms.

  Tentatively, I pinned one edge up and began a rolled hem. I stitched a few uncharmed inches, interested in only the magic of the zigzagging stitch that rolled into a minute finished edge. Then I began to pull a charm into the fabric. I repeated the methodical steps of the tiny rolled hem—stitching and pulling the thread taut in turns, hiding the stitches in the roll of the hem itself. The golden light burrowed into the turned fabric, glowing faintly through the thin cotton.

  I finished several inches before I saw the curse magic licking the edges of my work, testing the boundary of my will. I staved it off for a time, finishing one side of the kerchief and beginning another. It was easier to separate the two than it had been the last time I had cast, in Galitha City, though I felt my control beginning to weaken before I’d finished the second side. I set the fabric down and let my eyes and my thoughts wander.

  I thought of the story buried in the scroll Corvin had found—that woman had struggled to cast in the grief of losing her child. That didn’t help me much, I thought, toying with the threaded needle. I had begun to lose control of the ability I had always understood as innate only after the Midwinter Revolt—not right away or all at once, but in the spring months leading up to summer, I had struggled more and more. Unlike so many, none of my family or dearest friends had died.

  I stopped myself—in a sense, my brother had died. I had lost him. He was gone, likely forever, an expatriate whether he wanted to be or not, and I would never see him again. And even before he had taken Theodor’s deal of leaving the country, I had lost him. He betrayed me to his cause. I could have died because of him, and I had sacrificed my ideals because of him.

  I was grieving.

  It was grief, I realized with a start, grief that I shared with that ancient Pellian woman. I should have seen it when Lieta confided that she had struggled with casting after the loss of her husband, but I had been too focused on the intrusion of the curse magic to understand what was happening. Grief muddied the distinction between the light and dark magic in our perception; grief sapped our control over the casting. Lieta didn’t know the curse magic, and so had merely felt the exhaustion of trying to control the light while grief welled inside her. I had been grieving for my brother, grieving for our friendship and our family and our future. I would never sew his bride a gown for her wedding, I would never hold my nieces and nephews. I wouldn’t serve him a piece of Galatine wedding cake or a traditional Pellian baka at my own wedding.

  Tears rolled down my cheeks and made fat circles on the cotton kerchief. In the months immediately following the revolt, I had been too overwhelmed with shock, tumbling along with most of the city, trying to reconfigure a world where this kind of violence was possible, plausible. Then I had been busy recouping my shop’s losses, making sure that Alice and Emmi were all right, building the atelier back up. I hadn’t stopped long enough to acknowledge my own loss, but it hovered, always, unseen and unspoken.

  I folded the fabric, carefully weaving the needle, still threaded, through the layers. I felt strangely calm. Casting didn’t matter, not for the moment. I simply sat still for the moment, sat with my loss.

  As afternoon wore into evening, I finished the kerchief for Corvin, still drawing the curse magic away from my stitches but with a calm confidence that I understood my struggle better now. Perhaps my casting would never be quite the same, I acknowledged as I tied off my thread and snipped the loose end. Life was certainly never going to return to how it once was, sharing a row house with my brother, celebrating birthdays with sweet wine and plum cake, enjoying the summer horse races from the lawn.

  I had to accept those changes and accept that they had changed me. Perhaps that was the process that would let me learn to cast easily again—learning as a changed person.

  31

  LIEUTENANT WESTLAND FOUND ME ON THE TERRACE, MY EYES red but face dried of tears and the kerchief finished. “Miss Balstrade, I came as quickly as I—” He halted as he noticed my tearstained face. “You must already know something?”

  “No, I—” I coughed, clearing my throat and my thoughts. “What’s going on?” I hadn’t expected to see Theodor’s brother again until our trip home, Merhaven having charged him with minding the Gyrfalcon in port.

  He carried a packet of papers, bound loosely with red ribbon. “These were supposed to be sent to you,” he said, pressing them into my hands. Letters, I realized, addressed to my attention first at Southlea and then at the summit. “I didn’t open them,” he added, unnecessarily, I thought, until I saw that the cheap red wax seal had been broken and was flaking away, leaving an orange stain on the paper.

  “Someone did,” I m
urmured, swiftly beginning to read the rudimentary printing spaced out as carefully as its untrained hand could write on the inexpensive, knobbled paper.

  “They were open when I found them, but I must confess I did read the contents. May I ask—who is the writer?”

  “Byran Border,” I said. Theodor’s brother waited for an explanation. “A commoner from one of the cities we visited—Havensport.” I thumbed through the other letters—four of them in total, all from Border. “I told him he could write to me.”

  I skimmed the first letter, Border’s poor spelling slowing me down less than his poorly practiced handwriting. Galatine schools only taught common students through the age of twelve, and plenty of boys and girls left before that to start working. Despite any difficulty reading his letters, his message was clear.

  I glanced at Ballantine. “We have to find Theodor,” I said.

  Less than a quarter hour later, we were holed up in Theodor’s room, Annette perched on his desk and he and his brother poring over the letters by the window. “Where did you find these?”

  Ballantine ducked his head. “I shouldn’t have been in the admiral’s desk,” he began, “but I needed the tide charts we’d worked out and he forgot to give me a copy. I accept fully that it was a breach—”

  “Of protocol, of courtesy, yes, but damn it all, Merhaven had stolen these!” Theodor managed to keep his voice contained below a yell. “I don’t care what rules you broke.”