After a beat, Robert said, “Well. We have fewer strangers at this table than I thought.” Then, stabbing his fork with great concentration into his fried chicken, he sent what was all too obviously supposed to have been a tightly-shielded telepathic whisper.that came through loud and clear to us all. A rendezvous with a girl in the night-time, and you said not a word? There is more to you than I thought!
Liesel turned scarlet. For my own part, I choked on a laugh. Julian glared pure murder at his roommate, and for all I would not have want it directed at me, the reaction humanized him. He wasn’t a statue, nor a walking pillar of sidhe blood; he was an eighteen-year-old guy who’d just been embarrassed at the dinner table, and I hoped for Robert’s sake that the control they drilled into wilders meant Julian wouldn’t go for suitable revenge.
“To be fair,” I said, doing my own seelie best to gloss over the conversational implosion, “all Julian knows of me is that I’m a lunatic who goes diving into the Copper Creek on my birthday, then wanders around campus with wet hair in search of some pneumonia to catch. Hardly the basis for saying we know one another. Are you a CM major, too?”
That was what Liesel had started to ask. Robert said, “You have been questioned, sir,” and nodded his head toward me, in an attempt to redirect his roommate’s attention. I watched Julian swallow down his glare with remarkable speed. Either it had been more of an pretense than I thought, or this was that legendary self-control in action.
“Yes,” he said, “though not officially, of course.”
None of us could formally declare our majors until spring term, on the theory that we should explore our options before we settled down. But it sounded like all four of us had chosen our paths already. “No love for the telekinetic sciences at this table,” I observed. “Liesel and I are both in the telepathics.she does empathy, I do divination.”
Robert put on an expression of horror. Did he always act like this, or was it a device to cover for his roommate’s stiffness? No reason it couldn’t be both, I supposed. “Oh no.I fear this means war, the sorcerers against the psychics. Unless we could persuade you to the dark side?”
“Of ceremonial magic? I don’t think so.” I’d been happily ignoring that ever since Akila’s reading. “Way too much showy ritual and unnecessary pageantry.”
“Unnecessary!” He clapped one hand over his heart as if wounded. “My lady, I will have you know that ritual and pageantry is the lifeblood of any self-respecting magician.”
“Or at least any self-respecting Irish magician who fell in love with tales of Fernando Covas de la Vega as a child,” Julian said.
Robert pulled back in surprise. “When did I tell you that?”
“You didn’t.”
The reply came in the same unruffled tone as everything else Julian said, but its very blandness carried unexpected humour. After a startled silence, Robert laughed and made a seated bow. “I am that obvious, it seems. Very well; I confess. De la Vega is, indeed, a mighty star in my heavens. Self-respecting magicians of another sort may choose to do their sorcery without all the pomp.but where is the fun in that?”
While Liesel answered him, I began cutting up my lasagna, thinking about that reading. Lugh of the Long Hand, the final card. Associated with the Otherworld . . . I didn’t know Julian’s exact Krauss rating, but wilders had far more sidhe blood than ordinary psychics like the three of us. And the Otherworld.long since departed, known to us only through myth.was the home of the sidhe.
No, it went further than that. One of the main stories about Lugh was how the Tuatha Dé Danann almost didn’t let him among them because every skill he could offer, they already had from somebody else. They finally welcomed him in when he pointed out that nobody among them had all those skills. Wilders might not be the best at any one aspect of the psychic sciences, not when compared against the true experts.but unlike ordinary bloods, they were good at everything.
Liesel had brought me here to be social, not to poke at my lasagna and get lost in my own thoughts. She and Robert were talking about classes; I joined in, and after a moment, Julian did, too. But I couldn’t stop watching him in my peripheral vision, still stuck on the reading.
Papa Legba had come before Lugh. Both Akila and I had read a crossroads out of that, a choice of paths. Our meeting at the monument, no doubt. But what choice had I made?
Clarity came in a flash, from the depths of my gift. It wasn’t that clear-cut of a situation: door A or door B, thumbs up or thumbs down. These were paths, and I could backtrack if I changed my mind . . . but the farther I went, the harder it would become.
And this was the start of a path, right here. Julian, making wary conversation, but less wary than he’d been at the monument. Robert, playing up his ridiculousness enough that Liesel nearly choked on her iced tea. The four of us, at the start of something that could turn, over time, into friendship.
It would have consequences. Julian was never going to be just another student; he would always be the wilder, subject to prejudice and curiosity and a lot of arrant stupidity. Being friends with him would limit my options elsewhere. But backing off would have consequences, too, and I didn’t like the look of those half so much.
Julian was saying something about taking a shielding theory class on Tuesdays and Thursdays. “Where is that held, in Morrison?” I said. It would be that or Cavendish; those were the main CM lecture buildings, with most of the labs in Adler.
He nodded. I almost stalled, buying time to check in with my roommate, but it was impolite to have telepathic conversations in front of other people.and besides, I had no doubt what her answer would be. “Liesel and I have lunch in Kinfield on those days, since we’ve both got classes nearby. You’re welcome to join us, if you want.”
He went still. His self-control was good enough that I couldn’t read his reaction, but not good enough to hide that he was having one. Too soon? I wondered. I didn’t want to seem intrusive, but on the other hand, I did want to give him an opening to be social again, if he felt so inclined.
“Possibly,” he said, after a brief pause. “I don’t usually take much time for lunch.”
“With your course load, I’m not surprised.” They’d let him take six classes, I’d noticed. And not lightweight ones, either. “Well, feel free to join us for a break whenever you can. I’m reliably informed that too much studying makes your brain explode.”
Another moment of stillness. Then he exhaled in a quick, voiceless laugh, and smiled. “All right.”
Robert slouched back in his chair, not even bothering to hide his grin. By the self-satisfaction in it, we were all lucky he didn’t simply crow “Victory!”
But it was. He’d engineered this dinner, and it had worked.not just between Julian and me, but all four of us. I suspected Liesel and I would be seeing a lot more of both of them from here on out.
I looked forward to finding out where that path led.
***
If you enjoyed this story, you can back the second book of the series, Chains and Memory, on Kickstarter through June 17th.”
About Marie Brennan
Marie Brennan is an anthropologist and folklorist who shamelessly pillages her academic fields for material. She is currently misapplying her professors’ hard work to the Victorian adventure series The Memoirs of Lady Trent. She is also the author of the Doppelanger duology of Warrior and Witch, the urban fantasy Lies and Prophecy, the Onyx Court historical fantasy series, and more than forty short stories. More information can be found at www.swantower.com.
Twitter: @swan_tower
Journal: journal.swantower.com
Website: www.swantower.com
Lies and Prophecy: http://www.swantower.com/novels/wilders/lp.html
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