by Gwen Perkins
“Are all of your- boats- out?” He didn’t know the words for any of what Asahel did. The merchant trade to him was as foreign as another country would have been. Prior to their friendship, Quentin had never stopped to consider whether or not people were involved in bringing things like silk and cinnamon to Cercia. It had been as if those things simply appeared- after all, they had always been there.
“Ships,” Asahel’s smile turned genuine. “And yes, yes, they are.” He laughed shyly. “You’ll never stop calling them boats, will you?”
“No, probably not.” Quent agreed, nodding as he walked towards Asahel. The pair of them began walking towards the end of the dock, the long breadth of it stretching out far into the coastal waters. It churned beneath their feet, a dark blue gone to black in places, splashing up against the pilings with a rhythm they could have counted to, if they chose. Their feet kept time to the beat, walking as they did with no words exchanged between the two of them. It was one of the things that Quentin valued most about Asahel- the comfortable silences.
As they reached the dock, Asahel broke it, saying, “Have you ever been on a boat? Ship, I mean?” He settled himself on the boards, legs swinging against the piling as he sat, the waves below not high enough to touch.
“No.” Quentin said. “My parents felt that there was no point to showing me the things I couldn’t have.”
“Couldn’t- oh.” Those who used magic became tied to Cercia forever, will and strength destroyed with any attempt to leave the island. Asahel had not been destined for the university. Instead, his mother had chosen him for the sea. There had never been a magician among the Soames family, his talent an aberration.
“Have you?” Quentin realized that, for all the time spent together in the colleges, there was little that he actually knew about Asahel. He had simply never asked. His friend nodded simply but with longing as he turned to the waters, dark eyes drinking it in. A gull called above them and he leaned back, watching the birds swoop over the horizon, gray wings striking at the clouds. His eyes closed as he laid back on the wood, kicking his legs up on the air and relishing the feeling of the sunlight on his stomach, warm and soothing.
He could hear the sound of paper unfolding near him but Asahel remained quiet. Quentin kept his eyes closed, listening to the waves and the sound of his own breathing until he felt something flutter against his chest. Hand reaching down, he blinked to see what Asahel had dropped on his shirt.
“I think you ought to read it,” was all Asahel said as he stood up, then walked away, leaning against the wooden railing and staring back at the shore.
Quentin’s fingers suddenly started to sweat as he peeled back the folds, the crisp parchment sticking to his skin. The ink was in a hand he didn’t recognize, the words equally strange as he stared down at them. He had to read it twice before he understood, his mouth moving silently as he said it to himself.
“Someone saw us?” He said, disbelieving. Quentin looked up at Asahel but the other man wasn’t looking back. “But how?”
“Does it matter how?” The man’s lower lip was reddened, chapped with slight marks from his teeth. “Look at who it’s addressed to.”
He turned it over. Asahel Soames.
“You. So? What do you mean by that?”
“I mean-” Asahel’s breath caught, then released. He spoke slowly, as if he was talking to a child. “I mean that you’ve not gotten one of these, have you?”
“No,” Quentin said, then added quickly, “Not that Catharine’s said.”
“She’d say.”
“Maybe.” He tried to answer hopefully but the look on Asahel’s face stopped him. “You’re right. She’d say on something like this. She’d probably use it as a reason for divorce.” The last sentence was muttered quietly as he refolded the paper, his fingers tearing at the edges. Then his voice rose. “What are you going to do about it then?”
Quentin could tell after he’d said the words that it was the worst possible question he could have spoken. The other man’s eyes darkened as he knelt, taking the paper from between his fingers, and rose. He was stiff and still for a moment before he replied, “I don’t know.”
The wood creaked as Asahel started walking back across. Quentin couldn’t move for a moment. He looked down at his hands, thinking of the message that they had touched and of the threat to the other man’s life and property. The penalty for Heresy was death and they both knew it- had known it when Quentin suggested that they take magic where it was not allowed to go. The first Heresy was the law against the body. Of all things held sacred in the universities, the most important was the use of magic in any way that could touch a living vessel.
Not blood nor bone shall magic touch. They had sworn it before they had made any other oaths, and Asahel had stood next to him then, still a stranger.
He looked at that man now, his figure small and hunched against the landscape. Asahel was stumbling up towards the row of houses that overlooked the shore, and Quentin realized to himself that neither of them even knew where the other lived. He had been willing to risk a life he knew nothing of.
“Wait!” he called without thinking. Rising to his feet, he broke into a run as the other man continued up the rocky beach, unhearing. Quentin stretched out his long legs and increased his speed, leaping and stumbling over the rocks in his path. Grit kicked up into his face as he ran and he saw that Asahel had heard him, or at least he’d stopped, and was looking at him as if he’d gone mad.
He gasped as he reached the stout man, his slender body heaving with the effort of running so quickly. His forehead was matted with sweat, but he managed a lopsided grin, cocking an eyebrow as he blinked the stinging perspiration from his eyes.
“If you’re going to tell me that you’ve misspoken-” Asahel said calmly as Quentin’s face fell, expecting a rejection. “-then you’d better hurry. I’ve got to see about the cargo.” His chubby arm pointed to a ship in the distance, little more than a blot against the horizon but moving quickly. Quentin broke into relieved laughter at the unexpected end of the other man’s sentence.
“I have,” he grinned. “I have officially misspoken.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“You haven’t thought about the rest of it,” Asahel said with a groan. “Quent, do you ever think about things before you do them?” Quentin just kept grinning, knowing that Asahel could see through the smile on his face. “You don’t. But we need to think about this.”
“I’m not sure what we could do.” He looked up at Asahel, face darkening. “I don’t know the hand that wrote that. Nor did either of us tell anyone.” It wasn’t a question. He hadn’t spoken and he knew Asahel’s character well enough to know that the other man hadn’t, either.
“Then we need to find out who did.” The pause that followed lasted much longer than it should have. When Asahel spoke again, it was so quiet that Quentin could barely hear it. “I think that we shouldn’t stop.”
He stood there for a moment, staring at the other man. The risk for this fell on Soames’ broad shoulders, and he wondered whether Asahel knew that. Death sentences had been suspended in the past, but only for nobles, never for men of the merchant class, and in fact, such men were rare as magicians. It had only been through random chance, he suspected, that anyone had discovered Asahel’s talent at all.
“We can’t,” he said finally, knowing that he spoke for Asahel’s benefit, if not his own.
“We haven’t got a choice.” His friend moved closer to him until the two men were almost eye to eye. He could feel Asahel’s breath as it moved against his chin, the warmth of it hot through the sharp sea air. “If we’re going to be blamed for something that we haven’t yet done, then...” The breath stopped for a moment, then released in a sudden flood. “I want to do it.”
“It wasn’t your idea,” Quentin protested. “You don’t have to see this through.”
“It’s men like me who see everything through.” Feet, heavy in their
step, crushed seashells into the sand and dirt as Asahel backed away. He smiled, but there was a sad, thoughtful look in his eyes. “I’ll meet you at midnight. In the old place.”
“The old place.” He repeated the words to himself even after Asahel’s figure began to disappear, picking its way carefully through the rocks and fallen logs up towards the hill. He watched him go, deep in thought, as he remembered the things that lay between them. The old place.
PART 2
Chapter 11
Five years before, there had been an eclipse.
The entire university buzzed with the news, young men pausing in corridors to discuss its significance. Even a few of the professors cancelled classes under the pretense of illness.
“Sun sickness,” was what Felix Carnicus called it as he stood, staring at a notice posted on a wall outside the lecture hall.
“What does that mean?” Asahel leaned in, his dark eyes wide as if sun sickness was something that could be caught. Felix grinned over at him, one eyebrow lifting slightly.
“He—our lecturer, rather—feels if the sun won’t be out, then neither will he.” He lightly nudged Asahel’s shoulder before jouncing off again down the hall. Asahel bit his lip as he watched the older man go, surprised that Felix had taken the time to stop and talk to him. He rarely did—then again, no one did.
There was something about the feeling of being noticed that charged Asahel. Whereas he normally slunk away from the others, this time he quickened his step. His breath was quicker than he was used to as he stumbled after Felix, the other man too swift for him to catch up to easily. It was Asahel’s clumsy step, snapping branches as he floundered down the path, that seemed to turn his fellow student.
“Soames,” Felix said, his tone bored now rather than amused. The look he cast Asahel was clearly intended to dismiss.
Asahel’s throat went dry. He took a step back, half-tripping over a rock just behind him. Flailing in mid-air, he regained his step. His face felt hot, as he stared at his broken shoes, waiting for Felix’s laugh. It took him almost a full minute to realize that it wasn’t going to come.
“Soames.” Asahel realized that the sound in Felix’s voice wasn’t boredom but patience. He glanced up to see the other man’s face knit in confusion. “Soames, are you alright? Idle tongues do more mischief than idle hands, it’s said, but the cat does seem to have gotten yours.” Felix paused and this time, he did smile. “Until today, I wasn’t sure you had one at all. What is it?”
“The…” Asahel hesitated, and then glanced down at his feet. “The classes. If they’d been cancelled, where is everyone then?”
“The Commons.” Felix waved an airy hand. “Does anyone sit in their rooms to study when there’s an event of any sort around here?”
“I shouldn’t think.” The response was nearly inaudible. Asahel himself did just that.
He wasn’t sure why but Felix’s face knitted up again. His voice was softer as he answered Asahel. “Well, I should understand if one did. An eclipse of the sun, though—that’s a thing to see, isn’t it? Though better seen alone than with the old drunken crowd drowning it out with words to a song no one really knows.” Felix inhaled. “Any road, Soames, there’s your answer. Have it as you will.”
Felix’s arm lifted, pressing his books to his chest as he turned, starting his journey again on the narrow path that lay ahead of the two men. Asahel watched him walk until he was little more than a thin shadow among the thatched buildings that ringed the Commons.
He looked up at the sky. The astronomers had called the date for the eclipse but no one knew exactly when it would happen or for how long. There had been other eclipses, he knew, but none since his childhood—that one had come in the Summer of the Plagues. Asahel remembered his father speaking in a low voice to his mother, repeating the rumors that raged the docks. Every sailor believed that the sun had been consumed by a fever, pulled down to the earth by magic, then given to the people. His own parents had believed it—as they believed many things of the magicians. Asahel had seen it in their eyes when the Magister had come to claim him for the university.
His classes had taught Asahel better. Education, however, didn’t stop the quick pulsing of his heart as he thought of the hour of slow darkness that stretched before him. Childhood memories died hard, and it was those whispered words that he thought of now.
He didn’t want to be alone.
Asahel’s footsteps led him down the same worn cobblestone path that Felix had trod, into the heart of the Commons. The area formed the university’s center, a wide expanse of wild green. It was bordered by a few small businesses—a tailor, a smith, and the taverna which was the true heart of the university. The colleges lay just beyond—each tall, pale building representing a different year of learning. Asahel was on his second, Felix his third—most men stayed for four years. There were some who never left, it was rumored, but Asahel had never seen them.
The man stepped cautiously through the thick blades of grass towards the taverna. Wild roses snagged his sleeve as he passed a bramble of thorns, flowers snarled up with blackberries and a few yew seedlings. Yanking it free, he elbowed his way towards the weather-worn structure. It was well-used but little cared for, the boards of the taverna’s front steps so loose that they rattled when he stepped up on the porch.
Despite the gray flaking paint that coated the outside, the inside was full of color and light. Asahel opened the door, slipping inside as quietly as he could, his palm pressed flat against the wood to guide it shut. The precaution was unnecessary. Inside, it was too loud for even his clumsy footsteps to be heard. Students and lecturers alike were thronging the tables and windows. People were packed so closely together that there was little room to move, much less sit on the long wooden benches that lined the wall.
“A drink for the darkness!” One voice shouted, undistinguished from the rest save by its volume. A chorus of “Darkness!” followed the words. Full glasses lifted, catching a little of the faint light, each man touching his glass to the next, then raising it up to thirsty lips. An old waitress bustled towards one of the tables, already prepared with a new bottle of wine.
Asahel felt lost as he stood against the wall. Felix had arrived, he could see, but the other man seemed to have forgotten that he existed once more. Another classmate saw him and scowled, leaning over and whispering in the ear of the man next to him. The two burst into laughter.
He felt his stomach roil as he heard it. He was afraid to leave now that he’d been seen but he was just as afraid to ask for a place at the table. Nothing about him matched the others—not the broken soles of his shoes or the rough cotton of his shirt or the dirt under his fingernails that always lingered. Asahel’s face burned red again, red enough that it stood out even in the poor light. Red enough that he knew the guffaws from another neighboring table were directed at him.
Asahel wanted to leave but he was too embarrassed to even do that. His palms were sweating. He balled them up, trying to hide it as he willed his shaking knees to move back and failed.
He heard a whistle to his left, long and low. It’s me, Asahel thought, the hair on the back of his neck damp from sweat. It’s me who those men are laughing at. His mouth was as dry as paper as he forced himself to swallow, unable to speak. The whistle came again, this time short and sharp. This time, Asahel turned, afraid that if he didn’t, the attention would grow worse.
A face he recognized from classes beamed at him, startling him so much that he managed to take a step back. It was Quentin Mathar, a man that he’d barely spoken to. Quentin spent most of his days surrounded by other students. While Asahel had heard merchant rumors that the Mathars were no longer wealthy, those at university either didn’t know or no longer cared. The Mathars were still one of the oldest families in Cercia—to be affiliated with them, however tenuously, granted privilege in certain circles.
It was for this reason that Asahel didn’t move, not even when Quentin began to wave at him.
Fi
nally, the redhead stood.
“Asahel!” He yelled, waving a glass. “Asahel, come here and have a drink with me!” Asahel heard the noise at Quentin’s table suddenly mute as those around them stopped talking to stare.
“Really,” Asahel heard Tammas Nestor say to Quentin. “You don’t have to.”
Quentin kept waving, his long arm flailing dramatically over the heads of the rest of the table, nearly swiping a mass of blond waves but missing. He’s not going to stop unless I go over there, Asahel realized glumly. He drug his feet over towards the table as if he expected a trap to spring the moment he reached Quentin and his friends.
“Sure and you want me to have a drink with you?” He asked timidly, incredulous at the invitation Quentin had proffered.
“You should be honored, gudgeon,” Tammas muttered at Asahel. Quentin ignored him, leaning forward and grabbing a wine bottle by the neck. He poured a cup, sloshing wine into the vessel with a movement so quick that liquid spattered his hand and the table beneath. Disregarding the red spill seeping into the wood, he stepped up to Asahel.
“Yes, yes, of course,” Quentin pressed the cup into Asahel’s hands before he could protest. “My betrothal’s been set—I’ve just received word. I’ll damn well drink with any man I like today.” Then he gave Asahel a wicked grin, his eyes noting the way that the other students shifted away from the newcomer as Quentin patted a space for him to sit. “And from the way you looked when you walked in that door? You needed it.”
“Aye,” Asahel said quietly, holding the cup but not drinking from it. He’d been the target of too many pranks to trust a simple cup of wine, betrothal or not. He was so certain of a trick that he didn’t bother to thank the redhead but instead, remained standing.
Quentin didn’t appear to notice, his smile just as exuberant as it had been when he called Asahel over.
“We were just discussing the eclipse,” he said, gesturing at the other men around the table. Asahel’s stomach clenched again as he finally focused on the faces of those sitting nearby—Nestor was not his only tormentor among them.