She hadn’t wept after Father died; there hadn’t been time because by then Mother was slipping into the final desperate fever herself. The physician was there at last. He had come too late to save Father. Astonished at what he found, the physician had worked anxiously over Mother. But Araenè had known even then, from the physician’s hard-set mouth and hooded eyes, that he had not expected to save her, either. Nor had he.
But Araenè hadn’t cried then, either. She’d known there would be a parade of city officials, of neighbors and friends bringing the customary round cakes, the oranges and melons and tiny spherical pastries glittering with pastel sugars … everything sweet, to remind mourners that life was still sweet; everything round, to show that life did not end.… The smells of sugar and citrus had nauseated Araenè, but she hadn’t cried. She had set aside thought and feeling, and smiled stiffly at everyone, and said all the right things, until she could not bear it and fled to the dimness of her room and just waited for everything to go away.
Trei let her cry. He didn’t say anything at all. He just let her cry until she was exhausted. Then he led her back to her room, made her lie down on her bed, and left her alone.
When she woke, Araenè felt better. And instantly guilty, because how could she possibly feel better? She lay for a while with her eyes shut, but light poured across her bed.… Someone had opened her shutters. Even with her eyes closed, she could tell the light was brilliant, and hot.… She’d slept through both afternoon and night, she guessed, and well into the next morning, and just what had Trei put in that chocolate? Araenè surrendered at last to the inevitable and opened her eyes. She needed a bath, and proper clothing … and to find Trei.
Trei, when she eventually found him, was in Father’s office, looking at papers. He held a quill in one hand. He was frowning. He looked tired and … sad, Araenè realized, and felt a sudden, sharp grief that was only for Trei, separate from everything else. What must it be like, to lose your family and travel a thousand miles to kin you’d never met, and be welcomed by them, and then lose that family as well?
Then Trei looked up and saw her. He gave her a little nod. “Cousin. I sent Cimè to her mother—her mother has the illness.”
“Oh!” Araenè had barely realized Cimè had a mother. She fought down an impulse so appalling she couldn’t believe she felt it: a wish for Cimè’s mother to die—if Araenè lost her mother, why shouldn’t Cimè?
From some faint change in Trei’s expression, Araenè thought he’d recognized and understood her brief, terrible wish. That he thought it was normal. Somehow that made her feel it might be all right to suffer such a horrible wish; that it was an impulse she might feel and yet recover from.
Trei said, his tone neutral, “I understand you have to have a guardian, Araenè. It’s all right. I’m writing a letter to Wingmaster Taimenai, explaining that family matters compel me to quit the kajuraihi. I know sometimes kajuraihi do leave the kajurai precincts. And I’ve written another letter to the high minister of shipping asking for a position in his ministry—Cimè tells me that’s the custom, that he’ll give me a place there ‘on the books’ until I’m sixteen and can really start at the ministry.”
“Trei, you can’t!”
“It’s all right. Cimè says I’ll be an assistant minister by the time I’m twenty, probably. Then our position will be good enough for you to marry properly.”
“It isn’t all right!” Araenè was appalled. “You can’t go into the ministry, Trei! And give up the sky? Tear up that letter, Trei, and let me write my mother’s sisters; I can go to one of my aunts’ families—”
“No!”
She stopped, her mouth still open.
Trei said, “You can’t leave Canpra!” He sounded really upset. “Araenè, you’d hate it, shut up on some sheep farm in the country!” And when she tried again to protest, he added, his tone strained, “Araenè, I don’t want you to go away. Don’t you see? I don’t want to lose you, too. I’d rather—I’d rather give up the sky. Truly, Araenè.”
Araenè stared at her cousin for a long moment. Then she turned, went back into her bedroom, and stared at herself in her mirror. It was like a window, showing her herself: she thought she looked much older, as though she was looking at her future self. The future stretched out and out in front of her, measureless. But was it something to endure, or something to seize hold of?
Araenè changed into her best boys’ things. Then she took her sharpest pair of scissors, sat down in front of her mirror, and cut off her hair. It was harder to cut evenly than she’d expected, and much harder to watch the mass of it collect in discarded swaths on the floor and table. Araenè bit her lip and went on: even if she changed her mind—she told herself fiercely she would never change her mind—it was too late to stop now. The top was still ragged when she finished, and she was afraid the back was worse. But it was short. When she looked at herself … she saw a boy with a bad haircut, not a girl.
So did Trei when she went to show him.
“Araenè!” he exclaimed, eyes going wide.
“Arei,” she said sharply. Pretending she had no doubts. She couldn’t have doubts now. Or Trei would quit the kajuraihi, and she—well, she would have to explain the shorn hair. She was fierce to hide any trace of doubt from either of them. “You tear up those letters, Trei. Tear them up! You can tell the kajurai masters I’ve gone to my mother’s sister. I’ll write to my aunts and tell them you’re taking care of me. Then you can go back to the kajuraihi and I can go—Arei can go—to the mages’ school. Araenè can just disappear. Who will ever know?”
“Araenè—”
“Arei.”
“Arei, then,” Trei conceded. “The mages’ school?”
Araenè had forgotten he did not know. She got the Dannè sphere from the back of her drawer and showed it to Trei. It was opaque, featureless. It tasted mainly of cumin, though the other tastes were still faintly perceptible.
“Cumin?” Trei said doubtfully. He touched the sphere with the tip of one finger, cautiously.
“That’s just how it seems to me. I don’t think other—” Araenè shied off from the presumption of applying the title “mage” to herself. She finished instead, “People taste magic this way.”
“Well, if somebody was going to taste magic, it would be you, cousin.” Trei sat back in his chair and looked at her, still doubtful, as though she had changed shape under his gaze—not just from girl to boy, but from known to unknown. Araenè waited for him to say, Girls can’t be mages, but he said instead, “There might be a war coming—did you know?”
Father had worried about that. Araenè nodded.
“And you want to go pretend to be a boy at the mages’ school—the mages’ school. I don’t think that’s very wise, Ar—Arei. You might have fooled other people, but mages? Anyway, I thought … You’re family, Araenè, you’re my only family, and I thought we would live here and”—he gestured vaguely— “manage somehow. I don’t think …” His voice trailed off. He looked at her doubtfully.
Araenè said fiercely, “The mages didn’t see I was a girl before! They say magic—they say it’s like a tide rising in your blood. That’s what they said: magic rising like a tide. I think … I think maybe it is like that. They said you can smother it. I don’t want to do that! I don’t even know why, but I don’t! I didn’t want to be a mage—why would I ever think of being a mage? But now …” She stopped.
“You want to?” Trei asked her. “Do you?”
“I think … maybe I want to. Oh, I can’t tell anymore!” Araenè cried, and burst into tears. She hadn’t expected to. She hadn’t even realized tears were threatening. She certainly didn’t want to cry, a boy wouldn’t cry.… She turned her back and hid her face in her hands.
But Trei leaped up to take her hands and make her sit in a chair. He said earnestly, “It takes you that way sometimes. Don’t worry. Don’t worry about it, cousin. Cry if you want. Let me get you a cloth. You don’t have to decide right now.”
“I’ve decided,” choked Araenè. “I have—”
“You don’t have to decide now. You really don’t. Araenè—”
“I can’t live here, Trei! I can’t live in this house!” It seemed to Araenè that all the rooms were filled with grief and memories, thick as bitter syrup.
“We can move—we could find a smaller house—we could move near the University, we could even move to Third City, wouldn’t you like that? And we—”
“I can’t ever be a chef,” Araenè said, muffled.
Trei didn’t say anything.
“I can’t! I know that! But maybe—I think I might—I don’t know! But, Trei, I can’t stay closed up in any house and just wait for everything to just happen! War, or life, or, or anything! I can’t!” Araenè lifted her head and glared at Trei, her eyes hot. “I might be a mage; maybe I can do this. Anyway, if I get the training, then I will be a mage and what can anybody do then? I can make everybody think I’m a boy, I can do it for a long time, years if I have to, I know I can! And you—you need to be in the air. You are kajurai, you know you are! You have to let me do this!”
Trei stood still for a long time, gazing at her. Araenè, waiting to see what he would say, felt sick and hot and anxious. She said quickly, “It’s not that I don’t want to be—to be with you, Trei—”
“I know,” her cousin said. He held out his hands to her. “I know, Araenè. Arei. It’s all right. You write your aunts. And we can send the letter in a day or two, if you haven’t changed your mind. But”—and he sounded quite fierce on this last—“but you take some time and you think if you really want this, if you can really do this! Because we can think of something else if we have to, Gods weeping, we can go—I don’t know—to Cen Periven, if we have to. Clear away from both the Islands and Tolounn. Maybe you could be a chef there.”
But Trei couldn’t be kajurai there. But he didn’t say that. Araenè knew she had already decided.
Araenè let Trei persuade her to wait one extra day, until Sun’s Day should turn to Gods’ Day, for luck. But Araenè was determined she had waited long enough; she felt sick with the need to leave this house.
“So how do we get to the hidden school?” Trei asked. “I mean, isn’t it, you know, hidden?”
Araenè shook her head. “I don’t think it will be hard to find.” She weighed the Dannè sphere in her hand for a moment. The lemon was starting to spark through the smoky cumin. Araenè tucked the sphere under her arm, led the way to the front of the house, said, “Master Tnegun?” and opened the door on a wave of bitter fenugreek balanced by fragrant heat.
The door swung back, but it did not open on the Avenue of Flameberry Trees. It opened straight into a familiar shadowy hallway, where the sun gleamed dimly through dusty panes of glass in many high-set, narrow windows. Across from them, a tall door even narrower than the windows led—perhaps—to a room with ebony tables and white chairs and heavy books chained to their pedestals.
“Oh,” said Trei, staring along the hallway. “That was easy.” He gave Araenè a wary sidelong look.
Araenè knew he was thinking again that this was too dangerous for her, that one of the mages would recognize she was a girl and there would be trouble. She didn’t want to think about that, and anyway, she was sure it wouldn’t happen. She caught Trei’s hand in hers and stepped firmly forward into the dim light of the hallway. Behind them, the door swung quietly shut and disappeared into the paneled wall.
This time, the narrow door opened on a small, luxuriously furnished library. They were high up in a square Second City tower, each wall lined with shelves of books and racks of scrolls. A single chair occupied the center of the room, upholstered in dark cloth. A raven sidled back and forth along the back of this chair. Master Tnegun sat below the raven, a book propped on his knee and a tiny crimson lizard with golden eyes clinging to his wrist.
The master looked up as the door opened. His hooded eyes were fierce and vivid in his dark face, his black hand outlined clean as a flame against the white pages of his book. He regarded Araenè for a moment. Then his gaze shifted to Trei, standing at her right hand. One elegant eyebrow lifted.
Araenè felt herself blushing under that sardonic regard. She said, “This is my cousin—” trying to sound unemotional and finding she only sounded angry. She stopped.
“Ar—Arei’s parents died. Of the fever,” Trei said. He did sound flat and unemotional. Whatever he’d learned in order to manage after his own parents’ death, he was using it now. Araenè wondered how long it would take her to sound that indifferent. Never, she thought. She would never manage it. She blinked hard and fixed her gaze on the view out one of Master Tnegun’s windows.
Trei was continuing, “So Arei can stay here now. We think sh—he ought to, and he says he wants to. That you said you wanted him as your apprentice.” He looked straight at Master Tnegun. Fearlessly.
Araenè had liked her cousin, and pitied him, and been deeply glad of his presence when he’d come to pull her out of grief’s heavy undertow. That he’d suffered the same loss that now struck her, and survived it, was comforting. But she hadn’t admired Trei until he spoke so decisively to Master Tnegun, even though she knew he was filled with doubts about her coming here.
The master’s expression lost its edge of mockery. He shut his book, set it aside, and rose to his feet. The raven muttered, tucking its head down into its shoulders and fluffing its black feathers. The lizard clung to his sleeve, not in the least discommoded by his movement. Its tiny head turned as it inspected Araenè and Trei from first one golden eye and then the other. When the master took a step toward them, it ran up his arm to his shoulder and twirled around to watch them from beneath his ear.
“It is a terrible thing, to lose one’s family,” Master Tnegun said to Araenè, his tone dark and somber. “My people say the high mountains will wear to level ground before grief wears to nothing. That was a wicked fever that little showed what it would do until far too late. I am most grieved to hear of your loss.”
Araenè couldn’t answer his sympathy. Instead she said stiffly, not looking away from the lizard, “I want … I mean, my cousin …”
“I want to be able to see Arei,” Trei said firmly. “I don’t want him to be hidden away here, even if this is the hidden school.”
“One should be ashamed to separate kin,” Master Tnegun answered gravely. He held out his hand. A crystal lay on his palm, so pure it was almost invisible. Cinnamon and fennel sparkled from it. It was attached to a fine silver chain. The chain, dangling between the master’s dark fingers, tasted crisply of lime and ginger.
“Crystal for the young kajurai,” Master Tnegun said. “Wear it, if you will. Speak the name of your cousin and open any door, and that door will bring you to him. Or if not, speak my name, and it will assuredly bring you to me. You know my name? It comes smoothly from your tongue?”
Trei nodded. “Yes, Master Tnegun. What about Arei?”
“Our apprentices are not prisoners. Arei may go about the city as he chooses.”
Trei nodded again, cautiously reassured.
“You may safely leave your cousin to my care,” said Master Tnegun. He stepped to the door and opened it wide. It looked out upon a flickering, opalescent mist.
“Step through,” the master told Trei, “and the door will carry you wherever you choose within the limits of the city. Merely keep clearly in mind which destination you favor.”
Trei nodded, came to Araenè, hesitated, and put his hands on her shoulders—more appropriate than an embrace, since she was a boy. He gave her a steady look out of his strange kajurai eyes. “Arei?”
“I’ll be fine,” Araenè promised him. “I’ll be fine. Truly.”
But even so, she felt amazingly bereft after her cousin was gone. And frightened. She told herself sharply that she hadn’t any reason to be frightened—Master Tnegun had told her to come—he couldn’t be wrong; she must be suited to this school. Even though she was a girl. But doubts crowded into her
mind: maybe magecraft was just too hard for girls … maybe the reason girls didn’t become mages was because they truly, truly couldn’t. For a moment Araenè longed to run through the mist-filled doorway after her cousin and back to her own home. Only, the home she wanted to run to was the home with Mother humming popular street tunes over her needlework, with Father working on ministry documents and occasionally adding a whistled phrase to whatever tune Mother was humming.
But that home was gone. Dead. Araenè closed her eyes for a moment, found a strange, dizzy confusion of longed-for past and bitter present assailing her, and opened them quickly.
Master Tnegun shut the door and turned to stand quietly in the middle of the room, his hands clasped before him, regarding Araenè from his hooded, unreadable eyes. Dangerous eyes, Araenè thought; she was afraid of what he might see, looking at her with such intensity. She could imagine just the tone of sardonic disapproval with which he might say, We do not permit girls in this school. She held her breath.
But all the master said was, “I am glad you have come, for we have too few mages here. But I am sorry to have you driven to us by such tragedy. I am tolerably acquainted with loss. If you will accept my prescription, it is for an entire change of scene and a course of demanding study of compelling and unfamiliar subjects. One may thus forget for a moment and then a day, and in the end make a peace with grief. Does this seem well to you, young Arei?”
Not trusting her voice, Araenè simply nodded.
“It is poor solace to speak of the passing of time and grief,” the master said. His quiet voice had gone somehow bleak, though Araenè could not decide where in his unchanging tone the difference lay. “We do not wish our grief to fade, for it marks the love and honor in which we held our lost kinsmen. Nevertheless, permit me to assure you that while you may find peace a barren desert, yet eventually it may bloom.”
Araenè wasn’t certain she understood what Master Tnegun meant, but she nodded again.
“Well,” the Yngulin master said, and sighed. Then he called, “Kanii!”
The Floating Islands Page 12