That was the day she had discovered her talent for pastry baking, and Karel's parents had hired her, and—
Karel clinked his mug against hers, bringing her out of her reverie. "Here's to the woman with the most beautiful eyes, most delicious sweet rolls. and most rotten luck of anyone I've ever met."
"How would you like a pot of bad kaf dumped on your new pants?"
Karel waggled his eyebrows. "I can think of better fates for my pants. but I'll take whatever I can get."
Mardis rolled her eyes. "Why else would you stay near me today, knowing what's likely to happen?"
He shrugged. "If you didn't want me around, the time to say so was three years ago. Trusting me with your secret was part of what made me love you, you know."
"I was trying to warn you away, stupid. I thought that anyone a year older than me had to be smart. but I was obviously wrong."
Karel's eyes became uncharacteristically serious, and Mardis was afraid that she'd gone too far. He seemed about to speak again when the innkeeper came back inside, the recaptured pig struggling in his arms.
"Would master and mistress care for breakfast?" the innkeeper asked, grunting as the pig kicked him in the throat.
Mardis saw the mischievous sparkle come back into Karel's eyes, and was glad. For a moment, he had looked like someone else.
"A little bacon might be nice," Karel said.
Mardis stifled a giggle.
The innkeeper didn't seem to catch the joke. ''I'll see if we've any left," he said, and disappeared into the kitchen with the pig flailing vigorously.
Mardis and Karel looked at each other for a few seconds before letting out the laughter they'd been holding. The drunk by the hearth jerked awake, then swore and put his head down on his table again.
When Karel stopped laughing, Mardis saw that his eyes had become serious again.
'There's something we need to talk about," he said.
Mardis shifted on the rough chair. So he knows. But how? I'm not even sure myself yet.
"Listen, Karel," she began, almost whispering, "I should've told you—"
Karel covered his ears. "I've got to get through this all at once, Mardie," he said, "or I might not be able to get started again. Whatever you have to say can wait a bit, can't it?"
She nodded, and he lowered his hands.
Then he reached into his brown baker's smock and withdrew a slim silver bracelet. Taking Mardis's right hand in his left, he pushed the metal circle onto her wrist.
"It almost fits," he said, sounding nervous.
Mardis stared down at the bracelet—which was not what she'd been expecting—and marveled at the intricacy of its engraved loops and crisscrosses.
"This must've cost five or six levars," she said, thinking aloud.
Karel shrugged again. "I've been saving. Mother and Father are paying good wages."
"Not to me, they aren't."
"Ah, well, you're not family yet."
Mardis eyed Karel skeptically. "'Yet'?"
Karel looked exasperated. "Rikiki's nuts, Mardie! This is a family custom, like the birthday breakfast. We present a gift when offering marriage. I've heard Mother tell you so a hundred times. She had you marked as her daughter-in-law before I did."
Mardis touched the bracelet with the fingers of her left hand. The metal felt cool and elegant.
"If I refuse you," she said, "can I keep it anyway?"
Karel lunged in a mock attempt to grab it back.
Mardis leaned out of his reach and put her hands behind her head, gripping two of her four dark braids as if they were handles,
"Well, if that's the case," she said, feigning disinterest. ''I'll force myself to go through with it."
"You're accepting me?"
"I just said so, didn't I?"
Karel put his hands behind his head, mocking her, and grinned. "Hah! It only cost three levars."
"I'm only worth two," Mardis said. "So there."
She felt better than she had on any other birthday. There was no need to risk spoiling it by telling Karel her news.
Not right away, at least.
•
Later, after breakfast had been served, Mardis realized that Karel would probably take what she had to tell him far better than her mother would take their betrothal.
"To say that Mother's going to be disappointed," she mused, chewing on a slice of gristly bacon, "is like comparing the Great War with Saltigos to a kitten-fight."
Karel shrugged a third time. "Rashell's in a state of perpetual disappointment," he said. "You could be marrying a margrave, and she'd find something about him that wasn't to her liking. So the fact that she doesn't like me isn't going to trouble my sleep."
Mardis made a face. "It's not you she doesn't like. It's that I'm not fulfilling her dream of having a wealthy wizard for a daughter. She's been pestering me to invest my luck for the past seven years."
Karel snorted. "You can't eat luck."
Mardis swallowed the bacon and pushed her plate away. "Or this stuff, either," she said. "But you don't need to convince me. I'd make a rotten magician, if for no other reason than that the only lessons I've had have been from that fool Thardik. Mother can't accept that, though, and I've run out of ways of telling her. All she knows is that she paid Thardik good money to magically prolong my birth hours, and that I'm ungrateful."
Karel wiped his hands on his smock. "Why should you be anything else? Thirteen hours is nothing to do somersaults over."
"Well, it beats the seven hours you've got."
"It does, does it?" Karel waved his hand in a gesture that took in the entire room. "If Rashell did you such a great favor, why are we celebrating your birthday in this bull-wallow?"
Mardis began to feel angry. She was of the firm opinion that her mother was a dunderhead, but she didn't appreciate it when Karel made it clear that he agreed with her.
"Maybe I just haven't been trying hard enough," she said. "Maybe I could still become a wizard if I wanted to."
Karel reached to the table behind him and brought back a yellowish candle in a tin cup. "All right, Mardis the Magician," he said, setting the candle in the center of their table. "Rashell's forced you to take lessons for how many years? Eleven? Twelve?"
Mardis began to wish that she hadn't indulged the automatic urge to defend her own flesh and blood. "Fourteen," she said unhappily. "Since I was four."
"My mistake. All right, then—fourteen years of study, and now here you are in the second of your thirteen birth hours. A perfect opportunity to find out whether Thardik's taught you well."
Mardis sighed for the second time that morning. "Stop it, Karel. I don't want to be a wizard. I want to be a good, honest baker married to a slightly less good, slightly less honest baker. I don't want to play this game."
"But I do, Mardie," Karel said. "I don't want to wake up someday and find myself alone because you're chasing a dream I interrupted. So if your dream is magic, we'd better find out." He pointed at the candle. "Light it."
She shook her head. "You know what'll happen."
"No, I don't, and neither do you. Light it."
Mardis gave up and began to stare at the blackened wick. Maybe she did want to be a wizard, at that. Maybe her mother wasn't completely foolish. Maybe…
A huge spike of orange flame blasted from the fireplace and set the drunk's table ablaze. The scruffy man leaped up and ran out of the inn screaming, his smoldering coat leaving wisps of smoke behind to mark his path.
Mardis cringed. "A baker," she whispered as the innkeeper scurried from the kitchen and began beating at the flames with a greasy apron. "I want to be a baker."
Karel, looking shaken, took a few coppers from his smock and dropped them beside his plate to pay for their meal. ''I'm glad," he said, standing. "Shall we go see whether we've any work waiting for us today? It's too warm in here."
•
They were only a few doors away from the bakery when Mardis saw her mother and the wizard Thardik a
pproaching from the opposite direction at a fast waddle.
"Wonderful," she muttered. "Close enough to smell the dough rising, and now this."
Karel grasped her elbow. "Maybe we can run inside before they get their hooks into you."
They almost made it. Rashell reached the doorway two steps ahead of them and blocked it with her short, substantial frame.
"What do you think you're doing, child?" she demanded.
"I'm going to work, Mother," Mardis said, thinking that it must be the ten-thousandth time she'd said the words.
"On a Luckday? Don't this pup's parents believe in resting their slaves at the end of the week?"
Mardis glanced sidelong at Karel. "Well, 'pup'?"
"Woof," Karel replied.
Rashell scowled. "You're both terribly funny. Now, as youncan see, Mardis, Thardik has returned from visiting his family in Cabri, and I've persuaded him to give you a lesson. I'll not have you wasting the opportunity."
Thardik, a blotchy-faced man with feathery tufts of white hair sticking up at random over his scalp, cleared his throat nervously. "Well, um, actually," he said, "a lesson wasn't exactly why I c-came looking for Mardis today."
Rashell turned her face toward the sky and clapped her hands to her temples. "Oh, gods, I knew it. My ungrateful daughter has finally alienated her only teacher, her only champion. What did I ever do to deserve this?"
Mardis felt her abdominal muscles contracting into a familiar knot. Sometimes her mother made her so angry that she wanted to burst…
Across the street, a cartload of early apples exploded, shooting geysers of pulp into the air. The vendor pushing the cart stopped short and gaped.
"You're letting her get to you," Karel whispered.
Mardis winced as a blob of applesauce landed on the back of her hand.
"You know what you did, Mother," she said angrily, shaking her hand to dislodge the blob. "You hired Thardik to prolong my birth hours—an act no respectable wizard would have even considered. And every birthday, this sort of thing"—she gestured at the mess across the street—"is the result."
Rashell brought her eyes down and stared at her daughter in horror. "Think before you talk!" she said hoarsely, jerking her head in Karel's direction.
"Mother, Karel's known my birth hours since we first met," Mardis said. "My birth luck is why we met."
Rashell took a step forward and grasped Mardis's shoulders. "What's wrong with you, child? A wizard never, never lets anyone know her birth hours!"
Thardik coughed. "Um, that's t-true, you know…"
"Well, I'm not a wizard," Mardis said, shaking herself free of her mother's grasp.
"Through no fault of mine!" Rashell cried to the sky.
The bakery door opened, and Karel's broad-shouldered father, Delfor, peered out warily.
"I thought I heard someone," he said when he saw Rashell.
"Nobody out here but us pups," Karel said. "Arf."
Delfor shrugged, looking much like his son. "Well, whatever you are, come get to work on a batch of crisp-buns. The Nins are having a reception this evening, and their regular baker's on holiday. If we do well, we may have our pick of wealthy clients. Mardis, I'd like you to make twelve dozen of those Zhir-style sweet rolls you're so good at."
Rashell looked up at Delfor with an expression of righteous indignation. "If you want Zhir rolls, baker, go hire a Zhir to make them. My daughter's Liavekan, and an apprentice wizard." She looked down at Mardis's baggy white Zhir pants, which matched Karel's. "Even if she does insist on dressing like a Gold Harbor prostitute. "
Delfor raised an eyebrow. "Mardis is a good woman, son," he said to Karel in a low voice, "but are you sure you want this granddaughter of the Demon Camel for a mother-in-law?"
Rashell's face grew so red that Mardis was afraid the corpulent woman might suffer the same fate as the apples.
Stepping forward, she grasped her mother's arm and dragged her away from the doorway before Rashell could do more than sputter a few unintelligible curses.
"All right, Mother, all right," Mardis said in as soothing a voice as she could manage. "I'll come with you and take a lesson. For a few hours, anyway." She began pulling Rashell down the street toward their home, with Thardik hurrying on ahead.
"What about the sweet rolls?" Delfor asked.
"I'll only need three hours from dough to glazing," Mardis answered over her shoulder, "so I should return in time. If I don't, Karel can do a passable job."
"Considering what day this is," Karel called, "that might be a better idea anyway."
"Why?" Delfor asked. "What day is it?"
Mardis waved her right arm over her head. "Our betrothal day!"
She was brought to a halt as her mother became a dead weight.
Mardis rolled her eyes. "Help me carry her, Thardik. Make yourself useful."
The wizard waddled back to take Rashell's left arm, and then he and Mardis lugged the moaning woman down the street.
The gods only know how she'll react when I tell her I'm pregnant, too, Mardis thought, and then remembered that she didn't yet know how Karel would react to that, either.
•
Mardis felt as though she'd been carrying her mother for a year by the time they reached Rashell's four-room house on Bregas Street. It wouldn't have been so bad if Rashell had made up her mind to either awaken or stay unconscious, but she had recovered and fainted, recovered and fainted, all the way home. With each recovery, she had given Mardis a pained look before collapsing again.
Rashell stood on her own as soon as they entered the house, which gave Thardik. the opportunity to crumple into a sturdy wooden chair. His face had turned scarlet during the journey. and Mardis found herself thinking that if anyone were likely to really faint, it would he the overweight. puffing wizard.
"I am dizzy with grief," Rashell said dramatically, staggering across the room to the low couch that was her usual refuge during attacks of emotional turbulence.
Mardis leaned against a wall. "It's getting old, Mother," she said. "If I so much as suggest that I might someday move out and do what I like. you have a sudden illness. You might have sense enough not to do it on my hirthday, though—if my wild luck made it real. a healer might not he able to help you."
"As if you would care!" Rashell wailed, sinking down onto the couch. "Besides, I'll never have need of a healer as long as Thardik is my friend."
Thardik. mopping his forehead with a shirtsleeve, wheezed and said. "M-my thanks for your confidence. mistress. May your judgment always be as sound as g-good wood."
"Hah!" Mardis said, trying to sound like Karel.
Thardik's chair crumbled to dust, and the wizard hit the floor with a loud thump.
"There was no need for that. child!" Rashell said. "You apologize immediately. and then produce the coppers to replace that chair, which I've had since before you were born!"
Mardis spread her hands. "Do you think I did that on purpose?"
"You've studied under Thardik for fourteen years. It's well within your skills to do such a thing during your birth hours."
Mardis let her hands drop. "You can't let yourself believe there's something wrong with me, can you? After all, then you'd have to consider the possibility that it was Thardik who did this to me in the first place."
Rashell raised herself on her elbows and glared. "What you're saying is that I did something wrong, when all I wanted was to fulfill your poor dead father's dream of siring a wizard. But do you care about honoring his memory? No!"
"I never even knew him!" Mardis shouted. "And he's not dead at all, or at least he wasn't when I was born—and even if he was, he didn't have any dreams for me! Everyone at the docks says he sailed to Gold Harbor with a dancer from Cheeky's as soon as he found out I was on the way!"
She hated herself as soon as the words were out of her mouth, because she saw the slackening in Rashell's face that she had only seen twice before. The histrionics were over for now, because real pain had set in.<
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"Oh, all right," Mardis said, trying to suppress her guilt and keep her voice defiant. "Let's go to my room and get it over with, wizard. I've got baking to do today."
Grunting with the effort, Thardik stood and began limping across the room.
Mardis turned to accompany him, but couldn't avoid seeing the wetness glistening in Rashell's eyes. For a moment, she almost decided that she would try to become a wizard after all, if only so that she would never have to see it again.
•
"So, great low-budget magician," Mardis said. sitting on her straw pallet. "Shall I levitate a vase and risk flinging the house into the sky? Or shall I learn a spell to boil water, and cook the city in the Cat River?"
Thardik sat down heavily on his accustomed stool in the far corner. "Um, no, my dear, I'm afraid I…I have no n-new spells to teach you."
Mardis crossed her arms tightly. "I wondered when we'd reach the limit of your knowledge, and I can't say I'm sorry it's happened. My birth luck is wilder every year, and I've always thought your labor-prolonging spell had something to do with it."
The wizard cleared his throat. "Well, I, um…you're r-right. I think."
Mardis glared at the pudgy man. "Are you admitting that you did this to me'?"
Thardik was watching her as if afraid she would spring across the room and strangle him. "I've only just f-found out," he said. "Um, that is. I think I have…"
Mardis could feel her temper beginning to surge, and she struggled to suppress it. "How is it," she said slowly, "that a wizard would perform a spell without knowing all its effects?"
Thardik stood and shuffled to the room's only window, where he opened the sash and stood gazing out at the little yard.
"Let me tell the whole story before you judge me," he said, sounding incredibly old. "Wizards are scarce in the village of Cabri, so there isn't much chance for a young person to study the magical arts—particularly if he is of a poor family. So when a wizard from Liavek moved onto our street and offered to teach me…as you can imagine, I saw it as my way to a better life."
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