A College of Magics

by Caroline Stevermer

  Jane and Tyrian watched Reed go. When he was out of sight, Tyrian held out his hand to Jane. Jane dropped the coins into his palm and they smiled at each other with evil satisfaction.

  Faris took her time about changing clothes. More even than the quantity, the quality of the garments stunned her. She spent many minutes sitting on the hearth, staring into the fire, and considering the alternatives Jane’s taste and industry had provided. Then, with great deliberation, she chose a dress of moss green merino, with a single row of tortoise-shell buttons running from nape to hem. When she pulled it over her head, the soft fabric slid effortlessly into place. Faris straightened, and took a few experimental steps. Cuffs, hem, neckline, all fell into perfect order. As she began the long struggle to fasten the buttons, even those between her shoulder blades, she realized Jane’s guess had been right. Never before in her life had she worn clothing that truly fit her.

  When Faris joined the others in the east drawing room, it was evident they had been waiting for her some time. Jane, in a dress Faris had never seen before, of violet washed silk as delicate as a butterfly’s wing, was chatting animatedly to Brinker. Brinker’s attention seemed to be divided equally between Jane’s conversation and a nurse, who was showing Agnes a well-wrapped bundle of flannel. The bundle moved and Faris realized she was about to meet her cousin Prosperian.

  Brinker looked up as she entered and his dark eyes grew wide. After a moment, he murmured, “You don’t feel the need to carry a gun any longer?”

  “Do you think I can’t defend myself against a baby?” Faris countered, almost absently. She approached the nurse with caution. Nestled within the bundle was a large round baby with large round brown eyes. Faris was surprised and slightly irritated to see that the fuzz on the infant’s head was orange—not much different from her own hair color. While she looked at the baby, the baby looked at her. Faris studied the infant’s moist features until it turned scarlet and burst into furious howls. Agnes made a small gesture and the nurse withdrew with it, headed back to the nursery. When the door shut, the drawing room seemed strangely silent. “Splendid baby.” To her private astonishment, Faris found she meant it.

  Agnes merely gazed at Faris with dislike but Brinker nodded. “She has the family temper.” He smiled at Faris, rare warmth in his expression.

  Faris glanced at Agnes. “Whose family?”

  Agnes ignored her and pulled the bell rope. “I think luncheon is served.”

  At the table, Agnes did not seem inclined to say anything to anyone. Brinker seemed interested only in watching Faris. With the most animation she had shown since Paris, Jane applied herself to sustaining the general conversation. She steadfastly addressed Lord and Lady Brinker by their first names, as they had addressed her since her arrival. She confided to the table at large that she did not find the Chinese room intolerably red. She made observations on the weather, the architecture of Galazon Chase, and the novels of Marie Corelli.

  Faris listened, slightly awed by so much enthusiasm. She knew Jane did not truly believe the novels of Marie Corelli to be satirical social documents. She wondered how genuine the rest of her opinions were. In any case, it seemed certain that furnishing Queen Matilda’s room and the recovery of her luggage had done wonders for Jane’s spirits.

  When he had finished his cutlet, Brinker joined Jane in conversation. Having consulted his copy of Burke’s Peerage, he knew all about Jane’s family. Now he wanted to know all about Jane. Jane humored him briefly, then turned the conversation to the Nallaneens.

  “Faris has tried to explain it to me, but I just don’t seem able to follow. The immediate family is so small, yet whenever she refers to the Nallaneens, it sounds as though she is referring to a tribe. Like Scythians.”

  “Say rather a clan. There is a sense in which everyone born in Galazon is a member of our family. Put quite simply, we are the head of the clan, and all other families merely septs.”

  “Rather like the Scottish tribes of your own country,” said Agnes languidly. “Those who have only a cow or a goat look to those who own many cows and goats as their nobility.”

  Faris tried and failed to muster yesterday’s sense of tranquility. Her usual annoyance with her uncle had returned full strength, with plenty to spare for her aunt. “Not at all like the Scots, for we know our duty. In Scotland, when times were troubled, those who had only a cow or a goat looked to the lords they rented from and their lords turned them out to starve. We must follow a better example than that.”

  “That was a matter of simple economics,” Brinker corrected her gently. “There is no room for a cottage with a single cow where the sheep need to graze.”

  “It was a matter of simple greed.” Faris glared at her uncle.

  “Perhaps it wasn’t a very good analogy,” Jane ventured. “The clans of Scotland are various and quarrelsome. There seems to be only one clan here.”

  Agnes looked bored. “You know best, of course. I am not familiar with either place.”

  “How long has it been since you came here from Aravill?” Jane asked politely.

  “It seems an eternity,” Agnes replied. “Brinker came to Aravis to meet me before my father would consent to the marriage. I often think I ought to have come to Galazon Chase instead. Far more important than beholding one’s suitor is beholding one’s suitor’s home.”

  Faris stared at Agnes, eyes narrowed with annoyance. It was her house, not Brinker’s. Well, it would be a pleasure to send Agnes back to Aravis. She wished Brinker joy of his father-in-law.

  Jane glanced from the silver on the sideboard to the chandeliers overhead, then to the diamond-paned windows and the view of the snowy gardens beyond. “It is a splendid house.”

  Agnes followed Jane’s gaze. “It is a ridiculous climate.” She sighed. “My father meant well. He fancied it was his duty to summon Brinker to me.”

  Jane nodded sympathetically. “I have a father myself. He sometimes has curious ideas about his duty to the family. What is worse, he sometimes has curious ideas about mine.”

  “Ah, yes,” said Brinker, as if he had just remembered something he’d been straining after for a long time, “your duty. Surely this is not a propitious time of year for you to leave your duties at Greenlaw. I understand what brings Faris and her menial here. But what brings you?”

  This rudeness made even Agnes stare. Faris’s jaw dropped slightly. Jane returned Brinker’s challenging gaze with unruffled good humor. “To be perfectly honest?”

  “By all means.”

  Jane lowered her voice. “Bonnie Prince Charlie.” She enjoyed the long moment of baffled silence that followed, then confided, “Once upon a time, we English mustered the common sense to resist putting Bonnie Prince Charlie on the throne. A triumph of logic, but at what cost? We have been sensible ever since.” Brinker attempted to speak but Jane beamed and fluttered her hand to silence him. “I will be honest. We regret Bonnie Prince Charlie. We regret him extremely. And we wish to expiate our common sense. So we look for thrones and people to put on them. Playing king-maker in obscure corners of the world has become an English sport. When the duchess invited me to visit her here, how could I resist? I felt it was my patriotic duty to accept.”

  Brinker looked amused. “You do not expect to do any kingmaking here, I trust?”

  Jane laughed with him. “I have scarcely unpacked. You must allow me more time to study the ground before I surrender my ambition.”

  Plainly troubled, Agnes studied Brinker while she spoke to Jane. “I must remind you that the only available king is my father. He already has a throne. The only available throne.”

  “Then I must find our guest some other diversion.”

  “That shouldn’t be hard,” said Faris. “You’re good at games, aren’t you, Uncle Brinker?”

  “And I’m so easily diverted,” said Jane cheerfully. “I knew I should enjoy myself here.”

  11

  Snow in Season

  “An interesting item,” said Jane, “
and so simple, I cannot tell how the dickens it works.”

  It was long after dinner. Jane and Faris were alone in the library. Faris was trying to discover, through study of her mother’s papers, which of her advisers might still be a) interested in advising a duchess of Galazon and b) alive. Jane was examining the horsehair cantrip she had removed from Haverford’s disguise. Both were tired, yet neither was willing to retire for the evening. The blaze in the fireplace was too good to leave.

  “It’s interesting, isn’t it, that you could see Haverford as he really was, while to Tyrian and me, he portrayed the waiter so convincingly. Why, I wonder.”

  Faris put her work aside. “May I see it?”

  Jane handed the cantrip over. While Faris held it up to inspect it by the firelight, Jane stretched out on the carpet before the hearth, chin propped on the heels of her hands. “It’s a charming little bagatelle. Let’s keep it handy in case we need to disguise Agnes as a human being.”

  “Do you think it might be anything like your veil?”

  “My veil is just a veil. I do the hard part. This is something different. It’s simplicity itself, I think. Only it’s so simple, I can’t make head or tail of it.”

  Faris ran the gleaming black strand through her fingers. “Your veil works on me.” She held the strand up and inspected it minutely. The glossy surface caught the firelight and reflected it subtly, like the colors on a starling’s black feather. “This doesn’t.”

  “Greenlaw magic. You saw a bird when I changed that champagne cork. You saw a hat when I changed the bomb. You saw my old face when I put down my veil.”

  “So this isn’t Greenlaw magic.”

  Jane shook her head.

  Faris handed the strand back to Jane, who put it carefully away. Diffidently, she said, “I was a little tired. And I wasn’t thinking very clearly. But that morning in the Dean’s garden, Tyrian looked like a cat to me. So was that Greenlaw magic?”

  “With Menary, who knows? But after all, it wasn’t a matter of what he looked like. He was a cat.”

  “Yes.” Faris stared into the fire.

  There was a long silence.

  “If he looked like a cat to you, how did you know he was Tyrian?” Jane asked.

  “I knew when I saw his eyes.”

  Jane picked herself up off the carpet and took the wing chair opposite Faris’s. Looking warily down at the oriental rug, she asked, “How did you know there was something curious about this carpet?”

  Faris followed her gaze. “I’m not sure.”

  “You just knew?”

  Faris shook her head. “It changes. Sometimes the pattern looks geometric. Sometimes it looks like a garden or a forest.”

  “How does it look now?”

  “Stair steps. Neat rows of those lozenges that are supposed to look like elephant footprints, only the lozenges are bordered with stair steps.”

  Jane looked relieved. “That’s how it looks to me. Do you see it change? Does it move?”

  “No. I look away, and sometimes when I look back, it’s changed. That’s all.”

  “Well, if you notice that it changes again, tell me, will you?”

  “Of course. It looked like a trellis yesterday.”

  “A trellis. Marvelous.”

  The two of them went back to staring glumly into the fire.

  It snowed all that night and went on snowing all the next day. The day after that, when Brinker persuaded Faris to accompany him the next morning on a long-scheduled visit to the almshouse at Holle, there was enough snow on the ground to require the sleigh. There was room for only two in the sleigh, a fact that Faris found oddly reassuring. She informed her companions of the plan over tea in the library.

  “Bilge,” she said, when they protested. “He’s planned this visit to show the entire countryside that I’m alive and well. He’d hardly plot to kill me during a demonstration of our mutual goodwill.”

  Reed regarded Faris with mild suspicion. “Very well. Suppose that’s why he planned the visit. Why did you have to agree to his plan?”

  “Same reason. To prove that I haven’t killed him. Not so far, anyway.”

  “I think an escort would be a reasonable precaution,” said Tyrian.

  Faris laughed. “To an almshouse and home again? It’s hardly an hour’s drive to Holle.”

  “You believe your security lies in your uncle’s willingness to travel with you alone,” Tyrian stated.

  “As long as there’s no one else around to blame things on, I’m sure Uncle Brinker will be circumspect.”

  “Ah, but what if someone joins you unexpectedly?” Jane inquired. “Suppose he hands you over to some henchman of his—a woodcutter, say, who leads you deep into the forest …”

  “I’ll leave a trail of crumbs.”

  “You generally do,” Jane murmured.

  “Quiet, you. I’m going. I have a few questions to ask Brinker and this will be an opportunity to do it without interruption.”

  Jane began to tick off the questions on her fingers. “Did he hire Copenhagen and the others? Why did he really call you home from Galazon? Are you going to Aravis as an ambassador, or as part of some deeper scheme? Where did this peculiar yet handsome carpet come from? Why has he been taxing the life out of the citizens of Galazon?” She switched hands. “What possessed him to consider marrying Agnes—”

  “I think that’s obvious enough,” Faris replied. “Agnes is first in line for the throne and Prosperian is second, poor little devil.”

  “Ambition is all very well. Imagine spending your life with Agnes. It would be like having Menary for a tutor.” Jane’s brows shot up. “I have just had the most ghastly thought. Imagine if Menary had been better at dissembling her wretched self. What if she’d stayed at Greenlaw to teach? What if she’d become a proctor?” Jane shuddered. “Think of her poor students.”

  “What if she’d become warden of the north?” Faris countered.

  All four of them shuddered, even Tyrian.

  After a thoughtful silence, Jane poured tea. “Upon reflection, I think we were in no danger of that. That isn’t something you become. It’s something you are.”

  “Born to the purple?” Faris inquired bitterly. “It’s something I could have done without.” She sipped her tea and added, “Imagine the next wardens of the west and east and south. Do you suppose they’re waiting impatiently for me to mend the rift so they can get on with replacing the old ones?”

  Jane cleared her throat. “The Dean told me something about that. I gather they have no notion of their impending responsibility. No one knows who they are—unless perhaps Hilarion and the other two wardens do. I have the impression that it will be a bit of a shock to them when the old wardens cross over.”

  “Poor devils,” said Faris, with great feeling.

  “An epiphany,” said Tyrian. “If a responsibility well discharged brings new strength for new duties, surely the wardency must bring responsibility enough to earn a new life. A rebirth.”

  Faris regarded him gravely. “Is that what you believe? Is that why you are so notably devoted to your duties and responsibilities?”

  “A slave of duty,” murmured Jane.

  “Well, no,” Tyrian admitted. “I think in my case it’s mere vanity.”

  The next morning dawned clear and cold. Faris wore her merino dress and enough assorted coats and shawls to stuff a mattress. She carried a fur muff to keep her hands warm and had wrapped a white-work scarf into a turban to protect her head, but Brinker made her take it off.

  “You may have all the carriage rugs you please,” he informed her, tucking one neatly over her knees, “but you must not cover your head. How is anyone to recognize you without seeing your red hair?”

  Faris unwrapped the scarf and tied it around her neck. “Fair enough. Let’s go.”

  With a flourish of Brinker’s whip, the sleigh set off, drawn by a matched pair of bays. They left the gatehouse behind and set off at a swift trot along the Alewash road. Brinke
r drove well, though the pace he set was a trifle fast for the condition of the track. Faris leaned back comfortably in the deep seat.

  The sky was a light steely blue. It was still early enough that the sun cast long shadows, slanting pale blue on white. The sleigh’s runners made a faint singing sound across the snow, and the bays’ harness jangled incessantly. The wind of their passage was chill and clean. Faris smiled, and began to unpin her hair.

  Brinker glanced at her, a little alarmed. “What are you doing?”

  Faris slid the pins in her pocket as her hair came down in an unruly coil. She shook her head and felt the wind lift her hair like a banner. “My ears got cold,” she said.

  Brinker handed her his top hat. “Here, put this on.”

  Faris laughed and shook her head. “Thank you, no. I prefer it this way. And so will anyone trying to identify me at a distance.” She considered adding, Anyone with a loaded gun, for example, but held her peace. Plenty of time for interrogations and accusations later.

  The first houses of Galazon Ducis appeared ahead. To an unpracticed eye, their passage attracted no attention. The few people they saw as they drove through the village carried on with their business without interruption. The only sign of recognition came from the blacksmith, who looked up from his forge just long enough to lift a hand in casual greeting.

  Faris smiled and waved. The blacksmith grinned back and returned to his work. Faris clasped her hands inside the muff. The sleigh swept on. Brinker cracked his whip in the air and brought the tip of the lash expertly back.

  “That went rather well, I thought,” said Brinker, when the last cottage of Galazon Ducis was out of sight.

  “Very well,” agreed Faris. For theirs were not unpracticed eyes. They had seen the curtains that stirred as they passed, the heads that turned, the necks that craned. That lifted hand had been the equivalent of an ovation.

  The rest of the villages they passed were the same. The almshouse was more so. The folk Faris spoke to, as she took the midday meal with them, seemed more concerned to point out to Faris her poor taste in leaving Galazon, even for a few years, than to suggest any good deeds she might do for them.