A College of Magics

by Caroline Stevermer

  Her gloved hands tightened on the reins. “And what do they say of me?”

  “Are we back to that? You are their ruler. Greenlaw gets the blame for the changes they see in you.”

  “Such as?”

  “You have grown. You wear fine clothes. You behave with decorum.” Tyrian cleared his throat and added, “This afternoon will ease many minds.”

  “And what do they say of my companions?”

  “Jane is a lady and they know it. I have no idea what they make of Reed or me. Why do you ask?”

  Faris felt the words would choke her, but she got them out. “You are always with me.”

  “I am.”

  Faris looked at him. “Why?”

  Serenely, Tyrian returned her look. “You know why.”

  His calmness steadied Faris. “I know you promised to go with me to Aravis to repay me for restoring you to your natural shape.”

  Tyrian’s eyes widened. “My natural shape was the least of it.”

  Faris watched the memories of fear and guilt and pain cross Tyrian’s face, and wondered precisely what had passed on that last evening at Greenlaw. Tyrian was looking past her, looking back into that night.

  After a long pause, he continued. “As soon as I gathered some of my wits, I had to thank you. I would have given you anything in return. I think I could have fallen as far under your sway as I had under Menary’s. Instead, you set me free.” He hesitated. “The Dean summoned me and she was able to restore the rest of my scattered wits. Then I understood what I had undertaken when I promised to accompany you.” He smiled. “So you may go to Paris or to Aravis or to the world’s end. I’ll follow.”

  Faris laughed shakily. “Won’t that cause gossip?”

  “Is that why you’re concerned? If you shot your uncle between his beady eyes, the talk below stairs would be that you were just having your little joke. Don’t waste a thought on gossip.”

  “Sound advice.” Faris tucked her chin into her collar and wished for her scarf back. The wind brought tears to her eyes, and she had trouble seeing the road before her. “I will try to take it.”

  By the time they rode into the yard at Galazon Chase, the clouds had closed in completely. The wind had strengthened and gained an edge that promised more snow. At her order, Tyrian left her in the stable yard. Reluctant to return to the house despite the cold, Faris accompanied the horses to the stables. Inside, she sat on an upturned bucket and watched the lads work. She pulled off her gauntlets and kneaded warmth back into her stiff fingers while the fierce color faded from her face.

  Warm and peaceful, with smells of horses and hay and leather that were wonderfully soothing, the stables held a sense of timeless order. The horses in their stalls mulled over their feed tubs, shifted weight occasionally, blew into their water buckets, and drew deep sighing breaths that sounded like contentment. Worked together, these small sounds became no sound at all, merely the still background to a great calm. For the first time since leaving Hilarion’s house, she felt some of the peace she had encountered there.

  Faris took comfort from the silence and succeeded at last in thinking of nothing. She remained there long after the last horse was put away gleaming in its stall. Finally, shivering a little, she rose and left the peace of the stables behind.

  It was only four in the afternoon when Faris had washed and changed and was finally ready to go down for tea, but from Queen Matilda’s window it looked like nine at night.

  The wind sounded as if it was trying to blow half a gale. As it raked snow this way and that around the courtyard, it murmured ominously against the windows. On the keep stairs, the great wind outside had fostered many little winds within, icy drafts that stirred Faris’s skirts as she descended.

  The weather matched Faris’s frame of mind precisely, she decided. It would be far easier to race around the courtyard, rattling all the window panes, than to settle down for a quiet cup of tea as if nothing were troubling her.

  Faris joined Jane, Agnes, and Brinker for tea in the drawing room, glad her cheeks were still scarlet from the cold. It helped to conceal her blush as she greeted Brinker. With irony veiled by courtesy, he showed her to a chair beside the fire, and asked after her health.

  Faris answered politely and returned the inquiry. She looked closely at his eye but could see no sign of her handiwork. “I hope you enjoyed your stroll home this afternoon.”

  Brinker regarded her with genuine amusement. “I did. There is nothing like a brisk walk in the fresh air to clear one’s mind.” He glanced around to be sure Agnes and Jane were listening. “I’ve had an inspiration.”

  “Bread and butter?” Agnes offered a plate.

  Gently, Brinker took the plate away from her. When she glanced at him inquiringly, he repeated, “An inspiration, my dear,” and smiled at her. “We are going to Aravis.”

  Agnes did not smile back. “Don’t tease me about going home, I beg you. I am so ready to leave this frozen place, I would gladly walk twice the distance.”

  “I am quite serious.” Brinker offered Faris bread and butter. “Your credentials should be here any day now. I never felt it right to send you to Aravis unsupervised. While I was—strolling—this afternoon, it came to me that we should accompany you. Prosperian can be presented to her grandfather, too.”

  “Such an honor for her,” murmured Jane into her teacup, as Agnes expressed her rapturous surprise and gratitude.

  Faris demanded, “Who will look after Galazon if we both go?”

  “Galazon will do perfectly well while you’re away,” Agnes said. “It’s cold enough to keep nicely.”

  “Lord Seaforth made a very capable steward while I was in Aravis to sue for my bride’s hand.”

  Faris frowned. “Lord Seaforth. Is he the one who enclosed three hundred acres of river bottom and turned it over to sheep?”

  Brinker looked pained. “He may be. I don’t know his idea of what constitutes good grazing land. But he is trustworthy. The tax money he collects will be turned over in its entirety. Which is more than could be said for most of your acquaintance. Young Woodrowel paid a call here this afternoon. It was a pity you were out.”

  “Warin! Here? Did he say why?”

  “In fact, he did.” Enjoying her impatience, Brinker finished his cup of tea before he continued. “He came to Galazon Ducis to pay his taxes. He said as long as he was so near, he thought he’d stop in on the way home—to see if you had managed to kill me yet, was the way he put it.”

  “I’m sorry to have missed him.”

  “I told him you would be. He wouldn’t stay. I invited him, but he said he had to return home. No doubt he could see his visit was premature. Perhaps he’ll be back.”

  Faris met his eyes and held them. “Perhaps. Warin has moments of rare perception.”

  “I would have said that he had moments of perception rarely,” Agnes observed.

  Before she could stop herself, Faris replied, “You’d be the judge of that, wouldn’t you?” Then, alarmed at her lack of self-control, she retreated behind the barriers of etiquette. As teatime wore on, she put all her trust in civility. Faris practiced every art and grace Dame Brachet had drilled into her. When the meal was over at last, she accepted Jane’s suggestion of a walk in the gallery. She even kept up a lively narrative of the portraits until they were alone at the far end of the long hall. Then Jane seized her wrist.

  “We’re out of earshot now. It’s safe to Tell All. Just what the dickens happened this afternoon?”

  Faris freed her wrist and rubbed it. “Brinker and I had a little argument, that’s all.”

  “That’s not what I heard.”

  “What did you hear?”

  “That Brinker tried to push you out of the sleigh and you strangled him for his pains.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “The maid who brings my hot water.”

  “What’s her name, do you recall?” Faris inquired. “Does she have very blue eyes? That’s Ismena, Gavren’s nie
ce.”

  “Stop that. I won’t be distracted with nieces I want to know what happened.”

  Faris blushed painfully. “He made me angry and I lost my temper. Then I went for a ride to recover my wits. That’s all.”

  “You’d better tell me all about it.”

  Softly, Faris gave Jane an exact account of what she and Brinker had said to one another. When she finished, Jane was frowning. “I suppose you had to clout him one? You couldn’t just stubbornly refuse to catch his meaning?”

  “What meaning?”

  “Yes, like that.”

  Faris blinked. “What are you talking about?”

  Jane studied her for a moment. “I suppose we’d better go back to Queen Matilda’s tomb. I have no desire to be overheard.”

  Faris let Jane lead her back up the drafty staircase to her room. With the door locked and the keyhole stopped, Jane steered Faris into the chair beside the writing desk. While Jane stoked the fire, Faris eyed the neatly docketed report that topped the stack of books on the desk. Apparently Jane had been unpacking. “Brinker said my credentials should be here any day. Will you be ready to leave for Aravis when they arrive? For that matter, how are we ever going to mend the rift if Brinker insists on coming along with us?”

  “Don’t change the subject.” Jane put the poker down and stood with her back to the hearth. Her voice was crisp. “I ought to have asked you this long ago, I suppose, as I am here in loco Decanis. It’s absolutely none of my business, of course, but you know it’s important, or I wouldn’t ask.”

  Faris nodded.

  It was difficult to be certain, for with her back to the fire Jane’s expression was hidden in shadow, but she seemed to be waiting expectantly. After a long pause, she added, “I won’t tell a soul, you know.”

  Faris said, “What are you talking about?” but before she finished speaking, she felt her too ready blush rise up to betray her. Even by firelight, her discomfiture was plain.

  Jane shook her fist at Faris. “You wretch, you knew what I meant all along and you wanted to torture me until I said it aloud. And don’t dare ask Say what aloud? or I shall smite you.”

  “Very well. But don’t try to persuade me that the Dean would ever ask me to explain my—my menial paramour.”

  “She wouldn’t have to ask. She could tell just by looking at you. I can’t.”

  Faris rose and began to pace. “How could you, when I have no idea myself?” She shook her head. “If you’d asked me this morning, I wouldn’t have known what you were talking about. But when he brought me my gloves this afternoon, I finally realized. Oh, God, I’m so thick. And Brinker is quite right. He is my servant. He’s married. Why am I even thinking about this?”

  Jane sat at the writing desk and watched Faris pace restlessly before the fire. “Stop that. I don’t need an answer after all. Your behavior makes it all perfectly clear.” In a murmur, she added, “I wonder if that’s how the Dean does it?”

  “What am I going to do?” Before Jane could reply, Faris lifted her hands in despair and answered her own question. “What am I saying? I know perfectly well what I’m going to do. I’m going to pretend nothing’s changed. I’m going to ignore it. Nothing’s happened. I’m fine. Everything’s fine.”

  “Just what I was going to say.”

  “What am I going to do, Jane?”

  Jane shook her head. “Wait and see.”

  The storm lasted all through the night and well into the next day. When the snow stopped, the wind went from cold to ridiculously cold and stayed there for two days. Once the weather eased, the countryside lay silent in white, colored only with the blue shadows cast by wind-carved snow. For a day longer, the silence held. Then the wind came back, from the south this time, the snow slowly vanished into brown fields, and a richly dressed messenger arrived at the gates of Galazon Chase. The king of Aravill had sent the duchess of Galazon her diplomatic credentials, and a warmly phrased invitation to attend him in Aravis.

  Volume Three

  The Warden of the North

  12

  Aravis

  Faris hated everything about the next five days. She had to pack, which was tedious, and then watch Jane pack, which was worse. She was leaving Galazon, but not Brinker. She was going to Aravis, where Hilarion had sent her, to attempt something she had no idea how to do.

  To reach Aravis, they had to travel by carriage to Wex, then down the Lida by river steamer to Shene, and finally, by carriage again to Aravis. The meals were poor. The beds, when they managed to find a wayside inn that met Brinker’s high standards, were damp. Neither the meals nor the beds mattered much to Faris, but both did to Agnes.

  As they left the high meadows and deep forests of Galazon behind, the horizon dropped and the sky seemed to open and broaden. By Wex, the land was quite flat. Faris felt a sense of foreboding that increased as the journey went on, a mood she could not reason herself out of. Leaving Galazon was bad enough, but leaving it for the monotonous flats of the Lida river valley, was somehow worse.

  The signs of snow vanished as they moved south. The bare trees regained only a little of their golden foliage, but the grass was still green. Faris was troubled by the feeling that they were running most unnaturally backward in time.

  She had managed, with difficulty, to put her anxiety about Tyrian away where it could trouble neither of them. Tyrian, she told herself, had promised to go with her to Aravis so that she could mend the rift. To concern herself with anything beyond that was folly. There was no assurance there would be anything beyond that.

  Tyrian’s duties en route meant she seldom saw him for more than a moment. Faris could not help but feel relieved. She had utter faith in Tyrian’s sense of decorum, but she feared for her own and dreaded that Agnes—or worse, Brinker—might surprise her in some fit of bashfulness.

  Brinker and Agnes were traveling together in the lead carriage. The baby and her attendants were in the second. Jane and Faris were in the third, while the rest of the entourage, including servants and baggage, with Reed and Tyrian watchful over all, brought up the rear.

  Preparations for the journey had kept Faris extremely busy. Despite her best intentions, she had not yet had time to finish Jane’s neatly docketed report. She packed it with her personal effects but did not take time to look at it until the journey was nearly over. Even then, it was in self defense.

  Jane had pored over her Baedeker ceaselessly since entering the carriage for the final stage of the journey. The steamer voyage down the river had reduced Jane to silent misery. Despite the smooth passage they had enjoyed, unusually calm for the season, Jane suffered the violent reaction to travel over water to which most witches of Greenlaw were prone. Since their debarkation at Shene, however, Jane’s spirits had recovered completely.

  Faris, on the other hand, was struggling to conceal her gloom, which deepened with every mile that brought her closer to Aravis. Though the flatness of the landscape was gone, replaced by stony ridges, the sense of exposure remained. In an effort to discourage Jane, she brought forth her report and tried to pretend she could concentrate on it while the carriage swayed along. “Where did you say this report of yours came from?”

  “I didn’t say.” Jane turned a page. “Aravis, the capital of Aravill, and one of the most romantically beautiful cities in Europe, is finely situated on a series of ridges, separated by ravines, south of Shene Inlet, of which charming views are obtained from the higher parts of town.”

  “Riveting, The principal political parties of Aravill are Royalist, Conservative Royalist, Monarchist, and Liberal Radical. The king’s ministers are chosen by a coalition of the first two parties. The latter two parties have formed an uneasy coalition to represent the opposition.” Faris held a page of the report up to the carriage window and squinted at it. “British watermark. Yet you came by it in Paris. Odd.”

  “You’re supposed to read it, not appraise it.”

  “Very well. The Monarchist party, in particular, bears a mislea
ding label, since part of their platform repudiates the house of Paganell and denies its right to rule. By far the newest of the parties, it has been active only in the past four years. The extremist element of the Monarchists hold that reform, by any means necessary, is vital. These extremists, who revel in elaborate passwords and countersigns, may provide a disruptive element in the future. The party anthem, Tom o’Bedlam’s Song, has been outlawed by royal fiat.”

  “How interesting. Allow me to inform you that the population, excluding Shene, is (1908) 350,500. Aravis is the seat of the administrative and judicial authorities of Aravill, and is renowned for its excellent university and schools.”

  “Bilge. Members of the Monarchist party are predominantly young and uneducated. The party leader, Istvan Graelent, is a recent graduate of the University of Aravis. Reliable sources inform us that the popular songs concerned with the modern exploits of Tom o’Bedlam, obviously inspired by the party anthem, refer to this individual. Rumors associating Monarchist party fortunes with Austrian financial interests cannot be confirmed, but neither can they be discounted.” Faris stopped reading aloud, but turned the page, absorbed.

  Relentlessly, Jane continued. “Excursions in the neighborhood of Aravis are extremely beautiful and historically interesting. The royal chateau at Sevenfold is one of the greatest attractions.”

  “Oh, Jane, put it away.”

  “Perhaps no fairer or more harmonious combination of art and nature is to be found among the cities of the world, and even the buildings of little or no beauty in themselves generally blend happily with the surrounding scenery. The stranger is advised to begin his acquaintance with the ‘Modern Athens’ by obtaining a general view of it from the castle or from Artegal Hill.”