A College of Magics

by Caroline Stevermer

  “House arrest?” Reed shook his head. “She must have been having far too much fun in Paris. I hear she has been wiring for money at a shocking rate.”

  “If she’s kept out of the way until after Twelfth Night, we don’t need to change the plan,” Jane said.

  “Do you think it safe to assume that house arrest at Sevenfold will keep her out of the way?” Tyrian asked.

  “In a case of Eve-Marie and André Le Nôtre against Menary Paganell,” Jane replied, “I’ll back Eve-Marie and André Le Nôtre every time.”

  “But are we set for Twelfth Night?” Reed asked. “It’s not much of a plan really, is it? A case of swap the lady: keep the other guests watching Jane when they think they’re watching Faris. I’ve arranged the costumes, as instructed. But are we even sure where the rift is yet?”

  Jane chose a parcel from the armful on the table beside her, a cylinder as long as her arm, neatly wrapped in brown paper. “Here’s a little something we might find useful.” Jane undid the wrapping, pushed a lamp aside to make room on the table, and unrolled the cylinder. It was a pictorial map of Aravis, with the castle looming over all. In the decorative border were plans of each level of the castle, rendered in great detail. “I’ve studied the little map that folds out of my Baedeker until I gave myself a squint. This will be much more helpful.”

  Faris stared at the map, then at Jane. “Where did you get that?”

  “This?” Jane smiled apologetically. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to mention, Faris. When he heard I planned to visit Aravis, Uncle Ambrose asked me to look into one or two matters while I was here. To be sure things ran smoothly, he put me in touch with some people in Aravis. The map came from them. They seemed very happy to be of help.”

  Faris nodded slowly. “Ah, yes. The uncle who smuggles tobacco via diplomatic pouch. Uncle Ambrose wouldn’t happen to have anything to do with the diplomatic corps, would he? Or the neatly docketed report on the political climate of Aravill?”

  Jane looked demure.

  “He’s Sir Ambrose Hay, the British ambassador to France,” said Tyrian. At Jane’s startled expression, he added, “I made some inquiries while we were in Paris.”

  Faris’s voice was cold. “Is that why you were so anxious to come home with me?”

  “Oh, don’t be cross. I would have come with you in any event. In fact, I haven’t done a single thing that I wouldn’t have done if Uncle Ambrose didn’t exist. But it does help having friends here.”

  “Just what matters are you looking into for him?”

  “Shene is a deep-water harbor. There isn’t a better place for a fleet to refuel on the entire coast. And since the Paganells took the throne in Aravill, they haven’t been as friendly to us as they are to the Turks and the Persians.”

  “So you’re a spy,” said Reed.

  Jane drew herself up indignantly. “Not at all. I am here to help Faris.” Suddenly her indignation vanished, to be replaced by an expressionless face and an uninflected voice. “Although in the case of a disputed succession, I’ve been told the British government is prepared to be generous to the rightful heir.”

  “Provided the rightful heir is generous to them,” Faris finished. “Oh, Jane.”

  Jane, still expressionless, watched Faris in silence.

  Faris sighed. “You do realize, don’t you, that Shene is no concern of mine? If Galazon had fifty deep-water harbors, the British fleet could sport about in any of them. But Galazon doesn’t. And all I’m concerned with is Galazon.”

  Jane looked relieved. “Oddly enough, I have noticed that. Fond as I am of Uncle Ambrose, the harbor doesn’t matter. The rift does. I’m here to help you if I can. Are you going to look at this map or aren’t you?”

  All four gathered to inspect the map.

  “It’s a copy of a late-eighteenth-century original owned by the British Museum. I wanted to be certain to find a floor plan made well before the rift was created.”

  “Here’s the throne room,” said Faris, after some consideration. “I don’t see anything marked “the warden’s stair.” Are you sure there aren’t more levels than this?”

  “I would have said fewer,” Jane replied, “although I assume some were lost in the rift.”

  “That must be just about where the lions are now,” remarked Reed, tapping a forefinger on the view of the castle.

  “Lions?” Faris turned to him. “There really are lions?”

  “Oh, yes. Guard lions, you might say. Parts of the castle are mouldering away. People would wander off into the older bits and turn their ankles. Guards didn’t do much to solve the problem of stray visitors, so a few years ago, someone had a bright idea. They sent for lion cubs and let them grow up in the dangerous area.”

  “A simple method to keep people away,” Faris said dryly, “yet somehow completely typical of the Paganells. And I thought the lions had to be a flight of Menary’s fancy.”

  “It doesn’t work, though,” Reed continued. “People don’t stay away. They come to look at the lions—from a safe distance.”

  Jane looked up from her scrutiny of the map with such satisfaction that she almost purred. “Your index finger is precisely on the throne room, Reed. How interesting.”

  Reed studied the map more closely. “So it is.”

  Tyrian cleared his throat again. “So Reed and I must crash a fancy dress ball, Jane must pass herself off as Faris, Reed and I must escort Faris to a room that hasn’t existed for sixty years, and we must do all this while coming and going through a pride of lions.”

  Reed looked troubled. “It really isn’t much of a plan, is it?”

  “The lions may complicate things a trifle,” Jane conceded. “I’ve already taken care of the invitations, thanks to Uncle Ambrose’s friends at the British embassy here. It helped to have your authentic invitation to use as a basis for the forgeries.”

  “I still have to find a reason to slip away from the ball once you’ve attended to the lions.”

  Jane smiled serenely. “That should be simple. Surely you may indulge a whim to look at them—from a safe distance.”

  Faris pretended to examine the map. She was far from cheerful about the plan. She had suggested it the day her invitation had arrived. Nothing better had occurred to any of them since. And however faulty a plan it was, it had the merit of speed. The sixth of January was only four days away. If they were not able to carry out the plan, they would simply have to think of another.

  If Jane could control the lions, she still had to pose as Faris. If Jane succeeded, and Faris was free to find her way to the throne room—or to what was left of the throne room—then Faris could worry about what to do with the rift. Jane believed that Faris, as a warden, would know intuitively how to mend the rift. Faris had no confidence in that theory. The fact remained: it was her duty to find the rift, and her duty to close it. If she failed—Faris reminded herself there was a great deal to do, as well as to worry about, before she even had to make the attempt.

  When Faris looked up from her reverie over the map, Tyrian met her eyes. He had been watching her closely and he seemed concerned by what he had seen. “It would be better to find the warden’s stair. That would allow us to come at the rift as Hilarion suggests. The stair may well be on the map, unlabeled.”

  Jane looked haughty. “Search the map for it, by all means. But I think I can manage a few lions.”

  “Vanity?” Faris inquired.

  “Dame Brachet told us we couldn’t reject vanity until we understood it fully. I’ve always understood it fully but I’ve never been able to begin to reject it.”

  “Dame Brachet would shake her head and say, Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. What profit hath a man of all his labor which he taketh under the sun?”

  Jane’s serene smile returned. “Now, just because I am extremely vain, I’ll cap that quotation for you: ‘One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth forever.’ And so, I dare say, vanity abideth too.” />
  At the dinner party that evening, Jane’s words came back to Faris. On the heels of the memory came a sudden image of Hilarion, waiting patiently through the generations in the silence that lay beneath the city of Paris. She stopped eating her caviar. If she failed in her duty, how much longer would he have to wait? Yet if she succeeded, what then?

  With an effort Faris collected herself and returned to the dinner table conversation. The image of Hilarion remained with her all evening.

  Faris dreamed that night, but not of the castle. She was back in the labyrinth at Sevenfold, moving on horseback through a silence as palpable as the mist all around the garden. The privet walls turned and doubled in a pattern that she could never quite recognize. In the dream she knew that the pattern was taking her into the heart of the labyrinth and that she was afraid of what she would find there.

  The last turn came. The pattern ended. Faris found herself in the center of the maze. Menary was not there. Instead, prone in the grass, naked, as he had lain in the Dean’s garden at Greenlaw, lay Tyrian.

  Faris woke.

  As she lay in the silent darkness, panting and sweating, waiting for her heart to stop banging against her ribs, Faris tried to explain the dream to herself. She had dreamed of the labyrinth. That was natural, for she had been there that very morning. She had, all unexpectedly, met Menary there. What was more natural, then, to dream of the last time she’d met Menary in a garden. And so, logically enough, she had dreamed of Tyrian as he looked in that garden.

  Considered rationally, it was only to be expected that she would dream of Tyrian. Faris wiped her forehead with a corner of the sheet. She had not spoken to Tyrian alone since the day of her sleigh ride with Brinker. Since her arrival in Aravis, she had hardly even seen him. The conversation over Jane’s map was the most Faris had of his company since her quarrel with Brinker made her realize how inappropriate her feeling for Tyrian was. Of course she had dreamed of him that night. It was only natural.

  The next day, Faris invited Brinker to breakfast. Across the table, he eyed her with interest and asked, “What fell deed are you planning? This unexpected hospitality must have some dark origin.”

  “Why? You invited me to breakfast.”

  “Not without some trepidation.”

  Faris finished her coffee and braced herself. “The truth is, I wish to offer you an apology.”

  Brinker’s jaw dropped. “I beg your pardon. I cannot have heard you correctly. It sounded almost as if you said—”

  “I thought you’d hired someone to kill me. I was wrong. I’m sorry I suspected you.”

  “Ah, yes. I remember. You mentioned this before. I told you that you were mistaken. I take it you finally believe me. What sort of corroborative evidence have you found?”

  “I’m not at liberty to tell you.”

  “No? What a pity. It must have been impressive. Well, I accept your apology, my dear. I hope you won’t be so quick to question my motives in the future. Though I expect you will.”

  “I expect so, too. It isn’t easy to change the habits of a lifetime.”

  “No. Perhaps not. By the way, I trust that the corroborative evidence means that your life is no longer in danger?”

  “Not at the moment. So far as I know.”

  “Good. It would be a pity if anything happened to you now, you know. That day in the armory gave me quite a start.”

  “You saved my life. I’m grateful.”

  Brinker dismissed her words with an airy wave. “Think nothing of it. In fact, I am thankful to you. It gave me an idea for the Twelfth Night fancy dress ball. I hate masquerades, but I shall be ready for this one. As soon as Agnes reminded me that we would be here for Twelfth Night, I knew just what to have packed.”

  Brinker would not elaborate on his choice of costume, but he made the topic last for the remainder of the meal.

  Jane studied Menary’s horsehair cantrip carefully but was unable to learn any more from it. For safety’s sake, she insisted on destroying it.

  Tyrian found not one unmarked staircase in the map of the castle but fourteen. Further inquiries showed that all were still in use for the mundane tasks of household maintenance. Reed discovered that even before the advent of the lions, few people had ventured willingly into the area between the rift and the habitable part of the castle.

  The lions, fed regularly, were as much decoration as deterrent. The desolation of broken masonry and shattered brick would have been forbidding even without their presence, but a careful climber could have passed unhindered.

  Twelfth Night finally arrived. Brinker and Agnes left for the ball early, cloaked from head to heel to conceal their costumes.

  When Faris emerged from her room, she found the others ready and waiting for her in the suite’s outer chamber. Jane, in a red cloak over an expensively simple red gown, made a Little Red Riding Hood of a certain age, extremely soi-gnée, despite (or perhaps because of) the bonfire-in-winter hat, which she had insisted upon wearing. Her escort, Tyrian, in impeccable evening clothes, wore a full wolf’s head mask which rendered him completely unrecognizable. Reed appeared happiest of all with his costume: satin coat and knee breeches, powdered wig, black tricorne, half mask, and hooded cloak, a perfect replica of an eighteenth-century gentleman incognito, down to the slender rapier that hung at his hip.

  Faris was wearing her Parisian evening gown. It was slenderly cut in the latest mode, of satin that was either black or midnight blue or both at once. Embroidery of gray and white and silver thread meandered up from the hem in a design that might have been peonies and tree branches, or might have been puffs and whorls of smoke. The bodice was simple. The sleeves were full and made of some diaphanous black material which fluttered in an extremely pleasing way.

  With her great height, Faris could not dare any sort of headdress. Instead, her hair was braided and pinned into a coronet beneath a fine black veil that shrouded her from the crown of her head to the heels of her slippers. Despite her finery (or perhaps because of it) Faris was cross.

  “I look as though I’ve wandered in from a touring production of The Magic Flute,” she observed gloomily, scowling into the mirror.

  “You don’t.” Jane’s voice was crisp. She was trying to see past Faris’s shoulder. Her bonfire-in-winter hat was perhaps a trifle crooked. She adjusted hatpins deftly. “You look just as you should.”

  “There will be at least a dozen ladies who will come as Night,” predicted Faris. “Everyone will think I’m one of them. I should wear your hat and go as Sunset instead.”

  “If every lady present came as Night,” said Jane patiently, “you would still be wearing the best gown by far. You are going as Smoke. If your gown doesn’t make that clear enough to satisfy the other guests, you have my permission to light a cigar.”

  “The Queen of Swords.” Reed drew his rapier and offered her the hilt. “Would you care to borrow mine for the evening?”

  Faris smiled at him.

  “Don’t tempt her.” Jane put her basket over her arm. “She’d only find a use for it.”

  “I know. Oh, I know.” Reed smiled back and put the rapier away.

  Tyrian said nothing.

  At the castle, footmen were hard at work managing carriage steps, opening the doors into the forecourt, and handing guests in to the attentions of the masters of ceremonies. Faris and her companions presented their invitations, one genuine and the others forged, and entered. After the perilous climb to the top of the white icing staircase, they were relayed to the grand master of ceremonies, who announced their assumed identities with such calm dignity that his bored indifference was nearly audible. “Smoke. Le Marquis de Carabas. Le Petit Chaperon Rouge. The Wolf.”

  The ballroom, with its chessboard floor of black and white marble, was vast and nearly half full. On the far side of the room, against the hangings of sky blue velvet, an orchestra played. On the right, a few of the gilt chairs were taken already, by guests who obviously believed they needed to husband their st
rength to last out the ball. On the left, champagne was being dispensed. In the center of the room, fifty couples were waltzing, and still the room was not yet overly warm. At the edges, waiters roamed, offering inexhaustible trays of crab puffs and lobster patties, refreshment to the weary.

  Glad of Reed’s satin sleeve to rest her fingertips upon, Faris took her first steps into the ballroom. Jane and Tyrian came after her. Behind them, the grand master of ceremonies continued. “Mary, Queen of Scots. Father Time. Columbine. Harlequin. Night. Lohengrin.”

  Despite the great number of guests, and the extravagance and variety of costumes, Faris and her companions attracted considerable attention. Faris’s costume in particular seemed to occasion remark.

  “The king must be here somewhere,” Jane murmured. “He’ll have to greet his guests.”

  “Charlemagne,” the grand master of ceremonies called.

  “There,” said Faris softly. “St. Francis of Assisi in a velvet cassock. Who’s that talking to him? Alexander the Great?”

  “Julius Caesar, surely,” Jane replied. “I refuse to believe Alexander the Great had such spindly arms.”

  During the round of introductions, in which Reed and Tyrian were passed off as fictitious members of the British consular staff, Faris learned that Jane was right, as usual; it was indeed Julius Caesar.

  The king showed no interest in Faris’s companions, but his reaction to Faris’s costume was markedly hostile until it was explained that she represented Smoke.

  The king’s voice was cold. “Oh, indeed? We thought at first you had chosen to represent a figure from history. Smoke. How original.”