by Juliet Kemp
k k
“I saw your brother earlier,” Reb said.
The two of them were lying on Reb’s bed, legs entangled, quilt thrown to one side for now. The door through to the front room stood very slightly ajar, and through it, via the street window, came the faint noises of Marek in the evening; passer-by footsteps, the rumble of voices from the pub on the corner of the street, someone selling pastries.
Reb was lying on her side, facing Marcia, a little sweat glistening on her dark skin where the light fell on it. Her curls glowed in a shaft of sunset light.
“What, Cato was out and about?” Marcia asked, surprised. Cato tended to stay close to home, and his and Reb’s taste in pubs hardly coincided.
“I went to his room,” Reb said. “After he declined to come to mine.” She grimaced. “Well, he didn’t so much decline as not show up.”
“You can’t have been surprised,” Marcia said. She had difficulty envisaging Cato sitting in Reb’s neat, if down-at-heel, front room.
Reb scowled. “Pretty rude not to reply at all.”
“You can’t have been surprised,” Marcia said again. “So you went to him? What on earth for?” She sat up a little. “Is there a problem? Is Beckett all right?” Surely Reb would have said something before this.
“Beckett’s fine,” Reb said. She rolled over onto her back and stared up at the ceiling. “We need to rebuild the Group.”
“The Group?”
“Looks after sorcery in Marek,” Reb said. “Keeps an eye on people, and magic. When Zareth and I…” She glanced over at Marcia, saw something on Marcia’s face, and stopped. “Well. That time. We were acting as part of the Group.”
Marcia had been a teenager back then, making damn stupid decisions, and she didn’t really care to think about it. “Right,” she said.
“But it hasn’t existed since the plague,” Reb said. “If it had, I’d have known about Urso, and maybe…” She scowled up at the ceiling. “Well. Maybe, maybe not. But I can’t keep letting things slide.”
Marcia slid herself under Reb’s arm, which tightened around her.
“So what’s that got to do with Cato?”
“I can’t do it on my own,” Reb said. “Which means…”
“He’s the only other option,” Marcia said, understanding dawning. “How did that go, then?”
“Badly. Until Beckett showed up and threatened him,” Reb said. “Which I wasn’t all that keen about either, to be honest.”
“But he’s agreed?” Marcia said, incredulous.
“Reluctantly,” Reb said. “And to a radically more limited version than I had in mind. Major disasters and ensuring we know who’s performing sorcery within Marek, that’s all. No oversight, no centralised apprenticeship arrangements…” Her nose was wrinkled.
“So the Group used to act a bit like a Guild?” Marcia said.
“I suppose so. It seems – safer that way. Ensuring a basic standard.”
“Cato didn’t do an apprenticeship,” Marcia said.
“Which is part of why he’s against it, I assume,” Reb said. “I remember it well. He did it all himself, against the Group’s advice, and then hassled us into accepting that he was a competent practising sorcerer.”
“Which he is,” Marcia said, defending him automatically.
“Which he was and is,” Reb agreed. “But he created an awful lot of grief for everyone else in getting to that point.”
“But if he did it, why shouldn’t other people?” Marcia asked.
“Cato was both competent and lucky,” Reb said. “There’s a lot of things you can screw up. Admittedly, a lot of the time that solves the problem by removing the individual, one way or another, but… there’s the Ursos of this world, too.”
“Would an apprenticeship have meant that didn’t happen?”
“No,” Reb admitted, after a moment. “Probably not. It would at most have meant that someone was aware he was out there, and if you know a sorcerer is out there, then you can keep an eye on them, but then Cato doesn’t want us to do that either, because he thinks it’s an untoward interference with independent individuals, or something like that… I don’t know. Maybe I’m wrong. I’d just prefer to deal with things before they become disasters.”
Marcia kissed Reb’s shoulder. “Maybe the two of you will work it out.”
“Or maybe Beckett will feed us information,” Reb said. “I mean, they’re the one best placed to know what magic is going on in Marek, for certain, but their view of these things is a bit odd. And I didn’t like it when they threatened to cut Cato’s magic off.”
Marcia’s eyes widened. “Really?”
“Yes. I don’t think that was appropriate. Even just as a threat.” Reb chewed at a thumbnail. “So perhaps the Group needs to consider what our interactions with Beckett should be. Which is tough given that Beckett, when it comes down to it, has all the power.” She sighed. “And then, after all of that, and Cato cutting up about apprentices – I assumed he was just making a point. But then I found out, this afternoon when I got home, that he’s taken Jonas as an apprentice.”
“Jonas? But he’s…”
“Not magical? Salinas? All of the above?” Reb was scowling again. “Well, he’s Salinas, right enough, but apparently he is magical as hell. And I didn’t notice that either.”
“He’s Salinas,” Marcia said, reasonably. “He wasn’t exactly waving it around.”
“And I wasn’t looking. Which is part of the point.”
“How did you find out?” Marcia asked, trying to move Reb away from more self-recrimination. She knew her lover felt badly about the last two years; but it didn’t seem helpful to keep going over it.
“Did a spell to look for potential magic-users,” Reb said. “Found a few. Including one coming straight past my door, which turned out to be our Jonas.”
“And he’s apprenticed to Cato?”
“I tried to convince him it was a bad idea,” Reb said.
“Cato’s a decent sorcerer,” Marcia said automatically.
Reb sat up a bit. “Fine, but do you think he should be supporting brand new sorcerers? Really?”
Marcia didn’t say anything. She couldn’t bring herself either to agree or to disagree.
“Anyway,” Reb flopped back down. “He says he’s happy enough with Cato. He – never mind. It was a bit of a rough day, that’s all. What about you? What have you been up to?”
This was an ideal opportunity to introduce the idea of sorcerer representation on the Council – and this Group might be the right way to do it – except that Marcia felt hugely uncomfortable about it.
“Talking to the Teren Lord Lieutenant,” she said, instead, putting the moment off. “Who was interested in Marek magic. My mother was not amused. I’ve agreed to talk to her tomorrow.”
Reb frowned, evidently forgetting her own problems. “Wonder what she’s after?”
Marcia shrugged. “Who knows? It sounds like she was interested in the differences between Marek and Teren magic.”
“Well,” Reb said. She looked away. “There are indeed differences, right enough.”
Marcia had thought of asking Reb if she knew more about Teren magic, but something in Reb’s voice dissuaded her.
“Hopefully the basics will satisfy her curiosity.” She paused, then made herself go on. “And I was talking to Nisha, about reforming the Council. She might have some ideas. We’re going to talk some more tomorrow.”
Reb nodded, tension seeping out of her shoulders. “Right. Good luck.”
“I thought,” Marcia said, slowly. “I thought, if I’m trying to reform the Council anyway, give the Guilds more voice, I thought… maybe the sorcerers should have a voice, too.”
Reb sat all the way up and stared at Marcia as if she’d grown a second head. “The sorcerers? Have you lost your mind? You know how the Hill feels about us.”
“Yes, but, that’s a problem, right? The Hill ignores magic – like my mother today, with Selene, that
was exactly the issue, she just doesn’t want to think about it – but magic is part of Marek, and Beckett…” Marcia ran out of words.
Reb was shaking her head, firmly. “We are perfectly fine without representation. As if we need representation. We’ve got magic, you know? We’ve got Beckett.” She snorted. “If you want to give people representation, try looking to my neighbours. Try looking to the folks out in the streets south of the Square. Never mind your Houses and Guilds and certainly never mind Cato and me.”
“Nisha said that too,” Marcia said.
Reb’s eyebrows went up. “She did, did she?”
“I don’t think she was serious,” Marcia said. “But you said, about the Group…”
“The Group doesn’t want anything to do with city governance,” Reb said. “And Beckett can’t involve themself with politics, as well you know.”
“Not using magic in Council, of course not,” Marcia said. “But…”
“But nothing,” Reb said. “Thanks and all that, but no.”
It hurt more than Marcia would have expected. Of course Reb was entitled to decide what was best for her, and for Marek’s sorcerers, but…
“Shouldn’t you ask Cato?” she said. “Since you just said, you made him agree to join this Group of yours.” Her tone was spikier than she meant it to be.
Reb’s eyes narrowed just a little. “I suppose I should, yes,” she said, and she in turn sounded borderline grudging.
Marcia shouldn’t have said anything. Cato wouldn’t want to be involved either, unless he decided to take the opposite view from Reb out of sheer contrariness, which was entirely possible.
“But I doubt he’ll say anything different,” Reb said. “I’ll let you know if he does.”
Marcia tried not to hear that as dismissive, patronising; and didn’t quite succeed.
“Well,” she said. “I’d better be going.”
They both knew she couldn’t stay overnight. It still felt like running away, even as Reb embraced her and they kissed one another goodbye.
k k
Insomnia wasn’t a problem Reb usually had. But after Marcia left, sleep was unusually elusive. Things kept circling around her mind: Marcia and her bizarre suggestions about the Council; Marcia and what the hell Reb was doing being involved with her; Cato and Jonas; Beckett’s insistence that Reb herself get an apprentice; the Group.
The Group had existed again for barely a day and already Cato was keeping things from her. Had been, even as they were talking about it. Hadn’t they explicitly agreed that the Group should know who was performing magic in Marek? And yet Cato was teaching Jonas and hadn’t bothered to tell her.
She was grinding her teeth. She deliberately relaxed her jaw muscles and took a couple of long breaths.
She’d have to talk to Cato about it. Sooner or later. For a moment she toyed with the idea of getting up now and going over there – Cato would doubtless be awake – but she was angry, and tired, and it wouldn’t go well. She didn’t need Cato to know how wound up she was. She needed to retain some kind of distance, or dignity, or something…
Superiority was what she wanted to retain, really, wasn’t it? She laughed shortly at herself. The Group couldn’t work that way. They had to be able to work together, if they were going to manage this at all. And Cato was as good a sorcerer as her. It was just that he did what he pleased, took clients that Reb wouldn’t touch with a bargepole, and did absolutely nothing that didn’t benefit him personally in some way. Hell, he’d only agreed to be part of the Group after Beckett had threatened him.
Which was part of her concern with Jonas. What was Cato’s angle? What was he getting from this? And did Jonas know? Reb didn’t believe for a second that Cato was apprenticing Jonas out of the goodness of his heart; but Jonas evidently didn’t want to hear any warning. Which, when it came right down to it, meant that there was sod all she could do about it.
She turned over in bed and punched her pillow with a grunt of annoyance. Bloody Cato. She would have to mention it, at some point, but she was damned if she was going to go over there just to argue with him about it. It wasn’t that important. It was just… annoying. Infuriating. And if she had to work directly with Cato for the next however-many years, this was hardly going to be the first infuriating thing she had to deal with. Bloody Cato. Bloody Beckett. Maybe she should just have resigned from magic after all.
As if she could. She’d considered it, a few times, in the aftermath of the plague. She’d certainly let herself retreat from anything at all difficult. But she couldn’t possibly give up magic. It was part of her, all the way down to bone. That was, after all, why she’d come to Marek in the first place.
Marek, city of magic – apart from up on Marekhill, where they all pretended it didn’t exist. The notable exceptions being Marcia, and the wretched Daril b’Leandra. Leandra-Heir now, and that left a sour taste in Reb’s mouth. She understood why Marcia had done what she had, but… b’Leandra became Leandra-Heir; Urso, b’Leandra’s distant relative, got disowned and shipped out of the city in a hurry rather than tried like he should have been; where was the justice in any of it?
Beckett had been returned to their place as cityangel. Marek’s magic had been saved. The Council hadn’t toppled. How much of that was justice, either? The first parts, yes. The Council… well. Reb was hardly a radical, but you couldn’t live over this side of the city and care all that much about the Council and their preoccupations.
What was Marcia thinking, suggesting that sorcerers could be part of that? It was only ten years since the Guilds had won their Council seats, and everyone knew the Guilds hadn’t got as much out of that deal as they’d expected. The Houses always would close ranks, if it came right down to it. Witness Marcia and b’Leandra.
That was unfair. Marcia was doing what she could, even if Reb doubted she’d get far.
Reb turned onto her back and grimaced up at the ceiling. The other thing about sorcery and Marekhill, the thing neither she nor Marcia were talking about, was that it meant that the two of them could never really go anywhere. Not that Reb wanted to get ahead of herself. They’d been seeing each other barely a couple of months. But she couldn’t ignore the fact that Marcia, Fereno-Heir, couldn’t be openly involved with a sorcerer. And they might not have talked about it, but both of them knew it.
So maybe that was what Marcia was thinking about. A future that could regularise their relationship – and Reb had thrown it straight back at her. But it was impossible, whatever Marcia might optimistically think. Sorcerers and the Hill didn’t mix. That was all there was to it.
Sorcerers, the Hill, Cato, the Group…
It was a while before Reb finally slept.
SIX
House Berenaz was on Second Street, a couple of Houses along from the river end of the street. House Fereno sat at the river end of First Street, just before the road turned back on itself and became Second Street. A couple of hundred yards, at most; close enough that, especially for an informal meeting, Marcia was happy to walk, even if her mother would doubtless have taken the litter.
The street was relatively empty. Heads and Heirs might be up but were likely working; lesser House members tended to rise late and go out even later; and it was after early morning deliveries. In any case, messengers, porters, and tradespeople were strongly encouraged to come up via the alleys between the Houses, rather than clutter up the main streets.
House Berenaz was in a more modern style than most. The old building had burnt down back when Madeleine was a child, and Berenaz-Head of the time had taken the opportunity, not to put too fine a point on it, to show off. Marek wasn’t well-provided with local building material in any case, so stone had to be shipped in; but cut marble from the quarries out near the Crescent cities, Marcia felt, might be imposing but was also somewhat ostentatious.
It was Piath, Berenaz-Heir that Marcia was due to meet this morning, hoping to discuss the Guilds with them. Despite what Madeleine had said, Marcia didn’t think
she needed to take things as slowly as all that; and she was less sanguine than Madeleine about whether the Guilds would sit still and wait for the Houses to come around. She had the itching feeling in her toes that something was coming, something big building up, and she didn’t want to wait and be caught up in it.
Piath was some five years Marcia’s senior, known as a quiet, studious type who was good with an account-book. Piath was rarely seen in Council, but House Berenaz had been doing very well of late, partly through some complicated trading which no one else, Marcia included, quite understood. Some aspects of it didn’t seem even to be trading, not directly, but neither was it insurance as offered by the Crescent Alliance banks. Marcia had been wondering whether she should investigate. Though if it needed Piath’s mathematical skills, she might not get very far.
In any case, although Piath wasn’t a particular friend of hers, she got on well enough with them. Piath seemed like the sort of practical type to understand the value of working more closely with the Guilds, and building better relationships.
Her optimism sputtered out somewhere in the first few minutes of the meeting.
“Mm,” Piath said. They wore their hair short, and were fiddling with a set of twist-beads as they listened to Marcia carefully outlining her wish – very lightly expressed – for the Houses to work more closely with the Guilds, and her wish to deal with the concerns the Guilds had begun to express more loudly. “Mm. I do see what you’re saying. But – the Houses have been running Marek trading since the city was founded. Of course we need the Guilds. Of course we work with them. But… they simply do not have the experience that we do, in,” they gestured with the beads, “pulling the entirety of the system together.”
“I’m not suggesting that the Guilds should have more of a say than the Houses,” Marcia said. “Merely that perhaps their inclusion in the Council has not gone far enough; that the Houses are perhaps too willing to ignore them.”
“Well, well, only when that is appropriate,” Piath said. “And I cannot think of an occasion when I would have disagreed with my Head on any matter in particular. The Guilds can, I fear, be short-sighted. Seeking their own individual profit rather than what is best for Marek as a whole.” They nodded sagely, frowning.