8

I HAD LIVED IN THE CITY FOR OVER A DECADE, BUT I HAD NEVER been inside the university grounds. I had no reason to go there. Nothing taught at the university—philosophy, science, theology—interested me, and none of those disciplines took any interest in people like me. Seamstresses apprenticed or took a string of assistant jobs to learn the skills they needed, and charm casters learned from their family—usually their mothers. The former was a respected trade that could bump one into the middle-class ranks of shop owners, the latter an archaic cottage industry typically shunned by all but the Pellian immigrants who bargained for charms alongside the sesame oil, bright spicy peppers, and poppy seeds that flavored their favorite dishes. Universities were for another kind of learning, theories and mathematics and sciences with little practical application that I could imagine.

Kristos should have been a scholar, I admitted, and a more open system might have allowed him. The same eloquence and investment that fed his fiery arguments in the taverns could have made him an excellent lecturer; the single-minded dedication that made him a leader in the League would have served him well in research and scholarship. He would never have made a good business owner, I guessed; he didn’t have the right kind of plodding steadiness.

Kristos tugged my arm, impatient for me to finish my sausage on a stick. It was good, as he had promised, the onion flavors lingering on the sausage’s blistered skin. “I’m trying to enjoy my meal, not wolf it down like a mongrel dog. We don’t have to eat like street urchins, ready to run away from the trash bin when they’re caught.” Anymore, I added silently, thinking of the particularly difficult winter after Mother had died.

“We’ll be late,” he said, glancing at the clock tower in the Stone Castle, just visible over a row of tiled rooftops.

“I wasn’t aware we were on a strict schedule,” I replied, nudging the last of my sausage off the stick.

“He’s lecturing later.”

“Then why—” I let it drop. No matter. At least I would make it back to the shop in time to get some work done if this Professor Venko didn’t intend to keep me all afternoon. “Venko—is he Kvys? That name sounds Kvys.” I didn’t know many people from the country across our northern border—by all accounts their isolated location behind stoic mountain ranges had made for a closed, heavily religious culture. Few Kvys, aside from diplomats from their patrician families and delegates from their country’s complicated trade guilds, lived in Galitha. Common Kvys people didn’t tend to uproot and move to Galitha; there was no Kvys neighborhood in the city like the Pellian quarter. And they were distrustful of, and often outright hostile to, charms.

“I think by parentage, yes. But he’s lived in Galitha City most of his life. He’s not some stodgy Kvys monk. He doesn’t even have an accent,” Kristos added, as though that explained everything. “Are you done? Finally.”

I let him take the lead as we walked through the tall limestone gates of the university. The first university had burned down a century ago, and the new buildings had all been in creamy white limestone. Half the books in the collection were now housed in the archive near Fountain Square at the city’s center, so that a fire couldn’t destroy all of the university’s books ever again.

It may have been born out of disaster, but the university looked like a beautiful white city. The buildings were in a mock-antiquated style in homage to the ancient universities of Serafe, but undersize and planted in neat arrangements by subject area, interspersed with garden beds and manicured trees. Reliefs on the buildings indicated their purpose—a tree of life sprouting with animals of all forms must have been for biology, and I smiled at the beautiful scrollwork at the top of one building with what I recognized were the names of famous philosophers.

“This is us,” Kristos said, steering me away from the broad main avenue into a path of crushed shells leading to another set of buildings. “Humanities,” Kristos explained.

“Well, I didn’t expect the magicians to study at the physics building, I suppose.”

“He’s not a magician,” Kristos sighed. “And he doesn’t study only magic. Officially, he’s an antiquarian.”

“A what?”

“Antiquity. Ancient languages and cultures. Including,” Kristos said, pushing open the gate of a boxwood-ringed garden, “ancient Pellia.”

If I was supposed to be impressed that people studied the storied history of our homeland, I wasn’t. I wasn’t truly Pellian, even if my dark golden skin and tall build marked me as such to Galatines. I had never seen Pellia; I didn’t speak the language. The only thing Pellian about me was charm casting. Which, I figured, explained this professor’s interest in charms—if he studied ancient Pellia, maybe they cropped up as far back as ancient times. In that case, he’d be better off asking an actual Pellian person about them, not me.

“Kristos!” A tall man dressed in an unobtrusive but pristinely tailored black suit rose to greet us. He looked like I’d imagined nobility would when I was a child, distant and imperious, with serious blue eyes and a long, straight nose, and a way of regarding me that made me feel instantly smaller. “This must be your sister. I am Pyord Venko, professor of antiquities. And I have quite an interest in your abilities.”

Kristos was right—no accent, and he looked more Galatine than Kristos or I did, but still had the broad cheekbones and icy pale eyes that Kvyset’s people were known for. Perhaps it was the coldness of his eyes, or the chilly near-winter breeze through the garden, but I shivered in my cloak.

“I’m terribly sorry,” he said, apparently noticing the tremor of my shoulders, “but I’m only a lowly lecturer, and we must share offices. This is the sort of conversation I prefer to keep quiet.”

I pursed my lips. Kristos made it sound as though this man’s interest was professional, but was he about to rope me into a conversation about protests or revolution? Or worse, rope me into doing more than sew a few charmed caps for the cause?

I considered making my excuses then and leaving, but Kristos nudged me forward. “We understand completely. Don’t we, Sophie? You always keep mum about what your clients use your, you know, services for.”

I flushed red and swallowed, now grateful for the privacy of the garden. I glared at him, hoping my message—I’m not a prostitute, idiot—translated.

“And for similar reasons, I don’t discuss this with or in front of my colleagues. At least, not anymore.” He sighed. “I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that charm casting is not a respected art, Miss Balstrade. No offense meant, of course.”

“None taken.” I sat down at his invitation on a bench facing him. “I’ve managed to infuse the practice with a bit more cachet. It’s how I make my living. But I certainly didn’t expect anyone at the university to show an interest.”

“Nor should you. They’re all—they don’t recognize what I’ve discovered. Well, I should rephrase—what I’ve realized Pellian charm casters like you discovered centuries ago.”

“There’s not much to it,” I demurred. He seemed so eager, icy excitement glinting in his eyes. I didn’t want to disappoint him. “It’s just good luck charms, not fairy-tale magic where you can conjure something out of thin air or turn things into gold.”

“Yes, good luck charms. And curses,” he added. He must have seen the look on my face, because he left that subject alone. “I believe there may be more. I believe the ancient Pellians found the beginnings of much more than simple charms.”

“Then why didn’t they develop it?” I asked. Despite myself, I was a little intrigued. “Pellia is—well, you know as well as I do what everyone sees Pellia as. A backwater. If they were hiding some great magical knowledge, it seems they’d be wise to deploy that at some point.”

“Not loyal to the mother country, I see.” He chuckled, and I bristled. “It’s all right—I’m not a loyal Kvys citizen, either. I said they began to develop the study of magic. The cycle of seven-year droughts, followed by the invasion by the Equatorial States—they were one united archipelago then, and they had just discovered black powder—the writings on magic stop after that. They stopped studying it because they were starving. And it hasn’t been developed since.”

“Very interesting,” I said. I wasn’t sure what to make of him.

“I presume you learned from your mother?” he asked abruptly.

“Yes,” I replied. “Most of us do.”

“The sewing, as well? That is, did she teach you to embed charms in sewing?”

“Yes, but I combined it with actual clothing construction on my own. I used to make thread buttons to sell, and I practiced charm casting on them, and one thing led to another. By the time I was apprenticed with a seamstress, I realized I could put a charm into anything I sewed and started making some extra money on the novelty of it.”

“Fascinating,” Professor Venko said, and I knew he didn’t mean my business model. “That indicates a plasticity in the charm-casting skill that I haven’t yet seen in practice. Fascinating. Would you—that is, could you—demonstrate?”

I blushed. Charm casting was something I did in private, not a performance art. I had my housewife in my pocket, stuffed with thread and needles and scissors and my favorite sweet-scented beeswax for waxing the thread. Reluctantly, I pulled it out.

“I don’t have any fabric,” I said, hoping for an out.

“Take this,” he said, pulling a handkerchief from his coat pocket. I hesitated. Kristos nodded, encouraging.

I threaded my needle, hands shaking a little bit. I hated being watched when I sewed; occupying the center of attention was uncomfortable anytime, but especially when I was plying my trade. I tacked the thread with a few anchoring stiches, then began to charm cast, as discreetly as possible, drawing in the subtle glimmer of light from around my hands into a few inches of backstitched good luck. I snipped the end of the thread and handed it back to Professor Venko.

“That’s it?”

“Well, if it were a commission, I’d stitch the whole thing in charmed stitches.”

“No, I meant the process. No chanting, no incantations, just the sewing.”

“Yes. Mother said the chanting can help some casters concentrate, but she thought it was better to learn to work without it. I agree.”

“Fascinating. Just fascinating.”

“If you don’t mind me asking—Kvyset isn’t known for charm casters,” I said, hoping the question wasn’t as rude as it sounded.

He shook his head. “Indeed not. It’s illegal, of course, in Kvyset. The Church forbids its use, and the Church is, quite nearly, the state.” Kristos nodded, more attuned to differences in political systems than I was. I knew that religion in Kvyset was far more influential than in Galitha, where the local parishes, even the great cathedral in Fountain Square, devoted to the vague concept of the Galatine Divine, were more civic centers than powerful seats of religion.

“I came to Galitha City as a youth, with my family. I had never encountered charms before, but one day wandered through the Pellian district and saw the women hawking their wares. As luck would have it, I’d just started studying ancient Pellian and found theoretical treatises on the subject in the ancient works. The theory—it was incredible, truly, that it had not been more fully explored. I believe a more complete understanding of Pellian magical theory would in fact change our conception of their religious and political views.”

“Professor Venko is working on a full translation of Pellian theoretical texts,” Kristos interjected.

“A luxury I am granted here.” He turned to me. “When my family returned to Kvyset, I tried to continue my studies of Pellian, but Kvys universities are truly nothing more than theological seminaries. I was entirely unable to continue and, it might be noted, blacklisted among my peers for my interests.” A shadow crossed his eyes, making him seem suddenly volatile. “Kvyset is academically stagnant,” he added, “so I came here, even if the university system favors the nobility so that I cannot advance beyond my position now. I can’t even petition for entrance for very promising students,” he said with a glance at Kristos.

“Well, even those of us who can’t attend the university are grateful for the open lectures,” Kristos said, ears reddening. “He started them and even got some of his colleagues to give guest lectures, too. Sophie, you should come sometime. Maybe Professor Venko will lecture on charm casting,” he joked.

“A topic which even my most indulgent colleagues would likely find undignified to provide in open lecture to the public.” Venko laughed. “I’m afraid, given our increased investment in the League’s activities, that the open lectures will have to cease for now.”

Kristos nodded. “You’ve done so much already,” he said in a tone that expressed what I gauged as disproportionate gratitude for a few free lectures. He wasn’t, I realized, discussing the lectures any longer, but Venko’s participation in the League.

Venko leaned toward Kristos, adopting a confidential tone. “Many of my colleagues are unduly loyal to the nobility, even those who are not of noble lines themselves. They’ve become … uncomfortable with the number of red caps they see in the audiences. They’ve refused to continue participation, and it’s best if I don’t set myself apart by doing so alone.”

A heavy bell tolled across the university grounds. “I have to be in my lecture hall in fifteen minutes,” he said. “Tell me, Miss Balstrade. You stitched caps for your brother and his comrades, didn’t you?”

“I did,” I replied. I wasn’t sure where he was going. There was an eagerness to his eyes that I didn’t like.

“For which they and I and everyone in this movement are already grateful.” He was pouring it on thick. “Would you ever consider doing a bit more work for us?”

I hesitated. “I told Kristos I would stitch more caps,” I said, noncommittal.

“Very good, yes, and we thank you. I was thinking of something a bit more—direct. And potentially intricate. It would test some of the theories in the ancient Pellian texts.”

“I’m afraid I can’t accommodate any more work at the present,” I replied crisply. I would make charms to protect my brother and his friends. I didn’t want to see them hurt. But I wouldn’t involve myself any further. “I’m sure you can appreciate my position, managing a business that is our family’s primary income.”

Pyord Venko’s eyes narrowed briefly, like a cloud skidding across the sun, but he recovered. “Of course. I understand.” He rose, and bowed in formal farewell. “Kristos, thank you ever so much for allowing me to meet your lovely sister.”

We said our farewells, and Kristos looked faintly conflicted as we passed between the tall white gates. “Is something the matter?” I asked.

“I just—I know you’re busy. And I know this movement doesn’t inspire you the way it does me, though I don’t know why.” He ran his fingers through his thick, dark hair. Pellian hair, black and glossy and full of waves, like mine. “But damn, Sophie. You have a gift. I wish—I just wish you’d use it for the greater good, you know?”

My first impulse was to argue with him, but it wouldn’t help. In the thin golden light of the wintry afternoon, he looked so desperate and earnest, strange and foreign to me, valiant and brave like a hero in a fairy tale. I couldn’t take that away from him. Instead, I slipped my arm through his and leaned my head on his shoulder. “I know, Kristos. I know.”