27

MORNING ACCOSTED MY ROOM WITH BRIGHT SUNLIGHT, PULLING me awake earlier than I might have liked. Theodor had stayed up late, deep in discussion with two West Serafan Ainirs concerned with Galatine imports and Theodor’s position on the Open Seas debates. I had been asleep before he’d come back, and even though he slept a few yards and an interior wall away, I felt more lonesome for him than I did when we were half a city apart at home.

I began to dress, choosing another of my cotton ensembles, anticipating a walk to the university library with Jae later that morning. The heat rose quickly, and though my silks were more impressive, they were stifling under the broad midday sun.

“I don’t know how the Serafan women do it, wearing silk all summer here,” I mused.

Onyx was the only one listening. His white whiskers perked when he heard me speak, and he trotted from the open balcony to my feet.

I knelt and scratched between his nicked ears—he had prevailed over a few rows in his day. “Yes, you’re very sweet. Now don’t get fur on my clothes.”

The door between my room and Theodor’s opened a crack. “You mind company?”

“Of course not,” I called back. Theodor looked tired. “Long night of negotiations?”

“Hardly a problem,” he said. “It’s useful having the best supply of grain and a wine industry that fuels the intoxication of most of their parties.” He flopped on my dressing table’s petite bench. “No, it’s this.”

He tossed a letter onto the dressing table, and I picked it up. Viola’s handwriting. “Dated just after we left,” I noted. I scanned the letter, my throat tightening. Riots in Galitha City.

“Then it’s not only in the southern provinces, the port towns.” I recalled the stony faces and red caps, their resolve.

“The elections were canceled. The nobles are fleeing riots in the city in droves.” Theodor paused. “Viola says riots, but what if it’s not just rioting?”

The possibility hung between us, nearly tangible. Open revolution.

“It can’t come to war,” I said, not knowing how else to react. “It can’t.”

“We’re a week behind news. Anything could happen and we’d be quite literally the last to know.”

“You can set it right, as soon as you’re back. And the king! He must have the situation in hand, yes?”

“I dearly hope the king is upholding the law and not acquiescing to the demands of Pommerly and Crestmont and the like. I’m more than a little curious why he hasn’t contacted me about this at all.” Theodor drummed my dressing table with his forefinger, sounding too close to the tattoo of a military drum for my taste. “We could leave,” Theodor said. “I could empower Admiral Merhaven to act on my behalf, and I would trust him to do so. But that would signal serious trouble to the other nations here.”

“Should we?”

“Not yet,” Theodor said with a forced smile. “We will all go on pretending we have things well in hand, get the Open Seas Arrangement inked, and make haste out of here. For now, you’re still dressed like a better-appointed harlot.”

“Very funny,” I said, though the image of myself in the mirror—hair dressed, jewelry in place, but wearing only my stays and a petticoat—was quite similar to a cartoon whore.

“No, if I had my way, you’d be in a dressing gown and I in a banyan, eating dates on your balcony.” He wrapped an arm around my waist. “And we’d have long days with nothing to do but…”

“If only you were a rich noble who never had to work for a living.” I sighed in mock despair.

“If only. Listen, I’ve a long session on the Open Seas issue, but the afternoon is a forum on naval defense and fortification agreements that, frankly, it would be absurd of me to even attend with Admiral Merhaven here. We can’t do anything about the situation back home, and maybe we should go somewhere and clear our heads. What do you say we go to the coast for the afternoon? We could visit the famous bathing beaches of Serafe?”

“Bathing!” I said. “The one thing I didn’t bring any clothes for.”

Theodor laughed. “In Serafe, you don’t need any clothes for bathing.”

“No,” I said, shocked laughter bubbling from my mouth. “This is some elaborate prank—you convince me to take off all my clothes and then I jump into a lagoon full of people in bathing costume.”

“Now, would I do that?”

“Maybe,” I said with a slow smile.

“No, it’s true. But the bathing beaches are private—they build little changing houses out in the water, and you use those. No one can see anything without a spyglass.”

“Oh, lovely thought—some pervert with a glass, just waiting to catch a glimpse.”

“If you don’t want to see the shore…”

“I do!” I said. “And I especially want to get away with you for a while.”

“No bathing, then?” Theodor pulled me onto his knee. “I’m shocked.”

“I have to finish dressing,” I said, planting a kiss on his cheek. “And so do you.”

Viola’s letter still rested by my hair powder. There was no questioning the fact that reform hung by a tenuous thread, and that there was nothing either one of us could do about it.

Jae waited for me in the grand marble hall of the diplomatic compound’s main building, leaning against a fountain. “Looking a vision, Lady Sophie!” he said as he greeted me with a bow. “This weather agrees with you.”

“I don’t mind it, to a point,” I said. “They certainly know how to live alongside the heat, don’t they?” The buildings, the frequent baths, the light meals—all of Serafan culture had adapted itself to its thick weather.

“You ought to come to Tharia. Perhaps someday you will, if Lady Annette finds herself married to an Equatorial man.”

“Indeed,” I replied, the word stale in my mouth. We set out, Jae telling me about the wide loggias and sleeping porches of his home, the goldenfruit tree that grew right against a corner of the house and how he could wake up and pluck ripe fruit without leaving his bedchamber. Our walk wasn’t long. Isildi’s streets were laid out in neat grids and, though I couldn’t read the street names, were neatly and clearly marked. This city had been planned with deliberate pen strokes, not added onto piecemeal like the patchwork that was Galitha City.

“It isn’t every day one has access to that,” I said as we came to the cross street where our wide avenue ended and the university blossomed ahead of us. “I had thought our Public Archive impressive, but this is—something else entirely.”

“It is indeed. Now, forgive my inquisitiveness,” Jae said as he escorted me across a street busy with pushcarts, wagons pulled by oxen and surreys pulled by horses, and occasionally, a palanquin borne on broad shoulders. “But I am unschooled in Galatine culture of… betrothal and marriage arrangements. You and the prince are—betrothed?”

I stepped from the stone-paved street onto the broad walkway that bordered the university. “Yes. We are formally betrothed.” I showed him the slim gold chain around my wrist. “He wears one like it.”

“Ah! The Kvys exchange rings at marriage, the Serafans give the parents gifts to formalize an engagement—this is lovely,” he said, examining the fine links. “My father hoped that accompanying the delegation would provide good education for me in foreign affairs and cultures, but I find I have more questions than anything else.”

“I know the feeling,” I replied as we stepped inside the atrium of the university library.

I had expected a building like the Public Archive in Galitha City, a large structure, to be sure, and filled with shelves of books and manuscripts. This was beyond my imagining. Four three-story structures were joined around a central courtyard by covered pathways.

“Intimidating, no?” Jae said with a laugh. “They’re quite well organized, not to worry.”

“I can believe that,” I said as I followed Jae through the main entrance. Unlike the cold gray stone of the archive at home, the Serafan university library was warm sandstone, with windows, domes, and skylights arranged to allow the most light into the space as possible. The main atrium bustled with students and professors in academic robes. The practice of wearing robes had been abandoned by Galatine academics ages ago, but it continued here. I was sure that the colors, styles, and regalia each person wore had particular significance, but all I could discern easily was that the students wore lighter shades of gray and tan while the professors wore deeper grays and browns.

“I’ll ask about where to find what you’re looking for,” Jae said. “And then I’m going to get someone to show me the map archive.”

I agreed, wandering slowly into the wide expanse, drinking in the excitement of hundreds of students each pursuing some niche of knowledge. Kristos would have loved this place, I thought with a pang of something between regret and hope. He had left Galitha City and me on a one-way passage to Fen, but I could believe that someday he would make his way here.

“Lyat dharit,” someone said behind me, and I turned, surprised to hear the commonplace Pellian greeting—roughly, to your good fortune—here.

“I’m sorry,” I said in Galatine to the Serafan man in storm-cloud gray academic robes. “Y-na Pelli.” I don’t speak Pellian. Something I had repeated dozens of times in the Galitha City Pellian quarter.

“Oh, no, the apology is mine. I had forgotten how many Galatines are of Pellian ancestry. Your forgiveness?”

“None needed,” I replied.

“Your friend—the Equatorial man?—inquired if anyone could guide a young lady here toward some ancient Pellian materials, and I assumed she would be Pellian. It’s my error.”

“He’s already headed toward the maps, then?” I asked, laughing. Jae hadn’t wasted any time.

“Hmm? Oh, I didn’t ask where he was going. I study ancient Pellian and have a free morning so—well, I volunteered immediately,” he said.

“I don’t want to take you from your studies,” I said. “I have—rather complex questions, I’m afraid. And no real idea how to find the answers.”

“And how is it you find yourself here, with questions, but no means of finding answers?”

What a question—its incisiveness nearly took my breath away. Yet it had not been intended or delivered rudely. “I’m here with the summit delegation from Galitha. I am no scholar, I’m afraid.”

“It’s not a problem at all,” he answered. “It’s an honor to assist one of the dignitaries of the summit with whatever may be needed.”

I paused. “I—I don’t want to mislead you,” I cautioned. “This is my own personal business, not a summit matter.”

“That is of no consequence,” he replied with a smile.

“And I’m—I’m not a high-ranking dignitary,” I added.

“It’s a great honor for our city to host the delegation,” he said. “And so it’s an honor for any of us to assist you.” I remembered Aioma’s tent at the Silk Fair, the insistence she had for hospitality, that it would have disgraced her to be refused. I felt as though I was taking advantage of this man’s generosity, but I had been as honest as possible.

“Then I thank you,” I said. “I am Sophie Balstrade. Accompanying the Galatine delegation,” I added as an afterthought, realizing he might expect some sort of title.

“Corvin ad Fira.” He dipped a formal bow. “Fifth-year master understudy.” I had no idea what that meant, so I simply nodded. “My specialty is ancient Pellian, particularly the language development in the century after the colonization of the East Serafan peninsulas.”

“That sounds most impressive,” I said. “I—” I squared my shoulders, deciding that a fair amount of pride in my particular field would earn more respect in this conversation than shame in it. “I am a charm caster. I’m sure you’re familiar with the practice?”

His eyes grew wide. “Yes. The practice of curse casting and its attenuate theories are regularly mentioned in Pellian texts both ancient and modern. It’s honest-faith true, then?”

I smiled at his near-boyish curiosity and what had to have been a slip into a Serafan expression that didn’t translate into Galatine. “Completely true. There’s been very little study done on the theory itself, and I’d like to take advantage of your resources while I am here to make some headway. If there is any compensation I might offer…” I added, unsure how finances and money worked in West Serafe, let alone its university.

“Of course, yes,” he said. “I—my lady, I don’t expect financial compensation for doing the work I am supported by this university to do. But if you would be willing to consider—that is, this may be presumptuous—if I am of assistance to you, would you consider making me a charm?” His tan face took on a reddish hue. “Unless, of course—it may be your trade is one that is not for sale. I apologize.”

“No, no—it’s very much a commodity,” I said, almost laughing, wondering what Corvin would think of my atelier. “And I would be pleased to. My specialty is stitching charms into fabric goods. Let me know what you would like and I’d be pleased to oblige if it’s within my skill.”

“This, I have never heard of in the ancient texts—charmed fabric.” He grinned. “Then let’s go to the Pellian section—it’s in the east building—and find what we can,” he said.

I followed him down the long halls, outdoors through the covered loggia, tiled with green-and-blue mosaics of oceans and shorelines. I had heard that the Serafan shore was one of the most beautiful landscapes in the world, but aside from its frequent depictions in artwork and mosaics and murals lining their interiors, I hadn’t seen it aside from the busy port we arrived in.

“Now,” Corvin said, settling us at a bleached wood table and benches. “Is there something in particular you’re searching for?”

I hesitated. What I really wanted to know—what clawed at me—was why my magic had become muddled, dark refusing to separate from light. Why I couldn’t control what had once flowed like breathing. I couldn’t admit that here. “Theory,” I said carefully. “The casting is done by… well, by harnessing a light… a good… something that exists all around us. Cursing is done by harnessing its opposite. I want to know more about those… elements? Can we call them elements?”

Corvin weighed this question with a tilted head. “Yes, I suppose so. Ah! I know where to begin. The thirati. This sounds related to ancient Pellian religious views on the thirati—the balance of the universe.”

“That sounds promising,” I said, and Corvin hurried to the shelves and returned with several books. I waited patiently, recalling from my time with Nia that Pellian texts were difficult to translate.

“Yes—here’s a diagram,” he said. “Allegorical, of course,” he added, turning the book toward me. A sphere was divided into segments, four large quadrants bisected by arrows. “The thirati is the wholeness of all things, prefaced on the concept that there is nothing now that once wasn’t, and nothing that will be that isn’t now in existence in one form or another.”

“That’s not confusing at all,” I replied blandly.

Corvin laughed. “Yes, well. I believe the most prominent physicists have a term for it—material conservation. Since the beginning of time, since the world came into being, it is finite. We may transform, but we may not create out of thin nothingness.”

“I see,” I said, squinting at the page. “And each of these sections is some form of material?”

“Not quite—they are the thirati that govern material. There is light and there is dark, which you say are familiar from casting, and related to light is mass, and related to dark is void. Running through all of them is energy.”

I traced the image. There were combinations and permutations, surely, from the detail marked out in ink, but the basic concept felt intrinsically correct. No one who had not casted would understand it, I imagined, to the same degree I could—that the light and dark were real things, as real as the mass and void that one could see and feel.

“So these elements. Are they—linked? How do they exist, precisely—floating? Tied to things?”

Corvin pursed his lips. “They simply are, as matter and nothingness are. What I have never quite understood, and perhaps you can enlighten me, is that we can manipulate matter, and we can render matter into another form, and we can harness energy. The light and dark seem to merely float as some sort of balance, but you say you harness these as one does energy.”

“Yes, that’s accurate,” I said. “It’s not like molding clay, it’s more like taking a piece of the light and impressing it upon something.”

“So you do not change the light.”

“No—the light, it simply is. I don’t create it or change it, I just use it. That’s all a charm caster does.”

“And a curse caster, the same with the dark.” He nodded. “Light and dark being, of course, not fully accurate terms.”

“No,” I said quickly. “I—I think I realize that now, that light and dark is how we perceive them, but they aren’t physical light or dark—physical light is energy, correct?” Corvin nodded. “And dark like the dark in a closed barrel is the absence of light, or another way of thinking of void.”

“So the light and dark, if they are thirati, they are their own entities. Not simply other names for the same thing on the sphere.”

I wondered how I would define them, then, light and dark—good and bad? Positive and negative? Luck and misfortune? Each felt insufficient. “How do they relate to one another?” I asked. “Do they play nicely or repel each other?”

Corvin read on, turning pages and finally shaking his head. “We are thinking of this the wrong way. They simply are. They don’t fight one another or supplement one another—the theory keeps coming back to balance.”

“A charm caster, by definition, disrupts balance, doesn’t she? By manipulating the light into something. Is that—is that something the theory does not believe is right to do?”

“It was certainly acceptable to them,” Corvin said, gesturing to three other books on the table. “These are all religious works dealing with the theory and nature of casting. The ancients believed it to be a gift for working in a material, just as metallurgy or spinning or chemistry makes changes to matter.”

I was fascinated, but also disappointed. There was nothing here indicating that something about the thirati itself, about the light I knew so innately or the dark I had come to understand, could be causing the disruption in my ability.

“I have a few ideas of where to look,” Corvin said. “Any other hints?”

“There is one thing.” I hesitated. “I only deal in charms. But I understand that the ancients dealt far more extensively with curses. We shouldn’t limit ourselves to charms.”

He nodded, comprehending, and disappeared for almost an hour. I watched the scholars and examined the mosaics on the walls, and Corvin found me squinting at the styling of an ancient Serafan robe as depicted in stones on one of the walls. “I found a few more books,” he said. “Not all books, exactly—some scrolls. Older than the books,” he said with a smile. “I love the scrolls. With the books, I sometimes forget they were penned centuries ago. But the scrolls—I cannot help but remember when I am unrolling them that someone wrote these words perhaps a thousand years ago.”

“I’ve never seen writing that old,” I admitted.

“And I have never seen the elements of charm and curse. Nor have I the skill to drape fabric into—well, what do you call what you’re wearing?”

“A caraco,” I replied, tracing the pinked trim on the printed cotton jacket, impressed at the insight that had revealed to Corvin so quickly my self-assigned inadequacy at being in the presence of so much knowledge, so much learning that I couldn’t even begin to comprehend.

We spent the next hour poring over scrolls. Most were fascinating explanations of the craft of casting, relating it to the thirati Corvin had explained already, but never considered the light and dark as anything but separately controlled entities.

“This may be less than helpful,” Corvin said, “but it’s a rare narrative account of casting, by an individual caster, and it might be of some personal interest.”

The scroll was simply a ledger of several years of casting work, likely kept, claimed Corvin, for personal education or business reasons. The vast majority of the work done was in curses, but this caster did work in charms, as well. Like modern and ancient casters alike, the caster worked solely in clay tablets, inscribing the curse or charm in wet clay and instructing the patron to wear, hang, or bury the piece depending on the intended result.

“This is the most unusual part of the work,” Corvin said, scanning a section in the middle of the scroll. “Her house burned down, and she lost her daughter in the fire. I am not sure why she includes this here, aside from perhaps an explanation of her losses if she intended to use this as a business ledger.”

He continued reading and translating in summary. “And here she says she is plagued by some difficulty in casting and must shut down for a few months, but she returns—”

“What difficulty?” I jumped at this lead, more loudly than I intended.

Corvin started at my sudden interest. “Perhaps you will follow better than I—she says the curse is unruly and the charm is tainted with dark. It takes too long to produce a single tablet.”

My hands trembled as I tentatively touched the edge of the scroll. This woman—born perhaps a thousand years ago—described exactly what I was fighting. Yet my first assumption, that casting the curse had impacted my abilities, couldn’t be the reason she had encountered the problem. She cast both curses and charms regularly in her work.

I let Corvin continue reading and summarizing for me, but nothing else stood out. She took a short hiatus, returned to her casting, and there was another year’s worth of records before the scroll ended.

“And then what?” I asked. “Is that the end of her career, or her life?”

“Likely just the end of the scroll,” Corvin said. “If she wrote anything else, it does not survive.”

A glimpse into the ancient past, and then the door closed. This nameless woman had left me with something, however.

“She couldn’t cast after a house fire that killed her daughter,” I said. “Does it—does it say anything else, does she believe it was that loss or trauma that caused her to lose her ability to cast?”

Corvin reread the passage and shook his head. “It does not speculate so far. But it is unusual to include a merely personal anecdote in a business account, no?”

“Casting isn’t merely business,” I said, realizing the innate truth to that claim as I said it aloud. Casting wasn’t work like digging a ditch or harvesting turnips. It demanded something of the self; it was deeply personal.

“And here you are!” Jae strode into our corner of the library, seeming to occupy more space than he actually did with his resonant voice and broad grin.

“We were just finishing, I believe,” I said. “Would you give us just a moment?” Jae agreed and waited by a large window, observing a small flock of decorative coronet fowl pecking at the ground in a courtyard outside.

Corvin checked the time on a watch suspended from a belt in the folds of his robe. “Miss Balstrade, I am sorry, but I have a recitation to conduct this afternoon. I must beg your leave.”

“Oh, you’ve been too kind, please, don’t apologize. I’ve taken so much of your time. Your charm—what did you want me to make?”

“I could use some luck,” he said. “My examinations, to advance to the next stage in my career here, are approaching soon and… I tend to get nervous. Anything—a little kerchief I could carry in my pocket.”

“Luck alone?” I asked. “I could infuse it with—well, calm, success, other things besides simply good fortune.”

“You can do that?” His eyes widened. “The ancient scrolls seem to discuss good and back luck almost exclusively. Maybe money, maybe love. Nothing so specific as you describe.”

“If my clients can be believed, then yes—I can bring a bit of nuance into the charm. Perhaps it’s the fine-tuning work of stitching,” I said.

“Perhaps,” he mused. “Yes, anything you think is helpful for combating anxiety when one’s life hangs on a speech and a test.”

“I’ll get started right away,” I promised. “How can I reach you?” I asked. “If we wanted to plan another session, and at least to get your kerchief to you.”

“You may always leave me messages at the university mail service. Send a message to Corvin ad Fira, Mhuir Cai.” He wrote it down. “That’s just Cai Hall—my residence.”

I pocketed the note and waved to Jae, who accompanied me home talking of maps and the architecture of Isildi and skirting, always, his intentions with Annette. I could barely answer him, my thoughts wrapped up in the struggles of a long-dead ancient Pellian woman whose grief at the loss of her family mirrored, perhaps, my own.