29

WE ARRIVED BACK WITH A SCANT QUARTER HOUR TO SPARE BEFORE dinner. It was enough time for Theodor to put on a fresh neckcloth and comb his hair, making himself, almost by magic, presentable enough for the dinner still wearing his plain dove-gray suit. The fine worsted wool had survived the misadventure with barely a wrinkle. I, however, would never have enough time to change from my rumpled cotton caraco into formal silk and brush all the sand out of my hair, let alone powder and dress it, so Theodor went on without me.

I had food brought to the room, and indulged in a bath in my sunken tub, and then lay barely dressed on the bed with the refreshing breeze from the open balcony drying my hair. Onyx paced the bed, begging ear scratches and chin rubs, then flopped on his side and fell asleep.

When morning sunlight pierced the gauzy curtains by the balcony, I realized that I had fallen fast asleep, too. My legs were sore—city life had meant plenty of running errands on foot but little overland hiking—and my feet were rubbed raw in a few spots where I hadn’t adequately cleaned off the sand before putting my stockings and shoes on. I rose, stiff, and padded to the door between my room and Theodor’s. I rapped lightly, and it swung open.

“I didn’t want to wake you,” he said, striding into my room. He looked as though he hadn’t slept at all, and given that he hadn’t changed out of the clothes he had been wearing yesterday, I presumed he hadn’t. His haggard shoulders slumped. “I saw something last night at the dinner.”

He was harried, haunted as though he had seen a ghoul or a ghost. “Saw something?”

“Charm casting.”

I sank onto the bed. “Casting?”

“With music. Like mine.” He ran a hand through disheveled hair, his neat queue abandoned. “There were musicians playing during the dinner. When the Serafan delegate began to speak on their proposal for the Open Seas Arrangement, I expected them to stop. But they didn’t, they kept playing. I started to feel strange, light, as though I’d had too much wine. The delegate kept talking, and I thought all of his ideas sounded wonderful.” He paused, looking right past me, as though seeing the whole scene again. “Then I saw it, golden threads snaking around the room, licking at all of us, binding us together…”

I realized I had the coverlet clenched in my hand. “No one else would have seen,” I whispered. “It’s not you they wanted to prevent from being at the dinner last night!”

“You’re right,” he said. “It was you. They know you’re a charm caster, you’d be able to see it…” He broke off, disgusted. “At any rate, the delegate called for a short vote, right there. Not entirely outside protocol, but unusual. I had the presence of mind to move for a stay on it, but—by the divine, Sophie, they could have coerced the whole summit into the deal.”

“Would it have worked?” I thought of the ballad seller I had encountered in Galitha City, her untrained casting prompting me to fish a coin from my pocket, and of Theodor’s casting, which I had easily bent to my designs, yet neither was schooled in whatever art of coercive casting was at play here.

“I’m not sure. I don’t know how long it lasted, I was so shocked at the whole thing. And the delegate looked shocked, too, that I moved for a stay. I suppose the other delegates’ reflexive caution outweighed whatever charms were used and they voted with me.”

“Maybe they’re not very strong charm casters.”

“Or maybe they didn’t use very strong charms.” Theodor leaned, heavy, on the bedpost. “It doesn’t really matter. This is… this is beyond the pale. It can’t go on.”

“What do you propose to do?”

His lips narrowed into a line. “I suppose I can’t go about hurling accusations of magic that no one else can see, can I?” I shook my head. We hadn’t even told anyone else that Theodor could cast. “And I certainly can’t ignore my duties here to investigate, looking for magic in places I’m not supposed to be.”

“No, you can’t.” Our position here was tenuous enough, with a new king on the throne in Galitha and unrest threatening disruption of trade and alliances. The rest of the delegates didn’t, presumably, even know how badly things were deteriorating in Galitha. “But perhaps I can.”

I dressed as quickly as I could, forgoing dressing my hair and hiding it under a large cap. When Theodor left for a renewed discussion of the Open Seas Arrangement, I hurried toward the common rooms of the compound, the library and game room and reception lounge with its perpetually refilled tables of fruits and candied nuts. Jae stood next to a samovar of tea, chatting amiably with Duana and an East Serafan gentleman. I waffled next to a table of tiny pastries, unsure how to interrupt, how to ask him to come with me to the university. Unsure of everything.

“Lady Sophie,” he said. “I couldn’t help but notice you, looking like the cat who ate the prize hamster.” He mistook my breathless look for confusion at his expression. “We raise ornamental hamsters in Tharia. For fun?”

“Of course.” I bit back laughter—of all the strange hobbies the Galatine nobility indulged in, fancy hamsters was something I’d not encountered. “I—I don’t want to impose but, well, if you are not tied up, could I ask you to come to the library with me?”

“The university?” He grinned. “Of course! I’m free all day. And I wanted another look at those maps, anyway.”

As we left the compound, Jae asked, “And what is your interest at the library today?”

I blanched, hiding my face under the brim of my hat. “It’s such an impressive collection, I simply wanted to use it as much as I can, while I’m here,” I said. It wasn’t exactly a lie.

Still, I didn’t want to elaborate, so I changed the subject. “Did you and Annette enjoy the garden tour the other day?”

He grinned. “The tame deer were something to see,” he said. “They eat right from your hand, imagine! And of course Lady Annette was a lovely companion.” My smile grew strained as he continued to extol her virtuous features, but Jae didn’t notice.

When we arrived at the library, he peeled away and I began looking for Corvin, chiding myself for the fool’s hope that he would be waiting as though expecting me. Scholars in their variegated shades of gray moved easily here, homing in on shelves and stacks of books, passing one another with rote greeting, gathering in clutches to compare work or debate. I watched for a few minutes, absorbed by the notion that a whole group of people, hundreds of them, could be as fulfilled by words and ideas as I was by fabric and thread.

“Miss Balstrade! I had not expected you today. Did I forget an appointment?”

I turned, finding, to my surprise and relief, Corvin. “No, I hadn’t—no.” I forced a smile. “I had hoped I might run into you and we might arrange an appointment.” Or, I wished fervently, that he might have time to help me now.

“Ah, of course, yes.” He fidgeted with the hem of his robe’s voluminous sleeve. “I would be pleased to work with you right now, if you will only excuse me to rearrange another matter.”

“No, I couldn’t dream of interrupting your plans!”

“It is nothing, no. A… personal favor I can complete anytime. Do excuse me?” He almost ran away, leaving me to wonder what pressing matter I was pulling him away from. Who was I to command such attention—did Corvin think I was a higher-ranking Galatine than I really was? Or perhaps, I thought with sobering realization, I was regarded as high-ranking. I was going to have to adjust to an entirely new set of expectations, especially when it came to inconveniencing other people. No one would think of denying a favor to a princess.

He returned moments later, looking calmer. “Now then. You have the appearance of someone who may have some pressing matter to consider. Shall we sit down and begin?” He led me to the Pellian building, to the same sunny corner we had used on my previous visit. “One of the benefits of my rank in the system,” he said with a smile, “is that I am permitted a cart to store my books.” The cart still held the scrolls we had used before, along with a new pile of volumes.

“That’s strange,” murmured Corvin as he lifted a book. “I had these in order and—well, someone must have rifled through them. Curious initiates, no doubt,” he said, but his smile seemed a bit forced. Someone meddling with his books—especially priceless ancient scrolls—was sure to annoy him as much as having someone paw my best silks would aggravate me. “Now. What did you wish to investigate?”

I hadn’t considered how to frame this particular research topic. I was sure that the Serafan casting was a secret, and one that I couldn’t risk myself, Theodor, or even Corvin by divulging. I took a breath, weighing carefully what to say. “There is temporary casting. Through music. At least, I know for certain it can be done with music…” I was rambling, realizing as I spoke how little I knew. “I want to know more about that.”

“Temporary casting, with music.” Corvin pursed his lips. “The Serafan court sorcerers are rumored to use true magic,” he said. “Which I have interpreted to mean, possibly, the application of the thirati as you do with physical objects. Yet those who have seen their work indicate nothing to me of charms or curses.”

“What is their… work?”

“As far as I can tell, entertainment,” Corvin said. “The sort of display of illusion one might see from a street magician or a harlequin, but elevated in its artistry.”

“Do they use music in their… entertainment?”

“So I understand. I have never been invited to court, personally,” he added with a wry smile.

“Then that would be a good place to start,” I said.

“I’m afraid it would lead to a dead end very quickly,” he replied. “The secrets of the Serafan court and especially its sorcerers are closed even to the most highly ranked of our scholars.”

“Doesn’t that make anyone even a bit suspicious?” I asked. “That is, I can’t imagine the Galatine nobles in the delegation being willing to subject themselves to magic.”

“If anyone believed anything of it, surely. But it’s old superstition wrapped in tradition. You must realize, Miss Balstrade, that very few people here believe in magic. Of any sort, even your charm casting. They would see it as a quaint novelty, if that.”

“I suppose that’s true in Galitha, as well. It’s only the efficacy of my charms that convinces anyone. Even then…” I hesitated. Though my work had plenty of advocates, I also had the sense that some customers, especially more recent ones, didn’t truly believe in the charm they were paying for, but that they saw owning one of my pieces as a faddish indulgence.

“So you see. The mystery of the Serafan sorcerers is understood by most as a tradition that must be maintained in order to avoid revealing the—how do you say it?—the charlatan’s trick of the whole thing.”

“Do you think—there might be something in the old Pellian texts on casting like this?”

Corvin considered this. “We have found nothing in our search thus far, have we?”

I stopped. Of course—we had already delved deeper than I ever had into Pellian theory. If the kind of casting I wanted to learn about had been explored by the ancients, we should have stumbled across some mention of it by now. And Pyord, who had spent at least some time investigating the practice of casting, had given no suggestion that he had known anything about the temporary, musical casting Theodor had witnessed. If he had, the temporary casting might have worked better for his means. A singer at a public appearance of the king, a musician hired to play at court?

My imagination’s quick assessment of the sinister applications of musical casting made me shiver, and added urgency to the question of why there had been casting in the compound at all.

“I am, of course, willing to continue the search, but I do wonder—” He stopped. “It’s worth considering, of course, that the ancient Pellians were not terribly musical. Their music tended toward simple percussion for liturgical dance, and work songs that were more like chants.” His smile was slow, like opening a window to discover that flowers had bloomed overnight. “But the ancient Serafan nomads were highly musical. Troves of recorded songs, lyrics, treatises by later scholars on ancient music, instruments on funeral pyres—oh, yes.” His smile culminated in a grin. “This might be something.”

Corvin took a few notes in a notebook suspended from the belt of his robe, the tools of his trade close at hand in the same way I carried a needle case and a pinball in my pocket. “I’m afraid anything we need will be in the Serafan building, rather than here. It will take me some time, but I can send you a message, I suppose?”

“Yes, of course!” I paused. “You’ve been of more help than I can explain.”

“It is my duty,” he said with a bow. “Knowledge is meant to be used, not hoarded.”

I returned to the atrium, looking for Jae, but he was nowhere to be found. I was ready to give up when a wiry woman with an untidy kerchief tying back her dark curls found me. “The man you came with is outside.”

I thanked her and left to look for Jae on the loggia, but I saw Dira first. She faced away from me and appeared to be talking to a large potted palm, which I quickly realized hid Jae from my view. Her Tharian was rapid and she was clearly upset.

“You do not disagree, do you, Duana?” she said, abruptly switching to Galatine, the language they shared. I craned my neck to see the East Serafan woman standing next to Jae. “We should cease our interests in the Lady Annette and allow the East Serafans to pursue the match with Ainir Aidlo’s son.”

“But, sister,” Jae said, anger wrangled into tenuous submission, “we had agreed that a favorable match would advance my fortunes—I appreciate our alliance with East Serafe, but I do not wish to let this opportunity pass.”

Duana edged back. “This is a family matter, and not of my concern. But with your understanding, and the understanding of your family, Lady Dira, I will approach the Merhaven woman with our bid.”

I bit my lip—Annette’s future was being haggled over like any other negotiation here. Was this the sort of intercession Viola had asked me for? I couldn’t very well interrupt this conversation without looking like an eavesdropper, and moreover, there wasn’t much I could say that would change anyone’s plans.

“Then I don’t see a need to continue chaperoning her cousin’s doxy,” Jae muttered. My cheeks burned—how could I have thought he might have some interest in my company, not only access to Annette? I should have known better. In this perfectly manicured but ever-cold society, there were no alliances for friendship’s sake alone.

“Very well,” Dira said, waving him off. “I’ll stay and find the poor girl.” Dira’s pitiful poor girl was almost worse than doxy. “Duana, thank you for your assistance in this matter, and I do apologize for dragging you all over the city—I felt we needed more privacy than the compound allows, yes?”

I slipped back inside before Duana could answer, evading Dira as she entered the front atrium by snaking through several aisles of scrolls. Her condescension was the last thing I needed at the moment, and there was no need for a chaperone, save Lady Merhaven’s sensibilities. Isildi was not only safe, but any idiot could navigate the carefully gridded streets. Dira made a perfunctory search for me, then left by the same way she’d entered. I was alone, and relieved that, for a scant couple of hours, I was beholden to no one’s alliances—nations or scrabbling individuals.