Rathna was glad she’d had nearly a week’s warning before this meeting. It had given her time to plan, time to consult, and time to figure out what needed to happen if she went forward. Fundamentally, she was beginning as she meant to go on, even if that was not entirely what the young man she was meeting was expecting. Especially since it was not entirely what he was expecting.
There were things he would know, of course: Rathna was a Portal Keeper who had finished her own apprenticeship nearly twenty years ago now. She had taken on two successful apprentices, both fully established and tending portals themselves. Her marriage and children were recorded in the Gold Book that listed all the lines of the Great Families of Albion.
And yet, all of that was the most superficial sort of information. Her husband wouldn’t stand for that, chaotic and glorious magpie of a man that Gabe was. Nor would Richard and Alysoun, his parents. Even her children wouldn’t. Well, at least the elder two. Avigail, at seven and three-quarters, certainly had opinions, but she did not have as much experience of the world to argue from yet. That would certainly come.
Rathna had chosen the setting for this conversation carefully. She wanted Ferdinand Howard to be off balance. The young man knew what to make of a parlour, a library, or an office. Rathna could have had her choice of those. The country house of the Portal Keeper’s Guild had plenty of parlours and offices, as well as four separate libraries. She could have chosen the Guild Hall in Trellech, or even invited him out to Veritas, the Edgarton family estate in Kent. Instead, she’d chosen the Guild estate’s orangery.
It did not, in fact, contain orange trees of any sort. For the last century and a half, since the Guild had had the space, they’d used it to nurture and tend the saplings intended for portals. Only a few would thrive, but the trees were grown pair and pair, as was required for their eventual vocations.
Rathna enjoyed taking her turn to tend and encourage them when she had the chance, with both fertiliser and magic. She found the place restful, in a way she’d never been able to explain, but that Gabe understood. Trees had quite simple desires compared to the rest of the world, and they were fundamentally honest about them.
She’d chosen it because it was unusual, and she liked it. But also, the orangery was cosy, even with a brisk November wind outside. The heat radiated up pleasantly from pipes under the floor, making Rathna feel properly warm. She’d even discarded the wheat-gold shawl that went with this dress on the chair at the tea table.
The rest of her outfit, well, that was a particular statement as well, and she’d selected it with Alysoun’s advice firmly in mind. She had decided against a saree, but her emerald-green silk frock was cut very much like one, flaring out from a fitted bodice to a broad draping skirt. The golden embroidery around the hem, collar, and sleeves picked up the theme, brighter than most people in Albion would choose to pair, but striking.
Rathna, though, was making a point. If Ferdinand Howard had a problem with her Bengali heritage, she needed to know immediately. If he wanted someone traditional in the ways he understood tradition, she needed to know that. She kept her own learned and chosen ancient traditions, now in three distinct forms, but she suspected Howard only knew much about one of those sets.
Precisely on time, she heard leather-soled shoes coming down the polished marble of the hallway. She turned, having placed herself where the light shone through from the glass roof above. She took her time, the way she’d learned from Alysoun and Richard, making every movement matter, not rushing anything. “Good morning, Apprentice Howard.”
Rathna had seen him before, of course, at a conversational distance. He’d been a sworn apprentice for two years. He was two months from turning twenty-one, and decidedly handsome by current standards, with blond hair and bright blue eyes. She suspected he might still fill out a bit in the shoulders, but not by much, and he seemed to be more or less comfortable with his height. That was about Gabe’s height, a head taller than Rathna. He wore a navy pinstripe suit that - these days - she could identify on sight as coming from the second best tailor in Trellech. Along with it, he’d selected a silver-grey tie and pocket square, anchored by a moonstone tie pin. It made his house at Schola easy to read, even if she hadn’t spent hours with his file over the past few days.
Owl House produced swots, as many people liked to point out. Many of them spent their days lost in their books or their aspirations of knowledge rather than more practical work. But Rathna had come to know a number of quite effective Owls over the years, including Lord Geoffrey Carillon. She’d test young Howard, and see what he did with a situation he hadn’t already studied.
What he made of her house, that was perhaps the more interesting question. Rathna had found enough of a place for herself in Seal House, the most liminal of the seven. She hadn’t gone in for their more common arts and magics, though she wouldn’t be surprised if Rowena did. Their eldest daughter had taken to the house magics like, well, a seal to water, delighting in playing with them, and she was only a third year. Somehow already a third year. Both at the same time.
Rathna was wearing her guild token, as she usually did, with the cast gold portion of the disc resting against her skin, just slightly warmer than anything else touching her. The lemniscate on the visible side had an aquamarine for her Schola house in one half, and the labradorite that shimmered and flashed with the portal energies in the other. Both echoed the deep green of the frock and the gold of the embroidery. She’d hung it on a thicker golden chain than most did. It was one of the little touches that her parents - their memories a blessing - would have read as all the visible signs of success and security they’d craved when they came to England.
Howard came within a foot or two, just the right amount of polite distance. He made a sharp and precise bow, and when she extended her hand, palm down, he took it carefully in his own and made a precise kiss over it. “Magistra Edgarton.” As he straightened up, he looked her in the eye, which was a good sign. The very Continental manners, his own heritage on his mother’s side, those were more complicated to read correctly, especially at the moment.
“A pleasure.” Rathna offered a smile. No reason to be harsh about any of this, and again, beginning as she meant to continue was the thing here. “Do let’s have a seat. I gather you prefer coffee. My husband does as well. He approves of this roast.” She didn’t expect other people to like tea the way she took it when she had a chance. Rathna gestured toward the table. Howard hovered by his chair until she was settled, then took his own seat.
She nodded at him. “Do pour for yourself, the cream and sugar as well.” There was a little decorative tower of plates with biscuits. She’d brought the orange-scented shortbread from Veritas, where Cook had a touch with them. Rathna poured from her own pot, inhaling the spices of the chai masala before she added her own cream and a dipper of honey. There was talk of rationing, starting soon, but a childhood of scarcity had taught her a great deal about enjoying things while she could.
Only when all of that had been sorted did she continue. “Our goal today is to see if you might suit as my apprentice and if I might suit as your apprentice mistress. I am, to be up front about it, nothing like Master Fortnum. I respect him, his work, and his training, but we have decidedly different styles and approaches.”
On the other hand, beggars couldn’t be choosers. Davis Fortnum had been called up for war work, and it wasn’t suitable for an apprentice. They’d sealed the portals against those in Germany and Austria and Czechoslovakia, of course, each in turn. But layering additional protections without damaging the portal connections was fiddly, delicate work that needed extensive experience. More to the point, it didn’t generally allow for extended explanations.
“Magistra?” Howard looked up from his own cup, now a medium brown with the cream. It was not a particularly informative reply, even if it was suitably polite.
“It must be both of our choices, of course.” She wondered, all of a sudden, if that was what hadn’t been in the file - or one of the things - if he’d been given a choice about going into the guild in the first place. She gestured slightly with a hand, the gleam of her wedding band and betrothal ring catching the light. “I’ve read your formal records with the guild, and of course, I’ve talked with Master Fortnum about what you’ve studied so far. But I would like to hear from you, directly, about your experience and background.”
“Background, Magistra.” He gathered himself up. “My father is Francis Howard, of the Wiltshire Howards. Mother is German.” Rathna couldn’t tell if that slight pause were deliberate or simply a needed breath. “She’s lived here for many years, since before the Great War.” He wasn’t tentative about it, at least. He must have known she’d know, and she respected the way he rode that delicate line of protective defensiveness that Rathna used herself. Telling people the distasteful thing up front meant they couldn’t claim it was kept from them later. “I have two older brothers and an older sister. I’m the youngest by five years. The others are all married and established.”
Rathna nodded. “A good start, though I am more interested in who you are than who your people are, in the more genealogical sense. Though, of course, our parents shape us in all sorts of ways.”
He nodded once, as if thinking about saying something and deciding against it. He governed his impulses, then. That was useful information. Gabe would have asked, almost certainly, unless the duel of the conversation would go better if he refrained. “You have children, Magistra, from what I read?”
“I do.” She leaned back a little to tug the shawl over her shoulder from the back of the chair, partly for effect, and partly to keep the draught off her neck. She’d have to check the charms on the glass when they were done. One of them must have loosened beyond the tolerance of the insulating cantrip. “Why do you ask?” He wouldn’t have overlapped with any of them at school. Rowena hadn’t started until the autumn after he left Schola.
“Pardon, Magistra. Your family comes up in conversation from time to time.” Which it might well, especially among the Howards. Those weren’t people Rathna knew well. The Wiltshire line of the family didn’t directly hold the land magic, but Rathna didn’t know the Devon side of the family much better, for all she saw them at the obligatory rituals and social events. They had to make an appearance, since Gabe was his father’s Heir in that as in other things. Also, Alysoun always appreciated both company and an arm at that sort of do.
“My husband? His parents? Morah Avigail, her memory a blessing, who trained me?” The phrase came to her as naturally as always, but she saw it hit him oddly. Another thing he hadn’t expected, then. And of course, he would never have known her beloved apprentice mistress, who’d given her a home from the time she was fourteen until she married Gabe.
Avigail Levy had died eight years ago, not long before their youngest daughter had been born. She’d lived to a grand old age, surrounded by children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and died content with her life. Rathna missed her every day, and three or four times more on Friday evenings.
Howard had the grace to blush. “The first two, Magistra. And your children. They weren’t sure what to make of Magistra Levy beyond the fact she was respected by the guild.” No, the Howards wouldn’t know what to do with a woman who’d gone to Schola, but who’d made her life among the Jewish community in Spitalfields. Those with magic who lived there, like Rathna and Morah Avigail, kept to the agreements of the Pact, but otherwise lived lives intertwined with those without it.
Rathna nodded and Howard went on. “Lord Richard Edgarton has held the title since his father’s death in 1901, and the lands are widely considered to be flourishing, both agriculturally and magically. He is, as I am sure you know, both a Captain in the Guard, and a respected Magistrate for nearly as long. Lady Alysoun Edgarton comes from the Forsythes, though the family has been a bit attenuated in her own generation.” Her brother, expected to continue that line, had died in South Africa.
He took another breath, as if needing a moment to figure out what he should make sure to mention. “I have heard many good things about Veritas. The architecture, as well as the current health of the land.” That, now, held a hint of hopefulness, that this wasn’t going to just be a dull and rote recitation of known facts. Rathna knew the architectural magics were well up to snuff; Gil Oxley had lived at Veritas for five years now. His chosen partner, Magni, had been Richard’s own apprentice master. When he’d finally retired from the Guard, their house just outside Trellech had been a bit much for them to maintain. Gil was still one of the foremost experts on architectural magic, and just as busy consulting as he chose to be. Howard hesitated. “And you have three children with your husband.”
Ah, he was entirely unsure what to make of Gabe. That put him in the same company as most of Albion, so it wasn’t anything to be ashamed of. And they could tackle the matter of the children quickly enough. “Our eldest, Rowena, is at Schola, in her third year in Seal House. Anthony is in tutoring school. Our youngest, Avigail, is very almost eight, as she would tell you.”
She saw a moment of the flash of consideration, and she went on. “She is named for Morah Avigail Levy, my apprentice mistress, yes, her memory a blessing. They have a custom, a longstanding tradition, among their people - she was Jewish - that you do not name a child for someone living. But she died knowing I would have another daughter, and that I would name her Avigail.” It was a particularly tender point. If he were a bigot about her own parents, that was one thing. If he were going to be an antisemite, that was even less tolerable. Best to know now, so she could declare her refusal and be done with the question.
Howard nodded once, then considered his options, showing no further reaction to the matter of Morah Avigail, negative or otherwise. “Your husband, Magistra, is the eldest child of his parents, and Heir to the land magic for that part of Kent. He’s considered gregarious and charming.” He stopped before saying more, and Rathna suspected Howard had come across a story or two from women who thought that charm meant he could be seduced. Which he couldn’t be, not like that, certainly. “Attentive to the land, Magistra, and my family respects that.”
That much was certainly true, though it left a lot out. She’d never met anyone who loved the land as much as Gabe did, not even his father or Geoffrey. However, the way Howard had danced around things gave her an opening to challenge him and see what he did with it. Rathna was no duellist, but she’d married into a family of them, and she’d been looking for a chance to see what he did when he was pressed.
Rathna turned her hand over. “If you think the most important thing about my husband is that he’s Heir to his father, you are missing a great deal. Try again, please.”