Rathna settled back to see what Howard made of the challenge, picking up her tea. Gabe was going to laugh and laugh when she got home tonight. That was all to the good. He’d been increasingly worried lately, little twitches he hadn’t been able to explain. Not that the war didn’t give an excellent reason for nerves of all kinds.
He did something she hadn’t expected. “The portal at Veritas is made of local sandstone, isn’t it?”
“Quarried a few miles away, yes.” Rathna nodded. “You’ve not been through it, though, I believe.”
Howard shook his head. “No, Magistra. I’ve not done much with any of the sandstone portals, so I was curious. I saw in the notes that you’ve refined the tuning.”
Ah. She had, but explaining that was a trifle delicate. “A gift for my mother-in-law.” Alysoun suffered from pain that came and went, though mostly it came and stayed. Rathna had tuned the Veritas portal over months and years to make travel as gentle on Alysoun as she could. “Within the tolerances and scope, of course. There’s a fair bit of flexibility, especially with a private household portal.”
Howard nodded slowly, as if that were some interesting piece of information he was now filing. “Your husband, Magistra, is a Penelope. I am afraid I don’t quite know how to appreciate his skills there.” Howard didn’t sneer, but he was clearly dubious about what the Penelopes were. Interesting and quite telling about his family’s attitudes in general.
The Penelopes did tend to pull an air of mystery about them like a cloak. Even Rathna felt that, and she’d been married to Gabe for approaching two decades. They had their own jargon and their own codes. Aunts Mason and Witt had been firmly included as members of the family from when Gabe was tiny. They could signal each other like a couple who’d been in each other’s pockets for half a century, because, in many ways, they had.
Though they were rarely actually in the same office. Aunt Witt was a force of order and precision, and Aunt Mason was a swirling mote of chaos, nearly as much as Gabe was. Lucy Doyle, Gabe’s own apprentice mistress, was much more along Witt’s line, and Isobel, his current apprentice, seemed to lean that way as well. It worked very well as a principle of assignment, working the polarity, so long as it didn’t send them and everyone near them round the bend.
“What do you know of the Penelopes?” They could start there.
Howard frowned. “They work closely with the Guard.” It was a faint sort of answer, and he seemed to know it.
“Yes, but that is not why they exist.” He looked up at her, and Rathna took some pity on him. “We solve a particular category of problem, one that takes a specific, quite uncommon, flavour of magic. And we must be extremely skilled at our work to do it without causing more problems. There aren’t many people who can even attempt it and we have a long apprenticeship.” Gabe had, over the years, persuasively convinced Rathna how essential the Portal Keepers were, and how skilled any of them who made it through an apprenticeship had to be. Not that other people really appreciated those skills, they just complained when the portal didn’t work as expected.
Howard nodded, hesitantly.
“The Penelopes solve problems on a vastly larger scale. Any sort of problem. Someone comes up with a new approach to magic, and it backfires. They are the ones to solve it. An elderly alchemist locks themselves in their lab, and - well, we all know what can happen there.” She didn’t need to spell out that particular horror. There’d been another case in August that had seen extensive coverage in the papers about the need for better safety options. “They assist the Guard with investigations. The Penelopes can chase the thread of a particular magic through portals. They can figure out where someone was standing when they did something criminal, determine the cause of death in collaboration with the Healers, and much more.”
“Magistra.” Howard nodded again, slowly.
“They hold the depth and breadth of what magic can do in their hands and heads. And they turn it uniformly to helping people out of trouble, as much as they can. The Penelopes are experts in a dozen different kinds of magic, though they do in fact pick specialities. They work with each other closely, borrowing a cup of cleverness or expertise whenever it’s needed. They can’t let their egos get in the way, or nothing would get done. So when I tell you that Gabe had the shortest apprenticeship in the Penelopes in three centuries, finishing when he was twenty-one, it tells you a bit about his range of skill.”
“Shortest....” Oh, there was a burst of jealousy there, though he tamped it down quickly. Not quickly enough for someone who’d learned from Gabe and Alysoun and Aunts Mason and Witt how to spot that sort of thing, but quickly. “May I ask what his specialty is?”
“Magic that affects places. Architectural, but also the land magic. He hadn’t quite intended that, but they do keep asking him, because he’s Heir to his father and has been for so long. The two work well together. He’s a terror in an alchemy lab, but much more to the furnishings than to himself, thankfully.” Gabe had a very real appreciation for the safety precautions that mattered. Thankfully. Or the marriage would probably have done her in.
Gabe was impulsive, quick, and didn’t hesitate, but he was also often absolutely right about what needed doing and how. A burst of intuition with thumbs, and rather longer reach than a toddler. She half-smiled at it, and then held the moment. Let Howard puzzle over that. It would do him some good.
The young man across the table from her was quiet for a long moment. “This is not what I expected, magistra. Perhaps, would you be so kind as to instruct me? In what I should be considering.”
That had the first real solid of promise she’d heard yet. “Master Fortnum has given you an excellent and deliberate grounding. But the way I teach expands from what is known to be true to what might be possible.” She lifted her fingers, calling a charmlight wordlessly. “I learn a great deal from my husband.” She sent the burst of magic and vitality off toward a pair of the trees that could use a little more help. “Before I met him, I was a trifle rigid.” Also terrified of stepping out of her assigned place in society. “May I ask what your parents think of your apprenticeship?”
It mattered, whether he was here because of some obligation, internal or external, or whether he honestly felt a pull toward it. She could teach the skills of tending portals, but she couldn’t teach the desire to do so. Portals went at their own speed. She had not put Howard off yet, but she also hadn’t heard that spark she wanted from him, some desire beyond it being a respected profession and specialty.
Howard cleared his throat. “I’m the youngest. It’s known to be an honour, to be asked to apprentice here. It is work, yes, and my family does not generally need to do that.” Rich as well as posh, then, not that the two always ran together, especially these days. “They don’t entirely know what to make of me. They aren’t upset that I chose to apprentice, but it would....” His voice faded out.
“It would be complicated if you didn’t continue.”
“Yes, magistra.” His manners remained impeccable, though he had flushed, his cheeks going pink. It was one of the downsides of being quite that fair.
“Do you want to continue?” That was another question he definitely hadn’t expected. His chin came up, there was a flash of utter confusion on his face. She went on, more gently. “If you do not wish to, this would be a, shall we say, decorous way to end your apprenticeship. A public good reason.”
Howard didn’t hesitate. “Mistress, I’d like to continue, if it is possible. I don’t feel I know much at all yet, but what I have learned so far, I…” He stopped and looked away. Ah. He had feelings about it then, and it was beyond him to show those feelings, certainly to her. She could indeed work with that, given a little time. Probably also an application of Gabe, to shake things loose.
Briskly, she went on, saving him from the awkwardness. “Well, then. I believe in giving my apprentices my best. On that note, you may want to talk to Mhairi and Petrus about what to expect from me before you make a formal commitment. You’d not have met them, I suspect, other than perhaps very much in passing. Mhairi’s up in Scotland, and Petrus has been deeply involved in the adjustments to the Plymouth portal the last two years.” She reached to one side of her teacup, where her journal waited, and pulled out a small cream coloured card. “Their full names, so you can write by journal. They know you might write tonight.” The magical journals were tremendously handy, and the guild had made them a requirement for all members and apprentices in 1925. It had vastly simplified everyone’s lives.
“Magistra.” He barely hesitated, then reached for the card. “What will they tell me, magistra? About your training?”
“That I’m fair minded. Patient, as long as someone’s doing their best. Though they both saw me tear strips off someone who wasn’t. He was an apprentice at the same time as Petrus.” She glanced up, arching an eyebrow. “He shaped up.” It had, however, been the talk of the guild for a good six months. “That I get ideas and I want to try them out.”
Howard nodded, cautiously. “May I ask, magistra, does my family background bother you?” Ah, that was quite brave of him, if he was as earnest as he seemed.
“Your mother? Or your father’s people?”
“Mother’s, mostly. The white paper that came out from the British government last week.” He had the good grace to look worried. That paper had laid out, in quite plain language, what was happening to Jewish men and women in Germany, and to anyone who opposed the Nazi government. Even quite minor offences could get one thrown into a work camp, perhaps never to emerge.
“The question, on the whole, is what you value and what you choose. You have a choice here. It is a limited choice because of circumstances beyond your control.” She hesitated, then decided to give him the gift of knowledge. “I had not taken an apprentice recently because I have been working on something complex.”
“Magistra?” He leaned forward, though. That was promising.
This was the crux. She had to decide which way to go with this, whether to tell him what she was working on, or wait until she figured out if there was a faint chance he might actually be able to help. She chose the former. He should have as many choices as he could be given. “Your oath on the Silence, not to share this with anyone I don’t designate? It is related to the war and security.”
He didn’t hesitate, making an oath on the Silence and his magic. She wondered what flashed through him. The Silence oath brought a moment of greatest fear to the one taking it, what should force them to silence if they tried to break it. What could break a spirit, if pressed at, and shatter a mind into pieces. Whatever his was, only a flicker of it showed on his face, but of course she wasn’t as adept at reading those signs as some people she knew.
Rathna went on, keeping her voice even. “I have been working on research and some trials to see if we might establish a portal far more quickly than we have in the past. A matter of months, maybe weeks, rather than years. You know the Fatae tales of them springing up overnight, yes?”
Howard’s eyes had got wide. “That’s impossible.” It came out clipped and quick, before he flushed again. “Pardon, Magistra.”
“No one has been able to do it since the Pact.” The Fatae portals were different in so many ways from the ones humans had learned to make from them, perhaps most obviously in how they grew. “But we said it was impossible to create them across water, and the ones on Samson Island and in the Hebrides are doing well enough. A bit touchy in bad weather, but predictable about it.” Once one had solved one mythological problem, others seemed decidedly more within reach. Though someone did have to sail out and bang on those island portals with a metaphysical hammer on a regular basis to make them behave.
Howard considered that, and he had the patience to hold his tongue while he did. Finally, he said, “May I ask about the results so far?”
“An excellent question.” It was, and she was generous with her praise for a number of reasons. “We’ve made two. The process can’t be forced in the trials we’ve made so far. The portal that results isn’t terribly stable, but you have plenty of warning before it collapses. You can’t take much ferrous metal through it, certainly not much worked iron. It takes focused magic, trained skill, and raw power. As well as, well, convincing the local water or stone to do what you wish.”
“Not trees, magistra?” Trees were the other form of portals they could make, which was impossible to forget in the orangery.
She shook her head. “I haven’t had luck with trees.” She suspected it was because it was tricky to find paired trees in an otherwise suitable location.
Howard considered again, reaching for his coffee. Rathna matched him with a sip of her chai, charmed to still be the perfect temperature. Then, slowly, he asked, “If you made one, what would you do?”
“Ideally? You know of the kindertransport? Getting children out of Germany. Jewish children, in particular, but anyone who’d be at risk for their lives. Innocents.” She gestured, twisting her fingers in the air. “It could be abused all sorts of ways. Though it wouldn’t permit the passage of anything like automobiles or cars, or probably even rifles. Even the axles on a cart are iffy. And there are other complications.”
“Other complications, magistra?” He was leaning in again. Good, she’d done a fine job of hooking his interest.
“May I ask, have you visited your mother’s family in Germany? Are you familiar with the portals there?”
“I— pardon, magistra, but I need to know why you’re asking.” He stammered, flushed, and looked down. She waited until he looked up again, not quite meeting her eyes.
“To anchor the portal, you must tie it into the existing Fatae portals. The more recent ones, since the Pact, won’t do, and of course, all the portals on the Continent are Fatae made.” They had nothing like Albion’s Portal Keepers, who were a gift and consequence of the Pact made in 1484. “You do not need to go there or to open the portal between the two. You need them for alignment.” And it would work for only portals the creator knew well enough.
She’d worked out that part, painstakingly, with Thesan Wain, Astronomy professor at Schola and now a close friend. Thesan was a year younger and had her own particular brilliance in her chosen field. It had taken them all of one summer hols, and regular work through the next school year, to do the mapping. She let the question she’d asked sit.
Finally, slowly, he swallowed. “Does that mean that’s why you’d take me on, so I could help with it?”
“The question of whether or not I take you on is, shall we say, distinct from your choice to help here. On the other hand, it is the research I am working on, and if you apprentice with me, I will continue working on it, with or without your help.”
Howard nodded slowly. “Do you have other questions for me in making your decision?”
Rathna shook her head. “If you wish to agree, we will need to talk in detail through your training so far. You will need to work through some of the basics with me again, so I can figure out what we need to cover. A tad tedious, but a return to the essential skills never did me any harm, or anyone else I know.” She spread out both hands. “We could give it a trial, for a couple of weeks, a month or two. See how we do.”
Howard nodded, carefully. “And the etiquette, magistra?”
He was so careful about that. It was, on the whole, endearing. Certainly, it was a great deal better than the alternatives. “You may call me magistra or mistress, as you prefer, for the moment.” Rather than the more intimate form, with her first name attached. “We will see about it after that.”
“Magistra.” He nodded. “Howard, or apprentice, as pleases you, for now?”
“Certainly.” Rathna had expected formality from him. He was decidedly from the sort of family - both parents - where that would be the most comfortable for him. “Write to Mhairi and Petrus tonight. See what they tell you. If you wish to make a trial, we can begin tomorrow by signing the papers. I’ll make it all right with the Guildmaster.”
“Magistra.” Howard swallowed once, hard. “I expect that will be my answer.”
He really didn’t have much choice, no matter how much she wished he did.