Nora pulled the door of the palace kitchen shut. The greasy hubbub behind her diminished slightly, but she could still hear the noise through a solid inch of oak. She sighed. “Now I remember why I left restaurant work,” she said aloud as she mounted the staircase, back to the upper regions of the palace.
Nora had gone to the kitchen with the intention of asking for a job. She’d lasted about an hour. The chaos, the heat, the noise, were all familiar to her from her earlier life as a cook. But here it was trebled. Rats scrabbled in the corners over scraps of spoiled food, the chickens destined for tonight’s dinner ran around clucking underfoot, and a quarrel between two of the cooks exploded into a sudden knife fight. A flurry of spectacular jabs, and then the loser exited cursing, a reddening napkin held to his face, while the rest of the staff jeered. Nora finished chopping her onions, took off her apron, and made her escape.
It might be safer to live with one murderer than to work with a whole staff of likely ones, she thought.
Passing by a window, she saw that Lady Inristian and her friends were playing ben on the lawn, but she felt no interest in joining them.
She heard quick, purposeful steps behind her. Nora turned. It was Hirizjahkinis. Nora had seen little of her since the banquet. “Mistress Nora! Good day to you. I am glad to have the chance to say good-bye.”
“Good-bye? Are you leaving?”
“No, but I believe you are. Have you not seen Aruendiel yet?”
So he had returned as he had promised, even if he had not bothered to inform Nora. “He came back last night, and is leaving today,” Hirizjahkinis said. “I have tried to persuade him to stay longer, but he is implacable. I suspect he worries that the king will ask him to be the new chief magician. Me, I will stay in Semr a little while longer. I am getting plenty of work.” She laughed, shaking her head, and the gold beads at the ends of her braids clicked together. “Ilissa has been very good for my reputation. I must thank her the next time I see her.”
“And after Semr?”
“Oh, I will return home, certainly before the winter comes. I have no wish to experience another northern winter, ever. And I mean to attend the autumn sacrifices at Gahz. I used to care nothing for such things, but”—she shrugged—“I am becoming sentimental as the years pass.”
Nora asked her about the autumn sacrifices, and decided from Hirizjahkinis’s description that they sounded more like a large-scale barbecue than anything else. Then Hirizjahkinis began to question Nora about her own world: how people traveled, what they ate, what gods they worshipped, what demons they feared, and most of all, how they got along without magic.
Answering Hirizjahkinis’s queries made Nora feel homesick. “Do you know anything about traveling between worlds?”
Hirizjahkinis shook her head. “I have never studied that kind of magic, myself. This world is wide enough for me.”
“You’d like my world,” Nora said impulsively. “I think you’d fit right in. Maybe even better than you do here.”
“Better?” Hirizjahkinis raised her eyebrows.
“Well.” Nora stalled for an instant. “There are more educated, self-sufficient women, like you. And people of all different skin colors and”—Nora paused, unable to translate “sexual preferences” into Ors—“women who take women as lovers, or men who take men as lovers, can do so openly. Most of the time.”
Hirizjahkinis blew air out of her cheeks, a puff of pure incredulity. “I make no pretenses about whom I invite into my bed. And in my country, let me tell you, there are no white people. I fit in very well.” She shrugged her shoulders under the Kavareen’s pelt. “Furthermore, I am a magician. Of course I am self-sufficient. It goes without saying.”
“I’m sorry,” Nora said. “I hope I haven’t offended you.”
“No, no. It is true, there is no one exactly like me here. Plenty of women practicing a little ignorant country magic, but very few who are trained magicians.”
“How did you become a magician?” Nora asked curiously.
“I started out as a witch—a nun of the order of the witch priestesses of Kirajahn Alanafar Muris, the Holy Sister Night. My parents dedicated me before I was even born, as a thanks offering for a prayer that was granted. So I learned the chants and the rituals, and worshipped the goddess, and grew to be quite a strong witch, in my way. Of course, all that was almost useless, after I had to leave the order and the goddess withdrew her blessing. I did not learn to wield real magic until I studied with Aruendiel.”
Hirizjakinis’s account raised more questions than it answered. “How did you get Aruendiel to teach you magic?”
“Oh, it was a kind of trade. He was interested in some of the spells that I had learned in the order.” She added, after a moment’s reflection, “There is always this kind of exchange going on among magicians. There is always something to learn, even from bad magicians. At least you can learn what not to do.”
An idea bloomed rapidly in Nora’s mind as Hirizjahkinis was speaking. She thought: I bet Hirizjahkinis would teach me magic. And I’m sure she never stabbed anyone to death. How hard is it to learn magic? How long before you get to be really good? Nora pictured herself, grave and puissant, lifting a hand with lazy grace to summon a thunderstorm or—better yet—making Ilissa cower.
But Hirizjahkinis didn’t know the magic to send Nora home again. And as for becoming a magician—how much do I want to believe in this stuff, Nora thought rebelliously. There was something there, you couldn’t deny that. But was it really magic? Whatever magic was.
She wanted to take up a number of questions with Hirizjahkinis, not the least of which was the little matter of Aruendiel’s wife. But just then, a servant came up to them to say that Lord Aruendiel had requested that the ladies meet him at the south gate, and Nora had to go to her room to gather up her things. She changed, with some regret, out of her borrowed dress back into Mrs. Toristel’s brown one, and wrapped Pride and Prejudice inside her gray smock for discretion and safekeeping.
Making her way to the gate, she found Aruendiel looking rather tired but obviously in good spirits as he talked to Hirizjahkinis. The reason, she gathered, was that he had just been paid. It was compensation for the job he had done for the merchant cursed by the sea god. One of his client’s ships had arrived in Semr with a full cargo the day before; Aruendiel had collected a purseful of gold for the share promised to him.
“You see,” said Hirizjahkinis, “it was a very good idea to come back to Semr. Otherwise you would have missed the ship and, I am sure, forgotten all about collecting your reward.”
“He would not dare to let the debt go unpaid,” Aruendiel said with a crooked smile. “The consequences would be regrettable.”
“Only if you remembered that he owed you the money. So you will not stay here longer? It is late to be setting out; it is almost midday.”
“No, there is a banquet tonight, and I have no desire to be pressed into service to amuse a roomful of tipsy fools a second time. Although that ridiculous episode has had an interesting sequel,” he added. “Both Savo and Tirinist asked me to work the portrait spell for them. Savo wishes to see his first wife again, after thirty years. And Tirinist possesses an antique portrait of an unknown woman, with whom he wishes to become better acquainted.”
“You would have many more such commissions, you know, if you occasionally took the trouble to remind people of what a powerful magician you are.”
“Commissions? I said no to both.”
“No! Tell me you didn’t. Tirinist, at least, is a very rich man.”
“I will not work that spell again.”
“Then you must teach me the spell, and I’ll do it,” Hirizjahkinis said. To his raised eyebrow, she added, “I came to Semr to work. One travels lighter with a full purse. Would you have refused Savo and Tirinist if your purse were not so full?”
“Yes,” he said shortly. “But if you wish, I will tell you how to do the spell. It comes from Duisi Tortor’s Concerning Necromancy and Other Reversals of Fate (although there is almost no true necromancy in the entire book). It’s an elaboration of an ordinary testimony spell, the kind of charm you’d use to get any stone to speak. So you work the summons on the painting itself. The trick is to push it hard, and perhaps help it along with an awakening charm or a manifestation sequence. But the paint is fragile, so you need a fat wick. Tortor used to sacrifice a baby.”
“That’s a great deal of power.”
“More than really necessary,” Aruendiel agreed. “Fire or water work just as well.”
The spell he’d described almost made sense in a general way, Nora thought. But then Hirizjahkinis asked a string of questions that were too technical for her to follow. Aruendiel answered them in equally obscure terms.
“Did you resolve the little problem of the queen’s aunt—her unexpected death?” Aruendiel asked, lifting his travel bag and easing it onto the shoulder that stood slightly higher than the other.
“With great success. And no, I did not raise the dead, you will be pleased to hear,” Hirizjahkinis said. “Although the queen’s uncle thinks that I did. Fear loosened his tongue amazingly.”
Aruendiel looked at her for a moment. “Good for you, Hiriz. You always find a way.”
“Peace be your friend, Aruendiel.”
“And yours.” He turned away.
Nora said swiftly to Hirizjahkinis, “Thank you for everything. I hope that I’ll see you again.”
“Well, I do not come north very often these days—but I would like that, too. Be safe, little one.” She raised her hands briefly to lay them against Nora’s hands, a formal dab of leave-taking, and then Nora ran to catch up with Aruendiel.
The magician’s gray gaze slid toward her as, out of breath, she fell into step beside him. “So you do not wish to remain in Semr?”
“No.”
“Why not? It will be dull for you, back at the castle, with no one to talk to except Mrs. Toristel.”
“That’s true enough,” Nora said stolidly. “But I’ve had enough of court life.”
The answer seemed to please him; at least, his mouth curled for an instant and he stopped questioning her. He led the way downhill through the tangle of streets until they entered another marketplace, bigger and shabbier than the one that Nora had visited with Inristian, with a greater variety of goods. The narrow shop fronts and the open stalls were piled with ceramic pots and plates; copper kettles and pans; harnesses and saddles; iron tools, some recognizable, some not; bolts of cloth; animal hides; wheels of cheese; crates of live chickens, frogs, and doves; casks of beer and wine; glass beads; glass bottles; spices; salt; knives, swords, and shields.
Aruendiel picked his way through the maze of stalls and then ducked into a small, dark storefront that, unlike the other shops, had a lettered sign above the door. Nora remained outside for a moment, carefully sounding out the letters, then followed Aruendiel inside. He was talking to an immensely fat man whose girth had been poured into an equally massive leather-sided chair. Behind the fat man shelves and boxes overflowed with books, scrolls, and maps in various stages of dogearedness.
“. . . The Augur’s Companion just came in, but I don’t think it’s to your lordship’s taste, is it?” the fat man was saying. “You’ve never bought a single book of divination from me.”
“That’s because they’re all claptrap,” Aruendiel said.
“Not everyone’s of your mind, thank the gods. Most popular magical books I carry. What else? I have Ostr the Younger on strategy. No? Let’s see, there’s your own book on transformations—you wouldn’t be wanting a copy of that, I suppose.”
Aruendiel frowned briefly. “Burn it,” he said. “I knew nothing when I wrote it.”
The fat man shook his head. “You should do an updated edition. It still sells quickly enough, when I get hold of a copy. What else can I tempt you with? Well, I have some of Ierbe Norinun’s notebooks, that’s something you don’t see every day.”
Aruendiel inclined his head, and the fat man pulled himself upright to rummage on one of the bookshelves. His chair, Nora noticed, shrank to more normal dimensions as soon as he was out of it. After a minute, the shopkeeper turned back to Aruendiel with a half-dozen books bound in green cloth.
“How did you get your hands on them?” Aruendiel asked, opening a volume. “I thought that—what’s that wizard’s name?—Ruenc, Kelerus Ruenc had bought them all up years ago.”
“Oh, he did. But now—” The fat man clutched an imaginary glass and tilted the imaginary contents toward his mouth, then gave a sagacious nod.
“Ah,” said Aruendiel, still leafing through the notebooks. “Well, he’s not parting with the best stuff yet. This is very early, pure juvenilia.”
“Oh, your lordship should look more closely,” the fat man protested smoothly. “I’m no wizard—or magician—but there was another magician in the shop last week, could hardly tear himself away. Ice demons, he was interested in. And some unusual weather magic.”
“Who was it?” Aruendiel asked, sounding bored.
The fat man’s laughter took a few seconds to ripple through his huge body. “Your lordship knows I have to be discreet about my customers.”
“Obviously he didn’t buy them. You must be asking far more than they’re worth.”
“Ten gold beetles for the lot. Yes, it’s steep, but it’s a fair price for such a treasure, your lordship. I had to pay almost that much to the wizard Ruenc.”
“How much to have them copied?”
The fat man laughed again, even more heartily this time. “I never have original manuscripts copied, as your lordship well knows. If you buy them, you can be assured that no other magic-worker will have access to their secrets.”
“Unless they’ve already pawed through the notebooks themselves and set a copy imp to transcribe them.”
“I have a half-dozen protection spells on this shop to guard against it, all from different magicians. No offense, your lordship, but I’d challenge even you to steal words from my shop.”
“Be careful with your challenges, Gorinth,” said Aruendiel. “I might take you up on that boast. But assuming I want to pay for the goods I take, like an honest man—what if I work you another protection spell? That’s worth at least five gold beetles.”
“That would be kind of you, your lordship. But as I said, I already have six spells, so it’s hard to see how another protection spell would be worth so much to me.”
They went back and forth, with many throat-clearings on Aruendiel’s part and more laughter from the fat man, until finally it was agreed that the magician would pay eight gold beetles and work a protection spell in exchange for the notebooks and a three-volume history of the doomed republic of the Endueruvan wizards.
It took Aruendiel only a minute to do the spell. Nora could tell from the throb in her gut that he had not stinted on the magic, either. He was paying the shopkeeper the gold when the fat man said, “So is that the girl?”
“The girl?” Aruendiel said, frowning.
“The one that found the king’s chief magician locked away in a book.”
“Yes, that was me,” Nora said quickly.
“What were you doing looking in a book, miss?”
Nora shrugged. “I thought I might read it.”
The fat man laughed again, so hard that he had to sit down in his chair (which promptly extended its arms to embrace him). “That’s a good joke. I must say, it didn’t do me any good when that story got out. People got very nervous for a few days, wondering what might jump out at them if they opened a book.”
“I’ve actually read it once before,” Nora said.
The fat man was still chuckling as she and Aruendiel walked out of the shop.
“So you are famous,” Aruendiel said as they made their way through the marketplace. There was something waspish in his tone, as though he felt that she were stealing some of his glory for liberating Bouragonr.
You have no idea, she thought, remembering the gossip she’d overhead at the palace. Aloud she said, “Why did he think it was so funny that I might read the book? Because I’m a woman?”
Aruendiel’s only response was to make a disapproving sound at the back of his throat and to walk a little faster. When they came to a store that sold dry goods, he stopped and pulled a slip of paper from inside his tunic. “One more errand. For Mrs. Toristel.”
The interior of the shop was a cave made of bolts of cloth stacked, standing upright, or leaning aslant against the walls. Two thin, dark-haired women sat talking in the middle of the store, one knitting, one nursing a baby, their voices cushioned by the soft jumble around them.
“Four yards of black worsted, best quality,” Aruendiel read from the paper. “Five yards of gray, second-best quality. Six copper buttons.” The knitter put down her needles and slid off her stool to bring out the rolls of black and gray cloth.
As she was measuring, Aruendiel turned to Nora. “Pick out two lengths for yourself. You’ll need something heavier for winter.” Startled, she stared at him. He waved her toward the nearest pile of fabric. “I can’t have you taking any more of my housekeeper’s dresses,” he said.
Remarkable how a shop looked more inviting once you knew that you could actually buy something there. Nora prowled back and forth in front of the somber rainbow of fabric, trying to make out colors in the dim light, and finally picked out some thick, smooth-napped woolen cloth, one bolt rust red, one bolt sky blue.
The knitter measured out five yards of each color. “Six dozen and four silver beads for everything.”
Seventy-six, Nora thought, idly working the arithmetic in her head, as Aruendiel opened his money pouch and produced three gold pieces. They looked like thinner, cruder versions of Egyptian scarabs. As with scarabs, there was writing stamped onto the flat side.
The knitter dug through a box full of tiny, hollow silver cylinders with lettering on the sides, the same as the beads that Nora had seen Mrs. Toristel use in the village market.
“How many silver beads in a beetle?” Nora asked. Aruendiel looked at her with the sort of frown that implied she might be an idiot. “I just want to know how the money works here,” she said.
“Three dozen,” he said.
The knitter counted out twenty beads. Aruendiel pocketed them and motioned to Nora to pick up the bundle of cloth. Nora hesitated, running through some quick mental calculations. “She didn’t give you enough change,” she said.
Aruendiel frowned again, as though his earlier suspicion had been confirmed, and moved toward the door.
“Wait, she still owes you, um, a dozen beads.”
“Let us go, Mistress Nora.” He flung the words over his shoulder.
The knitter was scowling, too, beginning to bridle. “I’m sorry,” Nora said to her. “I think you just miscounted. You said it was six dozen and four silver beads?”
“Yes.”
“And he gave you three gold beetles. So that’s, let’s see”—one hundred and eight, she calculated—“nine dozen beads. You should have given him, um, two dozen beads plus eight.”
Before the knitter could respond, the other woman broke in. “She’s right, sister,” she said placidly, shifting the baby to her other breast. “Give them another dozen silver beads.”
Slowly, as though she were not entirely convinced, the knitter counted out the dozen beads into Nora’s hand. Nora thanked her. Then, looking up, she saw that Aruendiel had already left the shop.
Going outside, at first she did not see him at all. She had a moment of panic, and then she spotted his dark head moving through the crowd, twenty yards down the street. Nora followed him as quickly as she could, edging her way between stalls and jostling the other pedestrians. She was relieved to see that he had stopped to wait for her in front of a tavern, just before the street forked.
Something about the rigidity of his posture told her how furious he was. As soon as he saw her approaching, he turned and began to walk rapidly down the right-hand street.
Catching up, she told him, “I have the rest of your money.”
“You may keep it, if it means so much to you.” At the next intersection, he veered left without appearing to pay any attention to whether Nora was following him or not.
“She gave you the wrong change,” Nora said. “It was a simple mistake. I just pointed it out, that’s all.”
“You would have done better to have left well enough alone. In the future, perhaps you will let me conduct my financial affairs myself.”
“Don’t worry, I will!” Nora snapped, suddenly furious, too. “Is that why you’re angry, because I dared to intervene in your finances?”
“No,” Aruendiel said. They turned down another street before he spoke again. “What you did was very unseemly.”
“Unseemly?”
“To challenge those shopkeepers.”
“Challenge? She made the wrong change, and I corrected her. That happens all the time in a store. I wasn’t accusing her of cheating you.”
“A gentleman does not quibble with a shopkeeper over money.”
“Not even if he’s being shortchanged? I don’t believe that. Besides, you were haggling with the man in the bookstore.”
“That is entirely different. Gorinth is a learned man, an old acquaintance—”
“I see! He’s closer to an equal, not that anyone’s ever quite equal to you. So it’s fine to engage in a little gentlemanly bargaining with him. But not with a couple of women selling fabric in a little shop—even if one of them, at least, is better at math than you are.”
“You have only the crudest grasp of social niceties,” Aruendiel observed.
“Well, in my world people can ask politely for correct change without committing a social crime. By the way,” she added, “you do agree that she shortchanged you, right?”
He shrugged, his pale eyes elsewhere. “The exact tally of a few silver beads is of no concern to me.”
“I thought so,” Nora said. “You still aren’t sure about the math.”
They walked along in silence, single file because of the crowds. The rank, salty smell of the river became more pronounced. At last they came to a gate in the city wall. When Aruendiel gave his name, the guards waved them through, with a curious glance at Nora. She wondered what exactly she was famous for this time—rescuing Bouragonr, or being the mistress of a prominent magician and murderer?
Ahead was a long quay lined with a thicket of tall-masted ships, dark-timbered, weather-beaten, burlier and more disreputable-looking than the gleaming white sailboats she remembered from the shore back home. The wind off the water whipped through her hair.
“Are we taking a boat back?”
“To the other side of the river.” Aruendiel dropped his bag and walked down the quay, looking for the ferry.
I could still turn back, Nora thought. She glanced down at the bundles she carried. All her possessions in the world—this world—consisted of a change of clothes, a paperback book, and twelve silver beads. Would that be enough to pay for even one night’s lodging somewhere? She had no idea. There was also the fabric that Aruendiel had just bought her. That could be sold. Another dozen or two dozen silver beads. She worked her hand through the wrappings of the bundle from the dry goods store and fingered the blue worsted. It was good material, thick and felty. Warm for winter.
Mrs. Toristel might have asked him to buy it. But lately Mrs. Toristel had been talking about making over one of her daughter’s old winter dresses for Nora. Would she even dare to ask the magician to buy Nora material for new clothes? The cloth was bound to be more expensive in Semr.
Aruendiel was looking over the water, arms folded. Nora suddenly thought—why?—of the day they’d flown to Semr, after Raclin chased them, and how Aruendiel had stood alone, checking his hand for tremors. Did he find any? She could not get the image out of her head. Then she remembered the calm weight of his hand—the same hand—on her shoulder when she faced Ilissa. He would not let go, even when Ilissa’s magic fought him through Nora’s body.
An undefined emotion nagged at her. I want to know more, she thought—about magic and how magicians are made. About this magician. If I leave now, I believe I’ll regret it.
She hesitated, then picked up the bundles and walked along the quay until she reached the spot where Aruendiel stood. Across the water, a skiff was making its way toward them.
“I haven’t thanked you for buying me that fabric. It was very—” She wanted to find exactly the right word, one that would not annoy him all over again. “Very decent of you.”
“There’s no reason to thank me,” he said, not looking at her. “It’s my duty to see that those living under my roof are fed and clothed.”
“Well, I thank you anyway, because I’m pleased to have something comfortable to wear when the weather gets cold.”
Aruendiel nodded, then turned to regard her. “I should remember to make allowances for you. You are a foreigner. It is not your fault that you do not always know what is appropriate and what is not.”
It was not much of an apology. But Nora could not bring herself to apologize for asking the shopkeeper for correct change, either. The ferryman rowed another ten strokes closer before she answered. “I did not think that you were so concerned with social niceties.”
“And why not?”
“Because you’re a magician. Because, from what I’ve observed, you usually do what you want to do without worrying about the opinions of other people or their notions of propriety.”
“That may be true. But here we are talking about my notions of propriety.”
“Then maybe you should reexamine them.”
The skiff bumped against the quay, and the sunburned young ferryman helped Nora into the boat. She sat in the bow and watched the walls and roofs of Semr recede across the water, the gray bulk of the palace crouching at the top of the city. Aruendiel sat crookedly in the stern, looking out to sea.
Whistling, the ferryman steered them against the dock. “Fastest crossing I’ve had all day,” he remarked, sounding pleased. “Tide’s running hard right now, but we hardly felt it. That’ll be four silver beads for the both of you.”
Aruendiel gave him two beads. “The lady can pay for herself,” he said. Nora did so, wondering if this was some gesture of respect, but thinking it was more likely that Aruendiel was simply being cheap.