By the next morning Ferius and Rosie had apparently come to some kind of agreement about following winds or breezes or some such Argosi nonsense because they were considerably more cordial as we continued our journey towards the city of Teleidos. I was glad to have the tension between them lessened, but one thing was still bothering me.
I let my horse fall behind the others and waited until Ferius joined me.
‘Something on your mind, kid?’ she asked.
‘If Rosie thinks Seneira might have some kind of plague,’ I began, keeping my voice low, ‘then why are we going back to her city? Shouldn’t we be keeping her away from populated areas?’
‘First of all, none of us knows what’s ailing the girl, so don’t let Rosie get you all riled up. Second, magical plagues don’t spread through the air or from bodily contact like normal diseases. And third, in case you haven’t noticed, we’re not letting her near anyone who hasn’t already got a mite –’ she gave me a smirk – ‘too close.’
I decided to pretend I didn’t know what she was talking about.
Reichis did the squirrel-cat equivalent of chortling. ‘See? I’m not the only one who thinks—’
‘What about this “Red Scream”?’ I asked Ferius. ‘You and Rosie keep—’
‘The Red Scream is ancient history, kid,’ she replied, nudging her horse to ride on ahead of me. ‘Leave it buried where it belongs.’
I couldn’t get anything more out of her about magical plagues or why the Argosi would be so concerned about them. One look from Rosie told me she wasn’t about to enlighten me either.
Seneira seemed better than she had the night before, though she didn’t talk about what had happened. A kind of polite distance had settled itself between us, which felt odd after having spent hours together hand in hand while she fought through the attacks. I understood though: the shadowblack was something you lived with by pretending it didn’t exist except when you had no choice. The pain was bad, but like Seneira had said, it was the voices – or in my case the visions – that made you feel sick even after the pain had passed.
But if Seneira didn’t want to talk about her condition, she was more than happy to lecture us about the Seven Sands.
‘The Daroman empire cut this road through the desert over two hundred years ago,’ she explained. ‘Not so they could take over the borderlands, you understand – just for convenience in case they had to go to war with one of the countries on the other side.’
‘Why not just annex the Seven Sands into their own empire?’ I asked.
‘Because they can’t be bothered,’ she replied, and spread her arms wide. ‘Why concern yourself with the responsibility of governing a country when you can so conveniently manipulate it to your own ends?’
‘I didn’t think the borderlands were a country,’ I said.
That turned out to be a mistake. Even Reichis sniffed the air and said, ‘I think you just ticked her off, Kellen.’
‘The Seven Sands is a country,’ Seneira insisted. ‘Just because the great powers use it as a kind of no-man’s-land to keep from killing each other every day, doesn’t mean we aren’t a nation.’
Rosie nudged her horse closer to mine. ‘The Daroman generals, the Berabesq viziers and the Jan’Tep clan princes rely on the Seven Sands staying ungovernable,’ she explained. ‘It helps keep the peace between their three nations to have it there right between them, and keeping it weak prevents it from becoming a threat to any of them.’
‘That’s not the only reason,’ Seneira said angrily. ‘The Berabesq use our citizens as go-betweens to trade goods with the Daroman and the Jan’Tep, so they never have to shake hands with the “infidels” they’ve sworn to destroy; for their part, the Daroman nobles hire mining guilds to extract gold, silver and iron for them from the mountain regions without ever having to take responsibility for the people who live there; the Jan’Tep …’ She looked at me. ‘Well, who knows what your people want, Kellen, but whatever it is, I promise you they’ll take it from us without providing anything in return.’
She rode on ahead, leaving me with the peculiar feeling that I was somehow accountable for my country’s misdeeds, despite the fact that, with one or two exceptions, my people wanted me dead.
After she was out of earshot, Rosie said quietly, ‘Having spent much time with this one, let me say that there are a great many subject that can make for diverting conversation. I suggest leaving the topics of the Seven Sands to one side.’
No kidding.
When Seneira had said she was a student, I’d assumed she meant at some backwater school of the variety one expects to see in a region like the Seven Sands: small, poor and with a barely literate teacher. What I hadn’t expected was the Academy.
As a young Jan’Tep initiate, I’d heard passing references to a university that had risen up in the middle of the borderlands. Every couple of years a representative would come through our lands looking to recruit students, but they had scarce luck among the families of my clan: why would anyone want to go to a school that didn’t teach magic? So, to me, Teleidos had been nothing more than a dot on a map until that afternoon as we entered a valley made fertile by a wide river, and saw for the first time the small but beautiful city that glistened like a jewel against the desert sand.
Most borderland towns consist of a bunch of shabby single-storey buildings cramped together along dusty dirt streets full of potholes. The shops and villas of Teleidos, by contrast, were built from smooth white sandstone that gleamed with blue and bronze accents, rising thirty feet high, adorning curved avenues that ran in concentric circles around the city. I counted eight boulevards radiating from the outskirts of the city to its centre, where a dozen large edifices that could have been palaces or courthouses stood sentry around a tower that stood taller than any building I’d ever seen.
‘The Academy,’ Seneira said with the reverence of a religious convert.
Even I wasn’t immune to the sight. ‘It must be a hundred feet tall.’
Ferius snorted. ‘Kid, that tower is nearly four hundred feet tall. It’s almost a hundred and fifty feet wide at the base.’
Four hundred feet. ‘How do you even build something that high?’ I asked.
‘Same way you make any kind of monument: spend a lot of money. But the real question you ought to be askin’ is why anyone builds something so fancy.’
‘Okay, why?’
‘Because you’re a fool determined to make a statement to the world.’ Ferius nudged her horse back into a slow walk, and so didn’t see Seneira’s outraged glare.
‘The Academy is one of those big ideas folks sometimes get into their heads,’ Ferius explained as we rode. ‘The crazy fella that started it used his fortune to bribe the most famous teachers on the continent to come here. That’s how they get all these rich foreign kids here. In Darome, in Gitabria, even across the water in the Tsehadi countries, everyone knows if you want to train a future bigwig, send them to the Academy.’
‘You make it sound petty,’ Seneira said, ‘but you’re wrong. The Academy isn’t just a school, it’s an idea – that people from all over can learn together and find common ground, that knowledge and art are more important than geography. And Beren Thrane isn’t some “crazy fella”; he’s a bold visionary who risked every coin he had to make something important, something that could make the world a better place.’
‘All right, all right,’ Ferius said, raising her hands in surrender. Then she raised one eyebrow and added, ‘I don’t suppose this “bold visionary” would happen to be a relative, would he?’
Seneira did not look pleased by that question, but conceded, ‘He’s my father.’
‘Wait,’ I said. ‘Your father owns this town and you ran off? Why?’
‘He doesn’t own anything. He built the Academy and over the years the town grew and thrived around it. And why I ran off is my business and no one else’s.’
‘When she contracted the shadowblack, she feared it would trigger a panic, resulting in an exodus of students from the Academy,’ Rosie explained. ‘Thus her father’s life’s work would come to an abrupt end.’
Seneira scowled at her.
‘Glower all you want, child, but I am Argosi; if your intent is to discomfit me, you would have better luck giving dirty looks to a pool of water.’
Seneira seemed willing to test that hypothesis, but I was more curious than ever. ‘But where were you running off to?’
‘Away.’
Rosie translated the terse reply. ‘She thought she could travel to the Jan’Tep territories and find a cure.’
‘Thanks a lot,’ Seneira muttered. ‘So glad to know you keep secrets.’
‘Secrets are not the Argosi way.’
Sure they aren’t, I thought, wondering once again why Rosie had been so determined to travel to Seneira’s city. But I’m pretty sure secrets are a big part of the path of thorns and roses.