13
Rejection
I really could have used a shield spell just then.
Nephenia was armed only with her beauty and my feelings for her. That turned out to be plenty.
She looked pretty that day, as she did every day. A pale beige linen dress that ended just above her knees offset the soft brown curls hanging loose around her shoulders. I always liked her hair that way. There was a scent that came with it … tamarisk petals and warm sand and … No, I told myself. She’s here to break you. Those are her weapons. Stay strong.
A good counter-attack was what I needed. Something that would cut her to the quick and shake her from her no doubt well-rehearsed script. I came up with a dozen mean, nasty things to say to her. Things that would make me sound clever and her seem small and petty. Good. You’re ready.
But when she stopped, no more than two feet away from me, all my brilliant insults fled. I was suddenly transformed into a small, petulant boy. ‘I suppose you came over here to—’
‘They think I’m here to cast you out,’ she said quickly, her voice so quiet I had to replay the words in my head to make sure I’d heard them right.
I started to rise but she gave a little shake of her head so I sat back down. ‘But you’re not?’
‘I think … I think what you did was brave, standing up for that Daroman woman. I’m not sure if it was right. Jan’Tep are supposed to stick to their clan.’ She stood there for a moment and then shook her head as if banishing the thought. ‘This Ferius person saved your life and, when the time came, you saved hers. That can’t be wrong.’ She turned away, looking to the south, away from town. ‘Three of them, Kellen, and you with no magic. Yet you fought them. You beat them.’
‘Ferius … um … had something to do with it as well.’
‘I wish I could be as brave as you.’
‘You are,’ I said. ‘You would’ve—’
She spun back to me and her eyes were angry and filling with tears. ‘Don’t. I’m not brave, Kellen, so don’t say I am.’
Lacking anything either clever or reassuring to say, I simply said, ‘I don’t understand.’
‘Just … Just let me say this.’ She wiped the tears from her eyes and wiped her hands against her dress. ‘It’s not the same for girls, Kellen. The masters hardly ever want to teach us the high magics. They think we shouldn’t be allowed to learn anything except healing and—’
‘Then make them teach you,’ I said. ‘My sister doesn’t take no for an answer. She—’
‘I’m not Shalla!’ she whispered fiercely.
Several of the initiates looked over and for a second I was afraid they might think I’d done something to hurt Nephenia.
‘I’m not Shalla,’ she repeated, this time more quietly. ‘I’m not powerful the way she is. The masters teach her, because if they didn’t everyone would know it’s because she’s a girl. But me? They can just keep putting me at the back of the class. I have to beg and plead and stand behind the boys on tiptoes to try to see the spells they’re being shown. If some of the other students didn’t spend time with me after class, I’d never be able to pass my trials.’
Other students. Like who? I wondered.
‘I need those people to help me, Kellen. I don’t want to end up like my mother, married to a man who treats her like a Sha’Tep. Who uses her like a servant and expects her to … I have to earn my mage name.’
A part of me knew that I should be listening – really listening – to the things she was telling me. I should have been more sympathetic. I should have been able to understand that Nephenia was just trying to survive in the world the same as I was. But I’d just spent the past several hours being told by everyone who’d ever pretended to be my friend that I was diseased and would never have any power. I guess it kind of stuck. ‘Why are you telling me this, Nephenia? Is all this just an excuse so that you can feel better for siding with the others?’ I rose this time, partly because I was so angry and partly because this was probably going to be the last time I got to be near her. ‘You didn’t come over here to tell me how brave I am. You came to say goodbye.’
‘Not because I want to,’ she said desperately, as if that made any difference in the world. ‘Maybe someday—’
‘Maybe if I suddenly become a powerful mage? Then you’ll talk to me? Then you’ll want to …?’
I was close enough to see her lower lip starting to tremble. ‘I’m sorry, Kellen. I’m just so sorry,’ she said, and turned away from me.
I said a few things as she walked back to the others, things that no brave, heroic young mage would say about a girl who was crying. I said them quietly though, under my breath, like a coward, and so figured no one had heard.
‘You kiss your mother with that mouth?’ a voice asked from behind me.
I spun around to see Ferius Parfax sitting cross-legged against one of the colonnades, holding a large card in one hand and a paintbrush delicately in the other. An open leather case lay next to her, filled with more brushes and tiny pots and jars. ‘What are you doing?’ I asked, surprising myself with how angry I sounded.
‘Painting a card, obviously.’
The dowager magus’s question of the night before came back to me. ‘Of what?’
Ferius stared at the card in her hand. ‘None of your business.’
The glib answer irritated me. ‘You snuck up on me.’
‘Wasn’t hard,’ she replied, dipping the brush in something clear before wrapping it in a cloth and placing it back in the leather case. ‘Maybe next time you and your little girlfriend should try casting a “pay attention to the world around you” spell.’
‘She’s not my … She’s not anything. I don’t want to talk about it.’
‘Me neither,’ Ferius said, and reached into her waistcoat and pulled out a smoking reed and stuck it between her teeth. From inside the leather case she took two cloth pouches and then a tiny pinch of powder from each. When she tossed them against each other, they erupted into a tiny burst of flame that lit the reed.
‘What are those powders?’ I asked.
‘Stuff I use for paints,’ she replied, taking a puff of her smoking reed. ‘Not a good idea to mix them.’
She blew a ring of smoke in the air that drifted towards me. The act seemed oddly accusatory. ‘Nephenia walked away from me because I have no magic,’ I said, now realising I did want to talk about it. ‘One day I had promise and she seemed to like me, the next I didn’t and I guess she decided I wasn’t worth the trouble.’
If I was expecting sympathy, which I was, I didn’t get any. ‘You know what I’m wondering?’ Ferius asked. I didn’t respond, but that didn’t matter because she went on anyway. ‘I’m asking myself if that girl stopped being quite so pretty tomorrow, well, if you’d notice her at all.’
She gave me all of three seconds to come up with a reply before she laughed. ‘You crack me up, kid. You know that?’
‘Shut up, Ferius,’ I said. The sun was getting lower in the sky and Master Osia’phest was shuffling off down the street. Evidently the lesson was over. ‘Are you a Daroman spy? Did you do something to make Tennat and the others sick?’
‘Nope.’ She gave me a sidelong glance. ‘Did you?’
‘Don’t be stupid.’
‘Says the kid who just asked a suspected spy to reveal herself.’
‘If you’re not a spy then what are you?’ I asked. ‘Because I don’t believe some Argosi wanderer would still be hanging around here after what happened last night.’
‘I’m a woman, kid. You probably haven’t met one before, coming as you do from this backward place, but it’s like a man only smarter and with bigger balls.’
It occurred to me that she’d just insulted my mother, my sister and every other female in my clan. But something else was bothering me. ‘Aren’t you worried that Ra’fan and Ra’dir and Tennat might come after you again?’
She got to her feet and walked over to sit down on the bench next to me. ‘What, those morons from last night?’
‘Them or someone else. Don’t think the same tricks will work again. Next time they might—’
‘Next time I’ll use a different trick.’
All I could see in her face was her usual smug self-assurance, but I still remembered the genuine fear in her eyes the night before. ‘They’ve seen your smoke and your steel cards. What happens when you run out of tricks? What happens if more powerful mages decide to attack you and they—’
She shrugged. ‘Guess we’ll find out when it happens.’ She took another drag of her smoking reed. ‘But let’s deal with more pressing concerns. Like that little lady you seem to fancy so much but just treated like dirt.’
A whole town full of mages, half of whom probably wanted to see her dead, and she wanted to talk about my love life. ‘Look, unless you have a spell to make her like me despite how much of a loser I am, just keep your thoughts to yourself. Besides, it’s like she said – she’s not special.’
Ferius looked at me and let out a long breath, the smoke filling the air between us like fog on an early spring morning. ‘Okay, kid, you did me a favour last night, so I’m going to do you one in return.’
I turned away from her. ‘If you’re going to make a joke about teaching me spells again, then don’t bother.’ I was tired of the way Ferius made fun of magic as if it was all a game.
I felt her hand on my shoulder and nearly pulled away in surprise, but her grip was too strong. ‘I am going to teach you a spell, kid, not because you want it but because you need it.’ She leaned over and whispered a string of words in my ear.
It was, like always, just another of her stupid tricks – Ferius pretending that things that weren’t real spells were just as important as true magic. I could have just forgotten it and gone home, but the truth was, I felt pretty awful about how I’d acted towards Nephenia. So when I noticed her lagging behind the other initiates leaving the oasis, I ran quietly up to her.
She turned and saw me and I saw the fear in her eyes. Fear that I was going to yell at her or say terrible, angry things to her. Fear that I was going to reject her. The way you rejected me. I shook the thought from my head. If I was going to make a fool of myself, I’d at least do it properly. Calm, I reminded myself. First comes the calm. I closed my eyes for just a second, envisioning the spell doing its work, and then I spoke the incantation, exactly as Ferius had said it to me. ‘You said you weren’t special, Nephenia, but you’re wrong. One day you’re going to figure that out for yourself, but in the meantime, just know that you’re special to me.’
For a long while she stood there as if every part of her was trapped in a binding spell. Then I watched a single teardrop begin to form in her right eye. Just before it began rolling down her cheek she threw her arms around me. ‘Thank you, Kellen,’ was all she said.
She didn’t kiss me or apologise, or promise to stay friends with me. She didn’t give me some keepsake or secret code. I knew that tomorrow she’d have to do just what she’d said – go along with the others, because that’s what you do when you don’t feel powerful enough on your own.
But for those few seconds while I had my arms around her and felt her face pressed into my shoulder, my cheek buried in the soft curls of her hair, I didn’t mind.
Okay, so it wasn’t magic.
But it felt awfully close.
I returned to my bench between the columns, intent on making a few clever remarks to Ferius about her spell – only to find her gone and Shalla sitting there in her place. She looked paler than usual. Tired.
‘Where’s Ferius?’ I asked.
Shalla shrugged. ‘She left. I don’t think she likes me. Then again, she’s some kind of Daroman spy so—’
‘She’s not a spy,’ I said.
‘Then what is she?’
A woman. It’s like a man only smarter and with bigger balls. No, that was not going to make me sound clever. ‘Who knows? Probably just what Father said: an Argosi wanderer.’
Shalla started to say something but then coughed. I was going to ask her what was wrong when she nodded towards the street where Nephenia had gone. ‘What was that all about?’
I glanced back just in case Nephenia was still there, but the street was empty. ‘Nothing. I was just—’
‘I don’t know why you waste time with Mouse Girl,’ Shalla said. ‘Her family isn’t powerful, she’s not that pretty and she’s never going to be much of a mage.’
A dozen angry retorts arrayed themselves in my mind, organised from nastiest to least likely to get me in a worse mess than I was already in. I tossed them all out. ‘She thinks you’re amazing.’
Shalla’s mouth opened and then closed again. Now there’s a magic spell if ever there was one. It didn’t last of course. ‘You know these people aren’t your family, right? Panahsi, Nephenia, that crazy Ferius woman? None of them are family.’
‘So what?’ I asked, the anger rising in my throat despite my attempts to stay calm. Shalla really is smarter than I am. Somehow she always knows just how to dig down into me. ‘What has my family ever done for me? All those hours Mother and Father spent doing spells on me to bring out my magic? All they did was make me feel sick and weak and horrible. Do you think they’ll even let me sleep upstairs any more once I’m stuck being a Sha’Tep for the rest of my life? Will you even call me your brother when I’m coming to serve your dinner or scrub your floors?’
I expected Shalla to launch into a tirade, but she just smiled and took both my hands in hers. Then, as if that were somehow insufficient, she let go of my hands and reached over to hug me. ‘None of that matters, Kellen. You’re always going to be my brother.’
Of all the shocks I’d had in my life recently, that was the biggest. Was my sister really going to tell me that it didn’t matter if I became Sha’Tep? That she’d love me no matter what? I guess that’s why I was doubly surprised when she whispered in my ear, ‘Because I’ve figured out a way to fix your magic.’