By midafternoon, servants had moved Arram’s trunks and books to his new home in the next wing to the north, closer to the library and classroom wings. Even on the ground floor, students slept only four to a room, not twenty-six. Most of the residents were teenagers hoping to move to the Upper Academy within the next year.
For now, Arram’s room was shared by only one other person. His roommate plainly came from moneyed people; that much was visible in the fine wood and lacquered finish of the bow and quiver that hung by his window, accompanied by a good sword in a sheath studded with topazes. The boots tucked under his bed were nearly new, well-stitched leather with a glossy polish. Not only did this fellow possess a trunk made of fine teak, but beside the window was a matching cabinet. Arram dared a peek behind the wall that separated their cubicles—the desk matched the trunk and the cabinet, as did the chair. All four pieces had been carved by a master’s hand. His envy over the furniture vanished when he saw the contents of the three shelves over the desk. This boy left his schoolbooks there. The books on the shelves were very different, showing none of the battering and spots on the school volumes. Arram spotted Si-Cham’s Principles of Consistency and Edo Clopein’s Quick Defense, bound in fine leather with gold trim. Other classics, nearly as fresh as the day they’d been printed, occupied the shelves. His fingers twitched with greed; he actually whimpered.
Someone tapped on the outer door, and he jerked back into his own cubicle. He didn’t want his new roommate to think he was a snoop. “It’s open,” he called, his voice squeaking.
“I can see it’s open,” Sebo called. “Come out here and meet someone.”
Her purpose, Arram quickly learned, was to introduce the floor’s housekeeper to her newest charge. “This is Irafa,” Sebo informed him with considerable pleasure. “You are to do precisely as she says, understand?”
Arram looked up at the housekeeper and gulped. Irafa was tall and imperious, dressed in the red-on-red headcloth and wrapped dress of the northwestern Oda tribe. She smiled at him with satisfaction. “Say thank you to Master Sebo,” she said. “And be sure you do your bed up properly every morning, because I will check it.”
Arram bowed to Irafa and to Sebo, then retreated to his cubicle. He would have to wait to see how far he could open his window. In the meantime, he began to make up his bed. All was not yet lost. Tucked among his belongings was another small volume he had bought on a rare visit to the city’s markets, one titled On Coming and Going by Rosto Cooper the Younger. He had already successfully worked two of the spells for walking around the campus without being seen. He slid it under his mattress as he made his bed, reminding himself to find a better place before the housekeeper’s morning inspection.
He was pleased with his situation. His window commanded a view of a broad kitchen garden, and the ledge was low enough that hopping out would be easy. The scent of new herbs freshened the room when he left the shutters open.
He was arranging his books when someone else knocked politely on the open door.
Not only did the lovely Varice stand on his threshold, but she had a friend with her. The friend looked to be as old and as pale as the girl, and he was a couple of inches taller. Like most Carthakis, he wore a calf-length tunic, though he had skipped the shoulder drape due to the heat. The white cotton was embroidered at the hem, collar, and sleeves with green signs for health, protection, and wisdom. For adornment he had gold studs on his sandals, three gold rings on his fingers, and gold and gem earrings. His glossy brown hair was tied back in a horsetail. Just as Arram looked him over, he did the same, inspecting the younger, shorter boy from top to toe. His eyes were clear, straightforward, and curious.
Varice elbowed her companion. “I told you it was him.” She smiled at Arram. “When they said a boy was being advanced, I told Ozorne, ‘Depend on it. That’s the one I met.’ This is your new roommate, by the way. Ozorne Tasikhe, this is Arram Draper. Arram, this is my best friend, Ozorne.”
Ozorne offered his hand with a crooked smile. “How do you like the place? Unless Cosmas produces another child wonder, we should be safe with the whole thing to ourselves.”
“I’m not a child wonder,” Arram retorted, stung. “I’m eleven!” Then he gulped, recognizing the name. This was the member of the imperial family called the leftover prince. He had just snapped at the emperor’s nephew!
Ozorne’s crooked smile changed into a real one. “Are you? And I am thirteen, and Varice is twelve and a half. We shall take the world by storm, see if we don’t.”
Varice sat cross-legged on one of the empty beds across from Arram’s, while Ozorne dragged his desk chair over and slouched in it, smiling. “You’ll get used to her,” he told Arram, who sat gingerly on his own bed. “Once she’s decided you’ll be her friend, she assumes command.”
Varice sniffed at him. “You’ve never complained.” To Arram she said, “Ozorne and I are in the same classes most of the time. We’ve been friends for two years, I think.”
“So, what horrible thing did you do to end up in classes with us?” Ozorne asked. “Varice said I had to hear it straight from you.”
Arram gulped. “I flooded my classroom.” He got to his feet and looked out the window. “I didn’t do it on purpose! It just happened….” He faced the two older students again. “I still don’t understand why Master Cosmas is promoting me instead of sending me home.”
Ozorne smiled. “What was my misdeed, Varice?”
The girl tapped her forefinger against her chin. “We were in one master’s gardens, stealing cherries, and you saw a bird you didn’t recognize. You called to it, and called, and—well, I saw a great flood of your Gift roll from your hand, and the next thing I knew, the garden and every tree and plant in it was covered in birds! And then the master came, the one who managed the garden. He wanted us thrown out of the school for its ruin, because the birds refused to leave. I was laughing so hard I was crying by then, and Ozorne wasn’t even listening because he was able to hold any bird he wanted….”
“All I had to do was point and call, and the bird would come to sit on my hand,” Ozorne said, dreamy-eyed. “Even the hawks!”
Arram sat back down on his bed, fascinated. “I’ve never heard of such a thing. In The Magic of Birds by Ayna Wingheart, she writes that the magical nature of birds is such that only the most powerful mages can control more than ten or so, and that even she could handle no more than twenty-three or twenty-four at a time.”
Ozorne smiled at him. “What’s this? A fellow bird scholar?”
Arram chuckled and drew a pattern on the coverlet. “Oh, no, it’s just for fun. I can’t say I’ve studied.”
Ozorne got to his feet. “Well, study or no, let’s have a look at the bird enclosures in the menagerie! Varice?”
She stood and shook out her skirts. “I never turn down a visit to the menagerie.”
The two older students were at the door when they stopped to look back. “Aren’t you coming?” Ozorne asked.
“I wasn’t sure you meant it,” Arram explained.
“Anyone Varice likes is fine with me,” Ozorne said. “And you still didn’t tell me how you flooded your class, the Gift of it. We’ve both done that stupid spell, but we didn’t get those results!”
When she saw Arram had a tendency to lag behind, Varice tucked her arm in his and forced him to keep up. To his delight, Arram discovered that the students who cared for the menagerie animals were well acquainted with his companions. Ozorne in particular was a favorite in the areas set aside for the birds. Once he had vouched for Arram—which Arram thought was taking a great deal on trust—the three young people were admitted to the big enclosure that housed the birds who could get along. When the students handed each of the young people a cloth bag, birds flew down from their perches to land on their arms, shoulders, and heads, just as the pigeons did in the city squares.
The bags contained the food specially made up for the birds: small bits of vegetables, fruit, and fat, as well as seeds of all kinds. Arram ended up scattering his to the birds that swarmed around his feet while he watched Ozorne and Varice. They knew the animals so well that they could get them to do tricks for a bite of something.
One large golden peacock strutted over to Arram. To the boy’s surprise, the other birds backed away from him. A student attendant who had been keeping an eye on them all hurried over. She passed Arram another bag of feed. “This is his,” she said, nodding to the bird. “His lordship doesn’t like to share with the others.”
Arram poured the bag’s contents into his hand to find it was mostly brightly colored food: melon, squash, orange, and bits of small golden fish. “He’s very particular, isn’t he?” he asked.
Ozorne wandered over. “One day I’ll have a menagerie of my own, and I’ll have all of them,” he announced. “They’re called goldwings. They come from all the way across the Emerald Ocean.”
“I only see this one,” Arram said, looking around.
“We have two here, and the emperor has the other four. Now, come, have you seen ordinary peacocks before? I’m sorry, your lordship,” added the prince, bowing to the goldwing, “but you have to admit they’re pretty, too. Or at least the males are.” Ozorne hooked Arram’s arm and dragged him off to view birds with more colors in them than he’d ever seen in his life.
They barely made it to supper on time. Varice had refused to go until she’d changed her gown. Boys might be happy enough simply to dust themselves after birds had shed all over them, she informed her two friends, but she was not. They made it to the dining hall just before the monitors closed the doors.
“Close one,” a monitor chided as they skidded into the huge, noisy room.
Ozorne grinned at the older boy. “Close still counts!”
Arram had thought they might have trouble finding a table, particularly with him in tow, but it seemed that Varice was as confident in the dining hall as Ozorne was in the menagerie. She swept through the lines of serving plates and dishes, not only making sure of her own choices, but seeing to it that the boys took proper foods as well. Then she led the way to a small, shockingly empty table near one of the doors that led to the outdoor tables and a garden. The door was open, but no one took advantage of the tables outside: the air was cooling off. Instead Varice and Ozorne sat at that empty little table and pointed Arram’s new seat out to him. Only when everyone had eaten at least half of their dinners did Varice allow Ozorne to open the subject of water magic.
It was the best evening Arram had enjoyed at the university. Ozorne had some clever ideas on how to harness the power that had gone wrong that morning. Varice gave Arram some spells and charms for the manipulation of water she had learned from cooks and cook mages. If he worked hard he’d have them memorized by the end of the week. The water spells wouldn’t get away from him anymore!
They chattered outside one of the school’s many libraries until the end-of-study bells told them it was time to get back to their rooms. The boys escorted Varice to her building, where she was housed with older girls, then ran for their dormitory. Ozorne showed Arram a shortcut by way of the gardens behind the buildings. They were approaching their own place when Ozorne held out his arm to stop Arram. They halted in a grove of lemon trees planted in the edges of the garden. Two figures in the brown shirts and breeches of the university stable and field staff were standing at Ozorne’s window. The shutters were open; Ozorne had told Arram he always left them that way.
“I’ll get the guards,” Arram whispered.
Ozorne put a hand on his arm. To Arram’s shock, the older boy was chuckling softly. “Just wait,” he murmured.
One of the would-be thieves boosted himself up and over the ledge. The second followed. There was a yelp.
“Come on!” Ozorne said. He raced for the door to the building; Arram followed, wondering if he knew any battle spells. He’d learned Ozorne had fighting lessons after university classes four days a week, but he’d had nothing of the kind.
When they entered their room, Ozorne produced a ball of light, one of the few magics they were allowed to do outside class. Arram gasped. Two ragged men lay on the floor. They looked as if they’d fallen into bronze spiderwebs and been rolled up in them.
Curious, Arram went over and poked at the substance. The man inside it spat at him. The webbing itself was far thicker than spiderweb and not sticky, but these men would not be going anywhere until they were freed by a mage. He looked at his new friend.
“I thought we weren’t allowed to cast anything but tiny spells in our rooms, and only with permission,” he said, curious and awed.
Ozorne chuckled. “Silly lad, I know that. But the university understands I might be a particular temptation to those who don’t value their positions here.” He walked over to the other bundled thief. “Master Chioké cast this trapping spell for me. Would you let the housekeeper know we’ve caught fish in our net?” he asked Arram. He nudged the man with a toe.
Arram was at the door when he heard his new friend ask softly, “Are you Sirajit? I’ll know if you lie.”
That’s right, Arram thought as he knocked on the housekeeper’s door. Ozorne’s father was killed fighting Sirajit rebels. Arram had only been in Carthak for a year, but he remembered the student in black, and the memorial celebrations for the hero father. Even though Siraj had been part of the empire for years, its mountain people still resisted imperial rule and frequently tried to fight it off.
When he returned with watchmen, Arram found Ozorne still questioning his captives. As far as Arram could tell, the men were unharmed.
Feeling himself to be in the way, he retreated to his own part of the room as the guards chained the would-be robbers and took them out. Ozorne followed them to the door and slipped a few coins into one guard’s hand. “For your trouble,” he told the man.
After closing the door, Ozorne flung himself into Arram’s chair. “Gods save us, why are you reading that dusty old thing?” the prince demanded, looking at a book on Arram’s desk. “You don’t even have any class studies—you could read whatever you want. You could read something fun!”
Arram grinned at his new friend. “But this is my idea of fun. Is trapping robbers yours?”
“I don’t like strangers handling my things,” Ozorne said with a shrug. “And now you needn’t worry about more thieves. Once word gets around that our place is trapped, they’ll think the better of it.”
“Were they actually servants here?” Arram asked, concerned. “I wouldn’t have thought it.”
“More like family of servants, or acquaintances who overheard who the servants wait on. Word will get around. And I can tell Master Chioké the traps didn’t even leave a mark.” Ozorne grinned. “You now live in the safest room in the dormitories!”
The next morning was their day of worship, for those who chose to do so, and a day of rest for those who chose to relax. Arram heard Ozorne rise early and dress, but he went back to sleep. He had given up religious services not long after his arrival at the university, preferring to take one morning to loll in bed.
It wasn’t long before someone tapped on the door. Ozorne, who had returned, opened it and spoke softly to his guest: Arram recognized Varice’s reply. She asked him something, and Arram heard Ozorne walk closer. He turned over toward the wall and made a grumbling sound, as if he were still asleep. If they were going somewhere, he didn’t want them to feel obligated to ask him along simply because he was Ozorne’s roommate.
Ozorne hesitated, then left, closing the door quietly behind him.
Arram flipped on his back and sighed. He would have liked to go somewhere with them, but his pride got in his way. Pride was a horrible thing, and he wished he didn’t have any, but it was his family’s pride, so he was stuck with it. He didn’t even want to sleep anymore.
He had just gotten dressed when the door swung open.
“Oh, good,” Ozorne said. “I’m on a mission. I’m not allowed to return to the Northern Gate without you. Varice says you no doubt pretended to be asleep because you thought we were going to invite you because we felt sorry for you, and you are supposed to stop being silly and come along.”
“But…,” Arram said, knowing he ought to protest.
“Come on,” Ozorne insisted. “We’re going to lunch in town—my treat—and then there’s a play in the Imperial Theater. My treat also. She’s right—you are being silly. We wouldn’t invite you if we didn’t like you. I’m much too selfish to do otherwise. You’ll need better shoes than those sandals if you have them.”
Dazed by this whirlwind of information, Arram donned his holiday shoes.
Varice shook a finger at Arram when they joined her. “Wicked boy!” she cried. “Never do that again! You’re always invited, until you’re not! That’s our rule! Now, let’s go have fun.”
Arram did, more than he ever had with his father and grandfather. He made the three-lined Sign against evil when he thought it, and left a copper in a corner shrine to Lady Wavewalker, goddess of the sea and those who sailed on it, but it was still true. It was one thing to walk along the stalls with someone who took interest only in cloth and clothing, being told no every time he asked for something unusual (though they were kind—to a limit—about books and maps). It was another to go with people who looked at the same things he looked at and discussed them; stopped to watch jugglers, fire eaters, acrobats, people who walked rings and balls along their arms and backs, and musicians; pondered over the second- and third-hand volumes at the booksellers; and looked at the animals for sale—only to be forced to leave when Ozorne began to shout at a seller who didn’t clean the dung from the animals’ cages.
“If I had the power, there would be a law that they would have to keep the animals clean and properly fed,” Ozorne said, fuming, as Varice and Arram dragged their friend away from the seller. The man shouted obscenities and threats as their party mocked him.
“Maybe when your cousin is emperor you could ask him for the law,” Varice suggested.
“Ha! If he even remembers my name,” Ozorne retorted. Varice’s face turned sad, and he quickly put a hand on her shoulder. “Oh, don’t. I’ll ask, when the day comes. I will.”
They moved on to the theater and enjoyed themselves thoroughly. That night, when Arram flung himself onto his bed, he was too happy to sleep. They had eaten their supper from the market vendors’ carts, sampling one another’s dishes. He now had a list of new favorites to try in the dining hall. They had watched a puppet show that made them laugh themselves silly, just as they had at the short comedy before the play. The play itself was a heroic one, full of winged horses, a dragon, and a valiant hero. It was thoroughly satisfying, even from the high, cheap seats. Arram was surprised at how carefully his new friend paid out his coin, until Ozorne explained his mother said he must learn to manage his purse.
Arram thought of all of this as he lay in bed and grinned. What a fine day! He had friends!
At breakfast the next morning Varice looked at their bleary eyes and pale faces and smirked.
“Did you get any sleep?” she asked as they entered the dining hall.
“A little,” Ozorne mumbled. “Then he woke me up by scribbling and muttering about immortals. I asked what fascinated him so, and the next we knew it was daybreak.”
“It was wonderful,” Arram said. “Usually I talk to people about things and they just say ‘Huh?’ or ‘Don’t ask stupid questions.’ ”
“But you’re at the university now,” Varice protested.
“We were talking about the banishment of the immortals,” Ozorne explained.
Varice’s face lit. “I don’t suppose you know if they used kitchen witches or hedgewitches, people like that to help, do you?” she asked Arram. “I don’t see how they could have kept the little creatures from escaping without mages to work the smaller magics.”
“I told you she ought to have been there,” Ozorne said as he disentangled himself to gather a tray, bowl, and spoon.
Arram did the same, frowning in preoccupation. “I think I saw a book somewhere on how regular mages worked against the magics of the small immortals. It was very old but interesting, and it’s written in Common.” He looked at Varice, who was putting melon and a roll on her tray. Embarrassed, he said, “I’m sorry—you’ve probably read it.”
“No, I haven’t!” she cried. “And I’ll die without it! Would you find it for me?”
Arram grinned at her. He really had found two actual friends, who talked about book things, watched exciting theater shows, and enjoyed their food!
He took a chance with a personal question. “You remember we told you about the robbers, don’t you?”
She halted and cast a look at Ozorne. While they chose their meals, he was settling in at an empty table, out of hearing. “Of course I do. It’s just like Ozorne to have a trap laid.”
“Well, he asked one of the thieves if he was from Siraj. Why would he do that? Because of his father?”
Varice nodded. “He took his father’s passing very hard. So did his mother. His sisters are a little better….I suppose it’s different when you’re a boy. You get ideas, like you should have been there, and you could have saved him. Don’t ask him about it, though.”
“I won’t—it’s why I came to you,” Arram assured her.
She handed him an orange, then said quietly, “Sometimes he…gets angry if he tangles with someone he believes is from Siraj. His friends—his real friends—do their best to keep him out of that kind of trouble.”
“Of course,” Arram said, looking at Ozorne. Their day at the market had been tremendously fun, due to him and to Varice. He’d do anything for them. “You can count on me,” he told her.