The new roommates were snoring loudly when Arram crept into the room the next morning. He grimaced. Would he have to put up with that noise all year? He hated wax earplugs.
He dressed quickly, not wanting to deal with the older students so early on a free day. Of course, it was free for him. They had to go on the first of several tours of the university, learning the layout of the schools, and then their way around the different parts of the School for Mages. They had forms to fill out and tests to take to give the instructors a better idea of where to place them.
Once dressed, Arram trotted off to the dining hall. He halted in the doorway, seeing no sign of Varice. “She isn’t here,” said one of her friends who was standing nearby. “She asked me to tell you they’re letting her work in the kitchen during breakfast and lunch this week.”
Arram smiled at the older girl, a plump brunette with dimples. To his surprise, she smiled back before she walked off to her table. Arram spent a moment admiring the sway of her hips before he decided there was no point in eating indoors and alone. He gathered a napkin, fruit, cheese, and bread, and then ate his meal in one of the lemon gardens, surrounded by the trees’ scent. Once finished, he decided it was too fine a day to remain indoors.
In a shocking waste of hours, he spent his day wandering from the menagerie to the university’s many small museums. Agreeably weary, he was on his way to supper when someone grabbed him by the arm. Instantly he brought up a hand, a spell for stinging nettles on his lips. Then he recognized his black-clad attacker: Ozorne.
Arram’s spell evaporated as he grinned. “What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be at the palace. I almost got you with a stinging spell, you dolt!”
“You were quick with it, too,” Ozorne said with approval. He and Varice had plagued Arram to have small, hard-to-detect spells for self-protection ready at a moment’s notice, rather than trust to his unreliable fisticuff skills. “What has you on alert? Never mind that. My mother’s here. She’s invited you and Varice to supper.” He spotted Varice and waved her over to them.
Arram was confused. Ozorne wasn’t due back for at least another week. He also wasn’t kitted out in full mourning. Of course he wore black ribbons and beads braided into his hair, black pearl earrings, and onyx bracelets. Black embroideries were stitched over his cream-colored linen tunic in the signs for family, loss, death, and the Black God, but he should have been wearing a solid black tunic and a black headcloth. Most important, he should still have been in the imperial private quarters of the palace, observing the family rituals.
Varice frowned when she reached them. “Ozorne? I thought…”
“Everyone thought,” he said, grabbing her by the hand and thrusting Arram out the door ahead of them. Students got out of their way as Ozorne towed Varice a short distance down the hall. “When my illustrious uncle meditated on the circumstances surrounding Qesan’s murder and took counsel of the priests, he decided that elaborate mourning for a man killed in the act of adultery had, as he told us, ‘a stink to it.’ There will be no days of seclusion, Qesan will be buried on his home estates with only his father and some distant cousins to mourn him, and the rest of us may return to our lives. Before Mother goes home, she wants to see you two.”
Varice balked at that. “I’m not properly dressed to meet Her Highness!”
“You’re dressed like a student, so’s Arram, and that’s all that matters. I’m begging you, show her your best faces.” Ozorne halted before the ebony-inlaid door of one of the private dining rooms and tapped on it. The door swung open, releasing the scents of mint, thyme, cinnamon, ginger, and fresh-baked breads. Slaves in black tunics stood against one wall of the room, staring directly ahead. Arram looked away from them. These wore metal collars with the round emblem of House Tasikhe in front. Men and women alike wore their hair cropped very short. All were dark brown or nearly black in skin color, as if they’d been chosen to contrast with the ivory skin of Ozorne and the lady who sat in one of the room’s well-cushioned chairs.
She watched them with eyes that were the same striking shade of hazel as Ozorne’s, but far more weary and sad, framed by shadows above and below. They shared the same mouth, nose, and strong chin, but there was unhappiness at the corners of her mouth. Her dark brown hair was coiled and pinned in a gold net and covered with a light veil of black silk. Her black floor-length gown was belted at her waist with a gold chain set with gray and cream-colored pearls. Unlike her son, she wore no rings or bracelets other than a gold wedding band. Her sandals were plain leather dyed black.
Arram took all this in quickly. Sebo, when she didn’t walk him in the river or set him to learning the creatures and plants that lived there, insisted that he learn to describe things he saw only at a glance. Master Cosmas was the same. “You may be called on to save lives from fires as well as start and stop them,” he’d said when Arram and his friends began the spellcraft side of their lessons. “Your ability to do so may rest on what you see inside a room when you only glance into it.” Arram would not put it past any of his private teachers to demand that he describe Ozorne’s mother perfectly.
He bowed as Ozorne said, “Varice, Arram, I present Princess Mahira Lymanis Tasikhe, my honored mother. Mother, may I present my friends, Varice Kingsford and Arram Draper?”
Varice curtsied deeply. Neither of them straightened until the princess lifted her hand, indicating that they might do so. Once he was upright, Arram saw that Ozorne’s mother was inspecting him very carefully.
“My son tells me that you are good friends to him. For this I am grateful,” she said with a soft, wistful smile. “He needs such friends, so far from his sisters and me.”
Ozorne mentioned his younger sisters so rarely that Arram often forgot that he had any. It was his mother he talked about, when her letters arrived, and his father.
“He is a very good friend to us, Your Highness,” Varice replied. “We’re fortunate to have one another.”
There was a flinty glint in the woman’s gaze as she looked at Varice. “Are you still a kitchen witch, girl?”
Remembering that he and Varice were supposed to like one another, Arram stepped close to her and clumsily took her hand, trying to make it seem as if he did not want the princess to see him do it. Varice looked up at him and smiled, squeezed his hand, and let go.
“She is far more than that, Mother, as I have explained,” Ozorne was saying. His voice was tight with irritation, and there was flint in his own eyes as he told his mother, “She is excellent with medicines, herbal magic, and purification magic, as well as hospitality magic.”
Varice laughed, though Arram noticed her cheeks were flushed with anger, or was it hurt? Her lips trembled slightly as she replied, “No, Ozorne, it’s fine. I am a kitchen witch, if you think about it. My own father believes so!” She smiled at the princess. “It is true, Your Highness. But as I have told my honored father, consider how much a well-placed, talented person might do with the meals for warring clans who join to cement a marriage. Or what if a kitchen witch purchases the cooking supplies for a ship or a merchant caravan? Even a middling kitchen witch could turn such things for good or ill, and I am not a middling kitchen witch.”
The princess regarded Varice for a long moment. Neither Ozorne nor Arram dared to move. Arram wondered if the princess understood that when Varice spoke in that pleasant, perky tone, she was actually angry. He wasn’t even certain that Ozorne had figured that out about their friend, even though he’d known Varice longer than Arram had.
At last Princess Mahira gave Varice the thinnest of smiles. “You know your worth, it seems,” she murmured.
Varice bobbed a slight curtsy. “Your Highness, like your son I have entered the Upper Academy at the age of fifteen,” she said. “The university has already informed me of my worth.”
Mahira nodded and turned her regard to Arram. A small frown creased her forehead. “How old are you, boy?”
“Thirteen, Your Highness,” he replied. Heat crawled up the back of his neck.
Mahira sat back in her chair. “Thirteen? You are but a child!” She looked at Ozorne. “You said he is equal to the two of you, starting advanced training as you will this term!”
Ozorne grinned at his mother. “All three of us are advanced students,” he told her. “Arram has five masters teaching him privately—we each have four. Only a quarter of the third- and fourth-year students can boast even one master as an instructor. Most here study in classes until they graduate only with the certificate that places them just above hedgewitches and goodywives.”
Again the lady frowned the careful frown of a woman who did not want to incur too many wrinkles. “But not you, my son. Surely you will do better.”
“Your Highness, all mage students hope to do better,” Varice explained. “Success is very different. Ozorne has Master Chioké in battle magic. Master Chioké is very highly regarded.”
The princess looked past them, as if she saw things outside the private dining room. “My lord husband also told me success is different than what one hopes, not long before he was so foully slain,” she murmured. She looked at her hands, neatly folded in her lap. Silence stretched among them. It had begun to grow uncomfortable when Ozorne rested a hand on his mother’s shoulder.
“Did I tell you what Arram here did right before we met him, Mother?” he asked. “It was the talk of the whole school. He was supposed to raise a little bit of water from a bowl—”
“Ozorne, please, no!” Arram cried. When the princess turned her regard on him, Arram bowed, his hands over his face. “Your Highness, it’s a stupid story.”
“Not to hear our masters tell it,” Varice teased.
“And what happened to interest the masters?” Mahira inquired.
Politely, because good manners were thoroughly taught in the Lower Academy, Arram told the princess what had taken place that day, in Girisunika’s classroom. Ozorne interrupted occasionally to say what he had heard about it in the general university, but Varice kept silent, the picture of a well-behaved maiden.
Mahira raised her eyebrows when Arram finished. “And you were rewarded for such misbehavior, Arram Draper?” she inquired softly. She let Ozorne urge her gently from her chair and lead her to her place at the table. This was a dining room furnished in the Carthaki style, with very low cushioned couches and low tables. Once the princess was seated with Ozorne at her right hand, Arram and Varice were placed on her left.
“Your Highness,” Arram said, “if extra classes and more lessons were a reward, then I was very well blessed.”
The princess smiled and nodded. Apparently the nod was a signal. The slaves began to serve beef cooked with mint, cold chicken with pomegranate juice, and side dishes of salads and vegetables, each with its own unique blend of herbs and spiced vinegars. Arram hid a smile. He could see that as Varice did her best to keep up with the talk, she also tried to work out how each dish was made. Normally the university kitchens were more than able to cater to any guest, but Ozorne had once mentioned that the princess had her own cooks, since her health could be fragile. These dishes were very different from the school’s familiar ones. Arram ate heartily. Any weight he ever put on only went straight up to add to his height.
The lady’s requirements for conversation rested largely on Arram’s studies. He tried to explain that he often made mistakes and he wasn’t even sure that he belonged in the Upper Academy. She chided him for that.
“Your masters know far better than you, young man,” she said gravely. “They are great in learning and magecraft, respected throughout the Southern and Eastern Lands for their wisdom. You must accept their judgment. Work hard to prove worthy of it.” She had that distant look in her eyes again. “My son, you choose your friends well. I approve. Strong mages will be a great asset when you avenge your father’s murder by the Sirajit dogs.”
That struck Arram like a bucket of cold water. “Your Highness, surely…the Sirajit rebels who fought His Late Highness were defeated. We’ve been taught that there is no armed rebellion left.”
“Mother, we talked about this,” Ozorne said. “I am going to be a master mage, remember? I’m not the imperial sort.”
The princess didn’t seem to listen. She turned the wedding ring on her finger, gazing into the distance. Ozorne glanced at a slave, who nodded to him. “Mother, thank you so much for this meal.” The prince got to his feet. Varice and Arram did the same as Ozorne went to his mother, knelt, and kissed her cheek. She didn’t look at him or at the other two as they said their proper farewells and left.
Ozorne sighed. “She has good days and bad ones,” he explained as they walked down the hall. “In the last year she’s been having more good days than bad. She’s just worn out from being at court, or she wouldn’t have slipped away in front of you.”
Varice put an arm around his shoulders and squeezed. “It’s all right,” she said. “She was lovely. We didn’t think anything of it, did we, Arram?”
“No, of course not,” he said, doing his best to sound cheerful, but he was unsettled. From the look of Princess Mahira as she spoke of the Sirajit people, he thought she would have killed them herself, given weapons and soldiers. Her eyes had been frightening.
He needed to break the news now. “Ozorne, one of our new roommates is Sirajit.”
Ozorne halted and turned to look up at Arram. For a moment the older boy said nothing. Finally he looked away. “But how charming. I’m sure we shall all get on like lotuses in a pond. Perhaps complete peace with the province of Siraj will begin in our humble little room. Wouldn’t that be nice?” He sighed. “In any event, you must do without me for another two days. Mother leaves for our lands then. You know I like to stay with her until the last moment. It steadies her, you see.” They nodded, and Ozorne kissed Varice’s cheek in farewell as they left her at her dormitory. “Bear with our new roommates just a little longer,” he said as he and Arram walked on. “We’ll see. Maybe they’ll find out the university is hard on newcomers who think they are already mages.”
He clapped Arram on the shoulder, leaving his friend with goosebumps.
Upon his return to the room, Arram found it crammed with older students, all of whom were laughing and talking loudly, eating and drinking and occupying every spare inch of space. They barely moved as Arram fought his way through to his cubicle. He thought of trying to order them out, then thought of the laughter and mocking he would get. Instead he retrieved his blanket and pillow once again and left. He walked halfway up the steps to the roof before he realized the noisy talk and laughter were also coming from up there.
Growling under his breath, he decided to try something new. When he was in the Lower Academy, he’d been forbidden to venture outside the walls after dark at any time. As a member of the Upper Academy, he was permitted to do so between terms. He stomped out through the gate with a nod to the guard, who knew him, and across the City Road toward the river.
There were people on the beach there. It was too hot for older students and masters to pass up the chance to catch the river breezes, even if they meant to return inside for the night. From his studies with Sebo, Arram knew a track around a bend in the riverbank that led to a small cove. No one else was there.
He put down his blanket and pillow. Next he carefully shaped a circle in the sand around his things, using salt from a pouch that he always wore on his belt. “Let them take your clothes,” Cosmas had told the three friends. “Let them take your rings, let them take your shoes, let them take your…” He had twinkled at Ozorne. “Let them take the very beads from your hair, but do not let them take your salt! It is the most basic ingredient we have, and it can help you to get everything else back!”
Arram used it now because, while there were spells to prevent hippos and crocodiles from coming up on these beaches, there were always land animals to concern him. As he walked the circle, he murmured a protective spell. To his delight, the line of sparkling fire rose above his circle and faded. It worked!
He lay down and tucked his hands behind his head, watching the stars and listening to the river’s sounds. Hippos talked back and forth as softly as those great creatures managed. Now and then crocodiles bellowed. Fish leaped to catch insects and splashed back down. Clouds passed. He counted the constellations, starting with the Basilisk and moving on to the others, also reciting the magical influences attached to each one. At some point in his whispered recitations, he slept.
He dreamed he lay on a heap of sleeping dragons. Their skins were as lumpy and uncomfortable as rocks, and they stank. When one of them sighed in his ear, he woke up enough to object.
He’d flung an arm and a leg onto the bronze back of the giant crocodile god, Enzi, in his sleep. The creature’s immense forearm was Arram’s pillow. The stench in his dream came from the animal’s mouth, filled with sharp teeth.
The youth scrambled to his hands and knees, wheezing as he fought for breath. When he glanced at Enzi, he saw that one of the god’s golden eyes was open. The moment he met that ancient gaze, he froze.
You woke me, the god said. We both slept well, and you woke me. He released the spell of paralysis that held Arram. Why must you flail so?
“I didn’t expect company!” Arram squeaked. He cursed his voice, then wondered what he had done wrong on his protective circle. He looked and saw one problem immediately. The god lay on half of it.
Do you know how little rest I get from the endless complaints of my own people and the hippopotamus people? demanded the god. Clatter, clatter, we are hungry, the humans hunt us, your people eat our young. I find a nice place to nap and you woke me! Go away if you can’t lie still! The great eye slid shut.
“It’s not my fault,” Arram grumbled, yanking on his clothes. He would have to get another blanket. He was not waking the god for the one underneath him. He marched up the path to the university. “I didn’t invite him to sleep there. It was my protective circle he ruined! He has things to complain about! He doesn’t have to remake his life every year or two, or every few weeks….” He stopped. He had spoken with a god. Admittedly, Enzi was an earth god, not one of the Great Gods, who had their own separate realm, but how many people spoke with gods at all?
Would Sebo be angry? It wasn’t his fault that Enzi had crawled into his circle. And so much for thinking he could work a good circle—he needed to practice!
He had planned to see if Hulak wanted weeds pulled after he ate breakfast, but his meal was interrupted. He was about to dig into a very succulent piece of cantaloupe when something like a cool, tingling rope twined around his neck. His tablemates stared at him.
“Arram,” Varice said nervously.
He didn’t have to be able to see the Gift to know the person who wielded it. “Sebo,” he told her and the others, and tried to fit a bite into his mouth. The rope around his throat tightened gently and got cold. “I’d better see her.”
Once he was on his feet and outside, the grip on his throat released. He could barely see the rope stretching through the air ahead of him, leading him through the Water Gate. It didn’t show the way to Sebo’s hut, but took him instead to the riverbank. Sebo waited for him there, cooling her feet in the water.
“You are a lucky boy,” she informed him when he was within earshot. “Do you know what might have happened, had Enzi not been amused rather than angry? He is capricious! You trusted protective circles—the university’s and your own—to keep you safe from the god of the crocodiles!”
Arram blinked at her. “I thought it was a good circle,” he said mildly, ignoring his own vexation at his failure. The air was damp and chilly, which meant the old woman’s bones were hurting her. “Doesn’t the water make your feet hurt?”
She sighed, her rage seeping into the sand. “It’s warmer than the air,” she explained. “It isn’t just we humans and the big animals who have their own gods. The great things of this world—rivers, mountains, lakes, forests—have their own gods as well. The very large ones have more than one god. Old Zekoi is one, because the rivers and streams that come to him have their own gods. If you deal with one god—as you now have—you will see others. Treat them with respect if they come to you. Most will not say as much, but they are often called to battle against Uusoae, the Queen of Chaos. Our tribute, prayers, and respect give them strength to keep fighting, somehow.”
Arram frowned. “I thought Uusoae was just a tale to frighten children.”
Suddenly Enzi was there on the riverbank. The air shoved away from him, making Sebo and Arram stagger. Arram caught his master by the arm, but she shook him off.
Do not speak so of the Dread Queen. She would devour us all if she had the chance, Enzi said harshly. The gods hold her at bay, but she never stops planning how she will eat the world.
“We fight beside you, in our way,” Sebo told the giant crocodile. “It is our world, too.”
He will be called to the fore of the battle one day, Enzi said, looking at Arram. He had better be ready.
“What do I need to be ready?” Arram asked, but the god had vanished. “I can’t battle any Chaos Queen,” he told Sebo. “I can’t even fight bullies.”
She took him by the arm. “Study your lessons and practice your spells,” she said gently. “That’s all that can be asked of you right now. Come. Let’s walk the river.”
After he left her, he was completely absorbed in thinking about gods that did not take on the faces of human beings. Once he had bathed, he spent the rest of the morning in a library that specialized in books about religion, gods, and nonhuman creatures. He had plenty to turn over in his mind when he left, three books in his hands.