14 Nevrine (continued)

“How did you do that?” said a dark-haired man who entered just as I struck my target. “I’ve never seen anything like that kind of control.”

“Um,” I said. I could see my plan start to fray at the edges. “It was just a lucky stroke, I guess. I’m Sesskia. What’s your name?”

“I—” He looked embarrassed. “I don’t think I’ve earned the right to your praenoma.”

“We’ve met several mages in our travels,” I said, “and given how different we are from other people, it felt like kinship. My placename is Thalessi Scales, if you’re more comfortable with that.”

“No,” he said, “no, you’re right. I didn’t think of it that way. Kinship.” He brightened. “I’m Davik.”

“And I’m Jeddan,” Jeddan said, coming forward to exchange salutes with him. “What magic do you have?”

“The fire rope, same as Sesskia,” he said. “Did you say ‘mages’? I haven’t heard that word.”

“Everyone in the south uses it,” I lied—though it wasn’t exactly a lie; I’d pushed that terminology hard everywhere we’d been—“and we think it sounds more dignified than ‘magickers.’”

“I wonder if Norsselen will like it,” Davik said, mostly to himself. “But I’m serious about your ability with the fire rope, Sesskia. I don’t have nearly that much control.”

“Well, I might be able to show you,” I said, then remembered I wasn’t going to be here long, and he didn’t have the right vocabulary, and added, “Have you all had much success learning each other’s pou—magics?”

“Learning each other’s—that’s not possible,” Davik said. “Some people have acquired more than one magic, but that just happens as you get better with the one you start with.”

Jeddan and I glanced at each other, and Jeddan gave the tiniest shake of his head. I agreed with him. This was not the time to contradict this man’s assumptions. I wondered about this Norsselen he mentioned (now, of course, the name makes me scowl) and why his liking anything would matter.

“Well, I can try showing you what I’ve learned,” I said, and directed him to take up a solid stance, which I don’t think is necessary but is something the Darssan mages find critical in scribing certain kinds of th’an, and I figured the focus might help him. Then I broke down the steps of the pouvra and tried to walk him through it, which led to us having to stop to discuss how it felt to wield the magic at all. Davik isn’t terribly bright, but to my surprise this made things easier; he was compliant instead of argumentative, and we’d almost come to common ground when a couple of women showed up, and then another handful of people, and they were all curious about the newcomers.

We kept introducing ourselves by our praenomi, explaining of course no one should feel obligated to return the favor, and only about a quarter of the mages declined the honor. Interestingly, they all stuck together in their own corner, like a gang of toughs in the street who were dismissive of anyone not in their group, even down to a sense of low-grade menace. I kept an eye on them, just in case. Now I’ve met their “boss” Norsselen, I’m even more cautious around them. If I can’t predict what he’ll do, I certainly can’t predict what he might ask of his minions.

So we met people, and demonstrated our pouvrin, and I was more careful this time not to look like I had tremendous control over my magic. It turns out to be difficult to pretend to be less capable with pouvrin than you are. I was glad I’d chosen one I really am less experienced with. Jeddan had no problem downplaying his pouvra. At least he’s using it, though I have a feeling he’s never going to go immaterial through flesh again, which is fine by me.

Nobody seemed to think we were remarkable, and things were going well, when another man came through the door and said, “Ah, you must be our new members! I hope everyone’s made you feel welcome.” He was blond, white-blond, and had a long jaw and freckles that made him look younger than the thirty-plus I guessed his age to be. He also reminded me so much of Vorantor, with his broad smile and his “I’m a great leader” pose, that I had to choke back nausea, remembering my last sight of Vorantor collapsed across the kathana circle with his throat slit.

“My name is Norsselen,” he said, “and my magic is fire. And you are?”

“We choose to offer our praenomi in a spirit of kinship,” I said, “but if you’d prefer, my placename is Thalessi Scales.” I said this because despite what I avowed, I had no desire for this man to use my praenoma. I’m still not certain he won’t turn out to be an enemy.

“Thank you, Thalessi, I would prefer to maintain formality at the beginning of our acquaintance,” Norsselen said, extending his palm to me, then to Jeddan.

“Rokyar Axe,” Jeddan said, not even pretending to offer kinship. “I can move through things.”

“And my, um, magic is the fire rope,” I said.

“Good, good,” Norsselen said. “I take it we haven’t demonstrated our magics for you? Everyone, let’s show our new friends what we can do.”

The next part was impressive, and I have to give Norsselen credit for being able to point all these people in the same direction, even though I disapprove of both his methods and his motives. Everyone went to what looked like pre-determined spots in the room to form small groups. Then, exactly as if they’d practiced (because of course they had) each group took turns demonstrating a pouvra.

Norsselen (I guessed this, and it was later confirmed) had done the organizing, and he’d at least worked out that the fire mass and the fire rope were different pouvrin. There were a lot more people doing the former than the latter, which made sense to me, given how hard it had been for me to learn the rope. The largest group did mind-moving—I forgot to mention there were stacks of all kinds of things all around the room, bricks and short planks and hard rubber balls and things like that. None of them were capable of using the mind-moving pouvra on the same level as Cederic, but all of them seemed to be stronger than me. I’d feel inadequate about that if I didn’t remember crushing that bandit’s heart, and I try not to remember that.

There was another small group who could walk through things, and then, excitingly, a woman who flitted from one side of the room to the other in the blink of an eye. I’m still trying to figure out how to justify taking her aside and making her teach me that pouvra.

A couple of people, no more than ten, moved from one group to another to demonstrate a second or even a third pouvra. Norsselen has three—fire, mind-moving, and see-in-dark, though he not so modestly told us this later since of course he couldn’t demonstrate the last. There are another five who have that one, and three who can see through things. No concealment, obviously, no see-inside, and I don’t think any of them can turn their pouvrin on other people. They’re all pouvrin you’d expect someone to develop first based on some trauma, even though we established (through some quiet questioning) none of them had experienced anything unusual but the convergence.

to be continued…

14 Nevrine

I feel as if I begin a lot of these entries with variations on “I wonder if I made the right choice.” I used to pride myself on being decisive. Not rash or reckless, but when your actions can potentially get you killed, waffling about them is a big mistake. So I always try to think things through, and go over all the possibilities, and then, when I’ve decided what to do, I do it without revisiting every last detail. (That’s not the same as changing plans in midstream, which happens frequently, but is a response to the situation changing, not my analysis.) It’s like I’m swimming out of my depth all the time, not having enough information but having to act anyway, worrying that if I knew more, I’d see that whatever decision I’d made was the wrong one.

In this case, however, despite having not even close to enough information, I know I made the right choice. I just wish it had been the wrong one.

The day started, for me, with a knock on my door, and when I called an invitation, a woman entered with a steaming tray and set it down across my lap with a bow. It was scrambled eggs and bacon and apple juice and hot, black coffee, which I don’t care for but smells divine, and all the little condiments to make the meal perfect, and it was the first hot breakfast I’ve had in over a week, so I fell on it like I was starving and was really grateful no one was around to see my lapse of good manners.

The woman left me to my breakfast with another bow, and I ate my fill, then set the tray on the floor and got up to dress. I really wish I’d had my own clothes, because the ones the King forced on us gave the impression that Jeddan and I are somewhat higher class than we are, certainly people who deserve a surname and a home with two servants. Not what I wanted these mages to think of me, and I certainly couldn’t blend in very well in that getup, but there was nothing I could do about it except consider finding the servants’ wing and stealing something more practical. I’d leave money, naturally.

Anyway, I dressed—at least the clothes look nice—and then waited for a few minutes before remembering I’m not the sort of woman who sits passively waiting for things to happen, and that I didn’t care if wandering through the manor was against the rules. So I crossed the hall to Jeddan’s room and knocked, then entered on his invitation. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, dressed in his own too-nice clothes. “So what do we do now?” he said.

“Explore,” I said. “I want to meet these other mages as soon as possible.”

“Have you decided what you want to do about the pouvrin?” he said. “Or, for that matter, telling everyone they’re called pouvrin, because I doubt that’s knowledge they got when they became mages, especially since somebody came up with ‘magickers.’” He made a face.

“I’ve been going back and forth on that all night,” I said. “On the one hand, if we go in there claiming one pouvra, then have to reveal more later, that makes us seem untrustworthy. But if we manifest several, who knows what kind of balance that will upset, if none of them have more than three? On the third hand, I’m leaving soon, and don’t care if they think I’m trustworthy. So I’ve decided to say I’ve got just the one, and see what happens from there. My least favorite kind of plan, but I don’t know enough to do better.”

“That’s the conclusion I came to,” Jeddan said. He made a motion that encompassed all of him. “People see me as a threat because I’m as big as I am, and having several pouvrin will only make that worse. Better to find out what the people are like, and then reveal everything.”

“Then let’s see if we can find our colleagues,” I said, “and maybe we’re being too paranoid. Maybe we’ll be able to share what we know and learn from them.”

“Or maybe it will be as bad as I know you think it will, and we’ll both be leaving this place at a run,” Jeddan said.

“I’m trying to learn optimism,” I said. “You’re not helping.”

We retraced the route we’d taken the night before, down the narrow servants’ stairs, and went down the corridor only to discover ourselves outside. So we turned around and went the other way, through a small door into a tall-ceilinged hallway half-paneled in light maple, with skylights high above that made the place look cheery. There were two or three doors opening off the hallway that led to empty rooms with the same paneling and bare wooden floors. None were occupied.

At the end of the hall, another hallway, this one wider, intersected ours. More doors, more skylights. We investigated each one: these were furnished, mostly sitting rooms, but also a music room and a formal dining room with a table that could seat forty diners. We saw not a single living soul in all this time, not even servants. I think, now, that all the other mages got used to a leisurely morning, like we used to have in the Darssan, but while that does appeal to me, it certainly wasn’t how I was going to behave when there were so many things to explore.

We finally found a staircase, a big one with an ornately carved railing and thick carpeting with brass stair-rods, and went up to the next floor. That one had hardly any doors at all, and we were almost all the way to what I gauged was the north end of the house before finding anything worth investigating. That hallway terminated in the most beautiful window made of two enormous sheets of curved glass, one framed above the other, and it looked out over Venetry and the view was just breathtaking. Cities really are beautiful, if only from a distance.

We looked at it for a while, then decided to try the door on our left, which was a big three-paneled thing (it looked like three doors in the same frame, but only the outer two opened, and the middle was just a wood panel) we figured couldn’t possibly lead to someone’s bedroom, which was what had kept us from trying the other doors on this level so far.

The room it led to was enormous. The ceiling was two stories tall and capped with a dome of glass so clear it looked as if it wasn’t even there; the silence, as opposed to the birdsong of early morning, was the only thing that dispelled that illusion. More tall windows lined the walls on two side at regular intervals, with rose-painted panels dividing them. The floor was a glossy parquet of wooden squares of different sizes and colors, like a mythical giant’s puzzle, and sunlight reflected off it to cast a glow over the other two walls, which by contrast had been covered to a height of about twelve feet with rough oak planking that was scarred and burned everywhere.

I took a few steps into the room and turned in a slow circle. “Those light fixtures above the windows would turn night into day here,” I said. “I think this is a ballroom, or was.”

“There’s a patio over here,” Jeddan said. He’d crossed the room and opened one of the tall windows, which turned out to be a door. “It’s a sheer drop fifty feet down, but you can see most of Venetry from it. Very pretty.”

“I’m guessing we’ve found at least one of the places where the mages study,” I said, summoning a rope of fire and flicking it like a whip at the paneling. It made a mark paralleling an old burn scar. I tried again and managed to overlay the old mark entirely. Very satisfying.

to be continued…

13 Nevrine, after curfew (hah!) (continued)

“Of course he leaves it to us to handle the details,” muttered Lenssar, then in a louder voice he said, “You are indeed favored highly among your class. I hope you will show proper appreciation for his Majesty’s condescension.”

“Yes, Honored,” Jeddan said. “Where should we go?”

Batekessar rose and walked past us without a word. The others didn’t seem to think there was anything strange about this. “I’ll summon a servant to take you to the guest wing,” Jakssar said, though she didn’t rise, just sat there looking at us with the same intent expression Crossar had. I was starting to feel very twitchy.

“It really does make one wonder,” Lenssar said, and I had to avoid looking at him because that whiny whistle coming out of a face so eerily familiar was too disconcerting, “how society will be shaken up, all these nobody magickers coming up from nowhere.”

“Be polite, Lenssar, you’re talking about our guests,” Jakssar said, and now she did stand. “You went into the invading army’s camp, young woman? How thrilling. Whatever prompted you?”

“I wanted to help our country, Honored,” I said.

“I don’t know many people who would take such a risk simply to help their country,” Jakssar said. She came to stand in front of me, looking down—she’s not hugely tall, but taller than me—and I had this strange feeling I was in front of the God-Empress again. They’re nothing alike physically, and Jakssar strikes me as very sane, so I’m not sure what I was responding to. I’ve decided to be very careful if I have to interact with her again. She may seem friendly, and I still have sympathy for her position, but she’s still a Lord of the Chamber and every bit as ruthless as her peers to hold that position.

“It wasn’t much of a risk, Honored, the enemy has female as well as male soldiers,” I said.

“Really?” said Crossar, more interested now than before, which made his needle-sharp attention even more acute. “What else did you see?”

I’m embarrassed that my first reaction to this was to tell him nothing, so I wouldn’t betray Castavir, then I felt stupid because, for one, it was the God-Empress’s army and even Castavir wanted her defeated, and for another, I was still a Balaenic citizen and wanted my people to have every advantage when it came to war.

Then I told him as much as I could remember about the number of troops, the number of generals, the way they organize themselves, and how well supplied they were. I also told him about the God-Empress, including some details I pretended I’d learned in the camp that I’d actually learned from personal observation.

“I don’t speak their language,” I said at the end, “but by the way they reacted when her tent burned, I think half her officers are afraid of her. Honored.” I’d realized about halfway through my speech that some of that information I could only have gotten if I understood Castaviran. I hoped no one noticed the inconsistencies. I have got to be more careful now that we’re among Balaenics exclusively.

“This is excellent information,” Crossar said, and I saw him close his lips on a sibilant that was almost certainly the first syllable of my name. He had permission to use my name, as I’d been maneuvered into giving it by the King, but it was still a presumption on a relationship we didn’t have, so his choosing not to felt like more of an honor than the King’s dubious request. Naturally, this made me even more suspicious of him: was he trying to gain my, if not allegiance, then my good will? Because basically I don’t think someone like Crossar ever does anything without an eye to his political future. And I’m certain he wants something from me. I really don’t trust him.

We answered questions for a while, the kind of questions people of high rank ask of their inferiors that show they have no idea how anyone manages to live without a hundred thousand crowns’ income a year, then Jakssar finally did summon some servants, who took us away to be washed and clothed appropriately. The clothes are nice, but too ornate for my taste, and I don’t know where they took my old clothes. Probably burned them, so it’s lucky I smuggled these books behind a curtain instead of wrapping them in my clothes. Too bad, because I really liked that shirt. These new clothes are going to make sneaking around Venetry very difficult.

Then we had dinner with the King, who asked the same equally foolish questions as Chamber had, though he did manage to stay focused on our trip and what we’d seen along the Royal Road. He also wanted to know about magic. We told him the truth about pouvrin, which made his eyes glaze over, but didn’t say anything about our having more than one. At some point we’ll have to reveal ourselves, probably tomorrow when we meet the mages, and I’m not looking forward to that. The King said “two or even three” like that was really impressive, so I’m certain that walking in there tomorrow with twelve is going to disrupt whatever power structure they’ve got in place. Time enough to worry about that when it happens.

Dinner was very, very long, with so many courses I ended up taking just nibbles off some of the dishes I liked most because I’d incautiously eaten too much of earlier ones I didn’t really care for. I hope they give what we couldn’t eat to the servants. Some of those dishes were delicious. We ended with after-dinner drinks, which I only pretended to imbibe, and finally the King started yawning, and told us someone would take us to Fianna Manor, and left before we could finish saluting him.

We didn’t see much of Fianna Manor in the darkness. I’d like to say it’s the same as all the other manors up at the top of the city, but none of them share any similarities aside from having walls and windows and roofs. Sizes, construction materials, floor plans, all of those are unique to each manor, which is a fun challenge for a thief.

I’ve never stolen from Fianna Manor, so I didn’t know what to expect, and I still don’t, because we went through a side door down a narrow corridor, up stairs that had to be servants’ stairs, and into a wider, low-ceilinged corridor lined with plain wooden doors. These also are probably servants’ quarters, which makes me wonder if someone’s already trying to prove a point by pushing us to the side. If I were planning to stay, I’d care more about that. It’s still a nice, sizable room, though, with a pretty rug and matching counterpane, and a water closet, and furniture that all matches (heavy old oak, and I wonder how they got it up those stairs).

Jeddan’s across the hall from me and his room is almost identical, except for the rug and counterpane being in different colors. I was tired enough that all I did was strip down to my underwear and cuddle up in the bed to write all of this. It’s a good, comfortable bed, too. It makes me wonder what kind of luxury some of these mages might be living in.

I wonder what tomorrow will bring. I’m planning to stay three days and then head out for Colosse. I haven’t asked Jeddan if he wants to come with me—that’s part of what the three days are for, to see what happens with the mages and whether Jeddan would rather be part of whatever they’re doing. I’d miss him if he stayed, but I know too well what it’s like to crave learning to be disappointed if he did.

13 Nevrine, after curfew (hah!) (continued)

“I’m more concerned about us being overrun,” said the King. “Shouldn’t we draw the army back to protect the city?”

“I’ll send word to General Tarallan for his analysis,” Crossar said. “He knows the tactical situation better than we do.”

“I don’t want the army wasting time pacifying an enemy city just to have this one captured,” the King said, whining.

“Your Majesty, we will make the decision that will best keep Balaen safe, and that includes this city,” Crossar said. “How many magickers do they have?”

It took us both a second to realize he was talking to us. “Um,” Jeddan said.

“Seven squads of ten each,” I said, thinking fast. The only thing I really knew was that battle mages were, in fact, organized into squads of ten, and that each squad had its own standard, with a unique emblem and a red and black border. In reconnoitering the camp, I’d seen at least seven battle standards. What I didn’t know was how many of those battle mages had retained their powers. I’d been told once that the green-eyed mages tended toward academia and private service, so I’d guess the military would have fewer than their counterparts from the Darssan, a third of whom had green-gray eyes. But that didn’t really tell me anything. So I gambled that they’d have more squads than I’d observed, but fewer functional mages within those squads, and it would come out to roughly the same number either way.

“You were not addressed,” Crossar said.

“I’m sorry, Honored, but I’m the one who went into the enemy camp to learn where the army was going next,” I said. I was getting tired of being ignored.

“Were you?” Crossar said. “Rise.”

I stood, feeling wobbly, and got my first look at King and Chamber. The King I’ve seen before; he’s an average-looking man, not someone you’d peg as a leader, and has the slightly flushed cheeks and pouchy expression of someone whose diet is too rich.

Batekessar looks as old as he sounds—I think he’s in his seventies—with unpleasantly pale skin and deep grooves carved into his face, dragging his mouth into a permanent frown.

Jakssar is a lovely woman with a very matronly, comfortable figure, but she has a very mannish haircut and wears robes and trousers like the men instead of a formal gown, which makes me wonder about her position on the Chamber, if she feels she has to act like a man to get respect. I felt sympathy for her, if that was the case.

Lenssar gave me a bit of a shock, because he looks so much like Cederic—long dark hair, high cheekbones, crooked eyebrows. He’s about ten years older than Cederic, though, and shows it, and he’s got dark, deep-set eyes that are nothing like my husband’s. Even so, it threw me off balance enough that Crossar had to repeat himself. “I said, you were in the enemy camp?” he said, rising and coming to face me.

“I was, Honored,” I said. Crossar doesn’t look anything like his voice. Not that he’s ugly; he has silvery-dark hair, and a short beard, the kind that only goes around his mouth and chin, but he’s incredibly thin, and his nose is sharply pointed, and his lips are narrow, and between that and the hair he reminded me of a needle. I won’t deny he made me nervous, because I couldn’t read him at all.

“Daring work, for a woman,” he said.

“I’ve always been good at not being noticed, Honored,” I said. I put that “for a woman” remark aside to be angry about later.

“How were you able to identify the enemy magickers?” he said.

I was really glad he’d asked that question, because I’d forgotten for the moment I wasn’t supposed to be able to speak Castaviran and thus couldn’t have learned anything by reading or overhearing it. Crossar is clever enough that if I slipped up, he’d know it.

“I saw some of them working pouvrin, Honored,” I lied, “and the ones I saw wore special uniforms. I was there long enough to observe that they were organized into groups, and I counted those to learn how many they had. Though it’s possible there were more squads somewhere closer to the city, because I wasn’t able to explore the whole camp.”

“Did you see their leader?” he asked.

“I…think so, Honored,” I said, concluding rapidly it might be good for them to know who their most important target was. “There was a very finely dressed woman who seemed to be giving orders. All the officers bowed very low to her, and it looked as if they were explaining the strategy to her and waiting for her instructions.”

“A woman at the head of an army,” Lenssar said with a frown.

“Something to keep in mind, at least,” Crossar said. “You have served Balaen well, both of you. What are your names?”

“Thalessi Scales and Rokyar Axe. Honored,” I said, almost forgetting the politeness ritual in my worry that I’d done wrong in speaking for Jeddan, since they clearly thought him more important because he was male. Bastards.

“I ask the honor of your praenomi, for Balaen to honor you,” the King said. He sounded peeved that Crossar had taken the role that should have been his.

I looked past Crossar, and said, “Honored, my name is Sesskia.”

“And mine is Jeddan,” Jeddan said.

“And you are both magickers,” the King said, coming forward and having to push past Crossar, who paused the tiniest fraction of a second before moving away. Crossar’s eyes, which are nearly as light as his hair, stayed fixed on me, and I wished I dared hide behind Jeddan again. I dislike being the focus of attention of anyone who has the power to make me disappear in the night. Which is probably all wrong, and Crossar is actually a good man who’s committed to the defense of Balaen.

Hah. Unlikely. People in power don’t get to be that way by being nice to others. He might have Balaen’s good at heart, but there’s no way he cares anything for me, or for Jeddan, except for how useful we might be to his plans. I wish I believed being a known mage was somehow a protection.

The King came to stand right in front of us, examining our eyes. I let mine go unfocused so I wouldn’t go cross-eyed at how close the tip of his nose was. “Those with your peculiar green eyes are magickers,” he observed, inanely as far as I was concerned.

“Yes, Honored,” Jeddan said.

“And will you demonstrate your magics for us?” he said.

We did our usual tricks—it really was starting to feel as if we were performing animals—and received the usual reaction, which was to say, nothing at all. They’ve probably seen any number of mages in the last month. What I don’t understand is why everyone in Venetry seems to have adjusted so quickly to the idea of magic, when it’s always been feared and hated before. Something else must have happened to change everyone’s mind.

I guess it’s possible that seeing the Castavirans work magic might have convinced a few key people that maybe Balaen should encourage mages of their own, but it would have been days after the convergence before anyone encountered a Castaviran mage to learn about magic at all, and some of these pouvrin aren’t exactly subtle in their manifestation. I’d think a lot of mages would have been killed in those early days, so to go from executing people to being blasé about magic just seems unlikely. One more thing I want to ask about. It’s frustrating, really, because I keep finding reasons to delay leaving Venetry, which means it’s all my fault that I’m still here.

I’m getting off course again. We did our pouvrin, and then we were standing there wondering if we could leave, and was there some kind of politeness ritual we had to follow, when the King said, “I invite you to dine with me, Jeddan and Sesskia. I feel it is my duty to understand the plight of my southern subjects, and you will tell me of your journey and of magic. We have magickers who have become conversant with two or even three magics, you know!”

I gave him the wide-eyed stare of amazement he was angling for, and his smile broadened. “Come, you will be provided with the wherewithal to bathe, and new clothes, and you needn’t be overawed, I’m just a man, after all!” He clapped his hands together delightedly and left the room by a tiny door to our left.

to be continued…

13 Nevrine, after curfew (hah!) (continued)

I don’t know how long we waited, but it was a lot longer than an hour before some signal imperceptible to me led one of the soldiers to throw open half of the chamber door and say, “My Lords, your Majesty, these messengers beg five minutes of your time.” No one said anything in reply, but he advanced into the room, out of sight, and Jeddan and I looked at each other, wondering if we were supposed to follow.

I’d almost decided to stop hesitating when the soldier came back and said, in a low voice, “Approach to the edge of the carpet, go to one knee, and keep your head lowered until you’re told to rise. Address them all as “Honored” and don’t say anything until you’re spoken to. Say your piece and wait to be dismissed.” He gave Jeddan a little shove. “You first,” he said.

So Jeddan went through the door, and I followed him, which means that my first view of King and Chamber was obscured by his massive shoulders. I knew what the room looked like, of course: it’s not very big, and windowless, I’ve heard for security reasons.

The walls are covered by the Lessareki tapestries, which are so valuable no one could put a price on them, because their value comes not from their materials or their subject matter (the life of a minor Queen of Balaen from maybe two and a half centuries ago) but because they were created by Balaen’s most famous artist, whose placename is still one of the most popular girls’ praenomi in the country. I’ve never had time to admire them properly, and of course today wasn’t the right moment. But it was exciting to be in their presence.

There’s a square black rug in the center of the room, and five chairs are set in a circle on it, all of them identical as a reminder that in this place, King and Chamber are equal in the service of Balaen.

Hahahaha.

Anyway, I didn’t actually see any of this until Jeddan stopped and knelt, and I took a quick step to the side and knelt next to him and bowed my head. That only gave me a quick glimpse of four men and one woman, all of them looking at us. Then the King said, “Deliver your message.” (He has a distinctive voice that sounds like it’s coming from the back of his head and gets pinched a little on the way out. It’s not a voice you forget, even if you’ve only ever heard it while you’re hiding in a cupboard listening to him grouse at his valet for not ironing his nightshirt properly.)

Jeddan didn’t raise his head, which was probably the right decision. “Honored,” he said, “we come from Calassmir, where an enemy army has attacked the city as its first move in invading Balaen.” I really hated saying it this way, because it wasn’t going to make the King more friendly toward the Castavirans who weren’t the God-Empress’s pawns, but explaining the Castaviran sociopolitical situation and the consequences of the convergence would just have confused everything.

There was silence. I’d expected a least a couple of gasps, but no. Then, “Rise,” said the King, “just you, young man,” and I had to keep kneeling, which annoyed me. “You’re not a soldier,” he said.

“No, Honored, we’re both just loyal Balaenics who were in the right place when it mattered,” he said. “We were traveling here to look for other mages like us, and meant to stop in Calassmir for provisions, and nearly got caught by the foreign army. It looked impossible for our soldiers to get a message out, so we figured we ought to take it ourselves, just in case.”

“Foreign army meaning these invaders who have appeared among us in the last month?” said another man. He had a rich, strong voice, and if I hadn’t known who the King was I’d have thought this man was him.

“I think so, Honored,” Jeddan said.

“Then this puts a new light on their tactics in the north,” he said, half to himself. “How long before they arrive?”

“I don’t know, Honored, I’m no soldier,” Jeddan said. “We were there 24 or 25 Coloine and based on what the surrounding villages said, the attack had only just started a couple of days before that.”

“You took too long about it,” said a woman. Debarra Jakssar, Chamber Lord of Transportation. Her voice was nearly as deep as the other man’s, but more gravelly even though it was still clearly a woman’s voice.

“We’re truly sorry, Honored, we came as quick as we could, but we were on foot,” Jeddan said.

“You should have requisitioned horses,” said a third man, this one sounding very old, so I guessed he was Jarlak Batekessar, Chamber Lord of Agriculture. I’ve worked enough harvests to know he’s disliked by farmers, particularly the ones with the big estates, because of the demands he puts on them. “This is far more important than anything else you could do.”

“We can’t ride, Honored, and we didn’t have any proof that we were what we said we were,” Jeddan said. “The soldier Nessan at the gate showed great insight when he passed us through.”

“That’s his job,” the rich-voiced man said. “How many insurrections did you pass on your way here?”

“I beg your pardon, Honored, but I don’t know what you mean,” Jeddan said. My knees were starting to ache. I have no idea how Cederic manages to hold that position indefinitely.

“The other invaders. They were causing disruption in preparation for their army to attack our cities, hoping to weaken us?” he said.

“Ah, no, Honored, we didn’t see anything like that,” Jeddan said. “Most of those invader towns kept to themselves. And a lot of our people were, um, subduing them themselves.”

“Good initiative,” said the last man, whose voice had a bit of a whine to it, a whistling sound like he was speaking through a blocked nostril. “We ought to send another decree, commending their patriotism and encouraging them to stand strong against invasion.”

“I don’t want civilians interfering in military affairs, Lenssar,” the rich voice said. “Self-defense is one thing, but vigilante action is dishonorable.”

“I didn’t mean we should tell them to take up arms,” Lenssar said. Lenssar is Chamber Lord of Commerce and I don’t remember his first name. I don’t know much about him at all.

“Any encouragement could be seen as just that,” the rich voice said, and I realized he had to be Caelan Crossar, Chamber Lord of Defense. He’s got a reputation for cleverness and has maintained the army at full strength even though Balaen hasn’t been at war since forever, which says a lot about his influence over King and Chamber. I don’t know if he genuinely believes Balaen is in danger of invasion, or if a strong army just increases his political power, but either way it’s due to him that Balaen could repel such an invasion if it came.

to be continued…

13 Nevrine, after curfew (hah!) (continued)

I was impressed. And terrified. Nessan hadn’t struck me as the sort of man who can be bluffed, but Jeddan wasn’t really bluffing. I’m sure he meant it when he said they’d have to haul us away. And Nessan knew it too.

He tapped his finger against his lips for a few seconds, then opened one of the drawers, took out paper and pen and ink, scrawled something on the paper, blew on it and folded it. Then he walked around us to lean out of the guard room and call to someone passing nearby. “They’re to see the King,” he told the young soldier who answered the summons, and handed him the paper. “Urgent military business. Five minutes.”

That made me nervous; he might have written our execution sentence on that paper, and I wished he’d had better penmanship so I could have read it while he wrote. But there was nothing we could do about it except follow along.

The soldier saluted, and we trotted after him through the wide streets of Venetry. In the late afternoon, everything looked dismal, what with the slushy, filthy snow peppered with frozen horse turds shoved to both sides of the road, making a kind of frozen barricade between the passing horses and the pedestrians. I made note of landmarks as we went, updating my mental map of the city.

Not much had changed in the thirteen months since I’d been here last. All the traffic from the main gate funnels through the center of the city, where everything is new and modern and enticing to the eye of the visitor to Venetry. But that’s just the center. As you spread outward from that wide main avenue, you enter much older, dirtier places, some of which aren’t safe for anyone after dark, even their own denizens. I’ll have to see about renewing some old acquaintances there. Derria’s shop is probably still open, and she might give us a good price on that opal pendant. But that will have to wait.

We trotted along for a good while, through the city center and into the wide spiral that leads up to the top of Venetry where the rich manors are. One of those manors used to belong to my family, according to Mam, but I’ve never cared enough to find out which one. No point mooning over the past. I don’t even know what our surname used to be. I guess I’d be more interested if I didn’t feel like it was betraying my Dad to care about our past, when he set out to make a new life after he’d been ejected from his old one instead of clinging to what was. If I ever think about it, I mostly just get mad over the injustice of it all, though I don’t even know if it was injustice. I just know my Dad was a wonderful man, so he couldn’t possibly have deserved to lose all that.

But I’m getting off course. We went all the way to the top of the city, which does have an amazing view, maybe not as nice as Colosse, with all those white walls and colored roofs, but still amazing. You can see the whole city laid out in tiers below, and beyond that, the plains, but the best part, the part that actually brought tears to my eyes, was a distant lumpy smudge off to the west I recognized as mountains. Mountains that hadn’t been there before. The Arabel Mountains, in fact, under which lay the Darssan.

It struck me then as it hadn’t before that the land really had changed; the desert we’d traveled through to reach Colosse was gone, but the mountains remained. I wonder if Cederic will want to reopen the Darssan, when things have settled down and the God-Empress’s threat has been eliminated. Thirty years from now, probably. No sense worrying about it at this point. We still haven’t even met our fellow mages. Magickers. There’s no way I’m calling us that. I’ll just have to change everyone’s minds about that.

The royal manor—one of them, there are several throughout Balaen—anyway, the one in Venetry is called Janeka Manor. (I’ve never understood why so many of the wealthy manors are named after women, especially since women haven’t had much of a role in government until the last fifty years. It does give the impression of a bunch of hard-eyed matrons with their arms folded across their capacious chests, glaring at the rest of us.)

It’s a beautiful old house, built in the style of 150 years ago, with lots of windows made up of grids filled with thick glass bricks you can barely see out of and steep, shingled roofs that meet each other at odd angles. The gardeners had put the beds to sleep for the winter, which gave the manor a bare look, its harsh stone walls unsoftened by the hedges that bloomed in the spring. The ivy that used to grow on the walls all around the front door was gone, adding to the harsh look.

Two more soldiers stood at attention at the front door, and our guide saluted them, told them his errand, and they let us pass. I thought that was lax behavior until we came through the narrow hall, almost a tunnel, that led into the main hall of the manor, and came face to face with ten more soldiers, all of them standing where they could easily attack an intruder, all of them with the kind of humorless faces that characterize the really good warriors. I tried not to let them make me nervous. This time, at least, I was here legitimately.

Our guide took us the wrong way at first, and I had to remind myself I was a newcomer and a country girl and of course had no way of knowing where King and Chamber meet. He corrected himself without any slips that might suggest he’d made a mistake, which I approved of, and soon we were in the southwestern wing of the manor and stopping in front of a large double door banded in red-painted iron. Two soldiers stood there. They didn’t look as awe-inspiring as their brothers in the entry hall, but they clearly took their job of standing and staring into space seriously.

“Messengers to speak to the King. Five minutes,” our guide said, handing over the note.

“They’re in session. No one goes in,” the soldier on the left said.

“How soon?” our guide said.

“No idea,” the soldier said. “They can wait if they want.”

Our guide turned to us and said, “You can see the King when the session’s up. It shouldn’t be more than an hour or so.” He nodded at us and went back the way he’d come.

I glanced at Jeddan, who shrugged. We were both thinking another hour’s delay wasn’t going to matter, and it wasn’t as if we could do anything about it. So we waited. I leaned against the wall and surreptitiously examined my surroundings and plotted a way to draw the guards away so I could enter the chamber. Then I remembered I was now capable of assassinating the King with magic, which would be the only reason for me to sneak into that chamber, and it made me feel sick.

So instead I counted stones, and made lists, and daydreamed about what it would be like when I found Cederic, and went over the see-in-dark pouvra for possibilities of companion pouvrin. I didn’t have any success on that last one, but I haven’t given up. It does make me impatient to rejoin the Darssan mages and practice turning th’an into pouvrin. Which reminds me I haven’t practiced the binding pouvra for a while. No sense, when it doesn’t do anything, and we’ve got so many other interesting things to pursue.

to be continued…

13 Nevrine, after curfew (hah!)

I’ve decided to keep these books hidden now we’re among the mages. Not that we’ve met any of them yet; it was very late when they brought us here. So they might all be friendly and intelligent and committed to learning—in short, like the Darssan mages. But I’m not counting on that. No telling what someone might make of these records…all right, that’s a lie, I have a very good idea of what someone might make of these records, which is that I’m a traitor to my country on any number of grounds, not least of which is being married to a high-ranking mage from the “invading” world. The fact that I’ve done all of this to save both worlds would be lost on anyone who was stupid or fearful or had some kind of grudge against me, though I hope there isn’t anyone here who falls into the latter category. Making enemies is the worst kind of being noticed, and I’ve spent my life trying to avoid that.

It had stopped snowing early this morning, but it was still gray and depressing and Jeddan and I were impatient to get to our goal, so we didn’t stop except once to relieve ourselves, ate on the way, and spoke little. When we approached Venetry sometime late this afternoon, there was a crowd milling about on the road outside the gate, not aimlessly, but with the erratic movements of a lot of people in one place, all wanting to be somewhere else.

We hung back, observing, and realized that rather than being an incipient mob, which has a much tenser, higher note to it, these were all people waiting their turn to get into the city, which was strange. I’ve been to Venetry often, and yes, I did use the gate, and nobody stops travelers unless they’re carrying trade goods. But we could see a lot of armed soldiers stopping people and having long conversations with them before letting them inside. It made me nervous, and I suggested we enter the city by another way.

“We’re mages. The King wants us here. It’s not like we’ll be turned away,” Jeddan said.

“They’re making people put their names on lists,” I said. “I don’t like that.”

“But we have to get the King’s attention somehow,” Jeddan said. “Being on an official list will help with that. And these soldiers will send us to wherever the mages are supposed to go, and that’s got to give us better access to King and Chamber than going through the wall will.”

I scowled, and said, “All right, but if this goes wrong I’m blaming you.”

“If this goes wrong, neither of us might be around to do any blaming,” he said cheerfully.

We fitted ourselves into the loose line of travelers and inched forward with everyone else. It was boring, and cold, and I really wished we’d gone through the wall. Jeddan had the glazed-eyed expression that said he was working on the mind-moving pouvra. I’m not sure he’d thought about what might happen if he succeeded in the middle of this crowd and knocked someone over. At least it would be exciting. The whole thing made me realize I haven’t stood in line for anything in at least five years. I vowed it would be another fifteen before it happened again.

“Name?” said a soldier, and I realized we’d reached the front of the line while I was daydreaming.

“Thalessi Scales and Rokyar Axe,” I said.

The soldier wrote our names in a little book, along with the date and time (there are about fifty big clocks in Venetry, none of them in agreement with each other, and one of them is just above the main city gate where we were. No one knows why some long dead ruler, or Chamber, thought people entering the city ought to know what the time was. At least that one doesn’t toll the hour) and had us initial the entry. “Purpose?” he said.

“We’re mages,” I said.

“What’s that?” he said.

I rolled my eyes. “Magickers? People touched by magic? With the eyes?” I pointed at my eyes in emphasis.

He peered closely at me, then at Jeddan, and I realized he was very nearsighted. “Papers?” he said.

“We don’t have papers,” I said. “We heard about the summons in Hasskian, but no one said anything about papers.”

“Then you’ll have to prove yourselves,” he said, and pointed at another soldier, standing just inside the gate. “Talk to Nessan there about that. Curfew is nine p.m., no carrying weapons in the streets, no loitering, watch for the off limits signs, and if a soldier tells you to do something, you do it without question.”

“Curfew?” I said. “I’ve never known Venetry to have a curfew.”

“Martial law,” he said. “City nearly tore itself apart after the calamity, what with magic happening and the earth shifting. Things still aren’t back to normal. Move along.”

There wasn’t anything to say to that, so Jeddan and I went to where the soldier Nessan was standing. He was older than the first, his hair graying and his eyes deeply lined at the corners as if he’d spent thirty years staring at the sun. He also wore a different uniform I didn’t recognize as either regular army or city guard. “Magickers?” he said when we approached.

“We’re called mages,” I said, which was pointless, but I was feeling edgy and annoyed and wanted to get the whole thing over with.

“You can call yourself nasturtiums for all I care,” he said. “Over here, and let’s see what you can do.”

We stepped out of the way of traffic into a little guard room that was empty of everything except a couple of chairs, a chest with a couple of warped drawers, and some smoked-glass lanterns, lit against the dimness of the windowless room. Jeddan put his hand through the wall and didn’t seem afraid or upset or anything but calm, so I hope that means he’s coming to terms with what happened in the camp. I settled on the fire pouvra, the ropy version. Nessan wasn’t impressed by either of us. “You’re to go to Fianna Manor for instructions,” he said. “You know where that is?”

“I’ve been to Venetry before,” I said, which was kind of a non-answer, but he understood the way I meant it.

“But we have to deliver a message first,” Jeddan said. “An urgent message from the army at Calassmir.”

“Go ahead,” Nessan said.

“It’s for the King and Chamber,” Jeddan said. We’d worked out that he should bring the message, in case anyone wondered why a woman had been entrusted with military intelligence.

“Of course it is,” Nessan said sarcastically. “And I’m supposed to take you to the King on no more proof than the say-so of some backwoods lumberjack.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but Jeddan cut across me with, “What exactly do you think I’m going to do? You think I’ve traveled all the way from Calassmir just because I feel like wasting the King’s time? I’m tired and I’m hungry and if I could deliver this message to just anyone, I’d tell you and my work would be done. But this message is for the King himself, because he’s the only one who can decide how to act on it. So find someone to take us to him, or we’ll just wait here until you change your mind or carry us off to jail.”

to be continued…

11 Nevrine

I’d completely forgotten that Jeddan took the mage bandit’s pendant and ring. We found someone this morning willing to take the ring in exchange for five days’ worth of food, more than enough to get us to Venetry, which is only two more days away. It was worth a good deal more than what we got for it, and part of me wishes we’d waited until I could sell it in Venetry, but the rest of me, the part that doesn’t like going hungry, shouted that little part down.

Our learning technique works, and it doesn’t. That is—and I shouldn’t have done this—I had this unreasonable expectation I’d be able to pour the structure into Jeddan’s head, so to speak, and he’d get it immediately and then it would be just a matter of his flexibility of will. And that didn’t happen. But we’re making a lot more progress, more quickly, than I did, so in that sense, it works. Jeddan’s enthusiastic about it. Still won’t talk about what happened to that guard, and I’m starting to worry that maybe I need to bring it up, and I just don’t know how to do that. I don’t want to make things worse. So I’m going to leave it alone, and hope, if he needs someone to talk to, he’ll feel comfortable turning to me.

We came across the strongest evidence of the convergence’s destruction this afternoon. There was a place on the Royal Road where a Castaviran highway intersected with it, or would have if the convergence didn’t destroy every structure that overlapped with another. So the Royal Road comes to a crumbling halt, and then there’s a big roundish space where everything’s been obliterated, and then it starts up again. It was eerie, and we detoured around it even though we assured each other it was harmless. Castavir’s roads aren’t as well-kept as ours, and they don’t have the new procedure that keeps ruts from forming, but then we don’t have self-cleaning chamber pots, so I think they win.

12 Nevrine

Nothing important happened today. Jeddan’s still working on the pouvra, but we’re both distracted wondering what’s going to happen in Venetry tomorrow. Some of our food turned out to be rotten. Wish I could steal that ring back.

10 Nevrine

We’ve decided I should try to teach Jeddan the mind-moving pouvra. I actually suggested teaching him the other walk-through-walls pouvrin, but he went very stiff and very silent, so I didn’t say anything else. I hope he doesn’t give up on using the pouvra entirely. It was his first, the one that made him a mage, and…maybe it’s not the same for him, but even though I don’t use fire very often in comparison with some of the others, I know I’d feel like part of me was missing if I stopped using it. But it’s not my right to tell him how to use his magic, so we’re concentrating on the other pouvra, and it’s true that the mind-moving pouvra is the most generally useful, at least to people who don’t have to sneak around on a regular basis.

It’s been not quite three months since I learned that pouvra, but it took me more than twice that long to understand it. I’ve written before about how I learn a pouvra, how it’s about learning the figurative language the mage who created it used to describe it, then understanding the shape that arises from that language, and finally bending your will to meet the pouvra so it manifests through you.

Since I’ve already done all that work of interpretation, Jeddan and I will use our new vocabulary to give him the shape of the pouvra, and the rest is up to him. That’s the idea, anyway. We’ve never done this before; it’s possible no one’s ever done this before, given how solitary mages have to be thanks to society. So I hope it will take less time, but we both know there’s no use making assumptions where magic is concerned. I would have sworn the mind-moving pouvra was for small, finicky movements, and then I saw Cederic knock half a dozen soldiers across the room with it. I wonder if he uses it often, or if he’s so used to th’an it never occurs to him. I wonder if he’s figured out any more pouvrin.

Anyway, today we mostly just refined our vocabulary, made sure we meant the same thing when we used a word or image, and I practiced making things insubstantial. I have no idea what use that might be. Hah. I felt the same way about being able to turn the concealment pouvra on another person, but using it on the God-Empress saved the lives of my friends. So maybe there will be a crucial moment that depends on someone dropping their weapon, or something like that. It’s fun to speculate about.

We’re going to need food soon, and we’ve almost used the last of the bandits’ money. There aren’t any large cities between here and Venetry, and I really, really don’t want to steal from people whose lives depend on the food they have stored for the winter. But I also don’t want to starve. We’ll have to think of a better way.

9 Nevrine

It worked this time. It feels really strange. I’ve been thinking of this pouvra as a single thing, but with this new…technique, maybe? I’ve realized it’s three separate pouvrin: turning myself insubstantial, turning that on someone else I’m touching, and extending that to work on something I’m not connected to. And they look…I’ve been thinking about it all day, and all I can say is it’s like they’re made of the same fabric, but assembled differently. Like a pile of twigs used to make a bird’s nest and then a woven mat. I don’t know what it means yet, but it feels important. If I could find more related pouvrin, or find another way to

It took me about twenty minutes, and I don’t know if that’s fast or if I’m slow, but I’ve confirmed that the fire pouvra as a mass of fire and as a rope of fire are different, and concealing myself and turning it out on someone else are different. Not as different as the walk-through-walls pouvrin, so I’m not surprised I didn’t see it, but I’m still shocked.

So I’ve created four new pouvrin without the help of books—or maybe they exist somewhere and I just discovered them independently. No way to tell. I still don’t know what it means, though! And it’s hard to analyze the pouvrin while we’re walking, so the only time I have is in the evening, and then I’m usually so tired I have trouble bending my will to the pouvrin.

I feel even more urgency, now, to get to Venetry, deliver my message, and then…would I really want to stay there for a few days just to study? I would. I’d apologize to Cederic, but I know he’d do the same. We’re both infected with that disease that drives us to learn. He might even be annoyed I let my desire to rejoin him interfere with my becoming a better mage. He’s going to laugh when I tell him about this.