Fray

by Rowenna Miller

  I agreed, wandering slowly into the wide expanse, drinking in the excitement of hundreds of students each pursuing some niche of knowledge. Kristos would have loved this place, I thought with a pang of something between regret and hope. He had left Galitha City and me on a one-way passage to Fen, but I could believe that someday he would make his way here.

  “Lyat dharit,” someone said behind me, and I turned, surprised to hear the commonplace Pellian greeting—roughly, to your good fortune—here.

  “I’m sorry,” I said in Galatine to the Serafan man in storm-cloud gray academic robes. “Y-na Pelli.” I don’t speak Pellian. Something I had repeated dozens of times in the Galitha City Pellian quarter.

  “Oh, no, the apology is mine. I had forgotten how many Galatines are of Pellian ancestry. Your forgiveness?”

  “None needed,” I replied.

  “Your friend—the Equatorial man?—inquired if anyone could guide a young lady here toward some ancient Pellian materials, and I assumed she would be Pellian. It’s my error.”

  “He’s already headed toward the maps, then?” I asked, laughing. Jae hadn’t wasted any time.

  “Hmm? Oh, I didn’t ask where he was going. I study ancient Pellian and have a free morning so—well, I volunteered immediately,” he said.

  “I don’t want to take you from your studies,” I said. “I have—rather complex questions, I’m afraid. And no real idea how to find the answers.”

  “And how is it you find yourself here, with questions, but no means of finding answers?”

  What a question—its incisiveness nearly took my breath away. Yet it had not been intended or delivered rudely. “I’m here with the summit delegation from Galitha. I am no scholar, I’m afraid.”

  “It’s not a problem at all,” he answered. “It’s an honor to assist one of the dignitaries of the summit with whatever may be needed.”

  I paused. “I—I don’t want to mislead you,” I cautioned. “This is my own personal business, not a summit matter.”

  “That is of no consequence,” he replied with a smile.

  “And I’m—I’m not a high-ranking dignitary,” I added.

  “It’s a great honor for our city to host the delegation,” he said. “And so it’s an honor for any of us to assist you.” I remembered Aioma’s tent at the Silk Fair, the insistence she had for hospitality, that it would have disgraced her to be refused. I felt as though I was taking advantage of this man’s generosity, but I had been as honest as possible.

  “Then I thank you,” I said. “I am Sophie Balstrade. Accompanying the Galatine delegation,” I added as an afterthought, realizing he might expect some sort of title.

  “Corvin ad Fira.” He dipped a formal bow. “Fifth-year master understudy.” I had no idea what that meant, so I simply nodded. “My specialty is ancient Pellian, particularly the language development in the century after the colonization of the East Serafan peninsulas.”

  “That sounds most impressive,” I said. “I—” I squared my shoulders, deciding that a fair amount of pride in my particular field would earn more respect in this conversation than shame in it. “I am a charm caster. I’m sure you’re familiar with the practice?”

  His eyes grew wide. “Yes. The practice of curse casting and its attenuate theories are regularly mentioned in Pellian texts both ancient and modern. It’s honest-faith true, then?”

  I smiled at his near-boyish curiosity and what had to have been a slip into a Serafan expression that didn’t translate into Galatine. “Completely true. There’s been very little study done on the theory itself, and I’d like to take advantage of your resources while I am here to make some headway. If there is any compensation I might offer…” I added, unsure how finances and money worked in West Serafe, let alone its university.

  “Of course, yes,” he said. “I—my lady, I don’t expect financial compensation for doing the work I am supported by this university to do. But if you would be willing to consider—that is, this may be presumptuous—if I am of assistance to you, would you consider making me a charm?” His tan face took on a reddish hue. “Unless, of course—it may be your trade is one that is not for sale. I apologize.”

  “No, no—it’s very much a commodity,” I said, almost laughing, wondering what Corvin would think of my atelier. “And I would be pleased to. My specialty is stitching charms into fabric goods. Let me know what you would like and I’d be pleased to oblige if it’s within my skill.”

  “This, I have never heard of in the ancient texts—charmed fabric.” He grinned. “Then let’s go to the Pellian section—it’s in the east building—and find what we can,” he said.

  I followed him down the long halls, outdoors through the covered loggia, tiled with green-and-blue mosaics of oceans and shorelines. I had heard that the Serafan shore was one of the most beautiful landscapes in the world, but aside from its frequent depictions in artwork and mosaics and murals lining their interiors, I hadn’t seen it aside from the busy port we arrived in.

  “Now,” Corvin said, settling us at a bleached wood table and benches. “Is there something in particular you’re searching for?”

  I hesitated. What I really wanted to know—what clawed at me—was why my magic had become muddled, dark refusing to separate from light. Why I couldn’t control what had once flowed like breathing. I couldn’t admit that here. “Theory,” I said carefully. “The casting is done by… well, by harnessing a light… a good… something that exists all around us. Cursing is done by harnessing its opposite. I want to know more about those… elements? Can we call them elements?”

  Corvin weighed this question with a tilted head. “Yes, I suppose so. Ah! I know where to begin. The thirati. This sounds related to ancient Pellian religious views on the thirati—the balance of the universe.”

  “That sounds promising,” I said, and Corvin hurried to the shelves and returned with several books. I waited patiently, recalling from my time with Nia that Pellian texts were difficult to translate.

  “Yes—here’s a diagram,” he said. “Allegorical, of course,” he added, turning the book toward me. A sphere was divided into segments, four large quadrants bisected by arrows. “The thirati is the wholeness of all things, prefaced on the concept that there is nothing now that once wasn’t, and nothing that will be that isn’t now in existence in one form or another.”

  “That’s not confusing at all,” I replied blandly.

  Corvin laughed. “Yes, well. I believe the most prominent physicists have a term for it—material conservation. Since the beginning of time, since the world came into being, it is finite. We may transform, but we may not create out of thin nothingness.”

  “I see,” I said, squinting at the page. “And each of these sections is some form of material?”

  “Not quite—they are the thirati that govern material. There is light and there is dark, which you say are familiar from casting, and related to light is mass, and related to dark is void. Running through all of them is energy.”

  I traced the image. There were combinations and permutations, surely, from the detail marked out in ink, but the basic concept felt intrinsically correct. No one who had not casted would understand it, I imagined, to the same degree I could—that the light and dark were real things, as real as the mass and void that one could see and feel.

  “So these elements. Are they—linked? How do they exist, precisely—floating? Tied to things?”

  Corvin pursed his lips. “They simply are, as matter and nothingness are. What I have never quite understood, and perhaps you can enlighten me, is that we can manipulate matter, and we can render matter into another form, and we can harness energy. The light and dark seem to merely float as some sort of balance, but you say you harness these as one does energy.”

  “Yes, that’s accurate,” I said. “It’s not like molding clay, it’s more like taking a piece of the light and impressing it upon something.”

  “So you do not change the light.”

  “N
o—the light, it simply is. I don’t create it or change it, I just use it. That’s all a charm caster does.”

  “And a curse caster, the same with the dark.” He nodded. “Light and dark being, of course, not fully accurate terms.”

  “No,” I said quickly. “I—I think I realize that now, that light and dark is how we perceive them, but they aren’t physical light or dark—physical light is energy, correct?” Corvin nodded. “And dark like the dark in a closed barrel is the absence of light, or another way of thinking of void.”

  “So the light and dark, if they are thirati, they are their own entities. Not simply other names for the same thing on the sphere.”

  I wondered how I would define them, then, light and dark—good and bad? Positive and negative? Luck and misfortune? Each felt insufficient. “How do they relate to one another?” I asked. “Do they play nicely or repel each other?”

  Corvin read on, turning pages and finally shaking his head. “We are thinking of this the wrong way. They simply are. They don’t fight one another or supplement one another—the theory keeps coming back to balance.”

  “A charm caster, by definition, disrupts balance, doesn’t she? By manipulating the light into something. Is that—is that something the theory does not believe is right to do?”

  “It was certainly acceptable to them,” Corvin said, gesturing to three other books on the table. “These are all religious works dealing with the theory and nature of casting. The ancients believed it to be a gift for working in a material, just as metallurgy or spinning or chemistry makes changes to matter.”

  I was fascinated, but also disappointed. There was nothing here indicating that something about the thirati itself, about the light I knew so innately or the dark I had come to understand, could be causing the disruption in my ability.

  “I have a few ideas of where to look,” Corvin said. “Any other hints?”

  “There is one thing.” I hesitated. “I only deal in charms. But I understand that the ancients dealt far more extensively with curses. We shouldn’t limit ourselves to charms.”

  He nodded, comprehending, and disappeared for almost an hour. I watched the scholars and examined the mosaics on the walls, and Corvin found me squinting at the styling of an ancient Serafan robe as depicted in stones on one of the walls. “I found a few more books,” he said. “Not all books, exactly—some scrolls. Older than the books,” he said with a smile. “I love the scrolls. With the books, I sometimes forget they were penned centuries ago. But the scrolls—I cannot help but remember when I am unrolling them that someone wrote these words perhaps a thousand years ago.”

  “I’ve never seen writing that old,” I admitted.

  “And I have never seen the elements of charm and curse. Nor have I the skill to drape fabric into—well, what do you call what you’re wearing?”

  “A caraco,” I replied, tracing the pinked trim on the printed cotton jacket, impressed at the insight that had revealed to Corvin so quickly my self-assigned inadequacy at being in the presence of so much knowledge, so much learning that I couldn’t even begin to comprehend.

  We spent the next hour poring over scrolls. Most were fascinating explanations of the craft of casting, relating it to the thirati Corvin had explained already, but never considered the light and dark as anything but separately controlled entities.

  “This may be less than helpful,” Corvin said, “but it’s a rare narrative account of casting, by an individual caster, and it might be of some personal interest.”

  The scroll was simply a ledger of several years of casting work, likely kept, claimed Corvin, for personal education or business reasons. The vast majority of the work done was in curses, but this caster did work in charms, as well. Like modern and ancient casters alike, the caster worked solely in clay tablets, inscribing the curse or charm in wet clay and instructing the patron to wear, hang, or bury the piece depending on the intended result.

  “This is the most unusual part of the work,” Corvin said, scanning a section in the middle of the scroll. “Her house burned down, and she lost her daughter in the fire. I am not sure why she includes this here, aside from perhaps an explanation of her losses if she intended to use this as a business ledger.”

  He continued reading and translating in summary. “And here she says she is plagued by some difficulty in casting and must shut down for a few months, but she returns—”

  “What difficulty?” I jumped at this lead, more loudly than I intended.

  Corvin started at my sudden interest. “Perhaps you will follow better than I—she says the curse is unruly and the charm is tainted with dark. It takes too long to produce a single tablet.”

  My hands trembled as I tentatively touched the edge of the scroll. This woman—born perhaps a thousand years ago—described exactly what I was fighting. Yet my first assumption, that casting the curse had impacted my abilities, couldn’t be the reason she had encountered the problem. She cast both curses and charms regularly in her work.

  I let Corvin continue reading and summarizing for me, but nothing else stood out. She took a short hiatus, returned to her casting, and there was another year’s worth of records before the scroll ended.

  “And then what?” I asked. “Is that the end of her career, or her life?”

  “Likely just the end of the scroll,” Corvin said. “If she wrote anything else, it does not survive.”

  A glimpse into the ancient past, and then the door closed. This nameless woman had left me with something, however.

  “She couldn’t cast after a house fire that killed her daughter,” I said. “Does it—does it say anything else, does she believe it was that loss or trauma that caused her to lose her ability to cast?”

  Corvin reread the passage and shook his head. “It does not speculate so far. But it is unusual to include a merely personal anecdote in a business account, no?”

  “Casting isn’t merely business,” I said, realizing the innate truth to that claim as I said it aloud. Casting wasn’t work like digging a ditch or harvesting turnips. It demanded something of the self; it was deeply personal.

  “And here you are!” Jae strode into our corner of the library, seeming to occupy more space than he actually did with his resonant voice and broad grin.

  “We were just finishing, I believe,” I said. “Would you give us just a moment?” Jae agreed and waited by a large window, observing a small flock of decorative coronet fowl pecking at the ground in a courtyard outside.

  Corvin checked the time on a watch suspended from a belt in the folds of his robe. “Miss Balstrade, I am sorry, but I have a recitation to conduct this afternoon. I must beg your leave.”

  “Oh, you’ve been too kind, please, don’t apologize. I’ve taken so much of your time. Your charm—what did you want me to make?”

  “I could use some luck,” he said. “My examinations, to advance to the next stage in my career here, are approaching soon and… I tend to get nervous. Anything—a little kerchief I could carry in my pocket.”

  “Luck alone?” I asked. “I could infuse it with—well, calm, success, other things besides simply good fortune.”

  “You can do that?” His eyes widened. “The ancient scrolls seem to discuss good and back luck almost exclusively. Maybe money, maybe love. Nothing so specific as you describe.”

  “If my clients can be believed, then yes—I can bring a bit of nuance into the charm. Perhaps it’s the fine-tuning work of stitching,” I said.

  “Perhaps,” he mused. “Yes, anything you think is helpful for combating anxiety when one’s life hangs on a speech and a test.”

  “I’ll get started right away,” I promised. “How can I reach you?” I asked. “If we wanted to plan another session, and at least to get your kerchief to you.”

  “You may always leave me messages at the university mail service. Send a message to Corvin ad Fira, Mhuir Cai.” He wrote it down. “That’s just Cai Hall—my residence.”

  I pocketed the note and wa
ved to Jae, who accompanied me home talking of maps and the architecture of Isildi and skirting, always, his intentions with Annette. I could barely answer him, my thoughts wrapped up in the struggles of a long-dead ancient Pellian woman whose grief at the loss of her family mirrored, perhaps, my own.

  28

  THEODOR WAITED WITH A HARNESSED SURREY, THE LIGHTER, open carriage suited to the heat of the Serafan summer far better than our closed Galatine carriages.

  “I feel badly,” I said, tying my hat a bit tighter at the nape of my neck, “that we didn’t invite Annette. But I confess I wanted a bit of your time, uninterrupted.”

  “I’m of the same mind,” he confided as our driver left the confines of the city and trotted down a broad avenue. The sea glittered in the distance. “And it’s perhaps best if I allow Annette to take my place as the face of Galitha for a few hours at today’s luncheon. She’s ever so much more graceful than I.” I raised an eyebrow in unspoken question, which Theodor answered. “It grew tense this morning. Bad news out of Galitha and I admit I almost lost my head.”

  “Has something happened?” I asked, startled. I glanced at the driver, nervous—should we discuss official proceedings in earshot of anyone?

  Theodor followed my gaze and waved off my concern. “Hardly state secrets. Nothing more on any unrest, either. The news is economic in nature, by way of the Allied States. They claimed their usual midsummer shipments of last fall’s fortified wines haven’t arrived. It sent half the room into a mild panic that our unrest is already affecting our exports, and forecasting doom when we don’t have enough grain available this fall.”

  “Based on one shipment of expensive wine?”

  “The Serafans and some of the Equatorials are eager to exaggerate anything. Their alliances have long been with the nobility, and any unrest or even controlled change in Galitha means change for them, as well.”

  “All because they fear their imports will grow more expensive,” I said.

  “I think it may run deeper—if we reform our views on nobility and monarchy, on the distance between the common people and the ruling class, it may force similar changes on them.”