by Gwen Perkins
Athas Donat was leaning on his elbow, watching Asahel with a sweet smile on his face. His slender neck and thin hands were those of the aristocrat, ideally suited to ordering others to do the dirty tasks that he could not be concerned with. A simple point and Donat got what he wanted. Too many times, what he’d wanted had been Asahel’s body slammed into a wall. The colleges never raised a hand to it—it was part of university initiation, Asahel had been told. What the Magister had not revealed, however, was that initiation didn’t end.
Quentin looks like Donat, Asahel thought. He has the same hands. Only, they’re… different somehow. At any rate, it’s the excitement of the betrothal and the eclipse that has Quentin being kind. He won’t remember me in another morning.
“What were you discussing?” He asked, however, desperate to maintain the pretense that he belonged here. He caught sight of Felix over at the other table, his right eyebrow quirking up the moment that Asahel asked the question. How long has he been eavesdropping?
The pause that followed was too long. Quentin’s slim neck seemed to shrivel, dropping just slightly as he said, “Nothing.”
But it’s an eclipse. Asahel bit his lip, feeling the sting of his teeth on skin. If they were genuinely talking about it, why the—
“We were talking about how ignorant the poor are about this foul thing.” Donat’s shrill voice cut into Asahel’s thinking. Asahel glanced over at Quentin, waiting for him to follow Donat’s lead. Felix, he’d noticed, had risen from his seat across the pub and was nearly at the table. Asahel had played this out before with Donat and the students who followed him. Though Quentin and Felix had yet to be among them, Tammas had. Asahel’s fists knotted, waiting for the taunting to start.
It’s only words, he told himself as he always did. Aye, and you’re a man now so there’ll be no running from it. He lifted his eyes slowly until his dark irises were level with Quentin’s green, reflecting in their depths.
To his surprise, the other man was blushing.
“Yes, we were,” Quentin stammered. “But that doesn’t mean we need to go on about it. It’s an eclipse after all—there’s more wonder to that than idly gossiping.” Quentin smiled at Asahel, his cheeks still flaming. Asahel’s sigh of silent relief ended when Donat continued, speaking as if Quentin had been suddenly rendered invisible and silent.
“All that banging of pots when an eclipse comes and all night after—what a ludicrous tradition. As if you didn’t make enough noise with your animals and your children. Not that I can tell the difference half the time, filthy little things.” Donat paused, adding as an afterthought. “Not that you were filthy as a child, Soames. Your family lives by the water, don’t they? I can’t imagine one gets as dirty tending rats as they do chickens.”
Asahel remained quiet as laughter broke out around him. Quentin’s mouth remained stubbornly closed.
“Well—” Tammas broke in, laughing so hard he could barely talk as he jabbed Asahel in the ribs with a pointed finger. “Do you?”
Asahel swallowed, his throat still swollen from shame, and muttered, “Aye, you tell me. It’s your father we do most of the business with.” A chorus of guffaws broke out at that—though he couldn’t tell whether it was directed at Tammas or the fact that the Soames family did, in actuality, serve the Nestor household. For that matter, the shipyards controlled by his family served over half of Pallo.
“Oh, Soames,” Donat replied. “You sleep with the rats and talk like a weasel. What a delightful combination.” Donat’s eyes glittered as the light caught them, looking like black beads. He reached out for his cup, taking a sip before he said, “You never did tell us why the noise.”
“You never asked,” Asahel said stubbornly. “Not outright.”
“I’m sure your families have traditions they keep.” Asahel turned as he heard Quentin’s glib voice slip its way into the conversation. “Those clothes, for one. I can’t think of another reason you’d wear them.” Donat’s fingers had been picking at the embroidery on his sleeve, an ornate mass of golden thread which formed no pattern that Asahel could see. Quentin’s comment caused him to jerk his hand upwards.
“This isn’t about me,” Donat said, his voice hot.
“Nor is it about Asahel.” Quentin flashed a brilliant smile at the onlookers. Many of the students had stopped eating to watch the exchange. Most of them wore curious looks. “And I’m bored of poverty and pots—let’s discuss something else.”
“Like your engagement?” Donat’s voice was arch. Quentin opened his mouth to speak when Felix stepped forward to interrupt.
“Why not astronomy?” Felix asked, his hip butting against Quentin’s table hard enough to jolt both Quentin and Donat. The move was slow enough to indicate its deliberate nature. Felix’s gaze was heavy as it fell on Asahel, measuring up the younger man. “It’s the topic of the day, isn’t it? Only, let’s dismiss superstition and discuss magic. And science. It is what we’re here for. The eclipse—why does it happen? That would be the question you’d ask, Donat, if you had any sense in your head.”
“We already know why the eclipse happens.” Tammas said, his words flat and dull. “The sun passes the moon and since he’s meant to circle us, it’s—it disrupts things.” Quentin snorted behind him.
“Literalist,” Felix sighed.
Before either could say anything more, Asahel’s voice broke the quiet, surprising even himself. “No. That’s not it. I mean… I mean, why’ve we decided that the sun moves around the earth at all? Can’t it be that the earth… that we… go around the sun?” Felix’s face lit up suddenly as if a spark had just ignited.
“Oh, for—Soames, you’re an idiot,” Donat spat at the ground. He stood up, gesturing to the students at the table and the other onlookers. “The viewings will start soon enough. I think I hear the washerwoman banging pots already.” With a wave of his hand, he gestured to the table to follow and a swarm of students gathered around him. Felix gave Asahel a last, curious look before he, too, joined the crowd marching out the front door towards the Commons yard.
It was only after Donat halted at the entrance and asked, “Are you coming, Quentin?” that Asahel realized Quentin was still standing next to him.
“No, as it happens,” Quentin’s eyes met Asahel’s for a moment, then returned to Donat’s face. “I’m not.”
“Suit yourself,” Donat said, letting the door bang shut behind him.
“That could have gone differently,” Quentin commented as he sat back down at the table and picked up his cup. The few students remaining in the taverna were moving back to the empty benches now that the argument had disappeared. “Well. Are you going to have a seat now? You really ought to put the cup down if you’re not going to drink it.” Asahel glanced down at the cup that he was holding and quickly set it on the table. “You don’t talk much, do you? Ever?”
“Would you?” Asahel asked. It was a question that startled Quentin. He blinked his eyes, rubbing slowly at his cheek as he stared down at his cup.
“No, I guess I wouldn’t. We’ve been pretty beastly to you, considered.” It was a new thought to the other man.
“Aye.” Asahel was too honest to pretend otherwise. But he longed for company, even company whose motives he didn’t understand. He slowly lowered himself to the bench, waiting for Quentin to say something more.
“I’m sorry,” the other man said. “Peace?” He offered his hand to Asahel, palm up. It was a magician’s gesture of friendship and of trust. Magic traveled through the hands—if the hands were broken, so was the channel through which the energy traveled. A magician who lost his hands, or the use of them, lost the ability to control magic as well. For that reason, they rarely clasped hands, especially with those others who fully understood the power that coursed through their bones.
“Peace?” Quentin repeated with his hand still extended.
“We’re not at war.” Asahel’s fingers uncurled, tempted by the friendship that Quentin seemed to be offering. He doesn’
t mean it, he thought. Not with half the colleges placing wreaths at his feet. Besides, Mathar is impulsive and you know it—the whole university does.
“It’s just a saying,” Quentin answered blithely, then his face became more serious. “Please? I’d like to know you. There aren’t many people here to talk to.” The words were a contradiction to everything that Asahel had observed in Quentin, yet there was a ring of truth to them. Asahel wondered what it must be like to be constantly surrounded by people but so desperate for a friend that one would ask for a stranger’s hand.
It was a rare impulse of his own that made him accept the gesture. His fingers slid against Quentin’s, still sticky from sweat. The pair of hands tightened for just a few seconds before both men let go and stood up.
“Well-timed,” Quentin grinned as he saw Asahel’s movement mirror his own. “See? We’re friends already.” Asahel smiled back up at him, his nose pinking a little. “Come on, let’s not waste the day—or do we call it night?” Quentin dug in his pockets, finally finding a couple of coins and dropping them on the table. It seemed that he was determined to lead Asahel somewhere, and the other man followed him, too curious to be cautious.
Quentin strode through the Commons, his steps too broad and confident for Asahel to do much more than scurry behind him, taking two steps to every one of Quentin’s. They attracted notice, and perhaps that was the point, for Asahel could see that Quentin’s grin seemed to widen every time they passed another gawping mouth. He didn’t have time to think about it, so concerned was he with keeping up. They walked quickly past the tailor’s, then the First College, which led them into the wide fields that spanned the university. Quentin halted once they were away from the buildings, inhaling and spreading his arms out wide.
“Feel that,” he said. “You can actually breathe out here.”
Asahel looked at him as if he’d gone mad.
“Aye, but you could breathe in there too.”
“Not the same,” Quentin told him.
Asahel tried to concentrate on what Quentin meant, his focus shifting away from the man who was plopping down in the thick grass and towards the open sky overhead. The light was beginning to shadow now, the blue dimming to a faint gray. Only the small huts by the stream were close, the songs of the washerwoman and her children carried on the air. He could smell only sweet grass and clover out this far from the colleges, not stale wine and gutters. He breathed it in and could feel the magic starting to course through him. Out here, it was clean and pure, the rush of a river, rather than the crying of a choked stream.
“Yeotch!” Quentin lept up. He was rubbing his leg with a frown. “Asahel, snap out of it. You shocked me, calling that much magic.” Asahel glanced down and realized that he could hear the hum of the earth responding to the unintentional movements of his fingers. He closed his fist to make it stop but it took a moment for the energy to sink into the soil. Even then, he could sense it waiting just below the surface.
“I’m sorry,” Asahel murmured.
Quentin shook his head. His auburn hair was sticking up in spiky tufts, an aftereffect of the magical energy coursing through him. “No, it was brilliant. I’ve never been able to do that myself. I can barely light a candle.” He sighed, flopping back down on the earth so hard that a small cloud of dirt flew into the air after him. Asahel joined him, patting the ground first to be sure that it was dry. The grass around the two was so tall that it hid them from view, the blades swaying softly in the rising wind. Asahel leaned forward so that he could see Quentin’s eyes through the green, noticing how nearly they matched the grass itself.
“It…” He tried to think of something to say to Quentin, a man he barely knew but who apparently now considered himself a friend. “It must be something to be betrothed on the day of an eclipse, aye?”
“It is.” Quentin smiled to himself.
“Who is it?” Asahel knew that it was likely no secret around the colleges but he was not a part of any circle.
“Catharine Gredara,” he sighed softly, his heels digging into the dirt as his lanky body stretched out across the ground. “I’ve loved her since I was six.” Asahel laughed at that, unable to help it.
“Can you love anyone when you’re six?” He’d never been in love at all.
“Well. Maybe not,” Quentin allowed, a sheepish grin on his face. “But I liked her at least. I used to catch frogs and let them loose on her head, and she never screamed, not once. In fact, she used to put spiders in my tea when her mother called on mine.”
“That’s… um.” Asahel couldn’t think of much to say about that. Instead, he switched to, “What is it that you like about her? Besides the spiders.”
“She’s smart,” the other man answered promptly. “And she doesn’t just sit there and—and simper. You know how women do, fluttering their eyelashes and—and their hair.”
“I’d never noticed that,” Asahel said honestly. “Most of the women I’ve known were too busy for much of that.” He decided not to mention that he’d seen Quentin exhibit more of that kind of behavior just walking through the colleges than any woman he’d ever met. Quickly, he added, “But she sounds…” What was that word he used? “Brilliant.”
“I really didn’t think she even liked me,” Quentin mused. “Not after…well, maybe I was wrong.” Asahel shifted his weight, leaning on his right arm as he opened his mouth to ask another question. The hollow pounding of wood on metal broke his concentration and his head sharply turned as Quentin asked, “What is that?”
Asahel pushed himself up off the ground and stood. The sky was much darker than it had been and he noticed that the washerwoman had stopped singing. It was she who was making the noise, a large ladle in her hand beating down on a pot as her children clapped their hands together. She looked weary as her head lifted towards the sun overhead, staring at its distance from the oncoming moon. As he listened, he could hear other noises coming from the Commons. What Donat had jeered at him for was true, at least among the lower classes. The Soameses had tried to rise above it, but Asahel knew that his mother, at least, likely drummed her fingers against her desk in the same sentiment.
Quentin had risen as well, running a hand through his hair. “I remember the Plagues,” he muttered. “I can’t believe Donat scoffed at you like that.” He caught Asahel’s gaze and reached out, shoving him. “Don’t look up at the sky. I don’t care if it’s superstition—it can’t be good to see it.” The wind was rising again, whipping Asahel’s dark hair against his brow as he looked back down to the grass.
“It’ll be full dark in moments,” he said. “I reason we’re safe enough here.”
“Why is she beating the pot like that?” The other man shivered.
Asahel hesitated, knowing that Quentin was genuinely afraid. He had no desire to make it worse but he said, “There’s a story that says the Plagues… the fever. It comes from the sun, through magic somehow. Tradition says that if you make loud noises throughout the night, the darkness will be frightened away from your own home.”
“Is it true?”
“No. It wasn’t any better in the Low Quarter than at Lantern Street.” He sighed. “The difference for us was that most of my family was out at sea. They weren’t there to catch it.”
“Do you think—” Quentin’s face was pinched.
“Aye?” It felt strange to be on the protective end of a conversation, but Asahel sensed that there was something about the Plagues and his family that Quentin wasn’t sharing. It had been a bad summer for all, but he’d heard stories of the packed inner districts, of men hauling bodies into the streets to be burned without any care for burial. To the upper classes that found their immortality in the construction of elaborate tombs, Asahel supposed it must have been beyond imagining.
“Will it happen again?”
Asahel shook his head. “No, not plague. It was a coincidence before. Sure, and didn’t we talk of that in lectures all last week?” His voice was as steady as a ship in a becalmed sea, g
ently soothing Quentin with its deep and rocking cadence.
Quentin nodded.
The shadow of the sun was creeping up on them, casting long dark outlines across the grass. The pounding of ladle and pot slowed, wavering as the clapping stopped, although it still continued. Asahel took a few steps towards the colleges, his movements slow as he waited for the taller man to follow. He felt safer in the fields, away from the other students, but Quentin needed the security of crowds, Asahel saw. I’m used to being afraid. He’s not. That thought was enough to settle Asahel in his decision to lead them both back to where they’d come from.
“We’ll go back to the college,” he decided although he knew there was no purpose in going, except to give them a plan. The men trudged through the field, listening to the clang and crash of the people in the Commons who were trying to ward off the bloody tinge of light that now surrounded the sun. Once they had a course, Quentin moved ahead, leading Asahel towards the building in which they spent most of their days. His step was nimble despite the bumpy course, neatly avoiding the pits and foxholes scattered amongst the long grasses and clumps of weeds.
They had almost reached the college when Asahel saw four figures ahead. He stopped.
“Quentin!” There was no mistaking Donat’s voice, not to one who dreaded it. “We wondered where you were—have you been hiding from this racket? The sun’s almost gone.” Quentin stiffened as he took a step in front of Asahel, blocking his companion from view.
“He’s looking for trouble,” he whispered. “Let’s just try and stay out of it.”
“Aye. Let’s.”
Quentin gave Donat a curt nod, then he and Asahel quickened their pace towards the college. Neither looked behind them. Asahel didn’t stop and ask Quentin why he’d decided to move on ahead when he and Donat had known one another for years. He knew, as well as Quentin had, that Donat was looking for something. He, however, thought it blood and not just trouble.
