by Toby Forward
A man that looks on glasse,
On it may stay his eye;
Or if he pleaseth, through it passe,
And then the heav’n espie.
From “The Elixir”, by George Herbert
I had good teachers, bad teachers, terrible teachers and
wonderful ones. Don’t we all? This book is dedicated to
all my good and wonderful teachers.
Part One
DOUBLEDEALING
“Well what am I?”
asked Tamrin.
No one could have called her tidy at the best of times, and when she was cross, which was a lot of the time now, she looked more dishevelled than ever.
She waited for Vengeabil to answer. Either he didn’t hear her or he was pretending he didn’t, and she knew that he heard everything.
“I mean it,” she said. “What am I?”
Vengeabil put a piece of thread in his mouth. He was sewing up a stuffed dragon that had fallen from a high shelf and come undone. It was a Small Tortoiseshell, very rare, about the size of a cat, with a tail that ended in three points. He pointed to the thread and shrugged his shoulders, indicating that he couldn’t talk.
Tamrin jabbed her pen on her exercise book. The nib splayed out, ink sprayed over the page and on to her hands. When she brushed it away she just smeared it more.
“Blotting paper,” said Vengeabil.
“Hah!” she pointed her pen at him. “I knew you could talk with that thread in your mouth. What am I? Really. I mean it.”
“I know you mean it,” he said, taking the thread out of his mouth now that it no longer protected him from talking. “But I don’t know what you mean. They’re not the same thing.”
Tamrin had ink up to her elbows now and a smear of it on her cheek.
“I’m not a real apprentice, am I?” she said. “Not really.”
Vengeabil put the last stitch in and tied up the end. He examined the stuffed dragon from every side.
“And I’m a twin,” she continued. “But I don’t know what sort of twin and I never see my twin. I never even met him until a year ago, and then he was gone almost as soon as he was here.”
“This dragon,” said Vengeabil, “is the only one ever seen anywhere by anyone.”
“How do you know?”
“Because the book of dragons says there are seventeen varieties of dragon and eight of them have never been seen by anyone, and the Small Tortoiseshell is one of the eight.”
Tamrin peered across the kitchen at it.
“How did you get it?”
“There’s a story attached to that,” said Vengeabil.
Tamrin rolled her eyes. With Vengeabil there was a story attached to everything.
“That’s what I mean,” she said. She clenched her fists and knuckled her forehead. It was difficult to sort things out in her head. “You never teach me anything, not really. You just tell me stories. Not proper lessons, like in the college.”
The kitchen they were sitting in was in the cellars of Canterstock College, the oldest, biggest, and, if you really admitted it, the only college for wizards. Above their heads nearly two hundred pupils were studying magic. Tamrin had been one of them once, as a little girl, but it hadn’t worked out and she was sort of expelled and she sort of just left. After a while, Vengeabil took her on as his apprentice, to make her a wizard that way.
“Stories are how you teach an apprentice,” he said. “It’s how my old master taught me.” He stroked the dragon and looked into the distance. “Flaxfield. There was a wizard for you. He never went to the college. Proper wizards don’t; they pass it on to their apprentices. Your people upstairs, they’ll never be the sort of wizard he was. Not the sort of wizard I am. Not the sort of wizard you can be.”
This was Vengeabil’s story. Tamrin loved to hear him tell it. Every time it was just a little different. Every time there was just a little something new that he hadn’t told before. Every time she understood something better than she had the last time.
She pushed her books aside.
“Tell me,” she said.
Vengeabil moved across and sat next to her. He looked at her work. Despite her complaints about only hearing stories, Tamrin had filled many exercise books with notes and diagrams and drawings, lists and recipes, maps, names of herbs, and tables of figures. The pages were creased and blotched. The corners buffed and ragged. The covers, and more than the covers, were smeared with butter and wax and soot and grease. Any teacher upstairs would have refused to mark them, they were such a mess. Vengeabil marked them though, and he never found a mistake in the spelling or the calculations or the facts. Never. Tamrin had cried once because she couldn’t be neat and Vengeabil had said, “I remember Flaxfield saying to me something about the comfortable tidiness of the small mind.”
A bell rang high above them. Hundreds of feet thudded down the corridors.
“Lunch time. Lessons are finished for the morning,” said Vengeabil. “And it’s gloomy in here.”
He leaned over and pulled a candle towards them. He pinched the wick between his finger and thumb, and a flame was born, tiny, then small, then strong and blue with a yellow beating heart.
“Shouldn’t really,” he said. “I should get a light from the range, but there you are, there you are. Are you ready?”
Tamrin nodded.
“I was Flaxfield’s apprentice,” he began. “All in the proper way. Left home at six years old and went to learn from him. Signed my indentures when I was twelve. It was all going smoothly. And then there was the incident.”
This was the part that Tamrin wanted him to talk about. Sometimes he called it an event, sometimes an incident, once he called it a disaster, sometimes it was a chapter of occurrences.
“Anyway, after the – incident – everything changed.”
“What was it?” she said. “The incident.”
Vengeabil sighed. “You know, Flaxfield told us all never to talk about it. He said if we forgot all about it then we might be safe.”
“And did you forget? Is that why you never tell me what it was?”
“No. No, I never forgot. Still, after it happened, nothing was the same and I had to leave Flaxfield and come here.”
“Did you hate it?”
Vengeabil looked shocked. “Hate it? No. Not at all. Part of me wanted to come here. You have to remember, it was a different sort of place then. We had a good principal. A very good principal.”
Tamrin couldn’t stop herself from hitting the table with her knuckles, which hurt, but was worth it.
“I know,” he agreed. “Not like now. And I was apprenticed jointly to Flaxfield and to someone here. First time it’s ever happened. I didn’t go to lessons. Just learned,” he gave her one of his looks that made him look like a naughty twelve‑year‑old, “by stories. So I’m sort of half an apprenticed wizard and half a college wizard. Just like you.”
“Who was your master here?” she said. Not for the first time.
“So you see, to answer one of your questions – who am I? – you’re my apprentice and I like to think that’s not a bad thing.”
Tamrin felt ashamed.
“It’s a good thing,” she said. “I love it. But there are the other questions.”
She didn’t like to say that a question she hadn’t said out loud to him was, “And what are you?” She knew whatever answer he gave it wouldn’t be enough of an answer. And if she didn’t know what he was how could she know what she was?
“There’s someone coming,” said Vengeabil.
They paused and listened.
“I’d better go and see what they want,” he said.
Tamrin waited for him to leave the kitchen, then as she usually did, she followed him, silently.
“Mr M
asrani,” said Vengeabil. “What can I do for you, young sir?”
Tim Masrani grinned at him.
“Did you want a new pair of shoes?” the man asked.
“No. Er, no, thanks.”
“No?”
Vengeabil lifted the counter top and stepped out to stand next to Tim.
Vengeabil’s storeroom supplied everyone in the college with books, uniform, equipment and ingredients for experiments and spells, paper, ink, games, toys, bandages, rubber bands, pens and anything else he thought they might need. He was the storekeeper, which was just about the lowliest job in the college. The pupils treated him as a bit of a joke. The better ones felt sorry for him. The others would have made fun of him if they weren’t just a little bit scared of the scruffy old man who lived in the dark passages under the college.
“No,” said Tim. “I haven’t come for new shoes.”
“Well you ought to. Look at the state of them. They’re all scuffed and dusty.”
Tim looked down at his feet. His shoes weren’t really in any worse state than the rest of his uniform – trousers baggy at the knee, jerkin just too small, with a hole in the left elbow and reminders of meals down the front, hair not combed for a week. He brushed himself down with his hands, achieving no improvement at all, and said, “I’ve come to take Tamrin to Professor Frastfil. He wants to see her.”
“What if she doesn’t want to see him?” said Vengeabil. “What if she’s not here?”
A jerkin slid down from the counter and wrapped itself around Tim’s leg, turning into a small octopus and winding itself round him.
“Oh, not that again,” he complained, shaking his leg. “Why do you always do that? It’s wet, and slimy.”
“I’ll go and see him,” said Tamrin, stepping out from the shadows. “What does he want?”
Vengeabil nodded to the octopus and it slithered off Tim’s leg and turned back into a jerkin.
“Don’t know,” said Tim. He grinned at her. “You don’t think he’d tell me anything, do you?”
“Come on,” said Tamrin.
“Come straight back,” Vengeabil called after her. “You’ve got work to do.”
They climbed the stairs and made their way along the corridor toward the principal’s room.
Tamrin looked up at the globes that bobbed above their heads, casting dim light on the corridor.
“This place is sick,” she said. “Look at them. They should be bright as day. We crouch around in here, dodging from place to place, never doing anything useful. It’s rotting.”
Tim gave her a worried glance. She knew he quite liked her and she knew he was quite frightened of her. Not as frightened as the other pupils. To them she was a half-hidden secret, the girl who didn’t belong, the girl who had been thrown out of college and never left. Not a pupil, not a servant, not a cook or a cleaner or gardener. She was nobody. Just a girl who’d been left at the college by some poor tailor. Except when she was with Vengeabil in his storeroom, as his apprentice. But no one knew that either. As far as they knew he had just given her somewhere to live after she’d been expelled, and she tidied the stores and helped around the place in return. Her magic was still there, but it was uncontrolled, untutored.
They reached Frastfil’s door and Tim gave a hesitant knock. Before anyone could call them to come in Tamrin banged her fist on the wood, turned the handle and stomped in. She closed the door on the boy’s astonished face.
The three faces that looked at her now were even more astonished. Frastfil himself, the principal, was sitting behind his desk. His thin face, hooked nose and dishevelled clothes made him look more like a shopkeeper who sold damaged goods than the head of a great college.
“That door had a locking spell on it,” he protested.
Tamrin smiled.
“Did it?” she said, in a voice that made it clear she was not telling the truth. “I didn’t notice.”
“You must have done. You’re lying.”
The accusation was made by the other adult in the room, Dr Duddle, recently appointed as vice-principal. Tamrin was turning thirteen and Duddle was not much taller, though a lot heavier. And he had a fat smirk. As though he liked you, when Tamrin knew that the smile really meant that he liked himself. He carried his little round tummy in front of him, smiling all the time at how pleased he was to be Dr Duddle.
“If Professor Frastfil put a locking spell on the door, I wouldn’t have been able to open it, would I?” she asked Duddle. “After all, he’s a powerful wizard and I’m just, well, I’m nothing, am I? Either he’s not good or there was no spell.”
The third face in the room sucked its cheeks in at this. Smedge nodded and looked from Duddle to Frastfil and back to Tamrin. Tamrin saw him considering the third possibility, that she could break any spell Frastfil set. Tamrin glared at him.
“What are you staring at?” she said.
“You see?” Smedge said to Frastfil, and the man nodded.
“See?” said Tamrin. “See what? What do you want me for?” She raised her voice and confronted Frastfil, determined to show him that she wasn’t frightened of him. She’d watched the way the others treated him with respect and obedience, and she wasn’t going to do it. He might be the principal, but she wasn’t a pupil. There was nothing he could do to her.
“Are you all right, Smedge?” Frastfil asked. “Don’t be nervous.”
Tamrin felt a moment of fear. Smedge coughed and hesitated. Tamrin waited for something bad to happen.
Smedge spoke quietly at first and Tamrin couldn’t believe what he was saying.
“I’m frightened of her,” he began, “but not while you’re here, sir, and Dr Duddle.”
Frastfil tried to look strong and protective. Tamrin thought for a moment he needed to go to the jakes until she realized he was being important, and she laughed.
“You can’t laugh,” said Duddle. “This is serious.”
“Serious?” said Tamrin. “This is stupid. Look at him.”
She pointed to Smedge. There was a momentary ripple in the air, just for a second, and then it was gone. For that one moment Smedge appeared to Frastfil and Duddle as he usually did, another pupil at the college, the same age as Tamrin, just a little taller. He was the neatest boy in the place. His uniform always clean and tidy, his hair combed, his shoes shined. His face always wore an expression of eager helpfulness and amiability. Except for that one second. Hidden from the two men, but clear to her, his face took on a look of such empty, stupid hatred that she wanted to run out of the room. And then it was gone, and he was the obedient schoolboy again. She couldn’t work out whether she’d imagined it or if it was real, and if it was real had he done it on purpose, to show her what he was like, or had a mask slipped?
By the time she recovered her thoughts a conversation had been going on around her and was coming to a close.
“And I will not tolerate bullying,” said Frastfil.
“What?” she said.
“Smedge is frightened of you. You’ve made this boy’s life a misery,” he concluded. “You will have to leave.”
“He’s a liar,” she said.
“That will do.”
“I’ve never done anything to him.”
“Do you deny that you locked him in a block of ice? For an hour?”
Tamrin’s answer was shouted out before she had the time to control herself.
“He was taunting Westrim,” she said. “Making him run stupid errands and confusing him. And when Westrim got things wrong Smedge magicked up ants to bite him all over and sting him. Westrim was crying. I only locked Smedge in the ice to stop him and teach him a lesson. Ask Westrim. Ask any of the little boys. Smedge makes their lives a misery.”
“We have asked Westrim,” Duddle smiled at her. “Smedge said you would make up lies about him. So we’ve asked the other boys and girls. They like him. They look up to him.”
Tamrin saw Smedge’s look of triumph and she understood that this was a plan he had set in place f
or some reason.
“And so we have asked your guardian to take you away from the college,” said Frastfil. He stood up, put his hands in his trouser pockets and jingled the coins in there. “You must wait here until he arrives and leave with him immediately. We can’t have you upsetting anyone else.”
“I’m not going with him,” she said. “I can’t. I don’t know him. I don’t remember him. I’ve always been here.”
Tamrin had been left at the college when she was a tiny girl and no one had ever visited her. Her fees were paid in advance, and Frastfil had never said that she wasn’t actually in lessons any more.
“I’m sure you’ll be well looked after,” said Frastfil. “You would never have been happy as a wizard. You don’t have the discipline for it.”
“You stupid man,” she shouted. “You don’t even know what a wizard is.”
Duddle and Smedge exchanged glances of satisfaction.
A hesitant knock at the door brought silence. The knock was repeated.
“Come in,” said Frastfil.
Tim poked his head around the door.
“Person for Tamrin,” he said. “Name of Shoddle. He’s a tailor. Says he’s come to take her away. He’s waiting in the porter’s lodge.”
“You’d better go,” said Frastfil. ||
Tamrin was out of breath
but she kept running. Her feet slapped against the slabbed surface of the town square. She dodged errand boys pushing handcarts, dogs, an old woman with a heavy shopping basket over her arm, she swerved at the very last moment, only just managing not to knock over a baker with a tray of pies on his head. He staggered. His white apron fluttered and covered her face, blinding her.
“Hey!” he yelled.
He fell back, the tray tilting beyond the point where it must fall. Tamrin dragged the apron away, caught his arm, pulled him upright, waved her other hand at the tray. It grew eagle’s wings, flapped, settled itself back on the baker’s head and the wings folded away into nothing.
“Sorry. You all right?”
The shoppers cheered. Tamrin grinned. A pie slipped off the tray and flew round into her hand. She sprinted away, snitching an apple from a stall, across the square, round a corner and down a small alley that she knew led to the main gate of Canterstock. The last sight she saw was the baker, small against the huge grey stone of the college, counting his pies and complaining.
