by M. J. Scott
Willem’s expression turned innocent.
Cameron wasn’t buying it. “Well?” he prompted.
Willem had been nowhere in sight when Cameron had found his way to the dining room after Sophie had left Henri’s office with Madame Simsa. Cameron had assumed the boy was at his lessons like most of the other students. There had only been a few in the dining room, none of whom seemed all that interested in speaking to the Anglion stranger in their midst. He’d quickly gone back to fetch some of the coins they’d brought with them before he’d headed for the door and the city beyond.
Willem took a moment before answering, pursing his lips thoughtfully before his expression brightened. “The maistre said I should go with you if you went out into the city. Show you the way.”
More likely watch where he went and report back. Still, Cameron couldn’t blame Henri for being cautious. In his position, Cameron would be watching two Anglions washed up on his front door with a certain degree of suspicion as well. Still, how had Willem even known that Cameron was leaving the building? The corridors had seemed empty. Though he wouldn’t have necessarily seen a sanctii, he supposed.
“Your Illvyan is good, my lord,” Willem said. “But mine is better. I shall find you better deals. Take you to the best stores.”
“Who says I was looking to buy anything?” Who said he could afford the best stores, more to the point? Willem might know a money changer. Cameron could exchange some of the Anglion coins he’d brought—the gold would be worth something even if the Anglion currency wasn’t. He would wait to sell another pearl from Sophie’s necklace. Henri had told him the Academe would feed and house them, so other than clothes, their immediate needs were few. Figuring out a longer-term source of income could wait while they got their bearings and consolidated their plans.
“You arrived with so little luggage, sir. You will need more. Lady Sophie in particular. Women get out of temper when they do not have enough clothes.”
Cameron snorted, amused by the boy’s world-weary delivery of this particular judgment. “Do they indeed?”
“Well, my sisters did,” Willem said with a shrug. “But they were not yet married. Perhaps that matters more to them then. Madame Sophie already has a fine husband.” He looked over his shoulder quickly then, expression suddenly guilty.
“Who are you looking for?” Cameron asked.
“Madame Simsa would set me extra studies if she heard me saying that women are only out to catch husbands. My sisters were interested in little else, but Madame Simsa says that is my parents’ fault, not theirs. Says they should have been sent to school. But school is expensive.”
“How many sisters do you have?” Cameron asked, amused now.
“Five. All older. Many dowries to be considered.”
Five daughters could be expensive, if dowries were common here. “What does your father do?”
“He is head clerk for a shipping firm. He works down by the harbor.” Willem waved vaguely to his right. Cameron noted the direction. Knowing where the harbor was could be useful.
“They sent you to school though?” A head clerk sounded like it might pay a reasonable wage. But still, six children . . . maybe more if Willem had a brother or two. That would stretch any household.
“There have been many practitioners of the Airs in my family. None of my sisters manifested magic, but my family has hopes of me. If not, well, Madame Simsa says I have some skills with the birds and that there may be hope for me yet if I study hard, regardless of my magic.” Willem sounded happy enough with this fate. “Madame Simsa is wise, Lord Cameron.”
Madame Simsa, Cameron gathered from this information, was someone that Willem was both a little awed by and a little enchanted with. As she was about to instruct his wife in goddess knew what, he hoped the boy’s affection for the venable was warranted. Though hopefully the lessons would focus solely on earth magic as he and Sophie had agreed. He didn’t think Sophie would risk their chance to return home by seeking to study beyond that, but he also wasn’t sure he trusted the venables not to try and entice her to do just that. Every teacher or tutor or sergeant he’d ever had had been a tad obsessive about any of their charges they deemed to show potential. Always seeking to guide them to greater heights. Sophie had to be very tempting raw material for a mage to mold.
Well, he was just going to have to trust her to keep her head. There was little else he could do.
He turned back to the door. If he had to traipse through a strange city and conduct some business, then Willem probably wouldn’t be such bad company. And possibly a very good source of information. The boy was, after all, still young. And eager to please. It shouldn’t be hard to get him talking. “Shall we go?”
Willem grinned, then pulled his robes over his head, bundling them into a pile and unceremoniously shoving them into a small cupboard built into the wall. Underneath the robes, the boy wore a plain woolen jacket in a dull sort of gray shade over a white shirt. His pants were black, as were his boots. The clothes were clean and well cut, but Cameron didn’t know enough about Illvyan clothing to judge what they said about Willem. For all he knew they were part of the uniform of the school. Henri hadn’t mentioned a uniform, but it would make sense for younger students at least, who were living away from their families, to have one. Uniforms did simplify life.
Or complicate it. After all, they often came with oaths. Like the ones he’d broken so thoroughly when he’d fled here with Sophie. Certainly it was likely that he would have been leaving the Red Guard now that he was married and had to manage the small amount of land that came with the title Eloisa had granted him, but leaving was different to desertion. Which was what he had done by coming here.
He shook off the thought. As he’d told Sophie, there was little point wishing for things to be different. He had made his choice.
He followed Willem out the door and along the short path, turning at the gate to look back at the building. Last night it had loomed in the darkness, but it had been hard to get a sense of its size.
Large. Four stories tall and as wide across as the grandest erl’s house he’d ever seen. Not as big as the palace in Kingswell, though he had no idea how far back the building went. Or if there were more buildings behind this one. It could be nearly as large if there was more than one building in the complex.
“You must tell me what you want, Lord Cameron. Then I will know where to take you.” Willem pushed the gate open and held it, waving Cameron through.
“Some clothes, you were correct about that. For both of us. A map of the city, perhaps one of the entire country, if such things are available.” He kept the last part casual. A map of the empire was key, but he didn’t want word getting back to Henri that it had been the first thing he’d wanted to purchase.
Willem nodded. “That is easy enough. There are stores that sell small maps for those visiting Lumia, to help them find their way around. It is not so difficult once you know the system though.” He launched into an explanation of rings and spokes and quarters that sounded very complicated.
Cameron held up a hand. “Let’s wait for the map. A money changer first though. And also, perhaps a bookstore? I would like to get a book that teaches Illvyan. I don’t suppose it would be possible to find one written in Anglish?”
Willem frowned. “For Lady Sophie?”
“Yes. Though I also need to improve my skills.”
“The best way is by talking,” Willem said. “I could help you. You could speak Illvyan to me and then help me with my Anglion in return.
“Anglish,” Cameron corrected gently. “That’s how we say it. Yours seems quite good.”
“I know some. Usually it is only taught to the older students, but my father knew an Anglion man once. He learned a little from him. I have learned more since I came to the Academe. But it is never the same as speaking to someone from the place. My Parthan was terrible until I became friends with someone from there.”
Cameron had no idea what country spoke Partha
n. Yet another reason to find maps. “Well, if your teachers say it is acceptable for you to learn from me, I’d be happy to help you practice.” He wasn’t looking to put any noses out of joint by teaching the boy something he was not supposed to know. “Perhaps you can practice with Lady Sophie, too. But a book would also help her.” He really should teach Willem about Anglion titles at least, but he liked the more friendly sound of Lord Cameron and Lady Sophie. Hopefully as students, they could drop the titles completely. It might help them blend in.
“If Lady Sophie has trouble with the language, then Maistre Matin might ask a sanctii to help her.”
“A sanctii?” He thought of the creature he’d met the previous night and its harsh raspy voice. It didn’t seem a likely candidate to help a person perfect their Illvyan accent.
“They have a skill with language. And they can . . . .” Willem waved a hand vaguely in the air. “They can do something to help those who find it difficult.”
“Something magic?”
Willem nodded.
Demonic language lessons. Not something Sophie was likely to want to embrace. “Let’s start with the book and see how that goes. It’s simpler.”
“All right. There will also be books on languages in the library in the Academe. Maps, too. Larger ones of Illvya and the empire. So you do not need to purchase those,” Willem said eagerly. “You can save your money and buy something pretty for Lady Sophie.”
Cameron smiled at that. Perhaps he would. He needed to be careful with their funds so if he could find maps and other books at the Academe, that helped.
They had walked a little way from the Academe now. He needed to start paying more attention to his surroundings. He spotted a familiar-looking building. A portal. Maybe the one they’d come out of the night before, unless he’d completely lost his bearings. “Is that the closest portal?”
“Yes. There is another one a little farther in the other direction from the Academe as well. Those are the closest public ones.”
Did that mean there were private portals? Perhaps within the Academe itself? Private portals were not unheard of in Anglion. After all, they had used the one owned by Chloe de Montesse to escape Kingswell. However, they were not common due to the cost of constructing and maintaining them.
But perhaps Illvyans could build such things more cheaply. The empire was far larger than Anglion. And they had demon magic, of course.
So. Portals. If there were portals within the walls of the Academe, it would be good to find out where. And to find out where one could travel to from them. He knew Anglion’s portal symbols, but beyond those Chloe had showed him to get them to Lumia and to the Academe, he had no idea what any of the others for Illvya and the empire might be. “Is there also a guide to your portal system?” Having had to flee in haste twice now, he would make sure he identified the best routes to take if the need should arise a third time.
“Yes. You should be able to acquire one from the sellers who do the city maps. This way.”
“Is that the same way as the money changer?”
That drew a frown to the boy’s face. “Not to the one who has the best rates. Unless you wish to use one of the banking societies.”
“A money changer will do for now.” He wasn’t entirely sure what a banking society was but it sounded like it might require things like letters of introduction or identification or even sums of money more substantial than he currently had. “That first. Then clothes and a city map.” He considered. He had brought a small amount of ammunition with him for his pistol. It wouldn’t last long in a fight. But he didn’t want Henri to know that, so bullets could wait until he had figured out how to leave the Academe without his little informant by his side.
“Which way do we go?” He went to step out into the street. Willem caught his sleeve and hauled him backward just as a carriage rattled past, drawn by two huge black metal creatures billowing steam. A spark shot up from beneath the carriage, arcing toward Cameron. He slapped at it reflexively as it landed on his sleeve, still staring after the vehicle. “What in the name of—” He bit back the invocation of the goddess. He didn’t know if anyone used that language here. He was trying to blend in. Trying and failing, gaping after the carriage like a Carnarvon sheepherder come to a city for the very first time. “What was that?” he said, managing to sound a little calmer.
“Do you not have fabriques in Anglion?”
“No. Is that what those things were? Fabriques?” He rolled the word around in his head, committing it to memory. “What are they?”
“Metal and magic,” Willem said. “Faster than real horses. They can go farther in a day without stopping.”
“Magic? What kind of magic?”
“A little Air, a little Water. Another thing the sanctii assist with. They are good with machinery and mechanisms and such. There are other kinds of fabriques but the horses are the most common.”
Demon horses as well as demon languages? What else did the sanctii do? But no, perhaps better not to think about that just yet.
But when he returned to the Academe, the first room he was going to seek out would be the library.
* * *
The room Madame Simsa led Sophie to was quite some distance from Henri’s office. In fact, it was in a different building entirely. They crossed a small wedge of garden—more a courtyard—and then followed the path down between two buildings away from it again before Sophie had a chance to do much more than register flowers in strange colors and unfamiliar shapes. She would have liked to linger, but Madame Simsa didn’t seem the kind to want to pause and admire flowers.
She also set a good pace for someone who appeared to be in her seventies, her cane propelling her along with clicks and thuds. She didn’t pause until they reached a row of five small stone buildings, each maybe twenty feet wide and set apart from each other by a similar width of grass. Their walls were made from a pinkish-gray stone, and from the depth of wall that showed around the door frame, they were built very solidly. They resembled nothing so much as the prison building in Portholme. The narrow windows weren’t barred, though they, and the rest of the buildings, shimmered with wards piled upon wards, their glow painfully bright. Madame Simsa stopped by the second of the buildings and thumped her cane once against the door. The ward-glow died and she turned to Sophie. “Come along, child.”
Not a prison, Sophie told herself firmly. If they wanted to imprison her, they could have kept her in her chambers in the other building with very little effort. After all, the windows of that room were barred. And Madame Simsa seemed an unlikely sort of jailer. No doubt she was powerful or Henri wouldn’t have handed Sophie over to her with such alacrity, but she didn’t look like the type to do Sophie harm.
“Child. A little caution is a good thing, but I promise I am not going to eat you.” Madame Simsa stood in the doorway, looking amused. “My teeth aren’t what they used to be, after all.” Her smile widened. Her teeth looked perfectly white and healthy to Sophie.
Earth witches generally had excellent health. They were long-lived. As were their husbands, at least in Anglion where the marriage bonds set in place by the temple gave the husbands a little of their wives’ power, ensuring good health.
“And there’s no sanctii waiting inside to eat you either,” Madame said, a little more sharply. “What are you, a witch or a wailer, girl? Come along.”
Sophie’s head snapped up at that and she marched over to Madame Simsa. She was a royal witch of Anglion. Madame Simsa might learn that Sophie had some teeth of her own.
Inside the room was dim. Madame Simsa gestured toward the wall to their right. “There are earth stones over there. Can you light those?”
“Yes, Madame,” Sophie said. She reached out with her powers, seeking the stones. There. A row of them warmed to life with pleasing speed and the room lightened to a comfortable level. There wasn’t much within it: a sturdy-looking square wooden table with four chairs pushed against its edges, a fireplace with a mantle above it, a
cupboard squatting into the far left corner, and the shelf that held the earth stones.
“Good. You aren’t completely untrained, then,” Madame Simsa said. “Come, we will find out what else you can do. Bring two of those stones over to the table.”
Sophie obeyed, the familiar light of the earth stones oddly comforting as she carried them over to where Madame sat.
The venable nodded approvingly. “Now, you are to answer what I ask and do as I demand. Do not worry if anything I request of you seems risky. These practice rooms are warded half a dozen different ways and solidly built besides. Plus, I doubt you can start anything I cannot finish if needs be.”
The older woman started to grill her, firing questions and setting magical tasks with little pause between each one. Sophie could do some of them she was familiar with, managed a few more through applying things she had read about combined with things she could already do, and failed miserably at others.
She wasn’t entirely sure how long this went on but she was growing tired by the end.
Madame Simsa finally nodded and the stream of questions ended. Sophie wanted to slump back in her chair but she kept her spine straight. The ley line beneath the Academe was still strong beneath them, but dipping into the power had not been simple. The unfamiliar line was almost too strong and grasping it had been like being buffeted by strong winds.
“So you are not a weakling,” Madame Simsa said. She smiled suddenly. “I imagine your Domina was not well pleased when you and that pretty husband of yours got yourself bound up as you did.”
How did she know that? “Are earth witches not bonded to their husbands here?”
Madame Simsa thumped her cane on the floor. “Only if they choose to be. And the bond between the two of you is no marriage bond. I’ve seen those before. Besides, if the Domina had you neatly bound to Temple and husband, I can’t imagine anyone would have been able to do whatever it was that sent you running to the empire. You can tell me that story one day. When you know me a little better.”
