Not for Use in Navigation

by Iona Datt Sharma

  "Well, sahib," Birbal said, "we must teach you how to fly a pathang."

  The sitar player agreed that perhaps this would bring him closer to his son, but he was apprehensive. How, he asked, does a man who is nearly forty years old, who was always consumed by his art and never by the joys of his schoolfriends, learn to unroll a string and catch a wind?

  For once, it was Akbar who said, "It shall be done, my friend."

  You will recall that Akbar had a son, Jahangir, who had been born on campaign. Back on Earth he was unruly, as Akbar herself had been, and more inclined towards playing carrom and roaming the hills than working at his lessons. Akbar had seen him flying kites above the battlements, and she meant to promise him some sweetmeat or trinket, if he would teach the sitar player how to do the same.

  But then she remembered Jahangir's tutors had said he was shiftless, that he took no responsibility, and it occurred to her that to take responsibility one must have responsibility. She told him of the sitar player's son, her tutor's regrets, and though it troubled her to speak of it, her own illiteracy. "I owe this man a debt," she said. "You must discharge it for me."

  Jahangir said, "Amma, I will try."

  Birbal was one of Jahangir's tutors who believed he was lacking in application, but she trusted Akbar's judgement, and she was not wrong to do so. On breezy mornings when Birbal breakfasted with Akbar on the verandah, they would see Jahangir climbing up to the battlements with the sitar player, and from the voices carried in the wind they learned that Jahangir was a patient teacher.

  "You see, Birbal," Akbar said. "I cannot teach him to read and write, nor to play the sitar. I cannot teach him geography or history or languages. I can teach him to take care of his people, and that only."

  "It is not a little thing, huzoor," said Birbal.

  After that Jahangir gave his tutors less trouble, and Akbar, too, studied hard. Reading remained a chore for her -- she always preferred to hear the poets recite and the musicians sing – but she could make her way through a dispatch from her frontiers, and through a column of figures, and was content. Among her musicians was her tutor, who struggled with her technique no matter how hard she practised, but she was persistent and Akbar liked to hear her.

  Grief is a terrible thing, and it did not lift easily from the sitar player and his son. But they walked the hills together with their brightly-coloured kites, and it came to pass that they found contentment again.

  And as you will have learned in school, dear reader, Jahangir became the fourth emperor of the greatest empire ever seen. But that, too, is another story.

  Quarter Days

  (i) Candlemas

  On the Monday, Grace put the advertisement for the new apprentice on the door of their chambers; on the Tuesday, she had a couple of interested, and uninteresting, respondents; and on Wednesday, it was the seven hundred and thirty-first Candlemas of the City of London, so Grace went out with all the other Salt practitioners and raised the year's magic for the City's lamps, lighting Ned's as well as her own; and then on Thursday, a little after five o'clock in the morning, Ned knocked on her bedroom door and shouted, "Grace! Wake up!"

  They'd been raising light magic in the gardens till dusk, and afterwards they had watched the tapers burn away the night into the small hours. If she only had an apprentice, Grace thought ignobly, she could send them to see what was wanted. Then Ned knocked again, and she was on her feet looking for her dressing gown and slippers.

  "What is it?" she shouted through the door, thinking reflexively of Zeppelins, and then shaking her head to clear it of that sudden image, of fire in the dark.

  "A boy came from the station," Ned was saying, as Grace stepped out of her door, casting more light as she went, hanging a luminous globe off the roof. Ned was fully dressed with his battered Virgil closed on his thumb; he didn't sleep at night, now. "They're asking for every practitioner — there's been an accident on the railway bridge."

  Grace breathed in sharply. "Thanet?"

  Ned shook his head as they went downstairs. “Not here. Said something about a girl over the water. Grace, this may be our fault"-- and before Grace could respond, they were through their chambers and on Middle Temple Lane, standing on cobbles gleaming with last night's rain.

  There was no light in the sky yet and no stars, but across the water, Grace could make out the orange glow on the bridge by St Paul's. "Come on," she called to Ned, who was rarely outside these days and catching his breath. They hurried through the deserted gardens, down towards the Embankment. There were some carriages and motorcars on the roadway, though not many at this hour, and over them Grace could hear the distant shouting and the crackling of flames. Looking over her shoulder, she could see the lights coming on throughout the chambers surrounding the gardens, and other figures in flapping mishmashes of hastily-grabbed clothing.

  At the entrance to the station, they came up short at a police cordon. The constable looked askance at Grace's dressing gown - and at the darkness of her skin, no doubt - and then at Ned's general unkempt air. Reflexively, they both dipped their heads so their practitioners' bars were visible at their ears.

  "We're Salt," Ned said. "I worked on the signalling systems for the railway."

  "Thank goodness," the constable said, with unexpected fervour. "You're to go through."

  On the other side, all was heat and light. Grace realised at once that the cordon had been a magical one, made of both Salt and tape: because suddenly the smoke was choking and the heat a vivid presence, the surface of the platform warm beneath her feet. A half-dozen practitioners had raised their lights and she could see the spilled railway carriages as great sinister bulks looming out of the darkness. Running the debris patterns backwards in her mind, she imagined the accident: a train run straight into the back of another, but the one in front made of stronger stuff so it had stayed upright, its engine and carriages still standing straight on the bridge, with the other train on the station's landward side, now spilled behind it like confetti. Out of those strewn islands the flames were rising, and in the gloom beneath, there was the shadowy suggestion of movement, of limbs.

  "Oh," she said, stricken by it, and felt rather than heard Ned step forwards in the dark beside her. His presence was comforting and close, and Grace dismissed the protective instinct telling her to push him back behind the cordon.

  "Are you the magical folk?" called another policeman, and without waiting for an answer, "This way, ma'am, please."

  Closer-to, Grace could make out people being helped from the shattered carriages by way of splintered doors and windows; others were banging inside, waiting for the rescuers to come. Grace saw Ned look unhappily up and down the track, towards the signalling wires.

  "Can't do anything about that now," he said, and using his cane to balance, jumped heavily down onto the trackside.

  As Grace watched, he leant down beside a woman just pulled from a carriage, and helped her drink some water from a canteen. Without even thinking about it, Grace had begun work herself: she was casting spells for cooling and healing, of things as well as people, drawing water up from the river, dumping it on the flames, then beginning again. As light appeared in the sky and brightened, more and more Salt folk arrived from Temple: they worked in concert where they could, as to make better use of whatever power they had, and around them the flames burned blue-white with gas. By the time the sun was clipping the horizon Grace was exhausted, her eyes blurred with smoke and tiredness. Brought to herself by the ash burning in her throat, she looked around her at the chilled dawn in the east along the river, and the bleak aspect it gave to the passengers and the practitioners, their bedroom slippers incongruous in the light. The fires were still burning low and bright beneath the wooden railway carriages.

  "Grace." Ned was leaning against the platform edge below her, looking up. "Use me, if you must," he said, with his right hand on his heart; Grace checked he was fully supported against the edge before she reached into him and did it. It wasn't good pract
ice to take the heart out of a layman, but Ned's qualification as such was dubious, and her doubts were eclipsed by gratitude as she felt the strength of it.

  Then, somehow, it was morning: the light had risen sufficiently for her to make out the opposite bank of the river, and the slow progress of the injured being taken across the bridge. It was only then, as that Grace noticed the flock of starlings fluttering above her, making a neat, low circle about the station. Their wings were soaked through and raining down water, damping the very last of the flames. Grace wheeled around and called out, "Thanet? Is that you? Thanet!"

  "Grace!" Thanet called, hobbling across the platform, having ducked out from behind one of the shelters. He might have been there all the time, Grace thought; the three of them in their familiar formation, all unknowing. "Grace, I'm here!"

  Below them, Ned turned sharply, recognisable more by his gait than anything else, his face and hair smeared with ash. "Thanet? Oh, thank goodness."

  He leaned against the platform edge again, tipping his head back. Under the starling rain, the fire had died down to smoke, billowing and dissipating across the water. Grace looked down at Ned and up at the remains of the wreckage, and said, "Shall we?"

  Between them, Grace and Thanet got Ned back up to platform level, they paid their respects to the also exhausted police constables lining the bridge, and the three of them walked quietly along the Embankment, watching the first of the day's trams rattle past.

  "We were afraid," Ned said to Thanet, as Grace rummaged for the keys to chambers, "that you might have been on the train."

  "I was late coming back," Thanet said, his voice hoarse. "It was a girl in trouble, you understand? Didn't want the neighbours to see. I was walking across the road bridge when I saw the crash. And then, you know, I thought..." He paused, looking pale in the rising light. "Ned, did we do this? I mean - if, say, the signals were faulty, and the train..."

  "There will be an investigation," Ned said heavily. "We'll find out."

  "The door's unlocked," Grace said, opening it. "After you, Ned. We left in rather a hurry."

  Thanet chuckled grimly as they went inside their sitting-room and opened the curtains, which did little to address the dimness. To make light was properly Salt magic, but Thanet did it regardless. "You know," he said, "we should think about electricity."

  "We don't need electricity, we have magic," Grace said, then smiled a little. "I suppose they said the same thing about the wheel, once upon a time. Tea for all of us, I think."

  She used the gas rather than magic to heat the kettle, handed steaming sweet cups to both Thanet and Ned, and said nothing for a few minutes. Thanet was methodically picking ashes and burnt fragments out of his hair, and Ned was sitting on the ottoman by the fireplace, his hands shaking violently around the cup. Grace watched them both, and wondered. She had run the practice mostly alone from 1916; after that the nature of Ned's war service had been mysterious, while Thanet's had involved driving ambulances around unexploded shells. "If you want to get some sleep," she said, after a moment, "I won't open up yet."

  They both nodded, and Grace picked up the loop of heavy keys in time to hear the knock from the other side of the oak door. Normally their housekeeper, Mrs Throckley, would have answered it, but there was silence. Knowing her, Grace thought, she had probably gone to the station to see how she could help.

  Grace opened the door and looked down at the girl waiting beyond it, perhaps twelve or thirteen, with perfect braids over both shoulders and a neat dress and coat.

  "Hello," said the girl, peering back at Grace, who was still in her dressing-gown and all-over ash, blood and grit. "I saw your advertisement. I want to learn magic."

  ___

  (ii) Lady Day

  "Now, before the inquest there's a libel listed," Grace said, and was amused to note the slightly hectoring note in her voice. She thought of the old Salt practitioner, Mrs Macomber, who'd taught her in Liverpool when she was a girl of ten, and silently apologised through time. "I'm a practitioner ad litem on the case. You remember what that means?"

  Kira, whose braids were done up in blue bows today, looked up at her seriously. "It means," she said, "that you help the, er. The plaintiff-or-defendant. On a magical case. If they don't know about it already, I mean. Magic."

  Grace waited, and they advanced a few steps through the Temple gardens, but there was nothing else forthcoming. "I suppose that'll do," she said. "And after that, there's the coroner's inquest into the rail crash. It may be rather upsetting," she added, severely. "Talk of dead bodies and suchlike. Are you sure you'll be able to sit through it?"

  Kira nodded. Sotto voce, Thanet murmured: "Still trying to put her off, are you?"

  "Kira, we're early," Grace said, looking over at the gardens at junior counsel bolting their breakfast in the sun. "Take sixpence and get some rolls for us from the baker's, there's a good girl."

  “For you as well, Miss Thanet?" Kira asked.

  Thanet nodded. “Thank you, dear," she said, and Kira ran off.

  Not so long ago, Grace thought, they wouldn’t have had to fetch their own breakfast. Grace's father - and Mrs Macomber too, for that matter - would no doubt credit the imminent triumph of the revolutionary proletariat with that particular change in the weather. "Not putting her off," Grace said. “At least, not for the reasons you're thinking. I said I'd let her follow me about and see how she goes, but I'd half-decided to take the notice down before she turned up. Perhaps we don't need an apprentice, not now."

  "Why is that?" Thanet asked, turning on the spot, and Grace understood what she was trying to say: it was busy and beautiful here now, after the quiet of the last few years. Stallholders sold trinkets for the holding of Bird charms, and tinderboxes full of magical heart's energy; Salt practitioners unrolled great blueprints out on the grass, to get their colleagues' advice; up in the barristers' chambers and the practitioners', the curtains were pulled back and the plaques and signboards were dusted off, ready for custom. And there were children here: practitioners' children, who'd never known anything but the Temple gardens and the riverbank, laughing and playing, throwing sparks and bright firecrackers up at the sky (despite the sign: "No Recreational Magic In The Gardens, By Order"). Grace had grown up around the Court of the Tithebarn, the High Court for magical matters up in Liverpool; Ned had grown up here at Temple; and though Grace didn't like to pry into Thanet's past too much, there was warmth in her eyes here, surrounded by all the artefacts of their practice.

  "Because." Grace spread her hands. "Because she's a sweet girl, and maybe she really does want to learn magic with us, or thinks she does. But with the future of the practice uncertain—“ She trailed off. "You know, Thanet. With Ned - how he is, now, and the world so changed. Training an apprentice is a serious business and I don't know how prepared we are for it."

  "She wants what she wants." Thanet shrugged. "And in the meantime" - a pause, as they both watched Kira make her way back across the gardens, carrying a basket of bread rolls - "if you want to warn her off, don't think the dead bodies will do it."

  "I'll take it under advisement," Grace said, amused. "Are you ready for the inquest?"

  Thanet looked uncomfortable for a moment; she and Ned had both been summonsed to appear after the Board of Trade investigation. "First I'm going with Ned to see the Registrar," she said. "We need to - well, to sort things out, before Ned can address the court. It's Lady Day, you know."

  Grace nodded, pushing her braids out of her eyes. Registration day for practitioners was the first of the quarter days, the old Roman new year. For her part, she'd have to make a decision about Kira today. "I'll see you afterwards, then."

  Thanet shook her head. "I've another girl to go and see. I can't be late, she said if I came this afternoon her mother would be out."

  Grace nodded again, understanding. "Good luck."

  Thanet smiled and made her own determined way across the gardens, while Grace accepted a bread roll from Kira. "Now remember," she said
. “You're not my apprentice."

  "Yet." Kira looked up and didn't smile, eating her own bread roll; she was entirely serious.

  "That's as well as may be," Grace said, one of Mrs Macomber's set phrases to the letter. “But in the meantime you'll sit in the public gallery and you'll behave."

  "Yes, Miss May," Kira said, still calm. Grace shook her head and led the way through out of Temple, up the terraces and stone steps set amidst the greenery, and back into the noisy space of the world outside.

  ___

  Among the ceremonial morass of the City, the Worshipful Companies of Salt and Birds-in-Flight were, as they put it, outside the precedence: for them, no tussling over orders of procession and entitlements in the manner of the Skinners and the Merchant Taylors and suchlike, but a dignified existence elsewhere. Which might explain the clerk, Thanet thought: he'd wanted a better position, with more gilt-edging and less dust.

  On the other hand, perhaps nothing explained the clerk.

  "What kind of a name is 'Thanet', anyway?" he asked after a minute, lifting his pen in irritation so it spattered a long trail of ink over his page. He glared at it, and then up at Thanet, as if it were her fault.

  "Perfectly respectable name," Thanet told him. "I believe there's an entire region of Kent that goes by it. In fact. I know there is, I spent some time there as a young man."

  "As a..." The clerk trailed off, and seemed to give up. Carefully screwing the lid back onto his fountain pen, he went through to the internal door, knocked and put his head around it. "Registrar, there are some" - he turned back, glared again for good measure - "people here to see you. A Miss Thanet, and..."

  He trailed off again. It had been quite some time since Thanet had heard Ned laugh, but he did so now, and there seemed real mirth in it despite a twist of irony to his smile. "As you forgot to ask," he said, "here's my card. You might remind the Registrar of the apples and cheese I gave him in the schoolroom, his mother having neglected to provide him with same."