As a student at Greenlaw, Faris learned melody and harmony, found occasional tunes that suited her limited voice, spent the rest of her time in descants that let her sing without damaging the music. “Not the music of the spheres,” Jane observed, after a Lantern Night spent singing the usual Greek hymns and a Norwegian drinking song Gunhild had just taught them all, “but perhaps the music of the hemispheres.”
Even after Virgil ceased to plague her every waking moment, Faris spent many a late night over Latin texts. One night in the library’s reading room, her abstracted thoughts upon the structure of the world were broken by the sound of voices calling her name.
From the little topiary garden outside the library, merry voices called her until she unlatched the nearest window and swung it wide. The November night air fluttered the pages of her open books and every student in the reading room stared at her reproachfully.
Faris ignored the cold breeze and the cold looks and leaned out into the darkness. The light from the library’s green-shaded lamps reached far enough to show her four upturned faces, hardly more than pale masks in the gloom, but she recognized Jane, Eve-Marie, Nathalie, and Charlotte.
It was not merely their voices she recognized, nor their relative heights, nor the attitudes they struck, with their bat-sleeved academic gowns rustling around them. It was their immense gaiety that betrayed them, their blithe confidence that hailing her from her books at just this particular moment was the best and most hilarious thing they had yet contrived to do.
From the geometrically neat garden below, four voices rose in wobbly harmony:
The moon’s my constant mistress,
And the lovely owl my marrow;
The flaming drake, and the night-crow make
Me music to my sorrow.
“The isle is full of noises,” called Faris, trying not to laugh.
Behind her in the reading room, throats were cleared, papers were shuffled, books were slammed on desks. A cross voice called, “Some of us are trying to study.”
The harmony struggled on, half submerged at times by stifled hilarity.
With a host of furious fancies,
Whereof I am commander:
With a burning spear, and a horse of air,
To the wilderness I wander.
“Some of us want to study, not freeze to death,” the cross voice called again. “Close the window!”
Faris marveled for a moment at what kind of life these strict scholars must have led to make them so indifferent to that thread of song from the garden. She had never dreamed college would hold anything half so dear to her. Perhaps it was different when the song was for someone else.
“With a knight of ghosts and shadows,” Faris sang, or tried to sing, as she climbed from her chair to the sill. “I summoned am to tourney: Ten leagues beyond the wide world’s end; Methinks it is no journey.”
She swung out and dropped feet-first into the garden, narrowly missing the topiary.
Jane said, “Just yesterday, you told me you didn’t understand conic sections, yet here we find you, trying to make yourself into one.” She and Charlotte picked Faris up and brushed the gravel off her skirts. Eve-Marie made sure the topiary was not damaged.
Nathalie called up to the reading room, “Tee hee, quod she, and clapt the window to.”
Before she finished speaking, the window was slammed shut. For a moment, the five of them looked up in silence. The lights of the reading room shone forth undimmed.
“Thank you,” Eve-Marie called.
Then Nathalie took up the song again, and as they left the garden, the rest joined in:
I know more than Apollo;
For oft, when he lies sleeping,
I behold the stars
at mortal wars,
And the rounded welkin weeping.
Autumn at Greenlaw offered its share of discomforts. Bathwater, never entirely warm, chilled with amazing rapidity. Clothing sent to the college laundry returned clean but damp and had to be dried before the hearth, garment by clammy garment. Reading lists grew long, tempers grew short. Competition for space at the study fireside grew keen.
One night in number five study, Faris was supposed to be reading Metamorphoses, but in fact was merely nursing a cold and staring absently into the fire. Charlotte was at the table, working on an ink-and-wash illustration for the college’s occasional literary magazine, The Green Book, while Jane attempted to dry her favorite black woolen stockings on a toasting fork over the fire.
“I think someone sold Menary a bill of goods,” Jane said. “This coal is supposed to burn different colors, like driftwood. But it looks like common or garden coal to me.”
“What does the Pagan know about coal?” Charlotte inquired lazily.
“Nothing, apparently. She bought a scuttleful of this stuff at the market. I happened to walk back with her and she gave me a few pieces. So we’ve both been hoaxed.”
“As long as it burns.”
Faris blinked sleepily at the blaze. It had colors enough to please her, not just scarlet and gold but sometimes a pale green too, like a touch of the northern lights.
“Give it a poke, will you? I’ve just found the perfect spot and I don’t want to move the fork.”
At the heart of the fire, the coals snapped and shifted. A spark leaped and caught in Jane’s lace cuff. Jane dropped the toasting fork and jerked her hand back.
Hissing, the damp stockings began to burn. Acrid smoke billowed. Jane slapped at her wrist and the sparks spread to the other lace cuff. “Oh, dear.”
Charlotte sprang to her feet, knocking her chair over and upsetting the ink. Faris sneezed, dropped the hearth rug over Jane’s arms, and set to slapping vigorously.
After a moment, Jane pushed her away. “Stop that. You’ll break both my wrists.” Cautiously, she emerged from the hearth rug and examined her shirt cuffs. “Ruined.”
Faris helped Jane to her feet. “You can mourn your wardrobe on the way to the infirmary.”
“Oh, there’s no need to trouble the infirmary.” Jane held out her wrists. “Not even singed.”
In astonishment, Faris seized Jane’s wrist for a closer look. “No damage at all.” She released Jane, eyes wide. “You are a witch.”
“I didn’t do anything. It must have been the luck of the Brailsfords.”
Deftly Charlotte extracted what was left of Jane’s smoldering stockings from the hearth and displayed them, neatly impaled on the toasting fork. “‘What work is here, Charmian? Is this well done?’”
Jane looked past the toasting fork and spied the ink, trickling disastrously across Charlotte’s illustration, over the table, and on to the floor. “Oh, dear.”
Charlotte sighed. “More ink, less wash. One less illustration.”
Late one November night, Faris was in number five study reading The Prisoner of Zenda while Jane performed prodigies of mathematics to present to her tutor the next morning. Eve-Marie knocked at the door and Faris admitted her and Portia, a first-year student who was friendly with Gunhild. Jane looked up from her work as Eve-Marie brought Portia to the table and sat her down in Faris’s chair.
“Now,” said Eve-Marie, gently but firmly, “tell Jane what you told me.”
“Gunhild went down to the town,” said Portia obediently. “I couldn’t stop her.”
Jane and Faris exchanged a glance of concern.
“After curfew? Why would she do that?” asked Jane.
Helplessly, Eve-Marie lifted her hands. “She’s been terribly homesick ever since she arrived …”
Portia interrupted, “She keeps going on and on about the scent of pine in the frosty air …”
“I know,” said Jane. “How well I know.”
“She misses the scent of aquavit, too,” Portia continued. “She found a man down in the town who promised to give her a bottle of the stuff if she came herself tonight to fetch it. I caught her slipping out of the dormitory and made her tell me where she was going, but I couldn’t stop her.”<
br />
Jane looked harassed. “Doesn’t she know one doesn’t accept gifts from strangers? It simply isn’t done.”
“I tried to tell her,” said Portia. “But where she comes from, there aren’t any strangers. She laughed at me and off she went. I don’t know what to do. Even if we tell the proctors, by the time we’ve explained, she may be in terrible trouble.”
“So she came to me,” Eve-Marie said, “and I came to you.”
“Alarums and excursions,” said Jane pensively, “and quite possibly expulsions as well. What jolly fun.” She looked at Faris. “Do you find that book absorbing?”
“Young Rupert’s all right,” Faris replied, “but on the whole, no. Are we to go a-roving?”
“It would be slack to stay in, I think.” Jane turned to Portia. “Where is Gunhild supposed to meet this man?”
“At a brasserie near the gate. It’s called the Glass Slipper.”
“Very well, then. To the Glass Slipper.”
Mathematics discarded, Jane led Faris, Eve-Marie, and Portia out of number five study, down a crooked staircase, over a window sill, and into the night. It was cloudless, with moon enough to cast shadows.
Between the dormitory and the Cordelion Tower, as the others clambered through the window, Faris paused beside Jane and forgot anxiety for Gunhild and worry about breaking curfew in her delight with the darkness. Since she had arrived at Greenlaw, Faris had not been outside the confines of the college at night without a reliable escort. By every measure Faris had ever heard of, her companions failed to qualify as a reliable escort. She drew a deep breath, savoring the chill of the evening, the scent of the sea, and her unaccustomed freedom. When the others joined her, she followed Jane and the rest to the Dean’s garden, where an oak tree provided means to cross the college wall.
Free in the dark, Faris felt her delight shape itself into a small bubble of hilarity, which lodged at the base of her throat. Oak leaves rustled in the night breeze as they passed.
The garden below belonged to one of the houses of Greenlaw town. They slipped from the garden to an alley. Silently, down twisting streets, they came at last to the brasserie nearest to the great gate of Greenlaw.
“‘This is the place,” said Portia, shivering. “We were here this morning to ask if they sold aquavit. This is where we met that man.”
Inside, the Glass Slipper was not much different from the common room of the White Fleece. A bit smaller, a bit dirtier, it held a few wooden tables flanked with benches. On one side of the room was a spacious fireplace, where dying embers cast enough light to give the room a sullen glow. On the other was the bar, deserted. At the far end of the room stood a sailor with a dark green bottle in one hand, and in the other, Gunhild’s wrist.
At the sight of her rescuers, Gunhild stopped struggling and glared at the sailor. “Now you must let me go.”
Wide-eyed and mercifully silent, Portia stayed in the doorway as Jane and Eve-Marie advanced toward Gunhild. Faris crossed immediately to the fireplace and helped herself to the poker from the rack of tools beside the hearth. Some of her reckless delight was still with her and this did not seem an appropriate place to be delighted. Without haste, she put more wood on the fire and stirred the coals judiciously.
“Aquavit is filthy stuff, Gunhild,” said Jane. “You’d best come with us.”
Gunhild tossed her sheaf of golden hair angrily. “He won’t let me go.”
“Let her go,” Eve-Marie advised.
The sailor laughed. “Cinderella’s step-sisters,” he observed. “I think I’ve got the pick of your litter right here. The two of us made a bargain, and I intend to keep it.”
“Don’t be absurd,” said Jane. “All we need do is raise hue and cry against you. You wouldn’t care for that.”
“Go ahead,” said the sailor. “Call my friends. I’m not greedy.”
Faris left the fireplace and joined Jane, poker at her side. The small bubble of hilarity made it hard to keep her voice steady. Carefully, she said, “Let Gunhild go.” The words sounded normal enough, but Faris wondered if her hilarity could possibly be the first step toward hysteria.
The sailor eyed Faris. “You’re too big for a little lad like me, carrots. You’d better call my friends.”
With a quick tug, Faris kilted her skirts out of her way.
“Look at that, tearing her clothes off to get at me. I’d better call my friends myself.”
Faris heard her own voice as though it belonged to someone else entirely. It was perfectly level, perfectly assured. “Let her go, before I make you.”
The sailor lifted the dark green bottle high. “You come any closer, you’ll get to taste this.”
Gunhild twisted aside. Eve-Marie and Jane stepped forward. The sailor pushed Gunhild into them and brought his bottle down hard on the edge of the table. A crash, a thick scent of caraway and raw spirit, and the broken neck of the bottle was steady in his hand. Portia gave a squeak of alarm.
The sailor smiled. “Come on, then, sweetheart. Let’s have it.”
Faris was already on guard. Before he stepped toward her, Faris lunged. The tip of the poker caught him on the breast bone with a noise like thumping a melon. The sailor staggered but slipped aside. Glass glinted as he slashed. Faris parried with a blow that snapped bone. The sailor dropped the bottle and fell to his knees, cursing.
Faris felt Jane’s hand on her sleeve, but her voice seemed to come from far away. “Let’s go. Hurry, let’s go.”
“Get up.” Faris’s voice grated in the silent room. Her bubble of hilarity was gone. It took no effort to speak steadily.
The sailor looked up. At her words, he groped for the bottle neck with his good hand.
“Don’t do that,” said a man’s voice as smooth and cool as buttermilk. “Stand back, your grace, and put the poker down.”
Faris blinked and stepped back. At the door, beside Portia, stood a blond man, dressed in badly cut black. In his hand was a small but formidable looking pistol.
“Let the man alone, your grace. You’ve alarmed him, sufficiently, I think.”
Portia gaped at him. Eve-Marie looked relieved.
“Who are you?” demanded Gunhild.
“Consider me a witness,” replied the blond man. “If you have any influence with the duchess, will you use it to persuade her to leave?”
“Duchess?” Gunhild looked bewildered. “What duchess?”
“Do put the poker away, Faris,” said Jane. “Whoever he is, he’s perfectly right.”
Faris lowered the poker slowly. “His name is Tyrian.” Her voice sounded distant but otherwise quite normal. “I think he works for my uncle.”
“How nice,” said Jane. “May we go now?”
Gunhild began to sniffle slightly.
Eve-Marie put her arm around Gunhild’s shoulders and shook her gently. “Idiot.”
“I know,” said Gunhild, hanging her head.
Jane produced a flawlessly clean handkerchief and gave it to Gunhild. “Must we discuss it here?”
“Yes, let’s go,” said Portia.
Gunhild blew her nose.
The sailor cursed comprehensively.
“I believe that makes it unanimous. Or would you prefer to stay and explain to the authorities?” Tyrian asked Faris.
Faris eyed him defiantly. “I’ll go. But I’m keeping the poker.”
“By all means,” said Jane. “A most useful object, the poker. I had no notion.”
Tyrian bowed them out, paused on the threshold to threaten the sailor, and closed the wine shop door softly. “I suggest we hurry.”
4
“If you can’t speak sensibly, you can leave.”
Dame Villette stopped Faris after the first lecture the next day. “The Dean asked me to send you to her office.”
Faris’s eyes widened. She thought, Does the Dean know everything that happens within the gates of Greenlaw? “Do you know why?” She hoped her expression held only innocent surprise.
“
No, but I’m sure she will mention it at some point in your conversation. Come to see me when she’s finished with you.”
Faris left the lecture hall reluctantly. Had someone told the authorities that she had broken curfew? Or did the authorities know things without the need to be told?
Once away from the Glass Slipper the night before, Tyrian had insisted on escorting them to the college. Jane led the way back to the garden. Under the oak tree, she paused. “Gunhild goes first,” Jane whispered. “If anyone is waiting for us, she ought to be the one to greet them.”
Tyrian helped Gunhild up into the rustling branches, then Jane, Portia, and Eve-Marie. When he turned to Faris, she stopped him with a touch of her hand.
“First tell me,” she said quietly, “did my uncle hire you?”
Tyrian’s soft voice was surprised. “Weren’t you told?”
Faris didn’t answer.
“Obviously not. He hired me as soon as he had certain knowledge that you were a student at Greenlaw. He wanted to be sure you stayed at school.”
“Stayed where he put me, rather. So you are my guard.”
“Your bodyguard, should circumstances ever require one. I am surprised that my services weren’t needed tonight. I had no idea Greenlaw College provided such a liberal education.”
“They don’t teach that at Greenlaw.” Reluctantly, Faris handed the poker to Tyrian. “Nothing so direct.”
“Perhaps they should. Our nautical friend may think twice before he approaches another student.”
The thought cheered Faris. For the first time since the fight, she felt her heart lift. “A useful object, the poker,” she said.
A College of Magics Page 5
