A College of Magics

by Caroline Stevermer

  “Two thousand dinaras.”

  “Done,” called Faris.

  Reed and Tyrian turned identically aggrieved faces to her as she joined them in the circle of light. “That’s torn it,” snarled Reed. Tyrian said nothing but his disgusted expression was eloquent.

  “Who is that?” asked the young man, after a startled pause.

  “I’ll pay you two thousand dinaras to help us on our way,” Faris continued, “but first tell me what brings Warin Woodrowel down from Shieling and over the border to rob honest travelers.”

  “Who dares to call me a robber?” The young man took a step forward and stared at her. “Speak.”

  “I do,” said Faris, just as Reed muttered, “I can think of a few other things I’d like to call you.”

  Tyrian glanced at Reed, who subsided.

  “Have you given up your father’s cigars, then?” added Faris.

  The young man squinted at her in disbelief. “That’s never Faris?”

  “Well met, Warin.”

  Warin Woodrowel advanced three steps to meet her before Tyrian barred his way. Woodrowel stopped and held up his hand to steady his watchful men. “Your pardon, Faris. I never dreamed we would trouble you.”

  Faris came to Tyrian’s side. “Granted, if you explain these amateur theatricals.”

  Woodrowel regarded her with wonder. “How long has it been? You’re decked out in such finery, it’s a miracle I even recognized that long nose of yours. Have you come home to stay?”

  “First tell me about your charade here.”

  He cleared his throat. “Yes. Well.” He fidgeted for a moment, then met Faris’s gaze squarely. “It’s the taxes. We haven’t much hope of paying them, the way things are nowadays, and since your uncle levied the penalty for late payment, well.” He lit another cigarette in thoughtful silence and added, “Well, here we are.”

  Faris frowned. “You seem well practiced. Am I to take it that these are not amateur theatricals after all? You do this often?”

  “Not at all. The coach only runs three times a week. And we don’t stop it every time. Then it might not run at all. But this quarter we’ve been a bit behind, with bringing in the harvest and such. And the tree still looks fairly fresh, so we thought we’d press our luck.”

  “This quarter? Shieling pays taxes when the lambing’s done, not at midwinter.”

  Woodrowel scowled. “This past year, Shieling pays every quarter—and so does all of Galazon.”

  Faris stiffened. “On whose authority?”

  Just behind her, Jane’s murmur was quick and calm. “Steady on.”

  “Lord Brinker’s orders,” Woodrowel replied. At her expression, he grinned broadly. “You’ve not changed as much as I thought.”

  Faris drew a deep breath. “Reed. Give Warin his money. If you don’t have enough dinaras, give him marks or francs or florins, what you will. I have urgent business with my uncle. Warin, shift that pine and let my coach be on its way.”

  “Hold up, boys. Don’t move it just yet.” Woodrowel shook his head. “I can’t recommend that, Faris.” As she bristled, he held up his hand. “Now, don’t blaze away at me. We aren’t the first people in Haydock to raise a little capital, remember.”

  “So? Has all Galazon turned to thievery?”

  “Not at all. But this has always been good bandit country. In that coach on this road, if you go another ten miles, you may well encounter professional thieves. You won’t like them. They aren’t as well brought up as we are.” With great care and infinite smugness, Woodrowel made three perfect smoke rings.

  “Is there a better road?” Faris demanded.

  Woodrowel admired the last smoke ring. When it was gone, he said thoughtfully, “Not for a coach. But for riders in a hurry—”

  “I’m in a hurry.”

  “But can you ride?” Woodrowel eyed her companions. “Can the—older lady?”

  “We can ride,” Jane replied.

  Surprised by the youthful timbre of her voice, Woodrowel gave her a searching look. “In such a costume?” he asked politely.

  “We need four horses,” said Faris. “My chaperone and I require riding clothes—nothing elaborate. Can you provide these things? And a guide?”

  Woodrowel looked pleased. “I think I can supply you with what you ask. Of course, the use of the horses, the clothing, the guide, and the armed escort—for I could not in honor allow you to risk meeting any of the local hedge-robbers—I think these things may command a small fee.”

  Faris smiled. “Then shall we say two thousand dinaras, Warin?”

  “Done.” Woodrowel spat into his palm and held out his hand.

  Faris stripped off her glove, spat into her palm, and grasped his hand firmly. They remained hand-clasped for a long moment, regarding each other with great satisfaction.

  “For two thousand dinaras,” Tyrian said dryly, “will it be too much for you and your merry men to see that the coach and driver come safely to Ruger?”

  Woodrowel gestured with his cigarette and his men set to work clearing the road. “Not at all.” He smiled and made another smoke ring.

  Jane was fairly happy with Faris’s bargain until she saw the riding clothes spread out across the seat of the coach. She choked. “What’s this?” she asked, when she could speak.

  Faris eyed her with concern. “It is a shirt and vest and trousers. I wish Warin could let us have caps, too, but they haven’t any to spare.”

  “Baggy trousers,” Jane said indistinctly. “Shouldn’t they be Lincoln green, at least?”

  “Very baggy trousers, I admit. Are you laughing at our national costume?”

  “No, certainly not.” Jane steadied her voice. “I knew I should have packed my riding habit.”

  “It would be no use tonight. No sidesaddles.”

  “But I can’t wear these things.”

  “They’re nearly clean.”

  “Faris, these clothes are for a man. I can’t wear them. Neither can you.”

  “Jane, these clothes are for working. Riding across the border at night with Warin and his crew is working.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Oh, dear—well, for one thing, I’m English.”

  “Rosalind was English, she dressed like a man. Viola was English, she dressed like a man—”

  “Viola was not English, and dressing like a man is not proper and these clothes are ridiculous.”

  “Then get out of this coach and let me change in peace.”

  A short time later, Faris and Jane, both wearing the voluminous national costume of Galazon, rejoined the others. Woodrowel had detailed four men to escort the diligence driver on his way. Their horses had been appropriated for Faris and her companions. The horses were sturdy animals, gone very shaggy for the winter, unshod and only roughly groomed. The saddles were small and flat, each with a fleece strapped over it as padding, and the make-shift bridles were hackamores, little more than a few loops of rope.

  At first sight of their steeds, Jane stopped in her tracks and shook her head. She was wearing her own cloak over the borrowed clothes and its hood concealed her expression.

  “Do you think you can manage?” Faris asked.

  “When I was four, I learned to ride on something very similar. Just show me which end is the front.”

  Faris woke in the best guest chamber at Shieling. It took no time to remember where she was and why she was there, because every muscle in her body conspired to remind her. Scholastic life, she reflected, was as harmful to the body as it was beneficial to the mind. She felt, after only a night and a morning in the saddle, as though she had been beaten with sticks for a thousand years. Well, five hundred, perhaps. Plainly, she had been away from Galazon too long. She stretched, groaned softly, and, with some foreboding, remembered Jane.

  Jane had been cross about wearing the poor clothing that was all Warin and his men could provide. Jane had been testy before she was cross, before the pine tree, indeed, ever
since they had left the train. After a long slow ride at night, a long fast ride in the morning, and an afternoon and a night spent in Shieling’s drafty halls, surely Jane would be beyond cross, beyond testy, beyond reason. Faris winced. This was not the hospitality she had meant to offer Jane in Galazon.

  Faris closed her eyes. The ride through the pine forest had been terrible. The darkness, the need for silence, and the necessity of speed, lest the local brigands find them, made the journey seem endless. Faris had found her discomfort compounded by a private, irrational fear that she still had pursuers. Yet if her uncle wished her harm, there was no pursuit, for Copenhagen and his theoretical minions would be content to lose her on the train, knowing very well what her destination had to be. And if there had somehow been pursuers in that black forest, they must be following her on some other enemy’s behalf. Mustn’t they? There was comfort in that somewhere, she had thought, if she only had the art to reason it through. In the dark, on horseback, in a hurry, logic was beyond her.

  At dawn, when the clouds across the eastern sky were brindled with rose, they had come to a river, as brown as oatmeal stout in the early light. As they urged their horses into the ford, Warin had said softly to Faris, “One foot on that bank and you’re back home, Faris. This is the Alewash.”

  The water was icy and soaked her trousers to the knee. Faris noticed no discomfort. When her horse clambered out on the other side of the river, she was seized by an impulse about equally mixed of weariness and joy. Reining up within a few yards of the ford, she dismounted and fell to one knee on the crisp brown turf. She wanted to lie full length on the ground and breathe in the scent of the soil of Galazon. Cold and stiffness and the knowledge of her own absurd appearance prevented her. Instead she bent her head for a moment as if lost in prayer. In fact, she had no thought for devotion. Her whole heart was taken up with gratitude that she was home in Galazon again.

  “Are you all right, your grace?” Tyrian had drawn rein beside her and looked down at her anxiously.

  Faris nodded. She started to rise. It took longer than she thought it would.

  Warin drew up and dismounted. He tossed his reins to Tyrian and did not wait to see if he caught them. As Faris straightened, he halted before her and dropped to his knees, his slouch hat in his hand. “You have been too long away, my liege,” he said softly. “Welcome home to Galazon.”

  Speechless, Faris stared down at his dark untidy head. My liege? Had Warin been reading three-volume novels too? Her mother had been my liege to the men and women who remembered the days of her exile. She had never thought to hear the words herself, least of all from her old playmate.

  Reed dismounted, handing his reins to Jane. He dropped to one knee beside Warin, bowed his head before Faris. When he stood up, he looked sheepish. The early light made it hard to be sure, but Faris thought he was blushing.

  One or two at a time, as they splashed across the ford, Woodrowel’s men dismounted before Faris. Most contented themselves with an awkward bow. A few went to their knees before her. All remounted immediately and sat at ease, watching their leader from the safety of their saddles.

  Well aware of their interest and amused at Faris’s obvious discomfiture, Woodrowel made a lengthy ceremony of rising and resuming his hat.

  Grateful for the chance to compose herself, Faris struggled to muster an appropriate word or two. By the time he had put his slouch hat back on at the proper rakish angle, she was able to smile at Woodrowel and say lightly, “Exiled from friends is exiled indeed. Thank you, Warin.” She looked around at his men. “Thank you all for your welcome.” She turned to Reed. “Thank you. It has been a long journey. May I have a leg up?” Reed put her in the saddle. As she gathered her reins, Faris looked defiantly at Jane and Tyrian.

  Tyrian was looking as calm and uncommunicative as ever. Jane was paler than usual but showed no other sign of her fatigue. Hood back and hair only a little disheveled despite her exertions, she regarded Faris steadily for a long moment. Then, without a trace of mockery, she gave Faris a slight respectful nod.

  Speechless again, Faris nodded stiffly back.

  “Come,” said Warin. “We’ll be late for breakfast.”

  Despite wet clothes and weary horses, the ride across the hills to Shieling had been wonderful. The weather was mild for the season. The sun even shone from time to time. Faris found it impossible to worry about brigands or advisers or uncles. Weariness left her little leisure to think of anything but the ground before her and the horse beneath her. All her attention was taken up by the effort it took to stay close on Warin’s heels as he rode home across his wide holding.

  The hills were just as she remembered from her youth, closely grazed pastures rising into heights patched with heather, broom, and bracken. From time to time their route took them across brooks stained brown with peat, running steeply down from the heights like narrow flights of stairs. Rarely, they came to patches of bog and had to pick their way around on turf that gave like a mattress. With every brook, every bog, every patch of broom, Faris felt her spirits rising higher. It was all still here. It was all still safe.

  Shieling stopped everything to welcome them home. Dogs barked, chickens scattered, the midmorning routine shattered at their arrival. Stableboys and housemaids converged on the open yard in front of the old, low manor house. A blonde girl in a brown dress, her cheeks pink with relief and excitement, ran out of the house shouting Warin’s name. Woodrowel swung down from the saddle and gathered the girl into his arms. A stableboy took his horse away. Heedless of the racket all around them, Woodrowel and the girl embraced.

  Faris watched a little wistfully. She dismounted as the others did and never noticed when one of the stableboys took her horse.

  “Here, Flavia,” Woodrowel said to the blonde girl as he turned, his arm around her shoulders, “I’ve brought you company for breakfast.” He grinned at Faris. “Your grace, may I present my wife, Flavia.” His arm tightened very gently. “The duchess of Galazon has come home again.”

  Flavia regarded Faris with wide brown eyes. “I beg your pardon, your grace,” she said, after a moment’s hesitation. “I bid you welcome to Shieling.” She glanced uncertainly into her husband’s smiling face, then back up at Faris. “Will you join us for breakfast? It’s only pancakes, though,” she added apologetically.

  For a moment, afraid to speak lest her voice crack, Faris stared at Flavia. She blinked hard to vanquish the tears that suddenly filled her eyes.

  Puzzled by her guest’s silence, perhaps suspecting rudeness, Flavia’s color rose. She glanced at her husband, who was still smiling.

  “Thank you,” said Faris, at last, in a voice that trembled, “I would rather eat pancakes in Galazon than truffles in Paris.”

  Flavia beamed and stepped out of the circle of her husband’s arm to beckon Faris indoors. “There’s barberry syrup, too.”

  Faris presented her companions. When the introductions were finished, they crossed the threshold into the house. As they entered, Faris heard Jane’s soft reproachful voice at her elbow. “Easy for you to forswear them. You’ve never eaten truffles in Paris. I have.”

  Wincing at the thought of Jane’s probable opinion of Galazon so far, Faris got up, washed, and dressed. In addition to the clothes he’d sold her in the forest, Warin had rummaged industriously for Faris at Shieling. He had loaned her a pair of boots only a little too big for her, gloves so long they were almost gauntlets, a few rounds of ammunition, an old but serviceable revolver, and a sash to tuck it in. She left the gloves and loaded revolver in her room but put on everything else and opened the door.

  Outside the best guest bedchamber, the corridor was empty. Literally. Though almost as wide and fully as long as the gallery in Galazon Chase, the gallery at Shieling held no portraits, no carpets, and no furniture. It served only to connect Shieling’s many rooms. Indeed, its best guest bedchamber was nearly its only guest bedchamber, for though blessed with dozens of chambers, Shieling had only a few proper beds
.

  More than the pale light of morning, the silence of the house told Faris how early it was. Moving as softly as she could in borrowed boots, she crossed the corridor and listened at the door directly opposite. She could just hear Jane humming. It was difficult to be certain through oak. She thought it might have been Gilbert and Sullivan. Faris scratched at the door.

  Jane, flawlessly groomed in her borrowed clothing, resplendent in well worn boots that reached her knees and folded rakishly down again, let Faris into the second-best guest bedchamber. “I was so hoping you were the early morning tea.”

  “As a rule we don’t do early morning tea in Galazon,” Faris said regretfully. “If you like, I’ll send for a tray. How is your headache?”

  “Quite gone, thanks to Flavia’s home remedies. No need to send for tea. I’ll wait for breakfast. Will it be pancakes again, do you think?”

  “Probably. Those are nice boots.” Faris took a chair near the window and looked out into the yard. Below, housemaids and stableboys were starting to emerge. The day’s work was just beginning.

  Jane regarded her feet with great satisfaction. “They are, aren’t they? Flavia is letting me borrow them. We wear the same size, isn’t that fortunate? Why didn’t you tell me that all your gentry dress this way? I would have felt much less absurd.”

  “Well, Warin and Flavia aren’t precisely what you British think of as gentry,” Faris replied. “They’re farmers.” She crossed her ankles and stared glumly at her toes. “I just came in to apologize.”

  Jane looked astonished. “Whatever for?”

  “For the diligence,” Faris answered, eyes still lowered. “For making you leave your luggage. For the pine tree. For making you ride across the border in the dark—”

  “In fancy dress,” Jane added cheerfully. “For soaking my feet in the icy river. For pancakes at breakfast, galettes at dinner, and crepes at supper. For letting Flavia Woodrowel cure my headache with barberry tea—your point is taken. Very well. I accept your apology. Now, Tell All. Warin Woodrowel was your youthful beau, I take it?”