Exiled Queen, The

by Cinda Williams Chima

  Tourant colored. “No, sir, it’s hardly I place I would—”

  “Who has been to the Fells?” Askell said, looking down over the rows of seats. “Stand up.”

  Raisa slid out of her chair and stood. She was the only one.

  “No one else? Not even briefly?” Askell said. Everyone stared at the floor. “Anyone have friends, relatives, business associates from the north?”

  This time Haddam stood in a rustle of fabric, glaring at Tourant.

  Askell sighed. “Sit down, Morley and Haddam.” They did. “As master of Wien House and faculty here at Oden’s Ford, I like to think that I play the most important role in your education. But that’s not true. What makes Oden’s Ford so effective is the diversity of its students, who come from all over the Seven Realms.

  “Smart cadets will embrace this opportunity. They will shut up and listen to the experts among them, those who speak from personal experience. In future, whether you meet them again in war or peace, you’ll be better prepared to do your job. Those that rely on evidence will succeed. Those that embrace myths, innuendo, and rumor will fail. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir!” rolled through the hall.

  Askell smiled faintly. “Carry on, Proficient Tourant,” he said, then turned and walked out the door.

  Raisa turned back in time to catch Tourant’s poisonous glare. Well, she thought. I’ve made an enemy.

  After that she saw a lot more of Master Askell in her classes. Especially the recitations. Raisa would notice a shift in Tourant’s attitude and demeanor, and look up from her note-taking to find the master leaning against the back wall of the classroom.

  She’d turn away from the chalkboard in her finance class and Askell would be conferring with her teacher in the back of the room. At the end of language recitation, she’d spot him sitting among the students, and wonder how long he’d been there. He would often slip in unnoticed during the heat of discussion or in the midst of an oral examination. He’d leave again when he’d seen whatever it was he’d come to see.

  Raisa’s performance in the physical part of soldiering continued to improve, but she realized she’d never be adept at it. She was too small and lightweight for most flatland weapons, even though she’d been remade with a layer of muscle. She was a decent archer and a skilled rider. She excelled at geography, way-finding, and survival skills, courtesy of her training in the camps.

  She was also good at finance, a benefit of her time in the clan markets.

  She liked sharing a room with Hallie and Talia. As they spent more time together, they began to treat her more like a peer and less like a breakable object.

  Hallie seemed like a grown-up compared to her fellow Wolves. She was big, loud, strong, and gregarious, but she would go silent and sad when conversation turned to her daughter. She had a small sketch of Asha that she pulled out and studied several times a day, as if afraid she’d forget what her daughter looked like. She sent letters every week, and small gifts, never knowing if they reached their destination.

  Raisa asked Hallie to see Asha’s picture one night when they were both up late, studying for exams.

  “She’s beautiful,” Raisa said, examining the drawing of a solemn-looking girl with enormous blue eyes and a halo of fine, pale hair. “Who did the drawing for you?”

  “It was Corporal Byrne’s sister, Lydia. He asked her to make it when I signed up for school and joined the Wolves.”

  “It must’ve been a hard decision. Coming here, I mean,” Raisa said.

  Hallie shrugged. “I was in the regular army—the Highlanders—when I found out I was expecting.” She looked at Raisa. “I an’t a fool, I was taking maidenweed, but it’s hard to keep a schedule when you’re in the army, traveling all the time.

  “I came home to have my girl, but I needed to work to support her. All I know is soldiering, but I hated going back to the army because I’d be away from her all the time. I thought of joining the bluejackets, but you need schooling for that these days.” She hesitated, as if deciding how much to share. “I thought I’d have to try and find a good streetlord, join a crew. Only, if anything happens to me, Asha’s on her own. I keep her and my mam and pap, both.”

  These people make gut-wrenching choices every day, Raisa thought. And I thought life among the working class was simple.

  “Then Speaker Jemson at Southbridge Temple said there was something called the Briar Rose Ministry,” Hallie went on. “He said he could get me money to pay my fees at Wien House if I could get in.”

  The Briar Rose Ministry! Raisa’s head came up. “Really?” Impulsively, she gripped Hallie’s hands. “Oh, that’s wonderful news!”

  Hallie squinted at Raisa, tilting her head. “Well. Right. So you can guess the rest. I got in and here I am. And every Temple Day I buy a rose from the flower girl on the bridge and leave it on the altar for the Princess Raisa. And when I get back home, I hope I’ll be assigned to her service. I can be with Asha and I can keep the lady safe.”

  “Maybe it will happen,” Raisa said, clearing her throat.

  “Maybe it will.” Hallie tucked Asha’s picture away.

  In class, Raisa studied battle strategies developed by Gideon Byrne centuries ago. Lila Byrne had designed the prototype of a double-edged rapier that was still in use today. Dwite Byrne had made innovative use of mounted soldiers at a time when the cavalry had fallen into disuse.

  Raisa and Amon had this in common: they both felt the pressure of being the living heirs of an ancient dynasty of accomplishment.

  Amon was skilled with weapons, and performed well in his course work, but he wasn’t the biggest or strongest or richest of the cadets in his class at Oden’s Ford. He didn’t win over his classmates by buying ales and ciders for them on Bridge Street, then staggering home arm in arm with them in the small hours.

  He radiated a calm focus—like he knew who he was and where he was going. He was a steady mooring in a sea of change. He was honest and he kept his word, and he was unrelentingly fair. It made people want to follow him.

  I can learn from him, Raisa thought. I tend to stir people up, not settle them down.

  Amon continued to train her in sticking, using the staff Dimitri had given her. Some days it was all she saw of Amon—he left the dormitory before she crawled out of bed, and she was usually fast asleep when he came home. As class commander, he attended endless meetings and participated in the governance of the school. That was the story, anyway. It still seemed to Raisa that he avoided being alone with her.

  Yet sometimes she’d look up, even at dinner, and find those gray eyes fixed on her.

  “I thought this place was called the great leveler,” she said to Amon as she closed the book on another long day. It was now eight weeks into the term, the most exhilarating and exhausting eight weeks of her life.

  Amon looked up from his engineering drawing. “It is.”

  “Then why did Master Askell agree to put us all in the same dormitory? And why did he approve a special curriculum for me, if everyone is treated equally?”

  “They are,” Amon said. “Until they’re not.” He returned to his work until the pressure of her glare made him look up again. He sat back, rolling his quill between his fingers. It had become a habit. “Master Askell knows who you are,” he said. “I told him.”

  Raisa nearly spit out her tea. “What? Aren’t you the one who said it was so important that nobody know who I am?”

  Amon nodded. “Right. It is. But I needed to convince him that we should all stay here in Grindell Hall, which is against policy. Though you’re technically a first year, I wanted you in with fourth years.” The quill landed on the floor, and he bent down to get it. “I didn’t want to be lying awake at night, wondering if you were safe in a dormitory across campus. I wanted someone in authority to know, in case this goes wrong.”

  “You trust him?”

  “Aye. I trust him.”

  Raisa recalled her interview with Master Askell. “That’s why h
e gave me such a hard time. He expected me to be temperamental and demanding.”

  Amon nodded. “Right. He only agreed to what you wanted because he expected you to wash out right away.” He grinned, looking pleased with himself. “He doesn’t know you like I do.”

  “He’s been coming to some of my classes,” Raisa said.

  “He does that all the time anyway, but especially if he has a question about a particular student.” Amon hesitated, then plunged on. “Taim Askell is the heir to a noble Ardenine family. Remember when he asked you if you’d run away to join the army? That’s exactly what he did. He sailed across the Indio to Carthis and fought in the wars over there, working his way up from foot soldier.

  “When he came back to the Seven Realms, he decided he needed schooling to become an officer. He came here. My da was his class commander. Askell thought my da was a jumped-up cake-eater, promoted beyond his abilities. Da thought Askell was an arrogant know-it-all who should shut up and learn something.”

  “So what happened?” Raisa asked.

  “Da never said, but the story goes they met off campus to fight it out, and beat each other up pretty bad. Then Askell shut up and learned something, and he and Da wrote a book about the Carthian wars that helped Askell get a teaching job here later on. It’s in the library, if you want to take a look.”

  “What was it like, coming here to school under Askell?” Raisa asked.

  “He gave me hell the first two years,” Amon said, grinning. “I saw a lot of him in my classes, too. But it ended with him making me class commander.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  A MEETING

  WITH THE DEAN

  In the days following the dean’s dinner, Han was so focused on charm-casting that he fell behind in his other classes. He had to prioritize, with so much to learn. He was especially keen to learn charms that would keep buildings from falling on him.

  Because they were newlings, the Bayars, the Manders, and Han shared every class. They were a constant distraction.

  The class on healing seemed useless to Han. The clans had hired him to kill, not to heal, and the people Han would have liked to heal were already dead.

  Master Leontus was a gifted middle-aged healer with missionary zeal and a shiny bald head who did his best to interest his students in his chosen profession.

  It was a tough sell. Most charmcasters were weaned on power and privilege—not tenderhearted to start. And poor Leontus was cursed with relentless honesty.

  “Gifted healers take on the illnesses and injuries of their patients. This involves considerable pain, suffering, and expenditure of power.” Leontus paused and looked over his spectacles. “But there are strategies that can be used to minimize the damage to your body and regain strength after a healing session. With proper care and education, there is no reason why a gifted healer cannot achieve a normal life span.”

  As Leontus rambled on about the sacrifices and rewards of the healing trade, his students daydreamed about more appealing topics, or did their homework for other subjects. Han’s attention repeatedly strayed during lecture and recitation.

  The lectures on amulets, talismans, and magical materials were delivered by a wizened old clansman named Fulgrim Firesmith. Firesmith reminded Han of the insect carcasses he sometimes found along the trails in summer—brown, crispy, and shriveled.

  Creation of magical objects was the province of the clans, outside the abilities of wizards. So it was more of a history class than anything else—a survey of magical devices of the long-ago past compared to those available today. It only stoked the frustration of students who resented the limitations of modern magical tools.

  Firesmith’s lectures were terminally boring yet hard to ignore. Firesmith was deaf as a post, so he yelled out his lectures full volume.

  He taught from an ancient text so fragile that he had the students parade past to view its yellowed pen-and-ink drawings rather than risk lifting it from its stand.

  Han felt a relentless urgency, an impatient desire to focus on material that could be immediately applied. He already had a powerful amulet. He wanted to know more about the charms and hexes that would enable him to use it. He would have preferred to double up on the charmcasting classes and forget the rest.

  Not that he fancied spending more time with Gryphon.

  His mind kept drifting to Crow and his offer of mentorship. Learning spellcasting from Crow seemed far more appealing than suffering under Gryphon. If Crow could be trusted.

  Dancer, however, seemed fascinated with Firesmith and his dusty old books. He scribbled lines and lines of notes and asked detailed questions about theory and craft until Fiona rolled her eyes and smothered yawns behind her hand.

  “Are you really interested in all that?” Han asked Dancer as they crossed the quad for the midday. It was raining again, a dreary, cold downpour from a fish-belly sky. A bone-chilling wind drove raindrops into their faces like needles of ice. “I couldn’t stay awake. There’s so much to learn, and there’s nothing practical we can we do with that.”

  “I am interested,” Dancer said, scuffling through soggy leaves. “Remember? Before all this happened, I’d hoped to apprentice to Elena Cennestre to be a flash metalsmith.”

  “I know.” Han swung around to watch a pretty girlie splash across the lawn, laughing, lifting her skirts to expose a fine pair of legs. She ducked under one of the galleries and disappeared. He turned back to Dancer. “Have you ever made anything magical?”

  Dancer nodded. “When I was younger. Simple pieces, but they seemed to work.”

  “But — now you’re a charmcaster,” Han said. “And wizards can’t —”

  “I’m still clan,” Dancer said, lifting his chin. “I don’t care what the Demonai say. I haven’t given up on my chosen vocation.”

  “But — how would you learn to work with magical materials?” Han said. “Elena won’t teach you, even if you have the gift of flash metalsmithing.”

  “Firesmith says the library here has the best collection of texts on magical materials in the Seven Realms,” Dancer said.

  They climbed the steps to the dining hall, taking shelter under the porch roof. Dancer shook his head, flinging water in all directions, then stepped to the side, out of earshot of the other students streaming into the hall.

  “But clan artists learn by apprenticeship,” Han said. “Firesmith won’t teach you either, if he knows what you’re up to.”

  “He doesn’t want to know what I’m up to,” Dancer said. ”He’s thrilled to have a student that’s actually interested. I signed up for a special project with him next term.” Stuffing his hands in his pockets, he strode on. “I’ll teach myself if I have to.”

  Dancer has a hard spine in him that would be easy to overlook, Han thought. He chooses his battles and plays to win.

  Just then a Southern Islander in Temple dress spotted them. She broke away from a group of her fellow students and strode across the porch toward them.

  It was Cat Tyburn, but Han might not have recognized her had she not opened her mouth. Her mass of wiry curls had been tamed down and woven into a long plait that fell over her left shoulder. She wore white trousers and a long white overtunic split up each side for easier walking. She was cleaner than Han had ever seen her—except for the stained leather belt she’d strapped on overtop, her knife jammed into it. She still wore silver in her ears and nose and on her fingers. Between that and her blade scars and the thief marks on her hands, it was an odd marriage of sacred and profane.

  They hadn’t seen her in two weeks, though not for lack of trying. Several times they’d visited the temple dormitory, but had been told she was unavailable. And she hadn’t come to see them, either.

  Han stumbled into speech. “Cat, you — uh — you’re — I don’t think I’ve ever—what happened to you?”

  “They stuck me in a bath, and while I was scrubbing off, they stole my clothes and left me with these.” She tugged at the hem of her tunic. “They told me I had
to stay seques — holed up in the Temple School for a fortnight, and think about my vocation.” She made a face. “It don’t take that long. It’s not like I got a lot of choices.”

  As they got into line in the dining hall, Cat continued her litany of complaints. “The sun an’t even up when this bell starts clanging and we get out of bed and go to morning meditations. Then it’s bells, bells, bells, and class, class, class all day. For hours. Reading and writing and mathematics.” She pinched two apples and an orange off the line and stuffed them into her carry bag. “After lunch is better. There’s music class and dance and drawing.”

  Ladling soup into bowls, they carried them to a long table.

  Cat used her belt knife to whack off hunks of brown bread from a loaf in the center of the table. “I liked the school at Southbridge. You only had to go when you felt like it.”

  “How often did you feel like it?” Dancer asked, dunking his bread into his bowl.

  “I was there near every month,” Cat said, slathering her bread with butter.

  “She means once a month, on the day they gave out cinnamon bread,” Han said, and received a scowl from Cat.

  “You an’t been there for years,” Cat retorted. “Not since you was streetlord.”

  Well. He’d been there the one time. He’d been beaten half to death by Mac Gillen and his bluejackets and had taken refuge with Speaker Jemson in the temple. Corporal Byrne had tried to take him prisoner, and Han took Rebecca Morley hostage. It seemed a lifetime ago.

  “I’m not used to sitting in a classroom either,” Dancer said. “In the camps, we learn by apprenticeship—one teacher, one student.”

  “Why’d you come here, then?” Cat asked, keeping her eyes fixed on her bowl. “I an’t seen no other copperheads here.”

  “They don’t teach clan vocations here,” Dancer said. “There’d be no point.”

  Cat shrugged. “From what I heard, you all spend your time stealing babies, hexing animals into monsters, and making poisons and witch pieces.” She licked butter off her bread. “It’s no wonder people don’t like it when you come down to the flatlands.”