Points of Departure

by Patricia C. Wrede

  “That makes it more difficult,” said The Magician. “But you might try them first. You can always come back.”

  “I also need to hire a wizard,” said Jehane.

  “The Row is full of us,” said The Magician. “Most of them come cheaper than I do.”

  “I’ve got money,” said Jehane.

  “Will you give me one levar to tell you why you should not spend it here?”

  Jehane sat and looked at him for a considerable time, while the roof dripped gently onto the grass of the courtyard and the ginger cat came cautiously out of the shrubbery and stood by the brazier, shaking its feet. The brown cat growled at the ginger cat. It moved six inches away and shook its feet again. Well, thought Jehane, she knew nothing now. If she paid him, she would know something, even if she did not understand what it was. You couldn’t get to be The Magician unless you provided something of real value to those who came to you. He would probably give her a riddle. She was good at those. And he did keep cats.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “I’d forgotten,” said The Magician, ruefully. “The Acrivannish don’t bargain. Very well. I have already done your family something of a disservice, and I hesitate to take on a commission that might constitute another. If your brother is well, or has met any normal fate, there are far less costly ways to find him. I tell you again, go to the House of Responsible Life. Runaways are their business, and their records go back considerably longer than eight years. They’re on the Avenue of Five Mice, just off Neglectful Street. A very large, square, green building.”

  “What disservice, my lord?” said Jehane. “To whom? Nissy?”

  “What did you want to hire a wizard for?”

  “To make a revolution in Acrivain,” said Jehane.

  The Magician’s head came up, and he laughed. “Another grand idea!” he said.

  Jehane supposed the other had been Nissy’s, but there was no point in asking. She wondered if it was what Nissy had done that had irked Acrilat. That would explain why her family had always been odd, but had taken to doing things contrary to their own oddity in the past year. Did consulting a foreign wizard constitute a betrayal of Acrilat? If so, she might be about to make It even angrier.

  “I’m sorry,” said The Magician, “but that’s outside my field of privilege. I belong to Liavek.”

  “But if you won’t concern yourself with Acrivain,” said Jehane, “then what wizard will?”

  “An Acrivannish one, I daresay,” said The Magician.

  Jehane drew in her breath to make a hot retort, and stopped, and looked at him thoughtfully. He looked back, out of nicely-shaped eyes of green with gold flecks in them. Jehane stood up. “You’ve been very good,” she said, cautiously. “I’ll have to send you the money.”

  The Magician stood up also. “A momentary weakness,” he said. “The year is turning; put it down to that.”

  Jehane took this to mean that he would be less accommodating should she come again. “I’d better collect my cat,” she said. She turned, and there was Gogo, with Cinnamon and Nissy’s cat in tow. Shin growled again.

  “Has the brown one been sick?” said Jehane, before she could stop herself.

  “He’s missing somebody,” said Gogo, her bright eyes dwelling not on the brown cat but on The Magician.

  Shin wailed like a Zhir singer and took two stiff steps forward.

  “Thank you,” said Jehane, quickly, moving past Gogo for the door. “Come on, Cinnamon.” Cinnamon obeyed; Nissy’s cat sat down. Jehane knew she would have to do it. “Floradazul!” she said. Nissy’s cat got up and followed them, down the long hall and out into the misty street. The door shut firmly behind them.

  Jehane looked at Cinnamon, who had a generous smear of butter on his chin and appeared blissful. “You smell of garlic,” she said.

  “Snails,” said Cinnamon.

  “Carry the cat, then; she’ll lick your chin.”

  “She got some too,” said Cinnamon. But he picked up the cat, and they set off for the House of Responsible Life.

  They were damp when they got there. The Avenue of Five Mice was wet and chilly, but in the gardens around a blocky green building on the street’s eastern side, somebody had thought it safe to set out tomato and pepper and melon plants. Jehane didn’t care for the look of the house. In sunshine it might have been cheerful, but in this weather it looked moldy. She walked down the street until she came to a pair of double wooden doors standing hospitably open, and went up three green-painted steps, followed by the slap of Cinnamon’s sandals.

  They came into a large airy hall, smelling pleasantly of beeswax and books. To their right was a very wide wooden staircase; before them a set of swinging doors of the sort that usually lead to a kitchen; to their left a wooden table behind which sat a young man and a young woman, identically dressed in vivid green tunics and baggy white trousers. They had before them on the table a scattering of books and papers, and a little green glass skull. They were arguing, but broke off when Cinnamon sneezed. Jehane hoped she was not giving him a fever, dragging him all over the city in this weather. After so long in Liavek, it seemed cold today even to her; and all these foreigners were as thin-skinned as apples.

  “Good day to you,” said the young woman, in a very odd accent. “May we answer your questions?”

  “I’m looking for a runaway,” said Jehane, “and Cinnamon and the cat just need somewhere to sit out of the wet.”

  “I’ll take them back to the kitchen and give them some milk,” said the young man, standing up. His Liavekan was quite normal. Jehane nodded to Cinnamon, and he followed the young man through the swinging doors. A warm gust smelling of bread and kaf and ginger swept out and engulfed the hall. Jehane thought irritably that nobody seemed to want to feed her.

  “A runaway?” said the young woman. “You’ll want to see Mistress Etriae.” She opened a green-covered book the size of a tea tray, ran her thumb down a line of writing, and looked up at Jehane. “Up the stairs, the fourth door to your right.”

  Jehane went up the stairs, treading on a runner of green carpet, passing walls painted pale green; emerged into a hall tiled in green and white; counted off the doors with their green glass knobs; and stopped before the fourth one on the right, wondering what was responsible about green.

  Mistress Etriae was almost as tall as Jehane, and extremely dark, and very serious. She had another wooden table, a great many shelves full of scrolls, a little set of leather-bound printed books, and a tidy line of four dead mice leaking unpleasantly onto a stack of clean paper.

  “Good day to you,” said Etriae, with the same odd inflection the young woman had used. She laid a sheet covered with scribbled numerals over the dead mice.

  Jehane, who knew all about the embarrassment caused by cats, refrained from smiling and explained her problem.

  “Eight years?” said Etriae. She raised her voice. “Dialo! Ancient history!”

  A small man who needed a haircut emerged from behind a bookshelf, his arms full of scrolls. He wore a green robe that had seen better days. When he saw Jehane, his brown eyes grew extremely large. He put the scrolls down on Etriae’s table, as far from the mouse-pile as possible, and bowed to Jehane. “I’m Verdialos,” he said. “How may I assist you?”

  “She’s looking for her brother,” said Etriae, in a tone that seemed to contain some warning. “Deleon Benedicti.”

  “Thank you, Et,” said Verdialos, without taking his eyes off Jehane. She was used to being stared at by Liavekans, who seemed to think that yellow hair was somehow supernatural; but there was something different in his regard. His voice, however, was mostly without expression. “Mistress Benedicti, if you’ll come with me.”

  Jehane followed him next door into a much smaller room full of printed books, all bound in green. He did at least have a rag rug on the floor with a few streaks of red and white in it. “May I offer you some tea?” said Verdialos, pausing on the rug. “It’s a long walk to the House of Responsible Life.”r />
  “Please,” said Jehane, too grateful to ponder his tone of voice or to worry about the fact that, although it was a long way from where she had been, it was not a long way from everywhere. Verdialos went back out, and Jehane sat down on a wooden bench, irritably shoving aside the green cushions.

  He was a long time getting the tea. When the door finally opened, Jehane looked up smiling, and was rewarded with the sight of her little sister Nerissa, dressed in an old green dress of Jehane’s, in her arms a thick stack of paper and on her face a look of such huge surprise that Jehane’s first impulse was to laugh.

  “Why are you here?”

  “I’m looking for Deleon,” said Jehane, baldly.

  It was unwise to speak of Deleon to Nerissa; but this time a relief even huger than the surprise swept over her face. “That’s very clever of you,” she said.

  “Why are you here?” said Jehane, warily. Nissy was not free with her compliments.

  “I work here,” said Nerissa, smiling.

  “Nissy, Father will—” Or Acrilat has.

  “Not if you don’t tell him.” There was no particular plea in her voice; but then, there never was.

  “What were you doing at Number 17 Wizard’s Row?” said Jehane.

  Nerissa dropped the stack of paper, the top half of which separated itself and swept gracefully over the floor.

  “And what were you doing there? I won’t tell if you won’t,” she said, standing there with her arms hanging at her sides and the thick yellow hair uncurling itself from its green ribbon and sticking to her neck.

  “Not this time,” said Jehane. “This time, you tell me, and I tell you, and neither of us tells anybody else.”

  The black cat trotted into the room and made an inquiring noise. Nerissa scooped her up absently; then her eyes widened and she swung on Jehane. “You stole my diary!”

  That this was true did not change the fact that Nerissa had no evidence from which to have deduced it. “I didn’t read it,” said Jehane. She hadn’t even been looking for the diary; she hadn’t known that Nissy kept one. Nissy had spent two days walking around like a cat with a mouse in its mouth, momentarily uncomfortable but essentially pleased, which meant she had written a story. Jehane had wanted to read that.

  “No virtue in that; you couldn’t.” Nerissa smoothed the cat’s ears and stared blankly out the little window. Jehane looked too, but saw only streaks of rain and a luminous gray sky. “I’ll kill you!” said Nerissa.

  “What’s the matter with you?” said Jehane, beginning to be frightened.

  “How dare you go to Granny! How dare you go to Wizard’s Row! Spying and tattling; what did you give The Magician to tell you where I was?”

  “He didn’t tell me anything; and I wasn’t looking for you,” said Jehane. “I was looking for Deleon.”

  “Much you care for him! Where were you eight years ago?”

  “I looked for him! You were the one who hid in your room and howled.”

  Nerissa was extremely pale and looked quite likely to be sick any moment. Jehane had never seen her so wrought up. Jehane had answered her as she might answer Isobel or Livia; but she and Nerissa had never until now had anything resembling a quarrel. Nissy didn’t argue; it wasn’t her way.

  Nerissa leaned her cheek against the top of the cat’s head, and scowled hard. Anybody would think the cat was telling her things. “I don’t believe it. You’re as bad as the rest of them,” said Nerissa, quite flatly.

  “All I wanted to do,” said Jehane, losing her temper with a will to cover the stab of regret that statement caused in her, “was to read your story. Don’t try and tell me you haven’t written a story. You always hide them in the same places, and you know I always find them. I can’t help it if you don’t hide your diary better.”

  “Why can’t you leave me alone!”

  “I like your stories,” said Jehane, as calmly as she could manage.

  “I suppose you think that helps?”

  “Does it hurt?”

  The cat mewed vigorously; Nerissa set it down without looking at it; and Verdialos came through the door and put a tray with cups, a pot, a plate of cantaloupe slices, and a basket of little golden cakes down on the table. Jehane found time to be relieved that the food was not green, though the porcelain was.

  “You!” said Nerissa to the back of his head. “You knew she was here!”

  Verdialos leaned on the table and looked at her expectantly, and Nerissa turned her head aside and knelt to pick up the scattered papers. Verdialos poured three cups of tea—green, Jehane saw with regret—and handed her one. She didn’t want it now, but the warmth was useful.

  “Is Nerissa your responsibility?” Verdialos asked her.

  “Apparently not,” said Jehane, who was still angry.

  “I’m not looking for appearances,” said Verdialos. He dragged the wooden chair out from behind the table and sat down in it. “Nerissa, your tea is getting cold.”

  Nerissa went on picking up the papers.

  “She has been my responsibility,” said Jehane. “Since Deleon left. But she’s almost seventeen, and she won’t talk to me.”

  “And is Deleon your responsibility?”

  “He was,” said Jehane.

  “And you come seeking him now, when he is eight years absent?”

  “They’re all my responsibility,” said Jehane, capitulating, “and something’s got to be done about them now.”

  “What do you propose to do?”

  “Get them back to Acrivain.”

  “I won’t go,” said Nerissa from under the table.

  Jehane opened her mouth in a fury; Verdialos leaned forward sharply, spilling his tea, and shook his head hard. Jehane cursed the entire family, added a venomous thought in the direction of Acrilat, and said, “I can’t make anybody go. But everybody must have the choice.”

  “Mother won’t go without Deleon,” said Nerissa, in that same flat voice.

  So much for tact. Jehane looked again at Verdialos, who pushed the long hair off his forehead and said, “Nerissa, come out from under the table.”

  “Why?”

  “Because when you hear what I have to say, you will jump and hit your head.”

  Nerissa crawled out from under the table, stood up, neatened her stack of papers, slapped it down on the tabletop, and leaned against it, looking at the floor.

  “Your brother is safe,” said Verdialos, “and happy, and not at all inclined to join us.”

  Nerissa looked at him swiftly. “Mother said he’d outgrow it.”

  “Where is he?” said Jehane, wondering why it was she who had to say it. What was wrong with Nissy? How could she say she had loved Deleon and take Verdialos’s news so calmly? Where had she learned that judicious tone, that still consideration?

  “I think,” said Verdialos, gently, “that that is the least of your problems. What do you return to, in Acrivain?”

  “The Magician said—”

  “He sent you?”

  “Yes. He said you found runaways. And he implied that you had an Acrivannish wizard who could engineer a revolution in Acrivain, so that we could go back safely.”

  Verdialos opened his eyes very wide, as he had done when he first saw Jehane. “We have no wizards at all,” he said, with considerable emphasis. “And I don’t know of an Acrivannish wizard in the entire city. Are you sure—”

  “Reasonably,” said Jehane. “Do you know what he’s like?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Verdialos. He handed the cooling cup of tea to Nerissa. “Sit down, my dear.”

  Nerissa sat on the floor and tucked her feet under her, precisely as she had been taught not to.

  “I wonder,” said Verdialos, holding the plate of cakes out to Jehane. He began to smile. “Silvertop,” he said.

  “An Acrivannish wizard?”

  “He’s a Farlander of some sort,” said Verdialos, still smiling, “and he’s certainly a wizard. He lives on the Street of the Dreamers.”

&nb
sp; “Thank you,” said Jehane. She looked at her sister.

  “I think,” said Verdialos, very softly, “that you had better let her go.”

  Nerissa lifted the cup to her mouth and lowered it again without drinking. She would not look at Jehane.

  “And my brother?”

  “He knows where you live,” said Verdialos.

  “But he doesn’t know we’re going back to Acrivain. And it’s been eight years; he might try to see if things have changed—”

  “It seems to me,” said Verdialos, again softly, “that they have not changed in the least.”

  “But if we do arrange to go back—”

  “I’ll see that he knows,” said Verdialos.

  “All right,” said Jehane, not to Verdialos but to the top of Nerissa’s head. “I won’t tell if you won’t.” Nerissa didn’t move. Jehane got up and bent her knee to Verdialos, and went down the stairs to collect Cinnamon.

  • • •

  It was late afternoon and still raining when they came to the Street of the Dreamers. They were both drenched. The first person they spoke to knew where Silvertop lived; the second person they spoke to, on the narrow stair leading to Silvertop’s rooms, told them Silvertop wasn’t in, but to try the Tiger’s Eye. The Tiger’s Eye was a bad place to walk dripping into, but Jehane was too tired not do to what she had already planned. They walked around the corner and splashed up to the building, brilliant white in the early twilight, where Snake had her shop. The firethorn had not bloomed yet. The orange clusters of its berries in their dark oval leaves were as bright as jewels in the gray light. Somebody inside was just lighting the lamps. Jehane pushed the door open and entered in a cascade of bells. It was warm inside and smelled of jasmine, of cinnamon, of sandalwood, of tiger-flowers.

  There were three people behind the counter, arguing. There was a tall slim woman with a cloud of black hair shot with red; a smaller, darker girl with tight wiry hair and a skeptical expression; and the Acrivannish wizard. He was smaller than the girl, and narrower in the shoulders; he had skin like milk and features like the ivory carving of the Mountain Empress that Mama kept in the library, delicate as a snow sculpture; he had a cap of pale hair that caught the lamplight even better than Nerissa’s butter-yellow.