‘Timos!’ he said, like the aristocrat he was.
‘Syr Kallinikos,’ Aranthur responded with a cautious bow. ‘I have a problem. A friend who has an interview at court. Tomorrow. No clothes.’
‘Who is he?’ the nobleman asked.
‘A soldier from Zhou.’
‘Ah, now you interest me,’ Kallinikos said. ‘You know a man from Zhou?’
Aranthur nodded.
Fifteen minutes later, as the Academy clock rang the hour, Mikal Kallinikos was exchanging bows with Syr Ansu.
‘Where did you find him?’ Kallinikos asked.
‘On the waterfront,’ Aranthur said quietly.
‘He’s no soldier,’ Kallinikos said. ‘Ansu isn’t even a name. It’s a title.’
He turned to Syr Ansu and bowed deeply, and spoke in a fluid language with too many consonants.
驿外断桥边
寂寞开无主
已是黄昏独自愁
更著风和雨
无意苦争春
一任群芳妒
零落成泥碾作尘
只有香如故
Ansu smiled. ‘Tolerable. And one of my favourite poems.’
He translated for Aranthur, in Byzas.
Near the broken bridge outside the fortress,
I go, lonely and disoriented.
It is dusk and I am alone and anxious,
especially when the wind and rain start to blow.
I do not mean to fight for Springtime,
I would rather be alone and envied by the crowd.
I will fall down, become earth, be crushed to dust.
My glory will be the same as before.
‘It’s better in Zhouian,’ Kallinikos said with a smile. He turned and bowed very deeply to Ansu. ‘Come to my rooms and I’ll find you some court clothes. They won’t be your – hmm – style, old chap. Or should I say, Highness. But I’ll see you right.’
‘The blessing of the hundred and forty-four be on your head,’ Syr Ansu said with a deep bow. ‘I have been worried about humiliation. I considered not going. But Tauri will miss me.’
Kallinikos, familiar with the court, looked at Aranthur.
‘You are connected with the arrival of the drake?’
He winked at Arnaud, who sighed and went back to reading.
‘I brought it across four seas,’ the Zhouian said proudly. ‘Tauri volunteered to come. To bring the drakes back here.’
‘Tauri is the handler?’ Kallinikos asked, opening a chest.
‘Tauri is the drake.’ Ansu smiled.
‘A gift from your king?’ Aranthur asked.
Why didn’t I ask all these questions a week ago? he wondered.
‘From my father,’ the young man said. ‘But the drakes, as you call them, are not slaves. He is a guest, not a gift.’
‘For the Emperor?’ Kallinikos asked.
‘To save you from the barbarians,’ Ansu said. ‘The so-called Pure. They want to kill all the drakes. Don’t you know?’
Aranthur nodded. ‘I have heard of the Pure.’
Kallinikos turned his head, a little too suddenly.
‘As have I,’ he said.
That the Crown Prince of Zhou had been staying in their rooms for a week was a wonder, but it was quickly buried in the weeks of classes. Syr Ansu went to his interview in the palace and never returned. Kallinikos reported back midweek, by which time all of them were buried in schoolwork, that he was now living in a wing of the palace. A week later the young Zhouian was almost a memory, although Kati pretended to pine for him and blamed him that she was now a smoker. The only enduring effect of his stay, a month later, was that Kallinikos became a friend rather than an acquaintance. The two, who shared most of their classes, spent time dissecting a frog together in the nobleman’s rooms. It was safer there, because dissection was technically against the law. They spent a good deal of time talking about philosophy and politics.
Kallinikos was tall and thin and had a long nose like most Byzas, with skin the colour of old oak, and coppery hair, but his widely spaced, deep brown eyes and long hair made him look like an emperor, and in fact dozens of emperors were in his family tree, although all from before the revolution.
Over the corpse of the frog, Aranthur was blunt.
‘Why are you, a Lion, willing to dissect a frog with a lowly Arnaut?’
‘Oh, the Lions,’ Kallinikos said. ‘Hand me the flint scalpel, there’s a good chap. We need more towels. Chiraz!’
Chiraz, his all-round servant, appeared as if by magic.
‘Towels, and two glasses of red wine.’
‘Syr,’ Chiraz said.
‘I’m no longer a Lion,’ Kallinikos said.
Aranthur was drawing the frog’s intestines. He had wondered if this was the case, as Kallinikos hadn’t worn his club’s colours in a week.
‘Oh?’ he said.
Kallinikos was staring at the frog blood on his fine lace cuffs.
‘Shit,’ he muttered. Then he glanced at Aranthur. ‘Listen, old boy. Things change. People change, even blue-bloods like meself. And I met a girl. A woman, rather.’ He leant over. ‘Aploun!’ he said. ‘You draw like a professional.’
Aranthur smiled. ‘I practise.’
‘Hah, we’ll score in the top five, I guarantee it. Look at that! You even got the way the guts glisten.’
Aranthur sat back and stretched, and Chiraz appeared with two glasses of red wine.
‘Have one yourself, Chiraz,’ the aristocrat drawled.
‘Of course, syr,’ Chiraz said. He bowed and withdrew.
Kallinikos drank his off.
‘I met this woman …’ He looked at Aranthur. And shrugged. ‘I promised her not to talk about her. But she’s … Armean.’ He shrugged, as if this explained everything. ‘A noble,’ he hurried to say. ‘And a Magas. But she’s taught me things …’ He looked at Arnathur again. ‘The Zhouian. You. And my Armean. Really, the Lions are so full of shit.’ The last comment came out very quickly, angrily even. ‘You believe things, and then one day you discover that … it’s all horse shit.’
Aranthur had nothing to say, so he kept drawing.
‘You are the first Arnaut I’ve ever been friends with,’ Kallinikos admitted.
‘I hear we make good, loyal friends,’ Aranthur managed.
‘More wine!’ Kallinikos shouted.
Because of their new friendship, Kallinikos joined Aranthur at the salle, learning the sword. Master Vladith was always delighted to have more students, especially those who paid in advance, and he was openly pleased to have a member of the nobility. Kallinikos disliked being fawned upon, and made a wry face when he found his arms displayed over the door at the next lesson, but he was a good pupil, having danced and fenced as a boy.
Aranthur, for his part, had begun to lose his admiration for Master Vladith. He blamed Master Sparthos for the change. He observed his master’s pettiness, his attention to details that seemed to have no bearing on the art, his insistence on the grandiose courtesy and elaborate terminology that often dominated his lessons.
It was not all clear sailing, being friends with Kallinikos. The aristo resented the Eastern refugees under the Aqueduct and spoke about them too often and too broadly for Aranthur’s comfort. He felt that women needed to concentrate on having children and raising them, and he could be insensitive to anyone who didn’t meet his own rather limited standards.
‘Arnauts. A race of cattle thieves,’ he spat, when an Arnaut soldier bumped him in the street. And on another occasion, he looked around the salle and referred to his fellow sword students as a society of felons.
And yet, despite his occasional bursts of petty intolerance and his instinctive leanings to the privilege to which he’d been born, he also had excellent, almost supernatural social skills. He was sensitive, even empathetic, about everyone he included in his acquaintance. He was intensely curious, and he was ultimately capable of changing his mind – about Easterners, about Arnauts, about
geometry. It was this last quality that made him such a desirable companion. He would, sometimes, in the midst of a heated argument, smile suddenly and say ‘Good point’ or ‘I hadn’t thought that’. He was alone of all Aranthur’s friends in this regard.
Vladith treated Kallinikos as the superior swordsman of the pair from his second lesson, and often paid him small, flattering compliments on his handling of the sword, the sort of accurate flattery that he never aimed at Aranthur.
All of that Aranthur could have tolerated, but a month into the new term, at the termination of a lesson, Vladith invited him to fence with heavy weapons – the long swords that were almost out of fashion but were still widely used for battle. Aranthur was aware that he was going to be demonstrated on – that Vladith was using him as a display of his own talents, probably to Mikal Kallinikos. There followed several painful minutes in which he was hit repeatedly by blows he didn’t know: baffling feints and dodges he hadn’t been taught. It was a little like dealing with his Practical Philosophy Magos, except that the blows hurt. Aranthur set his shoulders, took up his guard, and didn’t complain.
But the next time his master started a series of feints, Aranthur raised his sword and thrust, using the tempo that his master was wasting by waving his sword tip in tiny feints.
His point went right over the master’s hands and flexed against his neck guard.
A long breath later, his master’s sword smashed into his helmet with so much vehemence that he was knocked to the floor. Despite the padding on the helmet, which was very like a cavalryman’s closed helmet, but lighter, his head hurt.
‘You should guard yourself,’ Vladith said. ‘That was really foolish.’ The man turned to the other students. ‘A typical idiot’s error – choosing to throw his own blow instead of parrying mine.’
Aranthur had the habit of obedience. He submitted to another dozen attacks, and waited for Vladith to unbend, but the man was clearly angry. At the end he gave Aranthur a very small bow.
‘Your … heritage betrays you, those angry pokings and silly postures. Be very careful. You swing too hard and people will not cross blades with you. I suppose it’s to be expected.’
Aranthur tried to breathe regularly.
Kallinikos frowned. ‘But …’ he began.
The master turned, all oily good humour.
‘I fear young Timos needs a dressing down,’ he said, like one conspirator to another.
Kallinikos shook his head. ‘He hit you. In your wasted tempo. While you played with his sword.’
Vladith drew himself up.
‘Oh,’ he said archly. ‘In your years of fencing experience?’
Kallinikos shrugged. ‘And dancing. A little harp. Tempo is tempo, Master. I think you are wrong, and should apologise.’
The three of them stood a moment.
‘I see.’ Vladith was clearly stung. ‘In fact, I see a great deal.’
He turned on his heel and walked away.
Aranthur left the salle floor, stripped off the heavy arming coat and borrowed steel gauntlets and helmet, and touched his head, where he had a lump.
In the canal boat, headed home – one of the advantages of Syr Kallinikos’ friendship was his willingness to spend money on his friends – he touched his scalp again.
‘Thanks for standing up for me,’ Aranthur said.
‘You hit him, in case you were wondering, old boy.’ Kallinikos raised an eyebrow. ‘Your sword fairly bent double.’
‘Double hits are for fools,’ Aranthur said.
‘Humbug. You skewered him half an hour before he hit you.’ Kallinikos shrugged. ‘He has some bad habits, our master. And there aren’t enough people to fight. Can we go elsewhere?’ He looked around, embarrassed. ‘Why did you go to Vladith, anyway?’
‘I saw a sign in a tavern,’ Aranthur said.
‘Hmm. Well, I don’t think I’ll go back. Nor should you.’
‘I know another master,’ Aranthur heard himself say.
Kallinikos had stood up for him, and he wanted to hug the man for it.
In addition to practising his sword arts, Aranthur was working hard as a student, and even his precious spare time was spent on his practices. As soon as he had an afternoon, he spread the parchment he’d found on the wall of his rooms, pinned it in place with tacks, and began to practise the evocation and emanation. It was a very complicated piece of work, and required the balancing of three forces. It directly involved, in concrete magikal reality, the very principles that one of his classes was discussing in vague terms. He revelled in being able to make the conjuration and the emanation act together. It helped him understand his Magikal Theory class, although the working itself was of no use to him, since raising rage in someone’s horse or dog was both illegal and deeply unprincipled.
Arnaud, a more senior student, read the work through and shrugged.
‘It’s like a very wicked practical joke,’ he said.
Another week passed. Aranthur successfully cast a compulsion, a complex one, on the Philosophy Master’s pet dog. Janos Sittar, the Philosophy Master, gave him some astounding words of praise for his work; Aranthur chose not to say that he had had some private experience of compulsion and had learnt a great deal from a spell he’d found in the street. He knew to develop a relationship with the target; actually, Iralia had told him that, and for a moment he was distracted by thoughts of her.
As a result, at the test, he was the only student who spent time with the dog, and fed him, also following Iralia’s advice. He thought of her often, but something was changing in his head, because suddenly he thought of every woman and girl who crossed his path. He had begun to feel strongly about Kati, for example, and to no purpose. She treated him with the same amused condescension with which she treated all men – like duelling partners
He tried to write Kati a love poem. It wasn’t so much that it was terrible, as that he had nothing especial to say, which caused him some anxiety.
The next week, for a class, he cast his own horoscope and was shocked to see that he was under the sign of change – total, rapid change. He assumed he’d made errors, but his master smiled.
‘Everyone your age lives under the sign of change,’ he said kindly.
As if to prove it, his various infatuations seemed to stack up as the week went on, and he had no idea what to do about them except be miserable. He couldn’t write poetry. He was too big and too poor and too much an Arnaut and not a Byzas to be attractive to anyone, and he suddenly found all women everywhere desirable.
He tried to work harder and do more fencing drills.
But a sudden attention to women was only one of the changes sweeping through his life that week. His success with the compulsion and his high marks on the winter writings had a strange result.
It was the Week of Books, when second years were assigned the book that they were to copy. Every student was assigned a book and would spend most of his next year or two, or sometimes more, copying that book and learning it thoroughly. Then the book became the student’s possession and principal area of study.
When the masters assigned books, they were, in effect, telling students what they were going to study. It was a breathless moment, as students sometimes were assigned out of their preference. It was all too common for a student who wanted to learn magik in the Studion to find herself working in Practical Philosophy, Mathematiks, or Language in the wider, non-magikal Academy.
His room-mates did well enough. Daud was assigned Compilations, an early and fairly straightforward Liote grimoire. Arnaud, the Western barbarian, was assigned a book in Ellene: Karmione, a dialogue between a practical philosopher and a hermeticist that held some devious arcana. Arnaud was dumbfounded, and delighted, at the difficulty of the task. He had clearly made the grade, and he embraced both of his room-mates and bought them dinner.
Aranthur’s name space was blank. No book had been assigned, and for an entire day, as he digested Arnaud’s dinner, he worried about the blank next to his na
me.
Before the panic could destroy his concentration, though, a small star was inserted next to his name, and that the same star by Kati’s name, far down the list, with an admonition to go to the Master of Arts.
Kati was renowned for her good marks, so he couldn’t imagine that this was a poor result.
Facing the Master of Arts was something else again.
The Master of Arts was a woman. He’d never even seen her, but it was a first-year joke to call her Mistress of Impractical Arts. Altaria Benvenutu was one of the premier practitioners of the Ars Magika in all the archipelago, and Aranthur approached her office with trepidation.
There were a dozen students there. He knew none of them; all of them wore the full robes of third and fourth years, some with elaborate shawls and hoods. Practitioners tended to hide their faces, although Aranthur didn’t know why; he assumed he’d be told when he reached such a dizzying height. No one had really explained why he shouldn’t eat meat, either.
He hoped to see Kati, but either she hadn’t been told yet or she had already been. Aranthur stood in an unfamiliar hall, hung with spectacular tapestries of women hunting arcane beasts, and strange, dreamlike men killing dolphins with swords underwater. He was in the hall for a quarter of an hour before he realised that the sea floor in the tapestry was a sea monster, its tentacles poised to take the men.
Behind the tapestries was a wall of dark wood panelling that seemed to stretch for stades. The Master of Arts had the only office on the enormous hall. Senior students came and went. A few wore swords; most wore long robes of black or deep blue. But one young woman wore a short doublet, like a soldier, and her head was bare, partially shaved in an elaborate and yet practical way, and she wore a light, straight sword. She smiled at him, and he smiled back, and she looked at him for a moment longer, as if recognising something.
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