The Desert Prince

by Peter V. Brett

  3

  COMPROMISE

  I see the stack of papers on Headmistress Darsy’s desk, and my stomach cramps like it does in the days before my flow comes. I was right about the test.

  “What are we going to do?” I whisper. “I can’t keep my own garden alive, much less recite the seven cures.”

  I wish I was exaggerating. Herb Lore has always bored me, and why not? I can’t apply the seven cures to my own experience. Whatever Mother’s magic did to me in her belly, I’m not like my peers in more ways than just biology. I’m stronger and quicker to heal than anyone my age has a right to be, I’ve never been sick, and I’ve no interest in fertility tea.

  Mother cites the curious mind as the highest virtue, preferring textbooks to novels, but I’ll take Jak Scaletongue adventures over old herb gathering journals and history books every time.

  The other girls are already chattering in their seats, but they fall silent when Selen and I arrive. They’ve saved us space, filled seats circling our favored chairs like a nest around two eggs.

  The three boys in the class sit together in the back of the room, vastly outnumbered. Before Mother opened the doors of Gatherers’ University to all genders, male Herb Gatherers were rare, and often derided as inferior to their female counterparts. Most Gatherers would refuse male apprentices, and even patients were wary, relegating most male practitioners to research positions. Even now, they are uncommon, and none hold positions of power at the university and hospit.

  “Hello, boys,” Selen says as we pass. I’m the conventionally pretty one, with perfect hair and powdered face, but she’s the one their eyes follow.

  It’s no different when we get to our seats. The other girls keep a respectful distance from my personal space, but with Selen, they lean in.

  I can’t blame them. Selen is nearly as royal as I am, sister to the duchess and daughter of a baron, but her self-confidence and unflappable good spirits infect everyone around her. Other girls want to be near her. They want to be her.

  Sometimes, I want to be her, too. I wonder what it feels like, to be so sure of who you are that others are drawn into your orbit.

  “Summer Solstice is next week,” Minda says. She’s the oldest of us at sixteen, with a round face and a warm smile. Her hair is tied back with a simple blue ribbon. “Are you going on the borough tour?”

  “Mum didn’t want me to, but Da gave permission anyway.” Selen holds up her little finger. “Got the general wrapped up tight.”

  Everyone laughs, but then the eyes turn to me, and my stomach clenches tighter than it did at the sight of the exam papers. “I haven’t spoken to the duchess about it, yet.”

  I’m afraid to ask, if I’m honest about it. Thirteen summers is old enough to go on the annual borough tour, but Mother has refused to let me go for the last two years. Even with Selen going, I don’t have much hope for a change.

  Invoking my mother has the desired effect, and the eyes fall away. The ones who aren’t terrified of Duchess Paper worship her. Many do both in equal measure.

  “I kissed Perin the stableboy,” Selen volunteers, pulling all the attention back to herself. She gives me a secret smile and I nod my thanks for the save.

  “Aprons on.” Before Selen can recount her odoriferous exploits, Headmistress Darsy walks in carrying a huge tray of plants in thick clay pots. Her gray-shot hair is pinned in a tight bun, and she carries the heavy tray effortlessly in hands thick from decades spent setting bones. Darsy was Mother’s apprentice once upon a time, another of the surrogates she’s surrounded me with to make up for her lack of time. I love her like an aunt, even as I disappoint her as a student.

  We pull our aprons—heavy, pocketed things filled with dry herbs and tools—over plain blue apprentice dresses, leaving our seats to meet the headmistress at the planting table.

  “We need to re-pot this stiffroot,” Darsy says. “Does anyone know why?”

  The other girls pause. Even I know the answer, so the rest of them must, but everyone gives me time to raise my hand first. Grandmum says it’s because they know I will be duchess one day and want to gain favor. I want to believe it is because they are my friends, but the truth is I don’t really have any friends other than Selen. Not ones who truly know me.

  “Olive.” Headmistress Darsy points as I lift my hand.

  “Because stiffroot tendrils spread quickly,” I say, “and will crack even the thickest clay in time.”

  “Correct!” Headmistress Darsy beams at me. “The force of stiffroot tendrils is slow, but enormous. Enough to break even these reinforced pots.” She gives one of the pots a solid rap with her heavy teacher’s rod. “You’ll need to twist each stem a few times to break the tendrils free of the clay before you can work it from the soil.”

  Minda is the first to take a plant. She’s a big girl and strong, and she grasps the base of the stem properly, but her face reddens as she strains to pull the roots free. I look around, seeing the other girls and boys struggling similarly. Even Selen gives a grunt, failing on the first pull.

  I take my own plant, gripping the pot firmly with one hand as I grasp the stalk with the other. I twist and yank hard. The stiffroot flies free in a spray of dirt, even as the reinforced clay shatters beneath my clutching fingers.

  My classmates gape at me, and I resist the urge to flee. I’ve always been stronger than the others, but sometimes I forget how much. Soil covers my dress and freshly plaited hair, ruining all Micha and Elona’s work. I look like a fool.

  “Carefully, child!” Darsy moves quickly to my side “Ent pulling a stump out of the ground. Did you cut yourself?”

  I should have. I felt the sharp clay slicing across my palm. Anyone else would need stitches, if not surgery, but I know without looking that my skin is unbroken.

  “I’m fine.” I try to pull away, not wanting further attention, but the headmistress’ meaty hands envelop mine, gently examining.

  A crash draws everyone’s attention. I look up and see Selen standing over a shattered pot, dirt and stiffroot all over the classroom floor.

  “Creator, did everyone grease their fingers this morning?!” Having assured herself I am not bleeding, Darsy lifts her skirts and hurries over to Selen, my accident forgotten.

  Selen catches my eye, and I know without a word spoken that she threw her pot to the stone floor on purpose before the others could think too much on what I’d done.

  I can’t imagine what I would do without her.

  * * *

  —

  I step away to the scrub basin to wash as the others finish potting, losing much of Elona’s powder work in the process.

  The apprentice dress and apron are designed to resist soil and come passably clean with a brushing. Not so, my hair. Undoing the braids would take the rest of class and leave me looking even more disheveled. I try to shake them out without much success. I can feel the dirt tickling my scalp, damp and gritty. I feel humiliated, but I do what Elona would and return to my seat with my head held high, just as Headmistress Darsy lays out the exam I knew was coming.

  I know more answers than not, but it doesn’t matter if I can brew a perfect sleeping draft from tampweed and skyflower, or identify a dozen seeds by their shapes. The only answers the duchess will notice will be the ones I miss.

  “Think I did all right,” Selen murmurs after we lay down our pens and Darsy collects the papers. “You?”

  “Remember me fondly when Mother kills me,” I tell her.

  Selen laughs like a swan, a snap to her long neck and a sound more honk than giggle. “Can’t be that bad.”

  “When you passed the flamework exam, your da whooped and swept you off your feet,” I say. “I scored higher, but when I told Mother she lectured me for two hours over the dangers of the one question I got wrong.”

  “Da’s just happy I can read,” Selen says. “Says he
couldn’t do more than sign his name till he had thirty summers.”

  As if on cue, Minda gasps and all the apprentices sit up straight, backs arched and eyes forward. I look up and sigh. The duchess has paid an impromptu visit.

  Striking coincidence, that it’s just after an exam.

  The apprentices bow their heads and spread their skirts as my mother, Duchess Leesha Paper, enters the classroom. Her eyes flick over me, taking in the smudges on my dress and the state of my hair.

  “Leesha.” Darsy pushes to her feet and curtsies.

  “Oh, enough of that.” The duchess waves the gesture away and opens her arms for an embrace. This, too, is practiced protocol. A message to the apprentices that Headmistress Darsy is in the duchess’ favor. Even Selen doesn’t call her Leesha, and they’re sisters.

  Darsy embraces Mother, but does not linger. “Didn’t know you were planning a visit.”

  “Just passing by.” The duchess glances at the exam papers on Darsy’s desk. “How are your students progressing?”

  Darsy’s eyes flick to me, and for one terrible moment, I imagine her handing my mother my exam to grade right in front of the class.

  But she doesn’t. “Got a lot of fine young Gatherers in this batch, I think. Olive’s always first to raise her hand, but they’ve all got talent.”

  The words are all true, after a fashion, but the duchess raises a brow at the planting table. The floor’s been swept clean, but her pale blue eyes drift over the shards of clay in the waste bin. “Problems repotting the stiffroot?”

  “My fault,” Selen cuts in before Darsy can reply. She holds up her big hands. “Don’t know my own strength, sometimes.”

  “Just like your father.” The duchess smiles at Selen, and my friend beams in spite of herself. Mother’s compliments have that effect, all the more precious for their rarity. I can’t remember the last time she smiled like that at me.

  The duchess looks back to Darsy. “Would you mind if I borrowed my daughter a short while, Headmistress?”

  “Of course not.” Darsy curtsies, and my stomach knots again.

  * * *

  —

  I keep close to the windows as we walk the halls of Gatherers’ University, trying not to stare at the delicate warded spectacles hanging from a silver chain around Mother’s neck.

  Her magic doesn’t work in sunlight. No magic does. Sun burns the power away, which is why demons—creatures of innate magic—only used to come up from the safety of the Core at night.

  The duchess is a witch, though she hates that word. It’s a science to her, if rather unlike what we learn in Herb Lore and Chemics class. She isn’t the kind of witch that stars in Jongleurs’ tales—cackling and putting curses on folk in need of a lesson—Mother’s wardings protect Hollow from demons.

  Or so they say. I’ve never seen a coreling, alive or even recently dead. Just old demonbones kept in darkness to preserve their power. The war against demonkind ended before I learned to walk. The few corelings to survive the Deliverer’s purge were banished to the edge of Mother’s greatwards and hunted down by General Gared’s Cutters.

  But whatever the fate of the corelings, the duchess’ magic is real. Her demonbone dice are carved with wards of prophecy, letting her Read what is and what might be. I’ve seen her predict fire, flood, and drought with uncanny accuracy. A ready brigade here, a levee there, an order to lay in extra stores one season, and Mother averted all those disasters, keeping her people sheltered with clean water and full bellies.

  I’ve never seen her use the wand she wears at her belt for more than drawing wards of light and sound to brighten a room or make herself heard before a crowd, but I’ve read histories—and seen more than one painting—of her using it to throw fire and lightning at corelings during the war. Exaggerations, I’m sure, but too many folk claim to have borne witness to dismiss the tales entirely.

  But it’s the spectacles I hate the most. Magic radiates up from the Core, but every living thing carries a bit of it inside them. The wards of sight etched around the lenses allow Mother to see magic as a soft glow, including each person’s individual aura. Auras are as personal as their fingerprints, yet as fluid as lakewater, shifting with our thoughts and feelings throughout the day.

  With her wardsight, the duchess can Read a person’s aura to spot a lie or omission as easily as she might page through one of her dry books of old world science. Sometimes she seems to pluck a thought right out of your head.

  I’m never alone as it is, never unguarded, never free to sneak around and kiss like Selen. My thoughts are the only privacy I have left.

  “You pulled too hard on the pot and broke it,” Mother notes as we walk.

  So much for the protection of sunlight. Even without her spectacles, the duchess can see through me.

  “It was an accident.” I know before they pass my lips that the words are insufficient to stem the coming lecture. Nothing can. Mother’s lectures are like the rain. Inevitable. Unavoidable.

  “You have to be more careful, Olive,” Mother says. “If folk realize how strong you are, they may find it…unnatural.”

  “Aren’t I?” I ask.

  “Nonsense,” Mother chides. “What kind of talk is that?”

  “Then why must I hide it?” I demand.

  “Because the less attention you draw, the safer you are,” Mother says. “You’ll have plenty of attention next summer, like it or not.”

  The words make me swallow my retort. “What happens next summer?”

  “Sixteen summers is old enough to approach,” the duchess reminds. “Next spring, the Angierians will begin sending calling cards and invitations to balls, and the Krasian matchmakers will form a line at my gate. Duchess Ariane is chomping at the bit to introduce you to her grandson Rhinebeck.”

  “Introduce?” I’ve been exchanging letters with Prince Rhinebeck since we were children.

  “As a suitor,” Mother says. “Even Duchess Elissa of Miln has some young prince in mind if we’re interested.”

  “Men will come court…me?” I am incredulous, but there is a tinge of excitement at the prospect of suitors. It’s one thing to sneak off with a stableboy, and another to walk in the gardens with a boy everyone considers a good match. I wonder if Rhinebeck is handsome.

  But in my heart, I know it isn’t that simple. Even if Rhinebeck shines on me like the sun, there’s no telling what he’ll do on the wedding night when he realizes I’m not like other women.

  “I’m not ready to promise anyone” is all I can manage.

  “Of course not,” Mother agrees. “You’re far too young. You’ve never even kissed anyone.”

  You would know. I struggle to keep calm as even this small fantasy of freedom is snatched away. “You were promised at thirteen. Grandmum told me.”

  “Ay, she would know,” Mother echoes my own thoughts. “It was her ripping idea, and ended in disaster.”

  I’d say that’s reason enough not to let one’s mother make the decision, but I don’t have the courage. “When will I be old enough?”

  Mother looks me over, choosing her words carefully. “A few more summers, I beg.”

  I blow a slow breath from my nostrils, trying to hide the blend of anger and disappointment.

  “Can I at least go on the borough tour with the other girls?”

  Mother wrinkles her nose. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. There’s too much happening at court. The Majah tribe have opened their border for the first time since you were born. We’re hosting their diplomats in a fortnight to negotiate their entry into the Pact of the Free Cities. If you want to tour the boroughs after that, I can have a team—”

  “I don’t want a team.” The duchess blinks as I cut her off. “I don’t want servants and bodyguards and First Minister Arther himself teaching the history of each town we visit.”


  Mother puts her hands on her hips. “Then I think you’re missing the point of the borough tour. It’s a rite of passage—”

  “You’re the one missing the point!” I cut in again, and this time the look on Mother’s face is decidedly less patient. “Of course, the tour is about learning the history of the duchy,” I allow, carefully measuring my tone, “but that’s not why it’s a rite of passage. It’s about being away from home with your friends. It’s about being out from under your parents’ thumb for a few days to see the towns. To sleep in portable ward circles in the wild lands beyond the greatwards.”

  “You’ll be with friends,” Mother says. “Selen, and Micha…”

  I stop walking. Mother continues for two strides, then stops and turns, irritation showing for the first time. “Selen is going with the other girls. General Gared gave permission. Micha is my nanny.”

  “Micha is your sister,” Mother corrects, but I only fold my arms.

  “Fine,” the duchess snaps. “You can’t go because it’s too dangerous. The other girls, even Selen, don’t have assassins hunting them.”

  “Mother, please.” I roll my eyes.

  She moves quickly. Quicker than even I can react. Her hand cups my chin, forcing me to meet her eyes. I try to resist, but I’m not the only one who’s strong. Mother’s fingers are like ice, cold and unyielding. I know she would never hurt me, but she is frightening, nonetheless.

  “This is serious, Olive. An assassin could be on you just as quickly. Quicker, in fact, and they won’t just cup your chin.”

  I try to pull away, but Mother lets go of my chin and takes my arm. To an observer it might be a simple, motherly gesture, but her free hand is touching her wand, and even with my strength, her grip is like carved marble as she steers me into an empty classroom, closing the door behind us.

  “Show some respect for your sister,” the duchess snaps. “She’s devoted her life to caring for you.”

  She’s right, but Mother wields the guilt like a lash, trying to distract me. I yank my arm free, striding across the room to stand by the window. Even indirect sunlight is an effective shield against Mother’s powers.