Banner of the Damned (47 page)

My heart thumped as I leaned toward her and murmured, “Instead of paying me, perhaps you could locate and buy something for me?”

Tif’s eyes rounded, and so did her mouth.
Is that apple-faced?
I wondered, distracted.

“I need a book on magic. As good as you can get.”

“Magic?” Kaura repeated. “Why?”

“It’s an assignment. For understanding.”

Tif pursed her lips, hands at the angle of Surprise. “Magic! Why you, a scribe? Can’t your princess summon a herald or two?”

“Not on the road. I need to understand the process of magic… if I travel.”

Kaura’s feathered fan touched her eyebrow in Discretion, and Tif took her bottom lip in her teeth.

“I have a cousin whose lover teaches something or other about elementary magic to the heralds,” Kaura said doubtfully.

“Elementary is perfect, actually,” I said gratefully. I was thinking that the description of magical history for the heralds would be less about politics and theory and more about how it was used, when and why, which seemed closer to what the queen wanted.

Kaura’s lips parted, then Tiflis said swiftly, “If you, on your… travels… find any good books, you’ll remember me, won’t you? Of course you will. You already did.” Then, in a low voice: “You’re a good cousin, Em—like a sister. When I think back to what a brat I was, how jealous I was that you were so much quicker at learning, well, you’re better than I deserve.” She gave me a strong hug. “You’ll get your book.”

I hugged her back, wishing her success and happiness. Lightning flickered in the distance; I made my excuses and departed.

F

Birdy and I spoke little, as others were always present. It felt good just to have him next to me, to be falling into our old rhythms, even though he’d grown two hands taller in the time he was gone. From time to time I remembered Tiflis’s promise, and tried not to fret, for none of my other avenues of research turned up anything useful.

For a few days fan practice was the only time Birdy and I saw one another, but gradually, during brief free moments, I’d find him at a meal, and it seemed natural to sit by him and continue catching up on each other’s our lives.

“No juggling?” I asked one day, after he dug his fingers into his pocket, and I expected to see the old silken bags. But instead, out came a note. He frowned at it, replaced it in his pocket, then looked up, his mouth awry. “Is that relief on your face? Ah-ye, do not answer. Everyone else was relieved. No more juggling, not after the ambassador forbade it that first winter, when we were all shut up together.”

Though I had maintained a scribe’s reserve—perhaps because I did—
he made a comical grimace. “You too? Nobody liked my juggling.” His tone shifted. “That’s because I never got any better at it.”

“Would it offend to request enlightenment on why you did it?”

“I don’t require formality, Emras. Before I came to scribe school, my Uncle Issas, who is a player, told me that juggling makes the hands sensitive and clever. Something a scribe needs. But I never got better at it. Partly because…” He looked away, then back. “Because I wanted to keep my hands busy, especially when my mind wandered where it shouldn’t. So I thought no one would mind music. I bought a tiranthe. But I haven’t any better musical sense than I do juggling sense. So then I tried carving. That one lasted two weeks, until I tired of the sting of ink in the cuts on my fingers.”

I accepted that with The Peace, wondering what he’d been about to say. But it felt intrusive to ask.

“Trousers,” he said a few days later at a staff meal. He turned on his cushion and wiggled his legs. “They look so simple, but if you don’t manage them right, I hate to tell you what they do to your parts. If you have ’em.” He grinned at my kitchen friend, Delis.

A young journey-scribe sitting across from us said, “I always wondered about that. Can’t you just wear a robe?”

“You don’t want to know what happens to the hem of a robe in the stable.” Birdy touched his nose. “There’s a reason stable hands wear trousers, and it has nothing to do with guild commonality.”

After the laughter died, Delis said, “Is it a demotion, going from herald to stable?”

“I like to think of it this way.” Birdy’s fingertips sketched Shared Empathy. “There are no openings for heralds or scribes just now, but among the horses, there are. I like their company just fine! They don’t waste ink, and they never dictate boring letters or require me to make diplomatic speeches.”

There was another laugh, and as he went on talking about the horses’ personalities, people returned to their own conversations.

So it seemed natural to wander in the direction of the stable if I had free moments, and—if I found Birdy—to share a meal, or talk, or do fan practice. I did not think we met often or for long; every meeting was interrupted by either a page, a bell, or both, and our conversations, though friendly, could easily have been carried on in public. The queen, however, had something to say when she finally called us back. She dictated a few orders concerning the journey, then finished with this: “Apparently you two are friends.” Her fingers flickered in the old-fashioned
Silken Screen mode, left from the days when people ate behind portable folding walls. “But I do not want my plans ruined. Curtail your public socializing, at least until we know that Lasva is safe, and that the rumors are mere rumors. There is no use in a stalking-horse if he’s being ridden by the very scribe who is supposed to be inconspicuous.”

She dismissed us. Birdy was silent as we walked out.

I had reached the second landing before the implication hit me. “Ridden?” I protested.

Birdy turned deep red. “You know how people are. If they’re twistling, they see pairs everywhere.”

“Ah-ye,” I breathed. “If that’s what people are thinking, then I guess the queen is right.” I said wistfully, “I’d looked forward to sitting next to you in the carriage.”

“I’d looked forward to that, too. We could practice our Marloven,” Birdy said.

“That’s right!” I said. “We’ve another language to learn! But how? From what I see, the Marlovens hold to themselves.”

“It will be a very long journey.” Birdy signed Rue with his fingers.

Two days before we left, a hired courier was waved upstairs, where she picked her way past all the boxes and piles and bags, moving from person to person until she found me kneeling before my trunk, trying to reduce its few components and wondering in despair why our archive was so scanty on the important subject of magic, for I’d spent most of my time sifting the relevant shelves only to come away empty-handed.

In surprise I took the package, and handed the courier the last of my spare coins. When I had my room to myself, I opened the neatly wrapped package and discovered a book, newly bound, the ink so fresh I could smell it.

On a strip of pink paper was Tif’s scrawl in out-of-practice Old Sartoran:
Here is the best we could do in so little time. Remember us!
I paged carefully through the book and gazed in gathering puzzlement.

Question, discovery of magic; wait for “Women/indigenous beings” questions. What spells do you think asked for first, why?

Second lesson: Question, what are angels? Indigenous beings—forms of living being—forms taken to communicate with humans—magic and power.

What questions?

This was
less
than we were taught! Where were the explanations?

When I encountered the words
First lesson in basics
, with a list of abbreviated cautions and warnings, I paged impatiently farther along to find no historical details, no maps or explanations, just columns of code, sometimes with odd drawings next to clusters of words. These drawings were brief, cryptic, with arrows, not unlike notes on fan forms.

I turned over a handful of pages, by training too careful to fling them over, though I wanted to. It made no sense! For a time I tried decoding the marks in some of the old archival scripts that we’d had to learn, and then the truth became a possibility: this was not a record.

It was not a history of magic as taught to heralds.

I had in my hands
a book of magic
.

It had to be an instructor’s book, perhaps the very instructor that Kaura had mentioned knowing at Tif’s celebration. I’d assumed that my cousin would approach this person for recommendations. Instead, she had—somehow—got hold of this.

I laid it on my knee as if it were more fragile than porcelain.

I am not supposed to have this book.

My first instinct was to wrap the book again and send it back to Tiflis with a carefully worded note explaining her error. But as I considered what I would have to say to her, I hesitated for three reasons. First, I did not want to offend my cousin, who had done her best to fulfill my request, probably at great cost. Second, I wondered if lessons for a beginning mage might furnish me more of the sort of knowledge I needed to know than a history of magic, suitably distanced as such things inevitably were. Third, and probably most important—though I thought it least important at the time: I was curious.

I wrapped the book up again, and laid it at the bottom of my trunk. I would not make a hasty decision.

The following days passed rapidly as I helped Lasva sort through her belongings, and I continued my research. She had burned all her rosebud carpets the night before we left for Sartor, which had shocked Marnda, but no one had dared say anything.

Most of the rest of her things were given away. Courtiers adopted the cats—as much as cats are ever owned by humans. Let us say, the clean-boxes and the food were shifted to new locations and cat-windows refitted.
Mostly, the cats vanished, though a few wandered through until the very last day.

Heirlooms went back into storage. About other things Lasva said only, “Take it away.” Like Rontande’s painting of cats. I don’t know what the servants did with these, but I suspect they were sold as once having belonged to the princess.

The only new things were those items she had ordered to take west as gifts. As her household shrank to packed trunks in bare, sunny rooms, she seemed to withdraw into herself.

I did not discuss my secret book with anyone. My orders from the queen had been clear about not burdening Lasva, and I understood that the less Birdy knew about what I would be doing, the less the Marloven king would be able to winnow out if Birdy (in his place as stalking horse) might come to be questioned. Besides (I am trying to be honest in this record) I knew he would tell me to send it back as quickly as possible so that I might get a suitable history. Not that I’d been able to find any such suitable history.

As for reconsidering my decision to keep it, I was too busy. Or so I reasoned. When it did intrude on my mind, I found myself arguing, not reasoning: I would learn just enough to understand, to see magic from the inside… what harm could it do? I would never use it. Knowledgeable, I could protect Lasva so much better, could I not?

Lasva was also isolated. Here are some of the memories she later cherished:

“This is the waltz,” she said. She’d brought Ivandred to her own suite for the lesson. Though it was smaller than the gallery, she did not want any reminders of waltzing with Jurac of Chwahirsland.

Instead, the reminders of Kaidas were like the thorns hidden behind the rose blossoms. Here they had stood… no. And, there they had—no.

She forced her attention to the dance steps, which he caught in a surprisingly short time. But the way he watched, with his eyes narrowed, his body so still before he moved, and then, when he did move, it was neatly, lightly, with controlled guestures mirroring hers all the way to the fingertips. It was strange to find her own style so adroitly copied.