Sparkers (3 page)

“Still. I don't want you working all night.”

“I won't, Mother.” Watching her brush a loose strand of hair away from her face, I recall when she had the energy to bake a cake with Caleb on the weekend and laugh over my stories of eccentric customers at Tsipporah's stand. Now I just wish she would follow her own advice and rest.

E
arly on Tenthday morning, I set out for the Ikhad again. It's the biggest market day of the week, and everyone is out savoring the end of the weekend before returning to work and school. Today is the last day before the secondary school entrance exam. I'm as ready as I'll ever be.

The crowd thickens on the boulevard that leads to the river. The smell of roasted chestnuts floats in the air. Halan women on their way to the market laugh with each other, their colorful scarves flapping in the wind. At the clop of hooves, they make way for a kasir's gleaming black carriage. The halan driver on the box seat touches the brim of his cap in thanks. Carriages are an unusual sight these days. Like Sarah's family, most kasiri now own automobiles.

The boulevard runs straight into the imposing façade of the most prestigious kasir school in Ashara: Firem. I wish there were a halan equivalent I could try to get into, but there isn't. Firem's great carved doors announce a legacy of wealth, privilege, and magic. The wide stone steps are dotted with university students and secondary school boarders dressed in black. One girl has shoes with heels, and another's hands are hidden in a fur muff. The older boys wear the stiff felt hats kasir men favor.

Past Firem, I fall in with the throngs along the banks of the Davgir. People stream around wagons laden with squash and potatoes from the countryside. Eventually, we all spill into the Ikhad square. The usual crowds eddy between the aisles as shoppers avoid tripping over crates of bruised vegetables. Nothing suggests that the previous market day ended with the First Councilor's Corps killing a halan woman under this very roof.

I hurry to the northeast corner of the Ikhad. Stationed at his steaming griddle, Old Gideon pours batter in a thin stream onto the hot metal. Behind the neighboring stand, Tsipporah is perched on her stool, knitting a sock with gnarled fingers.

“Good morning, Marah!” she calls.

I smile as I approach her stall. “Hello, Tsipporah.”

“You made it home safely Seventhday?” she says with concern.

I give a subdued nod. “I saw the arrest though.”

Tsipporah shakes her head bitterly. “No regard for anyone . . .”

She sets aside her needles and picks up a leather-bound volume. “Something new,” she says, handing it to me across the table of books. Her green eyes sparkle. “Thought you might like to take a look before some stuffy Firem professor snaps it up.”

Curious, I open the book. The elegant letters of Old Monarchic flow across the water-stained pages in neat rows. I gasp in wonder. “My thanks!”

Six years after Tsipporah and I first met, I still can't read Old Monarchic. If Tsipporah lent me a primer on the language, I'm sure I could learn. I've taught myself the rudiments of several other languages that way, but hard-up university students always snag Tsipporah's Old Monarchic textbooks before I can get to them. Still, even books written in languages I can't fathom are worth looking at. There's something about the foreign words and the beautiful scripts that I can't get enough of. They're like secret codes begging to be broken.

As Tsipporah takes up her knitting again, I squeeze between her and Gideon's stalls and sit on the ground behind her display. Taking care not to damage the rippled pages, I leaf through the Old Monarchic text, admiring the crisp typesetting. The sweet aroma of Gideon's pancakes wafts through our corner of the market.

At the sound of approaching customers, I jump up. Tsipporah takes care of the first one while I greet the second. For the next hour or so, we keep busy selling books. I steal a moment here and there to pore over the Old Monarchic text. During a lull, Gideon offers us each a thin, delicate pancake spread with jelly and rolled up tight. I eat mine quickly, licking the grease from my fingers. Then I make myself useful sorting out stacks of books haphazardly rearranged by browsing customers.

When I next look up, Tsipporah is standing in the aisle with a woman wearing a gray cloak. I can't see her face, only the long, silver hair escaping from the hood pulled over her head. When she speaks, her voice is hushed. This is not the first mysterious stranger who's come drifting through the Ikhad to talk to Tsipporah without ever touching a book. I've tried asking Tsipporah about her odd friends, but she always deflects my questions.

She notices me watching now and gestures for me to approach. “Have you heard of anyone falling mysteriously ill?” she asks me. The other woman stands perfectly motionless, her hood still up.

“No,” I say, perplexed.

“It seems there've been rumors,” she says, tilting her head toward the cloaked newcomer. “Strange talk of sickness.”

The way she says it, combined with her friend's mute presence, makes the back of my neck prickle. “Winter's coming. There's always illness.”

“This is different,” Tsipporah says, strands of white hair fluttering against her temples. “A new illness. The eyes of the stricken darken.”

“They darken?” I say blankly.

Tsipporah's gaze flicks toward the silent, silver-haired woman. “It may be nothing.” She hesitates. “You've done good work this morning, Marah. Isn't that big exam of yours tomorrow?”

I nod, my insides twisting at the reminder.

“You ought to rest up, then,” she says. “I think you should go home early.”

• • •

I
N
THE
MORNING
,
Mother leaves for the District Hall before Caleb and I have finished breakfast. She wishes me luck on her way out the door. I gulp down my oatmeal, anxious to get to school early for the SSE. First, I need to take Caleb to Leah's apartment. Horiel Primary refuses to accommodate a deaf boy, so he spends school days with Leah's mother and the youngest Avram children.

While I'm clearing the dishes, someone knocks at the door. I cross the kitchen to answer it, wondering who it could be.

The caller is a youngish man, tall and clean-shaven. His black coat, with its silk-covered buttons, betrays him at once.

“Who are you?” he says, frowning.

“I'm Marah Levi,” I say, alarmed.

“I'm from the District Hall,” he says, holding up an identity card. He steps forward, and I move aside, powerless to stop him from crossing our threshold.

“Does Caleb Levi reside here?” he asks.

“Yes, sir. My brother.” I glance toward the table where he's still sitting.

The visitor looks him over. “I've come to summon Caleb Levi to the District Hall. He's missed the deadline for completing his magic examination by several months.”

My heartbeat quickens. I thought Mother had taken him. All Ashari children must be examined for magic before turning ten. The test is usually a formality, since the children of kasiri almost always have magic and the children of halani almost always don't. Nowadays, intermarriage between kasiri and halani is prohibited, which simplifies things. Still, there are exceptional cases in which children's magical abilities don't match their parents', so the examination is required for everyone.

On the rare occasions when a halan-born child is discovered to have magic or a kasir-born child is found not to, the law dictates that they be removed from their home and placed in an adoptive family of the appropriate magical status. There was a boy in my year at Horiel Primary who turned out to be a magician. He disappeared from school, and apart from a terse announcement of his departure, our teachers refused to talk about him. Gradually, we too began to act as if he'd never existed.

Caleb has never shown the least sign of having magic. The ability emerges around the age of eight or nine, so we would know by now if he had it. But the government doesn't know. It has to be official.

They want to test you for magic at the District Hall
, I sign to Caleb.

His eyes get big, as though he's just remembered making a terrible mistake.

“Can my mother bring him tomorrow?” I ask the kasir.

The official's gaze slides back to me. “Your brother must come to the District Hall immediately. It's only a few blocks away.”

“But sir, I'm in Final, and the SSE's today. It starts in less than an hour. I promise my mother will—”

“I have orders,” the kasir says, a note of regret in his voice. “If you want, I could take him over myself.”

I would never leave my brother in the hands of some kasir official, but all I say is, “He's deaf, sir. Someone needs to interpret for him.”

Cursing to myself, I sign to Caleb.
He says we have to go now
.

He raises his eyebrows.
What about the SSE?

Don't worry
, I sign.
We'll find Mother. She can stay with you, and I'll go to school
.

Once I've gathered our identity papers and my schoolbag, we leave the apartment and proceed downstairs.

• • •

A
T
THE
D
ISTRICT
Hall, a balding official directs us to a room containing a row of chairs and an unoccupied desk. According to the clock on the wall, it's five past eight. The SSE begins in less than half an hour.

“Wait,” I say to the official before he withdraws. “Where can I find Chavah Levi?”

The balding kasir frowns in puzzlement, but he says, “Chavah Levi works upstairs.”

Leaving Caleb in the waiting room, I find the staircase and climb to the upper floor. It's a labyrinth. The hallways zigzag, there are too many corners, and nothing distinguishes one stretch of corridor from another except the words stenciled on the doors' frosted panes: Registry of Vital Records, Health and Sanitation, Courtroom . . . Many rooms are empty, and the people I do find send me farther on with confusing directions.

Ready to give in to blind panic, I poke my head into the next office. A man in a plain black suit is standing near the window, his arms loaded with papers.

“Excuse me, sir, where's Chavah Levi?”

He gives me a startled look. “Levi? Oh, they sent her across the city to deliver some documents. She'll be back this afternoon.”

This afternoon? There's no hope. My expression must betray me, because he says, “Is it urgent?”

I shake my head and dart out.

Caleb looks alarmed when I rush into the waiting room. The kasir who summoned us from the apartment is here, chatting with another official who has returned to his post at the desk.

“Sir,” I gasp, addressing our escort. “Our mother's not here. Would it be possible for the examiner to come at once?”

He purses his lips. “I'll see what I can do.”

He leaves the waiting room, and I sink into the chair next to Caleb's.

You should go
, my brother signs.
I can stay by myself
.

I shake my head. I'm not abandoning him in this nest of kasiri to fend for himself.

The examiner doesn't come. The SSE will have started by now. Will they let me in late? I feel like the breakfast in my stomach is curdling.

Finally, a pudgy, black-clad kasir enters the waiting room and calls Caleb's name. He ushers us into a cramped side office and motions for us to sit.

“This is the boy?” he says.

“Yes, sir.” I hand him Caleb's papers. He glances at them, then flings them onto a chair.

“Stand up. How old are you?” He gestures impatiently, and Caleb leaps to his feet. I sign to him discreetly, and he raises all ten fingers.

“Why don't you speak, boy?”

“He's deaf, sir,” I say.

The official becomes, if possible, even more bored. My stomach tightens as he begins a sequence of hand motions and spoken syllables. Pinpricks of light—gold, green, purple —blossom and die at his fingertips. I want to cover my nose against the magic's sharp smell.

The examiner's hands still. He keeps one held out, palm up, and utters a last incantation. A bead of light appears in the hollow of his hand. Its color is indeterminate, an unripe silver. I know from my own test that green means kasir and blue halan. I hold my breath.

The drop of light turns blue.

I let out an audible sigh. The kasir makes me sign a document in Mother's place. After I convince the examiner my brother can write his own name, Caleb signs too.

• • •

O
UTSIDE
THE
D
ISTRICT
Hall, Caleb assures me I don't need to walk him to the Avrams', so I let him go on his way. As I sprint toward school, I picture myself ending up on the docks of the Davgir unloading barges of Xanite cotton and Laishidi silk, or working on a factory assembly line.

My calves are burning by the time I reach Horiel Primary. The foyer is empty but for the caretaker sweeping the floor. The door of the headmaster's office looms at the end of the hallway. Steeling myself, I knock.

“Enter,” comes a muffled voice.

I let myself into the office and approach Aradi Terach's desk until the fumes from his pipe become too much. His eyes are small and sharp in his broad face, and his thick fingers drum on his armrest. School headmaster is one of the plusher jobs available to halani, a fact which makes Aradi Terach rather smug.

“Good morning, sir. My name is Marah Levi.” I haven't been in enough trouble to have wound up in his office for years, so he won't remember my name. “I'm in Final, and I'm supposed to be taking the SSE, but I wasn't able to get to school until now.”

He lowers his pipe and squints at me. I already have a feeling I'll never see the pages of this year's test.

“The exam was set for this morning, Levi. Every Final student in Ashara has known this for weeks. What possible excuse might you have for arriving so catastrophically late?”

“My brother was summoned to the District Hall, sir.”

“As far as I am aware, it was not your brother who was registered for the SSE,” says Aradi Terach.