The Magician's Apprentice (23 page)

Hope and bitterness swept over Tessia. If her father had been rich and powerful, would she have been able to train as well? Was Kendaria the first woman to defy tradition?

The woman leaned closer. “If you like, I’ll take you to watch a dissection. Would you like that?”

A thrill ran through Tessia. She remembered her father wistfully describing what he’d seen and learned watching dissections, the few times he’d visited Imardin and the Healer’s Guild in order to improve his knowledge. His descriptions had been both horrifying and fascinating, and she’d always wondered whether she, in that situation, would faint, or would lose herself in the mysteries of the human body as he had. She liked to believe she wouldn’t faint, and wondered every time they treated a gory injury or encountered a corpse if that was test enough.

“Eugh!” Zakia said. “I don’t know how you can stand it. Don’t go if you don’t want to, Tessia. Nobody would blame you.”

Tessia smiled and looked at Kendaria.

“I’d love to.”

Dakon’s wagon pulled up in front of the imposing grey stone building, home of the Drayn family for four centuries. Jayan sighed and forced himself out of his seat. As always happened when he visited his childhood home, mixed feelings arose at the first sight of it. Memories washed over him of childish games played with his brother, teasing his younger sisters, the warmth and smell of his mother, and celebrations both formal and informal. They brought a wistful fondness, inevitably followed by a gut-sinking resentment and remembered fear, grief and bitterness as he recalled punishment for mistakes that still seemed too harsh, the terrible feeling of loss and being lost and alone after his mother had gone, and the sour realisation of what being the second son meant.

Magic had offered him an escape in more ways than one. It took him from a home that had become stifling and humiliating, and gave him the means, if needed, to be independent of his family’s wealth.

Wealth? Or is that charity?

Still, he wasn’t stupid. He hadn’t cut himself off from them. His father’s nature might never soften, but with the weakness of age it was a blunt weapon. His brother’s arrogance in youth had also faded a little with maturity, perhaps because he knew Jayan, as a magician, would not be the dependent and obedient little brother he’d anticipated pushing around for the rest of his life, perhaps because he’d learned that other people – people he wanted to impress – were repelled by his maliciousness.

The door servant bowed and opened the door. Walking inside, Jayan looked around the greeting hall. Nothing had changed. The same paintings hung on the walls. The same screens framed the windows. Another servant greeted him and led him through the house. Jayan breathed in the sight and smell of familiarity. It was like dust laced with old perfume.

Finally they reached a small room at the back of the house, furnished with two old chairs. This was his father’s favourite room, into which he had always retreated “to think”. It had been a place forbidden to small children, where stern talks and punishments were given to older children, and orders were given to adult children. The significance wasn’t lost on Jayan. His father was in the mood for imposing his will. Jayan would have to be careful.

Yet Lord Karvelan, head of family Drayn, looked smaller and more lined than Jayan remembered, as if he had dried out slightly in the year since Jayan had seen him. There was still strength in the set of his shoulders and the directness of his gaze, though. Jayan met that gaze, smiled politely, and waited for his father to speak. You always waited for Lord Karvelan to speak. It was a right he insisted on.

“Welcome back, Apprentice Jayan,” Karvelan said.

“Thank you, Father,” Jayan replied. “Did you get my message?”

Karvelan nodded. “I gather our notes crossed each other.”

“It appears so,” Jayan replied, holding up the brusque summons he had received that morning, not long after he had dutifully sent his own note informing his father of his presence in the city and enquiring if he should visit.

“Sit down,” Karvelan said, nodding at the other chair. Jayan obeyed. Karvelan was silent a moment, his expression thoughtful.
Strange how I never call him “Father” in my mind. Always “Karvelan”. But Mother was always “Mother”.

“How is your training going?” Karvelan asked finally.

“Well.”

“Any closer to finishing?”

“Yes, but I can’t say how close. Only Lord Dakon can answer that question.”

“You were almost done when you last visited.” Karvelan scowled. “Is it true he has another apprentice?”

Jayan nodded. “It is.”

The scowl deepened. “This will surely delay your training. He should have waited until yours was finished.”

“He had no choice. She is a natural and dangerous if left untrained. By law he must train her.”

His father’s eyes narrowed and Jayan almost expected a scolding. Instead the old man grimaced. “Then he should have sent her elsewhere.”

Jayan shrugged. “He probably would have, if I were not close to independence. Even so, I don’t presume to question my master’s decisions. He does, usually, know best.”

Karvelan’s expression changed from approval at Jayan’s subservience to another scowl.

“Does he? What of this group he has joined? This ‘Circle of Friends’. Do you not find it an unwise move? It smells of rebellion.”

Jayan gazed at his father in surprise, then realised he was staring and looked away.

“You didn’t know I knew, did you?” There was satisfaction in Karvelan’s voice.

“Oh, the group isn’t a secret.”

“Then what?”

“That anyone… this idea that . . .” Jayan stopped and shook his head. It was never wise to phrase anything in a way that might be taken as a criticism of his father’s opinion. “Rebellion is a strong word. I assure you, the group has the encouragement and support of the king. Or…do you suggest rebellion against someone else?”

A sullen darkness had entered his father’s eyes – a look Jayan knew all too well. It was the look that Karvelan wore whenever he had reason to dislike his younger son.

“Rebellion against the city
is
rebellion against the king,” he growled. He shifted, his gaze sliding away for a brief moment. “I don’t want you associating with this Circle,” he said. “Links to them could reflect badly on your family.”

Jayan opened his mouth to protest, but stopped himself. He wanted to assure his father that the Circle of Friends was only concerned with the defence of the country. The
whole
country.

That he could not, in good conscience, oppose the defending of his homeland. But there was no point in arguing.

So he sighed. “Until I am a higher magician I must obey Lord Dakon. If he associates with the Circle then I have no choice but to do so as well. But…I will do what I can to remain a mere observer.”

“You should find yourself a new teacher,” Karvelan said, but without conviction. He knew that the choice, again, was out of his son’s hands. Jayan didn’t test his patience by pointing that out.

“I will do what I can,” he repeated.

“Finish your training,” his father said. “Don’t let that girl take all of Lord Dakon’s attention. She has no good reputation or alliances to lose.” He shook his head. “It is irresponsible of your master to drag you into this.”

Jayan said nothing. A silence fell between them, and when he judged it long enough to justify changing the subject, he asked how his brother was faring. While his father proudly described Velan’s conquests in trade and of women who might be acceptable marriage prospects, Jayan found himself thinking about Tessia.

No reputation to lose?
he mused.
No annoying family obligations to shake off, more like it. And alliances… from the way she and Avaria were talking last night, after their party, I suspect she’s doing a very good job of making friends here. With some particularly powerful women of the city, too.

And he’d been worried about her being accepted.

Suddenly he could see the attraction Tessia might have for city socialites. There were no alliances to endanger by befriending her. As a village healer’s daughter, she was educated enough to be acceptable company, different enough to provide entertainment. He could even see that her interest in healing, and determination to pursue it, made her an exciting person for city socialites to watch and admire.

Even if she failed, she would provide entertainment for the rich and bored. And, like Jayan, at least her magic would ensure she could not fall too far or too hard.

We have more in common than I thought
, he mused wryly. He liked the idea that, if either of them ever fell from grace, the other might be there to offer support.
It’s always easier to become friends with someone you have something in common with. I just hope it doesn’t take some socially disastrous fall before she’ll consider the possibility I might be a friend.

The healers’ university looked exactly as Tessia had imagined. Her father had described it as an “old but strange building that has adopted and absorbed surrounding houses as opportunity and funds allowed”. It sounded confusing and intriguing, and it was.

Though a muddle of interconnecting buildings, all had been built in the Kyralian style so there was a unifying look about the exterior. Inside, it was like walking through somebody’s home without ever finding the back door. Narrow corridors led to more narrow corridors. The doors on either side of the corridors were nearly all closed, so there was little natural light in the passages. Instead they were lit with the warm glow of oil lamps. The few rooms Tessia managed to look inside were no larger than the kitchen in her parents’ house, and furnished in a similar way with shelving on the walls, a table in the middle, and a fireplace at one end.

Kendaria was leading her to the dissection room. Tessia could not help wondering where in this place the healers would find a room big enough to hold both an audience the size her new friend had described
and
a dissection table.

Then they stepped from a doorway into a strange space. It was like the underside of a wooden staircase, except it was a very wide staircase. She could hear footsteps and voices above.

Ahead a narrow break in the “staircases” allowed access beyond, and Kendaria led her forward. They emerged into a large room. Looking around, Tessia realised that the wide stairways were actually tiered seats that sloped up to plain brick walls – some with bricked-up windows. Several young men were already sitting on the steps. They eyed her and Kendaria with interest.

The walls look like the exterior of houses
, Tessia thought
.
She looked up. The beams of a wood and tile roof stretched overhead.
This must have been a small street or a garden. They just built those seats and covered it over.
Which explained why it was so cold.

In the middle of the room was a generous stone bench. From the grooves carved into it to carry fluids into buckets she guessed it was the dissection table. On another, smaller table nearby several tools had been arranged. She knew what most of them were and wondered if the rest were specifically for dissections.

“We don’t have to stay, if you’re having second thoughts,” Kendaria murmured.

Realising the woman must have noticed her looking at the tools, Tessia smiled. “No, I’m looking forward to it. Where do we sit?”

“First I need to introduce you to Healer Orran. I don’t think there’ll be any problem with my bringing you here, especially as your father is a healer and you’ve been his assistant, and we’ve paid our fee. But it’s good manners to ask, and to introduce you.”

She led Tessia to two men of about the same age as Tessia’s father. The men were talking, as far as Tessia could tell, about the pregnancy of a colleague’s wife. Just idle chatter, but though the pair both glanced at Kendaria and Tessia when they approached, they continued talking as if the two women were not present.

Kendaria waited, her gaze on the face of the taller man. Her expression was one of patience and determination. The two men still did not halt their gossiping – which was what it was, Tessia decided, when it became clear that there was nothing about the pregnancy that should concern the healers professionally. They repeated what they were saying several times, each time phrased in a different way.

Were they, by ignoring Kendaria for the sake of this pointless chatter, being deliberately rude? The longer and sillier the conversation become, the more convinced Tessia became that they were. But the woman remained calm and expectant, her eyes never leaving Healer Orran’s face. At first Tessia was puzzled, then angry at this treatment, then fascinated. Clearly a social game was taking place here, and she couldn’t help wondering why, and what the rules were.

Finally the two men’s talk became so inane it faltered into an awkward silence. The taller man sighed and turned to smile coldly at Kendaria.

“Ah, I see you have decided to join the crowd today, Kendaria of Foden,” he observed. Tessia swallowed the urge to laugh. There hadn’t been a crowd when they had arrived, but now the room echoed with the voices of many more occupants.

“Indeed I have, Healer Orran,” she replied. She nodded at Tessia. “I have brought a new friend from out of town: Apprentice Tessia from Aylen ley. Her father is healer to Lord Dakon, and she has worked as his assistant most of her young life.” She smiled. “That is until recently, when she became Lord Dakon’s apprentice.”

Both healers’ eyebrows rose.

“A magician with a touch of healer’s training,” Healer Orran said. “How interesting. What is your father’s name?”

“Healer Veran,” Tessia replied.

The two men frowned thoughtfully. “I have not heard of him,” the other healer said.

“You wouldn’t have,” Tessia told him. “He did not study here, though he has visited from time to time. His grandfather was a member of the guild. His name was Healer Berin, though he worked here so long ago I imagine you wouldn’t—”

The two men’s mouths had opened in identical circles.

“Ahh,” they both said.