Varice untangled the chain and held the necklace up. “You made this for me?” Her eyes were wide and filled with amazement.
He nodded, looking at the ground. “I tried to find a blue stone with the properties I wanted, but this seemed better.”
“Would you fasten it?” she asked, nudging him. “So I can wear it.”
He knew she must fasten her necklaces all the time, but he couldn’t resist her request. He stepped behind her to do up the hook, breathing in her scent as he did so. She wore woods-lily scent today, just the lightest touch. It made him a little giddy.
“There,” he said, facing her once more.
She had taken a mirror from her bag and was examining herself in it. “It’s lovely!” she cried, flinging her arms around his neck. Before he knew what was happening, she had kissed him firmly on the mouth. Preet sang, flying around them, before Varice let Arram go. “I can’t wait until Gissa sees it!” Varice told him. “She’ll die of envy!”
“No, don’t,” Arram said, his head still spinning from her kiss. “She might want me to make her one, and…they’re special, that’s all. It takes strength to make them.”
Varice looked at him. “You said there isn’t magic in it. I don’t feel magic in it.”
He shrugged. “There isn’t, but…I think about them, when I work on them. About the power that naturally goes with the stone, and the metal. Jade and silver for money and protection, silver for the moon—”
“I knew that,” Varice interrupted. “Silver for the goddess, remember?”
He smiled at her. “And jade for love.”
She blushed. “Oh, who needs love? A mage only needs fun—love gets us in trouble.”
“Well, but you might want it someday, and then there’s the love of friends.” Feeling bold, he put an arm around her neck and kissed her hair. “But it’s hard, somehow, thinking about those things as I work on a piece. So don’t tell her it was me.”
Varice sighed. “All right.” She brightened. “I’ll tell her I’ve had it in my things for years and just found it again.” She kissed his hand and unwound his arm. “Ozorne will be wondering where we got to.”
“So he will,” Arram agreed. “And we have papers to write for Master Cosmas.”
—
To Arram’s pleasure, there were no examinations for infirmary work. Gerb, who oversaw him when Ramasu was away, pointed out sourly that every day in the infirmary was an examination. Arram didn’t mind. That month he had been assigned to work in the infirmary on Friday nights, where he cleaned wounds and healed black eyes in addition to judging more serious injuries and referring these wounded to the healer best at their particular hurts. Friday night, he learned immediately, was the night many of the poor families celebrated being free of work, even if they were too exhausted to attend their temples on Saturday.
What Arram liked was not so much the hectic hours, but the quieter ones, near dawn. He had made a new friend at the infirmary. Okolo was a curvy, lively girl who knew what to do with a shy, lanky boy in a storage closet when the waiting area was empty and the other healers were napping or playing card games. She always knew how to make Arram feel better when a sick or wounded child came in, just as she knew to fetch Arram when a child would not calm down for one of the other healers. She was fascinated by his juggling, and even learned to keep two balls of linen bandages in the air at once.
At the end of the term, she told Arram she was to be reassigned to an infirmary just for children in Yamut, far to the east. “They have so much poverty there, with all the fighting that goes on,” she explained. “But they also have healers from Jindazhen and the Kepula and Natu island countries who come to study and work there. Their ways are different than ours.” She kissed him. “I’d ask you to come with me—we’d have so much fun!—but I know you would never leave your friends.”
He would have protested, but he knew she was right.
—
The term ended. Arram was released from infirmary duty to travel with Sebo. They took a rented fisherman’s boat through the harbor at Thak’s Gate and westward on the coast. Here they camped in a secluded cove. Over their campfire Sebo talked about the sea and its temperament, the swift way weather could turn, and the glories of the water below the surface.
“You’ll see tomorrow,” she told Arram just before she retired to the tent their crew had raised for her. “Later next year I’ll take you for more extended journeys. It’s good to know seas and rivers. Then we’ll visit lakes and the more vigorous rivers inland. Unless you object?”
“Never!” Arram said eagerly. “It sounds wonderful!”
Sebo eyed Preet. “Stop pouting, bird,” she commanded. “You can’t go underwater with him, and that’s where we go tomorrow.”
Preet croaked at the old woman. To Arram’s ear the sound was very rude. “Preet! Manners!” he scolded.
She glared at him and croaked again, but apparently she was not too vexed. When he settled in his blankets, she cuddled into her usual place under his hair, against his neck.
“I love you, little bird,” he whispered very quietly. He had put his bedroll down a short distance from the others. If he talked in his sleep, he didn’t want anyone to know if he called out, especially if he called out a particular name, like Varice’s.
Walking into the sea with Sebo in the morning required all the nerve he could muster. It was not so bad in the cove, but when he was up to his chest, an incoming wave knocked him over. He fought his way up and a yard forward. It was harder to touch the bottom in salt water, as he found when the next wave knocked him down. He was not going to drown—he wore the mages’ bubble that kept him dry and able to breathe—but he floundered like an infant on a table.
Sebo made a sign in the water, one that glowed with her Gift. Arram copied it and immediately went to the bottom, standing as if he were on land. Walking was more difficult. The sea pushed back at him until he copied Sebo’s walk, turned slightly slantwise into the tide. Now they made progress, avoiding the creatures that lived among the rocks of the bottom and confronting the fish that came to eye them. Arram might have stayed there forever if Sebo had not pointed out that it was getting dark above.
He said little as they rinsed and ate supper. He did tell Preet about it when he couldn’t sleep. “I didn’t appreciate it when I came here,” he told the bird. “But I was ashore then. The gods are truly wondrous, to have created this world.”
“Good,” he heard a voice whisper. He looked around, but Sebo was nowhere near, and that was her voice. “A little piety is a good thing for a boy, and sleep is a good thing for an old woman. Sleep.”
—
Sebo woke him well before dawn to show him to a great moon tide. It bared the seashell creatures, crabs, shrimp, and slugs that normally hid in water-covered crevices. Arram sketched as many as he could before they were summoned to their boat.
On their way home through Thak’s Gate’s harbor, they saw people screaming and pointing at the water. Curious, Arram went forward. One glimpse at the problem, and he yelled for Sebo.
The immense brownish-green shape in the river rose, revealing its vast upper body. Preet zipped across the river and landed on the monster. Arram called on a spell that would make his voice louder. “He is a god!” he shouted to the watchers on land. “He is Enzi, the crocodile god of the Zekoi.”
Very flattering, the god replied. Preet, if you will devour those insects behind my ears…Enzi sighed as Preet pecked at the flesh where the insects were vexing him. I thank you.
“How sweet,” Sebo said tartly as she joined Arram. “Have you a good reason for terrifying half the city?”
I could not find you on the river, Enzi retorted. You were nowhere near the university, the capital, the palace, or this sewage hole. How was I to know you were jaunting about on all that salt poison?
“Do you have something to say?” demanded Sebo. “If not, I am weary to the bone. I’ve gone out to sea before and you never objected.”
/> This is different, Enzi told her. Troublesome times are coming. Troublesome for us all, land and water. Danger and death come. You are needed here. Preet rose from his head and returned to Arram. Thank you, child, Enzi said. He glared at Arram. And no, I have yet to find a proper gift. You may continue to look after her. Don’t feed her so much.
“Enzi,” Sebo said, “what kind of trouble is coming?”
What other kind is there? asked the god. Blood trouble. He smacked the water with his tail and vanished.
Sebo sighed. “I will tell those I think are serious and wary. You concentrate on your studies. And offerings to the gods might be a good idea.”
—
The students insisted that the great storm that broke before the start of school came because the gods were cruel. It lasted all the night before and the final day of vacation, as well as the first two days of school. Like Lindhall’s students, Arram immediately went to help with the animals. They rushed to get the outdoor creatures indoors and calm the nervous ones, as well as check that no rain leaked through to the rooms where the indoor animals were kept. The master himself muttered as he and Arram did their last check of their charges, saying “It’s too early for this, much too early.”
Worried, and perhaps just a little because he wanted to, Arram left Preet indoors during a break on the first day and went to the arena-like circle where he practiced fire magic. Thunder crashed over the university. He knew a circle of protection would do him no good. He simply raised his arms and called to the lightning snakes with his Gift.
He didn’t know how long he stood there as the rain drenched him completely. It was a while, because his arms ached when he lowered them. This first edge of the storm had passed overhead, taking its thunder with it. Puzzled, he climbed up to his room. The animals sleeping there complained when he dripped on them. He apologized quickly and gathered up dry clothing. Dumping his wet clothes in the hall, he tried to remember if he had seen so much as a single bolt of lightning.
He had not.
The next day he asked a number of people, including his masters, if they had seen lightning the day or night before. Some were positive they had not. Others were unsure, but were positive that they must have seen it. And still others demanded to know why he asked such a silly question.
Several waves of the storm, all lightning-less as far as he could tell, passed through before it ended sometime during the third night. Lindhall’s students returned the animals to their normal homes, opening weather shutters to the sun and warmer breezes. For the rest, the university was in session.
Yadeen scowled when a yawning Arram greeted him. “This year we turn to crystals, the tricksters of stone magic,” he informed Arram. “If you give them so much as a moment’s lapse of attention, they will slip your Gift along their surfaces and tangle it into a knot you cannot undo, so wake up!”
Arram covered another yawn. Masters—all masters—did not care for excuses.
Yadeen snorted. “You’d think Lindhall believes you’re his only student. All right, we’ll go slow, but only for today!”
Arram stared at the master.
“You think I was never a student?” Yadeen demanded, his large eyes flashing. “Now.” He opened a small box to reveal an array of bright stones in pink, blue, green, red, violet, and yellow shades. “No magic. Identify these and the magic associated with them, and we’ll work on your juggling. Your cross juggling is still a little awkward.”
—
Three days later Arram was deciding on lunch when he noticed how whispery the dining room was. He looked around. Everyone seemed shocked. Some girls, and a few boys, were weeping.
He hurried to his table. All of his friends were present but Ozorne. Varice was crying into a handkerchief while Gissa hugged her about the shoulders.
“I barely knew the man,” Varice explained. “But he was wonderful.”
“What happened?” Arram asked everyone at the table.
Varice laid her hand on his arm. “It’s Prince Stiloit, and his vessel, and two other ships of the Western Navy,” she said quietly. “That storm caught the fleet out to sea. Three ships sank. His Highness drowned.”
Along with his crew and those other crews, Arram thought. Was this what Enzi meant by his warning? It must be.
He thought of the prince, so alive and charming. “Black God ease his passing,” he murmured. “And that of his people.” The others murmured their affirmation.
“The imperial escort came for Ozorne this morning,” Tristan said. “Twelve days’ mourning at the palace, poor fellow. He asked if we could lend him our notes.” He looked at Arram. “Too bad he can’t borrow your notes for anything but illusions.”
“Tristan, don’t needle him,” Varice said. “He has no control over where the masters put him. You know that by now. And why should you complain? You two share fire magic and war magic, not to mention weapons magic and spy magic. Don’t tell me differently, because I saw your schedule.”
Tristan glared at her. “You hold yourself very high since hobnobbing with the nobility at the games,” he retorted, his face grown hard and far less handsome. “Getting too good for us peasants?”
“Tristan, enough,” Gissa told him. To Varice and Arram she said, “We’re all upset today. We have to go on mourning food and mourning meditations for— How many days is it, Varice?”
“Twelve, just like the imperial family mourns,” the younger girl replied glumly. “Three for Mithros, three for the Goddess, three for the Black God, and three for the Graveyard Hag. An hour of meditation before supper, and flatbread and butter for meals. Unless you know someone inventive. The kitchens will be closed and locked.”
Tristan leaned on his elbow, flashing a bright smile at Varice. “My dearest, dearest friend!” he said teasingly.
Varice propped her chin on her hand. “Of course, toward the end of the twelve days one’s invention and supplies run thin.”
“We have a Saturday in all that. We can get a meal in the city,” Gissa remarked.
Arram was not listening. He picked at his food, thinking about lightning. If there had been no lightning here at the school, what if it had been over the fleet?
He hadn’t seen it over the university during all that thunder, when Faziy said the two always came together.
Faziy.
She had told Chioké about lightning snakes, and Chioké had found her a job in the city that she would be a fool to resist. Such a favor put her in his debt and took her away from her university friends.
Chioké liked power. He had his eye on Cosmas’s place, but surely chief mage to an imperial heir was better, particularly when bad things happened to the other heirs.
There were only two people who would listen if Arram mentioned it to them.
—
Sebo scowled at him when he finished. “You did not tell me—or Yadeen—about the incident when Faziy told Chioké about lightning snakes.”
Arram thought of several excuses, none of them good, and shrugged instead.
“Young people and your shrugs!” she snapped. They were sitting on a log that had washed up on the riverbank. Now she picked up her walking stick and walked to the water’s edge. Arram wondered if he should follow and decided to wait instead.
She returned, but she did not sit. Instead she leaned on her staff and frowned down at him. “You saw no lightning in the storm? Felt none?”
Arram shook his head.
“But there was thunder.”
He nodded. “Right on top of me for a bit. Even in little storms I can see flickering in the clouds, but there was nothing this time. And I suppose I do feel, uh, prickling as a storm advances. But only in the ones with lightning. Not the mild ones.”
Sebo stared off into the distance. Finally she asked, “Have you told anyone else? About this storm?”
Arram snorted. “They’d make fun of me and call me—” He was about to say what they really called him, “an ignorant tribesman,” until he remembered that Sebo
was born to a tribe. “A fool,” he amended.
She smiled grimly. “You’ll have to learn to catch yourself better than that, if you mean to enter a prince’s service.”
A prince, Arram thought, dismayed. Ozorne. Ozorne will have to live close to court.
She patted him on the shoulder. “Tell no one. Not any masters, either—I’ll decide who should know. It’s not just students who think only ignorant tribespeople believe in the lightning snakes. You were right to tell me, though. I think you know that. Don’t worry about it anymore.”
“But something was going on, wasn’t it?” Arram asked. “Someone else who knew about lightning snakes did something, or got Faziy or someone else—”
Sebo put her hand over his mouth. “And you’ll keep that to yourself, too,” she ordered harshly. “Understand? Or do I have to put a silence on you?”
Arram shook his head.
She took her hand away. “You are too cursed clever for your own good. Learn to hold your tongue. Now, bring up your protective spells. We’re visiting the hippos.”
“Do we have to?” Arram complained, but he stood and did as she ordered. He would think about her warnings later.
—
In twelve days the locks on the kitchen were removed. The students descended on the dining hall as locusts might on a field of wheat. Ozorne returned that night and piled his plate before joining them. Preet hopped to his shoulder once he’d eaten for a little while and began to inspect him, running her beak through his hair and over his cheek, then wandering down his arm to inspect his hand. Finished, she peeped at him until he stroked her.
“Yes, I’ve lost weight,” he told her and his silent friends. “The emperor is strict in his mourning observances. I was more concerned for my mother’s health than my own. I was finally able to persuade her physician to give her yogurt drinks during the day.” His smile was long and sly. “He discovered he was more afraid of me than he was of the emperor, at least in such close quarters.”