Copyright

HarperVoyager

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018

Copyright © Tamora Pierce 2018

Map copyright © Isidre Mones 2017

Jacket design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018

Tamora Pierce asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008304317

Ebook Edition © August 2018 ISBN: 9780008304331

Version: 2018-08-02

PRAISE FOR TAMORA PIERCE

‘Tamora Pierce didn’t just blaze a trail. Her heroines cut a swathe through the fantasy world with wit, strength, and savvy. Pierce is the real lioness, and we’re all just running to keep pace.’

LEIGH BARDUGO, No.1 New York Times bestselling author

‘Tamora Pierce creates epic worlds populated by girls and women of bravery, heart, and strength. Her work inspired a generation of writers and continues to inspire us.’

HOLLY BLACK, No.1 New York Times bestselling author

‘Tamora Pierce’s books shaped me not only as a young writer but also as a young woman. Her complex, unforgettable heroines and vibrant, intricate worlds blazed a trail for young adult fantasy – and I get to write what I love today because of the path she forged throughout her career. She is a pillar, an icon, and an inspiration.’

SARAH J. MAAS, No.1 New York Times bestselling author

‘I take more comfort from and as great pleasure in Tamora Pierce’s Tortall novels as I do from Game of Thrones.’

Washington Post

‘Tamora Pierce and her brilliant heroines didn’t just break down barriers; they smashed them with magical fire.’

KATHERINE ARDEN, author of The Bear and the Nightingale

Dedication

To ladies of great generosity to stray and homeless cats:

Aurora Celeste (and her small future readers),

Jennifer Margaret Grosse,

Jonie,

Kat,

and Kate Kelley

with heartfelt thanks from my caretaking family and me

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise

Dedication

Map

Chapter 1: August 30–September 1, 435

Chapter 2: September 2–October 14, 435

Chapter 3: October 14–16, 435

Chapter 4: October 16, 435–March 436

Chapter 5: June 1–4, 436

Chapter 6: June 5, 436–March 18, 437

Chapter 7: May 23–August 24, 437

Chapter 8: August 25–28, 437

Chapter 9: August 31–December 2, 437

Chapter 10: December 3–31, 437

Chapter 11: January 1–9, 438

Chapter 12: February–March 438

Chapter 13: March 438

Chapter 14: April 438

Chapter 15: April–May 15, 438

Chapter 16: June–September 2, 438

Chapter 17: September 15–30, 438

Chapter 18: September 30–October, 438

Chapter 19: October 438–June 439

Chapter 20: Summer Term 439

Chapter 21: Summer Term 439

Chapter 22

Acknowledgements

Glossary

Also by Tamora Pierce

About the Publisher

Map

THE IMPERIAL UNIVERSITY OF CARTHAK
The School for Mages

The Lower Academy for Youthful Mages

SCHEDULE OF STUDY, AUTUMN TERM, 435 H.E.

Student: Arram Draper

Learning Level: 10

Breakfast – Third Morning Bell

Morning Classes

History of the Carthaki Empire

Essentials of Water Magic, beginning studies

Language: Old Thak

Lunch – Noon Bell

Afternoon Classes

Mathematics

Essential Earth Magic: Seed and Harvest (First Half Autumn Term); Stone and Earth (Spring)

Reading and Writing

The Tools of Magic: Bowls, Mortar and Pestle, Salt, Water, Vials

Supper – Seventh Afternoon Bell

Extra Study at Need

CHAPTER 1
August 30–September 1, 435
THE IMPERIAL COLISEUM, THAK CITY, THE CARTHAKI EMPIRE

Arram Draper hung on the rail of the great arena, hoisting himself until his belly was bent over the polished stone. It was the only way he could get between the two bulky men who blocked his view. He knew it was risky, but he couldn’t waste his first chance to see the gladiators when they marched into the huge stadium. His father and grandfather were back at their seats, arguing about new business ventures. They weren’t paying attention, waving him off when he asked to visit the privies and never realizing he’d squirmed his way down to the rail instead.

Apart from them, he was alone. There were no friends from school for company. They all said he was too young. He was eleven – well, ten, in truth, but he told them he was eleven. Even that didn’t earn him friends among his older schoolfellows. Still, he wasn’t a baby! If he didn’t see the games with his family today, he might never get the chance, and he’d learned only last night he might not see Papa again for two years, even three. Carthak was a costly voyage for Yusaf Draper, and his new venture would take him away for a long time. But in the morning, Arram would be able to tell the older students that he had watched the games right from the arena wall!

Already he’d heard the trumpets and drums announcing the arrival of the emperor and his heirs. He couldn’t see their faces, but surely all the sparkling gold, silver, and gems meant the wearers were part of the imperial family. He could see the Grand Crier, who stood on a platform halfway between him and the royals. More important, he could plainly hear the man’s booming voice as he announced the emperor’s many titles and those of his heirs.

‘Lookit!’ The bruiser on Arram’s left bumped him as he pointed north, to the emperor’s dais. Arram wobbled and might have pitched headfirst onto the sands twenty feet below if the man on his other side hadn’t caught him by the belt and hauled him inside the rail. Without appearing to notice Arram’s near fall, the man on the left went on to say, ‘There’s the widow, and her son! She never comes to games!’

‘Who’s the widow?’ Arram asked. ‘Who’s the son?’

The big men grinned at each other over his head. ‘For all you’re a brown boy, you don’t know your imperials,’ said the one who had bumped him. ‘The widow is Princess Mahira, that was married to Prince Apodan.’

‘He was killed fightin’ rebels two year back,’ the other man said. ‘An’ the boy is Prince Ozorne.’

Now Arram remembered. Ozorne was a year or two ahead of him in the Lower Academy.

From the podium, the crier bellowed that the emperor would bless the games. Everyone thundered to their feet and then hushed. His voice amplified, most likely by a mage, the emperor prayed to the gods for an excellent round of games. When he finished, everyone sat.

For a very long moment the arena was still. Then the boy felt a slow, regular thudding rise through the stone and up his legs. His body shuddered against the railing. Nearby, in the wall that took up a third of the southern end of the arena, huge barred gates swung inward.

Here came drummers and trumpeters, clad only in gold-trimmed scarlet loincloths. Their oiled bodies gleamed as brightly as the polished metal of their instruments. The brawny men represented every race of the empire in the colours of their skin and hair and the tattoos on their faces and bodies. One thing they had in common: iron slave rings around their throats.

Arram rubbed his own throat uneasily. His original home, Tyra, was not a slave country. Three years in Carthak had not made him comfortable with the practice, not when there were no slaves at his school. He saw them only when he was outside, and the sight of them made him edgy.

The leader of the musicians raised his staff. The trumpeters let loose a blare that made Arram jump, almost tipping him over the rail. The men caught him again.

‘You’re best off at your seat,’ the friendly one advised. ‘Ain’t your mamma callin’ yeh?’

‘I’m eleven,’ Arram lied. ‘I don’t need a mother – I’m a student at the School for Mages!’

The men’s laughter was drowned out by a thunder of drumrolls. Arram gave the sands what he called his special, magical squint. Now he saw waves of spells all over the arena floor. They sent ripples through the air, carrying the arena’s noise even to the people in the seats high above.

‘Why do they allow spells on the arena sand?’ he shouted at the friendlier of the two men. As far as he knew, magic was forbidden here. Perhaps they allowed only their own magic, just as they allowed the emperor’s magic.

‘What spells?’ the man bellowed. He reached over Arram’s head and tapped his friend as the musicians marched past. ‘The lad thinks there’s magic on the sands!’

The other roughneck looked down his flattened nose at Arram. A couple of scars on his face told the boy he may have come by that nose in fighting. ‘What’re you, upstart?’ he growled. ‘Some kind of mage?’

‘Of course I am!’ Arram retorted. ‘Didn’t you hear me say I’m in the School for Mages?’

‘He’s simple,’ the friendlier man said. ‘Leave ’im be. Who’re you bettin’ on?’

The other man seized Arram by the collar and lifted him into the air. ‘If you’re a mage, spell me, then,’ he growled. ‘Turn me into somethin’, before I break yer skinny neck for botherin’ us.’

‘Don’t be stupid!’ Arram cried. His mind, as always, had fixed on the question of magic. ‘Only a great mage can turn a person into something else! Even—’

His foe choked off Arram’s next comment – that he might never be a great mage – by turning his fist to cut off the boy’s voice entirely. ‘Stupid, am I?’ he shouted, his eyes bulging. ‘You moneyed little piece of tripe—’

Arram might have corrected him concerning the state of his purse, but he couldn’t breathe and had finally remembered a teacher’s advice: ‘You don’t make friends when you tell someone you think he is stupid.’ He was seeing light bursts against a darkening world. He called up the first bit of magic he’d ever created, after a walk on a silk carpet brought flame to his fingers. He drew that magic from the sands and seized the fist on his collar.

The tough yelped and released Arram instantly. ‘You! What did you do to me?’

Arram couldn’t answer. He hit the rail and went over backwards, arms flailing.

He was trying to think of lifesaving magic when a pair of strong, dark brown arms caught him just before he struck the ground. He looked into a man’s face: eyes so brown they seemed black in the bright sun, a flattened nose, a grinning mouth, and holes in both earlobes. His head was shaved.

‘You don’t want to join us, lad, trust me, you don’t,’ he told Arram, already walking back against the line of marching gladiators. The ones closest to them were laughing and slapping or punching the big man on the shoulder. Like him, they wore leather armour. Like him, they were oiled all over. Some were missing ears or eyes. These were the beginners, the midlevel fighters, and the old-timers, not the heroes of the arena. Some didn’t look at Arram; they were murmuring to themselves or fondling tiny god-images that hung on cords around their necks.

‘Hurry, boy,’ an older gladiator muttered to Arram’s rescuer. ‘Guards comin’.’

‘You don’t want the guards catching you,’ the big man explained to Arram as he quickened his pace. ‘They’ll whip you before they cut you loose. Is your family here?’

‘Sitting in the copper section,’ Arram said miserably. He had no idea how he’d get back to Papa and Grandda.

‘Don’t fuss,’ the big man told him. ‘We’ll fix it.’

Arram smelled something odd, like a barnyard thick with hay and dung. The ground under his rescuer shook. The boy looked up and cringed. Massive grey shapes approached, swaying as the sands thundered beneath their broad, flat feet. They waved huge, snake-like trunks painted in brightly coloured stripes, circles, and dots.

He had never been so close to an elephant! One halted in front of them as the others followed the parade of gladiators. As the gladiator lowered Arram to the ground, the gigantic creature knelt before them.

This elephant was decorated all over in red and bronze designs, even down to its toenails. It eyed Arram with one tiny eye and then the other before it stuck out its immense trunk and snuffled the boy. Despite his lingering fear, Arram grinned – the trunk’s light touch on his face and neck tickled. Carefully he reached out and stroked it.

‘This is Ua,’ the big man told Arram. ‘Her name means “flower”.’ He pointed to the rider, seated behind the creature’s large, knobbed head. ‘My friend’s name is—’ The name he pronounced sounded to Arram like ‘Kipaeyoh.’ ‘It means “butterfly” in Old Thak. Kipepeo,’ he called up to the armoured woman, ‘this lad must return to the bleachers – Where?’ He looked at Arram, who pointed. By now his father and grandfather had shoved up to the rail, next to the kinder burly man. The one who had dumped Arram over the wall was nowhere to be seen.

‘He must be placed there,’ the big man told Kipepeo. ‘Can you do it? Quickly?’

‘For you, Musenda, my love, anything,’ the woman called. She blew the man a kiss, then sounded a series of whistles.

‘Ua will get us all out of trouble,’ the man called Musenda told Arram. ‘No yelping. Ua’s as gentle as a kitten. For now.’ The elephant twined her trunk around the boy’s waist and lifted him. Arram yelped as his feet left the ground.

‘Thank you – I think!’ Arram called as Musenda trotted off to his place in line. The passing gladiators and elephant riders waved to Arram as they spread out in their ranks. Arram realized they were blocking the imperial soldiers who were trying to catch him. He clapped his hands over his face.

‘Don’t panic,’ Ua’s rider ordered. ‘She won’t let you come to harm.’

Arram lowered his hands and realized the elephant was too short to reach the top of the wall. ‘Her trunk isn’t long enough!’ he cried.

Kipepeo laughed. Tapping the great animal with a long rod, she guided Ua to the wall just beneath Arram’s relatives. Frightened and excited at the same time, the boy grabbed some of the coarse hairs on Ua’s crown for balance, trying not to yank them. Then he prayed to the Graveyard Hag, Carthak’s patron goddess and, he hoped, someone who might look after elephants and boys.

Kipepeo gave three sharp whistles.

Slowly, groaning in elephant, Ua straightened and stood on her back feet. Arram gasped as she lifted him high with her trunk. Now he was within easy reach of his father and grandfather. He raised his hands. They bent down, gripped him, and hauled him up and over the arena’s rail.

On solid stone once more, Arram turned and shouted, ‘Thank you, Ua! Thank you, Kipepeo!’

His two adults scolded him loud and long as they dragged him up the steps to the copper seating, but they also bought him a lemon ice and grilled lamb on skewers once they got the tale of his short adventure out of him. They even helped him to stand on the seat between them as the lengthy line of warriors, animals, and chariots finished their parade around the arena.

The gladiators bowed to the emperor, thrust out their fists, and shouted, ‘Glory to the emperor! Glory to the empire!’ The moment they finished, the elephants reared on their hind legs and trumpeted, the sound blasting against the arena walls. The crowd cheered, Arram and his family cheering with them.

Now the parade returned to the gate at the rear of the coliseum, with the exception of two groups of fighters.

‘It’s a scrimmage,’ Yusaf explained.

‘It’s a fight between lesser fighters, like a small war,’ Metan added. He was Arram’s grandfather, owner of their cloth-selling business. ‘The ones that need more experience. One team wears green armbands, and the other wears orange.’

‘Have you a favourite?’ Yusaf bellowed. The noise of the crowd was rising as people bet on Greens or Oranges.

Arram shook his head shyly. This fight was taking place right in front of the emperor’s part of the stands: he could not see much detail.

‘Here,’ Yusaf said, pressing a spyglass into Arram’s hand. ‘You ought to have a really close look at your first fight!’

Arram smiled at his father and raised the glass to his eye. Yusaf showed him how to twist the parts until he could see the emperor as if he stood only a foot or two away. Arram gasped at the flash of jewels on the great man’s robes, then swung the spyglass until he found the teams of fighters. Musenda was not among these gladiators.

A slave struck the great gong at the foot of the imperial dais, and the opposing forces charged with a roar of fury. They smashed one another without mercy, kicking and tripping when they were too close to swing their weapons. Arram stared, gape-mouthed. This was nothing like the self-defence lessons taught in the Lower Academy! One fighter, a tall, glossy-skinned black woman, was glorious, her spear darting at her enemies like lightning as she held off two attackers at once.

The crowd gasped. A gladiator wearing a green armband sprawled in the sands. A long cut stretched from the downed man’s left eyebrow across his nose; it bled freely. A pair of slaves raced forward to drag the fallen man from the arena as his opponent turned to fight someone else. The crowd booed their disapproval.

‘Why are they angry?’ Arram shouted in his father’s ear.

‘They prefer more serious injuries,’ Yusaf replied.

‘But he couldn’t see!’ Arram protested. ‘How can he fight if he can’t—’

Metan patted his arm, a signal for him to be quiet. Arram sighed. He was glad the slaves had taken the man away.

He looked for the woman and saw her knock a man down. She was raising her spear for a killing stab when one of his comrades swung at her, knocking her weapon from her grip. She lunged forward and grabbed his spear.

Suddenly a fellow Green stumbled into her, shoving her forward. Down onto her knees she went, clinging to her opponent’s weapon. The crowd was on its feet, screaming.

The female gladiator still gripped the spear, but one of the two men fighting her had cut her deeply from her ribs to her hip bones. She knelt in the sand, fumbling with crimson-black ropes that spilled over her loincloth. Arram opened his mouth and swiftly clapped his hands over it: the gladiator was clutching her intestines. He shoved the spyglass into his grandfather’s hold and forced his way through the crowd, praying that he would make it to the privies.

He didn’t. Arram threw up in the tunnel, in the gutter off to the side. Even when he was being sick, he wondered if the trench was there to carry away vomit or water from the winter storms. He was able to save the rest of his stomach’s contents for the privy. The immense stone room with its long line of stalls was empty, for which he was deeply grateful. He spewed everything in his belly. Finally he was able to rinse his face at one of the privy’s fountains. Weak and disgusted with himself, he staggered outside to rest on a convenient bench. His father found him there.

‘I thought you would like the games,’ Yusaf said, beckoning to a water seller. He purchased two bamboo cups full and handed one to Arram. The boy drank slowly; his stomach heaved a little, then settled. ‘Haven’t you gone with your school friends?’ His father sat next to him.

Arram shook his head. ‘I don’t have any friends,’ he admitted softly. Would his father be ashamed of him? Quickly, he added, ‘Well, I have some to talk to, but they’re two or three years older than me. And my old friends say I’m too good for them now that I’m two terms ahead. But everyone talks about the games. I was sure I’d like them.’ He hung his head. ‘You should go back. I’m ruining this for you and Grandda.’

Yusaf rubbed his shoulder. ‘Don’t be foolish. We see you once a year, if we’re lucky. It will be even longer if I get this new contract. Today we would far rather spend time with you. Wait here, and I’ll get him.’

Arram sat in the shade and gazed at the buzzards overhead. He had spotted a golden hawk when he heard his grandfather’s voice.

Metan purchased his own throwaway cup of water and came over to stand next to the bench. Arram put the spyglass in his lap and stared nervously at the old man. Metan’s bite was worse than his bark, but even his bark drew blood sometimes.

Finally the old man said, ‘What will you do when you must learn healing? Didn’t you say you’ll be cutting entire bodies open?’

Arram gulped. ‘Maybe I’ll get used to it,’ he said. ‘They have us doing worms and fishes now. It’ll be years before I must work on big animals, or people. If I even get to do people. I’ll be taught to make medicines first – herbalists are well paid, too,’ he pointed out. He didn’t tell them of the time he had been told to add a herb to repel snakes to a teacher’s potion and, thinking of something else, had brought the man a herb that would attract poisonous spiders instead.

Yusaf nudged him. ‘Arram!’

The boy twitched. ‘Oh – I’m sorry, Father, Grandfather. I was thinking.’

‘You are always thinking, youngster,’ Metan said. ‘Come – let’s rent one of these carts. If your belly’s up to it, we’ll take an early supper in Thak City.’ He walked towards the lines of carts for rent, calling back to Arram, ‘You can tell me what you mean to study this year.’ He chuckled. ‘I daresay I will like that as much as you enjoyed the games.’

Two days later Arram stood at one of the many docks in Thak’s Gate, watching his father and grandfather board the small shipping vessel that would take them across the Inland Sea to Tyra. He barely remembered the place: Carthak was his home now. He never said so, of course. His family would be hurt. But the truth was, they hardly seemed like family. The things they liked to talk or write to him about held little interest: shipping, cloth, cloth markets. The only thing about their way of life that fascinated Arram was the magic that could be worked with weaving and thread. His family scorned it – there was no status in such spells. Thread magic was the work of hedgewitches and goodywives, not worth their attention. If Arram became a mage, then all the money they’d put into his education would be worth something, but only in terms of battle or healing magic. Those would bring the family status and fortune.

Arram sighed. They loved him. He knew that, from the gifts they sent – sweets, warm blankets and coats, coin for shoes – and their letters. He loved them, for their kindness, their letters, and their visits. But he didn’t understand them, or they him. The games were just the most recent example.

He saw them waving and waved back. The ship was easing from the dock as sailors rushed up the masts and about the deck. A crowd gathered around Arram, waving and shouting to those who were sailing away.

Someone shoved him. Arram scowled at her, but she didn’t even look down. He was insignificant. His temper roiled inside him. He was always too small, too young, always being put aside. His mood was strange today, prickly and restless. He was itchy inside his skin.

‘Safe journey!’ people shouted, and ‘Swift journey!’

The thought sprouted up like it had been waiting. There was a way he could do something significant. They wouldn’t know it, but he would. It wasn’t much, but he’d feel better for it. He looked hurriedly at the inside of the hem of his tunic, searching for a loose thread. Only a couple of months ago, he had begun reading about weather magic. He had memorized a few spells from it to try when he had some time alone, out in the fields beyond the university, but surely this spell was safe enough. It was for hedgewitches, after all, a blessing for ships and voyages. It was a small thing.

He found a loose thread and tugged it free. It was red, even better! Red was for luck, hope, and strength. Holding it down in front of his belly so the people around him wouldn’t see, he wove the two scarlet ends of the thread in and out of one another, murmuring the words of the old spell. His fingers and the back of his neck were tingling. Small breezes played with his heavy black curls. Sweat trickled down his temples as he finished with the traditional blessing for his relatives and the ship. The breeze tugged at the thread. The nervous energy that had plagued his insides all morning surged and tore the thread from his fingers. He could swear it was strange, strong power from inside him that did it, and not the gusting air. Whichever it was, his spell-thread yanked from his fingers to fly high over the harbour.

Right in front of everyone, the vessel that bore Arram’s father and grandfather leaped into the air like an exuberant zebra, dropped lightly into the water, and zipped between the two lighthouses that guarded the opening to the Inland Sea.

For a moment there was only the slap of waves on the pilings. Then, nearby, someone who sounded very official yelled, ‘Who cast that spell? I want him caught and held for breaking harbour law! Find him right now!’

Correctly guessing that no one would be looking for a ten-year-old boy, or even an eleven-year-old one, Arram squirmed his way out of the crowd. Once clear, Arram trotted to the spot where a cart regularly waited to take passengers along the eastern side of the city wall, paid his fare, and took a seat. He had a great deal to think about.

CHAPTER 2
September 2–October 14, 435

The day after Arram waved goodbye to his father and grandfather, the autumn term classes began. At first everything was exciting. Arram sometimes complained about the amount of work that he faced, but the truth was that he learned quickly and well. Now he dug into the new classes with enthusiasm. Soon enough, however, he discovered that the intense work of the previous two terms, and the sessions with tutors to help him catch up and keep up as he moved ahead, was over. He was moving at the same pace as his fellow mage students, with empty hours to fill. His new fellows were at least two or three years older than he was; it was beneath their dignity to spend their spare time with a younger boy. Worse, he was getting curious about what lay ahead, until his curiosity overcame him. He began to turn over new and different magic in his head. And since he hadn’t had any fresh surges of oddness, he began to relax.

One place where he could not relax was Master Girisunika’s Essentials of Water Magic class.

Master Girisunika, who frequently stressed that she would teach Lower Academy classes until there was an opening in the Upper Academy, did not care if her students were bored. She spent the month of September making them recite what they knew of water and its magical properties as they learned it from the text. Next she taught them to stop water in midair as they poured it from a pitcher into a dish. Next they caused water to form small waves in a dish, then made it swirl widdershins in it. Now, in the second week of October, they were to use the latest spell they had memorized to draw water up from the centre of the dish, then let it fall and rise like a fountain.

On that hot day, Arram was bored. He had taken his turn at the table in front of the class. There he was the first to be successful in raising a five-inch-tall spout of water from the broad, shallow dish. He also raised scowls from his older classmates. Carefully ignoring them, he lowered the spout into the remaining water. Master Girisunika nodded, marked her slate, and beckoned to the next student without so much as a word of congratulations.

Arram watched the others work the same spell, except that it wasn’t the same. So far they had all made mistakes or failed completely. Finally he gazed at a nearby window. Its sturdy wooden shutters were closed, the spells on it shimmering in his gaze. They were there to keep any accidental magics from escaping the room. Still, Arram didn’t need to see outside to let his imagination go free.

He wished he’d had more time to fiddle with this spell. It wasn’t hard, no matter how much his classmates struggled with it. They only had to lift out a touch of their magical Gifts, a fingertip’s worth, set it on the water’s centre, then lift it up. Imagining it, his eyes half closed, Arram saw how he could raise the water into the air, higher even than Girisunika had done. With three finger-touches, he could create a pretty three-armed fountain. He had an image in his head of a dish ringed by spouts of water when Girisunika tapped his shoulder with her long pointer.

‘Do we bore you’ – she consulted her list of students – ‘Arram Draper? I know that you did the problem already, but it is possible to learn from others.’

Arram stared up at her, begging her silently to leave him alone. He was getting that panicky knot in his throat. He had tried not to get her attention this term. She didn’t know his unhappy way of getting into trouble, particularly when he was rattled.

‘Answer me, boy.’

Mithros help him, he had forgotten her question in his distress. ‘Excuse me?’

‘I was told you need special handling, but I had no idea it meant you were deficient in mind,’ she snapped. ‘Who helped you to do this spell before? Speak up!’

‘N-nobody, Master. Lady. Instructor,’ he stammered.

None of the titles he’d tried made her happy. ‘I am a master,’ she snapped. ‘Not a master of water, but sufficiently educated in it to teach this class.’

They were surrounded by giggles now. Master Girisunika jerked from side to side, trying to spot the offenders, but the students wouldn’t let her catch them. They’d had plenty of practice since Arram entered their lives.

Thwarted, she turned back to him. ‘We’ll see,’ she said, and tapped the worktable with her pointer. ‘Do it again.’ As the students murmured, Girisunika swung around to glare at them. ‘If you helped him before, you will not help him now,’ she told them. Once Arram stood behind the table, she took a place at his shoulder. ‘All of you, hands on desks. Should anyone move a finger, they will get punishment work for the rest of the term.’

He was as nervous as he’d ever been in a class, but he had to defend himself. ‘No one aided me.’

She slapped his head with her palm. ‘I did not ask for a debate, boy. I gave you an order. Now do the spell.’

He raised his hands. They shook. ‘I can’t concentrate,’ he said hopelessly.

‘A mage in the field must concentrate at all times,’ she snapped. ‘Report to me after your other lessons for three weeks. Do the spell!’

The giggles that filled the air stopped when she glared at his classmates.

With her attention locked on the others, Arram closed his eyes, sucked in a deep breath, and held it. Sometimes that helped. His magical Gift boiled in his chest, like the River Zekoi in flood season. He called the sparkling black magical fire up and let some of it stream through one shaking finger. Over the wide dish on the table, he wrote the spell-signs, using his power for ink.

It worked just as it did the first time. A vine of liquid rose into the air. This time he let it stretch as high as the master’s nose instead of the five inches she had required. His fellow students hissed; they always did when he succeeded where they failed.

Arram glared at the water as it dropped into the bowl. It wasn’t fair. Just because they couldn’t work a bit of magic, they expected him to drag his feet.

He faced the master. ‘I did it all alone,’ he insisted. ‘I could do more.’

She folded her arms over her chest, looking as if she’d gulped sour milk. ‘Oh, truly? What more could you do, pray?’

He turned back to the dish. Placing drops of his Gift on his forefingers, he touched each to a different spot on his slender column of water. It split. Now three ropes of water flowed up and over, then back into the dish, like his favourite garden fountain. Feeling bolder, he turned his hand and called the spouts. They went two feet higher. At that height, the water splashed onto the dish, the table, Arram, Girisunika, and the students in the first two rows.

‘Too messy,’ he said, frowning in concentration. All of his focus and power were locked on his creation. It was a bad habit of his, paying attention only to his spell.

Carefully he reached into the dish and spun the water sunwise once. It twirled, winding the three spouts like thread on a spindle until they shaped a twist in the centre. The twist became a miniature cyclone, swaying to and fro.

Arram frowned. There wasn’t enough water for people to see the glass-like swirls in his miniature cyclone. The bowl was nearly dry. He sent his Gift into the jar by the table, only to find less than a palmful of water inside.

He yanked it up and threw it into the bowl. Some of the students in the front began to snicker. Girisunika took a deep breath and announced with heavy meaning, ‘If you are finished, Draper …’

He was not finished. He could make it even more interesting. He scowled at the bowl and the cyclone, clenching his unsteady hand. Strength ran through him, coming from the floor – no, from beneath the floor. It soared up through his Gift almost as it had at the harbour six weeks ago. The feel of it was different, heavier.

It lanced through his hand and into the thin water cyclone. Without warning, the liquid shot into the air and sprayed throughout the room. Arram yelped and his fellow students howled as everyone was drenched.

‘Calm yourselves!’ Girisunika shouted. Raising a hand that shone with orange-red fire, she drew the water away from the students and back to the front of the room. It climbed until it formed a foot-deep pool-like block that enclosed Arram, the master, and the worktable. On the table, in the dish and above it, water continued to spout.

‘Draper,’ the master said, ‘where is the water coming from?’

Arram glanced at her face. She was sweating. ‘Where?’ he asked blankly.

‘Yes, dolt,’ she snapped. ‘Where did you get the water? There is far more here than before. Stop it at once!’

He had no more idea of the water’s source than he did of the wind that thrust his relatives’ ship out of the harbour. He scratched his head. He’d used no water signs other than those he’d placed at the spell’s start. The strength of it must have come from that strange shove of power that had gripped him.

His imagination built a picture of his cyclone’s thin tail passing through the dish, the table, and down through the marble floor. He bent and squinted at the table. The deepening pond of water had sprouted a rope of itself. Somehow it passed through the wood to feed his creation above.

Arram ducked underwater to find the source. A moment later a rough hand grabbed his collar and dragged him into the air. He struggled and spat. One of the bigger students had a strong grip on him.

‘What are you doing?’ Master Girisunika roared. ‘Do you want to drown? No one else can undo your mess!’ She motioned for his captor to release Arram. The youth obeyed.

‘Draper, what have you created?’ she demanded.

Arram held his head in his hands, but it was useless. Another surge ran through him, through his Gift. He lost control.

The spout exploded against the ceiling. The entire workroom was waist-high in water. The students were pounding on the doors. As was the rule when magic was being worked in class, the doors were closed and sealed to prevent outsiders from entering and causing just the kind of mess they presently had.

‘Undo this gods-cursed spell, boy!’ Girisunika yelled.

Arram shook from top to toe. They would send him home; he would never learn proper magic. Worse, they would lock him in one of those special cells the other boys talked about once the candles were doused. The cells where no one could use their Gift. He would be cut off forever from the thing he loved most, all because this instructor wouldn’t leave him alone!

One of the doors slammed open, knocking aside the students standing there. Water flooded into the hall. An elderly black woman and a snowy-haired white man, both in the red robes of master mages, stepped into the classroom once the depth was down to ankle level.

Flood or no, the drenched students knew that everyone was supposed to keep their heads and follow the rules in any emergency. They hurried to stand beside their desks as required when masters entered the room. They did not know the old woman, but Arram recognized the man. He was Cosmas Sunyat, head of the School for Mages.

Master Cosmas made glowing signs with his hands; the old woman made different ones with hers. Slowly every trace of water, even of dampness, vanished. The dish where Arram’s troubles had begun was empty even of a drop. It fell to the worktable with a clatter.

Arram picked it up and turned it over in his hands. Despite the bother, he was sad that his spell was gone. The surge of excitement had faded, too, leaving him no idea of how to call it back.

Girisunika was furious. ‘Who helped him?’ she demanded, glaring at Arram’s classmates. She was so angry she ignored the newly arrived masters. ‘He’s a child – he couldn’t do it himself! Which of you vile parasites connived at this?’

Master Cosmas thumped his ebony walking stick on the floor. ‘Master Girisunika, control yourself!’ he commanded. He surveyed the room. ‘Youngsters, report to Hulak in the kitchen gardens. Let us see if you remember the difference between coriander and weeds.’ As Arram’s fellows gathered their things and filed out of the classroom, Master Cosmas added, ‘Girisunika, Arram Draper, come with us.’

Masters Cosmas and Girisunika drew ahead as they walked through the marble halls. Arram, who had been raised to be polite, kept pace with the slower old woman. They had not gone far before she asked, ‘Did you have help from the others?’

Arram looked at her. ‘No, Master,’ he said. ‘They couldn’t have done it anyway. They aren’t very good.’

The woman snorted. ‘They are perfectly suited to those studies for their age, young man – as you should be. I am Master Sebo Orimiri. Who are you?’

Arram bowed as he’d been taught. ‘I’m Arram Draper.’

‘So you are the Draper lad. That explains a great deal.’ She walked on, making him trot to catch up.

‘It explains something?’ It was accepted in the Lower Academy that nothing explained the strange events that happened around Arram. ‘Whatever it explains, I probably didn’t do it on purpose,’ the boy added.

‘Tell me, what is your favourite place in the university?’

Arram looked at the master, sensing a trap but unable to figure out what manner of danger it could possibly hold. In the end he decided honesty would probably get him in the least amount of trouble. ‘The river. Or – or the gardens. But usually the library, Master Sebo.’

‘Only the Lower Academy library?’ She glanced at him and smiled. ‘The truth, lad. I’ll know if you lie.’

Something about her convinced him that she meant what she said. ‘No, Master. The mages’ library for the Upper Academy.’

‘Indeed!’ He seemed to have surprised her. ‘Not the Upper Academy? Aren’t the mages’ books too difficult?’

‘Most of them,’ he admitted. ‘Usually I read encyclopedias and books like that. They aren’t too hard, and I can look up the parts I don’t understand.’

‘I see. And how do you get past the librarians?’

‘There is this one book … The spells make me seem like part of the background.’ Arram smiled.

‘But surely, when you move, they notice.’

‘There was a note that you shouldn’t move when people look at you,’ Arram said.

‘Very practical. And this spell is useful, I take it? Not just for reading?’ Master Sebo asked drily.

He liked the look in her old, watery eyes very much. ‘I’m tired of doing the same things over and over,’ he explained. ‘With the not-seeing spell I can watch the masters and seniors experiment after the library is …’ He realized that he watched them when he was supposed to be in bed, after the masters and seniors had locked the doors. He sighed and dug his hands into his breeches pockets. Now he was truly in deep muck.

‘Don’t the masters inspect the library to ensure they have no witnesses?’ If Master Sebo was angry, her voice did not give it away. ‘I would like to think they are properly cautious.’

‘The, um, the spell I used works on masters as well as seniors,’ Arram mumbled.

Sebo halted, forcing Arram to do the same. ‘Where did you get it?’

Arram looked at her crinkled face. Could he get in any more trouble? ‘I found a little book on the upper level, mashed between … Bladwyn’s Book. It’s called Bladwyn’s Book. It has all kinds of spells for fighting and concealment. I learned that spell from it. Most of the rest only made my head hurt.’

‘I should think so,’ the old woman replied. ‘Bladwyn was a black robe mage who lived in the early three hundreds.’ She tugged on one of the ropes of beads that hung around her neck. ‘You were trying to work a black robe’s spells, Arram Draper. And here you are, alive and in trouble. How old are you?’

His breath hitched in his throat, but he managed to say, ‘Eleven, Master.’

‘Liar,’ she told him cheerfully. She didn’t seem to take offence.

The four of them entered the receiving room to the headmaster’s offices. The youth who sat reading there put aside his book and jumped to his feet. Cosmas beckoned to him and murmured instructions in his ear. The young man nodded and trotted out of the chamber. Cosmas ushered Master Girisunika and Master Sebo through the door to the inner office. Then the older man looked at Arram.

‘Remain here until you are summoned, young Arram,’ he said. ‘I suggest you work on a ten-page essay for me. It will be upon the virtues of maintaining one’s concentration, no matter what distractions may present themselves. In a while we shall summon you, understand?’

Arram understood. He understood that he was about to be very bored. He bowed to the head of the School for Mages. ‘Yes, Master Cosmas.’

‘Very good.’ The older man walked into his office and closed the door.

Arram hated boredom. That was the source of many of his problems. Bored, he might tinker with the spells he was taught – just tinker, not actually cast the whole thing! Then came visits to the healer, unhappy interviews with instructors, and labour or essays after that.

The head of the academy had told him to think about an essay on concentration, he reminded himself. But how could a fellow concentrate when he was so easily bored? Boredom had set his grandmother to teaching him to read when he was three. The first teacher for his Gift had come soon after, when he accidentally burned a month’s supply of firewood. He was six when his teachers gathered to tell his parents that the best – the only – place for him was the Imperial University of Carthak. No one in Tyra could teach a child whose Gift was so strong so young.

Yusaf hadn’t wanted to send him away, but Mother, Metan, and Grandmother had overruled him. Farm children apprenticed in the weaving houses at Arram’s age, they said. Embroiderers began their apprenticeships even younger. Besides, did Yusaf want to wait until Arram’s Gift burned the house down?

With soot on his hands from fighting Arram’s most recent workroom fire, Yusaf agreed. He brought Arram to Carthak himself and sat through his son’s entrance examinations. Arram was the youngest student by far. He performed a number of written and spoken tests, then demonstrated the magic he had been taught. When he and Yusaf returned in the morning, a master was there to admit Arram to the Lower Academy. Arram had cheered, and hugged his father, and danced around the room. He had thought he would never be bored again.

Now he had truly made a mess of things. Surely Master Girisunika worked out that Arram’s magic had somehow fetched water through the earth, and the tiles themselves, and the table, and the dish, without leaving a mark. He wondered if that had ever happened to Master Bladwyn, back in the old days. If it had, it wasn’t in the little book. Bladwyn never made mistakes.

While he’d been thinking these gloomy thoughts, his instructors and other masters he did not know passed through the waiting room. They entered Master Cosmas’s inner office, all demanding to know why they had been summoned. Arram put his face in his hands and wished he were on that ship with his father, bound for some far place beyond Carthak and Tyra.

He didn’t know how long he’d been sitting there, listening to muffled voices and wishing more than anything he could eavesdrop, when the most beautiful girl he had ever seen walked into the room. She wore her bright golden hair in a long braid down her back. When she smiled at him, her blue eyes shone like gems. Her light blue gown was in the Northern style – coming from a family that dealt in cloth, Arram still looked at what people wore. And her smile was very, very sweet.

‘Hello, there!’ she said, her voice as sweet as her smile. ‘Is Master Cosmas in?’

Reminded of his fate, Arram fell back into the glooms. He nodded. ‘But he’s having a meeting with other masters.’

The beautiful girl sighed. ‘Well, I’ll just have to wait. The master cook told me to hand this directly to Master Cosmas.’ She raised the small package she held, then flopped into the chair next to Arram, her legs splayed before her. ‘Cook believes that every message she sends is of utmost importance. Cook is very serious.’ She pulled an overly serious face, startling a laugh out of Arram. ‘I’m Varice Kingsford. What dreadful crime did you commit?’

‘I’m Arram Draper.’ He smiled despite his gloom. ‘I lost control of my Gift.’

To his surprise, she laughed. ‘I’m sorry, you look so glum, like they’re going to take you out and shoot you at dawn. With poisoned arrows, no less. Everyone loses control around here. That’s why all the workrooms are magicked to the rafters! That’s why we’re in the Lower Academy!’

‘You lose control?’ He couldn’t believe it.

‘Two months ago I knotted everyone’s hair in the room, including the master’s. They had to get three other masters in to figure out what I’d done,’ she confided. ‘I was just trying to make a net to catch stray magics, but …’

‘It went awry,’ Arram said. He was all too familiar with that problem.

‘They expect our Gifts to tangle early on,’ Varice told him. ‘How will we learn to manage them if they don’t?’ She looked him over. ‘Oh, come on. You look like you murdered someone. What happened?’

It took a little more encouragement and teasing from her, but soon he was telling the story of his morning. Instead of shocking her with his tale of runaway fountains, he saw her collapse into giggles. ‘Oh, I wish I could have seen it!’ she cried.

Then and there Arram promised himself that he would marry her one day.

The door opened and Master Cosmas looked out. ‘Ah, Varice, I thought I heard your laughter. Another package from Master Cook?’

The girl sprang to her feet and bowed like a proper student, then presented Master Cosmas with the parcel. ‘I was not permitted to return unless I had given it into your hands, Headmaster,’ she said with a smile.

Cosmas chuckled. ‘Thank you, my dear. You had best go before she thinks it went astray.’

She gave him a pretty curtsy and looked at Arram. ‘I’ll see you soon, Arram Draper!’ Then she trotted off, her skirts flying out behind her.

Arram hung his head. Not if they send me home, he thought, glum again.

Cosmas put his arm around Arram’s shoulders. ‘It’s not so bad as all that, my boy. Trust me.’ They stood aside as the instructors and a couple of the masters left the office. This time they looked at Arram. One or two of the instructors smiled, though not Master Girisunika. She frowned and hustled away, clearly unhappy.

Cosmas frowned. ‘Where are those runners of mine?’

As if they’d been summoned, a boy and a girl in Upper Academy robes came trotting into the room from outside. ‘It’s taken care of, Master,’ the boy said, puffing.

‘They’re bringing the books, Master Cosmas,’ the girl announced.

‘Very good, both of you,’ Master Cosmas said, beaming at them. ‘Now, would you run down to the kitchens and ask them to send up lunch for, oh, ten masters and one very hungry boy? We shall dine here. No, Lyssy, not in my office,’ he said. The girl had gone white. ‘In my dining room.’

She hesitated. ‘I should clear away the books and papers in there.’

Master Cosmas nodded. ‘Very good. Nangla, if you will go to the kitchens? Tell them I will need lunch to be served at the hour past noon.’ He smiled at Arram. ‘That should give us sufficient time to have a good talk.’

The boy left; Master Cosmas led Arram into his personal dining room, where Lyssy had already gone to work. Arram looked around as Lyssy removed piles of books from the long table. There were a number of different chairs: the room was built for large gatherings. Now only seven places were filled, one by Master Sebo. Master Cosmas pointed Arram to the place next to her, then took a big cushioned chair across from them. He did not introduce the other masters seated there, but left it to them to introduce themselves. Yadeen, Chioké, Lindhall – even Arram lost track of them after a short time, because each mage had plenty of questions to throw at him in addition to a name.

Arram thought he had been tested when he first came to the university, but it was nothing compared to what these eight masters subjected him to over the next three hours. They threw questions at his head like his fellows threw balls at him during play hours. Many of them covered material he had studied in the past three years, but others did not. There was plenty he had never encountered, even in his secret explorations. They knew about those, somehow – had Sebo told them? They wanted the tiniest of details about what he had studied – magical and ordinary – at home, and even about things that weren’t studies at all. They asked if he had tried drawing on his own, or building things, or handling animals. They asked if he sang, danced, or did gymnastics.

And then, with Sebo’s eye on him, Arram finally confessed to reading what he could of Bladwyn’s Book.

‘Bladwyn’s Book?’ That was the master who frightened him the most, a tall, muscular black man whose heavy lower lids made his dark eyes seem huge. He leaned forward, scowling. Like the other masters, he wore a scarlet outer robe. Under it he wore a simple white cotton shirt and breeches, and plain leather sandals. If he did well as a mage, his clothes didn’t show it, though Arram had been at the university long enough to learn that the best mages weren’t always finely dressed. ‘Bladwyn’s Book?’ the big man repeated when Arram didn’t reply immediately. ‘You were actually able to work spells from it?’

‘One spell,’ Arram admitted. ‘A hiding spell.’

The big mage flipped a large hand at him. ‘Show.’

Arram looked at the floor. ‘Do I have to?’ he asked Master Cosmas.

‘If you please,’ the head of the school replied. ‘Then we’ll feed you, I promise.’

Arram sighed. In truth, he didn’t see how doing it would get him into any worse trouble. He drew in his breath and let it out, then shaped the signs in his head. It wasn’t the kind of spell that could be worked with smelly oils or signs written on the floor, not if a fellow wanted to go unnoticed, anyway.

At first nothing happened. He was too nervous. Had he used everything up with the water spells? He glanced at Cosmas, who nodded at him in a comforting way.

He drew in a breath, bringing his Gift up from his belly, and released the air. He imagined himself drawing the signs on a great chalkboard inside his head. His hand quivered, or his imagination did. When he looked down, half of him was invisible, and half of him was not.

‘Relax, lad,’ Master Sebo told him. ‘That’s good enough for now. Release it.’

Arram looked at her. ‘I can do it right,’ he protested. ‘I work it all the time.’

‘We know you can,’ she said, glaring at the big mage in the chair across from them. ‘And if Master Yadeen weren’t so busy glaring at you, I imagine you would have done it properly.’

‘I wasn’t glaring,’ retorted the big man. ‘My face is always like this!’

Arram saw what Yadeen meant. He had the kind of eyes that looked as if they were set in an intimidating stare. ‘It’s just hard to concentrate,’ the boy explained. ‘Not because of Master Yadeen, though. I’m tired from the mess I made in class.’ A couple of them smiled at that.

‘By his account, he doesn’t use the spells we teach the older students,’ said a very beautiful master with glossy black hair and big brown eyes. She had introduced herself as Dagani. Arram was fascinated to see that she wore brown paint around her eyelids and crimson paint on her mouth. If he hadn’t met Varice, he would have thought this woman, in a stomach-baring gold silk top and skirt under her robe, was the most beautiful female he had ever seen. The woman continued, ‘Indeed, I have seen no masters use such a spell.’

Chioké sniffed. ‘The structure is archaic.’

This time Yadeen did scowl. ‘What is archaic is new to those who have never seen it, Chioké. Most defences against such spells would not be able to counter it.’

Master Cosmas stood and rubbed his hands together. ‘I think it’s time we had lunch. Arram, you may drop the spell and join us.’ He opened the door. Kitchen servants trooped in with all manner of plates and pitchers, setting everything that was needed on a long side table.

Watching the adults, Arram saw he was to take an empty plate and choose whatever appealed to him, then carry it to the main table.

Sebo and the beautiful mage, Dagani, added their own selections to Arram’s plate. He also found himself sitting between the two women at the table. They made certain he ate the greens and the fish they had given him, as well as hummus dip with bread. During the meal, Dagani got him to talk about his family and his normal day. She and Sebo exchanged looks when he admitted that mostly he read or walked in the gardens by himself.

He finally got the courage to ask, ‘What is this about? Will I be dismissed?’

‘Cosmas!’ Dagani called, rapping her spoon on her plate. ‘My dear sir! This poor lad thinks you mean to send him away!’

Arram sank into his chair.

Dagani tugged on his arm. ‘Up,’ she ordered, smiling. ‘You look like a turtle.’

‘Young man, I am sorry,’ Cosmas said when Arram stuck his head over the table. ‘I thought you knew what we were about. I will not send you home – that’s the last place a lad of your talents should be. When you came to us, your Gift was sufficient for the basics, but – for the most part – dormant. Sleeping. Now, however, your body has begun to change. With it, your Gift will unfold. You should have been reexamined before, frankly. We questioned you so thoroughly to see where to place you next.’

Arram groaned. They were going to shift him again? ‘Sir, that’s the third time in three terms!’

‘Speak to the master with respect,’ Chioké told him severely.

‘Don’t be hard on the boy,’ Dagani chided, her eyes flashing. ‘He has not been taught to expect the extraordinary, as has Ozorne. He doesn’t understand.’ She turned to Arram. ‘Did they tell you, when they moved you ahead these last two terms, that no two young mages grow at the same rate? Just as no two young bodies grow at the same rate—’

Arram nodded. He had noticed it among the older students.

‘It is the same with their Gifts. And Gifts continue to change for years.’

‘As will your mind,’ commented a heavyset, broad-shouldered man with grey-brown eyes and short, tight-curled light brown hair. Unlike the other masters, he had said nothing during the meal, but scribbled in a notebook as he ate. He’d been introduced as Ramasu the healer. ‘Surely you knew you were exceeding the reach of your fellows when you crept into libraries to read books that were not for you.’

Arram gulped. Those eyes were unnerving. ‘But there were parts that I understood, sir.’

‘We shall bring you to the level of those parts that you could not comprehend,’ Master Cosmas said. ‘And there are other students in your position. You will share classes with them. It will be some time before you are ready for the Upper Academy, but with these courses you will feel your curiosity properly challenged.’

‘Out of the new mage classes,’ Sebo began, ‘are your students all to have masters as instructors? That will be a pretty bit of schedule adjustment.’

‘You did load us up royally this term, Cosmas.’ Arram sat upright. Master Lindhall Reed was going to take part in his education? He had seen him before on visits to the menagerie, wandering in and out of the enclosures. Lindhall was a tall, lanky Northerner with reddish-tanned skin, blond hair bleached nearly white by the Carthaki sun, and long, ropy muscles. His blue eyes were large and pale, his mouth wide and expressive. Another student had told Arram the foreigner was brought specially from the North and paid extravagantly by the emperor to oversee menageries in both school and palace.

Now Master Lindhall tucked fresh fruit and vegetables into his robe’s pockets as he continued, ‘I can’t take another student this term. His Imperial Majesty requires that I overhaul the animal enclosures at the arena, gods help me.’ He looked at Arram. ‘And this lad is too young. You know I don’t use anyone younger than seventeen.’

Arram slumped in his chair as Master Cosmas said, ‘Then consider who can instruct him in animal life next term.’ To the others he said, ‘If you have a promising student, see if they can instruct Arram singly or with the others after Midwinter.’

He looked at Arram and smiled. ‘We will sort matters out so you have a more engaging schedule. In the meantime, you must be shifted to quarters better suited to your current status. They’ll be quieter, for one thing.’

Arram looked down to hide a grin. He’d often thought that studying in his dormitory was like studying in a barn, particularly when he was trying to read the more advanced books he slipped out of the library. This was a good thing!

‘Off you go,’ Cosmas said. ‘The servants will come to move your belongings. I should have a new schedule on your door before you leave for supper.’

Arram scrambled to his feet. Not knowing what else to do, he bowed. ‘Yessir, thank you, sir,’ he babbled. ‘Thank you, all of you! I’ll do my very best!’

Sebo caught him at the door. Arram skidded to a stop in front of her. ‘If you please, Arram Draper,’ she said, looking up at him steadily. ‘I believe you have something that belongs to the university.’

‘I would never—’ he began to protest. Then the copy of Bladwyn’s Book began to jiggle inside his shirt. He had forgotten it was there. He always kept it with him in case his roommate searched his things. ‘Oh.’

‘Indeed,’ she said, her wrinkled face grave. ‘Oh.’

‘I was going to take it back,’ he said hotly.

‘I will relieve you of the chore,’ she replied.

Her full, dark eyes were as ungiving as stones. He sighed and wriggled until he could reach under his undershirt. The book practically leaped into his fingers.

‘I didn’t even get to the best parts,’ he grumbled as he passed it over.

Sebo patted him on the chest. ‘You will one day. Now scat.’

He scatted. He didn’t tell her about the little copybook in his carrybag – the one in which he’d written down several of Bladwyn’s most interesting spells.

CHAPTER 3
October 14–16, 435

By midafternoon, servants had moved Arram’s trunks and books to his new home in the next wing to the north, closer to the library and classroom wings. Even on the ground floor, students slept only four to a room, not twenty-six. Most of the residents were teenagers hoping to move to the Upper Academy within the next year.

For now, Arram’s room was shared by only one other person. His roommate plainly came from moneyed people; that much was visible in the fine wood and lacquered finish of the bow and quiver that hung by his window, accompanied by a good sword in a sheath studded with topazes. The boots tucked under his bed were nearly new, well-stitched leather with a glossy polish. Not only did this fellow possess a trunk made of fine teak, but beside the window was a matching cabinet. Arram dared a peek behind the wall that separated their cubicles – the desk matched the trunk and the cabinet, as did the chair. All four pieces had been carved by a master’s hand. His envy over the furniture vanished when he saw the contents of the three shelves over the desk. This boy left his schoolbooks there. The books on the shelves were very different, showing none of the battering and spots on the school volumes. Arram spotted Si-Cham’s Principles of Consistency and Edo Clopein’s Quick Defence, bound in fine leather with gold trim. Other classics, nearly as fresh as the day they’d been printed, occupied the shelves. His fingers twitched with greed; he actually whimpered.

Someone tapped on the outer door, and he jerked back into his own cubicle. He didn’t want his new roommate to think he was a snoop. ‘It’s open,’ he called, his voice squeaking.

‘I can see it’s open,’ Sebo called. ‘Come out here and meet someone.’

Her purpose, Arram quickly learned, was to introduce the floor’s housekeeper to her newest charge. ‘This is Irafa,’ Sebo informed him with considerable pleasure. ‘You are to do precisely as she says, understand?’

Arram looked up at the housekeeper and gulped. Irafa was tall and imperious, dressed in the red-on-red headcloth and wrapped dress of the northwestern Oda tribe. She smiled at him with satisfaction. ‘Say thank you to Master Sebo,’ she said. ‘And be sure you do your bed up properly every morning, because I will check it.’

Arram bowed to Irafa and to Sebo, then retreated to his cubicle. He would have to wait to see how far he could open his window. In the meantime, he began to make up his bed. All was not yet lost. Tucked among his belongings was another small volume he had bought on a rare visit to the city’s markets, one titled On Coming and Going by Rosto Cooper the Younger. He had already successfully worked two of the spells for walking around the campus without being seen. He slid it under his mattress as he made his bed, reminding himself to find a better place before the housekeeper’s morning inspection.

He was pleased with his situation. His window commanded a view of a broad kitchen garden, and the ledge was low enough that hopping out would be easy. The scent of new herbs freshened the room when he left the shutters open.

He was arranging his books when someone else knocked politely on the open door.

Not only did the lovely Varice stand on his threshold, but she had a friend with her. The friend looked to be as old and as pale as the girl, and he was a couple of inches taller. Like most Carthakis, he wore a calf-length tunic, though he had skipped the shoulder drape due to the heat. The white cotton was embroidered at the hem, collar, and sleeves with green signs for health, protection, and wisdom. For adornment he had gold studs on his sandals, three gold rings on his fingers, and gold and gem earrings. His glossy brown hair was tied back in a horsetail. Just as Arram looked him over, he did the same, inspecting the younger, shorter boy from top to toe. His eyes were clear, straightforward, and curious.

Varice elbowed her companion. ‘I told you it was him.’ She smiled at Arram. ‘When they said a boy was being advanced, I told Ozorne, “Depend on it. That’s the one I met.” This is your new roommate, by the way. Ozorne Tasikhe, this is Arram Draper. Arram, this is my best friend, Ozorne.’

Ozorne offered his hand with a crooked smile. ‘How do you like the place? Unless Cosmas produces another child wonder, we should be safe with the whole thing to ourselves.’

‘I’m not a child wonder,’ Arram retorted, stung. ‘I’m eleven!’ Then he gulped, recognizing the name. This was the member of the imperial family called the leftover prince. He had just snapped at the emperor’s nephew!

Ozorne’s crooked smile changed into a real one. ‘Are you? And I am thirteen, and Varice is twelve and a half. We shall take the world by storm, see if we don’t.’

Varice sat cross-legged on one of the empty beds across from Arram’s, while Ozorne dragged his desk chair over and slouched in it, smiling. ‘You’ll get used to her,’ he told Arram, who sat gingerly on his own bed. ‘Once she’s decided you’ll be her friend, she assumes command.’

Varice sniffed at him. ‘You’ve never complained.’ To Arram she said, ‘Ozorne and I are in the same classes most of the time. We’ve been friends for two years, I think.’

‘So, what horrible thing did you do to end up in classes with us?’ Ozorne asked. ‘Varice said I had to hear it straight from you.’

Arram gulped. ‘I flooded my classroom.’ He got to his feet and looked out the window. ‘I didn’t do it on purpose! It just happened …’ He faced the two older students again. ‘I still don’t understand why Master Cosmas is promoting me instead of sending me home.’

Ozorne smiled. ‘What was my misdeed, Varice?’

The girl tapped her forefinger against her chin. ‘We were in one master’s gardens, stealing cherries, and you saw a bird you didn’t recognize. You called to it, and called, and – well, I saw a great flood of your Gift roll from your hand, and the next thing I knew, the garden and every tree and plant in it was covered in birds! And then the master came, the one who managed the garden. He wanted us thrown out of the school for its ruin, because the birds refused to leave. I was laughing so hard I was crying by then, and Ozorne wasn’t even listening because he was able to hold any bird he wanted …’

‘All I had to do was point and call, and the bird would come to sit on my hand,’ Ozorne said, dreamy-eyed. ‘Even the hawks!’

Arram sat back down on his bed, fascinated. ‘I’ve never heard of such a thing. In The Magic of Birds by Ayna Wingheart, she writes that the magical nature of birds is such that only the most powerful mages can control more than ten or so, and that even she could handle no more than twenty-three or twenty-four at a time.’

Ozorne smiled at him. ‘What’s this? A fellow bird scholar?’

Arram chuckled and drew a pattern on the coverlet. ‘Oh, no, it’s just for fun. I can’t say I’ve studied.’

Ozorne got to his feet. ‘Well, study or no, let’s have a look at the bird enclosures in the menagerie! Varice?’

She stood and shook out her skirts. ‘I never turn down a visit to the menagerie.’

The two older students were at the door when they stopped to look back. ‘Aren’t you coming?’ Ozorne asked.

‘I wasn’t sure you meant it,’ Arram explained.

‘Anyone Varice likes is fine with me,’ Ozorne said. ‘And you still didn’t tell me how you flooded your class, the Gift of it. We’ve both done that stupid spell, but we didn’t get those results!’

When she saw Arram had a tendency to lag behind, Varice tucked her arm in his and forced him to keep up. To his delight, Arram discovered that the students who cared for the menagerie animals were well acquainted with his companions. Ozorne in particular was a favourite in the areas set aside for the birds. Once he had vouched for Arram – which Arram thought was taking a great deal on trust – the three young people were admitted to the big enclosure that housed the birds who could get along. When the students handed each of the young people a cloth bag, birds flew down from their perches to land on their arms, shoulders, and heads, just as the pigeons did in the city squares.

The bags contained the food specially made up for the birds: small bits of vegetables, fruit, and fat, as well as seeds of all kinds. Arram ended up scattering his to the birds that swarmed around his feet while he watched Ozorne and Varice. They knew the animals so well that they could get them to do tricks for a bite of something.

One large golden peacock strutted over to Arram. To the boy’s surprise, the other birds backed away from him. A student attendant who had been keeping an eye on them all hurried over. She passed Arram another bag of feed. ‘This is his,’ she said, nodding to the bird. ‘His lordship doesn’t like to share with the others.’

Arram poured the bag’s contents into his hand to find it was mostly brightly coloured food: melon, squash, orange, and bits of small golden fish. ‘He’s very particular, isn’t he?’ he asked.

Ozorne wandered over. ‘One day I’ll have a menagerie of my own, and I’ll have all of them,’ he announced. ‘They’re called goldwings. They come from all the way across the Emerald Ocean.’

‘I only see this one,’ Arram said, looking around.

‘We have two here, and the emperor has the other four. Now, come, have you seen ordinary peacocks before? I’m sorry, your lordship,’ added the prince, bowing to the goldwing, ‘but you have to admit they’re pretty, too. Or at least the males are.’ Ozorne hooked Arram’s arm and dragged him off to view birds with more colours in them than he’d ever seen in his life.

They barely made it to supper on time. Varice had refused to go until she’d changed her gown. Boys might be happy enough simply to dust themselves after birds had shed all over them, she informed her two friends, but she was not. They made it to the dining hall just before the monitors closed the doors.

‘Close one,’ a monitor chided as they skidded into the huge, noisy room.

Ozorne grinned at the older boy. ‘Close still counts!’

Arram had thought they might have trouble finding a table, particularly with him in tow, but it seemed that Varice was as confident in the dining hall as Ozorne was in the menagerie. She swept through the lines of serving plates and dishes, not only making sure of her own choices, but seeing to it that the boys took proper foods as well. Then she led the way to a small, shockingly empty table near one of the doors that led to the outdoor tables and a garden. The door was open, but no one took advantage of the tables outside: the air was cooling off. Instead Varice and Ozorne sat at that empty little table and pointed Arram’s new seat out to him. Only when everyone had eaten at least half of their dinners did Varice allow Ozorne to open the subject of water magic.

It was the best evening Arram had enjoyed at the university. Ozorne had some clever ideas on how to harness the power that had gone wrong that morning. Varice gave Arram some spells and charms for the manipulation of water she had learned from cooks and cook mages. If he worked hard he’d have them memorized by the end of the week. The water spells wouldn’t get away from him any more!

They chattered outside one of the school’s many libraries until the end-of-study bells told them it was time to get back to their rooms. The boys escorted Varice to her building, where she was housed with older girls, then ran for their dormitory. Ozorne showed Arram a shortcut by way of the gardens behind the buildings. They were approaching their own place when Ozorne held out his arm to stop Arram. They halted in a grove of lemon trees planted in the edges of the garden. Two figures in the brown shirts and breeches of the university stable and field staff were standing at Ozorne’s window. The shutters were open; Ozorne had told Arram he always left them that way.

‘I’ll get the guards,’ Arram whispered.

Ozorne put a hand on his arm. To Arram’s shock, the older boy was chuckling softly. ‘Just wait,’ he murmured.

One of the would-be thieves boosted himself up and over the ledge. The second followed. There was a yelp.

‘Come on!’ Ozorne said. He raced for the door to the building; Arram followed, wondering if he knew any battle spells. He’d learned Ozorne had fighting lessons after university classes four days a week, but he’d had nothing of the kind.

When they entered their room, Ozorne produced a ball of light, one of the few magics they were allowed to do outside class. Arram gasped. Two ragged men lay on the floor. They looked as if they’d fallen into bronze spiderwebs and been rolled up in them.

Curious, Arram went over and poked at the substance. The man inside it spat at him. The webbing itself was far thicker than spiderweb and not sticky, but these men would not be going anywhere until they were freed by a mage. He looked at his new friend.

‘I thought we weren’t allowed to cast anything but tiny spells in our rooms, and only with permission,’ he said, curious and awed.

Ozorne chuckled. ‘Silly lad, I know that. But the university understands I might be a particular temptation to those who don’t value their positions here.’ He walked over to the other bundled thief. ‘Master Chioké cast this trapping spell for me. Would you let the housekeeper know we’ve caught fish in our net?’ he asked Arram. He nudged the man with a toe.

Arram was at the door when he heard his new friend ask softly, ‘Are you Sirajit? I’ll know if you lie.’

That’s right, Arram thought as he knocked on the housekeeper’s door. Ozorne’s father was killed fighting Sirajit rebels. Arram had only been in Carthak for a year then, but he remembered the student in black, and the memorial celebrations for the hero father. Even though Siraj had been part of the empire for years, its mountain people still resisted imperial rule and frequently tried to fight it off.

When he returned with watchmen, Arram found Ozorne still questioning his captives. As far as Arram could tell, the men were unharmed.

Feeling himself to be in the way, he retreated to his own part of the room as the guards chained the would-be robbers and took them out. Ozorne followed them to the door and slipped a few coins into one guard’s hand. ‘For your trouble,’ he told the man.

After closing the door, Ozorne flung himself into Arram’s chair. ‘Gods save us, why are you reading that dusty old thing?’ the prince demanded, looking at a book on Arram’s desk. ‘You don’t even have any class studies – you could read whatever you want. You could read something fun!’

Arram grinned at his new friend. ‘But this is my idea of fun. Is trapping robbers yours?’

‘I don’t like strangers handling my things,’ Ozorne said with a shrug. ‘And now you needn’t worry about more thieves. Once word gets around that our place is trapped, they’ll think the better of it.’

‘Were they actually servants here?’ Arram asked, concerned. ‘I wouldn’t have thought it.’

‘More like family of servants, or acquaintances who overheard who the servants wait on. Word will get around. And I can tell Master Chioké the traps didn’t even leave a mark.’ Ozorne grinned. ‘You now live in the safest room in the dormitories!’

The next morning was their day of worship, for those who chose to do so, and a day of rest for those who chose to relax. Arram heard Ozorne rise early and dress, but he went back to sleep. He had given up religious services not long after his arrival at the university, preferring to take one morning to loll in bed.

It wasn’t long before someone tapped on the door. Ozorne, who had returned, opened it and spoke softly to his guest: Arram recognized Varice’s reply. She asked him something, and Arram heard Ozorne walk closer. He turned over towards the wall and made a grumbling sound, as if he were still asleep. If they were going somewhere, he didn’t want them to feel obligated to ask him along simply because he was Ozorne’s roommate.

Ozorne hesitated, then left, closing the door quietly behind him.

Arram flipped on his back and sighed. He would have liked to go somewhere with them, but his pride got in his way. Pride was a horrible thing, and he wished he didn’t have any, but it was his family’s pride, so he was stuck with it. He didn’t even want to sleep any more.

He had just got dressed when the door swung open.

‘Oh, good,’ Ozorne said. ‘I’m on a mission. I’m not allowed to return to the Northern Gate without you. Varice says you no doubt pretended to be asleep because you thought we were going to invite you because we felt sorry for you, and you are supposed to stop being silly and come along.’

‘But …’ Arram said, knowing he ought to protest.

‘Come on,’ Ozorne insisted. ‘We’re going to lunch in town – my treat – and then there’s a play in the Imperial Theatre. My treat also. She’s right – you are being silly. We wouldn’t invite you if we didn’t like you. I’m much too selfish to do otherwise. You’ll need better shoes than those sandals if you have them.’

Dazed by this whirlwind of information, Arram donned his holiday shoes.

Varice shook a finger at Arram when they joined her. ‘Wicked boy!’ she cried. ‘Never do that again! You’re always invited, until you’re not! That’s our rule! Now, let’s go and have fun.’

Arram did, more than he ever had with his father and grandfather. He made the three-lined Sign against evil when he thought it, and left a copper in a corner shrine to Lady Wavewalker, goddess of the sea and those who sailed on it, but it was still true. It was one thing to walk along the stalls with someone who took interest only in cloth and clothing, being told no every time he asked for something unusual (though they were kind – to a limit – about books and maps). It was another to go with people who looked at the same things he looked at and discussed them; stopped to watch jugglers, fire eaters, acrobats, people who walked rings and balls along their arms and backs, and musicians; pondered over the second- and third-hand volumes at the booksellers; and looked at the animals for sale – only to be forced to leave when Ozorne began to shout at a seller who didn’t clean the dung from the animals’ cages.

‘If I had the power, there would be a law that they would have to keep the animals clean and properly fed,’ Ozorne said, fuming, as Varice and Arram dragged their friend away from the seller. The man shouted obscenities and threats as their party mocked him.

‘Maybe when your cousin is emperor you could ask him for the law,’ Varice suggested.

‘Ha! If he even remembers my name,’ Ozorne retorted. Varice’s face turned sad, and he quickly put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Oh, don’t. I’ll ask, when the day comes. I will.’

They moved on to the theatre and enjoyed themselves thoroughly. That night, when Arram flung himself onto his bed, he was too happy to sleep. They had eaten their supper from the market vendors’ carts, sampling one another’s dishes. He now had a list of new favourites to try in the dining hall. They had watched a puppet show that made them laugh themselves silly, just as they had at the short comedy before the play. The play itself was a heroic one, full of winged horses, a dragon, and a valiant hero. It was thoroughly satisfying, even from the high, cheap seats. Arram was surprised at how carefully his new friend paid out his coin, until Ozorne explained his mother said he must learn to manage his purse.

Arram thought of all of this as he lay in bed and grinned. What a fine day! He had friends!

At breakfast the next morning Varice looked at their bleary eyes and pale faces and smirked.

‘Did you get any sleep?’ she asked as they entered the dining hall.

‘A little,’ Ozorne mumbled. ‘Then he woke me up by scribbling and muttering about immortals. I asked what fascinated him so, and the next we knew it was daybreak.’

‘It was wonderful,’ Arram said. ‘Usually I talk to people about things and they just say “Huh?” or “Don’t ask stupid questions.”’

‘But you’re at the university now,’ Varice protested.

‘We were talking about the banishment of the immortals,’ Ozorne explained.

Varice’s face lit. ‘I don’t suppose you know if they used kitchen witches or hedgewitches, people like that to help, do you?’ she asked Arram. ‘I don’t see how they could have kept the little creatures from escaping without mages to work the smaller magics.’

‘I told you she ought to have been there,’ Ozorne said as he disentangled himself to gather a tray, bowl, and spoon.

Arram did the same, frowning in preoccupation. ‘I think I saw a book somewhere on how regular mages worked against the magics of the small immortals. It was very old but interesting, and it’s written in Common.’ He looked at Varice, who was putting melon and a roll on her tray. Embarrassed, he said, ‘I’m sorry – you’ve probably read it.’

‘No, I haven’t!’ she cried. ‘And I’ll die without it! Would you find it for me?’

Arram grinned at her. He really had found two actual friends, who talked about book things, watched exciting theatre shows, and enjoyed their food!

He took a chance with a personal question. ‘You remember we told you about the robbers, don’t you?’

She halted and cast a look at Ozorne. While they chose their meals, he was settling in at an empty table, out of hearing. ‘Of course I do. It’s just like Ozorne to have a trap laid.’

‘Well, he asked one of the thieves if he was from Siraj. Why would he do that? Because of his father?’

Varice nodded. ‘He took his father’s passing very hard. So did his mother. His sisters are a little better. … I suppose it’s different when you’re a boy. You get ideas, like you should have been there, and you could have saved him. Don’t ask him about it, though.’

‘I won’t – it’s why I came to you,’ Arram assured her.

She handed him an orange, then said quietly, ‘Sometimes he … gets angry if he tangles with someone he believes is from Siraj. His friends – his real friends – do their best to keep him out of that kind of trouble.’

‘Of course,’ Arram said, looking at Ozorne. Their day at the market had been tremendously fun, due to him and to Varice. He’d do anything for them. ‘You can count on me,’ he told her.

THE IMPERIAL UNIVERSITY OF CARTHAK
The School for Mages

The Lower Academy for Youthful Mages

SCHEDULE OF STUDY, AUTUMN TERM, SECOND HALF,

435 H.E.–SPRING TERM, 436 H.E.

Student: Arram Draper

Learning Level: Semi-Independent

Breakfast – Third Morning Bell

Morning Classes

History of the Carthaki Empire

Birds and Lizards: Anatomy

Language: Old Thak

Lunch – Noon Bell

Afternoon Classes

Mathematics

Recognition of Sigils – Second Half Autumn Term

Fish and Shellfish: Anatomy – Spring Term

Analysis of the Written Word: The Technique of Common Writing – Second Half Autumn Term

Analysis of the Written Word: The Technique of Writing: Sigils – Spring Term

Meditation

Supper – Seventh Afternoon Bell

Extra Study at Need

CHAPTER 4
October 16, 435–March 436

They were finishing their supper when Ozorne nudged Varice. ‘I think someone is hunting us.’ Both Varice and Arram looked where Ozorne did: a proctor was pointing to their table.

An older student trotted over to them, waving a length of parchment. ‘Arram Draper?’ he asked when he was close enough to be heard. Ozorne and Varice pointed to Arram. ‘With Headmaster Cosmas’s regards,’ the messenger said, handing his parchment to Arram. ‘You poor young cluck.’

‘If you peeked at that you’d know he’s no cluck!’ Varice shouted after him as the messenger hurried off. She took the parchment from Arram, who did not protest. He would never snatch anything away from her. Only when she and Ozorne had got a thorough look at it did they hand it to Arram: it was his new schedule for the remainder of the term.

He winced. The masters had not been jesting when they had said they were going to make him work. Looking at his afternoon’s studies, he squeaked, ‘I’ll be bored to death!’

‘Not unless the masters say you can die,’ Ozorne replied with a chuckle. ‘Cheer up, my lad. Varice and I have this class with you, and this one. I have this one, and I took these two last term, so you can use my notes.’

‘You can use my notes for this one,’ Varice added, pointing. ‘And I have these two with you. It’ll be all right. You’ll see.’

‘And we can study together,’ Ozorne said cheerfully.

Ozorne also introduced him to the back halls and hidden shortcuts that got them places faster. He showed Arram the university’s many hidden shrines to varied gods, where the friends left small gifts in thanks to the Great Mother; to Mithros, the god of men, boys, and scholars; and to the Black God, who oversaw not only death but also the arts of the mage. In his previous three years Arram had not learned as much about the university as he did with Ozorne and Varice.

One early November night he flung himself onto his bed and went to sleep, leaving the shutters wide open for any bit of cool air that might happen by. As a result, he was roused from his dreams when something dropped onto his face.

His teachers in animal studies all said that animals acted in two ways: fight or flight. Most of the boys boldly proclaimed they were fighters, while they sat at their desks on a bright day. Arram discovered that night that he did neither. Instead he froze as the small creature slapped him repeatedly with a leathery wing.

Slowly, with shaking hands and the greatest of care, he lifted it from his face. It scolded in the softest of squeaks. That and the wings told him that his visitor was a bat. Gently he rose and placed it on his bed, leaving it to flutter there. He’d already noticed that one of the wings wasn’t working. Groping in the dim light of the half moon, he found his candle and flint. Within seconds, he had light enough to see clearly.

His two-inch visitor had broken a wing. This was beyond his skills. He found a basket and placed an old shirt in the bottom, then eased the bat inside as it continued to scold him. It settled somewhat after he took his hands away, quivering as it glared up at him.

‘You’ll be all right,’ Arram assured it as he covered the basket with the shirtsleeves. ‘I’m sure there’s someone who can patch you up. Just be patient.’ Arram dressed quickly and pulled on his sandals.

‘What are you doing over there?’ Ozorne complained sleepily. ‘Don’t tell me you talk in your sleep now.’

‘Oh, good, you’re awake,’ Arram replied. He carried the basket over to Ozorne’s cubicle, nearly tripping on a stack of books. He yelped. ‘Someday you’re going to break a bone this way.’

‘Why? I know where I left them.’ In the dim light from Ozorne’s open window, Arram saw his friend make a twisted hand gesture. The candles on his desk lit.

‘We’re not allowed to do that,’ Arram said wistfully. He in particular was forbidden to do anything of the kind without supervision.

‘Why? Do you think you’ll make your room explode?’ Ozorne looked at Arram, who was tidying the cloth on top of the bat. ‘Mithros save us, you do think you’ll destroy your room.’

‘It was a shed,’ Arram mumbled. ‘And then a pile of old crates. And then they wouldn’t let me work any basic fire spells without a certified mage being present.’ He gulped. ‘They say I’ll grow out of it.’

‘Horse eggs,’ Ozorne retorted. ‘You just need the right teacher.’

‘They say I need to meditate more and control my Gift,’ Arram explained. ‘But never mind me. This little thing is hurt. Can you help?’

‘“Little thing”? What have you got? It had better not be a snake.’ Ozorne carefully raised the shirtsleeves covering Arram’s discovery. ‘A bat!’ He lifted the small animal and inspected her belly. ‘A girl bat, see? You really ought to release her.’

‘No, look – her left wing is broken. It has to be splinted, and she has to be kept quiet. Put her back, please? I’ll get in trouble if she’s in our room—’

Ozorne raised a finger. At last he said, ‘Shoo for a moment. Let me get dressed. We’ll take her to Master Lindhall.’

Arram returned to his mattress, murmuring reassurances to his bat. She had a long muzzle tipped with a pair of nostrils that pointed in different directions. Before he covered her again, he saw that her fur was a dark cinnamon in colour. Her long ears pointed straight up.

She was the first animal who had come his way in a long time. He wanted so badly to keep her! In his first year he had smuggled in a tortoise and several lizards to live under his bed, only to get caught by the proctors. Away went his pets, and he was assigned extra schoolwork for punishment.

‘Won’t we get in trouble?’ he asked his friend softly.

‘Nonsense,’ Ozorne said cheerfully. ‘We’re doing a merciful deed. No one can fault us for rescuing a wounded creature. How did she come to you?’

‘She landed on my face.’

Ozorne was grinning when he joined Arram. ‘I don’t know if your luck is good or bad,’ he whispered as he opened the door. ‘It’s certainly interesting.’ He gestured for quiet, and they tiptoed out of the building.

He led Arram past the dormitories used by the Upper Academy students, who were studying for their mages’ certificates, and the mastery students, who had certificates and now worked on specializations. Torches lit the way. There were always people in the libraries and workrooms, whatever the hour.

Beyond the student dormitories lay buildings for instructors and those masters who were teachers. One of these lay on the southernmost road within university property. Ozorne led him inside, up to the top floor, and down a softly lit hall.

Arram sniffed. The corridor smelled like … plants. And animals. Like the aviary, or an enclosed wing at the menagerie.

Ozorne knocked on a door. ‘I hope I can wake him,’ he told Arram over his shoulder. ‘If he’s been away he’s hard to rouse. Otherwise we’ll have to try his student, and he’s a pain. …’

The door opened abruptly; Ozorne nearly fell in. A light, breathy voice said, ‘It’s the young fellow who’s good with birds. What is so urgent that you must deny me my sleep, Prince Ozorne?’

Ozorne waved Arram forward. ‘My friend has a hurt bat, Master Lindhall.’

‘A bat, is it?’

Arram looked up at Master Lindhall. He’d really thought they’d find one of the master’s student helpers, not the man himself – the man who had said Arram was much too young to study with him. Lindhall inspected him with bright blue eyes. ‘Come in, come in. Quietly – my assistant is asleep.’ He took Arram’s basket and retreated into his rooms.

‘Come along,’ Ozorne whispered when Arram hesitated. ‘Don’t you want to see where he lives?’

They followed the master through a sitting room that doubled as a library. Shelves heavy with books seemed to lean from the walls, ready to collapse on the thick carpets and cushions at any moment. Arram craned to look at the titles, until Ozorne grabbed his arm and towed him down a corridor, passing closed doors. The scent of animal droppings and urine thickened.

The tall man entered a room and left the door open. He set the basket on a long counter and snapped his fingers. Light filled the lamps hanging overhead. When he lowered his hand they dimmed. Arram guessed that this was so they would be easier on the bat’s eyes. He sighed with envy. Would he ever be as effortless in working magic as Ozorne and Master Lindhall?

Lindhall uncovered the bat. ‘Hello, sweetheart,’ he murmured. ‘You’ve had a bad night. You were lucky to find someone kind … Don’t mind my big old hands.’ Gently he lifted the bat from the basket. ‘You, my love, are a common pippistrelle. Your kindred are found along Carthak’s northern shores, along the Inland Sea, on Tortall’s shores, and inland as far north as the Great Road East. You should be thinking about hibernation, but it’s been a warm autumn.’ He carefully placed the bat on her back on Arram’s cloth, spreading the left wing wide. ‘Lovely, my dear. A perfect wing. You tried to feed as often as you could before the rains. It’s worth the risk of a wetting, isn’t it?’

The pippistrelle, who had struggled at first, calmed and watched Master Lindhall with her large dark eyes as if she understood every word. Arram and Ozorne were quiet as well, observing as those big fingers handled the tiny creature.

‘You broke your left wing, and the strongest part, the radius bone. Now, I have small bamboo splints around here somewhere, in a red clay cup …’

Arram saw a number of such cups on a shelf in front of him. They were different sizes, with bamboo and wooden splints of corresponding lengths, from a foot to three inches. He took down the cup of three-inch splints and showed it to Lindhall, who nodded. Ozorne offered a roll of loosely woven cotton to the master, who said, ‘Would you be so good as to cut eight inches of that off for me?’

The boys watched as the man gently splinted the broken bone. He then bound the folded wing to the bat’s side to keep it from moving. Whether it was due to fright, magic, or fascination with Lindhall’s soft commentary, the bat remained still, her eyes fixed on her caretaker.

Finally Lindhall gathered her up and led the boys to a second room. Here a number of recovering animals, including two other bats, were housed in wood or metal cages. Lindhall placed the pippistrelle in one and filled its water dish. ‘My student will feed you later,’ he assured the bat. He ushered the boys into the hall as he cut off the light and closed the door.

Back in his sitting room, he looked at his guests. ‘Still here?’ he asked, shaking his head. ‘You’ll be useless in class in the morning. Off with you! Oh!’ he added as they turned. ‘You did right bringing her to me.’

They ran to their dormitory. They were settling in their beds when Arram said, ‘Thank you for helping. I didn’t know what else to do.’

Ozorne chuckled. ‘Are you joking? I jump at any excuse to visit Master Lindhall! Go to sleep!’

Grinning, Arram turned over and slept.

The term passed so quickly that Arram hardly noticed when the cold weather set in and the rains followed. He did realize that for the first Midwinter festivities since his arrival at the university, he had friends to share the holiday and gifts with him. Instead of spending long days and nights reading on his cot, he was welcomed to parties by Varice and those who wanted to stay friends with her and Ozorne. The prince even got to join them on the fourth day of the holiday, the longest night of the year. In his honour the emperor presented the Lower Academy with a fabulous breakfast of fruits, eggs, meat, fresh breads, and cheeses to mark the return of the sun. Afterwards, everyone waddled to their beds for a long sleep before the evening’s parties.

‘This is far better,’ Ozorne told Arram between yawns as they staggered into their cubicles. ‘Mother didn’t like me spending so much time only with a girl the last couple of years, so she’d drag me to the palace every night of the holiday. I’d have to be polite to every stiff statue in court, even though they can’t be bothered to remember my name. Now that we’re friends, though, Mother isn’t clutching me so tightly.’ He cleared his throat. ‘I may have mentioned that you like Varice.’

‘Well, of course I do!’ Arram replied, startled. ‘You two are the best friends …’ He looked at Ozorne’s grin and realized his friend meant a different kind of liking. That wouldn’t do – Ozorne would tease him mercilessly if he believed Arram had feelings for their friend. ‘Ozorne! I don’t think of her like that!’ he lied. ‘She doesn’t think of me like that!’

Ozorne wandered into his cubicle, shedding his long tunic. The beads rattled in his hair as he pulled on his nightshirt. ‘So sensitive,’ he joked.

Arram made a rude noise and retired to his own cubicle to change into his night gear. He was drifting off when he said, ‘I thought you liked Varice.’

Ozorne responded with a yawn, then said, ‘We already have it worked out. It will be years and years before any of us have learned enough magic to make us happy. By then I will have the emperor’s permission to set up as a mage on my own, perhaps in the central mountains. I could represent him there. Varice has agreed to be my housekeeper and hostess, and if you like, you can work with me as well. We’ll keep the emperor’s peace, study new plants, volcanoes, and waterfalls the size of entire towns, and no one will bother us. What do you say?’

‘Sounds glorious,’ Arram mumbled, then slept.

He was riding a log like a horse, bouncing along huge, roaring waves. Ahead of him the river thundered like the god’s greatest wrath. It was exciting; it felt strange; he was scared to tumble into what had to be waterfalls ahead. One more bounce as the log dropped off the top of a wave—

He woke on his belly. Outside his shuttered window he could hear the roar of pouring rain. ‘So that’s what it is,’ he muttered, and dropped his face into his pillow.

His male organ was pinching him somehow. He turned to the side. That at least took his weight off of it, but it still didn’t feel quite right. He squirmed, but the feeling remained.

He touched his organ and flinched. It was not its usual relaxed and floppy self. ‘Stop it!’ he ordered softly, wondering if someone had bespelled him, or if he was going to die. There was no change in his body’s new state.

He tried to hear if Ozorne was awake, but the rain drowned out his roommate’s light snore. Arram clutched his covers around himself and addressed prayers to a number of gods. At last his midsection began to feel as it usually did. When he took another peek, the member was back to normal. He silently thanked whichever god had intervened.

He heard a thump on the other side of the wall. Ozorne was up.

‘You’d best not be lolling about in bed,’ his friend called. ‘It’s the first day of the new term. The sun returns, or at least Great Mithros is planning to, and the Crone also considers loosening her grip. We can hope for warmth instead of freezing in class.’

Through all this Arram could hear his friend clothing himself. He cautiously rose and did the same, checking his member repeatedly. It remained in its proper position, as still as a post. Perhaps ‘post’ was not the way to think of it, he realized, considering its earlier behaviour.

For a moment he considered asking Ozorne about it, then rejected the idea in panic. He knew of older boys and men who were considered to be zoeg in Thak, or a couple in Common, but he also knew plenty of boys who turned nasty when they thought another boy might be interested in them physically. More than once he’d seen one boy viciously attack another when it was suggested. He didn’t want to risk it, and he didn’t want to risk the friendship. Better to find a book about it, perhaps in the Library of Medicine, or suck up his courage and see a healer. And perhaps it would never happen again.

The term rushed along. For a time his member behaved itself, enough that Arram forgot its unusual act. He had other things on his mind. At lunch on the first day of the spring term Master Cosmas called Arram out of the room and gave him a square of parchment. ‘Arram, I’ve made a bit of a change to your schedule. One of Master Lindhall’s assistants will instruct you in fish and shellfish anatomy during the time when you formerly learned sigils. This is where you will find the workroom.’

‘Yes, Master,’ Arram murmured, reading the paper.

‘You’ll continue your study of sigils in your class on the written word and writing technique in the afternoon. Both your masters feel that you have made enough progress to manage the combination.’

Arram nodded, fingering the paper. Fish and shellfish meant more cutting dead animals up, as he did with birds and lizards, and drawing their insides. It was interesting in a peculiar way.

‘Is something wrong?’ Master Cosmas asked, his bright blue eyes worried. ‘Have I loaded you with too much? Several of your masters say you are outpacing what they planned for you this term.’

Arram smiled at the kind older man. Cosmas often checked to see how he was doing, slipping Arram a handful of sweets or an interesting book in addition. ‘No, sir, I’ll be fine. I’m twelve now, you know.’

Cosmas’s eyes danced. As head of the school, he had access to Arram’s records. He knew Arram’s true age, but he never let on that he did. ‘I believe I gave you a birthday present at the time,’ he replied seriously. ‘But you appear concerned.’

‘Oh, I was only thinking that Varice will fuss over me working with fish and shellfish. She’ll make me change clothes before supper, probably.’

Cosmas chuckled and looked up as the university’s bells chimed. ‘There’s the hour – I’ll walk you to mathematics. I have no doubt that she will do exactly that,’ he said, continuing their earlier discussion. ‘She is very precise. Did you expect her to make a fuss over your cutting up animals?’

‘I did a bit when I started with birds and reptiles,’ Arram confessed. ‘But she was assigned to teach me how to do it. She’s very good at it.’

Cosmas nodded. ‘It’s her experience as a cook,’ he murmured. ‘It makes her the most nimble-fingered student in this academy.’ He looked at a group of rushing young students and called, ‘You will get there in time. Proceed at a normal pace.’

One of them squeaked at the sight of the headmaster. They promptly obeyed, swerving to the opposite side of the corridor from Arram and his intimidating companion.

‘Truthfully, I was never so happy as when Varice and Ozorne took you up,’ Cosmas went on. ‘Varice has been a wonderful friend to Ozorne. She brought him out of his shell after his father’s death, but they both drew away from the school at the time. They turned inward, associating largely with one another. Now they have taken a liking to you, and it has made them more sociable. Introducing you to the university has got them to be part of it again.’

Arram remembered that upon his new placement, the three of them had usually sat alone. Then slowly others decided to become part of their small group. Now new students joined them for meals, study sessions, and explorations in town. Ozorne, who used to talk largely to Varice and Arram, did so now with the others, if not as much.

‘But why?’ Arram enquired. He couldn’t decide if he meant ‘Why me?’ or ‘Why are you telling me?’

‘Some special thread among you three,’ Cosmas said quietly. ‘It is not only that you are the most rapidly advancing students in the Lower Academy, either. A thread that has brought you together, perhaps. Here is your class.’ He left Arram standing in front of the room. ‘Good luck.’

For the first week of the term Arram tried to observe his two friends, looking for that special connection, but if it was there, he didn’t see it. He watched them so intensely that others noticed. One day at lunch a schoolmate joked, ‘What, are you in love with Ozorne? You goggle at him enough!’

Arram gaped at him. Then he snapped, ‘Who invited you to sit here?’

Ozorne led the laughter from the others and slung his arm around Arram’s shoulder. Varice did the same from the other side and told Arram’s tormentor, ‘If you can’t be witty, you may seat yourself somewhere else.’

His cheeks flaming red, the boy gathered up his things and left the table. One of the others left with him. Varice and Ozorne released Arram’s shoulders, each with a firm squeeze. Arram lowered his head, smiling and teary-eyed at the same time. They were such good friends!

‘That was unkind,’ Ozorne said. ‘I didn’t know you had it in you!’

Arram glanced up; Ozorne winked at him. ‘I’m sorry – I didn’t mean to be rude,’ Arram explained.

Varice patted his arm. ‘Nonsense. You are far too polite. Since we can’t hit bullies without getting into trouble, we learn to say cutting things.’

‘To start with,’ Ozorne added.

‘You’re always joking,’ Varice said, crinkling her nose. ‘May we please finish our meal?’

Cosmas was right: Arram could handle the combined sigils and writing classes, which Arram considered to be a blessing. Fish and shellfish anatomy was as difficult as birds and reptiles, though his ability to sketch improved week by week. He even found himself making idle sketches of people and plants when he was daydreaming. He was so busy that it was a month before he noticed that Ozorne was escaping their lunch group several times a week to eat by himself. All of them did it now and then – the pace of schoolwork was so intense that sometimes it was necessary to find a corner to oneself. Ozorne had done it before, but this was more frequent.

He also talked less once he put his bedtime lamp out as February wore on into March. At study times they all talked only when they needed help with a problem. Arram noticed no difference there, but he felt snubbed when Ozorne replied briefly to anything he said and turned away.

One Friday night Arram asked, ‘Do we have plans for tomorrow?’

‘No, I do not have plans, and I do not want to join in plans,’ the boy on the other side of the wall snapped. ‘How many times can you look at the same stupid vendors and the same stupid animals? Just leave me be!’

Arram trembled at the sharpness of the reply to a perfectly ordinary question. He hugged his pillow to his face and tried to think of a proper retort. All those he considered were too extreme, too rude, or too childish.

He was still considering mighty retorts when he heard a deep sigh and bare feet on stone. Ozorne pulled out Arram’s chair. ‘Are you trying to smother yourself?’ he asked.

‘Go away,’ Arram said, his voice muffled. He lifted the pillow to admit air and to emit his voice. ‘I said, go away.’

‘Arram, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have snapped. I don’t have so many friends that I can afford to insult them – please forgive me.’ Ozorne nudged the bed with his foot. ‘Please? I must be coming down with something. My head aches. I just want to stay in and sleep, understand?’

Arram wanted to ask if he’d been getting ill for three weeks, but let it go. ‘Anything I can do?’ he asked.

‘No. Look, I just get a little … cranky this time of year. Don’t mind me, will you? Whatever I say?’

‘Have you any idea why you turn … cranky?’ Arram asked cautiously.

Ozorne gave an unprincely snort. ‘Why does anybody get cross when the weather’s like this, day after everlasting day? Even you … I’ve noticed you’re forever sneaking down to the river. You come back with sand on your shoes. How are you getting out of the grounds, anyway? All the gates are closed and locked at sunset, and there’s guards on duty.’

Arram sat up and shrugged. ‘There’s a tree with branches that hang over the wall in the citrus garden.’

Ozorne smiled. ‘I’m surprised old Hulak hasn’t caught you yet. Stop going there, will you? It’s too dangerous in the dark, especially during the winter floods. They say Enzi, the crocodile god, roams the banks, looking for fresh meat.’ He boosted himself from Arram’s chair. ‘I’ll tell you what. I will try to be sociable, and you will stay away from the river, all right? It’s been known to rise four feet in a day.’ He didn’t wait for an answer, but returned to his cubicle. He could be like that sometimes, thinking his requests – the ones that sounded like orders – would be obeyed instantly.

Arram stared absently into the darkness. Ozorne had it wrong. Arram didn’t visit the river to escape the school. He went for the roar of swiftly moving water. He loved the waves that rose there only during the floods. The bellows of hippopotamus herds and masses of crocodiles thrilled him. The river was a god, taking trees, reeds, boats, and anything else it found. And he didn’t believe the crocodile god, Enzi, actually roamed the river’s banks. Gods didn’t just appear in the Mortal Realms!

Someday he would take a boat along the river’s length. He would discover all its wonders, and learn to use its every magic.

‘Don’t tell me Ozorne’s not coming,’ Varice demanded at breakfast.

‘He said he must be getting ill. He wants to stay in,’ Arram explained uncomfortably. He didn’t think Ozorne was telling the truth, and he hated lying to Varice, even if it was just a lie he passed along.

Varice led them to an empty table. She set her tray down with a crisp clack. ‘Well, that does it,’ she said quietly. ‘I’ve been concerned for this last week.’ She patted Arram’s hand. ‘Don’t worry. There are things we can do, after I attend services.’ Varice was more religious than Arram and Ozorne put together, at least when it came to the temples of the university and town. Arram made the Sign on his chest for luck, before they both ate a hearty breakfast. It was a habit they’d brought from Northern homes: when Ozorne took breakfast, he had a Southern meal of yogurt, wheat or barley flatbread, a little fruit, and juice. He often teased Arram and Varice that by the time they were masters they would have to be rolled wherever they wished. It was a joke neither of his friends liked, but he seemed not to notice.

Breakfast done, Varice went off to her worship. Arram wandered out the nearest side gate and to the river cliffs once again. He had to give up the road to the wharf, since it was half underwater. The shaggy grass on the high ground was soaked. So were his breeches by the time he reached the heights that overlooked the Zekoi.

The view was better than it was at night. At night he mostly listened, half entranced by the sound of nature out of control. On his rare daylight trips he observed the waves that rose in normally flat waters, waves that tossed up spume like those at sea. He counted the whole trees and dead animals that passed, bracing himself against the grief of the animals’ loss by telling himself they were sacrifices to the river god. He knew the farmers sacrificed to Zekoi, since the god provided the water that flooded their fields, bringing rich mud that sired bountiful crops. It made sense that the plants and creatures of the lands would do the same for their water and food.

Dwelling on these and other ideas, he lost track of time. When he came around, he was caught in the middle of a cloudburst. The gate guard laughed as the dripping boy passed through. Arram pretended not to notice as he trotted back to his dormitory. It was a relief to shed his soaked tunic and sandals next to his door.

It was much less of a relief to walk inside his room clad only in his loincloth – also soaked – and hear Varice talking quietly to Ozorne.

‘Arram?’ she called.

‘Don’t come around!’ he yelped, ducking into his cubicle. He scrabbled in his chest for dry clothes. His face burned despite the cold water pouring down from his hair. First the tunic for cover, he ordered himself, then a towel for my head, and a dry loincloth …

He looked down. He had donned an old blue-and-orange tunic that was now far too short for his legs and arms, even for a Northern student.

‘Stay there!’ he commanded, more panicked than ever.

‘Whatever you’re doing, do it anywhere else,’ Ozorne commanded, his voice weary and vexed. ‘I said I wanted to be left alone. Are you two hard of hearing?’

Arram produced long breeches and yanked them on. Decently covered, if not attractively – the breeches were tan – he looked into Ozorne’s cubicle. Varice sat on the floor near the opening, a book open in her lap. When she turned her head to gaze up at Arram, she began to giggle.

‘Ozorne, look, he’s wearing a turban,’ she joked. ‘I didn’t know you were visiting the Ergwae tribes this morning!’

‘I wish he’d taken you with him and stayed there,’ Ozorne snapped. ‘Don’t you know the meaning of “go”?’

‘Not when you say it,’ she replied pertly. ‘And Arram just lost his ability to hear it, didn’t you?’ She gazed up at Arram, patted the floor beside her, and mouthed, ‘Sit down.’

Arram looked from her to the mound of pillows and blankets that was Ozorne. He’d never had to choose between them, nor had he got commands from both of them. He picked the middle road. Yanking the towel from his sodden curls, he scrubbed his hair.

‘Great Mother, what happened?’ Varice demanded. ‘Did you take a nap out there? And what happened to your feet?’

Arram glanced down. Mud oozed between his toes and down his shins. ‘The river heights are a little soggy,’ he explained. He went out to the gallery, where the servants kept a rinsing bucket. He cleaned off the mud, then returned to mop his floor. Varice waited for him to finish, a wicked-looking comb in her hand.

Arram balked. ‘That’s going to hurt.’

‘There’s a little of Ozorne’s scented oil in it.’

‘Will you two go?’ A sandal flew over the barrier between the beds and struck Arram’s chair.

Arram backed up against the door. ‘I don’t want smelly substances in my hair, particularly not Ozorne’s smelly things!’

Varice walked by and recovered the sandal. She whispered, ‘Keep it up. He’s getting livelier.’ In a louder tone she added, ‘Don’t be silly. Oil makes hair easier to untangle.’

Arram drew breath for another protest, never taking his eyes from the menace of the comb. Without warning, the door swung open and knocked him forward to his knees. He virtually tackled Varice; she fell onto her rump with a shriek.

‘What in the Divine Realms is going on here?’ demanded Master Chioké. Although he sounded shocked, he still calmly shook water from his hands and satchel onto the two young people. His long black hair, pinned back in twists of braided gold chain, was perfectly dry, as were his feet. Disgruntled, Arram guessed that the master must have left waterproof boots and a cloak hung in the gallery outside.

‘Student Varice, you are not supposed to be here,’ Chioké informed her sternly. He stepped past her and Arram.

Varice struggled to rise. Arram reached out and helped to pull her arms so she could stand. Carefully he fought his own way upright without falling onto her again.

Varice curtsied. ‘I have permission from the housekeeper, Master Chioké,’ she said demurely, gazing at the floor. Arram knew that tone and downward look: she was furious that the master had knocked them down without helping them to rise. ‘I told her that Prince Ozorne had missed the morning meal, so I brought him juice and food. I was reading to him from one of our lessons when Arram came in. Wasn’t I, Arram?’

Arram nodded. ‘Ozorne was telling us to go away. I’m sure he’ll tell you to go away, too, Master,’ he said, all innocence. Ozorne had told him once that Chioké said he thought Arram was talented, but perhaps a little simple. ‘Ozorne tells everyone to go away,’ he added in the face of Chioké’s suspicious glare.

Ozorne sprang up from his heap of blankets. ‘I do want you to go away, all of you! That’s the thing about this poxy, deep-fouled place – a fellow can’t get any quiet!’ He raised a hand that held his other slipper. ‘And don’t look daggers at me! You don’t know what—’

Chioké stepped around Arram and Varice, removing his satchel from his shoulder. Ozorne abruptly fell silent. ‘I am surprised by you, Prince Ozorne,’ the mage said quietly. ‘Your royal mother would be most distressed to hear you speak to friends in such a manner, particularly when they act only from concern.’

‘I hate clinging,’ Ozorne muttered. He glanced at Varice and Arram. ‘But I’m sorry. I’ve just been … itchy, of late. Itchy and cross and sleepy.’ He glared at Chioké, who took a flask from his satchel and removed the top. It was a small cup. ‘And what’s the use?’ Ozorne continued to rant while Varice clung to Arram’s arm. ‘I’ll get sucked into palace business anyway … I’ll never get to be a mage. They’ll put me in the army … I’ll be cut down, just like Father—’ His voice was rising.

Chioké deftly pulled the cork that plugged the flask and poured a small measure of liquid into the cup. Arram could see the liquid shining brightly in the journey from bottle to cup and in the cup itself. Chioké offered the shimmering vessel to Ozorne. ‘Drink, Your Highness,’ he told Ozorne. ‘All will be well.’

‘You aren’t bespelling him, are you?’ Arram asked, despite his own caution around masters. ‘We aren’t supposed to take any cantrip unless given by the healers.’

‘You dare.’ There was danger in Chioké’s voice. ‘Just because you have dazzled a handful of soppish mages does not mean I will permit you to question me!’

Varice covered Arram’s mouth with her hand. ‘No, Master, please, he doesn’t understand! Please don’t be angry!’ she pleaded.

‘Then get him away from here and explain, before I teach him the respect he owes a master who will not coddle him!’ Chioké ordered.

Arram protested, but Varice dug both hands into his arm. That was when he discovered that her beautiful fingernails were not only for decoration. Wincing, he let her tow him out into the corridor. ‘But my clothes,’ he protested. ‘Proper clothes … And he isn’t supposed to … mmph!’

She had clapped a hand over his mouth. ‘Will you be silent and let me explain?’ she demanded. ‘My goodness, Arram, but you do clack on sometimes! Master Chioké is Ozorne’s personal master.’

Arram peeled her hand away from his face. ‘But it’s only the ones that show great promise who get a personal master,’ he reminded her. ‘And that only in their last years at the Upper Academy.’

Varice sighed and leaned against the wall. ‘Ozorne is different. His mother and the emperor weren’t going to let him return here at all after his father …’

Arram nodded. She meant after his father had died.

‘Master Chioké stepped in and said he would be Ozorne’s personal master, even though he’s too young. He’s doing it for Ozorne’s family.’

Arram scratched his head. ‘But he’s a fire mage, not a healer.’

Varice shrugged. ‘I suppose he got the medicine from healers, or Ozorne’s mother. Take my word, those two treat Ozorne like gold.’

Arram looked at his door. ‘So now what do I do?’

‘You take these clean clothes.’ The housekeeper, Irafa, stood in her open doorway. She offered a set of his clothing to him. How long had she been there, listening? Arram thought, horrified.

‘Silly, she has to know about Ozorne, with him in her care,’ Varice said, guessing what Arram thought. She asked Irafa, ‘May he change in your room? I don’t believe Master Chioké wants to be interrupted.’

Irafa waved Arram into her quarters and closed the door behind him. When he returned, he found her talking with Varice. As soon as Arram handed his dreadful clothes to the beckoning Irafa, Varice said, ‘There’s a glassblower down the way who makes all kinds of things you wouldn’t expect. Do you want to go see? He’s under the arcade outside the gates, so we won’t get wet if we wear hats and cloaks.’

They returned from a fine afternoon of shop visiting and talk to take an early supper. Then, carefully, they looked in on Ozorne. Chioké was still present, reading in Ozorne’s chair, when they entered the room.

‘Very good,’ Chioké said, getting to his feet. ‘Irafa told me you were out. I want you both to know that he will sleep another day, maybe two. He has a cup and water beside his bed, as well as fruit and bread should he get hungry.’ He turned back and blew out the candle he’d been using. ‘However, I doubt he will wake. Send a messenger for me if you are here when he does. I am in good hopes that the medicine will do the trick in restoring his normal state of mind.’ He nodded at them, gathered his things, and left without bothering to close the door.

They both looked in at Ozorne, who was once again a lump of blankets and pillows. Varice tiptoed over and rearranged the pile so her friend’s nose poked into the open air. Then she turned to Arram and shrugged. ‘He’s the master,’ she said with resignation. ‘I suppose it’s just you and me for breakfast for a while, then.’ She waved and left Arram, closing the door behind her.

Two days later they were surprised at supper by a cheery Ozorne. ‘It’s still raining,’ he announced as if he hadn’t been dark and gloomy for weeks. ‘Anyone want to race paper boats down the corridors?’

Arram and Varice both sighed in relief. Arram never remembered to ask Varice if she had seen the glow in Chioké’s medicine.

THE IMPERIAL UNIVERSITY OF CARTHAK
The School for Mages

The Lower Academy for Youthful Mages

SCHEDULE OF STUDY, SUMMER TERM, 436 H.E.

Student: Arram Draper

Learning Level: Semi-Independent

Breakfast – Third Morning Bell

Morning Classes

Gems and Stones

Four-Legged Animals: Anatomy

Language: Ergwae

Lunch – Noon Bell

Afternoon Classes

Protective Circles – Cosmas – Ozorne & Varice

Illusions: Objects – Dagani – Ozorne & Varice

Basic Spellcraft

Monkey, Orangutan, and Gorilla: Anatomy

Supper – Seventh Afternoon Bell

Extra Study at Need

CHAPTER 5
June 1–4, 436

Students were rejoicing in the lazy week between the spring and summer sessions when Arram was summoned to Master Cosmas’s office. He went nervously, wondering what he might have done.

Cosmas was smiling when his assistant ushered the boy into the master’s large office. He waved Arram to a seat and surprised the boy by taking a chair next to him.

‘Well,’ the master said cheerfully, ‘you lived to the summer term. That wasn’t so bad, was it?’

Arram turned possible replies over in his head. He rejected complaints about long hours of study and having to give up expeditions into town. Finally he said, ‘I like the more complicated magics, sir.’

Cosmas nodded. ‘It’s a very good thing we are pursuing this course of study with you, then,’ he said gravely. ‘I know it’s a great deal of work. It leads to more difficult courses in the Upper Academy, too. Still, they will keep that busy mind of yours happy, as they will those of Ozorne and Varice. You three won’t be bored. Exhausted, but never bored.’ He smiled cheerfully at Arram, who found that he was smiling back.

‘Now,’ Cosmas went on, reaching for a document and an apparently heavy pouch that were on the corner of his desk, ‘I have had correspondence with your mother and grandfather over the winter, through the Council of Mages in Tyra. We have come to a different arrangement with them as regards your education.’

‘Sir?’ Arram was puzzled.

‘You see, it is impossible for us to educate you properly, as your talents demand, while asking for varying amounts of fees from your family to cover materials and books, depending on what you must study in the coming terms,’ Cosmas explained. ‘Even if they approved each course of instruction – and there are some that have refused to allow their youngsters to take certain classes—’

Arram grimaced. Last autumn Varice’s father had ordered that she was to have no more classes in cooking magic, calling it ‘nonsense’. Princess Mahira had forbidden Ozorne to study the part of a history class that covered the end of slavery in the Northern Lands. She said it was ‘seditious poison’ and threatened to complain to the emperor. Arram had always worried that his own family might not be able to afford his education in a bad year, but he knew they would never forbid a particular class.

‘We will not allow your schooling to be vulnerable. Thus …’ Cosmas offered the parchment to Arram. ‘This states that your education from this point onward – supplies, housing, and class fees – is assumed by the university. On the first day of the interval between terms, you come to me. I will give you a clothing and spending allowance. Here.’ He gave the pouch to Arram. ‘Your books and supplies will be delivered to your room, just as Ozorne’s are, the day before term begins.’ He leaned back and folded his hands on his small round belly. ‘A paper inside that pouch explains everything, including your classes for summer term.’ He smiled. ‘You appear dazed.’

Arram drew a shuddery breath. He was a little dazed. ‘My parents …’ he murmured.

‘They have agreed to everything,’ the headmaster reassured him.

Arram peeked into the pouch. It was heavy with silver thaki coins.

‘New summer garments first,’ Cosmas advised. ‘But buy yourself something – several somethings, in fact. You’ve worked hard. Perhaps let Varice do the bargaining when it comes to clothes.’

Arram looked at Cosmas. ‘I don’t understand!’ he said, baffled. ‘Why me? What did I do that day in water magic that makes me worth so much attention?’

Cosmas sat back in his chair. ‘Actually, we do this for others, students with talent who don’t have wealthy families. But … Great Mithros, did no one tell you?’

Arram shook his head. ‘Not really, sir.’

Cosmas rubbed his forehead. ‘Lad, however you did it, you reached through the floor, through the foundation of the building, and deep into the earth, breaking through the protective shield under the university. Then you gathered water from the lake beneath us, miles below. If Sebo and I had not stopped you, you might have flooded the entire building! What occurred is called a flare. It happens with young mages who will manifest great strength once they mature. You may have other such flares as time goes on. We are watching for them now, and your masters are stronger than most. Youngsters with your potential – and your intellect – are worth extra trouble.’

Arram felt his cheeks go hot with embarrassment. Cosmas had to be mistaken – though certainly Girisunika had not drawn the water into the dish. She had not forgiven him after all this time, but glared at him whenever they passed each other in the halls.

‘I hope I live up to your plans for me,’ he finally said shyly.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ Cosmas said, rising to his feet. Arram understood that this uncomfortable meeting was over and scrambled up, only to trip on the leg of his chair. Cosmas caught him as he pitched forward and set him upright, chuckling. ‘There you go,’ he said as Arram got both feet under him. ‘You’ve grown enough that it must be difficult to keep track of your legs, eh? Now study hard.

‘Oh.’ Cosmas tapped the purse. ‘And I would leave most of that with the bursar. Draw out what you need when you wish to shop. Run along – don’t waste your week off!’

Arram went, with an assortment of thank-yous. His first stop was in fact the office of the academy’s bursar: the purse felt conspicuous on his belt. He was glad to hand all but fifteen thakis over to the clerk, accepting a receipt for the rest from her.

He was wandering back to his room, considering what to do next, when Ozorne found him. ‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere!’ the older boy exclaimed, clapping Arram on the shoulder. ‘My lady mother has sent my allowance for the month. Let’s find Varice and go into town. What do you say?’

‘Master Cosmas said I need to buy clothes,’ Arram mumbled, looking down at his knee-length breeches.

Ozorne tugged on his own tunic hem. It was supposed to come to the tops of his calves and only covered his knees. ‘It seems you aren’t the only one who needs a new wardrobe, and quickly. I wager we’ll find Varice with her kitchen friends – come along.’

The afternoon was fun once they finished the dull work of choosing cloth, being measured, and bespeaking new clothes at Varice’s favourite tailor. They prowled the booksellers, finding more than a few volumes they could not do without, ogled the jewellery sellers’ booths, watched jugglers, and attended the latest play.

After a wonderful supper they were on their way out of the market when Arram saw a pastry seller’s cart and halted. ‘I have to do it,’ he said, digging a coin from his depleted purse. ‘He has tassen pastries, those three-cornered ones? Do you want tassen to take back with you? He has poppy, and it looks like apricot—’

Ozorne’s hand clamped on his arm. ‘Don’t,’ he said fiercely. ‘Look at that seller – the blue headcloth, and the star pendant. He’s a filthy Sirajit. He probably put dung in them, or piss. We don’t buy from Sirajit pigs.’

Arram didn’t protest. By now he had learned that Ozorne could not be shaken from his suspicion of anyone he thought was Sirajit. Arram only gave the pastry cart a yearning look as Ozorne pulled him away. Passing, he could see the vendor stood straight, holding on to his pride in the face of the students’ snub.

Once they reached the university, Ozorne stalked off, leaving Arram to escort Varice to her room. At her door she told him, ‘Don’t do that again, not if you can help it. You can see how it upsets him.’

‘I didn’t even know those cakes are Sirajit things,’ Arram protested. ‘Mother bought them all the time. This was the first I’ve seen them since I came here. Of course I won’t upset Ozorne, but the poppy seed ones are so good.’

Varice grinned. ‘I love the apricot ones. I tell you what – I’ll ask one of the cooks to get some, and we’ll just hide them from Ozorne.’

Arram gave her a coin large enough to buy a number of pastries. ‘You are wonderful, Varice!’ he told her gratefully.

‘I know,’ she replied, twirling before she entered her dormitory.

Arram began the walk to his room, thinking about what a good friend Varice was. It wasn’t long before, to his dismay, his member added its opinion, if not of his pretty friend, then of girls in general. Fortunately, his shopping satchel covered the bulge in his breeches, and the inconvenience shrank by the time he reached his room.

Two days later he and Ozorne went star watching with permission from the housekeeper. They lay head to head on the stretch of green behind the menagerie buildings, where most torchlight didn’t reach.

‘I saw the strangest thing the other day,’ Arram began. ‘This fellow was at his desk, and his – his …’ This was his best friend, and he couldn’t even say the word. ‘Below his belt. His, um, manhood, got … large. He didn’t even have his hands there.’

Ozorne moaned. ‘Oh, that,’ he said with amusement and despair. ‘But – just a moment. Didn’t you have the talk, the one they give to the twelve-year-olds …? No, wait, that won’t be until the autumn term.’

He fell silent for a short while until Arram said impatiently, ‘Ozorne, what talk?’

His friend shook his head. ‘I suppose … Well. They teach this to the twelve-year-olds when autumn term begins. You’ll love it; everyone makes noise and they won’t sit still … Really, you’d think our clever instructors would know that if you were so far ahead on everything else you might be far ahead on this! Sometimes these mages aren’t practical, have you noticed?’

‘Why? I’m not very practical,’ Arram reminded his friend.

‘Very true. Listen, then. This fellow – the thing with his member happens to most of us eventually. We could be looking at dirt and it will happen, or test questions, or things that have nothing to do with canoodling. Mother had our healer talk to me about’ – he made his voice deeper – ‘Becoming a Man the last time I was home. We start to get wet spots on our sheets or loincloths, too.’

‘Wet spots?’ Arram asked, horrified. He hadn’t wet the bed since he was a baby!

‘Because we have sex dreams,’ Ozorne explained. ‘Our members practise for the real thing. That has to be a gift from the gods, because bedding someone is all adults who aren’t mages talk about. The liquid, that’s what makes babies when it’s put in a woman.’

‘Why is life so complicated?’ Arram whispered.

‘Oh, don’t fuss. We’ll get to try it with a lover eventually – Look! A shooting star!’

Arram watched the stars fall, awed, wondering which god was sending a fiery love letter to another god, or even to a mortal. It happened sometimes: he’d read enough stories about it. A burst of stars passed over, drawing sighs of wonder from both lads.

They were sharing a bottle of grape juice when a group of students Ozorne’s age walked by. One of them looked towards the two boys and said something that made the others laugh, before they wandered on.

Arram glanced up and noticed his friend’s closed look and clenched fists. Hearing the ugly thing the older boy had said, Arram murmured, ‘The highest mark that one will get is his certificate in tree worm magic.’

Ozorne snorted. ‘Is that meant to console me?’

Arram assumed his most innocent tone. ‘Don’t you like tree worms?’

The prince looked at him. ‘One day they’ll pay for that.’ He took a drink from a flask he’d kept tucked away and offered it to Arram. ‘It’s only elderberry wine. My aunt married in Galla, and she sends casks of the stuff to my mother for ailments.’

Not wanting to seem rude, Arram tried a sip and grimaced. He handed the bottle back. ‘You know they advise us not to drink or use drugs that affect our thinking. Our Gifts.’

‘Elderberry isn’t strong! I just like the taste – Look, are you going to turn into a dull dog?’ Ozorne shifted onto his side to glare at Arram, who swiftly denied any possibility that he would get boring. Finally Ozorne waved him silent and asked, ‘So did you want to ask something?’

Arram took a breath and hoped his friend wouldn’t get angry again. ‘Why do some people call you the leftover prince? I don’t mean to upset you, but I’d like to know.’

Ozorne sat up, sighing. ‘Oh, that stupid thing. When I was small, apparently I told strangers I would be emperor someday. First my father heard. He said there were plenty of princes ahead of me. Then the emperor found out.’ Ozorne smiled grimly. ‘He sat me on his lap before all the court and pointed out every prince ahead of me in the line of succession.’

Arram frowned. ‘That wasn’t very kind.’

Ozorne shrugged. ‘It was honest. He said with so many heirs available, I was just a leftover.’

Arram remembered something from history class. ‘But there aren’t seven heirs, are there? One dead of a heart attack, one of the Sweating Sickness, your father …’

Ozorne took another drink of the wine. ‘My father. Someday I will build a statue to his name and place it in the Square of Heroes, at the palace. You’ll see.’

‘I believe you,’ Arram told him firmly. He believed Ozorne could do anything. His friend had spirit. His eyes had fire when he spoke.

Ozorne gripped Arram’s shoulder. ‘We’ll show them all, won’t we? Oh, look! Here comes a whole storm of stars! It’s the gods. They’re telling us we’ll succeed!’

After lunch the first day of the summer term, Arram found that he was keeping pace with Ozorne as he hurried to class. Varice, too, was trying to keep up.

‘Where are you off to?’ he asked his friends. They were close to the end of one of the open-sided galleries, next to a garden full of pungent herbs that practically threw their scent into the students’ faces.

‘Here,’ Ozorne said, opening the door to the last room. Arram checked the door’s number against his schedule; it was the same.

‘Mine too,’ Varice told him, and shoved him inside ahead of her.

‘Good afternoon, you three,’ a cheerful, familiar voice greeted them as Arram blinked away the light spots summoned as they passed from the bright outside to the shady room. ‘I hope you aren’t too sleepy from your meals to concentrate on your work.’

It was Master Cosmas. Arram grinned. He was going to share the master with his friends.

‘Be seated,’ he directed, pointing to a long table and various stools placed around it. There were three slates on the table, with three small boxes. As Arram, Ozorne, and Varice took their seats, Cosmas pushed a slate towards each of them, followed by a box. Since he was closest to Varice, he opened the box before her. It revealed sticks of chalk.

‘Are you settled?’ he asked. All three of them nodded. ‘Draw the most perfect circle you can manage.’

He clasped his hands behind his back and walked around the table, observing them. Arram broke two pieces of chalk before he realized he could just use a short piece instead of breaking more long ones. Then he and Ozorne spent time drawing curves and rubbing them out because they weren’t smooth or circular enough.

At last Cosmas raised a hand. ‘As you lads can see, Varice has done better by far – why is that, young lady?’

She looked at her circle and frowned. ‘When I help in the kitchens, they often put me to tracing the circles for the pastry cooks.’ When she noticed the boys’ baffled looks, she explained, ‘All those cakes and pastries that are perfectly round, and the circles of spice on top of dishes – someone has to draw them in heavy paper and cut them out.’

‘Why not use round plates as patterns?’ Arram asked.

Varice made a face at him. ‘Because the edges aren’t even.’

‘And magic depends on perfection,’ Cosmas interrupted. ‘A mage must be able to create a perfect circle on the ground, in the air, on paper or chalkboard – anywhere. Arram, your hand wiggles.’

Arram hung his head.

‘Ozorne, your lines are too short, and when you begin again, you don’t quite match,’ Cosmas said. ‘When you go to work the spell, you will either have it break free of your control, or you will have to put extra Gift into evening the lines, just as Arram’s spell will go everywhere. Varice, you must learn to do your circles more quickly.’

She nodded. ‘Yes, Master Cosmas.’

The old mage stood. ‘Now, I would like to see nine circles of the same diameter on those slates. I fully understand you may not have all nine by tomorrow, or by the day after, but each of you must have nine circles, all perfect, before we move onwards. You may not use your Gift, nor a round object.’ He went to the desk in the corner and sat on the comfortable chair behind it, lacing his fingers over his belly. ‘Wake me when the bells sound for end of class.’ He closed his eyes.

The three students looked at one another, dumbfounded at a teacher who napped during class. Finally they returned to work. Cosmas began to snore softly.

When the bells started to ring, they made noise as they gathered their belongings. Cosmas yawned and waved goodbye. ‘I will see you here tomorrow,’ he told them as he struggled out of his chair.

They emerged into the open-sided corridor. The sun was baking the university. ‘That was … instructive,’ Ozorne remarked, trying to fit his slate into his bag without smearing the marks on it.

Varice watched, smiling. The inside of her bag was filled with a number of smaller bags secured together, each with a different purpose. She was the only one of the three who could find everything in her carrybag right away. ‘I’ll tell you two what,’ she offered as Arram finally thrust his slate and chalk into his own carrier, wiping off most of the last hour’s work. ‘I’ll get both of you the needed materials for a cloth container for your slates and chalks. I’ll even help you start to sew the proper bags, but you do most of the work yourselves.’ She walked into the next room, nose in the air.

‘Do we have a choice?’ Arram asked Ozorne woefully. He could see what remained of the marks on his slate rubbing off onto the rough inside of his leather bag.

Ozorne sighed. ‘Not really, no. Unless you want to pay a seamstress to do it if she has time.’ He walked into the room after Varice.

When Arram stepped over the doorsill, he halted abruptly, colliding with Ozorne’s back. His friend was frankly gawping at their new instructor. Arram knew her as the radiantly beautiful Master Dagani, who had been so kind to him the day he’d flooded his classroom. After a long time of only glimpses of her in passing, he saw that her beauty was enough to knock a fellow breathless, as it had done to Ozorne. She wore her wavy black hair pinned up in the heat. Her thin white silk tunic clung to her scarlet master’s robe. A gold-embroidered silk belt was wrapped several times around her waist, displaying a number of small vials decorated with vivid paints and gems.

Arram gently kicked Ozorne and bowed. ‘Master Dagani, greetings,’ he said, trying to ignore Varice’s soft giggles.

‘Welcome to my class in illusions.’ Dagani came forward and cupped Arram’s cheek in her hand. ‘You look far better than you did the day we first met,’ she said in her musical voice. ‘But you should take a breath and concentrate on your Gift. It is escaping your control again.’

Arram apologized and closed his eyes. Slowly he drew breath, in and out, ignoring the conversation around him as he let the flying edges of his magic fall back into himself. He found a handful of strands had wandered out of the room entirely, an event so strange that he forgot he was in class and let his mind follow them.

What in Mithros’s and Shakith’s names draws my power so far from me? he wondered as he tried to call it back to him. As he followed the strands down the corridor, past the masters’ classrooms, the gardens, and the student classrooms, he failed to notice that more of his power was escaping him. What he did notice was the interesting thing, the attractive thing, that was drawing his magic. It sang to his Gift far more sweetly than any temple or street musician. He couldn’t resist finding out what it was. He would do that, and then he would retrieve his power. That was his plan.

Then he struck the university’s magicked wall.

The power on the other side was moving. He had felt nothing like it before. It reared up, towering over the wall. It plucked his Gift with claws of fiery gold. Arram fought to yank his power from it, promising himself he would meditate until strange magics would battle to get free of him. The power was amused: it released the strings of his magic one at a time, letting them whip Arram as they returned to him.

Another Gift, cool and silvery, wrapped itself around Arram and yanked. He flew backward, away from whatever had entangled him, past the classrooms and gardens. His last confused thought was that he was going to die. He struck something with a hard thump.

Cold water trickled over his face and into his shirt. ‘I was flying,’ he mumbled.

‘Did you see it?’ That soft, awed whisper belonged to Varice. ‘His Gift – it just flowed out of him, like … like ink!’

‘It looked like the night sky, with stars. I thought he was dreaming something odd again, but awake,’ Ozorne murmured. ‘Is he alive?’

‘Of course he is alive.’ That was Dagani. ‘Do his dreams always force his Gift to manifest?’

‘Sometimes,’ Ozorne replied. ‘I’ve never seen it during the day before.’

‘Did you let him know that his Gift was doing things in his sleep?’ Varice asked.

Arram could tell by her tone that she was displeased. He tried to wiggle his fingers to indicate that she should calm down, or make Ozorne be quiet. He wasn’t certain which he wanted to tell her, but it didn’t matter – his fingers wouldn’t move.

‘Why?’ Ozorne asked. ‘He wasn’t harming anything. And it’s entertaining when I can’t rest.’

‘Arram, my dear, your Gift has hold of you,’ Dagani told him softly. ‘Make it release you. You are the master. Make it accept your will. Otherwise I will be forced to use stern measures.’ She paused and said, ‘They may involve removing your shirt.’

The thought of the beautiful Dagani seeing his bony chest made Arram fling his power around the fugitive tendrils, then shove them down into his centre with a strength he didn’t know he possessed. Once they were subdued, sinking into the pool of his Gift, he sat up, banging into Ozorne’s shoulder.

Dagani drew over a chair and sat on it. ‘You need to work on your concentration. You must not lose your hold on your power in your sleep – a greater mage might draw it from you as a spinster draws thread from wool.’

‘I would never!’ Ozorne said with a grin. Dagani quelled him with a raised eyebrow. The prince ducked his head and busied himself in drawing up chairs for himself and Varice.

‘What happened to you?’ the mage asked. ‘One moment you were with us, and then … your Gift broke away and your mind followed it. You collapsed.’

Arram remembered and moaned with disappointment. ‘I missed it! You see, there was this tremendous power outside the wall, so huge I could feel it—’

‘Oh, please,’ Ozorne said, though he was smiling. ‘The master didn’t feel any tremendous power! You’re mistaking your own loss of control—’

Dagani held up her hand. ‘This power, did it move consistently in one direction, or did it shift here and there?’

Arram had been staring at Ozorne with hurt – how could his friend say such a thing? The master’s question distracted him. There had been one strain of magic, immense, but farther away. It hadn’t come near him. It was the other that had moved, approaching the gate. ‘It moved,’ he murmured. ‘I think it was going to come through the gate, even with all the magic on it, but it stopped when you pulled me away.’

‘Well.’ Dagani tapped her full red mouth with a finger that was tipped with blue lace-like designs. ‘You would have learned these things in the Upper Academy as you grew more attuned to … the natural world, and the Divine Realms.’ The three students stared at one another, amazed. They hadn’t heard of this aspect of magecraft. ‘Magic attracts magic. Normally it is not a factor, unless you are working very powerful spells. As masters you would be taught how to ward off magics that would interfere. But there are other magics that might be drawn to you.’

She rose and walked to the open door, looking outside. ‘The power you felt – and I know you felt it – the slow one that moves in one direction is the Zekoi River and its god. I’ve been feeling the itch all day. He doesn’t always come this far north, but when he does, you know it.’ She leaned on the doorway. ‘And the other that nearly caught you must have been one of the lesser gods.’

‘Can they pass through the spells on the wall?’ Varice asked nervously. ‘I’m not sure I want to deal with any gods, ever.’

‘If they do, Master Cosmas will summon a group of us to deal with whichever god it is, be it hippopotamus, crocodile, hyena, snake.’ Dagani smiled. ‘You need not worry, my dear. This place has drawn magical beings for centuries, and we always manage to deal with them. Now, Arram will meditate for the rest of our time, to settle down, while you two will undertake our first lesson.’

At supper Arram was trying to create an image of the power he had seen for his friends when a runner tapped him on the shoulder. The image flew apart. Arram turned to glare at the older boy. ‘I almost had it!’ he snapped.

‘Shouldn’t use your power in the dining hall anyway,’ the runner informed him. He was chewing on a straw. ‘Cooks don’t like it.’ He shoved a folded note at Arram and wandered off. Fluttering her fan, Varice watched him leave.

‘Don’t tell me you admire that oaf,’ Ozorne scolded Varice as Arram unfolded the note. ‘I heard he goes into the city with his bully friends and picks fights with the gumat.’ He’d used the word for the street toughs in the poorest parts of town.

‘Looking doesn’t mean swooning,’ Varice retorted, rapping her royal friend lightly on the shoulder. ‘Arram, what is it?’

‘I have a new class with Master Yadeen,’ he moaned in dismay. ‘Before breakfast!’

‘Hag roll the dice,’ Ozorne murmured. ‘Studying what?’

Arram knew he must look as puzzled as his friends. ‘Juggling!’

THE IMPERIAL UNIVERSITY OF CARTHAK
The School for Mages

The Lower Academy for Youthful Mages

REVISED SCHEDULE OF STUDY, SUMMER TERM, 436 H.E.–

SPRING TERM, 437 H.E.

Student: Arram Draper

Learning Level: Semi-Independent

Second Morning Bell

Summer Term – Juggling – Yadeen

Autumn Term, Spring Term – Stones and Magic, Juggling – Yadeen

Breakfast – Third Morning Bell

Morning Classes

Gems and Stones – Summer Term – Third-year student

Religions – Autumn and Spring Terms – Third-year student

Four-Legged Animals: Anatomy – Summer, Autumn, Spring Terms – First-year animal healer

Language: Ergwae

Lunch – Noon Bell

Afternoon Classes

Protective Circles – Cosmas

Illusions: Objects – Dagani

Basic Spellcraft – Summer, Autumn, Spring Terms – Fourth-year student

Monkey, Orangutan, and Gorilla: Anatomy – Summer, Autumn, Spring Terms – First-year animal healer

Supper – Seventh Afternoon Bell

Extra Study at Need

CHAPTER 6
June 5, 436–March 18, 437

‘Inhuman,’ Arram moaned to himself as he lurched up the gently sloping path. ‘Should have – have stayed home with the family business. No friend keeping me up all night asking how I knew ’bout power if it was outside a shielded wall …’ He stopped for a yawn that made the hinges of his jaw crack. Then he turned down the roofed corridor that would lead him to the master’s workroom. Of course it was at the end of the walkway, past three gardens. Each had spraying fountains set in patterns of coloured stones. Arram would have loved to stick his head in a fountain to cool off – the sun had already turned hot, in only an hour! – but he had a long day ahead, beginning with Yadeen.

The last workroom on the corridor was open. Arram found Yadeen leaning against the far wall. He always forgot how big the man was!

He bowed. ‘Good morning, sir,’ he said nervously.

Yadeen, wearing a loose pale linen shirt and breeches, nodded. He was turning something over in his large hands. Before Arram could guess what it was – it was small enough to be hidden in Yadeen’s grip – the master said, ‘Catch,’ and tossed it to him.

The wooden ball hit Arram in the middle of the chest – not hard, but enough that Arram noticed it was there. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said as he fumbled and dropped the ball. He retrieved it. ‘I wasn’t—’

‘Catch.’ Yadeen calmly tossed another ball at him. Arram reached for it and dropped both that ball and the one he already held.

‘The idea,’ Yadeen said, ‘is for you to catch the first ball one-handed so you will be able to catch the second ball with your other hand.’ When he saw Arram glance around at the shadowy room, he said, ‘Let’s go outside, where we’ll have more light.’ He led the way to a patch of bare earth next to the building.

‘I don’t understand,’ Arram said when they halted. ‘What is this for?’

Yadeen collected the balls from Arram’s hands and walked until he was fifteen feet away. ‘It is for concentration and coordination,’ he said, raising his deep, accented voice so Arram could hear. ‘Until you can fix your attention on one thing while your hands do another, you will be a very dangerous young mage, and not for the proper reasons. Catch.’

Arram caught the first ball with both hands. This time he only missed the second ball, since he remembered to keep the first in one hand. ‘I’m sorry,’ he called.

‘Don’t apologize,’ Yadeen ordered. ‘Learn.’

Through autumn, Midwinter, and into spring term, Arram, Ozorne, and Varice worked hard. Arram might have felt sorry for himself given the extra hour with the stern Yadeen in the mornings, but the same day that Arram began the study of juggling, Ozorne announced he was to apply himself to an hour of swordplay, on his mother’s orders. Varice, who never slept past sunrise if she could help it, decided to volunteer in the kitchens, in defiance of her father’s wishes. Unlike many of their fellows, the three never complained of trouble falling asleep.

At Midwinter, Arram had the pleasure of buying more than trinkets for his friends. He got a fine pocket dagger for Ozorne and a carving knife of good steel for Varice. Each of them had obtained books that he had coveted all season but refused to buy, since he’d been saving his coin for presents. And for his birthday he got more gifts, not just from his friends, but from Masters Cosmas, Dagani, and Yadeen.

‘It is the custom for a master to do this for the student, but not the other way around,’ Yadeen said when he handed a package to Arram. ‘It is assumed the student needs every nit he can find, if not for now, when he has a stipend, then later, when he is on his own. Don’t bother to be grateful,’ he said when Arram opened his mouth. ‘I do poorly with gratitude. Open it.’

Arram gently unfolded the beautiful blue-violet shoulder drape the master had used for wrapping – where he’d wear such an elegant garment he had no idea! – to find a polished red wood box, figured with dragons and griffins. He opened it to discover hand-sized balls, six of them, each different shades of reddish, brown, or black wood.

‘Juggling balls,’ he said blankly. He looked up at Yadeen and realized the master’s eyes were dancing. It was the first time he’d seen the man look humorous. ‘I don’t know what to say,’ he joked, keeping his tone flat.

Yadeen clapped him on the shoulder. ‘I knew you would be pleased. Try them out before classes begin again.’

Gifts from Cosmas and Dagani were books. Dagani’s was on great illusions, including one that was supposed to have lured all the world’s griffins out of the Mortal Realms and back to the Realms of the Gods. Cosmas’s book told of unusual mages: those who did not follow the normal path to a position as a teacher or a serving mage for a government or for a noble or royal house. Ozorne and Varice both leafed through it and shrugged, uninterested. They didn’t offer to show Arram the books they had received from Cosmas and Dagani, and Arram didn’t ask. He was too interested in his own books.

If asked later, Arram would have said he didn’t remember the passing of the weeks. He did recall students from the Upper Academy lingering around Varice in the late afternoons. Arram was taking evening strolls through the halls with dark-eyed Sheni in January and early February, before she tired of his ‘headache-making big words.’ She left him for a student who hoped to be a healer when he reached the Upper Academy. It was just as well: Ozorne was bleak again and needed attention and reminders to take his medicine, as he had the previous spring.

Varice ignored the older students. She made extra money giving new turns to spring garments for other girls, stitching on lace, taking in seams or letting them out, and sewing on embroideries. When Arram pointed out one evening that surely her stipend covered all her expenses, she looked down her nose at him.

‘There’s the future to think of,’ she informed him, holding her work up so she could be certain the seam was even. ‘I’m putting money by for that.’

They were in one of the empty cubicles in Arram’s room. Although they tried to talk quietly, Ozorne heard. He was in bed; they thought he’d been sleeping off another shadowy spell. ‘I told you, you’re going to live with me,’ he called. ‘We’ll have our own place, in the mountains or a forest …’

‘And if we’re sent journeying once we’re working for a mastery?’ Varice enquired. She picked up a handful of lace and began to roll it neatly. ‘You know they do it to a lot of them. I for one don’t intend to sleep on the ground on a ragged blanket, eating charred rabbit I cooked on a fire!’

Arram snorted. Ozorne began to chuckle. The idea of Varice – of any of them – living in such conditions was too amusing to consider seriously.

‘You know they’ll settle us with a master elsewhere in Carthak, or somewhere north,’ Ozorne said as he sat up and threw off the blanket. ‘They don’t just cast people they’ve taught so much into the winds of chance!’

Varice sniffed. ‘I hope so, but I’m not taking those chances if I can help it.’

‘I wouldn’t permit it,’ Ozorne told her cheerfully. Arram believed him, and his heart sank a little. It would be fun to wander alone, learning whatever he pleased. Perhaps Ozorne would let him off the leash now and then, when the time came.

The afternoon of the following day, he was so fascinated reading a book Yadeen had loaned him that he lost track of time. It began to rain. Only the appearance of a wet spot on the page, and the boom of the sixth-hour bell, jarred him from his trance. He yelped. He had promised to work on illusions with Ozorne and Varice; he was an hour and a half late!

Hoping to gain time, he jumped the waist-high wall to a herb garden. His plan was to run crossways over the rows of bare mounds that waited for warmer weather, which would cut his distance in half. He had not expected there to be a line of large jars positioned on the other side of the wall.

Down he went with a crash, spilling forward onto a mound with several shattered jars. The ground beneath him was decidedly damp. When he struggled to his feet, he found he was muddy from chin to toe.

His first instinct was to run and let someone else take the blame. His second thought was that this would be truly stupid. A mage could track him by the print his body had left in the mud. This occurred to him just as a man who had been kneeling near the corner of the wall rose to his feet.

He was stocky, not much taller than Arram, with skin a ruddy golden-brown. His black hair was cut short and streaked with grey. Dark eyes with long, sloping lids that lengthened at the corners looked Arram over. He wore a sturdy wool shirt under a sleeveless vest equipped with a number of pockets. His breeches, also covered with pockets, were heavily burdened with the tools of a working gardener. When he stood, it was easy to see that his legs were widely bowed, like someone who had spent a large part of his life on horseback.

Arram knew him. Everyone did who paid attention to the university gardens. He gulped. ‘Master Hulak, I’m so sorry! I never would have jumped the wall—’

‘If you knew I was here?’ the school’s head gardener, also a master in the study of plants, medicines, and poisons, asked gently.

Arram’s knees wanted to give way. ‘No, Master!’ he protested. ‘If I’d known there was work being done here! I thought it was too early for …’ His voice locked in his throat.

Hulak studied him for painful moments before he said, ‘So you think because you see no plants there is no work to be done? It is fine to gallop over my rows?’ He raised a hand for silence when Arram would have defended himself. Clearly he was still thinking. At last he enquired, ‘You are Arram Draper, Varice’s friend?’

Arram nodded. ‘Yes, Master.’ Everyone knows Varice, he thought.

‘Not Master, only Hulak. You are said to be clever.’ The older man watched him, his eyes seeming not to blink.

‘I’m trying to be,’ Arram replied honestly.

‘You have left me with’ – in a form of exquisite torture, the gardener pointed to each shattered jar and counted its number aloud – ‘seven broken vessels I had planned to use in the morning. These things are money out of my spring term budget.’

Arram saw coins – his coins – flying out of a drawer in the bursar’s office. ‘How mu—’

But there was that upraised palm commanding silence again. ‘No. More important is a student silly enough to think a garden is dead because he sees nothing above the ground.’

To add to Arram’s enjoyment, it began to truly pour. Hulak did not even seem to notice. Arram did, as mud ran down his chest, breeches, and feet. He said nothing, feeling that the worst was about to come.

‘You repay me by coming each school day, at this time, for an hour.’

Arram heard himself whimper softly.

Hulak ignored him. ‘Today I am in the third garden from the river. Tomorrow I will be in the fourth garden, and so on, until I reach the end of this long corridor. The next day I will move south, to the first garden on that corridor, and on. Understand?’

‘Yes, sir,’ Arram mumbled.

‘I will bring you better clothes for gardening, and sandals.’ Hulak looked him up and down. ‘Mages should understand plants. Varice knows this. Now it is your turn. Tomorrow, after your monkey lesson.’ He looked along the row. ‘Pick up the jar pieces, take them to the shed over there. Put them in the basket with others.’ He returned to the row where he had been working.

Arram heaped as many shards of pottery as he could carry in half of a broken jar and bore them to the shed, walking around the garden instead of through. As he worked, one question plagued him: How had Hulak known who he was?

‘Of course he knows,’ Varice said when he finally met her and Ozorne for supper. ‘Master Hulak knows everything!’ She patted Arram’s arm. ‘You’ll learn.’

Ozorne nodded. ‘The university paid a royal sum to woo him here from the Mohon tribes that live north of Jindazhen.’

Varice giggled. ‘It wasn’t the money,’ she informed her friend. ‘Master Lindhall – he was the one who brought Master Hulak here – told him about all of the plants and trees in the East that Hulak had never seen. You just have to know how to talk to him.’

‘Not this afternoon I didn’t,’ Arram grumbled. ‘Now I have even more work before I can do my classroom studies!’

Ozorne patted his shoulder. ‘Just wait till we get to the Upper Academy, my dear fellow,’ he said cheerfully. ‘You will dream of these happy, lazy days in the Lower Academy with wistful sorrow.’

Exhausted after his trying day, Arram gratefully fell into bed and slept almost immediately. It seemed as if he’d barely started a decent dream of a blonde girl who beckoned him to her when thunder crashed overhead. She vanished and Arram prised his eyes open.

‘That was going to be a good one,’ he muttered to the gods of dreams.

The thunder – no, not thunder, but pounding on the door – resumed.

‘Make it stop or I’ll make it stop,’ Ozorne growled from his cubicle. ‘They teach me explosive spells now.’

Arram crawled out of his blankets and stumbled to the door. ‘What the —?’ he demanded as he threw it open.

He stopped. The burly fist raised to pound again belonged to Yadeen. He looked no more awake than Arram. ‘If I am up and about, someone will share my misery,’ he informed the youth. ‘The marble slabs that are the face of the imperial platform – at the great arena – fell during an earth tremor. Did you feel it?’

Arram shook his head.

‘I would like you to help me put new stones in their place,’ Yadeen explained. ‘To do so I need you to let me use your power as well as my own. Normally no one would ask this before you had learned the spells to stop another mage from drawing on you, but this is an emergency. Will you help me? I swear by Mithros, Minoss, and any god you prefer that I will make you do no lawless thing, nor hold back any amount of Gift to keep you subject to my will in the future.’

Arram gawped at the older man. Finally he found the wit to say, ‘Wouldn’t you rather have one of your personal students? The older ones, I mean?’

Yadeen grimaced. ‘For a task such as this, they lack …’ He hesitated, then continued, ‘Sufficient raw power of the right order. I would need two or three of them, and one of my three is about to leave to serve at a quarry for a year. Rather than deal with all that, I would prefer one student, if possible.’

Arram jumped. ‘Yes, sir, of course, sir!’ he said, and grabbed the clothes he had placed on his chair for the morning.

‘Say nothing to anyone with regard to my evaluation of how many of my older students could do this,’ Yadeen said, accepting a cup of tea from Irafa, who had emerged from her own room. ‘Both of you.’ He raised his voice and looked towards Ozorne’s cubicle.

‘Your secrets are safe,’ the prince called back. ‘Though I’d say you need new students if your senior ones are this useless.’

‘Their skills are elsewhere,’ Yadeen retorted after a sip of tea. ‘Have you been asked to throw fire yet, or to work a simulacrum of yourself good enough to fool a master?’

‘No, Master Yadeen,’ came the grudging reply.

Yadeen took another gulp of tea. ‘In any case, our task is better done with a younger student if that one is strong enough. Older students have trained their Gifts in complex mental webs. It gets harder to pull them into solid ropes for great tasks. Arram, are you ready – ah, good. Enjoy your sleep, Your Highness.’ Yadeen closed the door once they were in the hall with Irafa. ‘You brought your workbag? May I see?’

Arram handed the bag over.

Yadeen examined the items and returned the bag to Arram. ‘With luck you won’t need this, but there’s no telling.’ He looked at Arram. ‘Coat and hat?’

Arram pointed to the door to the outside corridor and yawned.

Yadeen smiled. ‘Make certain they are there.’ As Arram went outside for his things, Yadeen returned his cup to Irafa and exchanged a few words with her. Arram was struggling with his coat when the master joined him in the outer corridor.

Yadeen gripped Arram’s coat sleeves and drew them properly onto the youth’s arms. Next he thrust Arram’s broad hat onto his head. As they set off, rain blasting their faces as the wind blew, he explained.

‘The emperor hosts the ambassador from the Copper Isles in three days. They wish to see our new wild beasts. The platform must be as good as new,’ he said. ‘Old Mesaraz gets cross if things aren’t perfect when he’s showing off, particularly since this Kyprish fellow is here to talk trade. The emperor would also like to find out how he took ship at this time of year and arrived safe and sound. Lucky for us, all we need to do is smooth and polish some tons of rock and put them in place.’

Arram trotted beside the master, bubbling over with questions. He chose the one that worried him the most: ‘Is it true, what you said, that it’ll be hard, later, to get a single pure line of my Gift? One that isn’t already tangled with spells?’

Yadeen glanced at him, a wry look on his face. ‘It depends on the mage. I was largely trying to plant the idea in your friend’s head, to see if he believed it enough to hobble himself a bit. I would prefer that you didn’t say as much.’

‘No, sir.’ Frankly Arram didn’t believe any suggestion would have power over Ozorne, and he hadn’t felt magic pass from Yadeen when he’d said that to his friend.

‘You’ll find, as you grow older, that the Tasikhe line can be erratic. There hasn’t been a mage for a generation, but the stories about the family are all about unusual behaviour.’ They had reached the end of the corridor. It opened onto the Fieldside Road, on the opposite side of the university from the river and its road to the city. Waiting for them were two hard-looking men in leather armour. Yadeen handed his pack to Arram and went to talk to them.

At last the master beckoned him forward. The youth tied the strap that fixed his wide hat on his head and plunged through the gate. A bubble of light bloomed from Yadeen’s hand, casting illumination over four horses standing in a roadside shelter. Arram gulped. It had been a long time since he had ridden a horse, and it hadn’t gone well.

‘Can’t we walk?’ he asked Yadeen.

‘If the coliseum master had wanted us to walk, he would not have sent horses,’ Yadeen said, his voice tight. Arram raised the brim of his hat to get a better look at him and understood: Yadeen didn’t want to ride, either. Feeling sorry for both of them, he said nothing more. He let an armoured man try to help him into the saddle three times before he made it all the way. At least Yadeen mounted his horse creditably. ‘Hand me your reins,’ he ordered.

‘Shouldn’t I have them?’ Arram enquired, obeying. ‘You know, to pull on?’

‘That is what I fear. I shall lead your horse. You will hold the horn and try to remain seated.’ Yadeen folded the extra reins in his hand.

Arram looked about. There were so many bits and pieces on the horse’s head! ‘What is the horn?’

‘Mithros, Minoss, and Shakith!’ cried Yadeen, calling on the ruler of the gods, the judge of the gods, and the goddess of seers. ‘Have you never ridden a horse?’

Arram gulped. ‘Once, Master. The second time it wouldn’t go.’

Their guides bellowed their laughter. Yadeen wiped his rain-soaked face with a wet forearm. ‘It’s that thing that sticks up from the saddle’s edge, like a man’s part,’ he said. ‘Grip it before you do fall. And you two, up front!’

One of them had the courage to glance back; the other straightened in his saddle.

‘My student can do more with a finger than you can on these huge beasts,’ Yadeen said. ‘If you cannot behave decently, I shall let him show you. Now pick up the snake-sliding pace!’

Arram gawped at the master. No one but Varice and Ozorne had ever defended him before. ‘Master—’

‘Hush,’ Yadeen said as he urged his horse into a trot. Arram’s horse followed along. ‘They should know even the smallest viper is a killer.’ Arram opened his mouth to ask the question, but Yadeen held up a hand. ‘Ask Ramasu or Lindhall about vipers. They’ll say I can’t teach you about them, for all I cut one off Ramasu once.’

Arram knew vipers. Lindhall had a number of them in the menagerie, and Arram had dissected at least two, carefully, in his reptile class. Arram shuddered. Vipers made him nervous, though Ozorne liked them and had never been bitten.

Instead he asked the real question on his mind. ‘Is your using my Gift going to hurt?’ he called. ‘Me, that is. Will it hurt me?’

‘Not at all,’ Yadeen called. ‘You’ll control the thread. If it gets to be too much, all you need do is ease down on the thread. You’ll see.’ He looked back at Arram. ‘Are you saying you doubt my judgement?’

Arram shrank in the saddle. He knew that tone. ‘No, sir. Not at all, sir.’

By the time he thought his member and balls had been pounded to paste, he saw a bulk even darker than the rainy night looming ahead. It grew larger, until he realized it was a wall, not a hill. Torches with magicked shields stood in brackets on either side of a broad gate. A guard emerged from a small shed beside the gate to open one of its broad leaves, and the riders passed through.

The moment they did so, Yadeen’s power rose to cover himself and Arram with a glimmering shield. ‘Have to,’ he murmured when he drew Arram’s horse up beside him. ‘This is the gladiators’ encampment. They should remain in their dormitory buildings, but it’s always best to protect yourself. Just in case.’

‘But the guards aren’t warded,’ Arram said as they followed their guides.

‘The fighters know what happens if they assault a guard.’ Yadeen pointed. The area was spotted with shielded torches, offering something of a view. ‘This open ground is where they practise. Barracks are over there.’

Arram nodded. Ozorne was going to be so jealous – whenever the emperor insisted that the princes attend the games, Ozorne made sketches of the gladiators and wrote down all the information he could glean. He would give anything to see this, rain or no. ‘What are those things? The big white rolls, the log stick figures, and the barrels?’ he asked, pointing.

‘The white rolls are practice dummies for wrestling and hand-to-hand combat,’ Yadeen replied. ‘The log figures are for weapons practice. The barrels hold weapons. They must have taken the weapons themselves indoors. I didn’t know you were interested.’

Arram was saved from having to explain that the information was not for him, when more guards opened another gate in a massive wall before them and waved them through. ‘The arena,’ Yadeen told him. To the escort he said, ‘We can manage.’

One of them shrugged. ‘Suit yourself, Master.’ He and his companion rode back to the training yard. The slam of the gate as the soldiers closed it made Arram flinch. They were alone in the vastness of the sleeping arena, under the many rows of seats.

The way before them was a tall, wide corridor lit by baskets full of burning coals. Arram’s jaw dropped. An appalling stench reached his nose: at once he was reminded of what he always thought of as the Day of the Elephant, when he had met one in addition to gladiators. The day he had seen a woman die. He swallowed. Part of the smell was definitely blood, human and animal, darker than the scent of blood in his animal dissections. Another part was sweat, and still another was animal dung. It made him dizzy. He held his sleeve under his nose as he clamped his free hand around his saddle horn.

They were passing cells on both sides, large ones, barred with iron. Both smelled equally of dung and piss, but the straw gave away the knowledge that the right-hand cages were used for animals. Arram wondered why anyone would place humans who would fight the beasts in cells across from them.

The huge gate at the end of the temple was wide open. Near it he saw cells far larger than those secured with iron on both sides of the tunnel. These chambers were closed and barred with wood. ‘What are those?’ Arram enquired.

If the stink bothered Yadeen, the master showed no sign of it. ‘The healing rooms,’ he explained. ‘The wounded go in those.’ He pointed to the doors on the left. ‘That’s if they’ve used up the tables in the workrooms on the right. Sorry – surgeries. Don’t be in such a rush to learn about them. You’ll be chopping and sewing men and women soon enough if Cosmas has his way. Got your hat on?’

Arram touched his head. ‘Yes, sir.’

‘Out into it, then. I hope they have a dry place for us.’

Yadeen led the way out onto the wet sands as the horses protested. The rain had begun to ease, but winds swirled around the vast structure, pulling at Arram’s hat. In the distance thunder boomed softly.

‘Odd to hear that!’ Yadeen remarked as he steered them towards the lanterns that gleamed ahead. ‘Thunder, so late in the season. The storm gods are amusing themselves.’

They passed the part of the arena where Arram had once sat with his father and grandfather, the length of rail where a man had once shoved him and Musenda had caught him. Arram’s heart pinched in his chest. Was the big man even still alive? And what of Ua the elephant and her rider? He had put offerings of bits of meat at the school’s shrines to Mithros, when he remembered to, and pieces of fruit at the shrines for Hekaja, the Carthaki goddess of healing, just in case, but he had been too afraid to ask those followers of the best-known gladiators if they knew about Musenda or the elephant riders. He didn’t want to know if they had been sent on to the Dark God’s peaceful realms.

Ahead he could see the imperial seats. They stood in the blaze of mage fires over the wall. A shadowed space filled the corner of the stand where it jutted forwards into the sands. A roofed structure had been built over the entire corner to keep the rain off the area.

Nearby was the tunnel used by the imperials and the favoured nobility to reach their seats high above. Torches burned in brackets on the walls, casting their light over large white chunks of stone on sledges. Each stone had to be as tall as Arram.

Yadeen reined up and drew Arram close to him. ‘Keep my kit beside you,’ he said quietly, his eyes never leaving the stones or the half-naked men who stood between them. ‘No one but you must handle either workbag, understand? You will be more aware of the outer world than me. Only touch my shoulder and I will return to it.’

A burly man in a leather vest and kilt trudged out of the tunnel. ‘Are you coming to work or gossip?’ he roared. He was short and squat, with long, knotted black hair wound into a fat roll at the back of his head. His skin was not quite as dark as Yadeen’s, but his eyes were as dark as the night around him. Hammers and chisels hung from his sagging belt.

‘We are settling upon our own approach, Najau! When we are ready, we will consult you!’ Yadeen bellowed in reply.

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