May 13, ’93 (11 months before the fire)

Spring, summer, autumn, and winter had passed, and it was spring again. Farisa had been teaching for one year, two months, and twelve days. She and Raqel walked through Cait Forest’s expansive botanical garden, hands interlaced on the pram’s handlebar while the baby slept.

“So, is there a name?”

“A name for what?”

Raqel’s fingernail scratched the scar on Farisa’s shoulder.

“Don’t be silly, Raqel. Only teenagers name their scars.”

“My math says you still are one. Nineteen and what, seven months?”

“Round it up to twenty,” Farisa said as she smacked her best friend’s arm.

The pram tilted slightly as it rolled over a pebble, but this did not break Sophya’s sleep.

Raqel said, “You were right about this place. It’s beautiful.”

“How is Beth finding her accommodations?”

“My mother is settling in well.”

“Her job in the greenhouse?”

“She is finally happy.” Raqel beamed. “Thank you so much for—”

“Thank the headmistress. She is the one who made it happen.”

A day-drunk boy, falling and un-falling in a coordinated direction more than he was walking, crossed their path.

“You have always belonged here, Raqel, more than any of these imbeciles.”

“I’ll never forget what you have done for us,” Raqel said. The two of them lazily followed a red-trussed covered bridge to a secluded meadow. “Let’s eat here.”

Farisa laid a picnic blanket on the grass. “Yes. Let’s."

The girls faced each other. They had such seclusion here, Farisa could remove her shoes.

“As soon as I had her,” Raqel said as the baby cooed, “I knew she deserved a better life, and that’s why we’re here.”

“You don’t need to talk so much,” said Farisa as she brushed a lock of hair aside from Raqel’s brown, the other hand cupping the back of her head, and closed in for a kiss.

A curt voice came from nowhere. “Farisa.”

She rubbed her eyes and groaned. The May morning light was harsh in the servant’s dormitory. This part of Cait Forest always looked better at night and in winter. A female night clerk was standing over Farisa. “You asked for a eight o’clock wakeup. It’s twenty past.”

“Right.” She sat up. Cotton socks protected her feet from the cold floor.

“Rough dreams, milady?”

“No. The other kind of dream, the kind you hate to leave.”

She had been living in dreams for some time. Raqel’s letters had mentioned having a child, but the woman had said little of her daily life, and Farisa was unsure whether she could even picture the Far North, having been away from it for two years, as other than both unreal and more real than this place. This time of year was still cool in Tevalon; here, the air would be stifling by one o’clock and stay that way till sunset.

Farisa rushed through breakfast. She skipped her morning bath. She did not want to be late for class, because her teaching was the one aspect of her life here that she did enjoy. Demand for her subject had increased; a second Lyrian II section would be added in the summer, as well as Lyrian III if she could get at least eight students to sign up for it. She stood, when helping others decipher a language as old as Cait Forest, outside of time and its attendant anxieties.

She checked her mail in Mason Hall, finding nothing from Raqel. Farisa suspected Raqel’s husband was filtering her correspondence in both directions. Sophya, fourteen months old, was in good health. About the rest of Raqel’s life, nothing had been said. Farisa had struggled for weeks to decide whether she wanted the union to hold or break. Raqel was her best friend... but Duriad had arranged the match... but Sophya deserved a happy family... but the husband worked for the Company... but, and this was what pushed Farisa to wish for the marriage’s success, women who divorced Globbos did not live long, nor their children. It was best, she ruled in her mind, to hope they could stick together.

Of late, she felt so mixed with herself regarding every condition of her life. This was one of those bright days with a crisp blue sky and pink dahlias in bloom, but there were cigarette butts all over the lawn, if one knew where to look, often buried so grounds staff would have to pick them out with their fingers. She had lived in this beautiful place for nearly two years without incident, but she could not stop herself from seeing its buildings as stacks of other people’s money. She had seventy students who loved her teaching; still, she slept in a servant’s dormitory, six women to a room.

According to Mason Hall’s clock tower, it was eight fifty. She would have to hurry her walk to avoid being late for her own lecture.

She had been up till two reading Katarin’s monograph, Analysis of Place. The deductive leaps still read more like magic than mathematics, because she was still not fluent in this new field. The leap between two lemmas might require an hour for her to work out on scratch paper why the one followed from its antecedent. It did not help that the books of notes she had taken, left in her dormitory cubby hole over the wrong night, had been swiped.

To be on time for the start of her class, Farisa took an underground shortcut beneath the chemistry lab, rather than go around the building. She knew this place well. She had found a druid’s circle three miles north of campus, probably abandoned fifty years ago. This past winter, she’d stumbled on a juniper of the age of at least a thousand years. Out west, in the pine barrens, she’d discovered a nest of those silver-and-purple garter snakes known only to exist here. She knew this place, ten times better than those who parents paid thousands of grot for them to attend, and yet she had failed to explore the social world. She had failed to become a normal girl.

The chalk dust, she decided, was to blame. She had never found a way to avoid it getting on her clothes, on her hands, and even in her hair, giving it the color—from a distance—of age. The conservative cut of her teacher’s dress also made it so that her students must have believed her to be at least thirty. She loved them, but in a distant sense. They did not swear around her; they were not even comfortable using her first name, rather than inquire about her family one, until the second week of class.

In most cases, the students here had known each other long before arriving. Eight preparatory schools within fifty miles of each other could account for two-thirds of Cait Forest’s admitted students. She never asked, but it was a good bet that two students in every classroom had grown up on Moyenne’s Eastern Horn, a place so rarefied and expensive as to give them the ability to find comfort, anywhere they might want to go, within hours. They showed up somewhere, and they belonged; that was how it had always been. She... was just a teacher, a nice lady—they probably thought of her in such terms—in a quaint indigo dress.

She entered the Old Schoolhouse. Six students were already seated. She hoped she was not late; the bells of Mason Hall confirmed she had arrived on time. She taught. She did the job well; she always did. She left around three, went to Bloom Library to do some research to tweak the curriculum, felt hungry but decided to wait for dinner...

There was no reason to dislike any of this. Today was an ordinary day. She no longer carried the cumbersome mail sack. She no longer needed to mind the opinions of stewards, so long as her work satisfied the students and, therefore, the headmistress. The hours did not drag. Nothing was bad. She just could not enjoy herself, nor experience sun or breeze as she had been meant to. What did normal girls talk about, late at night in their dorm rooms? What did normal girls talk about, either now on the way to dinner or late at night in their rooms? The texts of Bloom Library housed a million old stories from history and fiction, but what about the new ones being lived today? The laboratory was a fine place to mix acids and bases, but where did one mix minds?

She almost missed dinner, arriving at the cafeteria at two minutes to seven. The doors would close, but she could eat outside on the stone platform next to the dining hall, so she did. A group of girls were playing hylus in the oaken sun.

“Remember when I tried out for that?”

She did not say these words out loud, of course. People were always walking by. This was more of a trance in which she could restore the aura of an earlier dream, this morning’s or yesterday’s. This, for a girl locked out of Cait Forest’s social life, was as good a substitute as she could expect.

“You could join them,” said phantom Raqel.

“I’m no good. Ilana proved that to everyone.”

“You’d have made the team, if not for—”

“It doesn’t matter, Raqel. She was the better player.”

Ilana Harrow was an Easthorn. You didn’t have to be told where she had grown up; even the twitch in her left eye had money in it. She was Cait Forest’s rising hylus star, set to end the College’s decade-long losing streak against City Private. She was fast and strong and efficient and, during tryouts last fall, had been as focused on blocking Farisa’s goals as on scoring her own.

Raqel lifted her shoulders. “You can try again in the fall.”

“I’ll be twenty. It’s a kid’s game.” Farisa drank her real coffee and watched the also real action on the field. A short redhead had scored a goal and her teammates rushed to hug her.

Raqel asked, “Were you ever tempted?”

“Tempted? What do you mean?”

“You could have used your nonathletic abilities.”

“My good looks and academic prowess don’t count for much on the field.”

“You know what I mean, idiot.” A spark flew from Raqel’s finger.

I suppose I must indeed, your being a sprite of my imagination.

“That’s a rude question. Of course not. Too dangerous.”

“People like you used to be celebrated. A thousand years ago, mages ran the world.”

“We don’t choose when we are born, Raqel.”

#

On this hot June night, Farisa’s arms and brow tingled on the edge of sweat. The sun had been down for three hours, but there hadn’t been enough wind to sweep away the afternoon heat. The outdoor campus pub, The Stable, would be in standing-room conditions in fifteen minutes. Farisa bought two glass pints of beer before sitting down at a small table opposite Erysi, a short blonde in a red skirt and tan leather sandals.

“I hope this seat isn’t taken.”

“Hey, you.” The blonde adjusted her ponytail. “Are you allowed to be drinking with me?”

“As you’re not my student this term, there isn’t a rule against it.”

Erysi had taken Lyrian I last quarter. The blonde girl had always had, since she first walked into that classroom, poise so reflexive one expected the world to give her everything she wanted. Her features were point perfect excluding a small dimple on her cheek, an endearing asymmetry to remind the world she wasn’t a doll. Farisa imagined the tips of Erysi’s hair having the same ultraviolet markings, invisible to human eyes, that flower petals wore to entice bees.

“I noticed you didn’t sign up for Lyrian II. I can put you in, if registration’s a problem.”

“I have a time conflict. History class.”

“Oh.” Farisa looked around. “To be honest, you could probably handle III. It’s at four in the af—”

“Hylus practice.”

Farisa drank a swig of lager. “Oh.”

Erysi leaned forward and stretched her arms over the table. “Isn’t it just better if we’re two girls, not teacher and student?”

“I am still responsible for considering what is best for you,” Farisa said.

“Please,” Erysi said. “The rules don’t say you can’t drink with students. They’re about—you know—and even there, they’d half to fire half of their professors if they enforced anything.” She paused. “How long have you been here?”

“I just got—”

“No, silly. I mean Cait Forest.”

Farisa counted twenty-one months and eighteen days, but no one around here used precision on matters of time, so she held up two fingers. Two years.

“Huh. I guess we came here around the same time. I had to take a September start. A story for another time.” Erysi smiled. “It took us a while to find each other.”

Farisa drank her beer, already getting warm. “It’s a big place.”

“Sometimes, I don’t know what to make of it.”

“The social life here is a mystery I have not solved.”

“Oh, I don’t have that problem.” Erysi grabbed a handful of salted peanuts from a tiny wooden bowl. “I went to Mansford, so I have girls. They’re not bad people, but they only care about two things: hylus and boys.” She rolled her eyes.

“Hylus and boys,” Farisa said.

“More balls on the field than on the boys here.”

Farisa laughed.

“Pardon the mixed metaphor. Please don’t take points off, Teach.”

“I won’t.” Farisa shook her head. About ten yards away, a male student stopped to urinate on a tree, while others cheered him on. “I hardly read them as men.”

“In today’s world, poor men can’t afford to grow up, and—”

Farisa finished Erysi’s sentence. “The rich never have to. This is the future of all market societies.”

Erysi held two fingers close together. “I’m this close to giving up on Cait Forest men.”

“You’re seventeen.”

“I....” Erysi leaned back, looking up at the stars. “I don’t know. You have yourself so much more figured out.”

“It’s my job to make it seem that way. That’s all. Careful study has convinced me that an emotional breakdown would serve no educational purpose.”

“You have a funny way of saying things.”

“I know many things, which is why I can teach, but I have figured out nothing. I exist in several worlds; I live in none.”

“Don’t be silly. I’m sure you have your circle. Where do you find people to date?”

“Date?” Farisa laughed. “I don’t.”

She had gone on two dates since arriving here. The first boy had been well-read, polite, and reasonably handsome—she liked him enough, but when she saw him later with somebody else and was genuinely happy for the both of them, she realized her passion had not been intense. The second boy led her back to his room, saying he was going to retrieve a guitar on which he’d play some songs he had composed, but but emerged from his changing closet sans guitar—and sans clothing. He started pleasing himself while shouting racial invective. She left in a hurry. She would later learn that he was a Company son.

“Who would I date?” Farisa continued. “Students are off limits, of course, and they’re the only people I see, so....” She shrugged. “I’m not going to toss ribbons and old professors, and stewards....”

“Say no more.”

“I don’t have much of a social life, but I suppose I can do without one.”

“I can’t help you with dating,” Erysi said. “If I ever found a boy here worth the time, I’d probably take him for myself.” She laughed. “Sorry, bad joke.” She shrugged. “On the other hand, if you’re looking for a few friends, I can make introductions.”

“Yes,” Farisa said. “Yes, I would like that.”

“I promise Mansford girls aren’t as mean as we’re made out to be. My roomie’s eighteenth is next week.”

“I won’t be the oldest person there, will I?”

Erysi put a hand on Farisa’s arm. “You look young.”

“Your world just isn’t mine.”

“Well, what is?”

“You make a fantastic point, Erysi.”

#

Farisa did, in spite of her jitters, attended the party. A normal girl wouldn’t be intimidated by a social gathering, she reminded herself. A normal girl would just go. Erysi would be there with her. Indeed, when the night came, she had a good time and was invited to more social events—midnight breakfasts, boys-versus-girls trivia nights, and slumber parties where the other girls gossiped about courtship, marriage, and sex—over the summer. She suspected, although nobody got specific, that some of these girls were far more experienced in life’s matters than she was, and she had so many questions, but she had not yet worked up the nerve to ask.

She learned that one could go to The Stable on school nights, but only in-room drinking and private parties were acceptable on off-nights—the students who crowded the place then were of a lower order. Dark colors, she learned, were usually not to be worn until after Plumm’s Run, although Farisa got a pass, on account of being a teacher. There were days to wear one’s most expensive clothing and days that required understatement, based on weather and class schedules and the tastes of six girls whose opinions on all things were highly sought—to be off on such matters suggested one ranked lower, with the newly resourced. Farisa also learned about adult life: Moyenne had not one opera house but two, the rivalry between which dated back to the ‘20s.

Although her new world required memorization of details she found trivial, she preferred it over her new one, that of a girl in hiding. Erysi had developed a story in which Farisa was the niece of a Teroshi shipping magnate, which turned her skin color into lift rather than weight. The politics of the outside world truly disappeared here. No one asked or cared who was a Company daughter and who was not—the one rule to learn about money was never to ask where it had come from. On occasion, Farisa would sweat over a comment she had made while tipsy, but Erysi’s smile and hand on her elbow would put her at ease. What passed for danger, in this place, was to drink the night before an exam, or to sing a mildly obscene song from one’s dorm window until asked to be quiet, or to bathe topless in Zelos’ Fountain. She preferred these kinds of hazards over real ones.

The trepidation she had once had around the highborn waned. These girls were not unapproachable—they were not mean of heart at all. They sang silly songs to celebrate the end of exams. They traded dog-eared romance novels. They shared gossip about the Moyenni society they would soon enter. They truly were what Farisa had hoped to become: normal girls. Cait Forest, she realized, was a place of true magic where the exceptional young—some in wealth like Erysi; some in talent like Farisa—could commingle for mutual benefit. Talent and property, everywhere else, were mortal enemies—future and past; energy and inertia; devout and idolaters—but, here, lion cubs and hyena pups could play together, nary a claw unsheathed.

The afternoon of July 19 was so torrid even the dragonflies seemed to go at half speed. Farisa and Erysi were sitting together on a blanket over the grass, a stone’s throw from Mason Hall, playing this game they had developed of inventing life stories for passers-by.

Erysi pointed. “Who do you think she is?”

Farisa chuckled. “Oh, she and I have met—on the hylus field. She’s Ilana Harrow.”

“Everyone knows Ilana. I mean the girl behind her.”

Farisa sat back, resting on her arms. “Dark hair, white dress?”

Erysi nodded.

“I’m going to guess her name is…Eliza.”

“Not far off, actually. Lise Temazay.”

“She's a fourth-year,” Farisa conjectured. “Literature major.”

“Not sure. Decent guess.” Erysi smirked. “Her biggest secret?”

“I'm going to say”—Farisa stretched her legs in front of herself—“her biggest secret is that she’s a good girl at heart. She pretends to be delinquent, but she’s actually got an eight-seven average. Smoked a couple times, didn't like it. Social drinker, rarely gets drunk. She’s still with her boyfriend from prep school, but doesn’t talk about him, and she’d never cheat, so all of campus thinks she’s frigid.”

“You’re good.” Erysi crossed her ankles. “Ninety percent accurate.”

“What did I get wrong?”

“Her average is over nine. At least, she says it is.”

“Her dress is stunning.” The gold fringe and dark bands around the shoulder hems drew the gaze of others. “Where do you think she got it?”

“Oh,” Erysi said. “One of Ingrid’s.” She put a hand on Farisa’s knee. “I just realized what time it is. I have to get to my next class.”

“Ingrid,” Farisa said. She wanted to remember that name. To gain true residence in Erysi’s world, she would need to own garments like this one, and to challenge herself, she decided not to rely on her one close friend for the introduction. She would find her way to this dressmaker through Ilana, her former hylus rival. Erysi had said it—Ilana knew everyone.

The next morning, Farisa waited in the bleachers, pretending to read, while Ilana ran her daily laps around the field. Once the woman had finished, Farisa made sure their paths crossed.

“Oh! I thought I was alone out here. Hi, Ilana!”

Ilana wiped sweat from her brow. “What do you want?”

“I’m Farisa.”

“I know who you are.”

“Do you know Ingrid, the dressmaker?”

Ilana nodded. “I know her quite well. Why do you ask?”

“I’d like to buy one of her dresses.”

“Oh?” Ilana smiled. “You can afford one?”

“What is her fee? I’ve saved up sixty grot, maybe seventy, and as for materials, I can probably—”

“You have asked me this at the perfect time.” Ilana put an arm around Farisa, and lowered her voice to a whisper. “I’m throwing one of my girls a birthday party next week. Ingrid will be there. You should come.”

“I will,” Farisa promised.

“Just you.”

“Just me.”

“Good. I’ll be sure to make the introduction.”

Farisa’s shoulders relaxed. “Thanks so much, Ilana.”

“Easy done, Farisa.” Ilana walked away, then turned around. “Oh, one more thing.”

“What’s that?”

“A lot of important people will be there. You’ll be the only one who looks like you. Don’t make it weird or, you know, political.”

“Easy done, Ilana.”

#

The night of Ilana’s gathering, August 12, arrived. Farisa was glad her blonde friend was only an inch taller than she was, because it meant Erysi’s dresses fit well. After putting on a sleeveless, formfitting number that landed just above her knees, Farisa sat down in front of the full-length mirror, sucking in her slight belly, causing her stomach to fold at the navel.

“You have nothing to worry about,” Erysi said. “I’d gladly have that if it came with your—”

“Do not say it.”

Erysi stepped back. “I didn’t know you were sensitive about…”

Farisa laughed. “Sorry, I thought you were referring to something else. Yeah, they’re nice, I guess. Average.”

“Average size. Shape is well above—Wait, what did you think I was talking about?”

“Never mind. Something you don’t know about.” Farisa now wondered if she should apply concealer to the scar on her shoulder. She had looked over herself several times and found nothing she considered a serious flaw, but that didn’t mean others wouldn’t see oversights in her dress or preparation. “I’m so nervous.”

“Don’t be. Most people never get invited to something like this.”

“I should have asked if you could come.”

“You don’t need to worry about me,” said Erysi. “I have three exams tomorrow. And Ilana’s crowd is like mine but also... not like mine. When I want to get into something, I do.”

Farisa slipped her feet into closed-toe black shoes, the ankles doubly strapped so they couldn’t possibly come off by accident, and looked out the window. “I guess it’s time to get going, isn’t it?”

“No.” Erysi laughed. “You’re bringing the Far North with you. You’ll look like a fool if you arrive on time. Down here, six means seven, and seven means eight thirty, and eight means ten. Trust me.”

Farisa still found this attribute of southron culture puzzling. One made friends in Cait Forest by pretending not to want any. So, she removed her uncomfortable shoes and paced about Erysi’s room, creating her own breeze to avoid sweating.

Erysi asked, “Whose birthday is it, anyway?”

“I have no idea,” Farisa said. “One of the hylus girls, I think. Ilana’s friends all look alike.”

“They do.” Erysi laughed. “The nice thing about Cait Forest is not having to know.”

When ten o’clock came, and Farisa put her shoes back on and began to walk across campus, the night hadn’t cooled off much. The bush crickets were loud and haze covered the stars. Onis Hall, Cait Forest’s art building, stood across a footbridge over a dry stone moat from the rest of campus. It broke several rules to use a campus building for a private gathering, especially with the college’s servants hired away from their usual work to cater it, but Ilana had paid so many stewards to overlook the offense, no objections would be raised.

As soon as Farisa opened the door, a gust of body heat crossed her face. She could not see the back of the hall through the tobacco-colored air. Never before had she seen more than ten people—usually, outcast students and eccentric professors—in this building at one time, but tonight there were more than a hundred. The boys were wearing silk shirts halfway tucked, brightly-colored cravats three to one neck, and twenty-grot white fedoras pockmarked with cigarette burns. The girls, in more standard attire, walked bloodlessly from one seat of attention to another in a hip-high labyrinth of couches with a vacant dance floor at its center.

Farisa raised her arm. “Ilana!”

Ilana did not seem to notice Farisa at first. After a second call, the tall woman walked toward her. “I rented twelve servants for this. I wish I hadn’t.”

“Too few?”

“Too many. They’re why it’s so damn hot in here. Poor people have slow metabolisms.”

“You mean fast,” Farisa said.

“I mean slow. They’re peasant stock. It’s why they get fat after twenty-five.”

“Body heat is metabolism, so if you’re blaming their metabolisms, then....”

“Sure, whatever.” Ilana led Farisa by the hand to the reception desk, which had about twenty mostly-empty beer and gin bottles on it. “Don’t touch the surface. It’s gross.” She put a hand on Farisa’s bare shoulder before telling the servant tending bar, “This girl’s my friend, so she gets everything she asks for. Got it?”

“I’ll have a pale ale,” Farisa said.

She looked in Ilana’s direction to thank her, but the blonde athlete’s talent of moving quickly through people had already shown itself; she was gone.

The boy in beige handed Farisa her beer. “Hey, didn’t I once see you—?”

“No.” Farisa slid a quarter-grot across the table and smiled. “You didn’t.”

She disliked that she had been dismissive toward the boy, because she had worked with him more than a year ago and he was one of the few who never seemed to think her inferior for her dark skin or background. She was becoming fluent, as much as she detested it in others, in the nonchalant rudeness endemic to this place. Still, if anyone found out that she had worn beige here, she would lose everything.

Farisa nursed her drink until it was half-full, ideal for a prop, and began to walk around. Where was Ingrid? Was she the blonde with the two ankle bracelets, smoking by the window? Or was she the redhead on a couch, forcing laughter at a boy’s simian overtures? Or was she the tall girl who had been dancing on a mahogany table—it had been part of a student’s art exhibit—until her head collided with a chandelier?

“I’m Farisa,” she said to introduce herself to one of the women. “Oh,” was the response.

People did not talk here, not really. A dissonant phonograph was emitting bastardized versions of vaudeville tunes, and it was hard to recognize others’ words unless one listened closely enough to get shout-spit in one’s own ear. Hovering awkwardly, listening to others’ conversations, had not yielded useful information as to Ingrid’s identity, and after three hours of this, Farisa realized she would need Ilana to point the woman out soon, because people were leaving—rumor was spreading of a better party, with real orc’s blood, on the other side of campus.

She caught up with the one person here she knew on the stairs to the second-floor bathroom.

“Right,” Ilana said. “I did promise to introduce you to Ingrid. Follow me.”

She led Farisa into a side room. It was quieter here. Those who had passed out drunk and been piled asleep in the corner, but there were only two or three dozen people awake, some sharing wine bottles and others playing a finger game with a butane pocket torch. Several couches had been installed, including a pair of long ones which had been turned parallel to face each other. Here, three girls and four boys were languidly playing a card game whose rules had dissolved in drink long ago. The eight of shields lay creased and sticky on the floor.

Ilana snapped her fingers to grab their attention, then put her arm around Farisa. “My friend Rissa here—”

“Farisa.”

“—would like to meet Ingrid, the dressmaker.”

One of the girls, who had placed her head in a boy’s lap, sat up and smiled. “Who wouldn’t?”

Farisa, sure to keep a straight posture, sat down opposite her. “Are you Ingrid?”

“You can call me Ingrid.”

“I’m the one who—I teach—”

“The language teacher. We know.”

Farisa consciously stilled her hands. “I’ve seen your dresses around campus. They’re beautiful.”

The girl’s eyes lit up. “Why, thank you.”

“I’d love it if you could make one for me.”

“Can you afford one?”

“I’ve got…” Farisa emptied her pockets, counting out all the money she had. “Eighty-four seventy, eighty, ninety. It looks like I’m just short of eighty-five grot. Will that cover materials?”

“It might, but my price is a hundred for design alone.”

“It is worth the price, but I can’t afford that.” Farisa gathered her coins and bills before standing up. “Thank you for your time, Ingrid.”

“Don’t go just yet.” The girl flexed her painted toes. “We can make an arrangement. I take payment in other forms.”

“Other forms?”

“Do you have any gold? Jewelry?”

“No,” Farisa said. “None.”

“Silverware? Art? You must have snuck something from home. We all do it.”

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

“She looks like a scholarship girl,” said one of the other girls. “She doesn’t have a home.”

“I... I’m sorry, Ingrid.” She stepped away. “I don’t think I have anything you want.”

“How about head?”

“Head?” Farisa looked around. “What’s...? Oh, you mean tutoring. Of course! What do you study? I’m fluent in Lyrian, it being what I teach, and I would be able to help you in math, rhetoric, chemistry—”

One of the girls snickered. Ilana toasted the air with a shot glass.

Farisa scratched her neck. “What’s so funny?”

Ilana said, “The bronzie just offered to do her homework.” Raucous laughter erupted.

“Head. Head is what was said.”

“I don’t get it,” Farisa said.

One of the girls put a hand on Farisa’s arm. “When’s the last time you’ve been to the city?”

“Moyenne?”

“Are there other cities?”

“I haven’t—I mean, I want to go, but—”

One of the boys sat up and adjusted his hat. “Ingrid’s is a store. Twenty-Fifth and Clay.”

You-Can-Call-Me-Ingrid licked her teeth. “Wait. Did you seriously think…?” She shook her head. “No, honey, my name isn’t Ingrid.”

A girl slapped her knee, spilling her drink. “She really fell for it.”

One of the boys said, “Now about your offer of—”

The palms of her hands turned hot and she felt an urge to flee, as if direct elopement in the next ten seconds were her only chance at avoiding furious calamity—the art, at least, did not deserve destruction. She ran out of the building, shoving those who stood in her way, stepping on toes and spilling others’ drinks. Once outside, she ran to the bank of the Lepid River and splashed water on her face to cool down.

“Damn you, Ilana. Damn you to the hottest fucking fuck-fire of hell.”

#

The days of the rest of summer were hazy, dry, and indistinct. Rain and thunder seemed possible, always, but a drought that had begun last winter was only worsening. The gardens on campus were still watered and green for now, and the college’s land holdings south of the mountains had not been affected, and were still productive, but here the grasses of the prairies had, after a meek flowering in spring, returned to the color of winter, despite the high sun and summer sky. Exposed soil had fractured into hexagonal provinces, each curling away from its neighbors, shrunken in protest.

August hiatus, a three-week break in classes, had begun. Erysi went home. On the train back home to Moyenne, surely they were talking about nothing but the humiliation of the weird brown teacher. She tried to buy a dress at a party. She counted money in front of other people. She offered head—some accounts would include the naive understanding of the term to mean tutoring, and some would not—in exchange for.... It didn’t matter. It didn’t fucking matter. Farisa would never be a normal girl.

Half the students were gone for hiatus; the other half had tripled their loudness and chaos. A boy had come into the female side of the servants’ quarters, screaming drunk, until the night clerk took him away to put him to bed. The Marquessa began to visit again. The campus still looked ugly between first light and six o’clock, when servants began to clean it. One saw, in spite of its beauty, how little this place meant to most of the people here. They would inhabit it for five years—four, if granted a second-year start—and leave. Her students would move away. Erysi would return, in time, to Moyenne. Teachers, like wetnurses and governesses, existed to be outgrown.

When she had bad dreams—she was having the one with the silver apple and the billion spiders again—she would wake up and run across campus. Nothing else could dispel the freakish electricity in her legs that had to be used or it would not let her sleep. She would run, at twelve or one or two in the morning, to the Lepid River, to Rooksnest Bridge, to—if moonlight permitted it—the Black Lake, three miles north.

She found herself, one night, at the stables. I could grab a horse and leave. There is nothing keeping me in Cait Forest. At the time, she could see no flaw in the idea. She had ridden Lucy, the brown pony in the corner, enough times to trust her. She put the saddle on and, wearing a hood so no one would recognize her, rode by lantern light for Rooksnest Bridge. The watchman seemed to trust that she had important business, and did not protest her exit. Stars drifted. Dawn broke. She counted the mileposts. She wondered, as soon as she had come eight miles from campus, why it had taken her so long to have this idea. She was nobody’s captive, and Cait Forest had never wanted her in the first place. She did not have to sleep six to a room. She did not have to mind the opinions of conniving teenagers. She could keep riding for as long as the road would have her. On her third day, she’d reach Rosewater, where she could sell the pony to a decent owner and hop a freight train to Exmore, jumping off two miles early to avoid the rail police. On the western shore of the Bubo, she could take a riverboat south to Taen Osk, where she could pick pockets if low on funds until she had sufficient fare for passage on the ocean. Then, she could go anywhere: her ancestral Loran; the Yatek, to live on a dori; Bezelia, to see if it was as bad as people said it was. Or, she could make for Black Harbor, bust Raqel out of her horrible marriage, and go together with her to Salinay.

The sun rose. The landscape changed around noon when she crossed over Sawnotch Ridge—she was making excellent time—and the wind began to pushed her east instead of opposing her. The odor of lemons thickened as she descended into ferns and trees, the climate here moderated by the ocean. When the trees opened up allowed her to see ahead of herself, she let her mind fill with the sights and sounds of the landscape, savoring delicious freedom.

Around two o’clock, Lucy’s gait slowed. Farisa decided to walk alongside the pony, whose endurance should not be tested. In any case, the animal would need rest soon, as they’d covered almost two dozen miles. They arrived at Imtuita, where Farisa realized she would have to stop for the day, around four.

The lowest expectations of the town would have still resulted in disappointment. The houses had no porches or gardens. White domiciles with grimy windows and no suggestion of useful inner life were all Imtuita offered the eye. The roads were haphazard and potholed. In lieu of public spaces were empty gravel lots. Locals proved unwilling to answer basic questions, so it took her an hour to find the town’s solitary inn. The black paint of its front door was peeling, and some of the beams on the veranda had rotted.

The inn door creaked as she opened it.

“I’d like to request a room.”

The innkeeper gnawed a wad of snuff. “It’s seven grot per night.”

Farisa put out her chest. “The sign says four.”

“I know urt the sign says.” The innkeeper ejected a jet of saliva into a steel spittoon. “I alsa urn’t dumb. I know a-zactly urt it means ’ern a wimmin travels alone. Ye’re despert. Seven’s my price.”

“I’m not desperate.”

“Well, the next inn’s in Astiuta, and y’on’t get there ‘fore dark. I knows a despert, and that’s you, but ye’re welcome to ride on.”

“Seven,” she said. She looked into her bill purse and withdrew seven grot, knowing the price unfair, but not wanting to overtax Lucy. “Here you go.”

“There’s a two-grot stabling fee for yer hoss.”

“Two grot?”

“Nart’s free in the world, babe.”

Call me “babe” again, asshole, and I’ll burn off your— “I understand, but let’s make it eight, total, for the room and stable, including half a bale of hay.”

The innkeeper chortled. “You think I’m sitting on hay in this drought? No one’s got any. I’ll see you eight fifty, but ye’re on yer own to feed that cunter.”

“Eight twenty-five,” Farisa said.

The innkeeper frowned for at least a minute, then nodded and gave her a brass key. “The way ye’re shavin’ my rates, I don’t think you can afford what it costs to lose this.”

“I won’t lose it.”

“If ye’re low caught for entertainment, there’s a twigging in townsquare a-morrow morning at nine.”

“I’ll pass on that.” Twigging—she didn’t know people still did that. “In fact, I need you to wake me up by six o’clock.”

“Yer loss.” The innkeeper grinned. “They say she’s a fat one. Er-leven years old.”

She led Lucy to the stable, then used the waning evening light to look for food. Most taverns, like the innkeeper, assumed a lone woman they did not know to be a prostitute or something worse, but unlike him, saw no profit in her predicament, and so refused her patronage. The town did have an open-air market, but only four stalls were open, so she had to settle for a lard sandwich with wilted dandelions and a runny whitish condiment. She also bought a beer to wash away the sour taste. Knowing that care for her pony was as important as feeding herself, she visited the hay merchant, who claimed his product was genuine alfalfa and had priced it accordingly, but Lucy refused to eat it. When Farisa sifted through the sack, she found that the bottom two-thirds had gone moldy.

“It’s all I could find,” she told the pony, patting her on the head. “Next town, I’ll do better.”

She realized, as night fell, that she had failed to bring any books. With nothing to read, she used the grim outside light to count her remaining money, several times, as if the sum would improve on a recount, which it did not. She had spent eight and a quarter to sleep here, plus two on her own horrid dinner, plus four on a sack of bad hay. One day had passed, and she was down by nearly fifteen grot. She would need to do better than this.

#

When Farisa’s eyes opened to a bright ceiling, its cracks and water spots visible, she knew her request for an early wakeup had been ignored. She hurried to Lucy’s stable, wanting to waste no more daylight than she already had.

The streets of Imtuita had been deserted the day before, but today they were crowded, people moving southward to the site of the twigging. In a few minutes, if she wasn’t already there, a disobedient or disliked house servant would be placed in four-limbed stocks, have her clothes cut away, and be caned. The ritual punishment was administered by a well-to-do town beauty—Farisa had seen only ugliness and poverty here, so she imagined Imtuita making do with what it had—who wore a tight, revealing garment with red or pink stripes in mockery of the wounds to be soon inflicted. She knew about this because she’d seen twigging dresses in Cait Forest—they had come into fashion, of late—but she had never imagined that anyone still partook of this anachronistic practice.

“Come on, Lucy. We don’t need to see this shit.” She squeezed her knees into the pony’s ribs, wanting to leave this town as fast as she could. A full gallop wasn’t possible, but she achieved a cantor. Two men emerged from a bar, shouting at her. The crowd grew thicker and rowdier. She decided to leave this main avenue, following instead a side street until she reached a wall of ugly white houses, forcing her to take a hard right. An empty beer bottle flew overhead. She squeezed her knees harder.

“Get off your hoss!”

“That’s good meat you’re wasting by riding the thing!”

“Who’s a tarsha gotta rob to get a mount like that?”

The street was getting narrower, more like an alley, and she grew nervous as she realized it was turning toward the site of the twigging when she heard a loud voice.

“Get back!”

Two men, both wearing Globbo gray, neither much older than she was, jumped out from behind a two-story trash midden. The sun gleamed on a pistol.

“You, on the horse! Come no further or I’ll—”

She spun Lucy around, in mood to charge and test the trigger fingers of teenage soldats. Doubling back the way she had come, she found the crowd thicker and harder to navigate.

One of the townsfolk opened his second-story window shutters. “There’s a witch!”

Oh, shit. Farisa covered her face and squeezed the horse’s ribcage harder.

“Don’t go to the twigging! It’s a trap!”

“Where’s the witch?”

More shutters opened. Insults were traded. A rotten egg, intended for someone beside her, whizzed across her face. A moldy peach with a human tooth stuck in its rind sailed over Lucy’s spine before colliding the side of someone’s face. An obese woman whiffed a half-eaten tomato full of tobacco sog; it split open on the saddle.

“Lucy, run!” Farisa dug her knees in as hard as she could. The pony sped to a gallop.

A man with a hunched back shouted, “Get the witch off the horse!”

The fucking innkeeper. He figured it out and he told everyone. How would he know, though?

She shouted invective in Lyrian to avoid upsetting tempers, covered her head to keep herself safe, and held fast to the pony’s reins as they sped out of town. The wind swatted her face. Her neck and chest were sour with sweat. But she had escaped; Imtuita’s mob was half a mile behind her now, had either failed to keep up or lost interest, and she could slow Lucy to a walk. She had come out via the west, and would need to take a different road to Astuita, but she had escaped the noise and quarrels of that wretched town.

A boy, maybe sixteen, stepped into the road from behind a shrub and whistled.

Farisa ignored him. With neither muscle nor fat on his shirtless body, his features combined the stale-cracker lostness of these hinterlands with the sharp angles and edges of the urban poor farther east.

A girl emerged on the other side of the road and joined him. “Get off the ‘orse.” A glint of sunlight rung on her knife. “This is a robbery.”

“I’m the witch,” Farisa said. “You’ll put that away if you know what’s good for you.”

The boy drew a gun. “There’s no witch.”

Farisa realized, by their accents, these people were pessimou, the lowest of the Ettasi continent’s low, the sorts of people whose family names had meant “butcher” or “leather tanner” in languages spoken fifteen hundred years ago. She also understood the commotion in town to have had nothing to do with her or her magical talent—Farisa had fallen into one of the oldest pessimou traps, of raising a scare—a fire, an armed madman, an escaped leper—at a public gathering while other bandits waited at the town’s periphery to catch people in flight. She understood, also, that while a mage could handle one assailant, two thieves who knew how to work together—they were likely unskilled, but it was not worth taking chances—could represent enough danger that it was not worth it to resist the robbery.

Careful to share eye contact with each thief equally, she got off the pony.

The girl said to the boy, “Let me ’andle this.”

The boy holstered his gun.

Farisa asked, “What do you want?”

The girl rolled the knife between fingers. “All yer money, fer starts.”

“Money,” Farisa said. “Of course. Money.”

She went into the blue, Lucy. I’ll handle them. Hide a mile up the road, and I’ll meet you there.

The pony ran away.

Farisa reached into her jacket. Her fingers tightened around her money purse.

The boy shouted, “Hurry up!”

Farisa, recognizing the girl as likely to be more intelligent, raised her tiny purse to the pessima’s eye level. “This is all I have. Forty grot, silver and copper.” She extended her arm to hand it over, but at the last moment threw it aside and ran in the other direction.

The ground swung up at Farisa’s face. The boy had landed on her from behind, and his knee dug into her back.

“That trick only works when it’s one of us.”

“Just hold still,” said the pessima as she searched Farisa’s clothes. She slipped a finger into Farisa’s sock, finding some two-grot bills she’d wrapped around her ankle. “Clever.”

“Are we going to search ’er underwear?”

“Don’t be disgusting. We’ve got all the money she ’as. Right, bitch?”

Farisa looked back and nodded.

The boy removed his knee from her back. The girl counted the bills and coins aloud before putting them in her pocket. “This isn’t bad for one day.”

The thieves were walking away when Farisa, groaning, stood herself up and looked back.

The pessima waved her arms and yelled. “Cheer up! Ye’re lucky! We could’ve taken yer clothes too!”

You’re the lucky one, cunt—I could have stopped your heart.

Farisa had read, as a girl much younger, dime novels that harbored a certain romantic sympathy toward pessimou. She wished she had not. These people deserved their horrid reputation and status. Thievery and violence were bred into them.

Once well out of town, she sat on a rock and bit into her arm to muffle a scream because, in places like this, one never knew what might be listening.

#

As her nerves cooled, Farisa realized she had no options. Her adventure out of Cait Forest, thirty-three hours old, had failed. She would have to go back, and she hoped it would stand to her credit that she had missed no work—the academic term had not started—and that the purloined horse had taken no harm. She had discovered, through this series of mishaps, that she held no animus toward Cait Forest or any of its people—even Ilana was no knife-wielding pessima.

She returned slowly, knowing that Rooksnest Bridge changed its guard at exactly two fifteen in the morning, set to arrive precisely when she had the best odds of returning undetected. Clouds obscured all natural light, forcing them to go slow, but she did manage to reach the bridge without incident, and sneak across without permission.

A lamp turned on when she reached its other side.

“Dismount, please.”

She had never seen this man before, but his green garb and black sash made clear his status as a senior steward. The shadows of his eyes suggested he had been waiting for a long time. Nothing worth saying came to her mind, so she did as requested.

“I will take the stolen pony. You are Farisa, right?”

“I am.”

“Katarin’s office, six o’clock.”

“In the evening?”

He shook his head. “Morning. I’d stay awake if I were you.”

She considered his advice mockery. He must have known she would be getting no sleep. She walked to the servants’ dormitory but stayed outside it while the sky cleared. Summer was ending; the air was chilly. She walked to Mason Hall around five o’clock and watched dawn light slowly color the grass. A woman servant shook her head as she walked by.

I stole from the one woman making my life her possible.

But I was only gone two days. Maybe it’s not that bad.

No, I’ve broken too many rules. I’ve had so many chances. I’m fucked.

She found herself walking listlessly, away from Mason Hall this time. The sunrise side of the sky was pink with mixed clouds and sky.

It’s a six o’clock disciplinary meeting. I’m going to be fired. I should just—

Farisa, you’re being dramatic. If anyone has your back, it’s the headmistress.

What if I just don’t go? I can plan for this. I can—

What? Go out into the world? With what money? Ya gonna steal something else, thief?

Go hear what she has to say.

She entered Mason Hall and climbed the first flight of stairs. Two steps from the second-floor landing, she closed her eyes and leaned slightly backward. God, if termination and expulsion and dishonor are what I am here to face, please do what must be done. She lifted her toes. No fall occurred.

A male voice said, “The headmistress’s office has been moved to 103.”

“Room 103?”

“I’ll take you there.”

“No need. I know where it is.”

Farisa walked back down the stairs, traced a finger along the wall to slow herself down, and found that the movement of her legs had conspired to take her to Katarin’s office, the new one. The door was already open, and the headmistress was inside on a cushioned chair with rubber tires affixed to its bottom.

Eager to discuss anything but her disappearance, Farisa asked, “Did you get hurt?”

“No.” The headmistress put on her glasses. “Old age. You do get better at it, but not as fast as it gets better at you. Close the door.”

Farisa did so.

“Sit.”

She did.

“I assume you know why I called you here.”

Farisa’s mouth was drier than hardtack, and she did not want to speak.

“You have my attention. Use it.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Good. You should be. With that out of the way, understand that I gain nothing by punishing you. I gain nothing if I dismiss you. We would both lose, in fact. Your expulsion would draw attention to my having let you in here in the first place, and that would result in rounds of questioning that would endanger you, but that I would have to sit through.”

Farisa looked at her hands.

“I have never once questioned your intellect, your work ethic, or even your moral character. As soon as I learned you had stolen the pony, I knew you would never let her come to harm. You are a woman of great potential. That said, I am often in conversations about your behavior.”

Farisa’s neck itched and her nose felt hot. “What do you mean?”

“I will start with what is good. Your students say you are kind. A fair grader. A very capable instructor. Others on campus, who in my mind know you less, consider you uptight, laconic, and rude.”

“Rude? Who thinks I’m rude?”

“This perception, especially in light of your excellence in the classroom, hardly merits disciplinary action. Worse has been said about me, I am sure of it. I would not bring it up, except to say that it hardly helps your case.”

“I have ‘a case’?”

“You disappeared for two days and stole a horse. I could not prevent the board from becoming aware of you.”

Farisa felt a rush of blood to her face. “Do they know that I’m…?”

“A mage? The mage? Kyana’s daughter? No, none of that. It is bad enough for Cait Forest’s image when a student goes antic, but if it ever got out that a professor—”

“I’m not a professor. Or a student. What am I, even? I still sleep in the servant quarters.”

“I need you to promise me this will never happen again.”

“It won’t.”

“Very good.” The headmistress adjusted her glasses. “The first of September is soon. I expect you will have yourself in order by then.”

“I will,” Farisa said.

“I am sure of it.”

“As I said, I am very sorry.”

“I have been forced by circumstances to have you meet someone, but he does not arrive until eight. Do you know the name of Thomas Bechdel?”

Farisa’s fists tightened. “The doctor?”

“Our esteemed board knows enough of your existence to have ruled your employment conditional on your passing a psychiatric review.”

Farisa stood up and began pacing. “No. I won’t see him.”

“You have the right to refuse, but if you do, I am sorry to say that I must terminate your employment.”

“That’s unfair, Katarin. That’s so fucking unreasonable. I was only gone for two—”

“Dr. Bechdel comes at eight. I asked you to come at six, so you have time to air out any moods. Scream at me. Curse me out. Go outside and run until you are out of breath.”

Farisa said, “My mother was killed by a doctor.”

“I believe you lived for some time with Arvi and Skaya Shevek. Was this man not a doctor?”

“That was the North; this is the South.”

“Rest assured that Dr. Bechdel is not a Company man. He shares our sympathies. I trust him, and you should trust me.”

“I suppose I have no choice,” Farisa said.

“You have every choice. If you want to stay here, though, your choice must be to see him.”

Farisa nodded.

“In the meantime, we have two hours. It would make me happy if you would join me for a game of zo. I would get the board myself, but I don’t have the mobility these days.”

She retrieved the thick board, inexpertly placed at the other side of the office by whoever had moved Katarin’s possessions, and put it between them. Farisa, as the novice player, would use black stones and go first; Katarin took the white ones.

The headmistress asked, “What’s your handicap again?”

“Five stones.”

“Try four.”

Farisa nodded, and set up her initial position.

Katarin placed her first white stone. “Am I correct in believing that the name ‘zo’ comes from Lyrian?”

“I believe so.” Farisa placed a black stone diagonal to Katarin’s. “Wyzohn-karetz-nay.”

“Because it was originally played on a seventeen-by-seventeen board.”

“Right. It’d still be ‘zo’ on a modern nineteen. Terzohn-haletz-etta. Three hundred sixty-one.”

The game continued. Nervous and deprived of sleep, Farisa failed to notice until too late that Katarin had built an E-shaped colony of five stones on the board’s edge, a formation that could never be removed for it would surround—and therefore defeat—any first of two requisite invaders.

“Two eyes live, one eye dies,” said the headmistress politely as she backfilled her winning position.

“Great game, Headmistress.”

“You are getting better. One of these days, you will beat me straight on.”

Farisa laughed. “In twenty years, maybe.”

“Why don’t I show you how you could have won this last game?”

“I would like that.”

They were still assessing zo tactics when a brown-haired man in a white jacket arrived.

“You girls talking about me?”

The headmistress chuckled. “We do have other interests, Dr. Be—”

“Please, call me Thomas. I’ll see the patient now.”

“I’m not ‘the patient.’ I’m Farisa.”

“It is good to meet you, Farisa.”

The headmistress put her hands on her chair’s armrests as if she were about to stand, but did not. “You can use the room on the second floor. It’s at the end of the east wing.”

“I know it well,” said the doctor.

Farisa followed him up the stairs. The older man tried to make small talk, but Farisa rebuffed each effort. They went into a charmless room that looked like a maintenance closet, with no chairs and one upholstered table and only one window that seemed clean but that blurred incoming light.

“You can sit there,” the doctor said. As she did, he took her pulse. “Ninety-six per minute. You’re nervous, but I suppose that’s normal.”

“Thank you for your opinion.”

The doctor lifted her sleeve and strapped a band around her upper arm, then squeezed a bulb to inflate it. “I take it you don’t like doctors.”

“Who does?”

“Sick people.”

“Since my job is to prove I’m not sick, I must dislike you.”

“Logical.” The doctor smiled. “Blood pressure’s fine. Let me see your throat.”

Farisa gave a loud “ah” as she opened her mouth.

“The noise isn’t necessary.”

“None of this is necessary.”

“I’m afraid it is,” the doctor said. “Could you take off your shoes and socks?”

Farisa shook her head and crossed her arms.

“Loranian, I take it.”

“I’m Lorani. The empire, not the continent.”

“Your island hasn’t had an empire for nine hundred years.”

“True,” Farisa said as she crossed her legs at the ankles.

“We can skip the shoes-off part.” The doctor looked through his papers. “It’s not that important. The headmistress told me all about you. She wouldn’t hire just any doctor.”

Farisa laughed. “My understanding is that you all think you’re ‘not just any doctor.’”

“That may be, but I treated Saidus Ra’dall, a mage who lived to be—”

“Eighty-one,” Farisa said, deadpan. “I know, I know. Four times what most of us get, but it’s hard to call his case a victory, given how he died.”

He lowered his voice. “No physician has ever cured the Company.”

“Plenty in your so-called profession work for the Company.”

“Perverts and maniacs, yes. I will not deny that they exist, but there are a lot of us who entered this line of work to help people, and we’re suffering right now.”

“The Great Stethoscope Shortage of ’93?”

Dr. Bechdel chuckled. “You may find this hard to believe, but some of the men living under bridges in Exmore used to be doctors. My father couldn’t find work.” He put two fingers to his temple. “Became a patient, if you know what I mean.”

“Shit,” Farisa said. “I’m sorry. I meant to say—”

“No need to apologize for swearing. I see actual shit in this line of work.”

Farisa laughed. “I would never apologize for swearing. I mean that I’m sorry to have been insensitive, and about your father.”

“In this world, sensitivity can be lethal, and in my profession that is even more the case.”

“Right.”

“Anyway, I’ve got more than two hundred questions to get through, so let’s begin the interview.”

Farisa scoffed. “Interview.”

The doctor asked questions about her childhood, her experiences at Cait Forest, and her motivations for recent behaviors, all while scribbling illegible notes. Farisa counted two hundred and ninety-two questions, in fact, and suspected his notes were thick enough to comprise a small novel. She hoped, if the thing were ever printed and she were to appear on the cover of the damn thing, she would be rendered as someone attractive.

“We’re almost done,” he said.

“We could have stopped an hour ago. You know everything about me.”

“I have just one question left, and this one’s off the record—”

Farisa kicked her legs. “No such thing.”

“Then feel free not to answer it. I have already reached my conclusion about you. My question is: What do you want?”

“What do I want?”

“You’re almost twenty years old. That’s halfway to my age, and my age is halfway to, well... math says eighty. Let us assume you are granted by fortune a normal lifespan. What would you like to do with it?”

“I’ve never been asked that before.”

“Then feel free to take your time.”

“I suppose I’m lucky to have survived this far, right? I suppose, if I came upon a genie, as in the Tales of the Sixteen Winds, and were granted a wish, I’d ask to be cured of all this.”

“Fair answer, but what is ‘all this’?”

“Right. I forgot that you doctors don’t believe in the Blue Marquessa.”

“We don’t all believe the same things. It could be a form of nervous exhaustion. It could be a structural feature of the brain. It could be genuine haunting, though it would be a departure from my training to say it were such.”

“Whatever it is, I’d like to someday find a cure.”

The doctor looked at his notes and underlined something. “If anyone does, I’m sure it will be you.”

“Flattery will get you—Never mind.” Farisa chuckled. “So, what’s your diagnosis, Doc? What’s wrong with me?”

“Recent behavior, mildly manic. That could be stress. I’ve seen much worse in mages. Make sure you get enough sleep. Eat well and exercise. My report to the board will only say that you passed. It will not be a lie to say I found you in good health.”

“For now.”

“Good health is always ‘for now,’ Farisa. We all age, we all die.”

“Some of us just go a bit faster than others.”

“Would you like to hear my theory about the Marquessa?”

“I’m reminded of an old joke. How do you get a man to share his opinions?”

“I’m not familiar with that one.” He paused. “What’s the answer?”

“There isn’t one. You don’t have to do anything.”

The doctor, who had begun to write on Cait Forest letterhead, laughed. “Not bad, not bad. I’ve treated forty-six mages before you. Some have died young; others have lived for a long time. Not one has died of the Marquessa.”

“Oh, that argument.” Farisa rolled her eyes. “If someone becomes too plonkered to work and dies on the street, starving or gunned down or sick with typhoid, isn’t that the same as dying of the thing itself?”

“I do not consider madness inevitable. These ‘attacks’ or ‘embraces’ by the Marquessa, as they are called, are medically speaking no more dangerous than a five-mile run.”

“A run can be dangerous.” Farisa interlaced her fingers and stretched her arms. “It depends what you’re running from.”

“It seems to me that the Marquessa, whatever it is, is not madness itself and does not necessarily lead that way. The reactions of others seem to be the cause of disturbance, and persistent rejection can have such effects on anyone. It is strange how these illnesses, for which there is no risk of contagion, are stigmatized as if they were ghastly plagues. I would argue that those who suffer, like you, are the strongest specimens of humanity. Those who direct ridicule at others, instead, are the weak ones who belong in madhouses.”

“It’s a beautiful theory, I must admit. That said, it sounds a bit ridiculous.”

“Good.” The doctor finished writing his notes, then opened the door. “That means there’s a chance of it being true. I’ll report to Katarin now.”

“Dr. Bechdel,” Farisa said.

He turned around. “What?”

“Thank you.”

#

In the headmistress’s office, the older woman opened the envelope. “Nothing in here will surprise me, I hope.”

She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, watching as the headmistress put on reading glasses and looked over the doctor’s report. “What does it say?”

“Nothing bad. You are cleared to teach. Classes start in two days, so prepare.”

Farisa felt gratitude for having been returned to the world of the living. “I will.”

“He says you are under a lot of stress. Is something troubling you?”

“Nothing worth bothering you about.”

“I have the time to be bothered.”

“I’ve been thinking about…” Farisa looked out the window. This ground floor view was three-quarters occluded by a bush. She preferred the view from Katarin’s old office, and suspected the headmistress did too. “Do you remember the name Raqel Ahava?”

“She was a standout applicant. I wish she had come.”

Farisa looked down. “I’m afraid it’s too late for that. She’s married now, and they have a daughter.”

“I have admitted people in their fifties. Would her husband be supportive?”

“He works.”

“I should hope at least one of them works.”

Farisa scratched her face. “What I mean is that he works for the Employer.”

“Oh.” Katarin’s face fell. “How high up is he?”

“There’s no pleasant answer to that question, is there? A low rank means poverty; a high rank, culpability. I think he’s a Z-5.”

“Z-5. So he probably makes five or six thousand per year.”

“That low?”

“If six thousand grot per year strikes you as a low salary, Farisa, you have been here for too long.”

“I thought Globbos were rich—the officers, at least.”

“Eska verus ponotto,” the headmistress said.

“That... makes sense. It’s depressing, though.”

“Are you going to agitate for higher pay for Globbos?”

Farisa laughed. “Hardly.”

Globbos were not known to be the well-read, cultured sorts of people who knew historical languages, but one Lyrian phrase was known to all of them, given its status, in Ettasi, as a Company motto: Liberty is the Salary. It was a warning to workers, not to ask for more but to be thankful for the freedoms that had not been taken away, but it was also, for officers and executives, encouragement to extract carnal tribute from the conquered. It cost the Company nothing to let things happen, and it was good for morale.

The headmistress paused as one of the servants entered the room to adjust the padding between her and her wheelchair.

“Close the door after you leave,” she told him.

“Since you remain a member of our community,” said the headmistress as she leaned in, “I must tell you something distressing. I have suspected it for months, but I learned yesterday that it is in fact true. Hampus Bell knows that you—Farisa La’ewind—are here.”

Heat spread through her skin. “The Globbos know that...?”

“Most of them do not. He does.”

Farisa looked up, because she could not catch her breath, and the air might be better up there. “How?”

“I do not know. I am sure this news is upsetting to you, but he is no threat to you now.”

“No threat?” Farisa paced tight circles around the headmistress’s office, stomping the floor as if she were racing up a mountain. “What do you mean, no threat? If he knows who I am, he must hate me. He murdered my parents.”

“Please be quiet.”

Farisa’s anger made her say something so inarticulate, it could not be called words.

“Listen to me. I have no love for Hampus Bell, and I have met him. I detest the Global Company. The world would be better off without both of them. Still, it is not the case, nor has it ever been, that Hampus Bell hates you.”

“Are you saying that he murdered my parents and forced me into hiding out of love?”

“You made his career.”

“I did what?”

“Not you, but your existence. Why do you think Claes moved you from Loran? Why do you think you have been in hiding since age three?”

“I’m the daughter of rebels. I’m the enemy. I always have been. To the Global Company, I was born the enemy, and I will die the enemy.”

“Hampus Bell would kill a child himself if it suited his interests, but he is intelligent enough to know when it does not. Tell me: What do you think the Company’s core business was? How did the Global Company get started?”

“Everyone knows that,” Farisa said. “Whiteshirts. Private security. Alcazar, they were called. Businesses hired them to bust unions, and over time they became the Business. Everyone knows all this.”

“What else?”

“Some gambling, I believe, as intake for usury.”

“Usury is a steady business in all seasons,” said the headmistress. “If you force people to take debt, the newly-made false money raises prices of goods, which forces more people to take debt. What else?”

“Smuggling. Extortion. Bribery, I guess.”

“Right, bribery. Until about thirty years ago, there used to be public governments. A few even held elections. Of these local mayors and governors, quite a number proved venal. What happened if they encountered one who had no price, or who had set a price they deemed too high?”

“They’d....” Farisa drew a finger across her neck.

“Of course. That is exactly what they did, but it was never so simple as sending whiteshirts to kill someone. If they murdered a popular figure, they risked making him a martyr. Before the deed, they would destroy his reputation. They would follow him and find out if he was a drunk, or a gambler, or a lecher, and tell the world of the fact through his newspapers so that, when they did act, his demise seemed inevitable and possibly even socially desirable. What, pray tell, if they found nothing?”

“I don’t....” Farisa, who had sat back down, noticed that her hands had come together. “No. I think I know. They’d say he was a witch.”

“Precisely. Hampus Bell was never good with numbers. I should know. I taught him. At least,. I tried. Pyotr was the father’s favorite, and the second son—the disappointment—was stationed in Loran, then thought a place of no importance, to keep him out of the way. In spite of Hampus’s academic mediocrity, I saw even then in him a knack for spectacle, which makes him a natural fit for witch hunting. Your existence makes him relevant. If you were ever caught, his witch-hunting glory days would be over, and what would he be? A man in middle age whose salary exceeds his services. Every few years, a rumor emerges within the Company that you are still alive, and an effort is started to find you. The Patriarch sabotages all such attempts.”

“You’re saying that Hampus Bell is protecting me?”

“No, dear.” Katarin shook her head. “I am protecting you. Hampus Bell is a bad man, but right now, I do not place him at the top of my list of concerns.” She looked again at the doctor’s letter. “Sleep deprivation, I see. How many hours do you get per night?”

“Four. Five if I’m lucky.”

“I never got you out of the servant dormitory, did I? Those buildings need a lot of work. This is another fight I have, every year, with our illustrious board. I could get you something more fitting to your responsibilities, but it would incur risk of drawing attention to you, and it would take me three months before—”

Farisa said, “I have a better idea.”

#

September 17, ’93 (7 months before the fire)

The two of them had discovered this cabin, half a century out of use, earlier in the summer. A mile and a half north of campus, concealed from trail sight by a cedar thicket, this place was nearly impossible to find unless one knew precisely where to look.

They had begun to restore it using fresh-but lumber and borrowed nails in early August. Now that Farisa had secured the headmistress’s permission to build it, well after the project had begun, she had been granted a cotton-stuffed mattress and a wood stove.

Erysi asked, “Do you want to put in the last nail?”

“You can do it,” Farisa said.

Erysi drove the nail in. “It’s done.”

“Thank you for your help,” Farisa said. “I don’t know how to repay you.”

Erysi kicked the toe of her shoe into dirt and smiled. “I’m sure I will think of something.”

“Come up here any time. This cabin’s yours as much as it is mine. You did half the work.”

“A quarter, maybe.” Erysi chuckled. “It was fun. I got to break a sweat.”

Farisa stepped back to look at her new home. It was small, but it was hers, and she would make it her favorite place in the world.

“Are you sure it’s safe up here? I’m sure it gets very dark at night.”

“I’m sure it does.” Farisa laughed. “This is Cait Forest. Nothing bad in the light, nothing bad in the dark.”

“What about the coyotes?”

“Coyotes. They’re shy creatures.”

“Does anyone else know this place exists?”

Farisa walked inside and sat on the bed. “The Old Bear might have known about it. Too late to ask him. The headmistress won’t tell anyone. So, no. It’s just between the two of us.”

Erysi, sitting beside her, asked, “What are you going to do up here?”

“Whatever I want.” Farisa fell back on her blanket. “Read. Sleep well, for once. Recover, if I get... sicker.”

“You don’t seem sick with anything,” Erysi said as she brushed blonde hair from her eyes. Farisa had recently discussed her abilities, as well as the Blue Marquessa, to her new best friend. Erysi kicked off a sandal. “No one thinks you’re crazy but you.”

Farisa removed her sweater and adjusted the strap of her camisole. “I think this place is well-insulated.” She knocked on the inner wall. “It should hold up all winter.”

“I should get back to campus before it gets dark,” said Erysi. “I’ll see you around.”

Farisa gave her friend a parting hug before closing the door. She had a real home now, a secret one that was fully hers. She checked the sconces of her oil lamps to be sure she would be able to use them at night, if needed. On her small desk, she laid open the book Skaya had given her two years ago on leaving Tevalon: a hundred sheets of blank paper, a journal that she had never used because she had never found the quiet and privacy reflective writing required in the clamorous dormitories. She decided she would write in it, at least a word or five, every day.

She cooked dinner; she would be twenty years old in two weeks, and it was time to start doing things for herself instead of relying on that crowded cafeteria. She might even, if her schedule allowed it, start a garden out here to grow her own food. The sun had set, but it was warm enough to eat outside, so she did, listening to the autumn-night wind unbothered by campus noise. She had life to herself now. If she wanted to go to sleep early and wake before dawn, she could. If she wanted to stay up all night reading abstruse chemistry books or the latest T. C. Teller novel, she could. If she wanted to spend a whole day with her socks off or even fully nude, she could.

This evening, though, she was the best kind of exhausted, between the final six hours of work on this cabin and the sheer quiet she had not experienced in a long time. She opened her window to let in cool gentle air, her pillow positioned so she could see a few stars, and neither rushed to bring nor fought against the onset of sleep. Nights like this, where had they been her whole life?