Liv had to endure Sophie’s scowl as the maid set the third trencher of beef and bacon pie down. She had her back to Master Grenfell and Magis Jurian, who she’d served first, and so the two mages didn’t catch it.
“Thank you, Sophie,” Grenfell said from where he was sitting in one of the three chairs kept in his chambers for classes. He and Jurian had dragged the chairs and desks around to form a rough triangle with the one Liv sat in, which was the same place she occupied everyday. “That will be all.”
Bristling with resentment, the maid stalked back across the chamber to the door and shut it behind her. Liv tried to relax and enjoy the meal, but she couldn’t drag her mind away from the men waiting for her downstairs.
“This is very good pie,” Jurian remarked, taking a gulp of watered wine in between bites. “Are these raisins and prunes inside?”
“I believe so,” Grenfell responded. “Miss Brodbeck would know - her mother is the cook.”
“Yes,” Liv said, putting her fork down. She couldn’t even stand the thought of food right now. “What do they want from me?” she asked. “To have the sheriff lock me up? To take my hand for stealing?”
“No,” Jurian answered. “None of that gets them anything. They want to frighten you enough that you sign your word of power away to them, Liv.” He paused for a moment. “Is that short for anything? I do my best not to use nicknames with people I have just met.”
“Livara,” she said, before she could think better of it. “But no one knows that. Just you two, and my mother and I.”
“Best to stick with what everyone knows, then,” the visiting mage remarked, though his eyes lingered on Liv’s face until she had to look down at her soup to avoid his gaze. “More to speak of later, I suppose. Let us focus on what you need to know before the second bell.”
“First,” Jurian continued, taking another bite and talking while he ate, “I have checked all relevant records, Kazamir, as per your request. I can confirm that our young friend’s word of power is not registered to any noble house of the kingdom. It is, however, licensed for limited and very specific use by the Merciful Society of Butchers and Drovers, which is the source of this trouble. Miss Brodbeck, did you use your magic to store or preserve meat for shipping?”
“No?” Liv shook her head.
“Your table manners are atrocious,” Master Grenfell remarked to his colleague, but Jurian dismissed him.
“It comes of spending most of my time in rifts for the past few years,” he said. “Did you use your magic to install cold storage in the castle, or any other structure, in return for compensation?” Jurian asked Liv.
“No, we just have the cold cellar beneath the kitchen,” Liv answered more confidently. “And there’s nothing magic about it. No more than the hot springs.”
“Very good. So to begin with, they really have no claim for damages or compensation,” Jurian said. “Because their license to use that magic is very, very specific. And that is precisely why they are coming after you so hard, Liv, and why they don’t want us in the room. They’re going to ask for gold. A lot of gold - more than you or your mother could ever pay them. And then, they’re going to offer to waive that fine in return for you signing full rights to that word of power over to them.”
“Which means they are no longer limited by their current agreement,” Grenfell concluded, nodding his head. “I see. But if they did not license the magic from one of our noble houses, where did they get it from? Lendh ka Dakruim?”
“No,” Jurian said, shaking his head and taking a drink of wine. “They licensed it from the Eld of the North.”
Your magic, the baron’s wife had told Liv. Whatever else you lack, your father gave you that. “Do you know the name of the person they got the magic from?” Liv asked Magis Jurian. She’d been trying her best to follow the dizzying pace of legal explanations, but she knew very little about how the guilds worked. This one piece, though, was very important to her.
“I do.” Jurian nodded. “I am not certain that I should tell you at this time, however.”
“It is likely to come up downstairs,” Grenfell pointed out.
“And yet, if this young lady has not been told by her mother,” Jurian mused, “It is hardly my place to be the one to say it. I cannot control what other people may do, but I can control what I do. I’ll tell you what, Liv,” he offered. “After this whole thing is over, I will speak with your mother, and we will go from there. As Master Grenfell says, I may be forced to use this anyway, but I would prefer not to say it out loud if we can avoid it. The first thing we need to do, in any event, is to establish beyond doubt that I am legally able to speak in your defense.”
“To that end,” Jurian said, setting aside his fork. “I have a question for you. Miss Brodbeck, I would like to take you as my apprentice. If you accept this offer, you will legally be a member of the mage’s guild, and I, as your master, will be legally responsible for you.” He slipped his silver ring off his finger, and offered it to Liv. “What is your answer?”
Liv stared at the ring. It would be easy to lose herself in the shifting whirls of blue and gold hidden just below the surface of the gray stone set in silver. “If I said yes,” she asked. “what would happen? Would you stay here? Would I have to go away with you?”
“No, and no,” Jurian said. He did not withdraw the ring. “I am currently serving as a recruiter for the College of Vædic Grammar in Coral Bay. I do not have the means to provide a proper education to an apprentice while I drag you around from place to place, especially not while you’re using a crutch. I would leave you here with Kazamir, until you are full grown.”
Liv bit her lip. “Then why would I not be Master Grenfell’s apprentice? Won’t he be the one teaching me?”
“I will have to teach you a little bit of something,” Jurian conceded, “before I leave. Best if it’s before we go back downstairs, in fact, so that you can testify your lessons have already begun when they challenge this. And Kazamir will do well teaching you the basics. But my name will give you a certain amount of protection.”
Master Grenfell sighed. “That is true enough. My colleague here is substantially younger than I am, Liv, but he does have something that I am embarrassed to admit I have always lacked.”
“What?” Liv asked.
“A certain recklessness and disregard for danger to his own life,” Grenfell said.
“I would call it courage.” Jurian grinned. “Don’t look so upset, old man. If you had it, you would have pushed a lot further than you have. It’s not the worst thing in the world; you’re a lot less likely to die in some forgotten rift.”
“Regardless,” Master Grenfell continued, rolling his eyes. “There is a certain amount of protection in having a master who has delved Godsgrave. And that reputation is not something I bring with me, child. He can be your shield in a way that I cannot.”
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“But I don’t even know you,” Liv said, forcing herself to meet Jurian’s eyes. “Why would you do so much to help me?”
“Two reasons,” Jurian told her. “And I will be completely honest. The first is that I want you to bring that word you used to the mage guild. It would be wasted on merchants,” he said, with a scowl. “All they care about is coin. They can cut their costs by no longer paying the Eld for their license, if they get you. But our work is far greater, and far more important. Do you know what they mage guild does, Liv?”
“You use magic,” Liv said. “And teach it. And cull rifts.”
“That’s right,” Jurian confirmed. “It is our obligation, in return for a royal charter. Any member of the guild may be called on to cull a rift, and we have to accept. And that is of far greater importance than the profit margins of the Drovers’ Guild. If that rift under Bald Peak were left to grow, it would overrun this entire town. No one here would survive. That is what we do, Liv. We go wherever is needed. When the local noble can’t handle an eruption, we are there. If the Eld need help, we cross the mountains. Over the sea, in Varuna, there are things you can’t even dream of - rifts left to fester for a thousand years, boiling with the power of the old gods. We are the only ones willing to fight the battles that need to be fought. Your word would give us another weapon in our arsenal. It would save lives - not just the lives of the guild, but innocent people who’ve never had to lift a sword.”
“And that is the other reason I want you as an apprentice,” Jurian said. “No one starts like you did. Spontaneous, uncontrolled magic? That simply does not happen. Everyone is taught, everyone takes months or years of practice before casting a spell. This talent you have? You owe it to the world to use it. Before some pampered Baron’s son puts a ring on your finger and makes you raise a brood of his brats, I want you to see what is really out there. Because we don’t just need your word, we need you. I need you to grow into what I think you can become.” He shifted his hand, holding the ring up nearly in her face. “What is your answer, Livara?”
Liv reached her hand up, then hesitated. “I take this, and that’s it? I’m a member of the guild? For life?”
Jurian shook his head. “No. You are a child, and that wouldn’t be fair. Those who attend the college must choose by the end of their first year, to join the guild, or not. I will record this as a provisional membership. After a year at the college, you will either confirm your membership, or leave. If you leave, I will ensure there is no penalty.”
Liv shook her head. “I can’t go there,” she said. “We don’t even have the coin to pay Master Grenfell. Gretta is helping us.”
“I hereby waive your fee,” Jurian said. “As recruiter for the college. I will log it in our records as soon as I leave here and return to Coral Bay. You will attend, Liv. When you are- how old are you now?” he asked.
“Twelve.” Liv answered.
“Her blood,” Grenfell murmured to his colleague. “The Eld.”
“She is half?” Jurian asked.
“My father,” Liv said. “He was - is - one of the Eld.”
“Call it thirty six, then,” Jurian said, with a great sigh. “So long. In twenty-four years, Liv, you will be expected in Coral Bay.”
Could she really leave the castle? Liv thought about Mama, and Gretta, and Charlie the mouser who slept in her bed at night, and even Mean Archie. But if she did go, she would learn magic. Real magic, high magic, not just the charms of the kitchen. The word stirred at the back of her mind, and she could tell it wanted to get out, like a child who had been cooped up to long. She took a deep breath and held it, like Master Grenfell had been teaching her. The word settled, and went back to its slumber. Maybe she needed to go, so that it wouldn’t get out by accident.
“I’ll do it,” Liv said. “I’ll go.” Gently, she took the ring from Master Jurian, and turned it over in her hand to look at it. It was too big even for her thumb.
“Put it on,” Jurian said, with a very faint smile. Liv slipped it onto the ring finger of her left hand, and gasped when the ring shrank until it fit her perfectly. It was warm against her skin, and the stone tingled there so that she could not forget it was touching her.
“Excellent. Now, Apprentice Brodbeck, I am going to teach you something,” Jurian said. “Give me your books. Good, you have a quill and ink here, as well.” He uncorked the bottle of ink.
“Use the bestiary,” Grenfell said, moving aside the grammar primer. Master Jurian flipped the book open, finding the blank page at the beginning, and dipped his pen in ink before setting it to the paper. Liv leaned forward, watching him write in an elegant hand.
“That’s it!” she said, recognizing her word. “But - the rest…”
Master Jurian blew on the ink, then flipped the book around so that she could read what he had written there:
Celet’co Scelis’o’Mae
“It’s different,” Liv said.
“I’ve conjugated the verb,” Jurian explained. “Among other things.” He stood, lifted his staff from where he’d leaned it against the wall, and walked across the room, where he braced the staff in front of him. “Master Grenfell has taught you how to breathe, hasn’t he?”
“This is another example of that rash behavior we mentioned before,” Grenfell said, standing up and backing toward a different wall to clear space. “She isn’t ready, Jurian.”
“Given what she’s already done, I would say that she is. Take a deep breath, and sing the words I wrote,” Jurian told Liv. “Then thrust your hand toward me, like you were throwing something.”
Liv looked back and forth between them both, then carefully stood, using her crutch to brace herself. She took one breath, then a second, to steady herself as much as anything else. The word was waking; she could feel it. Perhaps it could tell what was coming, like a cat scenting a meal.
“Celet’co Scelis’o’Mae!” It came out of her in a rush of cold, the world nearly whiting out at the edges of Liv’s vision as if a winter storm had swept her up in snow. She thrust her right hand toward Master Grenfell, and the word vibrated up from her belly, thrumming along Liv’s entire body before it exploded outward.
A shard of ice coalesced in front of her hand, then shot forward, directly at Master Jurian’s heart. Liv shrieked in fear, desperately trying to call it back, but the mage shouted words of his own, and a globe of swiling blue and gold magic sprang into being around him, looking like nothing so much as a soap bubble in the wash basin. The blade of ice hit the bubble and shattered, falling onto the carpetted floor of Master Grenfell’s chamber in a glittering heap of broken ice and dust.
Overcome by a sudden weariness, Liv sat back down into her chair and dropped her crutch to the ground. She lifted up her right hand, looked at her finers, and then shivered. The hot pie in front of her suddenly looked very good, and she picked up her fork and began to shovel it into her mouth.
“That should not have been her first spell,” Master Grenfell objected. “You cannot even pretend that was safe.”
“Everyone looks to be in one piece,” Jurian said, stepping around the pile of melting ice on the carpet and resuming his seat. “I would say it was a successful lesson. And now she has a way to defend herself.”
“Twenty-four years to teach her sanity before sending her on to you is not enough time,” Grenfell grumbled.
“If you complain too much, I won’t teach you the word we found in Godsgrave,” Jurian shot back, and it shut Master Grenfell up immediately.
“What happens next?” Liv asked, her cheeks full of half-chewed meat pie.
“Next,” Jurian said, “we finish our wine. In just a little while, we are going to go downstairs, and send those merchants on their way. The sooner, the better, for we shall have very little time. I did not plan on coming here, and I have other places to be. But I do have an obligation as your master, so I must see to it you will be well-cared for while you are here.”
“Will you teach me more magic?” Liv asked. She looked down at the words written in her book. “That wasn’t anything like what I remember from the fair.”
“That is the difference between letting a word of power completely out of your control, and knowing how to use it appropriately,” Jurian said. “Now pay attention, it isn’t quite second bell yet. I’ve never used your word, Liv. How did I write you an incantation that could do exactly what I wanted?”
Liv looked between the writing in her bestiary, and her new master. Then, she reached for the grammar book that Master Grenfell had loaned her. She opened it, stuffing another bite of meat pie in her mouth while she found what she was looking for, and then flipped it around to show the two mages two pages of charts.
“You said you conjugated the verb,” she began. “I can see that.” Liv put her finger on the righthand chart. “Active present - he, she or it. I recognize that ending. But I don’t know the rest of the words.”
“Good,” Jurian said, with a smile. “This is why the rules Master Grenfell is teaching you matter. If you understand the rules, you can make any word do what you want. If you make a mistake, you can kill yourself, or someone else. I know that what he is teaching you may seem like it is not exciting, but it is the foundation of everything that will come after. Learn the rules, and you learn magic. Learn magic, and those men downstairs will never be able to threaten you again.”