The sheriff didn’t come for Liv for another three days.
Over that time, she was surprised how quickly she settled into her new routine. Having to use a crutch slowed her down, but Liv always made certain to give herself enough time to get to Master Grenfell’s chamber before the ninth bell of the day. If that meant she had to roll straight out of her bed instead of cuddling for a moment longer in the warm blankets, well then, at least sleeping alone made it easier. While the black mouser, Charlie, never failed to come in while she went to sleep, the dark silent hours of the night were his hunting times, and he was always gone by the time she roused in the morning.
If it hadn’t been for Mirabel and Giselda, in fact, Liv would have said that she was having the best time of her life, in spite of the broken ankle. The master mage worked her hard, but she was used to that, and the kind of work he had her doing was mind-work, not body-work. She was best able to put it into words when speaking with Gretta, a potato peeler in her hand.
“Everything I do in the scullery and the kitchen,” Liv said, turning the potato with expert fingers, “doesn’t really take much thinking. It would be different if I was making an entire recipe myself, but I’m just doing dishes and setting tables and chopping things. You don’t really have to think about any of that. Well, now I can think about what I learned in class while I scrub. And when I go upstairs, I’m using my head, but I can rest my feet and my back and my hands. So instead of working my body all day, I get to switch off.”
“As long as you pay attention when you’re using a knife,” Gretta grumbled, and Liv laughed, reaching for the next potato.
She had two books lent to her by Master Grenfell in her room, now, and was expected to be reading them during her limited free time. The more exciting of the two was an earlier edition of Blackwood’s Bestiary that was dog-earred from use and older than she was.
“You will need to take your own notes inside during class,” the mage had told her when he delivered it to the kitchen door. “The newer addition will not only have more information, but corrects inaccuracies based on the most current research. I suggest keeping a quill and ink bottle to hand whenever you have the thing open.”
“You want me to write inside a book?” Liv asked. “Isn’t that against the law? Like destroying a merchant’s goods at the market?”
“If it was not yours, it might be,” Grenfell said. “But as I am giving it to you, Liv, you may do whatever you like with it. I wish I could spare the current edition, but this will have to do until you can purchase your own.”
“I can’t take it,” Liv protested. “Books are expensive. There’s no way I could pay you for this.”
“Yes, it would be about a month of your mother’s wages, I should think,” the mage agreed. “Which is why I am giving it to you as a gift. In truth, Miss Brodbeck, you are doing me a favor. I have no use for an old edition, and I need to clear out shelf space. If you don’t take it off my hands, I fear I shall simply have to throw it in the fireplace.”
“I’ll keep it then.” Liv clutched the book to her chest. “Thank you.”
“No, thank you,” Grenfell insisted. “It will be a lot of work for you to make something useful of it, and I expect your fingers will be quite sore from the writing. Now, this one is not a gift. I expect it back, and in good condition, or I shall be very cross with you.” He handed her a slimmer volume, and Liv looked over the title.
“An Introduction to the Principles of Grammar,” she read aloud. “By Caspian Loredan.”
“Archmagus Loredan,” Master Grenfell corrected her. “You are years behind the other girls. You will need to study this to have any hope of catching up to them.”
“I will,” Liv promised. At night, her head swam with irregular verbs, cases, and the past perfect tense. During class, she diagrammed sentences and conjugated verbs, when she wasn’t doing her best to shrug off the constant digs from Mirabel and Griselda. Either the work they were given was something the older girls had long since mastered, or Master Grenfell was correct and they truly didn’t care about what they were learning, because they never seemed to be short of time to spend on tormenting her.
When the master mage asked them all to write sentences and then swap for more diagramming practice, Griselda passed her a slate that read: ‘Your clothes are as dirty as your hands. Wear something other than rags.” When Liv had her quill and ink out to make notes in the bestiary Master Grenfell had given her, Mirabel walked by and hit the desk with her hip, spilling black ink all over Liv’s apron and skirts. If she hadn’t been so quick to snatch the old book up, it would have been ruined, as well.
“Oh, I’m so clumsy!” Mirabel exclaimed. “I apologize, Master Grenfell.” Then she turned back to Liv and smirked.
That night, scrubbing her ink-stained clothes with lye in the washbasin, Liv would rather have been rubbing Mirabel’s face against the washboard. She could scrape off all of those fancy paints on her cheeks and around her eyes.
“I’m sure you know this already,” her mother told her, leaning against the door frame. “But we can’t afford to be buying you new skirts and aprons all of the time.”
“I know, Mama,” Liv said, gritting her teeth. No matter how hard she scrubbed, there was still a faded stain left behind. She raised up on her heels to really get her shoulder into the work, but her mother came over and stopped her.
“Let me do that.” Her mother reached into the soapy water to take the cloth and board away. “You know you can’t push so hard. You’ll break a finger.”
It was so frustrating that, by the fourth day of attending classes, Liv was spending as much time watching Mirabel and Griselda for signs of an impending attack as she was paying attention to Master Grenfell. In spite of that, it would have been difficult not to notice First Footman Archibald entering the chamber, leaning in to say something to the mage at his lectern, and then leaving again.
“Miss Brodbeck,” Grenfell said. “Please remain after the class is finished. You have been excused from your afternoon duties.”
Over at their two desks, the two other girls were grinning as they stared at her. “The sheriff is coming to see you,” Mirabel whispered, softly enough that it wouldn’t be heard at the front of the room. Liv ignored her and went back to studying a miner’s account of a massive cave centipede from just prior to the last eruption of the Bald Peak rift. The listing of the centipede in her old copy of the bestiary did not mention anything about how the chitinous covering of the species was gradually infused with mana over time, becoming as hard as steel armor. Carefully, Liv added her notes, but her handwriting was even worse than usual from how badly her hands trembled.
When they’d finished their breathing exercises, singing was a disaster. Though Liv had sung the hymn to Tamiris every market day morning for as long as she could remember, her voice cracked and broke on the notes. Finally, Master Grenfell called an end with the ringing of the twelfth bell. Liv would normally have waited for the other two girls to get up and leave the room first, before rushing over to the servants’ stair on her crutch, but today she simply gathered her two books under one arm and waited.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
“We are going down to the great hall,” the mage told her, once the door had swung shut, leaving them alone. “I know that you are not accustomed to it, but we will go by the grand staircase, together.”
A roaring in her ears made it difficult to hear what he was saying, and when Liv stood, she had to stop and close her eyes so that she didn’t vomit on her desk. Master Grenfell must have seen how terrified she was, because he came over and took her arm. “All will be well,” he said. “Come along, now.”
In the great hall, Baron Summerset was seated at the high table. Archibald waited just behind him and to the left, and the tables were set for the midday meal, but the rest of the room was empty.
“As requested, my lord,” Grenfell said, leading Liv up the center aisle to stand before the table. “Miss Brodbeck.”
“Thank you, Master Mage.” Henry Summerset nodded. “Liv Brodbeck, the Merciful Society of Butchers and Drovers has lodged a complaint against you with the sheriff. In just a moment, I am going to call in their Mayor Cooper, who will be speaking as their representative, along with Sheriff Porter. You will speak only when I tell you to, is that understood?”
“Yes, m’lord,” Liv said, clutching her books to her chest.
“Give me those, child,” Master Grenfell said, taking the books from her and setting them on a nearby table. “Baron, I once again ask this matter be set aside until the guild representative I have called arrives.”
“It is the middle of winter,” Baron Summerset said. “No one will be getting through the high passes from the lowlands until the second month of Flood, at least. We will proceed today. Archibald, ask them to come in.”
“Yes, m’lord,” the first footman said, and slipped out from behind the table. He passed Liv without looking at her, and though she could not see behind her back, she heard the doors to the hall swing open, and the footsteps of the men who entered. They marched right past her, nearly up to the high table, and then offered bows to the baron.
One of the men was clearly Mirabel’s father - he had the same honey-blonde hair, though his was clipped short on the top and carefully groomed into whiskers that descended past his ears and along his jaw. His chin and mouth, however, were bare, and he was somewhat stout. The other man must have been the sheriff, though Liv had never had occasion to see him in person before. Unlike the mayor, he wore a sword at his hip, and his head was shaved clean of any hair.
“Mayor Cooper, Sheriff Porter,” the baron began. “Thank you for joining us today. The girl, Liv Brodbeck, who is employed as a scullion in my kitchens, is here before you. Am I to understand that you are here, Mayor Cooper, to speak on behalf of the Drovers’ guild?”
“That is correct, Baron Summerset,” Mirabel’s father said, turning to point at Liv with a stabbing finger. “This girl has used magic proprietary to the Merciful Society of Butchers and Drovers, in full and knowing violation of the laws governing guild secrets. As the head of the Mason’s Guild here in Whitehill, where they do not maintain a hall, I have agreed to represent them.”
“Very well,” Summerset said. “As representative of the crown, in the name of Roland the Third, King of Lucania, I am prepared to sit in arbitration on this matter. Does the Drovers’ guild accept my arbitration?”
“I have been instructed to tell you that they do,” Mayor Cooper said.
The baron turned to Liv. “As the accused party in this grievance, do you accept my arbitration?” he asked her.
Liv looked up to where Master Grenfell stood by her side.
“The mage guild accepts your arbitration in this matter,” her teacher said.
“That girl is not a member of the mage’s guild!” Mayor Cooper objected. “As such, Master Grenfell, you have no right to speak on her behalf.”
“Miss Brodbeck is my student,” Grenfell argued back, though he did not meet the mayor’s eyes and Liv could see his hand trembling. His voice never rose above the volume he used during his classes, and once again she could hear a quaver in his words. “As my student, she is an aspirant to the College of Vædic Grammar at Coral Bay.”
“Students at the college are not required to choose whether to join the guild or not until the end of their first year,” Cooper shot back. “And she has not even begun her first. Look at her, the girl can’t be more than seven or eight years old.”
“Which begs the question,” Lady Julienne said, her voice filling the chamber as she strode in and up the aisle, “why anyone would be so cruel as to force a young girl into this situation. I am ashamed of you, Alban Cooper. Don’t you have a daughter of your own?” Her swollen belly did not impede her in the slightest as she swept past the men and took a seat next to her husband at the high table.
“My daughter,” the mayor said, “would never violate the law. My Lady.”
“This girl,” Julianne said, “saved someone’s life. She used magic entirely out of instinct, which nearly killed her. She has not used the Drovers’ Guild’s proprietary enchantments to compete with them, she has not sold anything. I don’t see what possible damages you can prove. To be entirely honest, you should be celebrating what she did.”
“If she had not broken the law, we would be doing so, I am sure,” Cooper said. “Back to the point. We do not accept the right of the mage’s guild to speak on her behalf. Master Grenfell, as respected as he is, even as a valued member of this community, has no right to be present during this arbitration.”
Listening to the adults argue past her, their voices louder by the moment, Liv hunched her shoulders and kept her head down. “I didn’t mean to break any laws,” she said. “I was just trying to help.”
“Ignorance of the law is no excuse,” Sheriff Porter said, speaking for the first time. There was a commotion at the door to the hall, but Liv couldn’t hear what was happening. Another set of footsteps came up behind her, and Archibald approached the high table again.
“My lord,” he broke in,” a representative from the mage guild has arrived.”
“Bring him in,” Summerset said, with a motion of his hand.
“How could someone possibly have come from Coral Bay in three days?” Mayor Cooper demanded, as Archibald rushed by him and back down the aisle.
“I came by the waystone at Bald Peak,” a new voice broke in, from the doorway behind Liv. She did not dare turn to look, but the thump of boots on stone, accompanied by the ring of a walking stick or cane, stopped just next to her on the right, opposite where Master Grenfell was standing. Liv didn’t know whether to be comforted or frightened that there was a mage on either side of her.
The newly arrived mage was much younger than her teacher, she saw when she snuck a glance at him. He was bundled in a long dark coat, still brushed with snow, and riding boots that came to his thigh, and in his right hand he held not a cane, but a staff of wood nearly as long as he was tall, with sigils inlaid into the wood using glittering gold and silver. He did not wear a beard, but his face was shadowed as if he had not shaved in some days - which would make a good deal of sense, Liv realized, if he had been travelling. A trail of melted snow wet the stone floor in the mage’s wake, and he pulled off a set of leather gloves lined in fur. Liv caught sight of a silver ring with a familiar, glowing stone set in it, on his right hand.
“That waystone has been dead for generations,” Mayor Cooper scoffed.
“Your waystone may lack power to send,” the man next to Liv responded. “But not to receive. In any event, I am more than capable of powering passage for a single person without any aid.”
“Your name, sir?” Baron Summerset broke in.
“Magis Jurian of Carinthia,” the young man answered. “I currently serve as a recruiter for the College.”
“You are welcome, Magis Jurian,” Summerset said. “Your colleague informed us you were coming, but we did not expect you prior to the thaw.”
“Lucky that I came so quickly, then,” Jurian said. “My Lord, I request a recess to speak with my guildsman and with the girl.”
“Reasonable,” the baron said. “And it will give us all time for a midday meal. Gentlemen, we will resume this arbitration at the second bell. Until then, Mayor Cooper, Sheriff Porter, perhaps you would join my wife and I at the high table.”
“Where can we speak in private?” Jurian asked Master Grenfell, lowering his voice.
“My chambers,” Grenfell said. “Thank you for coming.”
“As if the guild would let something like this slip away from us,” Jurian said, shaking his head. “You are Liv Brodbeck, are you not?” he asked, turning his attention to her. An anger she did not expect simmered behind his eyes.
“I am, sir,” Liv said. “Are you here to help? I promise I didn’t intend to do anything wrong.”
“I’m certain you didn’t,” Jurian said. “And yes, I am here to protect you. Come along now; we have a great deal to speak about, and little enough time. You have my oath, child, that nothing will happen to you. I won’t allow it.”