Cardainne had sent a letter, sealed with a blue sigil. Rana’s heart had near stopped in her chest when she saw it, slipped past the crack beneath her door.
The contents had been inscribed with expensive ink and worded like a request—it was most definitely not a request. Rana had realised two sentences in; her time listening in on the trivialities of court warfare turned out to be good for something after all.
Apprenticeling, he’d said, last they’d spoken; it was going to be a simple talk—probably. Her thoughts flicked back to the battlements—heart pounding in anticipatory terror, eyes fixed on the placement of his hands as she’d run analysis on every word out of his mouth. It had been terrible and exhausting; following the ordeal, she’d returned to her room and collapsed onto her bed, shaking all over. She had the vaguest inkling of just how close she’d been to taking an unfortunate fall over the edge—thinking too hard about it made her stomach twist with nausea.
To make matters worse, his proposition made no sense, even when taken at face value.
“I don’t know,” Karim had said, when she’d asked him as to what his master meant by their conversation. “Cousin Rana, I am not the one to consult on these things. He is a fairly private man—I couldn’t possibly guess the contents of his head.”
It was pity she couldn’t, either. Now, she stood in front of Cardainne’s looming office doors, shoulders set back in a facade of confidence.
She took a deep breath, and knocked.
Runes of warding and recognition flared at her touch, before dissipating in moments. The doors swung inwards, to the sound of soft-edged wingbeats.
“Ah, Miss Khan.” Cardainne’s voice floated from across the room; he sat at his desk, head bowed in work. “You are very punctual. Come, sit.”
She counted her steps as she drew closer, heart thudding almost painfully out of her chest. Her dress whisked about her ankles as she went—mostly white, trimmed with scribe-yellow. A full hour, she’d spent, measuring the items of her wardrobe against each other—which of these seemed most neutral, what was formal enough, but not too formal, how to convey her distance while appearing put-together and polite—it had been a tortuous mockery of getting ready for a dinner, or a festival, or some other event not brimming with barely-hidden malice. She’d allowed herself a shawl as well, wrapped protectively around her shoulders. Aliyah had embroidered little flowers on the edges for her, many years ago. It was…a reminder. She had to hold fast to her goals, had to remember what answers she was here for.
Arriving seemed to take both an instant and an eternity. She drew out a chair and sat, kept her face fixed in a mask of polite, impartial deference.
“Thank you for the invitation, Magician Cardainne.”
She considered adding that she did not wish to take up his time, then dismissed the idea. It could come across as a weakness, and court types scented blood all too willingly. Cardainne was not a courtling, but he was one of those who watched over courtlings—which made him worse.
Cardainne finished penning a last few words before finally glancing up. He set down his stylograph and reached for an item off to the side: a teapot made of translucent glass, dyed with colours like a sunset. He slid matching cups across his desk too—what an odd, formal place to have tea. She’d passed some seats and a table on her way across the vastness of his office—perhaps he had them as decorations only, or perhaps he meant to unnerve her by having the tea here. Well, it wasn’t working; she’d be more concerned if he tried a friendly act.
“Do drink,” he said. “It is a good blend. And see here, the clarity of this device? You can be assured it is not a poisoner’s teapot.”
He smiled at his own words, a small and disconcerting smile; she supposed people such as him could find such things funny. Then he drank an exaggerated mouthful from his own cup, as if providing proof of the tea’s harmlessness.
“Thank you,” she said, and took a cautious sip. If he wanted to kill her, well…surely there were easier ways.
The tea coated her tongue in a film of floral fragrance, the taste more expensive than she could comfortably afford.
“You recall the faery attack?” Cardainne said, apropos of nothing.
Rana forced her hand to remain steady as she set her cup back down.
“Yes,” she said. “I am sure it has been…a difficult time for all.”
Inwardly she thought: corpses. She’d missed the Seventhborn’s execution, and thought herself lucky to have never seen a corpse—until the body of the girl next to her had gone limp in its chains, the skin blooming with unnatural bruises.
Cardainne’s gaze flicked, very briefly, to the papers blanketing his desk.
“Quite true, Miss Khan.”
Bile rose up into the back of her throat. Why? she wanted to scream at him. Why are you asking me this?
She flicked through several possibilities in her her head: to unsettle, most likely. To upset. Perhaps, overall, to provoke her into a misstep, some justifiable excuse—
“You must be very distraught,” he continued. “You were not only a witness, is that correct?”
Ice formed in her veins. He damn well knew she’d been—
“That is correct,” she said, over the roar of her racing heart.
“I am sorry to hear it,” he murmured, and tapped at the rim of his teacup, as if lost in thought.
It was an act, of course—she sensed it in the shift in his tone, knew it by virtue of who he was—but it was a remarkably good one. She could have almost forgiven herself for guessing this was a lapse in concentration, a sliver of sympathy slipping through from behind the mask of Magicianhood.
Cardainne blinked, visibly collecting himself. His hand left the teacup and went to rest flat on the table-top, a false-gesture of harmlessness. He cleared his throat.
“Well, Miss Khan; to the topic at hand. I quite hope that the time I have given you was spent well. Have you considered my offer?”
She had. There didn’t seem to be any good way out of it, without causing offense—and an offended Magician was a dangerous one.
“I am honoured by your invitation, Magician Cardainne.” She made sure to hesitate between a couple of the words, so that they might seem less rehearsed. “I sincerely hope that I could be worthy of such an opportunity, though…I am only a Lower scribe. I would not wish to dishonour the covenant of Magicianhood with my novice skills.”
He shook his head. “You do not need to concern yourself with that. I will be the judge of enough-ness, I think.”
She swallowed. “Of course, Magician Cardainne. Your judgement is unquestionably—”
“I think that is enough,” Cardainne said, and the bemusement threaded into his tone made her freeze, jaw clenching halfway through a syllable.
“Here,” he said, shaking his head. “I will be a little more honest with you, and in return I hope you will do that same politeness. Yes?”
“Yes,” she said, and curled her fists tight enough that her nails dug into her palms. It was all she could do to keep from stammering.
“Relax, Miss Khan,” he said. “I am a Magician, it is true. But I am not going to cut out your tongue for speaking the truth.”
She supposed she had no option but to pretend to take his words at face value.
Cardainne leaned back in his chair and gestured at the expanse of window occupying a good third of his office wall. Rana wondered how much it had cost—likely a month’s worth of her salary, if not more.
“Look down there. What do you see?”
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Desert, mostly. A bit of city, and a section of river in the distance.
“The north-eastern wall?” Rana tried.
“Hah. You will have to think more broadly than that.” Cardainne rested his elbows upon his desk, lacing his fingers together. “What is down there, are the people. And what are these people to us, do you think? Why are they important?”
She blinked, caught off guard. “They are citizens of the kingdom,” she tried. “We are taught the importance of tax and tithe—”
“Yes,” he said. “But also no. What these people are, down there, are the majority.”
She swallowed, thoughts whirling with uncomprehension.
“How many lowborns are in this castle?” he asked.
How many then, or how many now? she thought, and fought to not to let it show on her face.
“I’m not sure,” she said. “Two…three hundred?”
“And how many citizens?”
“I don’t—” her thoughts flash-forwarded to the point he wanted to make. “Far more than the lowborns.”
He nodded. “Exactly. You understand, now?”
She did, sort of.
“Should we the Magicians need to act in the protection of our kingdom once more, it would be remiss to sacrifice one of our own.”
“I am not one of you,” Rana said carefully.
He lifted his teacup to his mouth and drank another mouthful, draining it entirely. When he set it down, he did not bother pouring more. Instead, he laced his fingers again, as if readying his hands to throttle thin air.
“And I am not without influence,” Cardainne finally replied. “You are not one of us…yet.”
She swallowed, mouth gone dry. Phantom pain shuddered through her veins, crackling exsanguination on all sides, draining magic from screaming, silenced mouths—
It hadn’t even hurt her, not really. Oh, it’d stung alright—it’d stung so precisely that she could have traced out every branch of capillary at her fingertips if she’d had the presence of mind for it—but no magic had been leeched from her pores, and no blood had burst from beneath her eyelids.
She’d survived. Maybe he even knew why.
“Up here, there is opportunity,” Cardainne continued. “Those little minds down there, they do not care about kiters and scribes. They do not care how many rich friends you have if you are not a rich friend yourself. They do not care whether you live or die, and there is nothing you can do to change it until you become something different. Something more than money—something that will keep you truly safe.”
“I see,” she said, and the pieces clicked together in her head.
Magicians, weaving their nets. The Killing Fields, rolling in. Sky-shields, to keep out flying Behemoth-spawn. Nine tenths of the kingdom saw safety, protection, the bounty brought on by harvest sacrifices—not too difficult to manipulate, perhaps, if one had a flock of Weathermancers at one’s disposal. She could picture it now: lowborn dissenters replaced with fresh blood from the houses down below…
Magicianhood was a coveted thing. She still didn’t want to associate with Cardainne—the way he’d acted up on the battlements, the way his face had flickered still and blank as he’d leaned himself against the wall…a chill ran down her spine at the very thought.
“So, Miss Khan,” Cardainne said to her in the present. “I think you would like to take my offer, now.”
She blinked out of her reverie, caught off guard—ugh. If she wanted to get out of this unscathed, she was going to have to get ahold of her fears. She unclenched her fists and let the memory flow away, sinking further into the troubling realities of now.
“Yes,” she said, having run out of good choices.
“Excellent,” Cardainne said. He reached for something on his side of the desk and drawer glided out smoothly, soundlessly—inside was a flash of blue. He handed her a cloak—an apprenticeling’s cloak—and a piece of paper. “You will be needing these.”
The fabric of the cloak felt cold and expensive in her hands, its lining slippery like melted butter. She glanced at the paper, furrowing her brow at the list of titles there.
“You wish for me to read these texts,” she hazarded, her heart sinking. There were at least a dozen items listed, all of them dense-sounding.
“All in due time,” he said. “Start with ‘Principles of Colloidal Weaving’, by Sadal Suud.”
She hesitated, skimming across her knowledge of the Lower Library archives. “Magician Cardainne, I don’t believe I have access to this book.”
He shrugged. “Karim will attest to its excellence as an introductory text. Though on second thought, if he has lost his copy…” He trailed off, drumming his fingers across the tabletop. “Well, you will need access to the Higher Library for the rest of it.” He reached for a different drawer and withdrew a form, his other hand already scooping up a nearby stylograph. “I will write you a permissive.”
He had it penned in the space of half a minute, signing off with a flourish.
“Study well, Miss Khan. We will be doing some work as soon as the weather clears.”
+++
The vault of the Higher Library loomed like open jaws, like falling teeth in stasis—upon entering the foyer, a dozen pairs of eyes swiveled her way. No doubt they were evaluating her Lower scribe’s uniform with distaste, but she hadn’t been able to bring herself to wear the apprenticeling cloak. Rana showed the missive instead, and then it was as if a string of tension had been cut—the clerk gestured her along, and the eyes flickered away as if they had not been interested in the first place.
Venturing deeper, she wasn’t sure what to expect; snakes slithering off the shelves, maybe? Tales of the place practically dripped off every castle eave, had trickled their way down into the Lower Library on the tongues of gossips.
There were, in fact, no snakes. Instead, she was greeted by an area comprising of many long reading desks, some with partitions to aid study. Beyond the desks lay a wooden wall of card catalogues and open stacks stretching beyond, organised and austere. There were different floors to the place, much like the Lower Library—though they went far further up, a dozen levels at least. The vastness of the interior surprised her a little, as did the sprawl of imperial staircases off to the sides. Gold-framed paintings graced the walls, depicting star charts and figures from old myths. An enormous, wonderfully-detailed armillary sphere graced the vault of the ceiling, each ring turning gently on its axis.
Scribes strode past her on all sides, each of them looking as if they knew exactly where they were going—she’d mastered the skill herself in her own workplace, but it was hardly possible to do here. She frowned down at Cardainne’s list, feeling utterly lost. The Lower Library had informational catalogues, but how exactly did that work here, where the archives were rumoured to be infinite?
“Hey,” a voice said into her ear.
She almost jumped—instead, she whipped her head around, stifling a sound of surprise.
“Sorry,” Nadim said, raising his hands in a show of apology. He gave her a strange, wincing smile, as if trying to hide discomfort. “Didn’t mean to startle you. Just, uh—what are you doing here?”
She held up her missive, then her list. “Looking for some books.”
“Oh,” he said, eyes fixing onto the blue Magician’s seal. “I thought—well, yes. I guess I can help you there. Come this way.”
He led the way down between the stacks.
“…You thought what?” she asked, once they were away from the entryways and out of earshot.
“Oh, you know.” He stopped walking and made a vague gesture with his hand, glancing back the way they’d come. “I thought Farzaneh might’ve pointed you this way.” He lowered his voice. “You didn’t have that forged, did you?”
“The missive?” She grimaced, unsure how to explain. “No, of course not.”
“Right, right.” He swallowed, throat bobbing nervously. “It’s just, uh. We don’t see many lower scribes up here—could’ve been some trouble if someone like Errai caught sight of you.”
Rana glanced down at her uniform. “I’ll be sure to wear something different next time, then. So, these books?”
He took the list, frown deepening the further down he read. “This is Magician stuff. I don’t know if they’ll let you take them out of the Library.”
“I have an apprentice’s cloak. Would it be better if I came back in wearing that? It’s legitimate. Not stolen.”
Nadim’s expression switched into one of alarm. “What are you…” He shook his head. “Never mind. Don’t tell me what I don’t need to know.”
“Alright,” she said, as agreeably as she could. “Though since I’m here, do you have any news on the missing Healer?”
Nadim hesitated. “Mostly rumours. Nothing helpful.”
“What rumours?” Sometimes, speculative clues could be better than none.
“You know the sort—just stories cropping up now that he’s gone. Usual Healer stuff.”
“Usual Healer stuff?” she prompted.
Nadim shrugged. “That he hated the administration, that he killed someone some years ago, things like that. They could’ve had him disappeared for it, I suppose. But that makes less sense, and a couple of the army boys say he was out on the battle proper, fighting with the fallen cadre. That’s all I’ve got, I’m afraid; difficult to sift through all the noise about…other things.”
“The rites,” she said flatly, filling in what he seemed reluctant to.
“Yeah,” he said with a bitter twitch of his lips. “The rites. Tell your friend Scionsong thank you, if you see her again.”
Given that Aliyah had disappeared with a traitor, she could be halfway across the continent by now. Or dead—Cardainne had all but said she wasn’t by way of the Magicians, but there hundreds of other ways to die. Picked off by wild animals, or dehydration across the sands…if what Nadim had heard was true and Saar-Salai hadn’t been with them in fleeing, the probability of Aliyah being dead rose significantly. Rana shut her eyes briefly, fought the surge of frustration in her chest.
“And the traitor?” she asked, opening her eyes.
“Still nothing—she was, you know, foreign. Seventhborn brought her back from a journey in Glister, so no one knew much about her.”
Rana frowned, thinking. “What about the Seventhborn, then?”
Nadim blinked. “Not much to say on that front, either; you’ve probably heard all there is to hear, same as I and the rest of the castle. She’s already—”
“I know she’s dead. But who knew her best?”
“Uh,” Nadim shifted on the balls of his feet, betraying further discomfort. “…Sheratan, I suppose.”
Rana skimmed through her inner lists until the name sparked recognition. “The Chief Librarian?”
“One of them.” Nadim’s frown deepened. “Look, it’s probably not a good idea for you to go bother her. She’s the nicest of the lot, but since you’re a lower scribe and all…”
“You aren’t,” she pointed out.
Nadim paled around the edges. “I only got promoted up here a couple of months ago.”
“Aliyah helped you,” Rana said. “And I’m trying to help Aliyah. Couldn’t you—”
He shook his head. “Sorry, no. I can’t. And I’d suggest you don’t try, either.”
“What if I wore the apprenticeling’s cloak?”
He winced. “I suppose that’s your call. But also,” he added. “I almost forgot—that Healer from before? He had other apprentices, proper ones. You could try talking to them.”
Rana schooled her expression; the information was a long shot. She supposed it was him trying to throw her a bone, to dissuade her from going after Sheratan. But Nadim didn’t know her very well if he thought that was going to help—she didn’t dig, but she did diversify her sources.
…And maybe she could dig, for this. Just a little. She’d already fallen under ominous attention, and it had passed her by without too much harm.
“Thank you,” she said, then gestured with her list. “I’ll think it over. In the meantime, could you show me where to find these books?”
Nadim sighed. “Yes, I can do that.” He cast her a glance over his shoulder as started walking. “Be careful, Rana.”
“Of course,” she said, not really meaning it.