The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic (32 page)

“I don't know,” Nora said tiredly. “I don't like being illiterate. I need something to keep my mind occupied.” The defaced page stared up at her. “There's no real reason.”

There was a silence. “I can remove this ink stain, if you like,” Aruendiel said. “So that you can continue reading.”

Nora shrugged. “I suppose. It's just some child's scribbles.”

Aruendield picked up the book again. “My sister's,” he said. “I recognize her hand. These figures are perhaps intended to represent my brothers and myself.”

“Really?” Intrigued in spite of herself, Nora leaned forward for another look. “This was her book? Which one are you?”

“We all used this book for lessons. The smallest is me, I would think. The one who is drawn with an open mouth.”

“Huh,” said Nora, not seeing much resemblance. “You were the youngest?”

“Oh, yes,” Aruendiel said, with a trace of asperity, as if surprised at her ignorance. “That is why I am called Aruendiel—Aruen's third son. You have not reached the section in the book that treats the grammar of familial naming, I take it.”

“No. I can't wait.” She saw what she had not suspected, that there must be a thread of genealogical information coiled inside Ors names. Udesdiel was another third son, obviously. Another code to break, another rule to learn—and for what? So she could survive, so she could peel apples and grub turnips in this alien world for another decade, or more.

Aruendiel was turning the pages of the book. “There are one or two other grammatical topics that I particularly recommend to you for study.”

“I thought that I speak fairly good Ors at this point.”

“Better than you once did,” he allowed. “Certainly you have nearly lost that vile Faitoren accent. But you have difficulties with the future potentive, for instance. It is more correct to say, ‘I will not be able to wait' instead of ‘I can't wait.'”

“I was being ironic.” By some small blessing, Ors had a word for “irony,” or something close enough.

“And you are careless with the verb genders, too. Very frequently you use the masculine form instead of the feminine.”

“What do you mean?” It was news to Nora that the Ors verbs had genders. With a lift of his eyebrows, Aruendiel began to explain the language's feminine verb prefixes. As she listened, it dawned on Nora that what she had assumed to be brief syllables of hesitancy—the equivalent of the English “um” or “ah”—in Mrs. Toristel's or Morinen's or Inristian's speech was actually a construction intended to assure the world that the speaker was a woman.

“So you ought to have said, ‘I was being ironic,'” Aruendiel finished. He used the feminine form. The sentence sounded strangely tentative, coming out of his mouth.

“That doesn't sound right,” Nora objected. “The extra syllables make the sentence seem weaker.”

“It's the way women speak.”

More codes to master, Nora thought. In fact, she had consciously tried not to mimic Mrs. Toristel in this particular linguistic habit, taking the filler sounds as a sign of lazy, uneducated speech. A bit of snobbery that had backfired.

“I was trying to copy you,” she said. “I thought that was the correct way to speak.”

“It is correct for me,” he said.

“Well, yes! Everything is basically correct for you.” Nora's hands made fists in her lap. “You can do what you please, because you're a magician and a lord—but most important, a man. You can travel, you can talk to anyone you please, you can read a book without being laughed at. Tell me any woman could do the same.”

Aruendiel did not contradict her. “You are unused to the ways of this world,” he said.

“Listen, I'm not trying to change the world—
your
world. I'm just passing through. But then I think about that bookseller in Semr, how he thought I was joking when I said I could read, and it makes me want to scream. Can you even imagine how that feels? Of course you can't. The Lord Magician Aruendiel is not accustomed to having his intellect or status questioned.

“And now it turns out that women can't even talk like men. Which is a clever way to invalidate women's discourse, isn't it? No wonder women can't do magic; no wonder spirits won't listen to their puny, trivial voices. It's all woven into the basic structure of the language.” She stopped, looking at Aruendiel's impassive face, thinking that none of what she had just said made sense to him, but feeling a certain relief that she had said it.

Aruendiel skewered the last piece of meat from his bowl and chewed it thoughtfully. He tilted the bowl toward his mouth, drained it, and put the empty bowl on the table. “I never said that women cannot do magic.”

“You said that the spirits would not listen to women.”

“Do you think that is all there is to magic, begging favors of spirits?”

“I don't know. I have no idea. You've never explained to me what magic is.”

“And what do you think it is that Hirizjahkinis does, if not magic?”

“I don't know. I suppose she has some special dispensation.”

“No, she is only a very fine magician, and yet she is a woman, or so I understand.” He made a noise deep in his throat that could have been a very dry chuckle, then closed the book. “I will give you no more suggestions for your grammatical studies. You must decide for yourself what is worthy of your attention.”

“As you like.” Nora shrugged. She was thinking that it was time to bring the conversation to a close and make her escape to bed. Something new had engaged Aruendiel's fancy, however. He reached for Nora's bowl and brought it closer to the light.

“This is an old one,” he said.

“What, the bowl?” she said, taken aback. “Well, I suppose. It's not like the others.”

“The other ones in the set must be long since broken. We used these bowls when I was young.” He rubbed a finger over the rim, tracing the pattern of interlocking spirals under the brown glaze. “We had a potter in the village then, who made these for my mother. Oxleg, they called him. This red-and-white stuff,” he added, looking at his own bowl, “is newer.”

“It's from the potter in Barsy, Mrs. Toristel said.” Nora pushed the bench back and stood up. The sight of the book and now the bowl had obviously stirred up some odd nostalgic current in the magician, but she was in no mood to give him a sympathetic ear. She held out her hand to take the bowl from him, intending to take it back into the kitchen.

He made no move to return it. “Why did you choose this odd one, instead of one from the set?”

“It's a good size and shape. I use it a lot.” Although she did not wish to say so, she had come to think of the bowl as her own. She usually ate alone; it wasn't as though her dish had to match the rest of a table setting.

“Do you?” he asked, cocking an eyebrow. “You like it, then?”

“Well, yes.”

With a fluid motion, Aruendiel lifted the bowl and flung it onto the floor.

Nora flinched as the bowl smashed on the flagstones. She looked at Aruendiel round-eyed. “What? Why did you do that?”

“Fix it,” he said calmly.

“Fix it?” she sputtered. “How?” Confusedly she thought of the little white Elmer's Glue bottle with the pointed orange top. Was there anything like that in this world?

“That's the same bowl you broke some time ago, if you don't remember. I repaired it then. Now you fix it yourself. Make it as perfect as it was a minute ago. You want to know what magic is, Mistress Nora? Now you have an opportunity to find out.”

T
his is hopeless,” Nora told herself for the twentieth time. She picked up two of the shards that lay on the kitchen hearth and touched the broken edges together. An exact fit—but she knew that already. The shattered bowl was a jigsaw puzzle that she had learned by heart over the past two days. Yet the jagged pieces refused to adhere to each other, falling inexorably apart as soon as she took her hands away.

The crack in the teacup opens a lane to the land of the dead. Of course, where else would it lead? There was no reversing time or entropy. Mechanically, she moved her hands over the broken pieces, keeping an ear cocked toward the great hall. She wondered if the coast was clear yet, if she could make her way upstairs now. No, she could still make out the low hum of voices through the door.

She was not keen to see Aruendiel, with no mended bowl to show him. Nor was she especially eager to encounter his visitor.

Two days before, she had been crossing the courtyard around midday, still a little groggy from sitting up the night before to fit pottery fragments together, when Aruendiel came around the corner of the house, his cool eyes meeting hers, and she knew that he was going to ask her about the broken bowl. She was saved when the dogs in the courtyard began to bark. Aruendiel walked to the gate and looked out. An instant later, he turned back, his brows knotted, and called out to Nora to find Mrs. Toristel, a guest would be arriving shortly.

It was Aruendiel's niece—Lady Pusieuv Negin, of Forel—Mrs. Toristel informed Nora, as they watched him help a woman in a long blue traveling cloak out of a glossy black carriage. Her fair hair was carefully arranged into a style that Nora had seen among the court ladies in Semr, known as “eels and baskets” or “whips and shields,” neither term quite conveying how complex or unflattering it was. She was on the small side; as she embraced Aruendiel, he had to stoop to kiss her on the cheek.

Forel was in Pelagnia, the housekeeper added with a touch of pride.

“I didn't know he had a niece,” Nora said.

“Grand-niece,” Mrs. Toristel corrected herself. “From his sister's line, that married the duke of Forel. Oh, what will we do for dinner now? Trouteye in the village killed his pigs early—we might could get a fresh ham.” She sighed. “
He'll
be angry if we don't show her the best hospitality.”

Lady Pusieuv Negin was sweeping toward them across the courtyard, accompanied by Aruendiel. Mrs. Toristel dropped a stately curtsy, and Nora did her best to imitate her.

“My housekeeper, Mrs. Toristel, will see to your—” Aruendiel began, but his niece interrupted him.

“Of course I remember Ulunip—it is Ulunip, is it not?” she said, with a wide smile.

“Yes, ma'am.” Mrs. Toristel colored slightly, pleased.

“It is always a pleasure to hear a good Pelagnian voice in these harsh northlands. You come from the Four Rivers district, isn't that right?” Mrs. Toristel said no, ma'am, the Purny Basin. “The Purny! One of my favorite places. The hunting there is excellent.” Lady Pusieuv discoursed briefly on the amenities of the Purny Basin, while Mrs. Toristel gave short, respectful assents. Then, abruptly, Lady Pusieuv broke off and looked directly at Nora.

“And this is—?” she asked quizzically.

“Mistress Nora Fechr,” Aruendiel said. “She is a guest here.”

“Fischer,” said Nora.

“I am delighted to make your acquaintance!” Lady Pusieuv said. Her round brown eyes bored into Nora's. “I heard so much about you when I was in Semr.”

“Oh, you've come from Semr?” Nora asked politely.

“Yes, I arrived there just a day after you and my uncle left. Everyone was still buzzing about Uncle—and his companion. So clever of you to have found that poor wizard! I was terribly disappointed to have missed the two of you. So I decided to come pay Uncle a visit.”

Nora expressed regrets that their paths had not crossed in Semr and hoped that Lady Pusieuv's journey had been an easy one.

“Oh, upriver was fine, but the roads past Noler have not gotten any better since I was here last, Uncle!” Lady Pusieuv launched into a rapid-fire account of a flooded ford and a broken axle. The trip, Nora thought, had obviously required a great deal of determination on her part.

Nora joined Mrs. Toristel in the kitchen a few minutes later. A dusty wine bottle stood open on the table, next to two blackened goblets. Mrs. Toristel was slicing hastily into a rather sticky-looking brown loaf. “One bottle left of the tawny Sprenen, can you believe it?” she said. “Here, you polish the goblets. He doesn't even know we have them. He sold all the silver settings years ago, but I held back a few pieces.”

Nora fetched vinegar and salt from the pantry and began to polish the goblets with a rag. “Isn't that the honey cake you made for Mr. Toristel?”

“Yes, and he won't be pleased to see it go, but we don't have anything else fit for her ladyship. You know he doesn't care for sweets, as a rule.”

“Mmm,” said Nora, sorting out, with a little thought, the two different parties that Mrs. Toristel meant by
he
. “Is she really worth all this trouble?”

Mrs. Toristel sniffed. “She's his only family left, she and her line. Lady Pusieuv used to visit at Lusul, she and her parents, when she was just a little thing,” she added, her voice softening. “Lady Lusarniev doted on her. I can see her now, letting the little girl play with her necklace.”

“So Lady Pusieuv must be well over fifty now,” Nora said meanly.

“Tsk, it doesn't seem possible.” The housekeeper sighed again. “What a darling little girl she was.” Mrs. Toristel disappeared into the pantry and returned with a crock of the sweet-pickled blackberries. She added a generous purple dollop to the plate that held the sliced cake. “I wonder,” she said, in a crisper tone, “what brings Lady Pusieuv all this way?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean it's been more than a dozen years at least since she visited here last. And you heard what she said about the roads. Mark my words, she has some reason for coming here now.”

“I can tell you why,” Nora said. “It's because of me.”

Mrs. Toristel gave her a look that, by its very neutrality, expressed deep skepticism.

“She came because of what she heard in Semr. You know, when I was there, they all assumed I was his mistress. Aruendiel's mistress,” Nora added, to be perfectly clear. “Absurd, of course, but that's how people there think.” She was conscious of trying a little too hard to keep her voice casual. She had never told Mrs. Toristel about the stories, true and untrue, that she had heard circulating in Semr about Aruendiel, or what he had told her himself. “So I'm sure Lady Pusieuv wanted to get a look at me. See what sort of baggage her uncle has picked up.” If she tries to pull a Lady Catherine de Bourgh and break up our impending nuptials, Nora thought, I will be pleased to set her straight.

“I've never known his lordship to take any interest in women since Lady Lusarniev,” Mrs. Toristel said with a sniff.

“All the more reason for Lady Pusieuv to see what all the fuss is about. She came a long way for nothing, obviously.”

“She'll figure out which way the river flows soon enough. One look at you, she should know.”

Nora laughed, a little bitterly. “Once upon a time, before I got clawed by a monster and when I could wear decent clothes, I wasn't considered that bad-looking.”

Mrs. Toristel looked at her critically. “Your face isn't so bad. Those scars have faded a bit. But to think that a great lord, especially one that was married to Lady Lusarniev, would take you as his mistress—well, the folk in Semr must be as idiotic as he always says.”

“I wouldn't dispute that,” Nora said, suppressing an urge to mention that the great lord in question had, by his own account, murdered the beautiful Lady Lusarniev. Mrs. Toristel didn't know that. Well, she knew it, Nora thought, but she wouldn't admit it.

That was two days ago. To Nora's relief, she had had only the briefest of encounters with Lady Pusieuv since then. Yesterday, Aruendiel had taken his niece riding downriver—“Lady Pusieuv is an excellent horsewoman,” Mrs. Toristel murmured approvingly—and in the castle, Lady Pusieuv was little in evidence. Except for mealtimes, she spent most of her time in one of the drawing rooms on the first floor, because—Mrs. Toristel had heard her tell Aruendiel—the great hall was drafty and old-fashioned.

“But those other rooms are a mess!” Nora exclaimed to the housekeeper. “There's no furniture! They're a ruin!”

Mrs. Toristel laughed unexpectedly. “Not today,” she said. “For once, they're as fine as they should be. With all the proper chairs and tables and tapestries and such.”

“How—?”

“He did it. Well, he couldn't put her in an empty room, could he?” She laughed again, drily. “He does it every time she visits. It's the only time he bothers.”

“Too bad he couldn't have done the same for her bedchamber,” Nora said. The day of Lady Pusieuv's arrival, she and Morinen had spent a hurried hour upstairs dusting, sweeping, scrubbing, and changing the linens for her ladyship.

But Mrs. Toristel, Nora suspected, would not trust magic, even Aruendiel's magic, to provide clean sheets.

Tonight Aruendiel and his niece were dining in the great hall, as Nora waited in the kitchen, her hands sorting the broken shards of pottery. They felt cool and hard and intractable under her fingers. If Lady Pusieuv had not been here—if Nora had not been working harder than ever since their guest's arrival—there might have been more time to steal away to a quiet place where she could be undisturbed and could focus, focus, until the magic words came into her mind, or whatever it was that would make the shattered pieces snap together.

Or maybe, she thought, they never would.

The door to the great hall opened, and she saw Aruendiel's lean figure in the doorway.

“Where's Mrs. Toristel?” he asked.

“She's gone back to her quarters,” Nora said. “Do you need her?”

He made a gesture of annoyance, as though snatching at a fly. “What in the name of Nagaris did she leave for a sweet course?”

“Do you mean the pie? It's on the table already.”

“There's something resembling a tart, yes. It appears to be full of pebbles.”

“Walnuts. It's a walnut pie.”

“Your handiwork?”

Nora nodded yes.

“I see,” Aruendiel said, packing an extraordinary amount of skepticism into a few syllables. Then he noticed the shards of crockery on the hearth. “You have not mended the dish yet?”

“No,” she said shortly. “Still broken.”

“Ah,” he said, with a shrug. Nora could almost hear the unspoken thought: I expected no better. “Leave that and come help me amuse my niece.”

“I wouldn't want to intrude on a family dinner,” she demurred. Strange to hear the magician ask for help, even of the social sort.

“It is no intrusion. We have reached that stage in conversation when another party begins to be most welcome.”

At the sight of Nora, Lady Pusieuv looked surprised, then smiled graciously. She expressed equal wonder to learn that the pie was made with walnuts, that Nora had made it, and that Nora had come from another world.

Come on, Nora thought, walnuts in a pie, it's not such an earthshaking idea. She'd simply made a pecan pie using neither pecans nor corn syrup. She tried a bite. Not bad. It would have been better with cinnamon.

“I heard,” Lady Pusieuv said, “that you actually used to live among the Faitoren.” She glanced at her uncle, but Aruendiel, who was taking a cautious bite of pie, said nothing. “And what was
that
like?”

What exactly was she getting at? Nora wondered, but she answered: “I enjoyed it at the time. I would not care to repeat it.”

“I saw a Faitoren once, ages ago. They're very attractive, aren't they? The men and women both.”

Nora gave a noncommittal shrug. “They put on a good show.”

“Of course, they are not to be trusted, I know. They've caused a great deal of trouble, over the years. Shocking.” Lady Pusieuv took a sip from her goblet, and Nora noticed how flushed her cheeks appeared in the candlelight. The bottle of wine that stood on the table was empty. “A great deal of trouble,” she repeated.

Nora nodded in agreement, wondering how Aruendiel was reacting to this line of conversation, but it was impossible to read his expression. Even the black eyebrows were decorously still.

“What I hear is that you had the unfortunate experience of being married to one of them,” Lady Pusieuv burst out.

Ah, so that's it, Nora thought with a half-smile. The other woman's tipsy curiosity filled her with unexpected cheer, as though she had just downed a glass of strong drink herself.

“It's absolutely true,” she said. “I married the son of the Faitoren queen.”

“Indeed! That must have been, oh, dreadful.”

“It was not a good idea,” Nora allowed. She turned to the magician. “Aruendiel tried to talk me out of it, but I wouldn't listen.”

“Oh?” Lady Pusieuv was alert, her eyes flitting back and forth between Nora and Aruendiel.

After a moment's hesitation, Aruendiel took his cue. “Luklren's men picked her up on the border, so we interrogated her, then sent her back. It was clear she was enchanted, but there was nothing we could do then.”

“Aruendiel helped me escape later on, though,” Nora said, letting a trace of huskiness creep into her voice.

“Mistress Nora called for help, and I responded. Any unfortunate in the power of the Faitoren deserves no less.”

“I owe him my life,” Nora said, with a confiding smile to Lady Pusieuv. She sighed, as though overcome with emotion. “I can never fully repay him.”

Aruendiel gave Nora a sharp look. She herself was interested to discover, after two days of resenting Lady Pusieuv for assuming that she was Aruendiel's mistress, how wickedly pleasurable it was to encourage the misperception—or at least to allow the falsehood to flourish unchecked. It felt strangely liberating.