None of them deserved to be denied their own future for myfailures.
A door opened in the corridor behind us. The sound of a tuneless whistleemerged.
I took a deep breath. “I will tell you everything,” I promised Miss Banks in a whispered rush. “And I’ll do it within a se’ennight.” I could put it off no longer. “Will you walk with me in Lord Cosgrave’s knot garden one morning after breakfast? We can talk privatelythen.”
“Of course.” Her face blazed with such hope, it was painful to lookupon.
Had I looked that way, too, when I’d first sensed the doors of the Great Library opening tome?
The whistling behind us broke off. “Isay!”
It was my older brother’s voice; I turned to find Jonathan smiling affably, his thick brown hair rumpled as if he’d been pulling at it with his fingers and a dab of dark blue ink smeared against his jaw. “I thoughtI’dbe the last one to supper,” he said. “I’m glad to find you two still here. I had to finish up a rather urgent note I was writing—a bit of an addendum to that article of mine for theJournal of Deniscan Studies. I’ve been reading the proof copies, you see, and they’ve got the footnotes allwrong!”
“Horrors.” I shook my head at him as I reached over to dab away the ink with one finger and Miss Banks watched, eyes wide and curious. “Have you really left poor Amy to escort herself down tosupper?”
“Oh, she doesn’t mind,” Jonathan said blithely. “All the more time to talk politics with her friends, you know, without having to explain the fine details to me as she goes along—and it’s not as if I’ve much of interest to contribute to their husbands’ conversations. All that high drama over the proper wording of spells...” He smiled ruefully at me. “Come and help me bearit?”
“Of course.” I slipped one arm through his, grateful for his familiar, solid strength and the unspoken support behind it—because for all that he’d phrased it as his own cry for help, he knew perfectly well how much I’d been dreading this first supper in magical companyagain.
Partners against the world.It was the way we’d always been, ever since we’d grown old enough to realize that the world—including our own parents—believed that the passions that drove us both had to be stamped out for our owngood.
ButAmy...
“Amy really is very patient with us, isn’t she?” I saidthoughtfully.
“She won’t be for long, if we miss the start of supper.” Jonathan gave my arm an affectionate squeeze. “We’d betterhurry.”
So wedid.
7
We did not missthe start of supper, although it was a near thing. The doors at the far end of the green salon were just swinging open, and the gathered guests were milling around in preparation to pass through them, when the three of us stepped through the salon entrance. Miss Banks slipped away from my side immediately, seeking—I presumed—Miss Fennell; Jonathan smiled and nodded to the various groups around us, laughing in good-humored acceptance of the jests tossed his way (“Couldn’t pull your nose out of your old scrolls in time, eh, Harwood?”) and volleying back jests of his own that sent the other men into shouts of laughter; and I rose up onto my tiptoes, as discreetly as possible, to scan the crowd for magicalsuspects.
I only recognized around half of the gentlemen in the crowd. The older husbands of the Boudiccate, of course, had all been regular guests at my mother’s house parties. A few of my own classmates were scattered through the room, too, although none I’d been particularly close to...and from the way their glances skittered off me, I doubted they would be seeking me out to trade reminiscences during thisvisit.
I would have to steel myself to approach some of them, though, despite our mutual discomfort. At the very least, they were all sure to have spent more time socializing with other magicians in the field than I had in the last few years, which meant that they’d have far more of an insight into who might be practicing weather wizardry at thisparty.
That particular specialization might be offered as an option at the Great Library, but not a single student in my year had chosen to pursue it, and for good reason. Weather wizardry was a profitable profession for any magician with limited talent or ambition—after all, every newspaper or almanac-publisher wanted a weather wizard on-staff at all times, and the government, too, was willing to pay ridiculously well for their predictions, no matter how unreliable those predictions might be—but as the disdainful elf-lord had pointed out earlier, our ancient treaties with magical creatures across the nation prohibited any attempts at meddling with the magic of the landitself.
And without even that option at hand...well, what magician with any significant power would choose to spend all his focus on reading the hidden secrets of the weather when he could be casting actualmagic?
I didn’t know a single one. But when it came to the question of whom I should approachtonight...
I felt Wrexham’s gaze before I saw him—a prickle against the side of my neck that made me instinctively turn before I could think better ofit.
He stood by the wall on my right, beyond the mingling crowd, alone and apparently content to be so. In our student days, he would have propped himself bonelessly against the wall. Now he stood erect, with a glass in his hands, and watched mesteadily.
But he didn’t look furious, as I’d half-anticipated, or like a man only waiting to seize any opportunity to pull me aside and lecture me on my mistakes. The look on his face as our eyes met across the room...could that really be rueful affection that Isaw?
The sight pierced all of my carefully-shored-updefenses.
He’d shaved since thisafternoon.
...What an idiotic thing to notice. Ofcoursehe’d shaved. He wasn’t a scruffy scholarship student from the docksanymore.
Yet here we were again, just like that first night all those years ago, watching each other across a crowdedroom.
This time, unlike that memorable first evening—and thousands of other evenings since then—he wasn’t striding toward me through the crowd to spend the rest of the evening at my side in lively discussion and debate. In fact, he didn’t show any signs of moving toward me at all. He must have come to the conclusion that there was no use in arguing with meanymore.
