“I don’t think the problem is my Kvys,” I protested.
Alba ignored my suggestion—that her plan for a small regiment of charm-casting sisters and brothers of the order was next to impossible—and strode toward the gates to greet our Fenian guests. I rinsed the berry juice from my hands at the pump in the courtyard of the convent. Stains remained on my fingertips and palms.
2
“PRA-SET,” I SAID IN POOR KVYS, THE WORDS STICKING TO THE roof of my mouth like taffy, hoping that my meaning, very good, was clear to the struggling initiate. Immell’s hand shook as she drew her stylus across a damp clay tablet, dragging ragged charm magic into the inscription.
Tantia, who had managed to craft another charmed tablet, laid her hand on Immell’s arm, reassuring her in a stream of quiet, almost poetic Kvys. I couldn’t follow more than a few words, so I nodded dumbly, what I hoped was a comforting smile plastered on my face. Immell’s hand steadied, and the pale glow around her stylus grew stronger, brighter. “Pra-set!” I repeated.
Immell finished the inscription, a word in Kvys whose meaning, Creator’s mercy, stood in for luck. The charm magic receded from her hand as she lifted her stylus from the clay, but the charm remained embedded in the tablet. “Pra-set,” I said again, examining her work. It was uneven and one letter was barely legible even to my unschooled eye, but it was done.
We were still a long way from what Alba hoped for, a phalanx of charm casters who had mastered what I could do. A complement to the Galatine army, she suggested. A safeguard for her house’s authority, I read between the lines. And a challenge to the laws prohibiting magic in Kvyset.
A few simple actions, a few stones tossed into a pond infinitely larger than myself, and the ripples were still reaching outward, trembling and new, but intent on fomenting change wherever they went.
Tantia and Immell were speaking in rapid Kvys, gesturing at the tablet. Another novice, Adola, joined them, and the three linked hands. “Da nin?” I wondered aloud. What now?
Tantia slapped some fresh clay from the bowl on the table, forming a sloppy disk with her free hand. I was about to chide her—orderliness was supposed to cultivate the mind for casting, especially in new learners—but she picked up her stylus and pressed her lips together, squinting into the blank space in front of her.
Light blazed around the stylus and all but drove itself into the clay, sparkling clean and pure in the gray slab. “Da bravdin-set! Pra bravdin olosc-ni varsi!” she exclaimed.
“How did you make such a strong charm?” I asked, correcting myself swiftly to Kvys. “Da olosc bravdin-set?”
“Is hands holding,” Tantia replied, bypassing attempting to explain to me in Kvys. “Hands. I put hand on Immell, she cast.”
“And the three of you—you joined hands and your charm was much stronger.”
She nodded, smiling. “Easy cast, too. Than before.” She thought a moment, then added, “Easy than alone.”
“How have I never come across this before.” I sighed through my nose. Pellian charm casters worked by themselves, except when an older woman was teaching a novice. “You would think,” I began, but stopped myself. My time in the Galatine and Serafan archives had taught me that precious little had been recorded on the subject of casting at all. One would think something important had been written down, but that didn’t mean it had.
The other sisters and the one brother who had joined us drew closer and Tantia explained what had happened. “We practice,” she announced.
I nodded, overwhelmed by their near-accidental discovery. Surely a mother held her daughter’s hand while teaching her to cast. But perhaps the process of learning was so different in adults that we noticed the effects more, realized that they were amplifying and not only teaching or steadying one another. More research. In the convent archives. In Kvys. I sighed.
I fled to my room, the only place I was ever alone in the compound. It was clean and bright and spare, with pale wood furniture carved in woodland animals and starbursts on the posts and rails. White linen and cherry-red wool covered the bed. A Kvys prayer book and hymnal lay on a shelf over the window. I couldn’t read any of it.
A light scratch on the door, and a dark gray paw shot under the slim crack. Its black claws searched for purchase.
“Kyshi.” I laughed and opened the door. The dark gray squirrel scurried into the room. A thin circlet of hammered brass around his neck glinted as he clambered up my bedspread and began to nose around my pillow as though I might have hidden a trove of nuts under the coverlet.
I opened my trunk and produced my secret larder—a handful of cracked chestnuts. “These are mine, little thief,” I chided him. He burrowed under my hand and swiped a nut. “Don’t take all my good chestnuts. They’re almost fresh.”
His sharp teeth made quick work of what was left of the shell, his nimble paws turning the nut over and around as he chewed. He had been abandoned in his drey and hand raised by Sastra Dyrka, who worked in the kitchens, where he had developed an astute palate for nuts of all kinds, as well as pastries, sugared fruits, and ham. Now he was a communal pet and quite nearly a mascot for the order.
He settled onto my lap after his snack. I stroked his fur, rich and warm as the finest wool. I wanted to bury my fingers in his thick tail, but he chattered disapprovingly every time I tried.
I felt useless. I thought of a time that felt longer ago than a single year, when my brother was staying out late in the taverns and drumming up support for change, before Pyord solidified their plans with money and centralized violence. Before I had realized I couldn’t escape the questions that nagged my brother, before I understood that, for all I had built with long hours and tiring work, it was on a cracked and crumbling foundation. I had resisted participating then, had rebuked my brother for even asking. Now I craved action. Picking berries, petting the squirrel, teaching novice charm casters—it all felt unimportant, artificial, and distant.
My place was with Galitha. My place was fighting for a better country, a better world for my neighbors and my friends and thousands of people I didn’t know.
Kyshi started as the door opened, darted up my shoulder, and settled against my neck. “Alba.” I acknowledged her as she entered.
“The Fenians are quite amenable to our terms,” she said. “Ah, I do like having a freshly inked contract in hand.”
“It’s done!” I sat upright, dislodging Kyshi, who protested with a profane squirrel screech and his claws in my hair.
“Cannon barrels. Three-, six-, and twelve-pound guns. In the proportions Sianh recommended.” Alba smiled. “And of course we will oversee the process for at least a portion of the run on-site at the Fenian foundry.”
“Of course,” I said. I chewed my lip.
“We’ll finish talks with the mill owners and the ship builders and then—Fen!” She grinned. “You look less than pleased.”
“I’m just tired,” I lied. “And I admit, I’m a bit nervous about Fen.” That, at least, was the truth.
“Fen is dull and they’ll ignore you like they ignore anyone who isn’t in the process of paying them or bilking them.” She shrugged. “Fenians.”