“But the law.”
“‘But the law!’” Alba mimicked my hesitation with a good-natured laugh. “What, you’re going to hang out a shingle, ‘Charms Cast for Cheap’?” Kyshi trailed down my arm and settled in my lap again, serving Alba a stern look for the volume of her voice.
“No. I wasn’t. But if anyone found out…” I let my fingers tremble on Kyshi’s soft coat. The Fenian penalties for even illusions, simple trickster’s street magic, included transportation to their cliff colonies, desolate places scoured half-dead by the northern winds. And actual crimes of attempted magical practices—execution, all of them. Galatine gossip pages sometimes carried stories of Fenian women—always women—tried for buying or selling clay tablets, sentenced to drowning in the deep blue waters off Fen’s rocky shores.
“No one will find out. Remember, they don’t have any idea you can even cast a charm without your needle and thread. And we’ll keep it that way. You’re quite confident in your methods once we reach Fen, correct? The looms will be set up for our orders and running swift as a sleigh on new snow, just as soon as money has been exchanged.”
“Yes,” I said. It had taken little practice to embed the charm in lengths of cloth.
“And you can be… subtle?”
“Of course I can.” To prove my point, I pulled a stream of light from the ether and sent it into the blanket, spreading it thin and sinking it into the fibers, all without more than a twitch of my fingers. “See?”
“Yes,” Alba said with a slowly growing smile, “I do. And you believe that doing so while the looms are running—”
“It will be fully integrated into the cloth. Woven into warp and weft, not just burrowed into it like a stain.”
“Good, good. And the cannons—”
“I don’t know what to do with the cannons.” I shook my head. There was no way to predict what charmed or cursed iron guns would do. “I think it’s best if we do nothing. If I charm them, they might protect our men but also fire ineffectually on the enemy. If I curse them, they might blow up and kill our own crews.”
“It seems such a waste.” Alba sighed. “Are you quite sure that even the shot couldn’t be cursed?”
“It might foul the whole gun,” I said.
“Too bad. But you see, there’s nothing to worry over. You’ve everything quite well in hand.”
“It’s only… I didn’t expect to be threatened in Isildi, either.”
Alba laughed. “I assure you that the Fenians are not the Serafans. They aren’t hiding anything, and you’re bringing them significant investments. And in Fen, nothing speaks louder than gold.” She caught my free hand in hers. “Trust me. The Fenians are a strange people, to be sure, but not indecipherable.”
3
THE LONG DINING HALL OF THE HOUSE OF THE GOLDEN SPHERE was always cramped at the dinner hour, the simple tables and benches lined with novices and initiates and full-fledged sisters. I had expected the house of a religious order, and a Kvys one at that, to be a quiet place, but aside from morning and evening prayers and daily services in the basilica there was nearly always laughter and chatter echoing through the halls and gardens. It served to remind me, constantly, that I was an outsider here, speaking too little Kvys to converse easily.
I took my trencher of bean soup and a wedge of bread, flecked at the top with yellow cheese. The sisters may have taken an oath of simplicity, but that couldn’t be confused with poverty here. Small indulgences like good cheese, wine, and rich desserts weren’t uncommon. The sisters were expected to work for their keep, however, all contributing to the gardening that filled the larders and the cleaning that kept the pale, spare buildings shining.
Tonight Tantia doled out baked apples stuffed with spiced nuts; it was her turn in the kitchen, and even hours of study with me didn’t excuse her from that duty. She smiled and gave me an extra-large apple. It smelled like the roasted chestnuts laden with mace and clove that street vendors hawked in the fall and winter in Galitha City.
I sighed, my appetite not matching the size of my dessert. Did Theodor have enough to eat, or had the Royalist navy blockaded the southern ports and cut off supplies? Was Kristos safe, or had he been injured or captured in a skirmish? I stared at the caramelized juices pooling around my apple, an ache no food could fill spreading in my stomach.
“Tantia likes you better than me,” Alba complained, sitting next to me. Her apple was half the size of mine.
“You can have mine,” I offered, and Alba swapped our fruits. “Shouldn’t you be entertaining Fenians?”
“They left already—you didn’t see them leave? No, that’s right, you were cleaning the library.”
“It hardly needs it, barely a speck of dust in all those shelves.”
“Books are treasures, we take good care of ours.” Alba savored a spoonful of the soup, and I wordlessly ate some of mine. The broth was rich with smoked ham hocks. “Of course I had hoped that you would spend some more time there with Altasvet to dig into the old volumes of the order’s history. There might be something there that—”
“There isn’t,” I replied, short. We’d been over this. The logbooks, the diaries, the transcribed prayers—none of it included pragmatic applications for Kvys casting. The construction of the basilica, which was imbued with layers of charm magic, had not even been described beyond a few notes on the timing and the costs of materials.
Alba sighed. “We must use our time here wisely,” she said tersely.
“I am.” I stared at the shreds of smoked pork on my spoon and forced a few more bites. I couldn’t make myself sick worrying. The war in Galitha felt so far away, but it needed me. “The best use of our time,” I added, “is elsewhere.”
“In good time,” Alba said. “The Fenian contracts are complete, and soon—”
“Soon!” I nearly shouted, drawing eyes from nearby nuns. I swallowed hard and shoved my trencher away. “They need us,” I whispered. “They could be dying. Waiting. It’s been weeks. Months, now, since we left West Serafe.”
“I understand that this is difficult,” Alba said. “But the business of negotiation is delicate. I can’t simply barge into a Fenian factory and make demands.”
“I can’t just sit here any longer!”
“You can,” Alba said evenly, “and unless you’d like to set off by yourself, you will.” Perhaps she expected more argument, but I stood and left. I walked toward the basilica, candles already winking through the windows as the sisters set up the space for evening prayer service. Alba didn’t understand. She couldn’t. This was a gamble for her, too, of course, but no one she loved was waging war hundreds of miles away. Her betrothed wasn’t risking death. Alba had her order, her sister nuns, but she was not, from what I could tell, bound in the kind of close kinships I had. If she loved, it was silently and secretly.
But she strategized and planned for the advancement of the Golden Sphere and, I allowed, protected her order. To the extent that I served that goal, she protected me, too.