The False Princess

CHAPTER SIX

“I am sorry, but there’s really nothing I can do.”
The blue-robed Initiate stared at me, lidded eyes heavy, then looked down and deliberately shuffled through several papers on the desk in front of him. A moment later, he glanced back up and seemed surprised to find me still sitting there.
I hadn’t moved because I was in shock. That morning, I had dressed as carefully as I could, choosing the best of the dresses I had been allowed to take from the palace: a red one with long, bell-like sleeves. I had carefully braided my hair around my head and then covered it with a dark veil. Not to keep out the wind—even a breath of breeze sent strands hovering about my face—but as an attempt at a small disguise. I had then walked from the Cat’s Paw to the wizards’ college and asked to speak to someone about admission there.
Now I found myself pulling fretfully at the veil as I said, “You’re sure? I mean, I know I’m a bit old, but I just recently found out that I have magic. I turned a plant into ash and scorched all this grass—”
“So you said,” interrupted the Initiate in his drawling voice, “Miss—”
“Azaway,” I reminded him.
“However, Miss Azaway, we do have strict policies—very old—about the admission of students to the college. Since you are not of noble birth, you really must be able to pay the yearly fees to be admitted. And, as you’ve told me, you cannot.” His tone trailed up at the end, as if he were waiting for me to correct him. When I didn’t, he shrugged. “Well then, you must see that there’s nothing I can do.”
My chest felt tight, as if iron bands were squeezing it. “But surely there’s some way. I have some money—it’s not enough for a whole year, but I’ll give it all to you. And I could—I could work …” I cast around for something else. “I can promise to pay the fees later.”
This time he laughed. “Really, we cannot take such promises from every person who traipses in here. We have quite enough wizards to perform all the magical tasks to keep the college running, and enough servants for the rest. As for paying your fees later, you might achieve whatever rank you could”—his tone made it quite clear that he thought I would never rise past Novice, in any case—“and then simply vanish.”
“But I wouldn’t. Please, I have to learn how to control it.”
The Initiate fixed me with a cold stare and said, his drawling tone firming icily, “Then I suggest you go to Wenth or Farvasee. I understand they are not nearly as selective about their students there. Good day.”
“Please, is there anyone else I can talk to?”
“There is not. I’m very busy, so I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
I stood shakily, nodded at him, and pushed open the door into the hall, nearly bumping into three young Novices in the process. One of the girls sniffed as she picked her way around me, but I hardly noticed. I walked blindly, my body remembering the turns I had made to find the Initiate’s office even as my mind froze. After a time, I found myself in the large courtyard that served as the entrance to the college. A fountain in its center sent streams of water into the air that then splashed down into a large, clear basin. It was made of the same white stone as the college’s many buildings and towers and had a thick rim all around it. Though wizards in green, blue, purple, and even a few black robes, as well regular people, stood talking in the courtyard or strode across it to one of the many buildings encircling it, no one was sitting on the fountain’s rim. Feeling like my legs wouldn’t hold me up much longer, I lowered myself onto the rim and let one hand trail in the cool water. To my relief, no one called out or even seemed to notice me at all.
What was I going to do now? Though I had told Aunt Varil that I would figure something out if the wizards’ college rejected me, I had never truly believed that they would. It had seemed so simple a few nights ago. After all, I had magic, and I needed instruction on how to control it. It had been a relief to realize that there was someplace I could go, someplace where I would perhaps fit in. I had, in the few days since my magic surfaced, started to view the college as a sort of safe haven, the place I was supposed to be, now that I was not the princess.
What I had not counted on were the rules and regulations governing the admittance of wizards. How had I never realized that only those of noble birth could enter the college freely? That everyone else had to pay an exorbitant yearly fee, one much greater than the amount in the bag in my trunk. It seemed wrong that the crown had never thought to make the college accept anyone not noble or rich.
Think, I told myself. Think! There must be something you can do, someone else you can talk to. But the thoughts were as slippery as fish, with nothing for me to hold on to, and they kept sliding away as I remembered the lazy coldness of the Initiate. Was this what Aunt Varil had meant when she said I gave up too easily? Was there something I could do, some action I could take that I was too timid to consider? I couldn’t think of anything, but maybe that only meant I really was as malleable as she had said.
As I stared blankly around the courtyard, a quick movement suddenly caught my eye. A woman dressed in the black robes of a Master was walking briskly toward the fountain. Even in my current state, I blanched, nausea rising in my throat when I recognized her as Melaina Harandron. The last time I had seen her, she had been standing with Neomar, watching calmly as he undid the spell they had cast on me to make me appear to be Nalia.
She would recognize me if she saw me. I had known her, distantly at least, from my childhood on. And I did not want to be recognized. Perhaps I wouldn’t have cared if I had been sitting on the fountain rim basking in the knowledge that I would soon be taking my place at the college, secure in the thought that I had a place in life. But now, with things the way they were, I cared deeply. I didn’t want to be seen as the foundering, lost person I was on my way to becoming.
The veil that I had used to cover my hair was already hanging askew because of my nervous tugging in the Initiate’s office. I let it fall forward to obscure my profile and bowed my head as she walked past. Still, I could not keep from lifting my eyes to watch her, my heart pounding as I waited for her to recognize me.
But nothing happened. Her eyes wandered over me and away as if I were part of the fountain. She lifted her hand in greeting to someone across the courtyard, and then moved away.
I should have been relieved, but, somehow, it only made me feel worse.
It was the same problem: Melaina’s scant notice of me and the college’s casual dismissal. Without a noble’s title or money to make up for the lack of it, I was nothing. I had no rank and no chance of getting one. I had thought that the wizards’ college would allow me to attain a place in the world, no matter what station I had been born into. But now, as I sat in the courtyard, unnoticed by everyone, I realized that I had never heard a Thorvaldian wizard with the accent of someone born into the lower classes, had never heard of a student taken in on scholarship. I had simply never thought about it before, just as the people around me did not think of it now. But surely that was madness, to leave people with untamed magic inside them, just because they were not nobles or born into wealth? Surely the king and queen would have seen that and ordered the college to change their rules?
No, whispered a tiny voice in my head. Why should they care if a poor man hurts himself or his family with magic he can’t control? After all, they were willing to let a weaver’s daughter be killed so that the true princess would live. And happy enough to send her packing when they were done with her.
The thought lanced through me, awakening the old hurts. And at just that moment, the fountain started to boil.
The water bubbled and roiled around my fingertips, spreading out in waves toward the other side of the fountain. Frightened and shocked, I snatched my arm back with such fervor that I fell off the fountain’s rim and landed with a thud on the stone surface of the courtyard. There was rushing in my ears and lightning racing through my muscles. I was going to hurt myself—it was the third time in three days that I had done magic accidentally—I would probably kill myself before I could find a Farvaseean wizard who would train me—
“Well now, that was impressive, yes, impressive.”
The words cut through my jumbled thoughts, and I looked up to see a figure standing over me.
The person clucked at me. “Really, you shouldn’t sit in the dirt any longer than you have to. I can’t abide dirt or dirty people. Clutter, yes—and cluttery people—but never dirt. Unless I’ve been looking for plants, and then it can’t be helped.”
Perplexed, I pushed myself up from the ground and stood to face the woman in front of me, trying to wipe the back of my dress surreptitiously.
She was a thin woman, perhaps half a head shorter than me, with tangled brown and gray hair that looked as if she had tried to put it up that morning without much success. Half of it hovered like a bird’s nest on top of her head, while the rest trailed partway down her back. She was older than Aunt Varil by perhaps ten years. Wrinkles etched her brow and around her eyes, which were a startling shade of green, as sharp as pine needles.
She was peering at me as if I were a scroll written in a strange hand that she nonetheless had to read. “But,” she continued, “did you do it on purpose?”
For I moment I thought she was wondering if I fell on purpose, and I opened my mouth to protest, but before I could speak she added, “If you did, it was a stunning use of Syrendal’s principle. Very impressive. Of course, if you didn’t, and since you’re not wearing robes, I think I can say with some degree of certainty that you are not a member of the college, then it means you have a great deal of untrained magic inside you, and you’re really quite dangerous to be around at all.”
I knew I was gaping at her, but I couldn’t help myself. I felt like I was in the middle of a flock of sparrows, being battered by wings and beaks and birdcalls all at once. “You’re not wearing robes either,” was all I could think to say. She wasn’t; instead, she wore a dark dress with a divided skirt, as if she had been riding.
She shook her head so quickly I wondered that it didn’t hurt and exhaled loudly. “Those robes, can’t abide them either. So long … They get in the way. But about that trick you just performed … Did you, in fact, intend to prepare the fountain for tea making?”
I swallowed. “No, I didn’t. I’ve only just discovered that I have magic, and I—I came to see if the college would admit me.” I could feel my shoulders sag a little. “But they wouldn’t. I’m not noble, and I don’t have enough money.”
Without warning, the woman reached out and grabbed my wrist. There was surprising strength in her bony grip, and after pulling my hand flat, she laid her other hand atop it. As she gazed into my eyes, something warm slid through me, like a cat slipping into a sunbeam. Then she dropped my hand, a scowl pinching her face.
“Stupid ordinances. If I’ve told Neomar once … Well, I shall have to take it up again, not that it will do any good,” she muttered to herself. She shook her head and stamped one foot, then said to me, “I can inform you, my dear, that you are positively bursting with magic. In fact, I’m quite confused as to how it could have gone so long without making itself known. Of course, if you were starved as a child, or very, very sick, that might have repressed it some, but … No matter, the point is that you have it now, and it can’t wait to work its way out of you. What’s your name?”
The abruptness of her question made me hesitate.
“Speak up, speak up. You do know your name, don’t you?”
Sometimes, I thought ruefully. “Sinda,” I said out loud. “Sinda Azaway.”
Probably most people didn’t know, or if they had heard the name of the false princess, they had forgotten it. But the woman in front of me narrowed her eyes, apparently thinking. “Sinda,” she said, looking away, “Where have I heard that … Ah.”
She tapped her chin, surveying me. “I saw you once, when you were a little girl. I’d come to the palace to ask permission to harvest some blood orchid from the gardens for one of my experiments. There’s nowhere else in this part of Thorvaldor that has the plant, very difficult to cultivate … You were playing, with a boy, I think it was. You told me where the orchid was in the garden.”
She glanced back at the building I had left and shook her head again. “I don’t much care for their rules, never have,” she said suddenly. “So I’ll teach you.”
“You’ll teach me what?” I asked.
“Magic,” she snapped. “Unless I was mistaken and you’re as slow as you seem right now. I may not look it, but I am a Master, if that means anything to you. It means something to everyone else, when they bother to remember, so it probably does to you, too. But not for free. I need a scribe. I suppose you learned how to write a fair hand up there in the palace?”
I nodded.
“And you’ll have to be able to do research as well.”
“I can do both,” I said dazedly.
“Good. I’m very busy with my experiments, so I won’t have a great deal of time for you, but it will be better than letting your magic kill you. I’m Philantha, by the way. I don’t live at the college. There’s a house in Goldhorn that’s been in my family for years, and I’ve found there’s nothing worse that living elbow to toe with a bunch of other wizards.”
Philantha gave another birdlike shake of her head and was suddenly walking away across the courtyard. I stood, unable to fully understand what had just transpired.
I didn’t have long to consider the whirlwind that had just descended on me, however. “Are you coming, Sinda Azaway?” she called impatiently over her shoulder.
This time I didn’t hesitate. “Yes,” I called, and hurried to follow.
And that was how I came to live in Vivaskari a second time. In exchange for my duties as scribe—and, in fact, assistant researcher, partial librarian, and general fetcher of whatever Philantha wanted at that moment—I was given lodging, magic lessons, and a salary of two silver pieces a week. It was not what a true scribe would have earned, but then most scribes were not receiving magic lessons as well. Besides, I had never earned my own money, and even those two silver pieces made me feel almost heady with wealth honestly earned.
Philantha’s house was in Goldhorn district, which lay nestled beside the palace walls and Sapphire district, and was the province of wealthy merchants and those come lately into money but without titles of nobility. It was not as grand as Sapphire, but considerably more dignified than Guildhall or South Gate.
The house itself contained three floors. The first was where Philantha met with friends and the various wizards willing to tolerate her eccentricities. She was not, I discovered, altogether well thought of at the college, but there were at least a handful of wizards who did not look down on her, and they sometimes came to talk magic with her. The second floor was reserved for her workings, and housed her study and various experimentation rooms. The third floor was where her staff, including me, lived. My room was not large, but it was bigger than the cramped room I had shared with Aunt Varil, and it was my own. In addition to me, Philantha employed a cook, a butler, one stable boy to look after her two horses, and two maids. I, however, was the only magical member of the household besides Philantha.
My first lesson in magic came two days after my arrival. I was sitting in the library, bent over a brittle old scroll that detailed, in tiny, feathered handwriting, the uses of common Thorvaldian herbs in magic. I was supposed to be copying the information into a new blank journal, but the process had not been easy. The handwriting was small enough, and the language archaic enough, that a headache was growing between my eyebrows when the door to the corridor thumped open behind me.
I jumped and just barely managed to avoid crushing the scroll with my elbow, which would have surely made at least part of it crumble to dust. I hardly had time to collect myself before Philantha was standing in front of me.
“I thought about sending Briath, but then I thought that by the time I called her into my study—all the maids are just terrified of my study, I’m not sure why—and told her what I needed, it would be easier to do it myself.” She paused expectantly, and I realized I was supposed to make some sort of response.
“You thought about sending Briath to …” I started hesitantly.
“To get you,” Philantha answered as if it were quite obvious.
“Oh!” I pushed back my chair with a clatter and stood up as quickly as I could. “Do you need me?”
“I thought we could begin your lessons. But it would be better to start them in my study. I expect I would be put out if you managed to set fire to the books here, even if half of them are too moldy to read.” With that, she turned and left the library without a glance to make sure I was following.
Philantha’s study was on the same floor as the library, though several doors down. As we entered, I couldn’t help but stop. With so much to look at, I threatened to trip over my own feet if I tried to walk and inspect the room at the same time.
It had once been the house’s master bedchamber, of that I felt certain. Philantha must sleep elsewhere, though, because there wasn’t room for even the smallest pallet now. Books littered the many tables and stools, as did tall glass vials, mortars and pestles of various sizes, and fat-bottomed bowls. Dried plants hung from the ceiling, a loom with a half-finished weaving on it stood in the corner, and what looked like tools for silversmithing lay forgotten on a desk, surrounded by necklaces both completed and in pieces. A large mirror was propped against the north wall, but it would have been impossible to see yourself in it because of the many symbols painted in red on its surface. Two doors were thrown open to reveal a small balcony that must overlook the tiny walled garden behind the house. The balcony teemed with pots overflowing with herbs and flowers. The room smelled strangely spicy, but also slightly charred, like things were burned here regularly.
“Come in, come in,” Philantha called from behind one of the tables. She shoved several books off a stool and gestured me toward it. “Now,” she said when I was nervously seated, “what do you know about magic?”
“Only that I have it,” I answered without thinking. “Otherwise, only what anyone else would know of it.” It wasn’t quite true, because I had spent an awful lot of time reading about magic in the palace, but I didn’t want to give Philantha the wrong impression of my knowledge.
“Well then, I suppose it’s time for a lecture. I used to give them, you know, when I lived at the college, which was longer ago than I think I will admit. But where to start, where to start?” She blew a breath upward, so that it ruffled the hair on her forehead, then said, “Magic is a talent, like being able to sing or learn languages quickly. Some people have it, and most people don’t. And some of the people have more of it than others, just as some singers are better than others.”
Perhaps because she viewed this as a lecture, Philantha had left off her usual breathless way of speaking. Her explanation was, so far, quite clear, and I let out a sigh of relief.
“The analogy only goes so far, however, because magic, unlike singing ability, has a sort of … awareness. Now, you’ll find that not everyone agrees with me on this point, but I feel quite adamant about it. I did several studies on the subject when I taught at the college, and it seems to me that many wizards, particularly the more powerful ones, experience a similar feeling when they access their magic. They feel as if the magic wants to be used, as if it needs to be used.”
She paused, and I, remembering the feelings I had been having for weeks, of something wanting to escape me, said, “What happens if you don’t use it?”
Philantha folded her arms across her chest, frowning. “The magic will force its own way out. Particularly when the wizard is experiencing strong emotions, and usually in a very primitive way. You might set something on fire, for instance. The magic wants to be used, you see, and if you don’t use it voluntarily, it will make you use it. Thus, my feelings that it is … different from other talents.”
I didn’t know what sort of feelings the other wizards at the college got from their magic, but Philantha’s ideas made sense to me. And they confirmed my fears that, if I had not left Aunt Varil’s, I would have become dangerous very quickly.
“Still, those are conversations for another day. At its heart, magic is simply the ability to take your will and use it on the world around you. You want something to happen, and if you want it badly enough, and you have enough power, it happens. You can use things,” she added with a gesture around her study, “like potions or herbs or scrying dishes, to help you focus your energy.” She fixed me with an impatient look. “You do know what a scrying dish is, don’t you?” I tried to nod quickly, not wanting her to think me completely muddled, but she had already gone on. “It’s a dish—very shallow—that holds water. You look into it and, if you have the talent, you see things that will be, or have been, or might be. Touchy magic, I don’t do a lot of it myself. The principles remain the same, though, no matter if you’re using anything to aid you or not. With all magic, in the end, it all comes down to whether or not you have the power and experience to do what you want to do.”
She paused, looking around the room with those quick, birdlike movements of her head, before seeming to find what she was looking for. A silver goblet stood on a nearby table and, picking it up, she placed it on the floor in front of my stool. Water filled it halfway to the brim.
“Now, it’s easiest to do things that are natural. Well, that’s not exactly true. It’s easiest, of course, to cast a spell on yourself. You know yourself, inside and out, even if you don’t know that you do. It’s other people, of course, always other people who make it hard, because you don’t know them, not the way you know yourself. But still, even with yourself, it’s easier to do things that are natural. Things that, in the right circumstances, might happen on their own.
“So it would be hard to turn the water into a bird, because, on its own, water will never turn into a bird. But water will freeze, if it’s cold enough.” She jabbed a finger toward the goblet. “By rights, I should have you start with a spell on yourself, you know. Make you change your hair color or speak in a language you don’t know. But I think you’re up to a challenge, so try this. Try to freeze the water. Look at it, and want it to be frozen.”
Part of me longed to protest that I wasn’t ready, that I didn’t know what I was doing. I remembered the way the vine had turned to ash in my hand, and it scared me. But the rest of me felt a charge of excitement, of daring. This was something that could belong to me alone, something that wouldn’t remind me of my former life.
I glowered at the goblet. Freeze, I thought. Freeze. But nothing happened. I glanced at Philantha, but she only gazed back at me without comment. I turned my eyes to the goblet again. Since thinking the word at it wasn’t helping, I would have to try something else. But what? Philantha hadn’t been particularly specific about how I should do it. I glared at the goblet, and still nothing happened.
I could feel frustration hardening my shoulders. Outside, wind stirred the plants on the balcony, and I realized that it was stuffy in the study. The fire in the fireplace had been allowed to burn too high for the late spring, and a few pieces of hair that had escaped my braid were sticking to the back of my neck. Involuntarily, my thoughts turned to the coolness, to the idea of icy wind against my skin. I thought about the way the fountains in the palace gardens had frozen in winter, about the smooth ice under my fingers, about the icicles that formed on the statues in their centers, hanging down like jagged capes. Kiernan had broken one off for me once, and I recalled the way it had burned my palm with its coldness.
My eyes, which had been wandering, snapped to the goblet. With the thoughts of winter, of snow and ice crackling in my mind, I pointed at the goblet. There was a tiny clank, the sound of something hard hitting metal. As I dropped my hand, suddenly fatigued, I saw that the goblet was covered in tiny frost crystals.
Smiling, Philantha took up a piece of cloth, it wrapped it around her hand, and picked up the goblet. “Completely frozen,” she pronounced. “I don’t think there’s a drop of liquid water in there, which is better than I did my first time—there was still a bit of water on the rim, you see.” She set the goblet down, then said, all business again, “And now you see what it feels like to control your magic. Keep that in mind. I don’t want you charring my things in a fit of pique. Now, if you aren’t too tired, let’s talk about other sorts of transformations.”