‘You don’t look so good, Tennat. Maybe you ought to—’
He ignored me. ‘So arrogant. So full of yourself. We’ve all known for years that you’re going to end up with the Sha’Tep, cleaning the floors of proper mages or, better yet, working in the mines where you belong. Kellen the magic-less trickster thinks he can lie his way through life, and worse, you act as if you’re better than everyone else.’
‘Not everyone else.’
‘So clever, aren’t you, Kellen?’ He gave a fake little laugh followed by a more genuine-sounding cough.
‘You should probably get some rest, Tennat. Sounds like you’ve got a nasty cold.’
‘I’ll get better,’ he said, mastering himself. ‘I’ll get well again because my blood is strong. Whatever sickness you’re carrying inside you that’s infecting our people, it won’t get a hold on me.’
There was a thought I hadn’t considered. What if I carried some kind of illness? I’d spent most of my life with one cold after another. But then, why would it affect the others faster than it had me?
Tennat was grinning down at me as if he’d won some grand debating point. Such an idiot.
‘Guess you’d better run on home, Tennat. Wouldn’t want you to catch a double dose of my deadly magical disease.’
He actually looked scared for a second, which told me that whatever this was, he wasn’t faking. ‘No,’ he said, turning and starting back towards his bench across the way. ‘I think I’ll stay and watch.’
It took me a while to figure out what was happening and recognise that by coming to the oasis today I’d managed to toss myself headlong into a trap. See, my people have a ritual for exiling a criminal. It requires that the outcast’s family and friends, colleagues and teachers, all tell him or her that they are no longer welcome among the clan. It can take hours or even days for the ritual to be completed. Only once every person that the outcast knows has rejected them will the council finally exile the criminal forever. Without family, without a clan, it’s rare that anyone ever tries to appeal.
The scene with Panahsi repeated itself over and over again for the rest of the afternoon. Every hour, when Master Osia’phest gave the initiates a few minutes to rest, someone would come over to me and make some snide remark to make it clear to me, and to everyone else, that we weren’t friends any more.
Every time they did, my father’s words came back to me.
The Jan’Tep do not hold grudges.
Sure.
I wanted more than anything to get up off the bench and run back home, lock myself in my room and do my best to forget the first fifteen years of my life. It wasn’t that the things people said to me were cruel – I mean, they were cruel, obviously – but rather the things they didn’t bother to say which stung. I was the outsider. I was the other. I wasn’t Jan’Tep or Sha’Tep or anything else.
I kept glancing over at Panahsi, hoping that he would stop the next person from coming or even just look back at me. He didn’t. I was like some kind of unwelcome insect that had burrowed its way into the garden. It wasn’t that he or the rest of them wanted to see me dead. They just didn’t want to see me at all.
I guess that was why I couldn’t leave. As much as every part of me was screaming to get up and run, as small and alone as I felt, somewhere inside me was a tiny shard of anger that wouldn’t let me go. I swore to myself I’d still show up every day at that oasis to sit through those lessons, to make everyone see me. Every day until my naming day, when I’d be forced to join the Sha’Tep forever.
I’d just about convinced myself I was doing something noble by staying when Nephenia walked over to me.
13
Rejection
I really could have used a shield spell just then.
Nephenia was armed only with her beauty and my feelings for her. That turned out to be plenty.
She looked pretty that day, as she did every day. A pale beige linen dress that ended just above her knees offset the soft brown curls hanging loose around her shoulders. I always liked her hair that way. There was a scent that came with it … tamarisk petals and warm sand and … No, I told myself. She’s here to break you. Those are her weapons. Stay strong.
A good counter-attack was what I needed. Something that would cut her to the quick and shake her from her no doubt well-rehearsed script. I came up with a dozen mean, nasty things to say to her. Things that would make me sound clever and her seem small and petty. Good. You’re ready.
But when she stopped, no more than two feet away from me, all my brilliant insults fled. I was suddenly transformed into a small, petulant boy. ‘I suppose you came over here to—’
‘They think I’m here to cast you out,’ she said quickly, her voice so quiet I had to replay the words in my head to make sure I’d heard them right.
I started to rise but she gave a little shake of her head so I sat back down. ‘But you’re not?’
‘I think … I think what you did was brave, standing up for that Daroman woman. I’m not sure if it was right. Jan’Tep are supposed to stick to their clan.’ She stood there for a moment and then shook her head as if banishing the thought. ‘This Ferius person saved your life and, when the time came, you saved hers. That can’t be wrong.’ She turned away, looking to the south, away from town. ‘Three of them, Kellen, and you with no magic. Yet you fought them. You beat them.’
‘Ferius … um … had something to do with it as well.’
‘I wish I could be as brave as you.’
‘You are,’ I said. ‘You would’ve—’
She spun back to me and her eyes were angry and filling with tears. ‘Don’t. I’m not brave, Kellen, so don’t say I am.’
Lacking anything either clever or reassuring to say, I simply said, ‘I don’t understand.’
‘Just … Just let me say this.’ She wiped the tears from her eyes and wiped her hands against her dress. ‘It’s not the same for girls, Kellen. The masters hardly ever want to teach us the high magics. They think we shouldn’t be allowed to learn anything except healing and—’
‘Then make them teach you,’ I said. ‘My sister doesn’t take no for an answer. She—’
‘I’m not Shalla!’ she whispered fiercely.
Several of the initiates looked over and for a second I was afraid they might think I’d done something to hurt Nephenia.
‘I’m not Shalla,’ she repeated, this time more quietly. ‘I’m not powerful the way she is. The masters teach her, because if they didn’t everyone would know it’s because she’s a girl. But me? They can just keep putting me at the back of the class. I have to beg and plead and stand behind the boys on tiptoes to try to see the spells they’re being shown. If some of the other students didn’t spend time with me after class, I’d never be able to pass my trials.’