Other students. Like who? I wondered.
‘I need those people to help me, Kellen. I don’t want to end up like my mother, married to a man who treats her like a Sha’Tep. Who uses her like a servant and expects her to … I have to earn my mage name.’
A part of me knew that I should be listening – really listening – to the things she was telling me. I should have been more sympathetic. I should have been able to understand that Nephenia was just trying to survive in the world the same as I was. But I’d just spent the past several hours being told by everyone who’d ever pretended to be my friend that I was diseased and would never have any power. I guess it kind of stuck. ‘Why are you telling me this, Nephenia? Is all this just an excuse so that you can feel better for siding with the others?’ I rose this time, partly because I was so angry and partly because this was probably going to be the last time I got to be near her. ‘You didn’t come over here to tell me how brave I am. You came to say goodbye.’
‘Not because I want to,’ she said desperately, as if that made any difference in the world. ‘Maybe someday—’
‘Maybe if I suddenly become a powerful mage? Then you’ll talk to me? Then you’ll want to …?’
I was close enough to see her lower lip starting to tremble. ‘I’m sorry, Kellen. I’m just so sorry,’ she said, and turned away from me.
I said a few things as she walked back to the others, things that no brave, heroic young mage would say about a girl who was crying. I said them quietly though, under my breath, like a coward, and so figured no one had heard.
‘You kiss your mother with that mouth?’ a voice asked from behind me.
I spun around to see Ferius Parfax sitting cross-legged against one of the colonnades, holding a large card in one hand and a paintbrush delicately in the other. An open leather case lay next to her, filled with more brushes and tiny pots and jars. ‘What are you doing?’ I asked, surprising myself with how angry I sounded.
‘Painting a card, obviously.’
The dowager magus’s question of the night before came back to me. ‘Of what?’
Ferius stared at the card in her hand. ‘None of your business.’
The glib answer irritated me. ‘You snuck up on me.’
‘Wasn’t hard,’ she replied, dipping the brush in something clear before wrapping it in a cloth and placing it back in the leather case. ‘Maybe next time you and your little girlfriend should try casting a “pay attention to the world around you” spell.’
‘She’s not my … She’s not anything. I don’t want to talk about it.’
‘Me neither,’ Ferius said, and reached into her waistcoat and pulled out a smoking reed and stuck it between her teeth. From inside the leather case she took two cloth pouches and then a tiny pinch of powder from each. When she tossed them against each other, they erupted into a tiny burst of flame that lit the reed.
‘What are those powders?’ I asked.
‘Stuff I use for paints,’ she replied, taking a puff of her smoking reed. ‘Not a good idea to mix them.’
She blew a ring of smoke in the air that drifted towards me. The act seemed oddly accusatory. ‘Nephenia walked away from me because I have no magic,’ I said, now realising I did want to talk about it. ‘One day I had promise and she seemed to like me, the next I didn’t and I guess she decided I wasn’t worth the trouble.’
If I was expecting sympathy, which I was, I didn’t get any. ‘You know what I’m wondering?’ Ferius asked. I didn’t respond, but that didn’t matter because she went on anyway. ‘I’m asking myself if that girl stopped being quite so pretty tomorrow, well, if you’d notice her at all.’
She gave me all of three seconds to come up with a reply before she laughed. ‘You crack me up, kid. You know that?’
‘Shut up, Ferius,’ I said. The sun was getting lower in the sky and Master Osia’phest was shuffling off down the street. Evidently the lesson was over. ‘Are you a Daroman spy? Did you do something to make Tennat and the others sick?’
‘Nope.’ She gave me a sidelong glance. ‘Did you?’
‘Don’t be stupid.’
‘Says the kid who just asked a suspected spy to reveal herself.’
‘If you’re not a spy then what are you?’ I asked. ‘Because I don’t believe some Argosi wanderer would still be hanging around here after what happened last night.’
‘I’m a woman, kid. You probably haven’t met one before, coming as you do from this backward place, but it’s like a man only smarter and with bigger balls.’
It occurred to me that she’d just insulted my mother, my sister and every other female in my clan. But something else was bothering me. ‘Aren’t you worried that Ra’fan and Ra’dir and Tennat might come after you again?’
She got to her feet and walked over to sit down on the bench next to me. ‘What, those morons from last night?’
‘Them or someone else. Don’t think the same tricks will work again. Next time they might—’
‘Next time I’ll use a different trick.’
All I could see in her face was her usual smug self-assurance, but I still remembered the genuine fear in her eyes the night before. ‘They’ve seen your smoke and your steel cards. What happens when you run out of tricks? What happens if more powerful mages decide to attack you and they—’
She shrugged. ‘Guess we’ll find out when it happens.’ She took another drag of her smoking reed. ‘But let’s deal with more pressing concerns. Like that little lady you seem to fancy so much but just treated like dirt.’
A whole town full of mages, half of whom probably wanted to see her dead, and she wanted to talk about my love life. ‘Look, unless you have a spell to make her like me despite how much of a loser I am, just keep your thoughts to yourself. Besides, it’s like she said – she’s not special.’
Ferius looked at me and let out a long breath, the smoke filling the air between us like fog on an early spring morning. ‘Okay, kid, you did me a favour last night, so I’m going to do you one in return.’
I turned away from her. ‘If you’re going to make a joke about teaching me spells again, then don’t bother.’ I was tired of the way Ferius made fun of magic as if it was all a game.
I felt her hand on my shoulder and nearly pulled away in surprise, but her grip was too strong. ‘I am going to teach you a spell, kid, not because you want it but because you need it.’ She leaned over and whispered a string of words in my ear.