Slowly the older boys shuffled forward and took the papers from midair. “Read them. I’ll wait.” Muriq glanced at Arram. “If you want to go to a library, tell the hall proctors I gave you permission. It may be a little while before these two and I understand one another.”
Arram nodded and made a grateful escape. Rather than go to a library, he fled to the aviary. A few hours spent helping the evening students settle their charges and feed the nocturnal birds helped to calm his nerves.
He returned to find his new roommates had gone. Rather than stay for their return, Arram decided to take advantage of the fine weather. He rolled up a blanket and pillow and went in search of the rooftop stairs. He wasn’t the only one seeking cooler air outside. Other students were there as well, talking softly or making themselves comfortable. Arram found a spot to place his blanket and stretched out on it, resting his head on his pillow. A slight, cool breeze came in from the river. With all the torches below the roof’s height, he enjoyed a fine view of the bright constellations. Once, to his delight, a shooting star flashed by.
He wished that he would do well in the coming year, and slept.
The new roommates were snoring loudly when Arram crept into the room the next morning. He grimaced. Would he have to put up with that noise all year? He hated wax earplugs.
He dressed quickly, not wanting to deal with the older students so early on a free day. Of course, it was free for him. They had to go on the first of several tours of the university, learning the layout of the schools, and then their way around the different parts of the School for Mages. They had forms to fill out and tests to take to give the instructors a better idea of where to place them.
Once dressed, Arram trotted off to the dining hall. He halted in the doorway, seeing no sign of Varice. “She isn’t here,” said one of her friends who was standing nearby. “She asked me to tell you they’re letting her work in the kitchen during breakfast and lunch this week.”
Arram smiled at the older girl, a plump brunette with dimples. To his surprise, she smiled back before she walked off to her table. Arram spent a moment admiring the sway of her hips before he decided there was no point in eating indoors and alone. He gathered a napkin, fruit, cheese, and bread, and then ate his meal in one of the lemon gardens, surrounded by the trees’ scent. Once finished, he decided it was too fine a day to remain indoors.
In a shocking waste of hours, he spent his day wandering from the menagerie to the university’s many small museums. Agreeably weary, he was on his way to supper when someone grabbed him by the arm. Instantly he brought up a hand, a spell for stinging nettles on his lips. Then he recognized his black-clad attacker: Ozorne.
Arram’s spell evaporated as he grinned. “What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be at the palace. I almost got you with a stinging spell, you dolt!”
“You were quick with it, too,” Ozorne said with approval. He and Varice had plagued Arram to have small, hard-to-detect spells for self-protection ready at a moment’s notice, rather than trust to his unreliable fisticuff skills. “What has you on alert? Never mind that. My mother’s here. She’s invited you and Varice to supper.” He spotted Varice and waved her over to them.
Arram was confused. Ozorne wasn’t due back for at least another week. He also wasn’t kitted out in full mourning. Of course he wore black ribbons and beads braided into his hair, black pearl earrings, and onyx bracelets. Black embroideries were stitched over his cream-colored linen tunic in the signs for family, loss, death, and the Black God, but he should have been wearing a solid black tunic and a black headcloth. Most important, he should still have been in the imperial private quarters of the palace, observing the family rituals.
Varice frowned when she reached them. “Ozorne? I thought…”
“Everyone thought,” he said, grabbing her by the hand and thrusting Arram out the door ahead of them. Students got out of their way as Ozorne towed Varice a short distance down the hall. “When my illustrious uncle meditated on the circumstances surrounding Qesan’s murder and took counsel of the priests, he decided that elaborate mourning for a man killed in the act of adultery had, as he told us, ‘a stink to it.’ There will be no days of seclusion, Qesan will be buried on his home estates with only his father and some distant cousins to mourn him, and the rest of us may return to our lives. Before Mother goes home, she wants to see you two.”
Varice balked at that. “I’m not properly dressed to meet Her Highness!”
“You’re dressed like a student, so’s Arram, and that’s all that matters. I’m begging you, show her your best faces.” Ozorne halted before the ebony-inlaid door of one of the private dining rooms and tapped on it. The door swung open, releasing the scents of mint, thyme, cinnamon, ginger, and fresh-baked breads. Slaves in black tunics stood against one wall of the room, staring directly ahead. Arram looked away from them. These wore metal collars with the round emblem of House Tasikhe in front. Men and women alike wore their hair cropped very short. All were dark brown or nearly black in skin color, as if they’d been chosen to contrast with the ivory skin of Ozorne and the lady who sat in one of the room’s well-cushioned chairs.
She watched them with eyes that were the same striking shade of hazel as Ozorne’s, but far more weary and sad, framed by shadows above and below. They shared the same mouth, nose, and strong chin, but there was unhappiness at the corners of her mouth. Her dark brown hair was coiled and pinned in a gold net and covered with a light veil of black silk. Her black floor-length gown was belted at her waist with a gold chain set with gray and cream-colored pearls. Unlike her son, she wore no rings or bracelets other than a gold wedding band. Her sandals were plain leather dyed black.
Arram took all this in quickly. Sebo, when she didn’t walk him in the river or set him to learning the creatures and plants that lived there, insisted that he learn to describe things he saw only at a glance. Master Cosmas was the same. “You may be called on to save lives from fires as well as start and stop them,” he’d said when Arram and his friends began the spellcraft side of their lessons. “Your ability to do so may rest on what you see inside a room when you only glance into it.” Arram would not put it past any of his private teachers to demand that he describe Ozorne’s mother perfectly.
He bowed as Ozorne said, “Varice, Arram, I present Princess Mahira Lymanis Tasikhe, my honored mother. Mother, may I present my friends, Varice Kingsford and Arram Draper?”
Varice curtsied deeply. Neither of them straightened until the princess lifted her hand, indicating that they might do so. Once he was upright, Arram saw that Ozorne’s mother was inspecting him very carefully.
“My son tells me that you are good friends to him. For this I am grateful,” she said with a soft, wistful smile. “He needs such friends, so far from his sisters and me.”