The princess didn’t seem to listen. She turned the wedding ring on her finger, gazing into the distance. Ozorne glanced at a slave, who nodded to him. “Mother, thank you so much for this meal.” The prince got to his feet. Varice and Arram did the same as Ozorne went to his mother, knelt, and kissed her cheek. She didn’t look at him or at the other two as they said their proper farewells and left.
Ozorne sighed. “She has good days and bad ones,” he explained as they walked down the hall. “In the last year she’s been having more good days than bad. She’s just worn out from being at court, or she wouldn’t have slipped away in front of you.”
Varice put an arm around his shoulders and squeezed. “It’s all right,” she said. “She was lovely. We didn’t think anything of it, did we, Arram?”
“No, of course not,” he said, doing his best to sound cheerful, but he was unsettled. From the look of Princess Mahira as she spoke of the Sirajit people, he thought she would have killed them herself, given weapons and soldiers. Her eyes had been frightening.
He needed to break the news now. “Ozorne, one of our new roommates is Sirajit.”
Ozorne halted and turned to look up at Arram. For a moment the older boy said nothing. Finally he looked away. “But how charming. I’m sure we shall all get on like lotuses in a pond. Perhaps complete peace with the province of Siraj will begin in our humble little room. Wouldn’t that be nice?” He sighed. “In any event, you must do without me for another two days. Mother leaves for our lands then. You know I like to stay with her until the last moment. It steadies her, you see.” They nodded, and Ozorne kissed Varice’s cheek in farewell as they left her at her dormitory. “Bear with our new roommates just a little longer,” he said as he and Arram walked on. “We’ll see. Maybe they’ll find out the university is hard on newcomers who think they are already mages.”
He clapped Arram on the shoulder, leaving his friend with goosebumps.
Upon his return to the room, Arram found it crammed with older students, all of whom were laughing and talking loudly, eating and drinking and occupying every spare inch of space. They barely moved as Arram fought his way through to his cubicle. He thought of trying to order them out, then thought of the laughter and mocking he would get. Instead he retrieved his blanket and pillow once again and left. He walked halfway up the steps to the roof before he realized the noisy talk and laughter were also coming from up there.
Growling under his breath, he decided to try something new. When he was in the Lower Academy, he’d been forbidden to venture outside the walls after dark at any time. As a member of the Upper Academy, he was permitted to do so between terms. He stomped out through the gate with a nod to the guard, who knew him, and across the City Road toward the river.
There were people on the beach there. It was too hot for older students and masters to pass up the chance to catch the river breezes, even if they meant to return inside for the night. From his studies with Sebo, Arram knew a track around a bend in the riverbank that led to a small cove. No one else was there.
He put down his blanket and pillow. Next he carefully shaped a circle in the sand around his things, using salt from a pouch that he always wore on his belt. “Let them take your clothes,” Cosmas had told the three friends. “Let them take your rings, let them take your shoes, let them take your…” He had twinkled at Ozorne. “Let them take the very beads from your hair, but do not let them take your salt! It is the most basic ingredient we have, and it can help you to get everything else back!”
Arram used it now because, while there were spells to prevent hippos and crocodiles from coming up on these beaches, there were always land animals to concern him. As he walked the circle, he murmured a protective spell. To his delight, the line of sparkling fire rose above his circle and faded. It worked!
He lay down and tucked his hands behind his head, watching the stars and listening to the river’s sounds. Hippos talked back and forth as softly as those great creatures managed. Now and then crocodiles bellowed. Fish leaped to catch insects and splashed back down. Clouds passed. He counted the constellations, starting with the Basilisk and moving on to the others, also reciting the magical influences attached to each one. At some point in his whispered recitations, he slept.
He dreamed he lay on a heap of sleeping dragons. Their skins were as lumpy and uncomfortable as rocks, and they stank. When one of them sighed in his ear, he woke up enough to object.
He’d flung an arm and a leg onto the bronze back of the giant crocodile god, Enzi, in his sleep. The creature’s immense forearm was Arram’s pillow. The stench in his dream came from the animal’s mouth, filled with sharp teeth.
The youth scrambled to his hands and knees, wheezing as he fought for breath. When he glanced at Enzi, he saw that one of the god’s golden eyes was open. The moment he met that ancient gaze, he froze.
You woke me, the god said. We both slept well, and you woke me. He released the spell of paralysis that held Arram. Why must you flail so?
“I didn’t expect company!” Arram squeaked. He cursed his voice, then wondered what he had done wrong on his protective circle. He looked and saw one problem immediately. The god lay on half of it.
Do you know how little rest I get from the endless complaints of my own people and the hippopotamus people? demanded the god. Clatter, clatter, we are hungry, the humans hunt us, your people eat our young. I find a nice place to nap and you woke me! Go away if you can’t lie still! The great eye slid shut.
“It’s not my fault,” Arram grumbled, yanking on his clothes. He would have to get another blanket. He was not waking the god for the one underneath him. He marched up the path to the university. “I didn’t invite him to sleep there. It was my protective circle he ruined! He has things to complain about! He doesn’t have to remake his life every year or two, or every few weeks….” He stopped. He had spoken with a god. Admittedly, Enzi was an earth god, not one of the Great Gods, who had their own separate realm, but how many people spoke with gods at all?
Would Sebo be angry? It wasn’t his fault that Enzi had crawled into his circle. And so much for thinking he could work a good circle—he needed to practice!
He had planned to see if Hulak wanted weeds pulled after he ate breakfast, but his meal was interrupted. He was about to dig into a very succulent piece of cantaloupe when something like a cool, tingling rope twined around his neck. His tablemates stared at him.
“Arram,” Varice said nervously.
He didn’t have to be able to see the Gift to know the person who wielded it. “Sebo,” he told her and the others, and tried to fit a bite into his mouth. The rope around his throat tightened gently and got cold. “I’d better see her.”