She picked up the rose and sniffed it. “Well, it would explain why you can’t hold on to a girl more than a month or two,” she teased. She blew Musenda a kiss, and the crowd roared its approval. He bowed to her and left the arena, waving to those who applauded him.
And they’d cheer just as loud if his opponent had won, Arram thought bitterly.
The autumn term settled back into routine, with only the threat of examinations and the Midwinter celebrations to disturb Arram’s peace of mind. His studies in healing expanded to include healing wounds, a process he wasn’t certain he liked. He listed it as his second-to-last favorite, the worst task being lancing and cleaning boils. It always took some time for the stink to clear his nose. His favorite was diagnosing a patient’s illness, something he had gotten very good at with the use of Ramasu’s spells,
One Saturday morning after a night at the infirmary he went to the market where good secondhand shirts were reasonably priced. The term’s classes were hard on his clothes: these days he could go through five clean shirts a day. He reminded himself to give the school laundry women good-luck stones for Midwinter, since they did so much work for him. He was deciding on which stones to give them when Preet crashed into his chest.
“Preet!” he cried. “I almost killed you, silly bird! What were you thinking?”
Rising into the air, she gripped a lock of his hair in her claws and pulled him down an unfamiliar alley. Much to his surprise, they emerged at a side entrance of the cemetery dedicated to the Great Mother in her guise of the Crone. Devout women of the university were buried here.
A hundred yards in, a group of women gathered around a funeral pyre. Arram halted beside a tree, not wanting to disturb them, no matter how insistent Preet was. Then one of the women looked up and drew back her headscarf.
It was Sebo. She tapped her neighbor, who turned: it was Dagani. Arram also recognized the girl who had lived with Faziy. A couple of the other women were senior students and masters. One of them wore the black robe and torch insignia of a Daughter of the Temple. She carried a burning torch in her hand.
Sebo beckoned Arram forward. He hesitated, not sure if he was supposed to intrude on a women’s rite. Sebo beckoned again and scowled. In the distance, thunder rolled. The breeze twisted around, blowing full in Arram’s face. The stink of rot filled his nose. Preet landed on his shoulder and bit his ear. Wincing, Arram forced himself to walk to the pyre.
As he left the trees, a group of men walked out of the temple: Cosmas, Yadeen, Ramasu, and Chioké. Each carried cypress boughs to cleanse the dead. At the pyre, they placed their branches on the linen-wrapped corpse, covering it from top to toe. Arram nearly panicked, having no offering, until he remembered the vial of meadowsweet essence in his healer’s kit. He used it to calm people who were upset. Here it would bring his wishes for peace to this dead woman.
Placing the bottle on the corpse’s chest, he saw why Preet had brought him here. Pinned on the linen where the body’s neck would be was a familiar jade-and-silver necklace. This was Faziy’s funeral.
The Daughter bowed to a short figure all in black who now joined them. A servant of the Black God of Death, the newcomer spoke the hopes of the faithful that Faziy would be remade in the Peaceful Realms, free of pain and sorrow. As she talked of the god’s kindness, she was forced to raise her voice. The storm was rolling in fast, lightning flashing ahead of it. Quickly the Daughter of the Temple lit the four corners of the funeral pyre. Once it was blazing, the witnesses retreated to the temple—all but Arram.
Arram shook his head as Cosmas and Yadeen tried to tow him inside. Instead he locked his eyes on the boiling clouds above.
The lightning snakes came. They twined themselves around the wood and the dead woman, weaving everything together into one blazing heap. It shrank into a hard, tight knot—
And was gone, wood, body, and bone.
The Daughter seemed to be angry with Yadeen. Arram caught some of her words: “snakes,” “never, never,” and “never.” Arram let the master yell and looked for Preet. She had tucked herself under the temple’s eaves, where she, too, seemed to screech “never, never” and “never.”
Finally Arram could hear properly. He looked at Cosmas. “Who killed her?” he asked. “We’re a citadel of magecraft—surely we know who did this. Why didn’t you bury her before? You thought you could work out who killed her. You know, don’t you?”
“If he were my student,” Chioké said, “I would lock him in a magic-less room on bread and water for a week.”
Arram turned to scowl at Chioké. He was about to tell Ozorne’s master that no one had asked for his opinion, when three sets of invisible hands clapped over his mouth. “I shall deal with my students—and my instructors—as I see fit,” Cosmas said mildly. “Arram was very fond of Faziy.”
“He needs schooling in courtesy if he is to strut at court,” Chioké retorted. “And so I shall tell my student. An ill-bred lout does his prince, and his masters, little good.”
Sebo stood next to Cosmas as Chioké gathered several of his friends and left the temple. “He gets more troublesome every full moon, Cosmas,” she remarked. “Perhaps you should send him on an exchange to the City of the Gods. He needs to cool down, and that’s the perfect place.”
Cosmas patted Arram’s shoulder. “Avoid Chioké, Arram,” he cautioned. “He’s every bit as likely to have sunk those ships as Faziy—and make it look like her work.”
—
Arram and his friends survived the Midwinter festivities and began the spring term. Arram, Varice, and Ozorne began to help Lindhall’s people with minor healings at the university and imperial menageries, while Hulak began to teach them how to make the most-used medicines for animals. Arram’s schedule changed not at all, except to grow harder.
When marks were posted, Tristan had his credential in war magic. He remained a fourth-year student in siege magic, fire magic, and air magic, and a third-year student in healing and other required classes.
“Just a matter of catching up,” he said carelessly, looking over his marks. “If I bear down on those third-year courses, I should be able to move ahead into all fourth-year classes next year and start my schooling for my master’s stone.” His friends, even Arram, clasped his hand in congratulation.
Gissa reached fourth year in most of her classes; Ozorne and Varice received top marks for the third-year courses. They were well beyond any students of their own age, studying with people who were in their late teens and early twenties on average.