2
Over the next week, he got letter after letter from the members of Dach’osmin Bruncavin’s salon. Most of them were rescinding his permission to use their family archives; Dach’osmin Bruncavin wrote that, while she honored him for making such a difficult choice, it might be better if he did not return to the salon.
Only Osmin Narlezin wrote in unequivocal support. Her letter, Ulcetha kept. The rest, he burned.
* * *
The day of Osmer Trenevar’s execution, Ulcetha took the Star of Cstheio to the Cairad’mazan’theileian. It was the last thing he had to do on his way out of the city.
It had been Osmer Sazamar who had suggested he might fare better at a different university.
“But where can I go?” Ulcetha said, perhaps a little despairingly.
Osmer Sazamar said, “I will write you letters of introduction to Osmer Hailenar and Osmer Padronar at the University of Choharo.”
“Choharo?” said Ulcetha and thought uneasily, superstitiously, of Mara. But that was nonsense—the wreck was nothing to do with the city.
“It is an excellent university,” said Osmer Sazamar, mistaking the cause of Ulcetha’s unease.
“Yes, I know. I’m sorry. It just never occurred to me to leave Cairado.”
“It is a hard thing,” Osmer Sazamar said. “And it is not your only option. But if you want to achieve first-class honors…I do not think you will do it here.”
Which was a gentle way of saying that Osmer Harcenar would never approve his first-class thesis, whether he wrote about shopkeepers or emperors.
“I know,” Ulcetha said. “If you would write those letters, I would be very grateful.”
“Of course,” said Osmer Sazamar. “There has never been anything wrong with your scholarship.”
That stung, just a little, but he was too conscious of what he’d been doing in his five years’ banishment to protest.
He crated all of his books and left them, carefully labeled, at the central courier office, to be sent for when he had somewhere to put them. It was expensive, asking the courier office to store things, but it was worth it for his books. His other belongings, he mostly sold or gave away. Those he either could not part with or would need immediately he crated and sent ahead to the central courier office in Choharo.
In the middle of his packing, he found Sinzharo at his door again, and she again invited him down to the Cat and Carpenter for a drink. Ulcetha had too much to do and said so. She nodded, stood irresolutely for a moment, and said, “I thought it was you.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I knew Mara had a lover, but I thought it was you.”
“Me?” Ulcetha tried to imagine that scenario and failed. “How…?”
“You were the only person he ever talked about.”
“We were friends .”
“Yes, I see that now,” said Sinzharo. “And I wanted to apologize.”
“Oh.” Ulcetha hesitated. “Well, maybe one drink.”
It was not a wake—neither of them could afford to drink until dawn—but they split two bottles of good Flomari and talked about Mara, and Ulcetha did not get home until well past midnight. He thought a hangover would have served him right, but he went back to his packing the next day with no more than a headache, and not even a very bad one.
And then, with all of his belongings given away or sold or sent to Choharo (or waiting to be sent to Choharo—he had to stop himself almost on a daily basis from going to the courier office to check that his books were still there), the only thing remaining to do before he bought a ticket on the diligence from Cairado to Choharo was to give the Star of Cstheio back.
His third night-time trip to the Harceneise was no more eventful than the first two, and the Star of Cstheio was mercifully exactly where he had left it. He debated about taking the Neschonori book with him and finally decided that it would make him more unhappy knowing it was here, where no one would ever know about it, than having it himself, even if he couldn’t explain to himself why that should be so. He also debated about the cache of stolen items from Salathgarad’s shop; he could not square it with his conscience to pawn them, even though he could sorely have used the money, and he ended up taking a detour to Prince Altheva Street on his way back to Chandler Street to shove them, one by one, through the mail slot, and he could only be passionately grateful that this time no night watchman came to see what he was doing.
When he got back to his apartment, he could not settle on a safe place to put the Star of Cstheio, worrying, although he knew it was irrational, about Salathgarad bursting in and discovering it. He finally put it in the ring box he had found for it, and put the ring box under his pillow, and in that way felt it was secure enough that he was able to get some sleep.
He might, he thought, be a little frightened of Salathgarad.
In the morning, he packed a valise of pajamas and toothbrush and a clean shirt for when he got off the diligence, put the ring box in the pocket of his coat—checking once to be sure that the Star of Cstheio was still there—and set out. He stopped at the Chandler Stret zho?n for breakfast: kolveris tea and oslov and fresh peaches, and then walked down to the Athamara and found a goblin ferry.
It seemed ridiculous that this was the last time he was going to do this, and then it seemed unbearably sad, and he had to distract himself by trying to think of what he was going to say to the Cairad’athmaza before he started weeping into the river.
On the peninsula, he walked out past the remains of the First Wall and then took General Trovimar Street away from the bright shops and the municipal library into a neighborhood that had been fashionable before the Star of Cstheio was lost, but was now rundown and shabby and all in all not dissimilar to the neighborhood Ulcetha had grown up in. The Mazan’theileian of Cairado, which stood well back from the road among a grove of giant reznabeth trees, was a long, low, stone building from the reign of Prince Estora, that being the last time the mazei had had any real power in the city. It was in need of repair, which was hardly surprising, and the two novices on duty at the front door were hilariously shocked to have a visitor who wasn’t a tradesman or a bill collector.
“We would like to speak to the Cairad’athmaza,” Ulcetha said. “Is that possible?”
“Yes,” blurted the younger novice.
The elder kicked his ankle and said, “Just a moment and we will go ask. Who should we say is calling?”
“Our name is Ulcetha Zhorvena, and we are a scholar second-class,” not that they couldn’t tell that from his ribbons.
“Thank you, Mer Zhorvena,” said the elder novice and padded away down one of the building’s long arms.
He was back very quickly and said, “The Cairad’athmaza would be very happy to speak to you. Follow us, please.”
Ulcetha followed him down the hall and across a small courtyard to a circular room, cracking plaster walls and cobwebs up in the dome where it was hard to reach, bookcases—which must have been specially built—following the curve of the wall all the way around, crammed with books, rolls of parchment stacked on top. In the center of the room was a desk, clearly also specially built, since it echoed the curve of the wall, but scarred and ink-stained, with stacks of papers held down with a variety of makeshift paperweights: a sextant; a pale green glass sphere the size of Ulcetha’s palm; an accounting ledger; a porcelain bowl, the glaze of which matched the glass sphere, full of paperclips; a small wooden statue of a cat. Next to the desk stood a tall, middle-aged elven man with gentle blue eyes and glasses nearly as thick as Ulcetha’s.
“Mer Zhorvena?” he said. “I am Selora Athmaza. How can I help you?”
Ulcetha had tried to rehearse for this all the way out from Chandler Street, but had found himself simply unable to imagine what the right thing to say was. He held out the ring box and said, “This belongs to you.”
Puzzled, Selora Athmaza took the box, opened it, and his eyes widened behind his glasses like a child’s reading a wonder-tale. “Is this…”
“As far as I know,” Ulcetha said carefully, “that is the Star of Cstheio. But I am no jeweler and my sources are…not impeccable.”
“Where…” said Selora Athmaza. “How…”
“I would prefer not to say,” Ulcetha said. He could feel the blush mounting in his face, but explaining would only make things so much worse. “I feel that the Star belongs to the Cairad’athmaz’are, so I’m returning it. That’s as much as I can tell you.”
“Wait wait wait!” said Selora Athmaza, rightly guessing that Ulcetha was on the point of fleeing. “You need not tell me anything you do not want to. I merely…” He looked down at the ring again.
“You will want to get a jeweler to look at it,” Ulcetha said.
“Yes.” Selora Athmaza looked at him, his mild blue eyes suddenly quite sharp. “And what can the Cairad’athmaz’are do for you in return?”
“What?” Ulcetha said, horrified. “Nothing! There’s nothing… I mean, I’m not asking for anything.”
“You’re quite right. Nothing we could do could possibly be fair recompense. But you surprise me. I would have thought there would be something .”
“There really isn’t,” Ulcetha said, face burning now. “And I have to go. I have a diligence to catch.”
“You are leaving Cairado?” And he could see the sharp mind behind the gentle eyes putting the pieces together.
“I am.”
“You were a friend of Osmer Trenevar?”
“I’m the one… I mean, ultimately, I’m the reason he was caught.”
“Ah,” said Selora Athmaza. “I understand.”
It occurred to Ulcetha that politics in the Cairad’mazan’theileian had to be at least as bad as politics in the University’s Department of History. He said, “So I’m just?—”
“Can I write you a letter of introduction?” said Selora Athmaza. “For certainly this marks you as a friend of the mazei.”
“You haven’t known me for five minutes!”
“But I know a great deal about you,” said Selora Athmaza. “It will only take me a moment—you notice that I am not asking you where you are going.”
“Thank you. I mean, yes, thank you, if you’re willing to write me a letter of introduction, I will gladly take it.”
Selora Athmaza nodded. He found pen and paper and wrote swiftly, a matter of a few sentences, then folded it and handed it to Ulcetha. “Wherever you are going, go with my thanks, and the good will of the Cairad’athmaz’are.”
“Thank you,” said Ulcetha, putting the letter with his other letters of introduction in his inside waistcoat pocket. He and Selora Athmaza bowed to each other, and he turned and made his way out of the Cairad’mazan’theileian. As he started walking toward the Blue Boar, where the diligence for Choharo would stop, it began to rain.