Chapter One #2
The winds influenced everything here, from fashion to architecture. Testylier House, my residence hall, was a five-story sandstone building with thick walls to block out the wind. The roof barely sloped so the winds would have difficulty peeling tiles away.
The door to Testylier House bore the same emblem as my jacket—an open book against a tree. Inside the foyer, a few worn but presentable chairs stood by the mailboxes. A desk took up most of the space, behind which the dorm’s guardienne, Madame Hadar, often sat. Her sharp eyes caught everything.
I opened my mailbox, anticipation surging at the sight of a beat-up packet with Mom’s handwriting. A creamy white envelope, which I ignored, lay alongside it. I ripped open the packet as I started up the stairs to the fifth floor, where I lived with Leah and two other scholarship students.
Two giggling girls came flying around the bend, their arms linked. They wore long coats with flaring skirts, much more fashionable than our school blazers, and kitten heel lace-up boots I coveted on a soul-deep level. The three of us pulled to an awkward stop.
“Oh, hello.” élodie bat Amit straightened the sleeves of her royal blue coat.
Birra Shachar said nothing, fixing her gaze over my shoulder.
They’d piled their hair high and embellished it with jewels and flowers.
You’d need wire frames, hair pads, a jar of mousse, and a thousand pins—all of them enchanted—to secure it against the winds.
In Talum, the styles of the rich seemed to exist to show they had the resources to be impractical.
My aunt had suggested I befriend girls like these, Talumizans from powerful families, but we had nothing in common, save family members with the same job.
Aunt Tirtzah served as one of the six representatives of the Judahite tribe on the Great Sanhedrin, the highest court in the land.
I only grasped how important people considered my aunt when strangers went out of their way to be nice—or invite me to the graduation festival.
She had a palatial house on Society Hill, the most exclusive neighborhood in the city.
But the house was hers only as long as she served on the Sanhedrin.
She wasn’t really wealthy, not like these two. And these girls knew it.
“Hi.” I forced a smile. “How are you two?”
“Great,” élodie said. “Heading out for the evening.”
“We got invited to a party at the Rocks,” Birra burst out, as though she couldn’t help herself. I tried to keep my stab of jealousy off my face. The Rocks lay on the southern side of the island, and I’d never heard of first-years attending the upperclassman parties there.
“What are you up to?” élodie asked, scrupulously polite. She was in the School of Government, and I’d have been shocked if she didn’t run for the Sanhedrin herself one day.
“Studying.” If I didn’t maintain high grades, I’d lose my scholarship and be sent home. “I have an Intro to T3 test tomorrow.”
They both winced. Intro to Theurgy and Thaumaturgy Theory was required for first-years and unanimously hated. “Good luck,” élodie said, and the two of them were gone.
Continuing up the stairs, I skimmed my family’s letters hungrily.
Dad reported on his current woodworking project and asked about my classes; Grandma gossiped about neighbors and my sisters; Mom said everyone loved and missed me, reminded me to eat well and get enough sleep, and asked if I’d made friends.
I swallowed hard. I wouldn’t tell my family and worry them, but it hadn’t been easy to adjust to life as a Lyceum student.
I loved Talum, and I’d been lucky to bond with the girls on my floor, but I felt out of my depth at school.
While I might have been the most dedicated student in my village, I was nothing special at the Lyceum.
Dad had tried to warn me, but I’d been too excited to listen.
Dad had grown up in Talum. He’d left at seventeen to become a sailor, to his parents’ dismay, then met my mother on leave in Port Naborre and never gone back.
He knew what the city was like—and he had been right.
The brightest student in a high plains village was considered deeply mediocre at the fabled Lyceum.
I had an ear for languages—my mother’s mother had spoken to me in her singsong southern dialect since I was a child, and I’d picked up foreign tongues from sailors in Port Naborre—but I didn’t have eighteen years of formal study.
Sighing ruefully, I skimmed my sisters’ letters, though the last envelope nagged at me. Better to get it over with fast. I ripped it open.
Dear Naomi,
I am hosting a festive gathering next month, on the 22nd. I will send a carriage for you at six. Please confirm you have an appropriate outfit. If not, I will send something.
Aunt Tirtzah
My stomach clenched. I’d met my aunt only once, and I wasn’t eager to repeat the experience. Also, what did “an appropriate outfit” entail?
A skittering up the stairs distracted me. I had no time for unwanted suitors, a looming exam, and a mouse. Cautiously, I took another step—and saw something glowing red with a long tail whip around the bend.
I blinked. Surely I hadn’t seen a salamander. Salamanders—according to legend—were born from stone calcite burned for seven years in fires built of myrtle wood. They died as soon as they were removed, their blood used to make one impervious to flame. It’d been a long day; I was imagining things.
At the top of the stairs, a worn carpet lined the wooden floor, threadbare from thousands of footsteps over the years.
Lights glowed in old-fashioned brass sconces, etched with the standard spell for lighting; the four of us had a schedule for painting them every morning with neshem oil so they didn’t run out of power.
At the end of the hall was my favorite detail: stained glass windows depicting olive trees.
Four doors faced each other, leading into matching sets of rooms. As I neared mine, I slowed. Something was off. Light glowed from the crack beneath the door, and I never left my lamps on. A faint scent, like the wind blowing off the desert, made the back of my neck prickle.
Had Leah been home, I’d have knocked on her door, but she was gone, and so were the others—Jelan and Gilli had a late class today.
If I was smarter, more cautious, or less tired, I would have called in reinforcements—the gendarme, or a rabbi, or someone from one of the other floors at least. But wasn’t it usually your imagination when you suspected a villain was hiding in your shower? I braced myself and opened the door.
Someone was sitting on the sofa.
The air around him wobbled, distorted like the shimmer above a fire. His bronze skin glowed from within. Perched on his shoulder sat a small, luminous red salamander.
When I entered, he looked up from the book in his lap, which I recognized as a present from my mother: A Household Guide to Demons.
His eyes were a pure, glossy black, no whites, no irises.
His mouth turned up at the corners. “Hello, darling,” he said, and his voice sounded like smoke, silvery and strange. “Welcome home.”