Chapter Eleven #2
“Good.” Daziel craned his neck back, taking in the library’s pedimental sculpture, which could just be seen through the fog.
It showed the symbols of the twelve tribes interacting.
The sun, moon, and stars of Issachar took center stage, while my tribe’s symbol, the gazelle, leaped gracefully in the left corner. “We’ve not been in here before.”
“It’s the library.” I hadn’t come here since Daziel appeared, finding the idea of keeping him quietly entertained too stressful. But sometimes a girl needed to do research, like when she had a major spell to write. “You have to be quiet.”
“You have so many rules,” Daziel said. But softly.
The front doors opened into a spacious atrium, all white marble and gleaming statues of scholars.
I led him into the main hall, where wooden beams arched high above endless stacks of books.
Tables clustered in the center, surrounded by green velvet chairs, almost all filled by students and piles of books—plus, often, the surreptitious remnants of lunch.
Through the stacks we went, into a hall built three hundred years ago.
Burnished wooden shelves held heavy treatises; narrow windows let in slats of light, and the ceiling arched in a dome.
Chandeliers hung all down the long hall above wooden tables with brass lamps, and more students filled these seats, quieter than in the main hall.
I found us a spot at the edge of one of the tables. Daziel settled across from me. He spoke sotto voce, scanning the room around us. “So this is where the books live.”
I smiled, pulling notebooks from my rucksack. “I’ll be right back. I have to get a few more.”
He came with me. Refrains for Revealing, Advanced Technopaigniac Forms, and a dusty old title called The Elegant Cast, which discussed writing spells inspired by foreign languages. All of which would hopefully help me figure out how to amend the spell as Professor Altschuler had requested.
Daziel carried them back to the old hall. “You don’t have to stay,” I whispered to him. “I’ll be here a couple of hours. You could play knockball or whatever.”
Daziel shrugged. “I have some work to do too.”
At home I often worked in companionable silence with Daziel, usually while he read or crocheted or, recently, tried out recipes.
Yet I had no idea what library-appropriate work he had.
Foiled by my curiosity, I kept glancing over.
I wasn’t the only person covertly watching him—so were half the other students.
While they’d become used to him enough not to stare, sidelong looks and murmurs still followed him wherever he went.
Daziel cupped his hands together. When he pulled them apart, a ball of light hovered between them. He began playing with it the way a cat toys with yarn.
I leaned forward, mystified. Looking at the bright sphere didn’t hurt the way looking at the sun did, but it didn’t feel comfortable, either. Like the blurred distortion around Daziel, it looked off, like there was something behind or beneath it I couldn’t understand.
“What’s that?” I finally whispered across the table.
“Magic,” he whispered back. “Why are we whispering?”
“The quiet thing.”
“Right, right.”
Magic, he’d said—but shedim magic, not letterform. “Why’s it look like that?”
He paused in his motions and appeared intrigued. “How’s it look?”
I watched the threads expand and contract. “Like you’re pulling at a ball of shimmering light. Does it look different to you?”
“Shedim retinas are different than humans’, so yes. We can see a different range of particles than you can. And we have what you might call thaumaturgical sensing.”
“You can sense magic.”
“Essentially.”
“So, what do you see?”
He looked at the light. “Mess. You know how wool is combed before being spun? I’m essentially combing my magic. Neatening it up, keeping it aligned and tidy.”
“That’s your magic?”
He nodded, looking amused. “Some of it. Interesting you can see it. Humans usually can’t.” He turned to the closest student, a boy at the table behind us wearing a red Engineering blazer. “Can you see anything between my hands?”
The boy flinched, stared at Daziel, looked at me, then shook his head very quickly.
Daziel nodded, satisfied. “See?”
I swallowed, fixing on the very distinct golden glow. I wasn’t a huge fan of being able to see things other humans couldn’t. “An effect of the betrothal?”
“Probably.”
Great. “You don’t have, say, a list of all the things that might happen to me because of the betrothal?”
“Nope,” Daziel said cheerfully. “Since you’re a human, I have no idea.”
Cool.
~ ~ ~
I spent the rest of the week improving the spell. Daziel was unexpectedly easygoing about my lack of attention, perhaps due to knockball season ramping up; he attended his biweekly practices with great fervor and often went out with Ezra and other teammates afterward to discuss strategy.
One afternoon, when he was at practice and I was trying to figure out how to trim the beginning of the spell without losing any pertinent information, a bell in my rooms chimed.
The bell connected to a panel in the lobby of Testylier House.
When a visitor wrote their name in the clay tab downstairs, then pressed a resident’s name, the writing appeared in the resident’s matching tab upstairs.
Such spells couldn’t work over great distances without shocking amounts of neshem, but they were useful within the same building. Tirtzah bat Tovah, my tab read.
I slid my feet into my dorm slippers and spared a glance for my hair before darting out the door. This was it, then. She’d decided whether to tell my parents about Daziel.
Downstairs, I found Aunt Tirtzah in the receiving parlor, reading a briefing.
I tried to take in the room from her perspective.
It was very much a student parlor, worn furniture, faded wallpaper, glow globes thirty years out of style.
Two windows looked out at the street, where students hurried by. “Hi, Aunt Tirtzah.”
She put away her papers. “Naomi. Hello.”
“Can I get you something to drink? Tea, coffee, water?”
“Tea would be lovely.”
I set the water to boil and offered her the parlor’s eclectic mix of teas to choose from. She selected chamomile, and I followed her lead. I could use some soothing.
“I’m sorry to impinge upon you.” She regarded the basic furnishings in a way that made me suspect she was sorry to subject herself to student housing. “I’m here to talk about Daziel.”
“I figured.”
“You’re in over your head.”
I winced. “You’re going to tell my parents?”
“Frankly, I should do more than that. I should banish him.”
Startlement jumped through me, then anger. That wasn’t her call to make. “That seems excessive.”
“Is it?” she returned, more forcefully than I’d expected.
“Naomi, you have no idea what he might do to you, out of amusement or by accident. If this is because you wish to have a tutor so you can maintain the grades for your scholarship—I can afford a tutor.” She sighed, rubbing her forehead.
“Unfortunately, I don’t have the money for your tuition, or I’d pay it outright.
But I can help navigate loans. You can live with me, and you won’t have to pay for housing. ”
I lowered my head, embarrassed she’d do so much for me. “Thank you.” The water boiled, and I poured us both our tea. “But you don’t have to.”
“That makes it sound like it’s not about your bargain, then,” she said heavily. “It’s about him.”
I bit my lip. I should probably tell her about how the betrothal bound us together; she’d probably help nullify it. But for some reason, I was reluctant. Daziel was an infuriating demon, but he was my infuriating demon, and our arrangement worked. “It’s complicated.”
She rubbed her nose. “I’m not unaware of the appeal of unique or forbidden romances. I was eighteen once. But the two of you have no future. I say this not to be hurtful but to set your expectations. Sleep with him, laugh with him—”
“I’m not sleeping with him!” I interrupted, mortified to have this brought up again. My mortification doubled when my aunt gave me a pitying look. It wasn’t clear if she pitied me for not having sex or if she thought I was lying.
“Enjoy your time—but remember he’s not going to stay. He’ll be gone with the winds.”
“Why are you even talking to me, then?” I said bitterly. “If you’ve made up your mind to banish him?”
She studied her mug. “Because I haven’t. I should banish him and tell your parents. As your aunt, I should protect you from inevitable heartbreak, and potentially worse.”
I straightened, curious. This wasn’t the turn I’d expected our conversation to take. “But?”
“But I’m also a Judahite representative on the Sanhedrin. And having a shayd in my corner is leverage. People who don’t normally socialize with me will accept invitations if it means they might meet a shayd.”
This shocked me more than it should have. “You’re as bad as the classmates who asked me out so they could meet you. You want to use me.”
“If it leverages me connections so I can make more allies and pass better laws? Yes.” She stirred her tea. “You’re worried about the weakening maelstroms, the strengthening winds, the birds disappearing?”
I nodded.
She gave me a grim smile. “So am I. I’ve been trying to raise funding and awareness and get more research into what’s happening.
As long as you’re not in actual danger, yes, I’m willing to use you.
Your inevitable heartbreak?” She gave a one-shouldered shrug.
“I’ll accept that as collateral damage.”
Brutal. I was almost impressed.
At that moment, Daziel walked past the parlor door toward the stairs, then doubled back on seeing us. He was kitted out in his knockball clothes, his equipment bag slung over his shoulder, bright athletic shoes on his feet. “Hi.”
Aunt Tirtzah stared. He couldn’t look less dangerous if he’d tried. He looked like a Lyceum student badly in need of a shower. Which should have made me wrinkle my nose, but his sporty, sweaty demeanor worked for him. “I know,” I said to my aunt. “He’s very confusing.”
“You play knockball?” Aunt Tirtzah asked.
“Middle back,” he said cheerfully. He leaned his bag against the wall—definitely not something the dorm guardienne would approve of—and swung a chair around to sit in backward. “You a fan? What’s your team?”
“The Green Sparrows.”
I gaped at my aunt. “You follow knockball?”
She cast me a droll look. “I do have hobbies.”
“Naomi hates knockball.” Daziel snagged my tea and drained it in several long gulps. He slipped the lip of the mug into his mouth as though ready to chomp down, then caught my side-eye and hastily put it on the table.
“I don’t hate it.” I removed the mug from his reach, overly aware of how intimate sharing a drink looked. “It’s just not my thing.”
“Naomi only likes things more than a century old.”
“Knockball was created in the 5540s,” Aunt Tirtzah said. “So it’s a hundred and twenty years old.”
“Really?” Curiosity piqued, I tried to imagine students in old-fashioned uniforms knocking about a ball.
Daziel and Aunt Tirtzah laughed, and I bumped Daziel with my shoulder. “Leave me alone,” I grumbled, but I was smiling.
He grinned back, but the grin faded as he turned to Aunt Tirtzah. “You think I’m a threat to Naomi.”
“Are you?”
“No. We’re betrothed. Any threat to her is a threat to me. I am beholden to protect her.”
I scrunched up my nose. “That’s a little paternalistic.”
He frowned. “How is it paternalistic to say I want to keep you safe?”
“Because I’m responsible for my own safety.”
Now he looked full-on irritated. “Oh, and you’re so good at safeguarding yourself?”
I glared at him, peeved he’d alluded to my run-in with the winds before my aunt. “I’ve survived this long.”
“All right,” Aunt Tirtzah interrupted, looking back and forth between us.
“Daziel, I’ll be frank. You seem like a nice boy, but your kind have a reputation for mischievousness.
If you’re going to continue staying with Naomi without any interference on my part, I’m going to request you attend twice-monthly events at mine. ”
Daziel perked up. “Parties?”
I should have anticipated Daziel would be thrilled by this turn of events.
Aunt Tirtzah raised her brows. “Occasionally. Also luncheons and dinners.”
Daziel smiled. “And what do I get?”
“Not banished.”
He grinned. “Fair enough. I warn you, though, I am not easy to banish.”
“I wouldn’t challenge me,” Tirtzah said calmly. Probably Sanhedrin members were better spellcasters than Lyceum students.
“Also, she’ll tell my parents,” I said. “Which might be worse.”
Daziel dealt me a mock-hurt look. His hair was particularly disarrayed today from practice, and my fingers itched to comb it into place. “You haven’t told your parents about me?”
I rolled my eyes. “Have you told yours?”
Daziel ignored this. “I’ll make a deal. For each visit, we see a new part of Talum.”
Given my aunt had threatened to banish him if he said no, I didn’t think I was the person he should bargain with—but it sounded fun. “Deal. Unless I have an exam to study for.”
He groaned. “You always have an exam.” He appealed to my aunt. “Can’t you do something about it?”
She regarded him from above her tea. “About…exams?”
“They are the bane of my existence,” he said, a touch melodramatically. “Do you know, she refused to go see The Barber and the Violinist, playing for three nights only, because of an exam?”
“Actually, I think that was because I had to finish an essay for my Keft class.”
He sighed. “I could have written the essay.”
“I don’t let him,” I told my aunt quickly. “He helps me study but doesn’t do any of my work.”
“I would never,” Daziel said disdainfully, despite having literally just said he would. “It is so tedious.”
Aunt Tirtzah stood, biting back a smile. “I’ll see you in a fortnight.”