Chapter 27
Edmund finished the movement, coming to stand in the centre of the ritual circle.
Then he shifted weight minutely to bring himself into a slightly better alignment.
He could partly explain why there was a tug against his solar plexus and hip that went away once he’d moved, but he understood only some of it.
Uncle Alexander was sitting on a stool in the far corner, out of the scope of the circle proper, and he nodded once.
Edmund took a breath and then went about undoing the whole thing.
There was a way in which it made him think about partnered dancing, where one person was ever going forward, and one backward, the turns mirroring.
He made a mental note to ask Uncle Alexander about the Council dances and how that worked sometime before tucking the thought away and focusing on what he was doing.
Rituals of this sort had dangers if anyone lost track of their attention.
Rituals that were designed to do something often did.
Once he was standing in the centre again, the ritual space deconstructed magically, he made a slight bow to Uncle Alexander. “Sir.”
Before he’d finished, Uncle Alexander was off the stool, taking even strides over, and then peering at Edmund. “What have you been up to this week? No, wait. Put your things away. I’ll make a cup of something to drink. Do you have any food up here?”
“No.” Edmund coughed once. “Sir. I could see if they have food downstairs.” Now he felt entirely off-kilter, like he’d missed something huge and important.
“That won’t be needed. You tidy things up.” Uncle Alexander went off immediately. Through the door into the other half of the room, Edmund heard the sounds of him putting on the kettle and rummaging for something in his satchel.
This was Uncle Alexander’s firmly professional mode, and Edmund didn’t know how to read it.
The tidying up was partly physical— sweeping up flower petals and salt on the floor— but Edmund found that calming.
Unlike an awful lot of his various work, magical and otherwise, he could see what he had done once he finished. It was a concrete change in the world.
By the time he brought the two tables back to store in the cabinets, Uncle Alexander was sitting down on the bench. He’d cleared enough space for a tray on the desk, with a pot of tea, two cups, and a small paper packet.
“Have I done something wrong?” Edmund hesitated. “Sir?” Formality seemed best right now. The acknowledgement of relevant status and authority here seemed relevant, at any rate.
“Sit.” Uncle Alexander leaned forward. “What have you been doing with yourself, please? Beyond your ordinary studies and such. I am familiar with your lecture schedule, after all.”
Edmund’s shoulder twitched, like when he’d been a boy and caught sneaking a biscuit or sweet. He looked to one side, then sighed, because it wasn’t as if Uncle Alexander would let him get away without answering. “It’s private, sir.”
“It is affecting your magic, so no, it is not private from me.” There was absolute silence for a good five seconds before Uncle Alexander took a breath and went on.
“I am not upset with you. Not yet, anyway. It would take your doing something quite awful for me to be upset. But you have obviously been exerting yourself magically, and I am concerned there may be consequences you have not considered. Do I need to be more formal about it? Would you rather come back to Ytene?”
“No, sir.” Edmund swallowed. Going home would feel good in a number of ways, but he would have to face his parents when his thoughts were entirely untidy and deal with whatever they thought on top of it.
He managed to look up and meet his uncle’s eyes.
“Could you confirm that we’re private, though? ”
Uncle Alexander considered, then stood. He first did a circuit of the ritual workroom, then went to the hall door, out into the hall, and back.
He didn’t particularly linger there, but he was brushing something off his hands when he came back.
Then, he turned once the door closed and latched behind him, and pressed his hand against the doorframe.
Edmund felt a wave of utter muffling quiet flow over him.
It filled the room as if it were honey, all the small sounds of the building and the people nearby, the feel of their magic, disappearing.
When Uncle Alexander came back, he tilted his head. “Did you discuss whatever the private matter was here at any point? Within, mmm.” There was a pause, rather the way some people looked when naming the vintage of a wine for a challenge. “The last three weeks. May Day.”
“Um.” Edmund had to think back. “The ninth. But I took care with the warding then. Otherwise, no one except me, you, and the scout.” Never mind that Pen was part of what would come up in this conversation. He took a breath. “Why, please?”
“There’s an echo of a particularly elegant sort of listening trace in the hall.
I don’t think it would have carried in here, but I’m uncertain.
I’ll have a word with the Dean about having someone go over the hallways.
That sort of thing is not on.” Uncle Alexander raised an eyebrow.
“Not the sort of magic meant to keep people from getting up to things in a workroom that aren’t meant for a workroom.
Those have an entirely different flavour to them. ”
“Oh.” Edmund swallowed. “Just here, or elsewhere?”
“That is an excellent question, and one worth investigating when we go down. Here. Take your tea, mix in that restorative, and I’ll show you how to spot them before we go down. Have you had anyone around at home?”
Edmund ducked his head. “Yes. Tuesday.”
“You had a busy Tuesday then. Tell me about it. Drink first, then talk, please.” The thing about it was that it wasn’t quite an order. Not that Uncle Alexander didn’t have full authority to give Edmund orders. Besides, Edmund would have obeyed even without the formal apprenticeship.
Edmund did not fight it now. He obligingly took the packet and found a powder inside it.
He poured the tea, poured a cup for Uncle Alexander, and then dumped the contents of the packet into his own cup.
The charms on the cups at least handled the problem of the tea being too hot to drink.
Then he took a taste, which was like sunlight, or rain after a drought, and blinked. “What is this?”
“You are fortunate in having friendly alchemists who like a challenge and who are familiar with the family’s magical nature,” Uncle Alexander said, amused.
“I’d already asked them to make something up that would be easier to take if you had supper in hall or out somewhere.
Looks like a headache packet. Best taken in a hot non-alcoholic liquid, but if what you have is water or alcohol, it will still work.
Some chance of hiccoughs in either case, apparently.
They’re working on that. You will persist in stretching your limits, I thought it best to have something on hand. ”
That made Edmund smile a little as well as relax a hair.
“Sir.” He swallowed perhaps half the tea before he tried to find somewhere to begin.
“I was using naming magic for a fair bit on Tuesday, sir. A complicated conversation, trying to hear how to navigate through it, and which parts the person was being truthful about. Someone walked me home. I had a good meal and a restorative. I slept well that night. I did not get as much done yesterday as I wanted.” Only about half the list of what he’d intended.
He swallowed a bit more of the tea, feeling the restorative sink in, before he added, “Two lectures today, and working on a paper in between.” This morning had been on the history of Greek and Latin as languages.
He had half a dozen things he wanted to read as soon as he got a chance, but the week’s paper for his tutorial had to come first.
“Mmm.” Uncle Alexander had an entire library of non-committal noises, and this was about the middle of them. “Explain what you were doing.”
Edmund laid it out as coherently as he could. He began, of course, with a summary of what he and Pen had noticed, then went on to the conversation in the punt. After draining most of the rest of his tea, he touched on the conversation they’d had in his rooms.
Now, it felt more like the pull of the confessional.
Or at least the way he’d heard about that, since the Carillons did not keep such traditions.
He elided some of the more personal details.
But in the circumstances he made it clear that he’d discussed learning Naming, the implications, and the two pieces of family history.
When he finished, Uncle Alexander poured him another cup from the pot before saying anything.
Then, slowly, he said, “We have not discussed outright the lonely road you’ve chosen.
We ought to at some point. Not tonight. Your rooms some evening, perhaps.
Or over the long vac. You think well of Pen Stirling, then? ”
“Yes, Uncle Alexander.” He swallowed, then eyed his cup and took a sip before going on.Honestly, he was curious what Uncle Alexander did with the information.
“When I talked to Ursula and Anthony about it, Ursula wondered if perhaps Pen had found me attractive despite not wanting to, and now she’s contemplating her assumptions.
” He ducked his chin, feeling absurdly young and uncertain.
“Ursula asked what I thought of Pen. I said she’s clever in ways I am, and ways I’m not, and—” He looked up, now decidedly feeling out of his depth.
“I can’t tell you why I trust her with this, but I find her company, erm. Trustworthy. Solid, like that.”