11. Arienne
11
ARIENNE
In this place, both the men and the women, and even the walls and the furniture it seemed, wore a thick coat of makeup. The brothel owner, Lucretia, was a heartlander beauty whose age was difficult to determine. She never said a word to Arienne, only led her to her room in silence. Cain had said Lucretia owed him something. She didn’t ask what that debt might be.
The room on the third floor was small but comfortable. The bed was plusher than the one she’d had in the dormitory, and was covered in a bedspread with an intricate design, of men and women entangled in passionate embrace. There were a table and chair by the window. The carvings on the table legs and the back of the chair rivaled the bedspread in their scintillating depictions. Lucretia brought up sheets and sleep clothes, and a simple meal. It was a rich stew of meat and potatoes.
Lucretia wordlessly showed her the escape route out the window. A sturdy ladder was already in place. Arienne briefly wondered why the room should come with a way to escape it, but her interests quickly turned to the food.
Arienne carried the small tray to the bed before starting on the stew. She was feeling almost relaxed. The potatoes were hot enough to scald the roof of her mouth but tasted utterly divine in her hunger. Before Lucretia left the room, she tapped the bolts on Arienne’s door. Arienne got up from her stew and slid the bolts shut behind her.
Eldred then spoke from the room inside her mind.
“When can you make it to the Senate?”
“I have to take care of myself first, I told you. And what business do you have with the Circuit of Destiny?”
“I’ll tell you when the time comes. But first, I would appreciate it if you could unravel these bandages. I can’t move my arms.”
“Only if you keep your promise.”
The bandages that wrapped the Power generators were to prevent leakage of the Power. It wasn’t mentioned in her studies, but they also seemed to have a restrictive function against Eldred himself. She was afraid to imagine what would happen if she unwrapped Eldred’s bandages in the room of her mind.
“Just my head then? I can hardly see in front of me.”
Arienne didn’t answer.
“… All right, then. For now. I shall teach you the magic I promised you.”
He was acting as if he were doing her a great favor. As if he escaped his coffin and the Academy all on his own. Arienne went on eating her stew.
“My magic is the magic of memories. The principle is to re-create in the mind something one has previously experienced.”
“Like the room you’re in?” asked Arienne between mouthfuls of stew.
“Exactly. My expertise was in reanimating the memories of the dead and making them live again. Doing this inside one’s mind is mere imagination; making it happen in the outside world is magic. That you created this room and were able to move me from the real world into it is a great feat for someone with as little experience as you have.”
“You’re saying I can learn how to make whatever I imagine come to life?”
Eldred made a sound like a scoff.
“Imagining it is not enough. You must really believe in it. If it’s not a memory, it will not work. And you’re not creating something out of your imagining. You are using an image in your mind to gather your focus on the spell.”
“What’s the difference?”
“It would take years to explain that to you. Today, you cast off your robe in the market, did you not? Do you remember the spell you used?”
“I…”
Why hadn’t she noticed until now? It hadn’t been a spell she’d learned before.
“You were applying something you had learned when you made this room. To think of cutting the thread of your robe, you must’ve learned how to sew back home.”
Arienne nodded, chewing her potatoes. It had nothing to do with sewing. No seamstress would make a garment that would unravel at the snap of a single thread. She had imagined a thread that did not exist and cut that instead. Despite what Eldred insisted, that hastily and instinctively wrought spell had worked with just her imagination. As she opened her mouth to contradict him, something told her it was a good idea not to let Eldred know.
“I shall teach you what’s immediately useful, the things you need to know to protect yourself.”
Eldred spoke a few words, syllables her tongue was not used to. Arienne repeated them. A kind of strength swirled on the tip of her tongue, summoned by the incantation from an unfamiliar realm of sorcery. She didn’t have an inkling as to what language the words were, or even if they were human words.
“This is a spell that ends the life of your enemies. Just a few words and any man or woman would die where they stand.”
Arienne was aghast.
“Of all the… Killing someone with just words? With no ingredient or ritual?”
“The incantation itself does nothing more than call the attention of the universe to the matter at hand. Trying to recall something as vividly as possible and convincing the universe that this is a fate that must absolutely happen is a difficult thing. You have talent, but if your images are not clear, it will not take effect. Now, try to remember a time when you killed someone. Try remembering it as vividly as possible. Try re-creating the scene here in this room.”
Arienne almost spat out a piece of potato. “I don’t have such vile memories!”
Eldred made something of a sigh.
“How easy the lives of sorcerers are today! In my time, we… Well, you were trapped in that minuscule school since an early age, studying things far from real magic, I suppose it isn’t surprising this should be so. What about beasts, then? Sheep or chicken? You must have struck a sheep’s head with an axe or twisted the neck of a chicken.”
“Never.”
“You, the daughter of a farmer?”
“I’ve cracked an egg or two.”
She put another spoonful of stew in her mouth.
“Cease this eating and pay attention!” Eldred had raised his voice. The bandage around his mouth fell, revealing two shriveled lips. Arienne almost flipped the tray in her revulsion.
“Before I ended up this way, there was a line of young sorcerers going out the door begging me to accept them as apprentices, you ungrateful—”
“You keep talking about killing this and killing that, but it is odd that you’re the one who ended up killed.”
Eldred fell silent.
“I escaped because I didn’t want to end up like you,” Arienne added.
She was beginning to feel angry. She had expected him to be a poor, tortured soul of a noble sorcerer, but from the moment they escaped the Academy, he had been saying nothing but the vilest things. And he had been a murderer as well! She couldn’t forget the skeleton with its broken neck.
“Are you saying you refuse to learn sorcery from me? That you will not listen to anything I say?”
“You should say something worth listening to!” she shouted. “What have you done so far to help me? I don’t know what grand country you were the great sorcerer of, but ever since we left the school you’ve behaved more like a murderer or a slaver! If we hadn’t been lucky enough to meet Cain when we did, we’d both be in the dungeon of the Office of Truth right now!”
Eldred grew silent. His head was bowed, and so was his waist. Arienne realized her voice had been too loud and was about to open the door and peek out, but the sight of the sliding bolts sapped the energy from her. She sat back down.
It was deep into night now. She could hear coquettish voices and laughter and music seeping in from the outside, reassuring her that no one was paying attention to her. Arienne closed the door to the room in her mind. She finished the stew, put on the sleep clothes, and crawled in between the sheets. She was asleep as soon as she closed her eyes.
When Arienne woke, she heard no music or laughter. Drawing back the thick red drapes brought in sunlight that almost blinded her. She closed the drapes and looked down at the shoes and dress she had cast aside. They were dirty from the street. The shoes she could clean, but the dress was torn in places.
Someone knocked at the door.
“Just a moment.”
Arienne drew back the bolts and opened the door. Lucretia stood outside with a wooden basin and towel in her hands. Steam rose from the basin. There was also a leather sack on the floor resting against the doorframe.
Lucretia’s attire was plainer and looked more comfortable than yesterday’s. She was wearing nothing on her face, but her age was still difficult to tell. As Lucretia set down the basin on the side table, Arienne carried in the sack. Lucretia tidied up a little and left the room with the empty bowl from last night’s stew. She didn’t speak, but her smile was warm and her movements respectful, which went far to reassure Arienne. What had Cain done for Lucretia, that she should be like this to her?
Along with the rucksack, there was also a pair of sturdy-looking boots, tied together by their laces. They fit comfortably on her feet. The rolled-up bedding on top of the sack was fastened by string. Inside the bag were two pairs of trousers and two tunics made of thick, tough blue material. They were patched in the elbows and knees with leather. Arienne, when she’d come from Arland to the Capital, had worn such clothes. There was an undyed woolen scarf, perfect for wearing over the t’laran on her neck. At the bottom was some dried meat and hard bread, enough for three days, or even four if she was frugal. There were plenty of places to get food and drink along the Imperial highway, so these were just for emergencies.
Arienne suddenly realized she hadn’t given Cain any money. He had done this for her on his own coin. Would she ever see him again to pay him back? Regretfully enough, that would be difficult. She needed to get as far away as possible. Like in a book, she could choose to have adventures around the periphery of the known world. Maybe somewhere down south where it was never cold. Or stow away on a ship at shore and sail to an island in the middle of the Great West Sea where no one would find her. Kaya, the girl who taught Arienne the sleeping spell at the Academy, had confessed that she learned her spells from a witch in hiding, back in her homeland. Perhaps Arienne could learn Eldred’s sorceries and become such a witch herself…
She changed into her new clothes. It was good they were a bit loose, but the chafing of her skin against the rough fabric could become a problem. Arienne took them off again and washed her face and body with the hot water in the basin, careful not to splash too much on the floor. She then washed her dirty dress in the lukewarm water. It was torn, but it would be enough to wear underneath her new clothes. She draped the wet dress on the table and chair, pulling open the curtains so the wintry sunlight fell on it. She made sure the bolts on the door were drawn shut once more and went back underneath the covers.
After midnight, when the lower floors were still too loud and bustling for anyone to notice, she would take the window exit Lucretia showed her and slip into the unlit back alley. But she still hadn’t decided where to go from there. Well, she would have to leave the Capital and the Imperial heartland, and then she could go on to think of what was next.
She thought more about being a hermit sorcerer in some faraway place where even the Office of Truth wouldn’t bother to look. To do that, she needed to learn sorcery; she couldn’t move forward into the dark with the candle-lighting spell as her only weapon. Hoping Eldred wouldn’t hold her harsh tone from the night before against her, Arienne drifted off to sleep once more.