is why,” Kaab countered, her chin high, “it was better that I be here.”
“I have half a mind to expel you from the service and make you chief nursemaid to all the children for the rest of your life. If you’ve imperiled our trade here—”
This was not a serious threat. She knew it, and she knew that he knew she knew it. “Don’t be ridiculous. If she saw me at all, she saw a barbarian servant. When it comes to dealing with her, you’ll be better off with my help than without it. You appear, for example, not to have caught her mistake.”
This brought him up short. “Which was?” he said after a pause.
“When you told her you would have to ask Auntie Saabim about her proposal, she began to chatter. She had not thought Kinwiinik women to have authority in our houses. And if she didn’t bother to learn before she came that the Balam are nobility, then she believes us unimportant and more easily dealt with than is the case. She may be a jaguar, but she is not the jaguar you think she is.”
Chuleb said nothing; he only stood, fuming.
“Fine,” he snapped finally. “But if you’re going to impersonate a servant then you can do so for the rest of the day. This office is a disaster. I want it as spotless by dinner as if Chaacmul had washed it with the sea.”
It would not do to show her glee. She schooled her face until she resembled a statue guarding the royal tomb. “As you wish.”
• • •
Micah was exhausted.
People kept getting angry at her. Sometimes it was when she told them why they were wrong. Sometimes it was when she asked them questions, sometimes it was when she didn’t ask them questions. Sometimes it was when she answered their questions. Sometimes it was when she did what they’d told her to do. She wasn’t acting any differently, but for some reason things that seemed to be fine on the farm were not fine here, and she often wanted to squeeze herself into a tiny ball in the corner and disappear.
But the exhaustion and the tension were worth it, because when they weren’t getting mad at her for doing or saying the wrong thing, the people here were talking about numbers and calculations and shapes and patterns and all the incredible ideas that her family seemed not to care about at all—not just talking about them but loving them, respecting them, understanding how beautiful they were. And it turned out that those ideas, the things she spent all her time thinking about, had names! Seven-siders were actually called heptagons, for example, and twelve-siders were dodecagons, but that was just the beginning. The shapes and everything else made her mind move faster and faster and faster, until her body was filled with light. And if she had gained the key to so much in such a short time, how much would she learn if she stayed longer? In three days Uncle Amos would start sowing the early peas for spring, and she felt both that she wanted to be there to help and that she wanted to stay here, which was awful. That was another exhausting aspect of being here. Every time she tried to figure it out, her head started to throb in time with her heart, and she had to do numbers until she could calm herself down.
Micah reached for a pen and a sheet of foolscap.
Dear Aunt Judith and Uncle Amos, she wrote. Sorry I’m not back yet I love it here even tho the people are confusing sometimes. Twelve-siders are actually called something I don’t know how to spell yet, but they have a name and I now I know it. Don’t forget to plant the peas in three days I will see you soon. Love, Micah.
• • •
“But if you despise him so,” said the duke from the blue damask couch by the window, as Rafe paced around the library of Tremontaine House, his long stride made longer by impatience, “then why continue attending his lectures?”
“If I’d known I was going to have to pay for my chocolate by rehearsing my unpleasant and embarrassing career in the College of Physical Sciences, I don’t think I would have stepped into your carriage, after all.”
The chocolate had been amazing, better than the finest he’d ever tasted at his father’s table. If this was what Tremontaine served to casual visitors, Rafe couldn’t imagine what he brought out for special occasions. And somehow it had only made Rafe’s mood worse.
“The chocolate is gratis. The rehearsal is entirely at your discretion.”
Rafe stopped pacing and sighed. He was above rudeness for the sake of rudeness, or he ought to be. But he was distracted by the exquisite cut of the Duke’s black breeches against the deep red velvet of the couch. “He’s brilliant, for one thing,” he finally brought himself to say. “His take on planar geometry, his work on elliptical motion, his commentary on Delphin’s mapping of the stars. He thought I was brilliant too, until I realized that the College’s guiding principle—and his—was wrong.” The delicacy of the man’s hands as he brought his chocolate cup to his lips was extraordinary. Rafe turned away from Tremontaine to face the crackling fire. “He’s also the only one left.”
“Pardon?”
Rafe sighed, defeated. His shoulders slumped. He ought to turn back around and face the duke again, but for some reason he was reluctant to do so. “I started with de Bertel, when I first came to the University,” he said to the fire, and rubbed his hands together. “Then I abandoned him for what seemed greener pastures. But gradually I’ve gone through most of the other professors, breaking with each one as I grew more and more cognizant of their mistake. I ended up back with de Bertel, who forgave my betrayal at first, but now that I have the knowledge to back up my intuitions it’s worse with him than it ever was with any of the others. Today’s fracas was the inevitable result of the last several years of my life.”
“And what did it concern?”
He turned back to the duke and his eyes suddenly filled with the sight of cheekbones. “The fact—not the idea, my lord, but the fact—that the earth revolves around the sun. I’ve been driving myself mad trying to prove it, but I can’t. No matter how many observations I make, no matter how many measurements, the math never works out right.” His hands had started moving again, in ever-larger sweeps and circles. “Or it does, but only because I add some lunatic number of epicycles, which simply compounds the problem I’m trying to solve.”
“Which is?”
“Our current, stupid, stupid cosmology has the universe rotating horizontally with respect to the earth, but also moving on an epicycle oblique to that orbital rotation, so—” Rafe felt himself begin to step forward, thought better of it, stopped.
“Never mind. Go back to the doctors. You’ve worked with most of the others?”
“The ones whose lectures I never attended are idiots.”
“Then I don’t understand. How were you planning to find anyone to sit on your examination board who would pass you, let alone sponsor you for a doctorate?” The duke turned over a questioning hand palm up, his wrist framed by elegant lace. “If everyone on the Physical Sciences faculty either hates you or is an idiot?”
“Oh, I had it all worked out,” said Rafe, closing his eyes. “The examiners were going to be Chauncey, Martin, and Featherstone. Chauncey is an idiot, but I’m almost certain he agrees with me, alone on the faculty, though he wouldn’t dare say it out loud. Martin is also an idiot, but he’d pass me if he thought it would increase his chances of getting me into his bed, which, by the by, it wouldn’t; I may be free with my favors, but I don’t do charity work. And Featherstone hates me, but he’s a coward and invariably votes with the majority. He’d vote with the majority if they proposed to draw and quarter his daughter.” He opened his eyes, only for them to be drawn again to the breeches. “Which means that if I had Chauncey and Martin then I’d have him, too.”
“I see. But with de Bertel on your committee—”
“Exactly! That was the only possible combination of faculty.”
“And so you think your chances of passing the exam are shot.”
Rafe emitted