unwelcome companion then, the Houseman? Could you track her through him?”
“The emblem on his cloak was a round object—a ring perhaps—with three wavy lines in the center—”
“Lanaris Family. From your description—especially the hand movements—she’s probably a magic-worker. It fits. Lanaris’s interest would suggest a spellbinder. No doubt newly graduated. Lanaris aims to maintain a monopoly on the employment of the Seminary’s best students. They want her and she’s resisting.” He waved his hand like a street performer. “Simple.”
Tashnark squinted at his brother. “You’d make an excellent legal advocate, if you could just learn to be suitably corrupt. So how do I find her?”
Ishwarin swallowed a mouthful of ocar, unaccountably yet obviously savoring the light creaminess of the beverage. It left a scum of brown foam on his upper lip. “Ask Lanaris House,” he said.
iii.
Despite her sense that bridges had been burned behind her, Remis continued with plans to find independent work. In the morning, she woke bleary-eyed and lethargic and had to force herself to wash, have breakfast, dress and head out from her thin, cluttered rooms into the City. Everywhere it was the same: officials who had previously welcomed her enquiries now turned her away without explanation, agreements nearly signed were found to be faulty and lapsed or were discarded, no new custom approached her door. Over the following days, she would go to the docks to meet incoming ships, hoping to keep ahead of the spreading conspiracy that isolated her from her future, and there approached captains and foreign merchants, offering her skills. Some would express interest. But within the hour a richly attired figure would come to them with whispers and nods, and they would send her away.
“I’m sorry. We can’t use your services,” they’d say.
“Why?” she’d ask. “I can be competitive and guarantee the result.”
“I’m sorry.”
Once, pushed beyond self-pity into anger, she let go her restraint and accused a fat merchant’s agent of conspiring with Lanaris House to ruin her. The man laughed and had her removed from his office by force. When she threatened to go to the Ruling Council, he gestured carelessly for her to do so. He knew as well as she that it would get her nowhere.
Her shop, so lately a symbol of her new, expanding life, suddenly felt like a prison, its dark narrow workrooms cold with discouragement and failure. She spent some time binding minor power-spells into worthless trinkets, which she then hawked at a nearby market. One sold, but word got around somehow and before she knew what was happening, she was jostled and items were stolen in the crush; thugs appeared to channel passersby away from her. When she complained to a Sumis law enforcement officer, he commented that the markets were like that—not a fit place for someone of her status to peddle their wares.
“It’s more than that,” she insisted. “This is organized intimidation. I’ve been threatened by Lanaris House.”
The officer studied her intently. “You do have a permit to sell in open market, do you?”
“I’m a trained spellbinder. That gives me the right.”
Darkly, he insisted she accompany him back to the main Sumis offices at Mallos House, where he checked her credentials. After a delay of about three hours, she was told that her license could not be confirmed.
“I’m a graduate of the Seminary,” she said, astonished.
“I’m sure someone has misplaced the documentation, that’s all. It’ll get sorted out. But until it does, you must refrain from practicing your Art commercially. I’m sorry.”
Argument was useless. In a rage, she went to the Faen-Hassur Shas’torarb, which housed the Seminary and had been for so long her only home, and told the Dean her story. He was sympathetic, but it was clear that neither his jurisdiction nor his outlook extended much beyond the walls of the school. She talked to some of her teachers to the same end. It was her problem, they said. If she chose to resist the system, there was little they could do to help her.
It made her isolation all the more apparent. What friends she’d made during her years of study were scattered across the world now; only one had remained in Koerpel-Na—Seran, a young woman born far outside Vesuula and adept at various minor commercial magics. Accordingly, Remis sought her out and they went for a drink together, but already their paths had separated. Their talk was superficial, emotional connections weak. It left her feeling morose. More and more she thought of the family she’d left behind many years ago in the mountain plains just outside the northern Vesuulan border. Her father hadn’t wanted her to go, had instead wanted her to marry the son of a local landowner and thus cement the family’s local fortunes. “What else are girl-children for?” he’d yelled. They’d fought about it, long and hard; Remis had left home in a storm of argument and regret. She hadn’t seen either her father or his wife for over five years, though once her mother had written—a tense, clumsy missive which Remis had too easily discarded. To whom or to what was she connected? She’d abandoned her bloodline and the society she’d adopted was abandoning her. Perhaps it had been a mistake to place so much hope on a vision of the future. Of what real worth was it anyway?
“You must ask yourself what it is you want out of life, Remis,” one of her old teachers offered her. Right now, she didn’t know.
Walking home that afternoon, she passed the forge of a smithy whose skills she’d used on occasion when her own non-magical technical abilities hadn’t been up to the metal-working required for some particular object she was devising. The smithy was named Arhl Mogarni, and his ultra-pale skin and borderland accent branded him as much an alien in this cosmopolitan city as she was becoming herself. Koerpel-Na wasn’t as open a place as it pretended to be, she reflected. It was closed-off and unfriendly, greedy for foreign trade but subtly exclusive in its practices, even to those it had beckoned into the fold.
As she approached, she saw that the smithy was standing in his front yard, leaning against the large open door of his workroom—obviously seeking momentary relief from the interior heat. He noticed her and waved. On an impulse, she veered closer.
“Hello, Mogarni,” she said.
He acknowledged her with unexpected eagerness. “Please, it’s Arhl,” he said. “No formality necessary.”
“Taking a break?”
“Not entirely by choice.” He smiled a touch wryly. “Work is scarce.”
“For me, too. It’s hopeless.”
The look of concern that spread over his pale, bony features seemed overstated—she should have been more careful what she said. He had always adopted a fatherly air in her presence.
She shrugged. “It’s all right. I’m just feeling a bit sorry for myself. I’m finding it harder than I imagined. Independence, I mean.”
He nodded dumbly, as though he’d been close to revealing too much and had suddenly realized the fact. “You deserve better,” he mumbled.
“I’m sure things will improve.”
She wished him well and continued on her way, vaguely disappointed. What had she expected? There had been some sort of connection between Arhl Mogarni and herself, but it had felt distant and awkward. They hardly knew each other—and not personally—so how could it be otherwise?
* * * *
Her nights, lying alone in her rooms, filled with dreams and omens. These gnawed at her incessantly, like rats at a hessian grain-sack. She shivered in her bed, desperate to throw them off. But they gathered about her mind in ever-thickening clusters, finally coming together into shapes of terrible significance.
One night a few days after her abortive meeting with Lanaris House’s lackey—finding herself on the verge of acquiescence—Remis lay on her bed in the semi-dark, staring at the ceiling, wishing she could find some resolve. After a while the shadows seemed to move toward her. She blinked