Ariah (27 page)

PART FOUR:

ALAMADOUR

CHAPTER 18

Vathorem’s status as an envoy awarded us a private car on a state-of-the-art train from Rabatha to Shalakesh. Not a private cabin, mind you: an entire car. It was strange and luxurious. The car was larger than my parents’ house, larger than Dirva’s apartment. I had a cabin with a bunk completely to myself, and the mattress in the bunk was softer than any I’d slept on before or since. The Qin rail agents brought us three meals daily from the dining car free of charge. It was a week and a half of creature comforts.

Still, the trip was not particularly pleasant for me. Where Dirva had always been a reactive mentor, a man who waited until I stumbled before he went to catch me, Vathorem was an interventionist. He wanted to see what I could do, he said, and when I wasn’t sleeping, he had me across the table from Dor trying to learn red magic, trying to learn to build walls or knock them down, trying to do things I’d avoided even thinking about for my entire life. He gave me no time to prepare, no time to adjust. He gave me no time to breathe.

I sat across a small table from Dor, the would-be king of Vilahna. The Qin coffee in our cups sloshed in rhythm with the sway of the train. Vathorem leaned against the wall, peering out the window at the desert sands. “You’re not even trying, Ariah.”

“
I am.” I dropped my face into my hands. “I am not Athenorkos. I’m Semadran.”

“
Tell that to your grandmother.”

We had been at it for hours. It was the second day on the train, and the night before I’d dreamt of magic. I had dreamt I drowned in great foreign wells of it, thick and rushing like a terrible river. “With all due respect, sir, I thought you were going to train me in shaping. I don’t see what this has to do with that. I don’t see how this will help me.”

Vathorem looked at me. “Dirva had a copy of
The Art of Shaping
. Did you ever read it?”

“
No.”

“
And you’re surprised you have no control?” I opened my mouth to say something—anything—but he waved at me. “Look, never mind that. All right. I know us folks and you folks talk like magic is this distinct thing, that you’re either this or that. I know that’s how you were taught—that there’s red magic and silver magic and blue magic. But I don’t think that’s true. There’s just magic. How can you master just one piece of what you have? You can’t. If you want to understand how to rein yourself in, and clearly you do, you got to understand how it fits with the rest of you. You got to understand the limits of your gift, Ariah. You might be a charmer, or you might pull a mirror. You are so quick with spoken language, and they say that’s a red thing. Things are rarely ever so clear-cut as theory suggests.” The train lurched. Vathorem lost his footing and half-fell into a chair. Dor stood up, but Vathorem waved him down again. “I’m fine. Sit down. Dor, charm him again. Ariah, try to pay attention this time.”

“
How can I pay attention if I’ve been charmed?”

“
Pay attention to what it feels like to you,” Vathorem said. He was frustrated, irritable. The only one who was not miserable was Dor.

“
I can’t think when I’ve been charmed!”

“
Then I guess you won’t get much thinking done in Vilahna.”

I glared at him. “You know I’m scared of that. I know you know it.”

“
Then you’d better get to work,” he said. “Charm him, Dor.”

I began to protest, but Dor had me in his clutches in half a heartbeat. He didn’t need to touch me. He didn’t even need to say my name. He just looked at me, caught my eye, and smiled. That was it; that was all it took. It was not like when Sorcha had charmed me at all. There was no pull with him, just a one-sided hazy fascination. “You’re so smart,” I said, pulling my chair a little closer. Dor laughed. He thanked me. “You are so comfortable with yourself.”

“
Oh, well, sometimes I am. Sometimes I’m not,” he said. “How do you feel?”

“
Me? Fine. I feel fine.”

“
Tell me how you feel.”

“
I feel…fine? How are you so sure of yourself?”

“
I am and I’m not. Depends.” He looked over at Vathorem and shrugged.

A flash of scalding magic burned me. It shook me out of the charms. I blinked and drew my knees up to my chest, an instinctive, protective gesture.

“
Ariah,” Vathorem said. His voice was heavy, tired. There was no anger in it, but there was little patience in it, either. “How do you lose yourself so quick? I read you, and there’s hardly any you in there to even read.”

The magic left me shaken. I felt exposed and vulnerable. I crossed to the other side of the cabin and wedged myself in the corner, turned away from both of them. “It just happens.”

“
You know you read Dor, there, when he charmed you. You know that? Those questions, you were parroting back to him the things he was thinking.”

I didn’t even know I’d asked questions. I had little memory of it at all.

“
It didn’t burn,” Dor said. “I didn’t know.”

“
Well, hell, boy, it was flattery. I’d not expect you to look all that close at it.”

Dor laughed.

A heavy silence settled over the cabin. I felt a tension mounting in Vathorem. It was a thing alive, this tension, a thing that grew, a thing with a beating heart of frustration. He left, and I immediately felt better. I sat down again across from Dor. “Don’t mind him,” said Dor. “He’s never been good with folks. Can’t take it personal. Try charming me now, without him in the room. Maybe it’ll go better when he’s not looming, making you all nervous.”

“
It won’t,” I said, but the truth was that I hadn’t been trying to charm him, not really. The truth was that I was afraid I could, and I was afraid of what might happen if I did.

“
You should try. No harm in trying,” he said, and I laughed. It was a brutal and loud laugh, disdainful. Dor raised his eyebrows.

“
There would be harm in succeeding.”

“
It’s just charms, Ariah.”

The train screeched. Switches clicked into place, and the train began to turn. My chair slid a few feet and landed against the window. Dor’s face went white; his jaw clenched. “That’s normal,” I said.

“
Nothing about this blasted thing is normal.”

“
Sure it is. It’s steam-run. What’s more normal than water?”

He held onto the table, white-knuckled, while the train turned south a little harder. “We’re going so fast,” he said quietly. “This great hunk of metal we’re in, it’s going so fast.” He stood up and held onto the window frame. “I’m sorry,” he said. He let out a shy, embarrassed laugh. “I’m sorry, I just…I’ll be glad when we’re out of this thing.”

“
You should sit on the floor,” I said.

“
What?”

“
Sit on the floor. It feels more stable on the floor. You can feel the rail, and you don’t swing so much.”

“
Oh.” Carefully, slowly, he moved along the wall until he found a spot clear of any furniture. He slid down the wall. There was an immediate look of relief on his face. “This is better.”

I watched him for a little while. A bowl of fruit slid across the table and into my lap. I ate a plum, soothed by the clatter of the train. “You said it didn’t burn?”

“
Not then, no,” said Dor. “It’s burned before when you read me. Like back in Rabatha. But when I charmed you, I didn’t feel a thing.”

“
Strange.” I sighed. “He’s right. I know nothing about myself. I have no idea what my gifts really are. How do you control something when you have no idea how it works?”

“
You don’t,” Dor said. “And you’ve got to use it to learn how it works. You sure you don’t want to try?”

I put the bowl of fruit on the floor and made my way across the cabin. I sat in front of him. “How do I do this?”

“
Vath told you.”

“
No, how do I really do this?”

“
Just feel me out. It’ll just click. Wait until there’s a tug, and you just coax me over. That’s it.”

“
But how? How do I do it?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know the mechanics. I just know how it works for me. I know it’s something to do with attention. Whoever it is you’re trying to hook, they’ve got to be focused on you. From there it’s just…intuition, I guess.”

“
Well…you’re…you’re paying attention to me now,” I said.

“
Oh, no, it’s more like I need to pay attention to
you
. Not the conversation, or what you’re saying, but you. You and me. I need to pay attention to you and me together. This moment where we’re sitting here, you and me. That’s the start of it.”

I tried. I did. I took his hands and leaned forward, peering into his face with a peculiar, willful intensity. “Dor? Shaliondor. I, uh…” I narrowed my eyes and leaned towards him a little more, searching for him, trying to fish him out. “Dor. Dor.”

He laughed. “Nothing.”

“
Really?”

He pulled his hands from mine and patted me on the shoulder. “Nothing.”

* * *

The farthest the railroad went was Shalakesh; from there we traveled by horse. By the time we reached Shalakesh, I had been charmed at least a hundred times. I’d been mirrored dozens of times. I had failed at both countless times. But I tried, and that was the important thing. As long as I tried, really tried, did not hold back in the least, Vathorem gave me encouragement. He could tell when I slacked, and he could tell when I feigned effort, and he would have none of it.

I found it a little hard to be around Dor. It felt like he’d seen me naked. He’d charmed me over and over again, and I had only the vaguest memories of what I did and said when caught in his thrall. It felt uneven between us. None of it seemed to matter much to him. He seemed on the surface a simple man, but he wasn’t and likely never had been. He had a shell of simplicity wrapped tight around him, like armor. There were times I woke in the night, my mind turning, and I knew I’d caught a glimpse of something when I’d read him in a charm, but I rarely knew what. I had no grasp of him. My attempts to read him outright were generally unsuccessful. Vathorem had taught him to wall up from a very young age. I didn’t know until then that the skill could be taught to someone without the gift, but it had, and he was much better at it then than I have ever been. Dor was utterly unperturbed by me, or at least he seemed to be, but I was a bundle of nerves around him.

When we got to Alamadour, we sold the horses. Vathorem gave me the money he got for them. “You’ll need a place of your own,” Vathorem said. “The palace is crowded. I’ll need space from you, and you’ll need space from me if the training’s to take.”

“
You think so?” I was dubious; remember, Semadrans live with their mentors. I had lived and eaten and slept at Dirva’s side for years.

“
I know so,” Vathorem said. “Especially you. You got to stake out who you are, what your roots are. You’ll not be able to do that with me around. I pull your focus. So, look, I’ve a friend who keeps a place here, but he’s retired to the City more or less, so it’s just sitting there wide open. You spend your days with me, at court, and your nights are yours to do with what you will.”

I looked out at the street. The people were uniformly red. I felt them staring at me, like a thousand pinpricks. I did not want to leave his side. “Are you certain this is the best way?”

“
I am.”

“
Because I…”

He patted my shoulder. “You’re a quarter red. Let that quarter rise to the surface,” he said. “Dor, I’ll meet you back at the palace. Tell your ma I’ll be there direct. Ariah, you come with me. I’ll get you settled.”

He led me four blocks east of the palace. There was a bar, the Pickled Bear, three doors down from the Alamadour Library. It was hardly a library, actually; certainly it was not Magi-made. It was a low building, wide and languid, built with stark right angles in some lazy approximation of Magi architecture. The Pickled Bear was a dark, fragrant place lit by oil lanterns. It seemed quaint until I realized there was no electricity in Vilahna. Vathorem went to the counter and bought a small jar of pipeherb. He handed me a key, told the bartender I was taking the apartment, and pointed to a set of stairs at the far end of the bar. “Isn’t there a separate entrance?”