told Lan that with the training he was getting in school, he’d never even be good enough to be a drudge magician— that none of your family had any real magical talent, and that your father must know it or he wouldn’t be sending all of you to the day school.”
“Oh,” I said. Even hearing about it secondhand made me just as mad as Lan had been. No wonder he’d yanked William right up to the treetops like that. For a minute, I was sorry I’d tried to calm Lan down.
I told Dick thanks and trudged on home, thinking hard the whole way. I wasn’t sure if I should tell Papa what I’d learned, or not. It felt important. But I could also feel a nasty part of me that wanted to tell Papa the whole story in order to get William into trouble, a part that wanted its own revenge on William for what he’d dared to say about Papa and Lan.
CHAPTER 7
THAT SPRING LEADING UP TO MY TENTH BIRTHDAY, WE HAD MORE rain than a mammoth has hair. It rained in slow, steady, daylong streams and in sudden rushes like someone dumping a bucket out. The streets that weren’t paved went ankle-deep in mud or worse, so that taking out a carriage or wagon became something that took care and planning. The few days of sun we had were nothing like enough to dry things out.
Then, just as school was letting out at last, it dried up and got hot. The churned-up mud took a week to bake nearly as hard as bricks, full of deep cracks that were wide enough to stick your whole finger in. The leaves on the trees curled up, and the grass dried out hard and sharp as pins. Over it all hung the sun and the dust. Not a breath of air stirred.
Naturally, the boys spent all their time down at the creek. Lan went with them whenever he could get away from his extra magic lessons. Everyone else stayed on the porch, because even Papa’s best spells couldn’t cool the house off enough for comfort in the daytime. Everyone except me, that is.
I spent my time on the roof, in the hiding place I’d found the summer before. If I didn’t move much, it wasn’t any hotter there than on the porch, and no one could interrupt me to do chores or errands.
The day Professor Graham came by, I was on the roof and Mama and Papa were on the porch, having the same conversation they’d had nearly every day since the hot spell started. Mama complained about the heat and the dust and the extra work it made, and Papa said she should think of the settlers, trying to farm when first they couldn’t plant for the rain, and now anything they had gotten in was drying up and blowing away. Mama said if she felt for anyone, it was the settlers’ wives, who had even more dust to deal with than there was in the city. They could go on like that for hours, play-arguing. They’d already been at it long enough to chase Rennie and Nan and Allie off to find someone to visit.
I wasn’t really listening, just enough so I’d notice if either of them said anything about me. I recognized Professor Graham’s voice when he turned up, and something in it when he and Papa exchanged greetings made me close up my book and pay close attention.
Papa must have heard it, too, because he didn’t waste much time on socializing. “What brings you over, Professor?” he asked as soon as everyone had finished with their hellos.
“There’s been another incursion,” Professor Graham said, sounding grim. “Near Braxton, this time. Ten families, wiped out.”
“Braxton!” Mama gasped. “So close!”
“It’s a good fifty miles west of the river, Sara,” Papa said mildly.
“Yes, and there’s no reason to think the Great Barrier is weakening,” Professor Graham put in hastily. “But the lesser spells the settlements have been using just aren’t up to the job of holding back the wildlife.”
“Not in a year like this one, anyway,” Papa said. “Any word on what it was?”
“An assorted mob,” Professor Graham said. “A herd of mammoths overran the magician’s barrier and trampled the fences. They’d been stampeded by a mixed pack of Columbian sphinxes and saber cats, and there were scavengers following after—jackals and terror birds, from the sound of it. There were only four survivors.”
“Oh, Daniel,” Mama said.
There was a short silence. I thought about what Professor Graham had said. We’d studied the animals of the North Plains Territory in natural history in school. They were divided into two sorts, the ordinary and the magical. The ordinary ones were things like mammoths and dire wolves and saber cats and terror birds, and the magical ones were steam dragons and Columbian sphinxes and spectral bears and swarming weasels, and all of them were deadly dangerous, magical or not. And those were just the plains animals; there were other things just as bad in the northern forests, and no Great Barrier magic to keep them off, either. It was suicide to go west of the Mammoth River, or north of its headwaters, without a magician to keep you safe; everybody knew that. But it hadn’t occurred to me until right then that you could have a magician and still not be safe.
“Thank you for telling us,” Papa said.
“Don’t thank me until you’ve heard it all,” the professor warned. “The new head of the Settlement Office is disturbed by all these recent incidents. They’ve requested that the college send you, me, and Jeffries out to study the settlements, with a view to improving their magical protections.”
“And?” Papa said.
“And that damn fool thinks we should bring along the seventh son of a seventh son,” Professor Graham said.
“What?” Papa sounded outraged.
“No.” Mama’s voice was quiet and very firm. When she spoke like that, you knew that there was no point in arguing.
“Sara, we may not have a choice,” Papa said reluctantly. “This is a land-grant college. The Homestead and Settlement Office has the right to request our assistance; that was part of the agreement.”
“No,” Mama repeated. “Lan is not an employee of this college, nor of the Settlement Office, nor of anyone else in Mill City. He’s a ten-year-old boy.” There was a rustling sound, and then footsteps against the porch floorboards. “I’d appreciate it if you’d take me into town right now, Daniel. I will not have my son pushed into matters far beyond his age and understanding, and I intend to make that very clear to the officials of the North Plains Territory Homestead Claim and Settlement Office.”
“I told them that,” Professor Graham said. “They won’t listen.”
“They will listen to me,” Mama said. She sounded perfectly composed and angry as anything, both at the same time. “Because if they do not, Lan and I will be on the next train east. Living here has been very good for him. I’m not having all the good undone because the settlement board is panicking.”
“You can’t do that!” Professor Graham said, startled.
“I most certainly can,” Mama said. “I’m his mother, and I’m not an employee of this college, nor of the Settlement Office, either.”
“Rothmer—”
“I’ll reserve the train tickets while she’s at the Settlement Office,” Papa said. “Do you want to take anyone else, Sara? It might save some face at the Settlement Office if we make the trip look like a family visit.”
“At the moment, I really don’t care how foolish the Settlement Office looks,” Mama said. “But we can discuss it on the ride into town, if you think there’s need.”
And that was that. Just as soon as they could get the buggy hitched up, Papa and Mama and Professor Graham were off to town. They stayed away the whole rest of the day, and I would have given my best Sunday dress and a year’s growth to have been able to see what happened when Mama arrived at the Settlement Office. I almost went and asked Rennie if she’d do a scrying spell to see, but I’d have had to tell her why, and Rennie couldn’t keep a secret to save her life. Besides, I wasn’t entirely sure she could work a scry spell. She never paid much attention to her magic lessons, that I ever saw, and even if she’d learned scrying, there was a good chance she’d forgotten how since she graduated from the upper school.
Mama and Papa were home in time for dinner, and they didn’t say one thing about the Settlement Office or Lan. I thought about telling Lan, at least, what I’d heard, but in the end I didn’t. It was plain that Mama and Papa didn’t want him knowing, nor me, either. I couldn’t unhear what I’d heard, but I could pretend I hadn’t heard
