“I don’t know.” Nora’s attention was elsewhere. She had not seen so many books since the royal library at Semr. Their dark spines encircled the room; there were even rows of books lining the ceiling, held up by some magical means, she assumed—a neat space-saving trick, if you were tall enough to reach that high. Aside from the shelves of books, the room held only the table at which Aruendiel sat and another, longer table that was half- covered with papers and still more books. A spiral staircase led upward.
“You have a wonderful library here,” she said.
“Thank you,” he said briskly. “No, don’t put that here—on the other table.”
She took so long that after a minute Aruendiel put down his brush and lifted his head to see what was keeping her. She was bending over a book that he had left open.
“That can’t be very interesting to you,” he said, “since you can’t read it.”
Nora turned quickly. “Oh, but I can. Not very well, but I’m trying to learn,” she said.
“I see. What is it you’re reading?” he said, freighting the last word with a small load of irony.
“A book of spells, I think.”
“A magician’s library is bound to have many books of spells.”
“I’m not guessing.” She pointed to the page. “This is an invisibility spell. ‘For invisibility,’ it says.”
“A brave start. What does the rest of the spell say?”
Nora opened her mouth to read the spell aloud, then caught herself. “What if it works—and makes me invisible?” she asked, some challenge in her voice.
Aruendiel raised an eyebrow. “If you can work the spell, no doubt you will be able to perform the counterspell, too.”
Nora smiled quickly, with an air of pleased excitement, and glanced down at herself as though taking one last look before she disappeared. “‘Contemptuous needle—’” She halted, scanning the line again. “It doesn’t quite make sense.” No explanation or encouragement from Aruendiel. “‘Contemptuous needle something my ways— cloak my ways from, um, something eyes—tracking eyes.’ And this other word has to be ‘unsound,’ even though the sentence sounds strange.
“‘Contemptuous needle unsound, cloak my ways from tracking eyes.’” She repeated it, more confidently. “Well? How did I do?”
If she were truly invisible, though, Aruendiel’s cool eyes would not meet her own gaze so precisely.
“You read it correctly. It’s an old, rather elementary invisibility spell—from the
He spoke the last words dismissively. Hunching his shoulders, he picked up his brush again to make a note on the parchment in front of him.
Nora made no movement toward the stairs. She cleared her throat. “The spell didn’t work.”
“No,” he said, not looking up.
“Did I do something wrong?”
Before answering, Aruendiel dipped his brush in the ink and wrote a couple of lines. “In general, with spells of this sort, it helps to cut the throat of a small animal, or to burn hanks of your own hair with dried fox dung and blood mint, as an offering. But even so, you would never be able to work the spell.”
“Why not?”
“Because you are female.”
“Are you serious? What do you mean?”
He shrugged. “You could recite that charm a thousand times, and nothing would happen. The same for every spell in that book. The spirits to whom those spells are addressed would simply disregard the puny, trivial pleadings of a female voice. And now, Mistress Nora, if you will excuse me, I have work to do.”
Nora walked sedately, furiously down the tower stairs. She checked herself just short of actually stomping. It was a dignified withdrawal she was making, she told herself, not a humiliated retreat.
She went back to the kitchen, spread the sliced apples to dry in the back courtyard, fed the parings to the pig, brought in a load of wood for the stove, and decided to wait until after the butchering was completed before cleaning the kitchen floor.
I’m overreacting, she told herself sensibly, heading out to help the Toristels with the calf. He was just stating facts.
It was the way he said it. Something really nasty in his voice. As though he were angry at the whole idea of a woman doing magic.
Hirizjahkinis—it didn’t bother him that she did magic. And obviously there were some spells women could do. But which ones? Perhaps Hirizjahkinis was a special case. A former witch priestess—that must help. A lesbian.
He didn’t have to be so damned superior about it, she thought irritably, swatting at the whining black cloud of flies around her head while Mr. Toristel cut into the calf’s haunch. He didn’t have to brush me off like a servant. Except that he treats his actual servants with more respect than he treats me.
The next day Morinen came up from the village to help with digging turnips. As she and Nora went down the rows, squatting on the chilly soil, their hands gloved in mud, Nora took a perverse pleasure in telling her about the visit to the court at Semr. Morinen, she could tell, was picturing the palace at Semr as a version of Aruendiel’s ramshackle castle, so Nora went to some lengths to emphasize how much bigger and grander it was. With a slight edge in her voice, she described the lavish banquets, the ornate dress of the courtiers, the days of busy idleness in which noble ladies like Inristian had nothing to do except fret about getting married.
It would be no bad thing, Nora began to feel as she talked, if Morinen and others like her could be brought to recognize that they worked and slaved and starved (sometimes) to support an essentially parasitic class, qualified to rule only by hereditary privilege.
Morinen was not a ready subject for revolutionary conscious-raising, however. She listened without saying much, and seemed to be as impressed to learn that the streets of Semr had cobblestone paving as by any detail of court life. She did look a little puzzled, though, by what Nora told her about Inristian.
“A great, rich lady like that, and she can’t find a husband?”
“She’s not as rich as some of her rivals,” explained Nora, but the answer did not seem to satisfy Morinen. Looking up the social scale from a turnip patch, Nora thought, it was difficult to discern degrees of wealth. “She also has smallpox scars.”
Morinen sighed. “Poor lady. I feel sorry for her, not able to be married.”
“Inristian? I suppose.” Nora looked at Morinen more closely and considered the faint droop of her mouth, the fact that she was quieter than usual. Mrs. Toristel had mentioned that the blacksmith’s wedding to the miller’s daughter would take place next month. “You’re right,” Nora said. “I think she’s lonely.”
Morinen ducked her head lower, running her hands carefully through the soil, although she had already searched that particular spot. “I don’t know if you heard about Dorviv.”
Dorviv was the miller’s daughter. “I heard she’s getting married, yes.”
“You know who she’s marrying?”
Nora nodded. “You liked him, didn’t you?”
Morinen gave a noncommittal shrug without raising her eyes. Nora abused the blacksmith for a few minutes.
“It’s all right,” Morinen said finally. “He’s not a fool. She’s pretty, Dorviv is. Not as big as me. Her father’s giving them a field—freehold, not just leased from his lordship. I was all upset at first, but Ma gave me a talking- to. She said I had no right getting my hopes up. It’s not as though we have any land.”
“Well, you’re pretty, too, Morinen,” Nora said staunchly. “And you know—I’m not sure if this is what your mother meant, but honestly, if all this man wants in a wife is land, you’re better off not marrying him.”
Morinen gave Nora a bemused look. “But who’ll ever marry me, when I don’t have any land? Ma says men always like to have a wife with a strong back, but they don’t like it if she’s bigger than they are. Gravin’s like an ox,
