Magic Steps (6 page)

“More thousands of miles,” Lark replied. “They’re in southern Yanjing. Even if he wanted to journey so far, we couldn’t allow it. First he must learn basic control over his power. There’s no telling what kind of mischief he could set in motion with a step here, and a step there.”

“I don’t think he’s strong enough to do serious damage,” Sandry told her.

“It doesn’t matter if he is or he isn’t,” Lark said. “Dances are patterns. You know what patterns can do.”

“Placing magic in a pattern makes the magic stronger,” Sandry replied; it was a lesson she knew as well as her own name. She smiled. “That’s why you and I have to be careful when we weave. So you’re saying that Pasco can extend his power through dance patterns.”

“Easily.” Lark toyed with her teacup. “And the stronger the pattern, the more things can go wrong. What if this Pasco had not followed the net so faithfully?

A wrong step that broke the net magic might have driven all the fish from the sea for miles. What if he’d thought of pretty girls as he danced? He could have called all the girls of Summersea to him, whether they wished to be called or not. You’re absolutely right. Pasco must be taught.”

“So I’ll bring him to the school here.” Sandry felt bet ter immediately: a decision had been reached.

Lark shook her head. “It’s not that simple. Temple and university mages follow laws and guidelines, some of which you know. On the subject of new mages, the law is set. If no teacher with the same power is available, the discovering mage has to teach the newcomer the basics.”

Sandry laughed. “But the discovering mage is me.”

Lark nodded gravely.

“I’m just a kid myself,” Sandry pointed out, using street slang for child. “I cant teach him. I have to keep an eye on Uncle.”

“You can and you must teach,” said Lark firmly. “The Winding Circle Initiate Council or the mage council at the university in Lightsbridge enact penalties on a mage who shirks her responsibility.”

Sandry sat bolt upright in her chair. “And if I do not recognize their authority?” she demanded, offended by the idea that these strangers might try to control her life.

Lark laid a hand over hers. “If you did not follow the rules, then as a great mage of the Winding Circle Initiate Council it would be my task to teach you your duty.”

Sandry blinked at her. She knew that Lark—and Rosethorn, when she was home—often attended what they always referred to as “council meetings.” She had always assumed they were meetings of the Dedicate Council that governed the temple city, not a council of temple mages.

“Mages without law are dangerous,” Lark said. “What if there were no duke to rule in Emelan? If he just vanished, with no heir appointed?”

“Someone else would take his position,” replied Sandry hesitantly. It hurt her heart to think of it.

“After bloodshed,” Lark pointed out. “After civil war. councils ensure that our people have someone to answer to, as Emelan answers to his grace. Other parts of the world have their own ways to hinder rogue mages.”

“I don’t know how to teach,” complained Sandry.

“It hasn’t been that long since you learned the basics,” Lark said firmly.

“Start with those. Go through your uncle’s library. Talk to merchants and nobles—see if any of them have ever heard of dance-mages. And he’ll need a dance teacher. If he’s from a lower-class family, he’ll know jigs, country dances, and wedding dances, but little else. Learning new dances will help to keep him out of mis chief, and create a direction for his power.” Bending down, she picked her workbasket up from the floor. It was filled with clothes—she dumped them on the table. “If you’ll take the stitching out, I’ll cut these into patches for a quilt,” she told Sandry. “One of the East District families wants the father to have a quilt made of their old things when he takes ship in the spring.”

“That’s sweet,” remarked Sandry, pulling a tattered shirt toward her. Turning it inside out, she laid her fingers along one of the seams and called to the thread that held it closed. The thread began to wriggle free, twining around her index finger like a vine. Watching it slither out of the cloth, Sandry remembered the most vexatious part of her conversations with Pasco.

“He seems to think his family won’t let him learn magic,” she pointed out to Lark, drawing out the threads that tacked the cuffs to the shirt. “He says it would be different if he had a talent for provost’s magic, but his family won’t hear of dancing magic—as if it’s a toy that Pasco might pick up. I don’t understand it.”

“You see this in a lot of guild families and in the no ble houses,” Lark replied, cutting a worn skirt into squares. “And from what I heard of the Acalons when I lived in the Mire, they’ve served the provost for genera tions.

They’re practical people. Still, they aren’t fools. Once they realize Pasco is a genuine mage, they’ll know he must be taught.” She put her scissors down and gazed at Sandry. “Of course, they may take it better if they hear it from you.”

The girl sighed. The last thread came out of the collar, leaving the shirt in pieces on the table before her. She stacked them up and put them aside, drawing a pair of breeches out of the pile. “I really think he should be the one to tell them. He might as well get in the habit of owning up to his magic, after all.”

Once she had turned the breeches inside out, she saw these were better made than the shirt, with the ends of the thread all hidden inside the hems. She glared at the cloth. All the sewing-threads jumped out of the material in a hundred pieces, flying across the room.

Lark hid a smile behind her hand and remarked quietly, “That seems like a dreadful waste of thread.”

Sandry nodded wryly, and lifted her hands. It took several calls to get the scattered pieces to return. Once she had them, she scooped them into a mound on the table. She petted them gently for a moment until they ceased to tremble.

When the bits of thread were calm, she sent her power cautiously through each fiber. As the mound wriggled and shifted, she confessed, “I don’t know how I’m going to get him to like the idea of magic.”

“Of course you do,” Lark said, picking up a square of cloth in one hand and her scissors in the other. “It sounds like your Pasco is dying to dance. Lure him in by telling him he gets to learn new dances to use with his power. Of course, he’ll have to practice a great deal—but I’ll wager he wants to practice dancing.

You just need to weave the two lessons into one, and I know you can do that.’”

Sandry looked up at her teacher and grinned. She had a feeling Lark was exactly right. “Are you sure someone else can’t teach him?” she asked, though she was fairly certain of the answer.

Lark grinned back at her, “It seems to me that teaching will be a very good discipline for you, too,” she replied, mock-serious. “Mila knows it was good for me.”

“Was: it hard, teaching magic?” Sandry wanted to know.

Lark nodded. “But I was older than you, and much more set in my ways,” she pointed out. “And I was so new to my own magic, coming to it late as I did, that I was convinced I was leaving out something important. I’ll tell you what Vetiver told me: don’t forget that Winding Circle is nearby. If you get stuck, ask questions.” She gathered up her scraps and put them aside. “Personally,” she added, “I think Pasco is very lucky to have you for a teacher. I think you’re going to be very good at it.”

“I only hope I’m as good as you one day,” Sandry re marked softly. “You were so patient with me.”

Lark shook her head. “You give me too much credit. It was very easy to be patient with you, and an absolute joy to teach you.”

Sandry looked down, blushing with pleasure. Hearing that from Lark meant a great deal to her. Lark was pleas ant, but she also didn’t believe in compliments unless they were earned.

When Sandry checked the heap of thread-bits, she saw they had woven themselves into one strand. Now they arranged themselves in a polite coil, as if they wanted to show Sandry they could behave. “Thank you,” she told them. “You did that very nicely, and I’m sorry I frightened you before.”

She didn’t notice Lark’s smile. She was thinking, Thread minds me—why can’t Pasco? That wasn’t entirely fair, and she knew it. This thread came from sheep, who were docile enough if you kept after them. Silk thread would have been harder to control, since the caterpillars that spun silk worked only for themselves.

Remembering her friend Briar at Pasco’s age, Sandry wondered if he’d been as deliberately ignorant as Pasco was this afternoon. Briar hadn’t been. He could be in furiating, and difficult, and independent, but he was also a realist. He would never argue when someone had pointed out something obvious, like his magic. That made her wonder, was it Briar who’d been unusual for his age, or the boy she had met today?

“Pasco seems so young” she complained. “But that’s impossible. He’s two years older than any of us were at the start of our studies.”

“But by then you in particular were no longer young,” Lark told her quietly.

Sandry looked down. She knew what Lark meant. Two weeks locked in a cellar in a country gone mad, with her parents and nursemaid dead and no hope of Sandry’s ever being found, had worked a change on her ten-year-old self. The weeks she had spent afterward, staring at a ceiling and not wanting to leave her bed, had done still more to age her past her years.

“Give me a day or two,” Lark suggested. “I’ll ask some of the dancers I know to recommend a teacher—some one who won’t be unnerved if Pasco’s control over his power slips.” Lark still kept the performer friends she’d made in her youth, before she took her vows. “In the meantime, begin his lessons in meditation as soon as possible. And be prepared to talk to his parents.”

Sandry nodded gloomily. She didn’t feel at all confident about teaching.

Lark came over and gave her a hug. “The wheel turns,” she told Sandry. “The student becomes the teacher. And you’ll do me credit—just you wait and see.”

Sandry chuckled and returned the hug. “If I can do half as well as you, I’ll count myself lucky.”

Once baton practice started, it was a good idea to think about only baton practice, not about full nets or Lady Sandrilene. Pasco’s mother Zahra was feeling brisk she made them all step lively that morning. The cousins’ feet slapped the courtyard tiles as if they were step dancers all doing the same measures.

When a maid told Zahra someone had come to see her, Zahra ordered them to pair up and practice the latest drill. The moment she was gone. Pasco and a couple of the others sat down to rest..

A baton thumped Pasco’s crown. “You heard, your mama, tippy-feet,” his cousin Vani said, jeering. “Come: prance around, with me a bit.”

Pasco replied with a rude suggestion.

Vani growled, and rapped Pasco’s head again. Pasco saw stars.

“Stop it, Vani,” Reha protested. “You’d be cleaning chamberpots for weeks if Aunt Zahra saw that.”

“She won’t catch me, though, and you won’t tell if you’re wise.” Glaring at Pasco, Vani added, “Guess who got stuck hauling wood this morning while somebody took his sweet time coming back from market? Wha’d you do, Pasco? Stop and goggle at them Capchen dancers practicing in the yard at Wainwright’s inn?” Vani banged Pasco’s knees, then his shins, with his baton.

Pasco surged to his feet and lunged at Vani, baton out. His cousin backed away, swung his weapon and knocked Pasco’s from his grip. He surveyed Pasco with narrowed eyes. “I got to teach you not to stick me with all the hot sweaty work.”

Pasco trembled. Vani was going to hurt him again. Even if one of the girls fetched help, sooner or later Vani would get his revenge. For some reason Pasco brought out the worst of Vani’s mean streak. Now he shrank back, raising his hands to guard his face as his bigger cousin drew close.

A bit of flute music threaded through his mind. The Capchens had danced to it

Humming the tune, Pasco took three quick steps to the right, his arms in the air, palm-to-palm overhead.

Vani halted and rolled his eyes. “Now what?” he de manded.

Pasco took another three quick steps to the left. He lowered his arms halfway, holding them like wings out from his sides. He arched his chest, head high. Long step next, then leap at Vani, one leg bent, the other trailing straight behind him.

Vani, Haiday, and the youth behind them flew up and back as if thrown. Pasco landed on the ground and waited for them to do the same.

They didn’t All three stayed in the air, four feet above the tiles. They hung, and they hung, and they hung.

“Pasco, what did you do?” breathed Reha, who was earthbound. “That was you, wasn’t it?”

“No,” he said quickly.

The three hanging Acalons flailed without shifting their bodies an inch. “Let me down!” yelled Vani. “Right now, you puling, puking little rat turd!”

Pasco licked his lips. Time. He needed time to think “Promise you won’t beat me up,” he retorted, his voice squeaking.

“I’ll mince you is what I’ll do! Get me down!” Reha left the courtyard and returned with a tall stool. She thrust it under Haiday, as if she just needed a step down Haiday struggled, but the air held her fast. Reha tried the stool on the other two, without result.

Vani kicked it over when she put it under him. “Pasco, get me down, or you’re hog food!”’

“Promise,” whispered Pasco, mind racing like a pan icked mouse, All he could think was that Vani would need, to hurry to beat Mama to killing him.

A sharp voice demanded, “What is going on out here? You children know very well Great-grandmother rests at this hour!” Gran’ther Edoar walked out of his quarter of the house, as cross as a bear. Leaning on his walking stick, the tall old man went up to the three hanging Acalons and tugged Haiday’s leg. She remained in the air.

Pasco fell to his knees with a whimper.

Gran’ther walked around the three, looking them over, pulling first an arm, then a leg. Pasco’s mind had stopped running, frozen around the thought that he would never be allowed out of the house again.

Once his inspection was complete, Gran’ther halted and looked at the cousins who stood on the ground. “How did this come about?” he inquired mildly. “Surely you have not learned to fly, or someone would have men tioned it at supper.”