CHAPTER SIX

ROOK

So the morning after the professor spent the whole day trying to school us in appreciating other people’s feelings, with his whole face looking extra special on account of the big blue handprint, Adamo rounded us up and sat us down in a circle in the common room, where the professor—no longer blue, all the more the pity—was waiting for us.

“Right,” he said, like he was facing down a whole horde of Ke-Han. “Today we’re going to try something different.”

For a long time no one spoke, and it got pretty uncomfortable, and I was grinning the whole time.

“Ah,” Balfour said finally. The little snot. “What’s that, then?”

“We’re going to play roles,” the professor replied, “in order to better understand those who are different from us.”

Another silence. This time, though, it was Luvander who spoke up. “You mean like . . . role-playing?” he asked, all incredulous.

“Yes,” the professor said. “Exactly.”

“But isn’t that like when the redhead’s been a very naughty schoolgirl and the brunette’s also been very naughty and they’re spending all this time being punished by the blonde, who does it all with spanking—” Luvander began, but Adamo cleared his throat all of a sudden, and I supposed I’d have to ask Luvander for the rest of the story later, and who he’d been to see, and who I should ask for to make it happen.

The professor also cleared his throat. We were all looking at him now, and every man thinking the same thing: basically, that we weren’t playing schoolgirls for him or with him, no way and no matter if th’Esar himself commanded it be done.

“No,” he said patiently, though I could see him grinding his teeth and on the edge of his patience. “No, that isn’t the—Those aren’t the roles we’re going to be playing.”

“What other roles are there?” Compagnon asked, probably ’cause he didn’t have the imagination our fine genius of a professor had.

I was almost busting my seams, I was laughing so hard.

“You’ll soon see,” said the professor. And, just like that, he was handing out these pieces of vanilla-colored paper to each of us—the stiff, good sort, with something written on each. When he stopped in front of me and handed me mine, whatever the fuck it was, he gave me a kind of smile I didn’t like, no matter which way I turned it, and not just on account of the more general dislike I had for his entire face.

“Now,” the professor went on, returning to his place at the center of the circle, “you’ll find that on each of these cards I’ve distributed is a name.”

“It’s not my name on this card,” said Compagnon.

“No,” the professor confirmed. “Indeed, none of your names is on any of the cards.”

“So they’re all our roles,” said Raphael.

“Exactly. Three points for you, Raphael, for that apt assessment,” the professor said. Raphael looked way too pleased with himself after that, and the rest of us a little sour that we were playing a game with points, that none of us had known it before now, and that Raphael was already winning. “The rules and information are as follows. One: The names and the cards have been distributed completely at random. Two: If you ask to exchange your card for another, three of your points will be deducted. The purpose of the game is to represent the character, the emotions, the viewpoints, and the sensitivities of the name written on the card currently in your possession. Each time you make an astute and insightful observation as to the nature of your particular role, you will be awarded three points. Whoever first achieves thirty points will win the game.”

“Excuse me,” said Niall, “but my card says on it ‘That Whore Rook Insulted the Other Day for Having Ugly Breasts.’”

“Indeed,” said the professor. “Indeed, it does.”

“Mine says ‘The Arlemagne Diplomat’s Wife,’” Balfour said, looking at me, then at the professor, then just looking real distressed at no one in particular.

“Mine says ‘The Arlemagne Diplomat,’” Adamo said. “So I guess you’d best sit here by me.”

I didn’t want to know what was written on my card, but I guess I had to look so I would know the right way to kill this whoreson standing here in front of us all, smug as you like. I flipped my card over. It read, “Margrave Royston,” that fucking Cindy magician.

“I’m not doing it,” I said. “Fuck you. Take these cards and fucking shove ’em. I’m not doing it.”

“Ah,” said the professor, “that puts you at negative three points and Raphael at positive three, and everyone else at zero.”

“I feel,” Ace said, sudden and sly, “that as the ‘Prince of Arlemagne,’ I’m kind of in a tight spot right about now, don’t you think? What with everyone gossiping about me, even though I managed so cleverly to place all the blame on that ever-so-foolish Margrave of mine.”

“Indeed,” the professor said. “Very astute. Three points for you as well, Ace.”

“And I,” Balfour piped up, “I definitely didn’t enjoy being called a whore in front of so many of my peers, or . . . or treated so abominably by that heartless airman of the Dragon Corps!”

“Two astute observations,” the professor said. I was beginning to get the feeling he was all Cindy, one hundred percent, and was sort of especially hot for fucking Balfour. “That’s six points, I think.”

“Maybe, as ‘The Arlemagne Diplomat’s Wife,’” I said, with a real nasty sneer, “you shouldn’t’ve acted like a whore to avoid getting called one.”

“I don’t know if the ‘Margrave’ would have said that, actually,” said Adamo, and the professor looked as pleased as spiced wine.

“Well I wouldn’t know,” I said, feeling boxed in at all sides. “Seeing as I ain’t no Mary Margrave.”

“Oh, no one said you were,” snapped Jeannot, short and sharp, like a current through the air. He was a quiet one, Jeannot, but he got serious real fast, and faster when he thought someone was wasting his time. “I, as ‘Chief Sergeant of the Airmen,’ wish to get through this with as little incident as possible.”

Adamo made a sound in his throat like he was growling, amused and happy as an old dog.

“Excellent,” said the professor. “Thank you, Jeannot. Three points.”

“I guess, as one of the ‘Handlers’ down where the dragons are kept, I’d like it if no one tried to tell me how to do my job,” piped up Merritt, with a pointed sort of look at Ivory, who’d been known on more than one occasion to pitch a fit at his muck-boys if Cassiopeia got touched wrong. But, if you asked me, Ivory was a little touched wrong in the head, so it all washed clean in the end.

The professor nodded, made a note real quick in that damned book of his that let us all know Merritt’d got his points, too. Something in the air shifted somehow, changed the way it did when you were on a raid and had to get primed for the fight to come. There were points adding up, fucking Balfour was in the lead, and all fourteen of us keen on winning now that there was something to win.

I knew the professor had planned it just that way on purpose, the way he’d planned my card on purpose, so I just kicked back in my chair. I wasn’t going to play his game, not even with negative three points.

“As ‘Provost,’” Compagnon said eagerly, “I really wish people would stop breaking the rules. It’d make my life a sight easier and I could kick back and enjoy the sweet little paycheck th’Esar tosses me every other week.”

“A little obvious, but I’ll grant it to you,” said the professor, in a voice that sounded like he thought he was being really gracious. Staring at him reminded me of one other rumor I’d heard about the magician, when he wasn’t biting the pillow with foreign Nellie princes.

“If I were the Margrave Royston,” I said grandly, grinning from ear to ear, “I’d blow up your ’Versity-stuffed head and dance in the gray matter.”

Someone who sounded an awful lot like Ghislain made a disapproving sound. I didn’t care, I still thought it was clever as foxes and no two ways about it.

“Well,” said the professor after a moment. His mouth was drawn small and tight, so any words that came out looked forced. “I suppose I have to give you points for at least being accurate on his Talent.”

“Suppose you do,” I said cheerfully.

“That puts you at zero,” he snapped, and crossed something neatly out in the ledger.

“I’m pretty sure Rook hurt my feelings, saying I had ugly breasts,” Niall said, diving into the silence headlong, and his pronouncement was punctuated by Compagnon dissolving into a fit of giggles. “I mean, he’d paid me and everything, sure, but what about my feelings? Just because I’m a whore doesn’t mean I don’t have feelings,” he concluded, enjoying himself far more than seemed natural.

“Ah, yes.” The professor stopped looking angry pretty quick, turned to smile at Niall. He did that to everyone, looked straight at them when they were talking as if it made any kind of a difference. “That is almost two observations I think, Niall. You’re at six.”

Adamo cleared his throat. “As ‘The Arlemagne Diplomat,’ I’m still fuming mad that anyone would be not only stupid enough to sleep with my wife, but also to slap her ass and call her as good as a Hapenny whore in front of everyone.”

“I’d imagine so,” agreed the professor with that stupid little smile of his.

Did they teach him how to do that in the ’Versity? I wondered. Maybe that stupid face cut it with a passel of school brats, but here it was just out of place, same as the rest of him.

“Yeah, and it’s all your fault we’re here in the first place,” I jeered, but I shut up real quick when Adamo shot me a glare.

“Suppose it’s mine too, seeing as I’m th’Esar,” Ghislain said. “I had a real difficult time of it, pleasing everyone sharpish in that meetin’ room, and it didn’t help having two incidents with Arlemagne happening around the same time, either. Guess it was the only thing I could do.”

“Very good,” said the professor, and he sounded so happy I thought he was going to piss his pants again. “Wonderful observations. That definitely makes six.”

“I’m ‘Head Mademoiselle at Our Lady of a Thousand Fans,’ and I wish people would stop asking me ‘how much,’ because I’m quite happily married,” said Luvander. There was a sort of quiet that settled over the room after this, with no one able to decide whether they wanted to laugh or not, and everyone turning to look at him. “What?” He sat up straight in his chair, looking ticked off. “It’s true.”

“Well, that’s news to me,” admitted the professor. “But I’ll take your word for it.”

“Hey now,” I said. “What’s stopping the rest of us from just making stuff up and spoon-feeding it to you, huh?”

“The goodness of your hearts,” he replied dryly, in a tone that I didn’t like at all. It thought far too much of itself, that one.

“Are you calling me a liar?” Luvander spun around in his chair.

“As a ‘New Recruit’ to the Dragon Corps, I’m either really fucking lucky or doomed or both, and after my first week it’s like enough to be the latter even if no one’s pissed in my boots yet.” Magoughin smiled, looking particularly proud of himself.

Balfour was looking a little pale, like that hadn’t all been years ago anyway, and him with a new pair of boots whenever he wrote home for one.

“Ah,” said the professor, looking a little under the weather himself all of a sudden, like getting his boots all fouled was something he hadn’t thought of yet. It was almost sad, really, him with such an active imagination and all. “Well, very good, three points for you, Magoughin.”

“Um,” said Evariste. “My card says, ‘That Kid Ghislain Hit on the Head When He Dropped Merritt’s Boots out the Window.’”

“It was really an accident,” said Ghislain mildly.

“Yes,” said the professor.

“Well, I guess my head hurts,” finished Evariste.

“Oh, well, I don’t know if I’d exactly call that an astute—”

“If I’m th’Esarina, I probably wish my husband wouldn’t make so many trips to the ’Fans,” cut in Raphael, clearly eager to take his lead all over again. He paused. “Because it violates the sanctity of our marriage. You know, we took vows.”

“Holy shit,” I said. “‘Violates the sanctity’? Why not just put on the damned dress and a tiara, Raphael?”

He sniffed. “It’s not my fault that you’re losing, Rook,” he said.

“Actually, talking of marriage, I’m still very angry with my wife,” said Adamo, and Balfour looked over at him for a moment, all hurt-like before he got ahold of himself, and that was nearly when I lost it. This game was going to drive us all mental.

“All right, I get it now,” said Evariste again, quickly. “I wish whoever had been dropping heavy boots had been more considerate of . . . who might have been standing there. Below. I wish they’d looked.”

“Yes, that’s much better,” said the professor, scribbling away like mad in that notebook of his. I wanted to snatch it right out of his hands. “Both of you, well done.”

“As a Member of the Basquiat,” said Ivory at last, in a bored sort of tone, “I am—depending on my political interests—watching this situation with the diplomat from Arlemagne unfold with interest. I want to see how th’Esar will handle it, certainly.”

“As th’Esar I’m thanking the bastion one of yours got mixed up in the mess with Arlemagne,” Ghislain threw back at him. “Evens us out nice and square, don’t you think?”

“Was Margrave Royston a member of the Basquiat?” Balfour slipped out of character, not that he was nearly nice-looking enough to play the diplomat’s wife.

“Why don’t you ask him?” Ace grinned at me with a mouth full of teeth that were just asking to be broken.

“I’m not fucking playing,” I said.

“Well you’ve managed to raise your score to an even zero,” said the professor, calm as you please. He seemed to have decided that if we weren’t going to let him sleep proper through the nights, then he might as well not bother being all careful and polite with us. It even worked; some days he didn’t even stink so obviously of fear and rage.

“I cry myself to sleep at night,” Niall spoke up, touched by a sudden inspiration. “I ask countless clients whether they think my breasts look all right, and if they hesitate for even a moment, I know that terrible airman was right.”

“Hang on,” said Compagnon. “How do you know she cries at night?”

“Well I’m elaborating, aren’t I? It’s one of the skills of the theatre,” replied Niall, in a voice like he thought it was obvious instead of totally insane.

“Has anyone won yet?” Merritt leaned forward in his chair. Maybe he expected the professor to show him his book when he held it that close to his chest, like it was his baby or something.

“No one’s got to thirty yet, no,” he answered, and studied the page for a moment. His eyebrows went up in surprise. “Niall’s in the lead, though.”

Almost like they’d planned it, everyone started shouting at once, Raphael even doing some ridiculous high sissy voice that he thought made him sound more like th’Esarina.

Right then, I knew I’d have to start making a list of my own, in order of noses that needed breaking so I didn’t off and kill anyone ’cause of pent-up steam.

And I’d start with the professor—wipe that smug grin off his face for once and for all. I flexed my fingers in anticipation. It was going to feel real nice after all of this.

 

HAL

Though I expected him to read what had nearly happened right off my face the moment I set foot inside the castle, all the chatelain actually said was that we’d best be more careful next time and not wander so far off—as if we were both his children, no less—and then he sent us on our way, my heart still pounding fit to break inside my chest. I’d almost kissed the chatelain’s brother. I knew I still wanted to, but no one had guessed it.

Royston, meanwhile, didn’t say anything at all.

This distressed me more than I could say, and above the unsteady rhythms of my heartbeat, nervousness began to creep into my blood instead of a fever. Perhaps it was a fever of another sort, a fever I’d been too busy with my books to experience until now, but it transformed me: I was at once too large for my skin and too small to find myself. I answered Royston’s silence with a shamed silence of my own and longed for him to say anything at all. When I dared sneak glances at his face, I could find no clues in his expression that would illuminate his thoughts; rather, he was unreadable as a text in ancient Ramanthe, and I no scholar well versed enough to translate this unfamiliar language.

If only he would take my hand, I thought, or give me some sign. Then my thoughts contradicted themselves; I told myself that for certain he was only being cautious, as at any moment William or Etienne might have rounded the corner, or Mme herself, or any one of the servants. We were certain to talk about my foolishness; Royston was merely waiting for the appropriate time.

I bowed my head. I couldn’t bear to look at Royston’s face again only to find it so foreign to me. Yet, despite my fear, I followed him through the halls and back to his room, as per the chatelain’s instructions, where Royston paused with one hand upon the door and pointedly didn’t look over his shoulder at me.

“Hal,” he said.

It was as if my own name had been turned into a spell to be used against me however Royston wished. I knew he wouldn’t harm me, and yet I felt suddenly as if I were being harmed, all the same. After all, I’d made an enormous blunder; had assumed too much from his expression, had asked too much of his experience and his patience. He’d done such things before, perhaps more times than I could imagine, while I knew only what I’d read in books—and, until now, had been content to know only that. I seemed very foolish to myself, and very young.

I should have been more circumspect.

At last, I managed to speak. “Yes?” I said, barely hearing the sound of my own voice as it passed my lips.

“We must speak, at some point,” Royston said. His voice and his words were all very careful; they seemed to me to be a precarious tower of cards, which the slightest breath of air would send tumbling all at once to the ground. “Whenever you are ready.”

I was ready now, I thought stubbornly, but I reminded myself that we both needed warm baths and fresh clothes and some breakfast. “Shall I come to you tonight after dinner, then?” I asked.

My voice sounded as careful and as tentative as his. I didn’t know what game we were playing. All I knew was that I didn’t like it and missed the honest companionship we’d shared before.

“Yes,” said Royston. “Tonight.”

I spent the rest of the day in a jangle of nerves. No matter what I did, despite the hot bath I ran for myself and my fresh, warm clothes, I couldn’t coax warmth into my fingertips. I tried to read: I could not. I spent time with William and Alexander: I was too distracted. Emilie remarked that I looked as if I’d been spirited away by a faerie circle—and was that where I’d been last night?

Royston was nowhere to be seen; I assumed he was inside his room, though whether it was because he too was cold and tired, or because he didn’t want to face me, I had no way of knowing.

I dined with the children and he with Mme and the chatelain. We didn’t seek each other out in the halls as we were lately accustomed to doing, nor did I make an excuse to bump into him before our appointed hour for reading.

“Something’s the matter with Hal,” I heard Emilie say to Mme.

“Perhaps he’s caught a cold from staying out all night in the rain,” Mme replied. “Keep away from him the next few days. You don’t want to catch it from him, do you?”

“No, Mama,” said Emilie.

At long last it was half past nine, which was when we usually met in the evenings. We’d been in the middle of discussing an anthology of Ke-Han war verse that Royston had brought to the country with him when he left Thremedon, and though his thoughts on rhythm and assonance were thrilling, it was not the book I wanted to discuss this evening, however terrified I was of the new topic to hand. I had to promise myself to be calm, to be receptive, to be polite.

I rapped twice on the door, which was our signal, and from within I heard him say, “Come in.”

It was too much for me.

All at once I was inside, breathless, helpless; I craved reassurance, and felt that without it I would break all to pieces. If only I could know that our friendship wasn’t lost to us for good. “Please—Royston—” I began, but he lifted one hand to stop me, and I all but bit savagely into my lip to keep myself quiet.

Fool, fool, I scolded myself. Let him speak; don’t trouble him so!

“Hal,” Royston said. His voice was warm but guarded. I pushed away from the door and walked uncertainly to sit at his bedside in what I’d so presumptuously come to think of as my chair. Of course, it wasn’t. It was Royston’s, and should he no longer want me sitting in it night after night listening to the long, refined cadence of his Thremedon vowels, I would obey his wishes not simply because he was so greatly my superior but also because I cared so greatly for him.

“Shall I,” I began, licking my lips. “Shall I begin where I left off ? With the war verses, that is; we’d just come to the time of—”

“Hal,” Royston said again, more gently. “There is—I know it may be uncomfortable for you, and I’ll not allow it to continue this way.” There was a strain behind his words, which informed me at once that my presence here was troubling him, making the corners of his eyes crease. Some more dramatic part of me wanted to fall to my knees and beg for his forgiveness.

“I should not have acted the way I did,” I said, picking my words with excruciating care, “and if I’ve—If I’ve done something that can’t be fixed—”

“Is that what you think?” Royston swore under his breath, a city curse, and beneath the anger in his eyes I saw familiar sadness. “I’ve made you feel that way, haven’t I? I didn’t think—No, Hal, this is very hardly your fault at all.”

“Must there even be a fault?” I asked.

“You were very cold, and very close,” Royston informed me, as if I hadn’t also been there. “I felt a certain . . . instinct, a certain desire, and I found myself almost incapable of restraining myself, until I forced myself to consider the repercussions of my actions. I led you to believe I wanted—even required—something in particular from you. You acted upon that cue I gave you. It was a most ignoble thing for me to do, being so much older than you, and—I think it’s safe to say—better versed in the subtleties of these entanglements, though obviously no wiser for my experiences, as my recent actions have so deftly proven.”

He was hiding behind the comfort of words, as he often did when he was most unhappy with himself. I reached out—impulsive, clumsy, but unable to stop myself—and quickly took his closest hand in both my own. For a moment, I feared he’d shy away or pull back as if burnt, but he did neither of these things and merely allowed me to hold him, though all the while I could see how wary he was of it.

“If you can find yourself capable of forgiving me,” Royston went on, still picking his way across the landscape of his words as if they were eggshells, “then I hope we can continue as we were, forgetting my, ah, indiscretion.”

I wanted to tell him that I most certainly would not forget it, feeling suddenly fierce and protective of what had very nearly passed between us. It had almost been ours. Was I to give it up so easily?

“If you wish,” I said finally, my fingers tightening against his. “There is nothing to forgive.”

Royston watched my face closely for a moment, and though I tried to conceal my feelings, I felt as though he could read them as easily on my face as if they were words on a page.

“I know it is very much to ask of you,” Royston said. “Are you sure that you can forget it? You must know this: I’m not saying that I took advantage of you, not entirely.” I could detect a note of panic in his voice, as if this wasn’t progressing the way he’d rehearsed it. “You’re twenty years old, fully capable of looking after yourself, a very clever young man, and I hold you in the highest regard possible. If it were within my power, I would take you from here to Thremedon, where you could learn as you so clearly crave to do. It is a . . . different matter here.”

“You didn’t take advantage of me,” I said carefully, “because nothing happened.”

“Ah,” said Royston. “I—Ah. Yes. Well—Not entirely, as I said.”

“And I’m not one of the children,” I added, knowing full well how foolish that claim must have seemed, blushing as I was to the tips of my ears with the compliment he’d just paid me.

“No,” said Royston. “But Hal, you are still quite inexperienced. I find myself in a curious position, keenly aware of your promise as a student, and—” He cut himself off then, shook his head, and said no more.

I sought to reassure him somehow. “It’s all right,” I said. “Nothing happened. We were cold, we would have both caught fever if you hadn’t acted as you’d done. I’m grateful for it.”

All these things were true—Mme had once told me I was no better at lying than a child of three or four, and what was more, I didn’t want to lie to Royston. I felt a strange kindling longing in my chest, but I was so enamored of his friendship that I knew then and there I’d do nothing to endanger it.

“Thank you,” Royston said at length. “Thank you, Hal.”

“Is it all right, then?” I asked uncertainly. “It isn’t—I haven’t ruined anything?”

Royston reached out to brush the troublesome fall of hair out of my eyes. “No,” he said. “Though if you continue to ask that question, I shall become very angry. Not with you,” he amended quickly. “With myself, for giving you cause to think such preposterous scenarios have any merit to them whatsoever.”

There were his words again. He had an entire library of them for keeping the rest of the world at bay, and I wondered if this was the sort of tactic one was required to learn in the city. I’d never met anyone with the propensity for it in Nevers; men like the chatelain, who preferred to avoid uncomfortable matters, did so generally by clearing their throat and changing the topic with gruff, inexorable insistence. (I knew this much from the time I’d sought to get the chatelain’s permission for securing Etienne further schooling with his art, a natural talent the chatelain seemed determined to ignore.)

The silence between Royston and me grew awkward without warning; it did so at approximately the same moment his fingers became stiff in mine and I wondered if I’d once again presumed too much.

I didn’t know where the boundaries were between us. Nor did I know what we were to each other, too informal to be tutor and pupil, too close to be mere friends, and not yet close enough to be anything more.

That was the purpose of this conversation, I supposed: to establish what it was we actually were to each other.

Even as I watched him, I caught him stealing glances at my face. The sight filled me with inexplicable hunger, and the more I sought to suppress it, the louder it clamored to be acknowledged. I felt my cheeks grow hot, yet though I looked away, I refused to release Royston’s hand.

“What are we to do, then?” I found myself asking uncertainly.

“Things have indeed been very . . . unusual between us,” Royston conceded. After a moment, he even shifted his hand so that our fingers were twined together, and from that small movement I gleaned disproportionately large relief. “The plan—at least, my plan—for this evening was that we might attempt to explore the nature of our peculiar friendship. I would like it very much,” he added gravely, “if you would trust me and allow us to continue to meet this way.”

“And discuss your books?” I asked, feeling breathless at once. For a moment my eagerness eclipsed my disappointment.

Nothing had changed because, as I’d said already so many times, nothing had happened. This would have to be enough, I told myself firmly. I would be certain not to mistake Royston’s intentions again.

“Yes,” Royston replied. “And discuss such matters as I think you already quite capable of discussing.” After a moment’s pause, he added, “But we must be careful, you realize.”

I couldn’t entirely understand it, and I looked at him in perplexity before I grasped at a possible explanation. “I remember that I was once reading a collection of more . . . common verse,” I said, “and Mme said that I mustn’t read such garbage where her children might be able to see it.”

Royston lifted a brow. “What did she do with the book?” he asked.

I’d never quite been able to forgive Mme for her reaction. “She tore the pages out,” I whispered, shaking my head sadly. “Tore all the pages into little pieces and threw them into the fire.”

“Ah,” Royston said, and turned to look at me fully.

Royston’s eyes were very dark, and I’d known it for a long time, but close to the center there was a light in them, warm and wondering. I felt a sort of wildness skip below the surface of my chest, as though I’d do anything to get him to look at me this way again.

No, that was a lie. I could do nothing at all and I knew it.

I was the one who broke the gaze first, and Royston cleared his throat a few seconds later.

“That is precisely my point,” he went on smoothly, as though nothing at all untoward had passed between us in that moment. “If we are to learn—and learn properly—my brother and his wife must be completely unaware of our studies. There are many cases wherein they would assume, through whatever prejudices they are content to harbor, that the nature of our studies is unfit for their household, and certainly unnecessary for your education. In their minds, you are to be a children’s tutor and nothing more. They have no sense of learning for its own sake, of learning for the beauty inherent in the struggle.”

I wanted to kiss him again. I settled for gripping his hand tight within my own. “Yes,” I said. “Would you—Will you teach me?”

“If you’ll have me as your teacher,” Royston replied. “But as I said, we must keep it private. My brother and his wife see only a single goal before them and, I admit, would suspect me of foul play.”

“Foul play?”

“They might think I was training you to leave them,” he replied slowly, as though he were struggling to explain it simply. “In the city, certain Margraves—certain magicians—have had much use for an assistant, a pupil, whose intellect and honesty they can trust as much as they trust their own.”

More than anything, I wished to be that person for Margrave Royston; but at the same time, I knew that wasn’t all. My desire had a baser connotation, something less pure and less loyal, and one that betrayed all our arrangements even as we made them. I fought it down again, until at last it curled around my heart and remained there, taunting me. I needed to find some way to silence it.

All I managed to say was, “Oh. Oh, yes, I see.”

“I wouldn’t wish to be so ungrateful for my brother’s hospitality as to steal from him the tutor he’s been training all this time to teach his children,” Royston concluded. “I doubt also that you would be the sort of young man who’d wish to worry them so, having them think you’d taken advantage of their kindness, only to leave them at the last.”

“Of course not,” I said, almost too fiercely. “I made a promise to them—”

“And I can see plainly enough how much you love those children.” Royston closed his eyes for a moment, and swallowed. “What I think is this. During the day, we must keep away from each other. We must stop this madness of meeting in the hallways every chance we have, or whispering between ourselves in the living room. You do understand what this would appear to them to be?”

“Yes,” I said, though I regretted it. “Yes, of course. I can’t neglect the children, after all.”

“Exactly,” Royston said. “We’ll keep our hours of study to the evenings—perhaps earlier?”

I nodded, and then there was nothing left for us to discuss. We’d solved everything and nothing at once.

If my life worked as a roman—as it secretly unfolded page by page in my innermost thoughts—I would have pressed myself against him and told him to teach me all those things he knew that I did not, to cup my face in his hand the way he’d done before in the boathouse. I would open my mouth to his, and this time, he wouldn’t pull away.

Instead, I opened the volume of Ke-Han verse and asked, “Ah, yes. Where were we?”

“Page twenty-eight,” Royston said softly, leaning close to flip the pages for me, and without a moment’s pause he leaned back once more against the pillows to listen to me read.