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Authors: Caroline Stevermer

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BOOK: A College of Magics
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Brinker rose and began to pace, hands clasped behind his back. “Belatedly, it occurs to me that in summoning you, you might claim I have prevented you from completing your last term at school. I trust you won't try to persuade yourself that I commanded you to interrupt your education.”
“Me, leave Greenlaw for a little thing like an urgent summons home? Don't be silly.”
Brinker stopped pacing and studied her with disfavor. “I wonder now how wise I was to send for you. I have evolved a plan which may quite possibly win our independence from Aravill once and for all. Now that you are here, however, and I see how little effect your schooling has had upon your demeanor, I doubt that you are the proper person to employ. I may have summoned you in vain.”
“I suspected as much.” Faris smiled grimly. “You had a plan. It simply didn't encompass my return.”
Brinker gave her another long, faintly bewildered look. “I don't know what you mean.”
“Of course you don't.” Faris drew the revolver from her belt and inspected it fondly. “Have you ever considered more direct methods? I have.” Brinker started to speak but she held up her free hand to stop him. “No, no. Don't
bother to say it again. You don't know what I mean.” Very carefully she leveled the revolver at him. “I was taught never to point a gun unless I intend to use it.”
“Is this what you learned at Greenlaw? I am surprised at you,” Brinker said crossly.
Faris regarded him with something so close to affection that she was shocked at herself. “I hoped you would be. Now, let's try it again. Why have you sent for me? If you don't tell me this time, I'll be forced to jump to conclusions.”
“I dislike your tone. Still, you have had a long journey and I suppose allowances must be made. Travel often makes me peevish, too. Very well. To put it bluntly, relations between Galazon and Aravill have changed since my marriage.”
Faris grinned. Before she could speak, Brinker added, “I think you should refrain from making any of the doubtless vulgar remarks that have just occurred to you.”
Faris stopped grinning.
“Relations have improved so much that Aravis has consented to receive a diplomatic mission from Galazon.”
Faris stared.
Brinker looked extremely pleased. “Precisely. A country doesn't receive an ambassador from one of its own provinces. The bare existence of such an embassy would be tacit admission that Galazon is a sovereign nation.” He paused. Faris was still staring at him. He took advantage of her silence to add primly, “I thought you were the obvious candidate for the post. It is plain that I was mistaken.”
Faris frowned. “If Galazon is a sovereign nation, I'm its sovereign. Why would I be the obvious candidate?”
“Who else should I send? Some farmer? You have the training.” Brinker caught himself. “That is, you should have the training. If you don't, simply say so. You certainly don't seem to have benefited much from your time at school, riding in dressed like a brigand and waving a pistol to get your way.”
“Why don't you go?”
Her question surprised him into smiling. “Would you trust me enough to send me?”
Faris smiled back. “Of course not.”
“Just as I thought. Now, will you put that thing away? It's making me extremely nervous.”
“I doubt that. Anyway, it's supposed to make you nervous.
If
I were to visit Aravis, and
if
I managed to pass myself off as the ambassador from Galazon, what then?”
Brinker lifted his hands. “Who can say? I must leave some of this to your wit and discretion. A treaty? A trade agreement? Subsidies, perhaps?”
“Delicious thoughts, one and all.” Eyes narrowed thoughtfully, Faris regarded Brinker in silence for a moment. “What is the money for?”
Brinker looked baffled. “Money?”
“The tax money.” Faris brandished her revolver very carefully. “Tell me about the tax increase.”
“Don't be absurd. I think I've been very tolerant of your flights of fancy. Now I begin to find this rather wearisome.” Brinker turned toward the door. “You obviously need to
rest and recover from the hardships of your journey. We'll discuss this again more sensibly when you've had time to think the situation over.”
“Tell me.”
Brinker paused with his hand on the knob. “You don't seriously expect me to believe you will fire at me, do you?” He wore his bemused look.
Faris rose, revolver steady. “I do, in fact.”
“Indoors?” Brinker looked disapproving. “Things have certainly changed a great deal since I was sent away to school. Well, if you're going to shoot your own uncle in your own library, perhaps you'd better get on with it.”
Faris leveled her weapon at the spot between the toe of her uncle's left boot and the edge of the carpet. It was at least as wide as a playing card.
“Perhaps your mother is to blame for insisting you be sent to an educational institution in France. Vienna was always good enough for the rest of us.”
Faris squeezed the trigger. The shot reverberated in the closed room. Brinker neither moved nor spoke as he regarded the scar of white wood gouged in the floor before him. The smell of cordite filled the room. Faris aimed at the doorknob. “Now,” she said, perhaps too loudly, but her ears were ringing and she couldn't be sure, “I suggest you take your hand off that knob before I fire again. Or simply tell me now, why do you need money?”
Before Brinker answered, the knob turned and Tyrian came through the door, pistol first. Reed was behind him, Jane hard on their heels. At the expression on Faris's face, all three halted abruptly.
The door had knocked Brinker back as far as the center of the carpet but he had not lost his balance. He turned to face Faris as the newcomers stared at them both. “If you're quite finished, I have some business to see to before it's time to change for dinner. You do change for dinner in France, don't you?” His low opinion of Faris's costume was evident as Brinker walked past her companions and out the door.
 
F
aris put the safety on and slid the pistol back into her sash, then turned to Jane. “I apologize for that. I miscalculated.”
“I sure you had your reasons.”
“In fact, I did.” Faris regarded her companions gravely. “Brinker says he called me home because he wishes me to go to Aravill on Galazon's behalf. ‘Relations have improved so much that Aravis has consented to receive a diplomatic mission from Galazon.' I quote.”
“How interesting,” said Jane, “and how convenient.”
Reed was perplexed. “Is that why you wanted to shoot him?”
“I wanted more information. I didn't get it.” Faris shook her head. “I can't believe that's all Brinker has in mind. I'll have to try him again after dinner.” She glanced down at herself. “Any chance of a quick scrub and brush in Queen Matilda's room before then?”
“Your room is not yet ready,” Tyrian said. “I think it would be wise for you to stay here until it is.”
“Gavren's had them light a fire and the flue must be clear because it's drawing all right,” said Reed. “There's a chest
there now, and a couple of chairs on the way. He's got a few of his boys moving a bed up the stair in pieces. It's like watching ants at a picnic.”
Jane looked at the bullet hole in the floor. “Go ginger them up a little. Faris can show me over the house until the room is ready, but don't let them take all night about it.”
Reed departed. When Faris and Jane left the library, Tyrian accompanied them. Faris didn't ask why. She knew he would stay with her until she reached her defensible bedroom. Efficient and unobtrusive, he considered it his duty to guard her, even in her own house.
Faris made a vague gesture that took in the ranked golden frames. “Picture gallery. Ancestors. Very dull.” She walked toward the stairs. “I'll introduce you some other time.”
“Goodness,” said Jane. “What eyes. Who is that?”
“Oh, that's many-times-great-Uncle Ludovic. He was all right. His two-handed sword is downstairs in the great hall armory. See the hilt over his shoulder in the portrait? Blade and all, the sword had to have been at least his height. His armor used to be here, too. They must have moved it.”
“Did he live very long? He's got that duelist's look about the chin.”
“Died in bed at an advanced age. They say he killed a hundred men before he turned thirty, so perhaps you're right about the jaw. He was a soldier, though, and most of his victims were, too.”
“Not in the same army, I hope.”
“Luckily not. He was flourishing back when the kingdom of Lidia had its last gasp. The old king died, there was a feeble attempt to put a Haydocker on the throne, which failed, mercifully, and Lidia split apart into the four duchies: Galazon, Aravill, Haydock, and Cenedwine. Ludovic ended up running Galazon. That settled him down nicely.”
As they walked along the gallery, Jane examined the portraits. She did not ask for any further identifications. She merely eyed the paintings closely and remarked from time to time, “There's your uncle's beard. There's his nose. There's his beard again.” Faris nodded abstractedly but did not speak until they reached a small canvas at the foot of the staircase, an oil painting of a severely dressed woman with wide brown eyes and a formidable chin. “That's my mother.”
Jane regarded the painting in silence for several moments, then turned to Faris. “So that's why your uncle wears a beard. He didn't get the chin.”
Faris led the way up the stone stair. “You've seen your bedroom? Right, I'll take you the other direction. This is called the Florentine room, for the spinach-colored carpet, I've always suspected.”
The tour lasted until Reed found them at the door of the great hall armory. “Queen Matilda's room awaits you,” he told Faris. “Gavren couldn't decide on a straw mattress or a featherbed, so he gave you both. I'm supposed to find a pea to tuck under it, to finish up the job.”
“Too kind of you,” said Jane, “but we're almost finished here. I've been hearing about Lidia, Cenedwine, all these places I can't find in my Baedeker—you have no notion how confused I am. Faris tells me there's a map painted on the west wall of the armory. I have to see it, or I'll never get it all straight in my head.”
“Simple,” said Reed, as he held the door for them. “Lidia looked like a hand pulling a cork out of a bottle. Aravill's the bottom of the bottle, Cenedwine's the neck, Haydock's the hand, and Galazon's the cork.”
“That's absurd,” said Faris.
“Not if Italy looks like a boot, it's not,” said Reed. He led them past the cataloguer, whose troops had dwindled to one housemaid with a feather duster, to the map frescoed on the plaster wall. “There. What did I tell you?”
At the far end of the hall, Brinker entered. “If you are quite finished amusing your friends,” he called, “we would like to know what time you wish dinner to be served.”
Faris turned back from the map. “What time would it be served if I hadn't been summoned home from Greenlaw?” she countered. It was, strictly speaking, Agnes's responsibility to determine such things, as it had certainly been before Faris's return. Yet if Agnes chose this method to register her indignation, Faris was glad to oblige. She could make sure the household staff was treated as they used to be treated in her mother's time. Who knew what Agnes considered proper?
Jane and Reed studied the map, and Tyrian turned to watch Brinker cross the great hall toward Faris. The housemaid
took the scabbard the cataloguer handed her, duster at the ready.
And the cataloguer raised the sword, a two-handed sword nearly as tall as he was.
Faris saw the blade start to swing, had just time to think,
why, that's Uncle Ludovic's sword
—and then—
Copenhagen
—as the blade swung down toward her.
Someone shoved her.
Tyrian?
She fell forward. Her eyes were on the bright steel, and she knew she was in its path. She put out her hands to break her fall. Before she touched the floor, a shot deafened her.
Tyrian?
She hit the floor, rolled, and glimpsed Tyrian, just bringing out his pistol.
Ears singing, Faris looked up. Across the great hall, Brinker was putting away a pistol. Between them, the stoop-shouldered man sprawled on the floor. Part of his forehead was gone. Faris glimpsed that much, then the scarlet that had spattered everywhere. The two-handed sword was on the floor nearby, still vibrating with its fall. It had probably made a noise hitting the stone flags, but her ears were too stunned to hear it. She stared at the sword, afraid to look at anything else. The polished steel blade was the only clean thing she could see.
 
BOOK: A College of Magics
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