Small Magics (42 page)

Eileen sniffed it, made a face, and promptly put it down. “I don’t think I need that.”

“Benjamin already had his,” said Henry. “Trust me; it will make it all better.”

Thomas nodded and picked up the second mug. “Unfortunately, he’s right.”

Thomas took a deep breath and tossed back the slimy contents of the cup. He knew what was going to happen and still wasn’t ready for it when something exploded inside his belly, then shook its way out to his extremities in a massive shudder. His stomach turned inside-out, flipped over, then settled itself back. Stars danced behind his eyes a moment, then cleared.

“Are you all right?” Eileen asked.

“I am,” said Thomas immediately, though he wasn’t sure. He did a quick check on his stomach and head, found he was right. “Your turn.”

“Drink it all at once,” advised Henry. “Bottoms up.”

Eileen took up her cup, smelled it again, and shuddered. Wrinkling her nose up, she took a deep breath of her own and tossed it back. The shudder ran through her, and her face twisted in several unseemly ways before she could speak again. “That,” she said at last, “was disgusting.”

“True,” agreed Henry. “How’s your head?”

Eileen, obviously taking stock, took a moment before saying, “Better.”

“And your stomach?”

“Also better.” She shook her head in surprise. “Thank you, Henry.”

“You are welcome,” Henry turned from the table and shrugged himself into his robe. “Did you figure it out yet?” he asked Thomas.

“Figure out what?”

“The plan for getting into the witchcraft room in Theology. You said you’d think of something.”

“Oh,” said Thomas. “That.”

“Have you?”

“Not yet, no.”

“Wonderful.” Henry headed for the door. “I’ve got a class to attend. Come tell us when you’ve got it worked out.”

“We’ll meet you after the third bell,” called Thomas after him. “Tell Ben!”

The only reply was the clatter of Henry’s feet on the stairs. Thomas shrugged and headed for his room. George was there, sitting up and holding his head. He saw Thomas and managed a wincing, “Good morning.”

“Morning, George,” said Eileen from behind Thomas, her voice cheerful and just loud enough to be annoying. “How’s the head?”

George glared at his sister. “It’s been better.” He switched the glare to Thomas. “Yours?”

“Much better, now.”

George shook his head, wincing again, then looked closely at his sister. “Why is Ei—” he stopped at Eileen’s raised finger. “Alex. Why is Alex wearing my shirt, and why is it soaked?”

“We dunked in the fountain,” said Thomas.

“Is it as cold as the pump back home?”

“No.”

“Good.” George heaved himself off the bed like a bear from its winter den and stumbled out of the room.

“Drink the mug that’s on the table first,” called Thomas. “It will help.”

He watched as George sniffed the cup, threw him a glare, and tossed back the contents. After a long, shuddering gasp, the big smith shook his head, glared at Thomas again, and stomped outside. Thomas watched him go, then turned back to see Eileen was looking at him expectantly. Thomas took a moment before he caught on.

“Right,” he said, realization dawning. He let her go in, then stepped out and closed the door so she could change in peace.

***

The second bell, announcing the start of classes, rang before Thomas, George, and Eileen made it out of the apartment. Eileen wanted to go sooner, but

Thomas kept them inside, worried the Masters would recognize him. In the meantime, they made a breakfast of leftovers from the night before, and Thomas raided his room-mates’ cupboards. Henry’s robes would be large on Eileen, but many students wore over-sized robes. Benjamin’s, on the other hand, fit George quite well. Thomas waited for a few moments after the second bell, and then led his friends down the stairs and across the courtyard. Instead of heading for the main gates, though, Thomas led them in the other direction.

“Aren’t we going to go in?” asked George, peering over his shoulder to the gates.

“We are,” assured Thomas. “But not that way. There’s a smaller gate that goes directly into the dormitory quadrangle. No one watches it. We can sneak you two in through there.”

They turned a corner and the sunlight hit them full on, making them all squint and groan.

“Sneak us in?” asked Eileen, holding a hand over her eyes to block the sun. “Why sneak?”

“No one’s supposed to be in there except students, Masters, and workmen.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. I think it’s supposed to keep out distractions.”

“What happens if you get caught?” asked George. “And what happens to us?”

Thomas shrugged. “They shout a bit, I get a reprimand, and you two are escorted out the gate with a stern warning.”

“And if they find out I’m a girl?” asked Eileen.

“Longer reprimand,” Thomas said. “Flogging if you’re sneaking the girl in for indecent purposes.”

“Ouch.”

“Aye. Here it is.”

The place he pointed to seemed more ivy than wall. The green vines covered it top to bottom and left only the occasional glimpse through to stone.

“Where is it?” asked Eileen.

Thomas pointed. Behind one small opening were the bars of a small iron gate. He pushed aside some of the ivy and revealed a passage just wide enough to admit one person at a time.

George looked at it dubiously. “I’m going to have to walk sideways through that.”

“Probably,” agreed Thomas. He stuck one arm through the bars of the gate, and fiddled until he found the latch. There was a metallic click, followed by a long groan of un-oiled and ill-used metal, and the gate swung slowly open into the passage. Thomas made sure no one was watching, then ducked under the vines and into the passage beyond. Eileen came in hard on his heels, leaving George to turn sideways as he had expected and close up the gate before following.

On either side of the little path, steep, windowless walls rose up—the backs of the dormitories, Thomas explained. The little path led them straight for a short distance, then under an archway and out into a quadrangle. The buildings here were built much like Thomas’s apartment, with balconies and stairs on the inside. These, however, were stone, beautifully constructed and spotlessly clean. Even the paving stones underfoot were shiny.

George gazed up at the architecture, his eyes wide. “You moved out of this?”

“No girls,” Thomas reminded him.

“Ah, right.”

Thomas took them across the compound and down a set of stairs. “This leads us through the baths and out the other side.”

“The baths?” George repeated, shooting a look at his sister.

“That’s the other reason we waited until after the second bell,” said Thomas. “The place is empty this time of day.”

“Oh, please.” Eileen rolled her eyes. “I do have a brother.”

“But not a hundred of them,” said Thomas. “Follow me.”

The stairs ended in a large open room. The walls were adorned with hooks for towels and clothes, all empty. Four long, thin tables had enough washstands for fifty to have a quick rinse. Beyond that were the pools proper. Each was about four feet deep, ten feet wide and twenty long, tiled with stone and full to the edge.

“How are they heated?” asked Eileen, staring at them. She stepped closer and nearly lost her balance. Thomas caught her.

“From underneath,” he explained. “There’s a room where they heat the water, which they pump in through the vents on the sides,” he pointed to an open vent, just above the surface of the pool. “See?”

“Aye.”

“Good. Now be careful. It’s slippery.”

Thomas led them through the baths and pushed open the rear door of the building. A thin cobblestone path led from the door to a wide thoroughfare that ran through the Academy. There were a dozen large buildings, all of light grey stone cut in large blocks and mortared together. Most were square and squat, like the dormitories, with windows every few feet to let in the light. Thomas identified the different schools for his friends as they passed them. The junior college taught the basic subjects: grammar, rhetoric, and logic; geometry and arithmetic; astronomy and earth science. Another held classes in music and art, as well as the gymnasium, where the physical disciplines, including fencing, were taught. The other buildings held the advanced schools; Theology, Philosophy, Science, Medicine, Languages, and Law. The observatory on top of the Science building was home to the largest telescope in the country, Thomas explained proudly.

There was also a meeting hall, which was a dark, forbidding building, but with a slightly more elegant appearance than the schools themselves. There was a lofty-spired church where services to the High Father were held, a small house beside it where the priests lived, and a sizable graveyard behind. Two dozen smaller buildings stood in a cluster at the far end of the compound. They were the houses of the Masters, Thomas explained. One single grand manor house, by far larger than the others, held the Principal’s residence. The rest of the area was covered in grass and scattered with trees and benches.

“I can see why you like it here so much,” said Eileen, turning slowly to look at all the buildings. “It’s so peaceful.”

“It is now,” said Thomas. “Wait until class gets out.”

“Even so,” she sighed, “I wish…”

Thomas, guessing the rest of the sentence, said nothing. He took a quick look to make certain that no Masters were around, and led them swiftly across the grounds to the most impressive building of them all: the library.

It looked almost like a small castle, save that where a castle’s walls would be solid stone near the ground, this building had windows every five feet, rising twenty feet high and made of dozens of small panes of glass set in lead frames. George examined the work and shuddered. “That must have cost a fortune.”

“That’s what they tell us at the beginning of every year,” agreed Thomas. “And the Four show you mercy if they find you playing with a ball anywhere near it.”

There was a tower on each corner of the building, each with a spiral staircase, Thomas explained. The windows, so plentiful on the lower half, were fewer on the upper reaches of the building to keep the books from fading. In fact, Thomas said, some places among the stacks of books, you had to go searching at a certain time of day, when the sunlight was coming directly through the upper windows, to tell one book from the other.

“And you’re allowed to go looking up there?” Eileen asked. “I thought books were too valuable.”

“They were once,” said Thomas. “Not so much anymore, though.”

“What happened since?” asked George.

“The printing press,” explained Thomas. “When it started getting popular a hundred years ago, the Academy built their own and used it to make copies of every book in their library. Took fifty years.”

“Wow,” said Eileen.

Thomas nodded his agreement. “All the manuscripts are under lock and key in the colleges or the Masters’ houses. All the books in the library are now pressed, rather than hand-written. It’s much cheaper and allows the students a chance to actually use the library.”

“Can you take books out?” asked George.

Thomas shook his head. “They’re not as cheap as that. You can read them on the main floor, and make notes from them.”

“Are you going to go looking?” asked Eileen. “For books about…” She trailed off, obviously not wanting to say it out loud.

“No point,” Thomas said. “Ben is a better researcher than I could ever hope to be. If he says there’s nothing useful there, then there isn’t.”

“Then why are we here?” asked George.

“I wanted to show you,” said Thomas, his eyes on Eileen. Eileen blushed slightly and smiled back at him. “Besides, we’re waiting.”

“For what?”

The Academy’s bells began pealing again. Thomas smiled. “For that. End of the period; the others should be coming out now.”

The peace of the grounds was immediately shattered. Students started pouring from buildings, and the grounds were soon filled with movement. The younger students were shouting and pushing and playing with balls, while the older ones moved more slowly, talking among themselves and occasionally fending off the accidental charges of the younger boys. Thomas moved easily through the crowd, leading the others towards the Theology building. A dozen or so students came out of the gymnasium, robes on their arms and sweat on their faces. A stout, bald man stood in their midst, obviously making a point while the students listened

attentively. Thomas immediately angled away from him.

“What are you doing?” asked George.

“That’s the fencing master,” Thomas kept his voice quiet, fearing the man would hear him.

“And he dislikes you so much you need to hide?” asked Eileen.

“He knows me so well, he’ll spot me at once,” said Thomas. “I’ve spent far too much time there.”

“Is that why you’re not wearing your sword?” asked Eileen. She looked at the other students passing by. “And why isn’t anyone else wearing one?”

“You said everyone wore them in the city,” accused George.

“In the city, we do,” said Thomas. “Not on the Academy grounds. They were banned. Too many duels.”

“What do they fight over?” Eileen asked. “They’re students.”

“Aye, and if you’ve ever seen a Theologian debating with a Philosopher, you’ll know why they took the swords away.”

“There you are!” Benjamin’s voice boomed across the courtyard.

“So much for being unnoticed,” Thomas muttered, hurrying towards him.

Benjamin was just emerging from beneath the thick lintel of the Theology building. He was moving somewhat slowly, but his eyes were focused and he wasn’t wincing at the noise. Further proof of the efficacy of Henry’s cure, thought Thomas. The four met on the grass, and Benjamin gestured them to follow him.

“I take it that fits comfortably?” asked Benjamin, pointing to the robe George was wearing.

“Very,” agreed George, rubbing the fabric. “Thank you.”

“You’re quite welcome, though I can’t quite recall Thomas asking permission.”

“I knew you wouldn’t mind,” said Thomas.

“Fortunately, he’s right.” Benjamin gestured them forward. “Shall we walk?”