“My friends asked me to bring them back for them,” Ruskin rumbled. He had discovered by now that if he reduced his voice to a low, grinding rumble, people assumed he was trying to whisper and usually begged him not to. The sound made the library windows buzz and produced irritable looks from the students working at the tables. “Just give me the library slips, and I’ll get out the other books they need,” he grated.
“Hush. Very well. Hush,” the librarian agreed, anxious only to get rid of him.
Ruskin left the library with thirty-eight new books. Every single one of them was from the Gastronomic Magic section. This puzzled the librarian a little. Only a couple of Wizard Umberto’s students were doing the food magic option this term, and Corkoran never bothered with it. But there seemed no point in telling Corkoran. He had ignored the librarian’s last note utterly. The librarian shrugged and went back to casting Inventory-spells.
Ruskin retreated to his own room and got down to some serious reading. Sweet peace reigned.
The following day the frosty weather gave place to rain. Elda, who had really, truly, and honestly intended to go out flying before breakfast, got up to find rainwater spouting from every gargoyle on the Spellman Building and dripping from the end of Wizard Policant’s pointed nose. There was even a small waterfall sliding down one of the walls of her concert hall. She gave up and went back to bed, marveling at the way Olga still went out rowing in spite of the rain. Olga came back drenched and blue-white, but very cheerful and ravenous for breakfast.
The refectory smelled, very strongly, of fried onions. “Ooh!” said Olga. “My favorite!”
Most other people found the smell the exact opposite of what they needed first thing in the morning and contented themselves with toast, even though most oddly there were no onions being served at all. There were, however, some remarkably fine sausages and golden mounds of perfectly scrambled eggs. Olga and Elda, who needed to eat twice as much as a human, anyway, both heaped their plates high and sat down near Ruskin to enjoy eating for once.
Lukin was one of those who could only manage toast. “Great gods!” he said from the other side of Olga. “What’s wrong with this toast? It’s nice! Usually it’s too floppy to hold and too tough to bite. I’ve always wondered how they got it like that. But this is just right.”
Olga nudged Elda’s wing and jerked her head toward Ruskin. Ruskin’s plate was mounded even higher than theirs. He had six pieces of toast and a stack of pancakes dripping with syrup and butter lined up for later. He was eating with serious rapture. But his round pink face was just a little too innocent. “Shall I say anything?” Olga murmured.
Claudia had no doubts. “Ruskin,” she said, “most of it’s lovely. But what makes it all smell of fried onions?”
Ruskin’s pink forehead wrinkled. “I don’t know,” he confessed. “I’m working on it. I think I’ll have it sorted by lunchtime.”
“Please solve it soon,” Felim requested. “The smell gives me a headache. I was up far too early finishing my essay.”
Essays were traditionally to be hande
d in after breakfast on that day. There were shelves in the Spellman Building for that purpose, each marked with a tutor’s name. Tradition handed from student to student described the serious penalties for not getting an essay there in time. For the first offense you could be deprived of your voice for a week, and your hearing as well next time, and, it was claimed, repeated offenders had their magic powers removed. No one knew anyone to whom these things had actually happened largely because no one dared be late with an essay. Nobody wanted to lose the power of speech, let alone anything else. Even the most dissolute of students hurried to turn up with at least one scribbled sheet on time.
In consequence, there was quite a procession of students trotting through the rain toward the Spellman Building after breakfast, shielding wads of paper under umbrellas, cloaks, waterproof jackets, or damp shawls. Everyone who arrived in the North Lab for Wermacht’s class on Basic Alchemy immediately afterward was chilled and dripping and out of breath.
“Outer garments on the cloakrack,” ordered Wermacht. He was as spruce as ever, having been protected by some kind of rain-warding spell, and he tramped impatiently to and fro behind his lectern with the hourglass on it, while everyone obediently hung sopping garments on the tall, three-legged stand beside the door or hooked umbrellas to the lead-lined trough by the wall.
“Today,” proclaimed Wermacht as soon as this was more or less done, “we are going to examine the mystery of the Alchemical Marriage. Write that down. Your small heading under that is ‘The White with the Red.’”
People scrambled to chairs and snatched out notebooks, and then they were off, writing down the mystery as fast as they could with wet, chilly fingers, until the sand in the hourglass had trickled to the bottom, every grain of it. Lukin, in his hurry, tried to use the golden notebook, but everything he wrote apart from the big heading simply disappeared as fast as he wrote it. He gave up and got out the jaunty little calfbound notebook Claudia had given him instead. After that he was steadily behind with Wermacht’s dictation and still trying to finish when the others surged to their feet and collected their still-dripping garments from the cloakrack.
Amid the bustle he heard Wermacht say peremptorily, “You with the jinx, come here.”
Uh-oh, Lukin thought, and kept his ears open and his head down as he scribbled, in case Claudia was in trouble.
Claudia’s wrap was at the bottom of a heap of others on the same wooden hook, and she had to wait for other students to unhook their cloaks and jackets from on top of it. If it had only been on top, she thought, she would have snatched it and run and pretended not to hear Wermacht. She wondered whether just to run anyhow, but one odd result of her mixed parentage was that she hated rain. Claudia’s mother could never understand it. Marshpeople were supposed to revel in wetness. But the part that had come uppermost in Claudia here was the Empire half, and the Empire was hot and dry. Being wet made Claudia ache. Her wrap was specially charmed to keep her dry and had cost her brother, Titus, most of the taxes from a town. So she was forced to stand there waiting for it while Wermacht came striding up and seized her arm.
“Please,” Claudia said, pulling away.
“I’ve been thinking,” Wermacht said, holding on just as if she had not spoken or moved, “about this jinx of yours, and I can see now what’s causing it. I can lift it very easily. Would you like me to do that?”
“No, thank you,” Claudia said coldly and promptly.
Wermacht stared at her as if he could not believe his ears. “Do you mind telling me why?”
Claudia, having been brought up with the very good manners everyone had in the Empire, did not answer, “Because you told Corkoran my spell was yours, you creep!” although she was tempted to. The trouble was that not saying this threw her into confusion. This is often the case when someone is being too polite. Claudia did most desperately want to be rid of her jinx. It caused continual trouble when she went to the Marshes and worse trouble in the Empire. It had made the Senate declare her an Unwanted Person there, in spite of the Emperor’s coming to the Senate in person to intervene. But strongly though she yearned to be rid of it, Claudia knew that this meant someone—probably a wizard—tinkering with her magical powers. And of all the wizards who might tinker, she most passionately could not bear it to be Wermacht. She had almost no idea how to say this politely.
“Because,” she managed to say at length, “because, er, it’s only due to misdirected power, you know.”
Wermacht’s outraged glare did not abate. He did not let go of her arm. “Precisely,” he said. “It’s simply a matter of straightening the paths of power and reaming them out a bit. I can do that in seconds.”
“No,” said Claudia. “Thank you, Wizard Wermacht, of course. But my—my Empire code of morals means I have to do the straightening out for myself.” And in spite of Wermacht’s still hanging on to her arm, she reached haughtily for her wrap with the other hand. “Good morning, Wizard Wermacht.”
“You are being a silly little thing!” Wermacht said. He shook her arm.