“I’m Claudia,” she said huskily, “and the Emperor of the South is my half brother. Titus is in a very difficult position over me, because my mother is a Marshwoman, and the Senate doesn’t want to acknowledge me as a citizen of the Empire. My mother was so unhappy there in the Empire, you see, that she went back to the Marshes. The Senate thinks I should renounce my citizenship as Mother did, but Titus doesn’t want me to do that at all. And the trouble over me got worse when it turned out that the gift for magic that all Marshpeople have didn’t mix at all with Empire magic. I’m afraid I have a jinx. In the end Titus sent me here secretly, for safety, hoping I could learn enough to cure the jinx.”
Corkoran tried not to look as amazed as he felt. His eyes shot to Olga. Was she Derk’s daughter then? He switched his eyes back to Claudia with an effort. He could see she had Marsh blood now. That olive skin and the thinness, which always made him think of frogs. His sympathy was with the Senate there. Perhaps they would pay the University to keep the girl. “What kind of jinx?” he said.
A slightly greenish blush swept over Claudia’s thin face. “It goes through everything.” She sighed. “It made it rather difficult to get here.”
This was exasperating, Corkoran thought. Something that serious was almost certainly incurable. It was frustrating. So far he had a king’s son with no money, an obviously wealthy girl who would not say who she was, a young man threatened with assassins if the University admitted he was here, and now the Emperor’s jinxed sister, whom the Empire didn’t want. He turned with some relief to the dwarf. Dwarfs always had treasure—and tribes, too, who were prepared to back them up. “You now,” he said.
The dwarf stared at him. Or rather, he stared at Corkoran’s tie, frowning a little. Corkoran never minded this. He preferred it to meeting students’ eyes. His ties were designed to deflect the melting glances of girl students and to enable him to watch all students without their watching him. But the dwarf went on staring and frowning until Corkoran was almost uncomfortable. In the manner of dwarfs, he had his reddish hair and beard in numbers of skinny pigtails, each one with clacking bones and tufts of red cloth plaited into it. The braids of his beard were noticeably thin and short, and the face that frowned from under the steel war helm was pink and rounded and young.
“Ruskin,” the dwarf said at last in his peculiar blaring voice. The voice must be caused by resonance in the dwarf’s huge, square chest, Corkoran decided. “Dwarf, artisan tribe, from Central Peaks fastness, come by the virtual manumission of apostolic strength to train on behalf of the lower orders.”
“How do you mean?” Corkoran asked.
The dwarf’s bushy red eyebrows went up. “How do I mean? Obvious, isn’t it?”
“Not to me,” Corkoran said frankly. “I understood dwarf and Central Peaks, and that was all. Start again, and say it in words that people who are not dwarfs can understand.”
The dwarf sighed, boomingly. “I thought wizards were supposed to divine things,” he grumbled. “All right. I’m from one of the lowest tribes in our fastness, see. Artisans. Got that? Third lowest. Drudges and whetters are lower. Six tribes above us, miners, artists, designers, jewelers, and so on. Forgemasters at the top. All ordering us about and lording it over us and making out we can’t acquire the skills that give us the privileges they have. And around this time last year we got proof that this was nonsense. That was when Storn and Becula, both artisans and one a girl, forged a magic ring better than anything the forgemasters ever did. But the ring was turned down for treasure because they were only artisans. See? So we got angry, us artisans, and brought in drudges and whetters, and it turned out they’d made good things, too, but hadn’t even submitted them as treasure because they knew they’d be turned down. Oppression, that’s what it was, black oppression—”
“All right. Don’t get carried away,” Corkoran said. “Just explain how you come into it.”
“Chosen, wasn’t I?” Ruskin said. A slight, proud smile flitted above his plaited beard. “It had to be someone young enough not to be noticed missing and good enough to benefit here. They picked me. Then each one of them, young and old, man and woman, from all three tribes, put down a piece of gold for the fees and a piece of their magic into me. That’s the apostolic part. Then I came away secretly. That’s what we call virtual manumission. And I’m to learn to be a proper wizard, so that when I am, I go back and smash those forgemasters and all the rest of them. Overthrow the injustice of the old corrupt order, see?”
And now a dwarf revolutionary! Corkoran thought. Bother! He saw that if Myrna sent out her letter to Central Peaks fastness, it would almost certainly bring an enraged party of forgemasters (and so forth) here to remove Ruskin and his fees with him. He made another note by Ruskin’s name, while he asked, “Is that why you’re in full armor?”
“No,” Ruskin answered. “I have to come before my tutor properly dressed, don’t I?” He eyed Corkoran’s tie and T-shirt again and frowned.
“I advise you to leave it off in future,” Corkoran told him. “Iron interferes with magic, and you won’t know enough to counteract it until your second year. You’re going to have trouble, anyway, if you’re working with bits and pieces of other people’s magic.”
“Don’t think so,” Ruskin blared. “We dwarfs are used to that. Do it all the time. And we work with iron.”
Corkoran gave him up and turned, finally, to the griffin. “You.”
All this while the griffin had sat brightly swiveling an eye on each student who spoke and quivering with eagerness for her turn. Now she fairly burst forth, both wings rising and tufted tail lashing so that Felim and Olga had to move out of their way. “I’m Elda,” she said happily. “Wizard Derk’s daughter. I used to be his youngest child, but now I’ve got two younger than me: Angelo and Florence. Flo’s wings are pink. She’s the baby. She’s beautiful. Angelo’s wings are brown, a bit like Callette’s without the stripes, and he’s a magic user already. Mum says—”
“Hang on,” said Corkoran. “Wizard Derk is human. You’re a griffin. How come—”
“Everyone asks about that,” Elda said sunnily. “Dad made us, you know. He put some of himself and Mum and eagle and lion—and cat for me—into an egg, and we hatched. At least, we had an egg each. There’s me and Lydda and Don and Callette and Kit, who are all griffins. Shona and Blade are my human brother and sister, like Angelo and Flo, except that Shona and Blade don’t have wings. Shona’s married. She’s gone to run that new Bardic College out on the east coast. She’s got three girls and two boys, and I’m an aunt. And all the others except Mum and Dad and the babies have gone over to the West Continent in two ships, because there’s a war there—only Lydda’s flying, because she’s a long-distance flier and she can do a hundred and fifty miles without coming down to rest, but Dad made her promise to keep in sight of the ships just in case, because Kit and Blade are the ones who can do magic. Callette—”
“But what about yourself?” Corkoran asked, managing to break in on this spate of family history.
“What about me?” Elda said, tipping her bright bird head to look at him out of one large orange eye. “You mean, why did Mum send me here to keep me out of mischief?”
“More or less,” Corkoran said, wincing at that piercing eye. “I take it you have magic.”
“Oh, yes,” Elda agreed blithely. “I’m ever so magical. It keeps coming on in spurts. First of all I could only undo stasis spells, but after we saw the gods, I could do more and more. Mum and Dad have been teaching me, but they were so busy looking after the babies and the world that Mum says I got rather out of hand. When the others all went off on the ships, I got so cross and jealous that I went into the Waste and pushed a mountain out of shape. Then Mum said, ‘That’s enough, Elda. You’re going to the University whatever your father says.’ Dad still doesn’t know I’m here. Mum’s going to break it to him today. I expect there’ll be rather a row. Dad doesn’t approve of the University, you know.” Elda turned her head to fix her other eye on Corkoran, firmly, as if he might try to send her home.
The thought of doing anything to a griffin who could push a mountain out of shape turned Corkoran cold and clammy. This bird—lion—female—thing made him feel weak. He pulled his tie straight and coughed. “Thank you, Elda,” he said when his voice had come back. “I’m sure we can turn you into an excellent wizard.” And bother again! He made yet another note on his list for Myrna. If Derk was angry about Elda’s being here, he had certainly better not receive a demand for money. Derk had the gods behind him. Oh, dear. That made five out of six. “Right,” he said. “Now we have to sort out your timetable of classes and lectures and give you all a title for the essay you’re going to write for me this coming week.”
He managed to do this. Then he fled, thankfully, back to his moonlab.
“He didn’t say anything about the moon,” Ruskin grumbled as the six new students came out into the courtyard, into golden early-autumn sunlight, which gave the old, turreted buildings a most pleasing mellow look.
“But he surely will,” said Felim, and added thoughtfully, “I do not think assassins could reach me on the moon.”
“Don’t be too sure of that,” said Lukin, who knew what kings and emirs could do when they set their minds on a thing. “Why is the Emir—?”
Olga, who knew what it felt like to have secrets, interrupted majestically. “What have we got next? Wasn’t there a lecture or something?”