Magic Steps

Once she had reassured Pasco, it seemed that life would not let her alone. There was Yazmín, who wanted to talk about his training. Lark visited to say that she had been watching Pasco’s lessons at Yazmin’s, but it looked as if the novice weaver she’d mentioned on Sandry’s last visit was indeed a mage. Moreover, he was too shy to deal with more than one or two people at a time. She really needed to concentrate on him, at Discipline. Erdogun had a tantrum with the Residence housekeeper Sandry’s hearing: he told the women that he’d gotten very fond of having Lady Sandrilene cover these matters; had servants no minds of their own to use?

The duke came for advice on matter of taste. What colors were flattering to him, what gifts might please a women of experience and which were to overpowering, did he look older or younger when he rode in a carriage? That had actually been the first light moment in Sandy’s release from self-hate: the discovery that her hopes for the duke and Yazmin had borne fruit.

The final spur to her return to the larger world came as three letters in two days, one from Briar, one from Daja, and one from Tris. All were thick; all wanted to know why she hadn’t written. They were full of news about what they did and what they had seen. They brimmed with life. They made her present world look shadowy by comparison, and shadows, Sandy realized at last, where one thing she did not want in her Mind.

“I’ve been very silly,” she told Lark now.

“You did a very hard thing, for reasons that everyone agreed were right,” Lark said firmly. “You acted as an adult, and you did it without hate. I’m not sure I could have done it without hating them, after seeing that poor maimed boy.”

”There’s blood on my hands,” whispered Sandry, looking at them.

“Good. As long as you feel that way, you won’t become like them, will you?”

asked Lark.

Sandry shook her head. “You never did have sympathy for the glooms. Maybe I should have come back here afterward”

Lark put the teakettle on. “Should you?” She asked. “It seems to me it would have been like putting off your fine gowns and donning the dresses you wore when you were six.”

It was Sandry’s turn to gape, slack jawed, like the boy who had run upstairs.

“you think so?”

Lark laughed. “My dear, you’ve moved into the greater world, whether you wished to or not,” she said. “As a teacher, as a noble. You’ve outgrown Discipline.

You’re getting ready to take your place on the adult stage. Pasco was just the beginning.”

Sandy propped her elbows on the table and rester her chin on her hands.

“Remember that day you brought Yazmin to the residence? You knew then I was going to live there permanently, didn’t you? You didn’t seem at all surprised when Uncle said he wanted to start entertaining at this winter with me for hostess.”

Lark got down three cups, including Sandry’s, and put out honey and a loaf of spice bread. Sandry began to cut up the loaf. “I knew how close you two had become since you went there,” The women replied. “You would miss each other terribly, if you moved back here, and he might well return to bad habits. And you’re learning a great deal from him, all of it good. Comas,” she called, “if you don’t come down, Sandry and I will eat all the spice bread ourselves.”

“He’s the new student?” asked Sandry. “He’s a bit odd.”

“He isn’t odd.” Lark put three plates on the table. “He’s so shy it half-cripples him, poor thing. He agrees with nearly anything he’s told to do, which is how he became a novice in the first place. I’ve got my work cut out for me, to break him of that”

“You’ll find a way,” Sandry told her. “You always do.”

Lark cupped Sandry’s face in her hands. “You and I are not finished, my heart’s own. There is still much we can learn from each other, and you’re the closest thing to a daughter I will ever have.”

Sandry hugged Lark fiercely. “Then I can come back, if I don’t like living at the Citadel?”

“Whenever you want,” Lark said firmly. “You can even have your old room.”

Sandry released her and gazed at the stairs. It had given her a pang, to know a stranger was in the rooms she and her friends had shared, but it looked as if this Comas needed Discipline as much as any of them ever had.

And she knew Lark. If Lark said they were not finished with each other, that Sandry was as good as her own blood, then perhaps Sandry could afford to be generous.

“Let him have my room,” she heard herself tell Lark. “That way he doesn’t have to run so far to hide.”

Lark rested a hand on Sandry’s shoulder. “You needn’t do that. You know Daja sleeps mostly at the forge when she’s here at Winding Circle.”

Sandry nodded. “My rooms got better light for a weaver,” she replied quietly.

“And it’s nice, being next to your workshop. I used to listen to you weave, late at night. I bet Comas would like that, too.”

“Then why don’t you go and tell him yourself?” asked Lark. “He knows you are my student—you can reassure him that you aren’t jealous.”

Sandry got to her feet. “I have an idea,” she said. “My student is too outgoing, and yours isn’t outgoing enough. We’ll mash them together and teach them as one boy. Then we’ll mix them up a little and make two new boys who are almost perfect. Teachers will come from everywhere to guess our secret.”

“Mila, don’t let Comas hear you,” said Lark, her eyes dancing. “He might think we could actually do it.”