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“What would life be without some mystery? Connor,” Alex added, “the goats are in the pen, or probably not in the pen, on the south side. Come up with some recommendations about keeping them out of the magical herb-garden.”
Connor looked from prince to magician, visibly made a decision, and went.
Garrett massaged the spot between his eyebrows. “Please don’t.”
“I can hire him elsewhere. I thought this might be a good fit. He’s not afraid of magic, and it might help you.” Alex paused. “Headache? Again.”
“No. Yes. I’m only…it’s fine. We did need him. I hadn’t done anything about that yet.” He took a step back, found a cool shaded wall to touch. “Thank you. I think. How are you paying him, if not from your allowance?”
“How does anyone pay for anything?” Alex said, which was not an answer, and put a hand under Garrett’s elbow and coaxed him over to one of the unfinished stone seats by Lorre’s pool. “Here. Cheese. Bread. Wine. Pears. Eat a pear.”
Garrett did. The world felt marginally less difficult, with sweet ripe juices and golden brightness on his tongue. More manageable. The bread helped as well, richer and more buttery than his own quick version. The wine sang like new flowers and honey, when he swallowed.
“So,” Alex said, somehow turning the simple act of sitting on a bench into an art of rumpled bedroom lounging, “tell me what else you need.”
“I don’t think you can solve those riddles with a pear.” He nibbled cheese. It had herbs. It was smooth and creamy. He should, in theory, save some for Quen and Jennet and Tamlyn and Karis. “We’re trying to literally build the first-ever proper magicians’ school. Out of nothing. Without owing anyone anything. No obligations. It would be easier if the Grand Sorcerer were here. I’m not—I do what I can.”
“You have students,” Alex said, “because they believe in you. Because they want to learn from you.”
“We’re still missing two.” And then he ended up telling Alex that too, how Lorre had blown in that morning as a gust of tropical flower-scented zephyr, had dropped a tangle of tarnished silver on Garrett’s desk, and had said, “Oh, Lilac and Margaret, they’re alive, I checked, I’ll bring them back next week if they haven’t come to their senses, I have to talk to a sailor in Penth about island-turtles.”
Garrett, desperately, had said, “We need you here—curricula, lesson-planning—what do you want me to teach the rest, and should I work on the road, or the plumbing, or the window-glass—?”
“You’ll figure it out,” Lorre had proclaimed, “you’re so good at that, look at the ice-house, and the shields on the workrooms, that was so well done, I trust you with this entirely,” and had stuck two sapphire-jeweled pins into his hair, eaten the last of the blueberries, and walked into air, presumably down to the harbor in Penth, in a swirl of blue and gold.
Alex, one long leg pulled up as an arm-rest, watching Garrett accidentally eat half the cheese, said, “Lilac Auclair?”
“You know her? Oh—you would, wouldn’t you. I hadn’t realized.” The Auclair family was related, in sprawling and complex ways, to the royal family: cousins, intermarriages, multiple generations of closeness to the crown. Young Lilac had, like many courtiers, been enchanted by Lorre’s presence, shimmering tempting power, limpid blue eyes; Lorre had been interested back, not for Lilac herself but because she could touch a word, a written phrase, in a language she did not speak, and understand it.
“Not well.” Alex shrugged without moving. “She and Theophania are friends. Theo,” he clarified, for Garrett’s benefit, “is my eldest brother’s second daughter. Don’t bother keeping track. Anyway, yes, I think I do know her. I didn’t know she was one of your students. Her mother told the Court she’d gone away to school, which of course I suppose she did. They don’t like each other much, Lilac and her mother. But then again Idon’tknow them that well.”
Garrett stared at him.
“What?”
“You say you don’t know them well, and you know that. About her, and her mother. I didn’t.”
“It’s not a secret if you’ve ever been to Court.”
“I haven’t.”
“I know.” Alex’s beckoning smile popped back up. “How old are you? I was wondering. After meeting Lorre.”
Garrett considered, with some longing, the opening of a pit beneath a beautiful young prince’s boots. “Thirty-one.”
“Oh. You are?”
“I have grey hair because of you. And politics. And students. And the Grand Sorcerer.”
“I thought you were older.”
Garrett did not sigh out loud. Pits, earthquakes, sudden improbable avalanches. No. “Thank you.”
“I meant, I thought magicians were older. And looked younger. Lorre—”
“Lorre,” Garrett said, with some acerbity, “is over a hundred years old and the child of a river-spirit. One of the last wild powers. I’m neither.”
“Oh.”
