She glanced down but spoke strongly for all her averted gaze. “You gave me to understand that the decision was not mine to make.”
“Nor is it now!” he shouted. His voice was louder, but it lacked the timbre of his old thunder. Yaril stood firm before it. “But you can have an opinion on it, can’t you, and I’m asking you that opinion. What is it?”
She lifted her chin. “Do you wish me to speak it in front of Professor Stiet?”
“Would I ask you while he was sitting here if I did not?”
“Very well.” The new edge in her voice rose to meet my father’s old steel. “I do not know enough about him yet to completely judge his character. I have seen him only as a guest in our home, rather than as a man about his business in the world. If I must take him, then I will make the best of it. It is what women do, Father.”
My father stared at her for a moment. Then he gave a cracked laugh. “And doubtless it is what your mother did with me. So there. You hear the girl, Stiet. I don’t think you’ve got anything we want just now. I think you can keep your damned rock and your damned slip of paper and your damned ‘son.’ I don’t think my daughter and I need any of them.”
I saw something then. I saw how my father sensed and defied the magic. It writhed through him like a squirming parasite, seeking to bend him to its will. The magic did not want Professor Stiet to leave. My father lifted a bony hand and rubbed at his chest as if trying to ease an old pain. I had a glimpse of his set teeth when his lips writhed back, but he mastered it. He fought the magic, just as I had. I recalled suddenly the day I had made that map, how I had dashed it off furiously, a deliberately sloppy rendering simply to be able to say I had done it and be finished with it. That Nevare had almost instinctively defied the magic, just as my father did now. I saw him twitch again.
“Wait!” I cried the word aloud, from my body in the distance. “Leave him. Leave him be. There is another way, a better way. Let me guide the magic in this, and I swear you will have your way. But only let the old man alone.”
Without hands, I reached; without fingers, I gripped. I drew the magic out of his body as if I were pulling out a snake that had tunneled into his flesh. He cried out as I did so, and clutched at his chest. I knew it gave him pain, and worried that his body would not be able to withstand the strain. But that was uncertainty; what I knew was that if I left the magic in control of him, he would either capitulate to its will or die. I suspected he would choose death.
His face was white, his lips darker than scarlet when at last the magic came free of him. With a cry, he curled forward, clutching his chest. Yaril rushed to his side, crying, “No! No, Father, you must not die. Breathe. Breathe, Father, breathe.” She turned to Stiet and barked, “Do not stand there! Call the servants, send someone to fetch the doctor from the Landing.”
Stiet didn’t move. Cold calculations were totted up in his eyes.
“Send for the doctor!” she shrieked at him.
“I’ll go myself.” The voice came from the doorway. Caulder Stiet stood there. He had become bookish, to put it kindly. If I had seen him on the streets of a city, I probably would not have known him. His hair had grown out of its military cut, and he wore low shoes on his feet, gray trousers, and a white shirt with a soft gray cravat. In one hand, he held a book, his finger marking his place. He did not look a man of action and the eyes he fixed on Yaril were puppyish with affection.
“Yes! Go!” she cried. Still, he took three steps into the room, set the book down on a side table, and then turned and hurried off.
I had considered using Caulder. That glimpse of him decided me. No. Father was right. Yaril must do what he was no longer strong enough to do. The old man was looking directly at me. His lips moved. “Thank you, son. Thank you.” His head sagged to one side on his neck.
The magic squirmed against me, flailing and then wrapping around my ghost fists as it sought to escape. I danced harder, caught in the magic and yet battling with it. My heart rattled in my chest like an empty wagon hitched to a runaway team. I was the magic and I fought the magic, trying to master it, trying to force it into a channel that would not destroy all of the Burvelle family. I clenched it tightly, looked at my helpless little sister as she knelt by my father’s failing body, and then doubled the magic into a loop. I pressed it to my brow, imprinting it with an old memory, searing an image into it, and adding to it a message. “This is where the stone came from. But do not give this knowledge to Stiet. Use it for the good of the Burvelle family. Gift whatever it is to the King and Queen. It is the only way.”
