The air near the window was comfortable because of the soft breeze, and beads and incense kept the bugs out. Aralim sniffled his nose, and turned the page he had been reading. Nearby, Hayan was reading another book; he had decided to help out. They were both reading about rats. Naeen was, apparently, practicing some sleight of hand tricks, a small deck of worn out cards slamming against the table behind them every few moments. She had tried explaining it to Aralim, but it didn’t make much sense. Who would fall for such nonsense?
He had picked up their language quickly enough, and had finally graduated to reading books from the lands of Numa’nakres, instead of archived tomes from overseas. He turned another page, and then looked up at the sound of a wooden staff clicking on the granite floors.
“Miresh?”
“I did it!” she said, marching toward them. “I killed the rat! Poor little rat.”
Aralim stood up and put down his book. He didn’t need it anymore at all. “Excellent! How’d you manage it? Was Rattar happy?”
Miresh grinned ear to ear; her short brown hair had started growing longer since they arrived in Rema, and she let it flow freely around her face. “I remembered a beggar in Lantern Town tell me that not all food is good food. I had eaten some that he said didn’t strengthen me, nor fill my stomach. If I ate enough of it, just passing right through my body, I’d die! So I focused on the fruit they were feeding the rat. Not to age it… I just made it not benefit the rat, I guess, if that makes sense.”
“Really?” Hayan asked, thumping his book closed. “All these diagrams of rat innards…” he sighed.
Miresh’s mood couldn’t be dampened. “I couldn’t stop its heart, I tried for a week! I couldn’t stop it breathing either. So I starved it, I guess. Rather horrible for the little critter, now that I say it out loud.”
“What did Rattar say?” Aralim asked. He wasn’t sure if poisoning the food was going to be satisfactory for the master mage.
“He said that was exactly how to do it!” Miresh exclaimed. “It was like a riddle. He said only two magicians he’s ever heard of could force a heart to stop with their focus, and they had both endured major heart stops themselves.”
“Really?” Hayan asked. “So you really do need to understand something completely…”
Aralim smiled. Miresh had. She used her knowledge from life on the streets—half of her strange lifetime—to kill a rat for the most powerful wizard in the world. “Well, good show, I say. Did Rattar give you a new task?” He would need to return all of these rodent books to the Grand Archive on the Palace grounds.
Miresh shook her head and leaned heavily on her staff. “Nope,” she said. “He gave me the rest of the day off!”
“What do you want to do, little hawk?” Naeen asked. She had started calling Miresh ‘hawk’ because of the Numa’nakres omen of observation. Miresh was the only one that her card tricks and witty remarks were not lost on. “We could play a game or go find food?”
“Rattar said there was a fair today, actors conducting a show in the Mining District,” Miresh said. “Could we go?”
Aralim grabbed his lantern staff from nearby. “I don’t see why not,” he said. “Hayan?”
“I’ll come too,” he said, and piled up their books on the windowsill.
Just as they were reaching the front door of the estate, someone knocked. Aralim opened the door, while the guards in the foyer watched tensely. There were more guards outside, usual soldiers of the Imperial Army. The closest wore a helm with a jaguar face carved into its dark iron design. “Aralim?” he asked.
“That’s me,” Aralim said. “Is there a problem?”
“Nothing like that,” a woman said, stepping up, beside the guard. He recognized her as Yakalaka, the dark-skinned woman serving in the First Court of Rema. She was the foreign advisor, wasn’t she? The sides of her head were shaved, while a long braid hung down from the top of her scalp to her belly button, visible below the short linen tunic she wore. It was coloured in folds of various green and grey shades, with round iron pins on the shoulders. “I hope I’m not interrupting. I wanted to introduce myself properly after our brief meeting a few months ago in the Palace.”
Aralim looked at the others. Miresh looked a little crestfallen by the visitor—it was the second this week! General Ro had appeared two days after Tag’na’s grove visit to ask Aralim a variety of security questions. Aralim had still not told Miresh a single thing about the incident, assuring her that the noise on the Palace grounds that day had been nothing but a training drill. She didn’t need to worry herself about things like that, when everyone had guaranteed her safety.
But after General Ro, now Yakalaka had appeared too. The words of Ovoe the Keeper returned to Aralim. “If his Ascendance visits you, then everyone will shortly follow,” or something to that effect.
“We were on our way to the fair,” Aralim said, looking back at the politician. “If you’d like to speak, would you mind walking with us?”
Yakalaka grinned. “That’s an unusual request for—oh, never mind. Let’s go.” She bade her guards keep their distance, while the guards employed at the estate kept a closer perimeter. Like a proper parade, Hayan, Naeen, Aralim, Miresh, and Yakalaka parted the crowds in the streets of Rema to navigate eastward. The Iron Palace loomed to Aralim’s right, while the jutting mountain on his left cast its shadow over the city ahead of them.
“I hope this isn’t too inconveniencing,” Aralim said.
“Not at all.” The dark-skinned woman smiled politely. She had one silver tooth, he realized. She looked down at Miresh. “How has your training been? Rattar is quite a dry old man, isn’t he?”
Miresh giggled. “He’s dry, I suppose, but he’s fun. I’m learning lots, and quickly too, I think.”
“You going to be his replacement?” asked Yakalaka. Aralim almost interrupted, thinking it was far too direct of a question, but then he thought, This is a question for Miresh, not I. He was following her more than vice versa.
As it turned out, the questioned surprised the young girl as much as it had Aralim. “Rattar is the Grand Mage! I can’t replace him!” she muttered. “I’m just learning what I can do. I don’t even know if I want to stay in Rema.”
That silenced things for more than a few paces, until Yakalaka broke the silence again. “And how have you been doing, Aralim? I heard from a few of the others that you were going to the Palace every day with her?”
“I discovered I may be more useful at the studying element of magic than the performance… If I can help Miresh in anyway, that’s what I want to do,” Aralim said.
“You’re a valuable friend for her, then,” Yakalaka concluded.
“He is,” Miresh piped. “He made me this staff!”
Yakalaka smiled again. “That’s a pretty colour; it reminds me of the Aura!” After a glance at Aralim, the foreign advisor glanced back at Miresh. “Do you mind talking to your other friends for a moment? I’d like to speak with Aralim.”
“You bet!” Miresh said, and dashed ahead a few paces.
Yakalaka seemed a little more sober now. “Aralim, I’m sorry to have asked about Rattar and the Grand Mage position like that. It was… a poorly considered question.”
“Thank you,” Aralim said. It didn’t really bother him.
“But, you should be aware. For the hospitality the Emperor and this Court have extended to you and your friends… Miresh won’t be leaving Rema,” Yakalaka murmured, her voice quiet and serious. “It’s not a threat. You’re not a prisoner. But when the two of you stood before us, you were asking to join us. And you have, one way or another.”
Aralim blinked. “We follow the Path, Mistress Yakalaka. We will follow it wherever it leads, and no power in the world can stop that. When we have learned all we can here, we will move on.”
“I see,” the woman replied. Her voice reflected her irritation, but she maintained politeness. “I hope his Ascendance does not feel he has wasted his hospitality.”
Aralim checked the urge to shrug, and squinted at her through the sunshine. “Anything else?” he asked.
Yakalaka smiled. “As a matter of etiquette, these days, I apparently must ask you: did the invader who died in the Iron Palace last Moon say anything?”
“Only the sorts of things men shout when they die,” Aralim said, with a wink, and answered no more questions from the politician on the way to the fair. She left them soon after, and Aralim could rejoin his friends to laugh at the story of Miresh and the dead rat, as Hayan built it into a stage production with hand waving and shouts of drama.