Uprooted(81)

Ragostok said nothing, and didn’t even lift his head save for one brief glance that took me in from head to feet and dismissed me at once and forever as beneath his notice. But I preferred his disinterest to the hard suspicious line of Alosha’s mouth. “Where exactly did Sarkan find you?” she demanded.

They’d heard some version of the rescue by then, it seemed, but Prince Marek and the Falcon hadn’t bothered with the parts of the story that didn’t suit them, and there was more they hadn’t known. I stumbled through an awkward explanation of how I’d met Sarkan, uncomfortably aware of the Falcon’s eyes on me, bright and attentive. I wanted to say as little as I could about Dvernik, about my family; he already had Kasia as a tool to use against me.

I borrowed Kasia’s secret fear and tried to hint that my family had chosen to offer me to the Dragon; I made sure to say my father was a woodcutter, which I already knew they would disdain, and I didn’t tell them any names. I said the village headwoman and one of the herdsmen instead of Danka and Jerzy, and made it sound as though Kasia was my only friend, and not just my dearest, before I haltingly told them of her rescue.

“And I suppose you asked nicely, and the Wood gave her back to you?” said Ragostok without looking up from his work: he was pressing the tiny red jewels into the gold with his thumbs, one after another.

“The Dragon—Sarkan—” I found myself grateful for the small lift I felt, from the thunder of his name on my tongue. “—he thought the Wood gave her to me for the chance of setting a trap.”

“So he hadn’t lost his mind entirely by then,” Alosha said. “Why didn’t he put her to death at once? He knows the law as well as anyone.”

“He let—he let me try,” I said. “He let me try to purge her. And then it worked—”

“Or so you imagine,” she said. She shook her head. “And so does pity lead straight to disaster. Well, I’m surprised to hear it of Sarkan; but better men than he have lost their heads over a girl not half their age.”

I didn’t know what to say: I wanted to protest, to say That’s not it, there’s nothing like that, but the words stuck in my throat. “And do you suppose that I lost my head over her as well?” the Falcon said, in amused tones. “And Prince Marek in the bargain?”

She looked at him, an edge of contempt. “When Marek was a boy of eight, he wept for a month demanding his father take the army and every wizard in all Polnya into the Wood to bring his mother back,” she said. “But he’s not a child anymore. He should have known better, and so should you. How many men did this crusade of yours cost us? You took thirty veterans, cavalrymen, every one of them a prime soldier, every one of them carrying blades from my forge—”

“And we brought back your queen,” the Falcon said, a sudden hard bite in his voice, “if that means anything to you?”

Ragostok heaved a noisy and pointed sigh without even looking up from his golden circlet. “What difference does it make at the moment? The king wants the girl tried—so try her already and let’s be done with it.” His tone made clear he didn’t expect it to take long.

Father Ballo cleared his throat; he reached for a pen, dipped it into an inkwell, and leaned in towards me, peering through his small spectacles. “You do seem rather young to be examined. Tell me, my dear, how long have you been studying under your master?”

“Since the harvest,” I said, and stared back at their incredulous eyes.

Sarkan hadn’t mentioned to me that wizards ordinarily took seven years of study before asking to be admitted to the list. And after I spent a good three hours flubbing half the spells they set me on, exhausting myself in the meantime, even Father Ballo was inclined to believe that Sarkan had gone stupidly in love with me, or was having some sort of joke at their expense, to send me to be tested.

The Falcon was of no help: he watched their deliberations from the sideline with a mild air of interest, and when they asked him what magic he had seen me use, he only said, “I don’t think I can properly attest—it’s always difficult to separate the workings of an apprentice from a master, and Sarkan was there all the while, of course. I should prefer you all to make your own judgments.” And then he looked at me from under his lashes, a reminder of that hint he’d given me in the hallway.

I gritted my teeth and tried again to appeal to Ballo: he seemed the best chance for any sympathy, although even he was growing irritated. “Sir, I’ve told you, I’m no use at these kinds of spells.”

“These are not any kind of spell,” he said, peevish and purse-mouthed. “We have set you at everything from healing magic to inscription, under every element and every quarter of affinity. There is no category which encompasses all these spells.”

“But they’re your sort of magic. Not—not Jaga’s,” I said, seizing upon the example they would surely know.

Father Ballo peered at me even more dubiously. “Jaga? What on earth has Sarkan been teaching you? Jaga is a folk story.” I stared at him. “Her deeds are borrowed from a handful of real wizards, mixed in with fanciful additions, and exaggerated over the years into mythic stature.”

I gaped at him, helplessly: he was the only one who had been polite to me at all, and now he was telling me with a straight face that Jaga wasn’t real.