Guild Mage: Apprentice

6. The Old Tongue

"You can’t be," Liv exclaimed, and then looked around the hall and lowered her voice. "Does the Baron know, m’lady?" How could that man stand to lower himself by marrying a woman of low birth?

Lady Julianne grinned. "Of course he knows. I haven’t been wed long, but I think I can give you at least one piece of advice: don’t begin by lying to your husband. I’ve seen how well that’s worked for my step-mother, and I have no interest in following her path."

"But," Liv protested, "Baron Henry hates that I’m a bastard. Everyone says that if I’d been born after his father died, he would have put us both out on the street for the shame of it."

"I have an advantage or two that you do not, I will admit," Julianne said, helping Liv down the stairs. She was so distracted that they were three steps down before she realized they were taking the grand staircase, and not the servants’ stairs.

"I shouldn’t even be here, m’lady," Liv said.

"You can’t expect the lady of the castle to use the servants’ stairs, can you?" Julianne asked with a glint in her eye. "Besides, the railings are much nicer here, and we’ll need them to get down, between your ankle, and my belly."

Liv bit her lip. Baron Henry was cold and terrifying, but his wife seemed nice. "What do you have?" she asked. "That I don’t, I mean. M’lady."

"For one thing," Julianne explained, keeping one arm around Liv’s waist, "I have my father. He never married my mother, but he took me in from the time I was an infant, and raised me as his daughter. I cannot inherit, of course. Still, I had tutors, a maid, and more dresses than any girl could wear if you gave her a lifetime. Even after my father finally wed, and my half-brother was born, Father didn’t turn me out."

"I don’t know my father," Liv admitted. "Everyone says he was one of the Eld."

"So I am told," Julianne said, helping Liv down the last few steps. "And that, dear girl, gives you an advantage that I did not have."

"What?" Liv tried to imagine what she could possibly have that the baron’s wife did not. She was a woman of wealth and position; by her own admission, she’d been cared for by a wealthy father. She was also elegant and beautiful, even in the late stages of her pregnancy, and wearing only her night clothes.

"Your magic," Julianne said. "Whatever else you lack, your father gave you that."

"He did?" Liv asked.

"It certainly did not come from your mother," the older woman said, as they turned toward the kitchens. "Margaret is a wonder in the kitchen, but she does not have pointed ears or white hair, dear. She doesn’t have blue eyes that look like winter ice. And she could not have saved that girl the way I am told you did."

"I wish I did look like my mother," Liv said, before she could think better of it. "Then I wouldn’t be so small and ugly."

Lady Julianne drew her up in front of the door to the kitchen. "I think you will find, Liv, that when you are grown you are anything but ugly. Now. Master Grenfell has informed me that you will begin lessons with him."

"Yes, m’lady," Liv confirmed, lowering her eyes. What would the first footman think if he saw her being so familiar with the Baron’s wife? It wasn’t the place of a scullion to speak to the lady of the castle.

"Good," Julianne said. "Mind your lessons. I will make certain my husband does not object to modifying your duties. Now go on and find your mother - she must be beside herself after all this uproar."

Liv made a curtsy as best she could, holding onto the door so that she wouldn’t fall, and then slipped into the kitchen.

In spite of the early hour, someone had already lit a fire in the hearth. Mama and Gretta were frying potato cakes, and had brought a jar of preserved apple sauce up from the cold cellar. There was an iron kettle of hot tea at the table, where Archibald looked up from a conversation with Tom, the remaining footman. Even Sophie, the serving maid who had been sick in bed all day, was cradling a cup of hot tea.

"Good," Archibald said. "Now that everyone is here, I have a few words to say. Tom, please bring Liv her crutch so that she can have a seat and get a bite to eat."

Tom scrambled to his feet, picked up a length of wood with an armrest at the top that had been wrapped in cloth, and brought it over to where Liv leaned against the door. "Thank you," she said, but he merely ducked his head and returned to the table. Liv put the crutch under her arm, and immediately noticed how much easier it was to move herself about. The first footman waited until she was seated, with a trencher of fried potato cakes and apple sauce in front of her, before he continued.

"I know that it was quite a disturbance to be roused in the middle of the night," Archibald said plainly. "And that we are now out a footman. Between that and Liv’s injury, it is going to be a difficult few days. I am going to need each one of you to step up to the challenge ahead of us, for the good of the castle. You may be asked to perform tasks outside of your normal duties, and I expect that you will do so without hesitation or complaint. Every one of us must do what we can to take up the slack until a new footman has been hired."

Liv kept her eyes on her food, slicing off a piece of potato cake and dipping it in the applesauce. After the harvest, she’d spent hours helping Gretta and her mother boil down bushels of apples, jarring them, and carrying everything down to the cold cellar to last the winter. Now, she found that she was absolutely famished, and ate quickly while she listened to the first footman talk.

"I have also been informed," Archibald said, "That our Livy will be attending lessons with Master Grenfell. We congratulate her, but that is going to mean that certain duties will need to be shifted around. Maggie, at what hour are the lessons?"

Liv’s mother spoke up without leaving the cakes she was flipping. "From ninth bell until noon," she said.

Archibald chewed on that for a moment. "Liv, you will come down to light the hearth as normal. Everyone will bring their own chamber pots to you to be scrubbed. I don’t believe any of us wish one of the pots dropped in the hall." Sophie wrinkled her nose at that.

"I believe you should be able to set the table before breakfast, clear it after, and clean the dishes before you go upstairs," the first footman said, and Liv nodded. With the crutch, she thought she could manage well enough. "Tom and Sophie will set and clear the tables for all meals during your lessons, and when you come down, Liv, you will wash the dishes. You will carry out your normal duties from that point on."

"Yes sir," Liv said, looking down at her empty trencher with longing. She was still hungry.

"I don’t see why I should have to do extra work so that she can laze about upstairs, getting above her station," Sophie remarked. She had a sour look about her, as if she’d bitten a lime.

"Why not?" Archibald shot back. "When you were sick abed yesterday, we all pitched in to see your duties completed - including Liv. That is what we do here. The worst will be over in a few days, when we have hired a new footman." When Sophie opened her mouth again, he kept going, right over her. "I will hear no more about it. You should be proud that one of us has earned an opportunity. I will not abide jealousy."

Liv felt her cheeks flush under Sophie’s gaze, but the serving maid said nothing further. "Now," the first footman said, "We did not plan on getting an early start today, but we have it nonetheless. Let us take advantage. I expect everyone to be dressed and at their duties; the events of the night do not alter the fact that breakfast must be served on time, upstairs in the great hall."

At the first footman’s command, the serving staff sprung into action. Liv, as she scrubbed clean the chamber pots that were brought to her, one after the other, was forced to reconsider her feelings on ’Mean Archie.’ He was never going to stop being stern, she figured; but he had also put an immediate stop to Sophie’s venom, and given Liv not so much as a harsh word about her morning lessons. In fact, he’d said they should all be proud of her. In spite of the stink of the dirty pots, and the vinegar, Liv found herself smiling.

By the time the ninth bell struck, Liv was dressed in fresh clothes and a clean apron, her hands still red from washing the dishes, but in front of Master Grenfell’s chamber door right on time. She was surprised that there were no other children waiting - had something happened to delay them?

A peal of laughter echoed down the hall, from the direction of the grand staircase, and two young women came into view just as Master Grenfell opened the door to his chambers. Liv thought she caught a slight twitching around his brow and the corner of his mouth, but the mage’s voice was even when he spoke.

"Miss Mason, Miss Cooper," Master Grenfell said. "Good morning to you. Please come in and take your seats. We are joined by Miss Brodbeck, a new student."

"Good morning," Liv said, doing her best to make a curtsy with the aid of her crutch. When she glanced up at the other two girls, however, their expressions gave the impression they’d been confronted with ants at the table, or a particularly large and frightening spider.

Griselda Mason and Mirabel Cooper were the sort of girls that even Liv recognized. In the first place, they came to Castle Whitehill everyday for their lessons, delivered in a carriage so that neither had to debase herself with something as low-class as actually walking on the streets. For the second, the two young women held court each and every market day, surrounded by a rotating gaggle of Whitehill Upon Aspen’s young bachelors. Until this morning, Liv had never actually been put into a situation where she had to speak to either of them.

They were like creatures from a different world. Their dresses were both of dark gray fabric for an outer layer, but brightly colored silk linings peeked out at the sleeves and collars. The daughters of merchants weren’t permitted to dress like nobles, not openly, but by using expensive cloth on the inside of their skirts and bodices, they got away with flouting the laws.

Both girls were taller than Liv, though she thought not much older. Their hair was uncovered, and pinned up with beautiful wooden combs; a few artful curls of honey-blonde hair escaped, no doubt quite deliberately arranged. Kohl had been used to outline their eyes, and Liv suspected the red blush of their cheeks came less from the winter cold, and more from the application of rouge. Even their eyebrows were elegant, no doubt carefully plucked by their maids. Confronted with them, Liv wanted to crawl away and hide.

"What is that doing here?" Mirabel asked, turning to Master Grenfel as if she’d been presented with a shovel-full of manure, instead of a new classmate.

"Miss Brodbeck will be taking lessons with you," Grenfell repeated, though Liv thought that his voice had a bit of a tremor to it. "Please, ladies, go in and be seated."

"I didn’t realize you were taking on charity cases," Griselda remarked, and then the two girls brushed past Liv in a cloud of perfume and entered the room. Liv realized that she was biting her lip.

"Please," Grenfell said, extending his hand to direct Liv into the chamber. She shuffled in with her eyes down, and found that three chairs had been arranged in front of matching desks. In the brief moment they’d had in the room ahead of her, Mirabel and Griselda had moved their two desks off to one side, creating a space between where they sat and the empty third chair that was waiting for Liv.

Liv scurried over to her desk, while Master Grenfell paced up to the front of the room, where a tall wooden table of some sort - she didn’t know the name of it - was waiting for him. On her own desk she found a piece of white chalk and a slate.

"Do you think she even knows how to read?" Mirabel whispered to her friend, just loud enough to be certain that Liv would hear her.

"Let us review, for the benefit of our newest student," Grenfell began. He was completely ignoring what Mirabel had said, Liv realized. Or hadn’t he heard? "Why do we study grammar?"

Griselda answered, her tone and expression both conveying her boredom. "Because the old tongue is the language of magic," she said.

"Vædic," the master mage corrected her. "You may perpetuate the widespread ignorance of humanity when you are at home, but at least in this room we will be precise and exact. The language of magic, as you call it, Miss Mason, is the first tongue of this world. It was the language used by the Vædic Lords before they were cast down. What fragments remain to us form the words of power used by the Mage Guild, by noble families such as our own Summersets, and even by your father’s own Hall of Bricklayers and Masons."

Words of power, Liv realized, like the one that had come to her the day before on the frozen river. At the memory, it stirred in the back of her mind, like a cat arching its back after a long nap in the sun.

"And yet, a word of power alone is insufficient," Grenfell continued. "Do you recall why, Miss Brodbeck?"

Liv jumped in her seat, suddenly aware of the other two girls watching her. She thought back to what the master mage had told her the day before, and what he’d made her promise. "You said it was like fire," she said, finally. "That it wasn’t safe to say, unless you’d been taught to do it right."

"Do you even know what grammar is?" Mirabel asked, from across the room.

Liv shook her head, and lowered her eyes to the slate on her desk.

"See?" the mayor’s daughter complained. "I doubt she even knows how to read. What is a peasant like that doing here with us?"

"I can read," Liv muttered.

"I doubt that," Griselda chimed in.

"Miss Brodbeck is here," Master Grenfell broke in, "because she has a very rare and unique gift. She is here because yesterday she saved Emma Forrester by using a word of power. I imagine the story is already making its way around the town. You both should understand by now how dangerous a word is in the hands of someone who is untrained, if your studies here have meant anything to you. Liv must learn at least enough so that she does not pose a danger to Whitehill."

"That was her?" Griselda exclaimed. "I thought it was you."

"Which word?" Mirabel broke in.

Liv looked to Master Grenfell for guidance. She shouldn’t say it out loud, should she?

"That is not relevant to today’s lesson," the mage said.

"Maybe not to the lesson," Mirabel pushed on, "But it will be to my father. Unauthorized use of a registered word of power is a crime. Who did she learn it from - or did she steal it?"

A sudden rushing sound in her ears kept Liv from hearing what was said next. She’d known that nobles were secretive about their magic, and the guilds as well - but a crime? Had she broken the king’s laws, yesterday? But all she’d meant to do was save a little girl from drowning. It was an accident.

"It was an accident," she repeated, out loud. "I didn’t steal anything. No one taught me. It was just there, in my throat, and it came out."

The argument in the room stopped at her words, and there was a long moment of silence.

"Say that if you like," Mirabel said, finally. "But you can be certain I will go directly home to my father when we are finished here and tell him. I expect he will meet with the sheriff this afternoon, and then you can lie to them and see if they believe you."

"I have already consulted the records of the guild," Grenfell said. "The word spoken by Miss Brodbeck is not one registered to any noble family in this kingdom. Now. We will continue, and there will be no further discussion on this topic during our lesson. Is that understood?" When there was no response, the mage moved on with his lesson.

There was a great deal to do with words that Liv had never heard of before: nouns and verbs and conjugations and cases, and there were charts as well, full of letters and pieces of words. She dutifully copied everything onto her slate, but she didn’t really understand anything that Master Grenfell was saying.

All Liv could think about was what Mirabel Cooper had promised to do. It was all well and good for a master mage to say the matter was over with, but what if the sheriff didn’t agree? What kind of crime was it, anyway, to use a word of power? The kind meant a fine in silver? The kind where they jailed you, or put you in the stocks?

Or was it a crime you went to the headsman for?