Sunshine

When I came downstairs her door was open. I closed it behind me and made my way to her kitchen. My apartment was one of the attics; hers was the whole of the ground floor, and it was a big house. I didn’t linger to stare, but I found myself looking around at everything I had seen before with the new idea that any of it might be possible secret wards; and it did seem to me that the shadows lay differently on certain things than on others, and some of those certain things were pretty unexpected. Could that faded, curling postcard that said A Souvenir of Portland leaning drunkenly against a candlestick be anything but a worthy candidate for a housecleaning purge?

Yolande was fitting the tea cozy over the pot when I came in. There were cups on the table. I knew where her cookie plates lived, so I got one down and put my offerings on it: chocolate chip hazelnut, Jamdandies, Cashew Turtles, plus butterscotch brownies and half a dozen muffins. (Fortunately I hadn’t landed on the bakery bag when I fell asleep.) Technically we aren’t supposed to take anything home from the coffeehouse till the end of the day, but I’d like to see anyone try and stop me.

“It is ironic,” she said, “that SOF, our white knights against the darkness, are causing you such bother. But I think I can guarantee they will not notice your friend if he comes again. You will forgive me if I made my obstructions specific again to him only. Were you successful the other night?”

I didn’t mean to laugh, but a sort of yelp escaped me. “Yes. If anything too successful.”

Yolande said, “I’m afraid that is sometimes the inevitable result of the possession of real power. That it is stronger than you are, and not very biddable.”

“I don’t think it’s my so-called power that’s the problem,” I said bleakly. “It’s the trouble it gets me into.”

Yolande pulled my cup toward her, settled the tiny silver sieve over it, and poured. Before I met her I had thought you made tea by throwing a tea bag in a mug and adding hot water. Four years ago I’d convinced Charlie to inaugurate loose tea in individual teapots at Charlie’s. I told him that a coffeehouse that sold champagne by the glass could stretch to loose tea. Our postlunch afternoon crowd had instantly ballooned. Must be more Albion exiles in New Arcadia than we thought. Albion had been hit very badly by the Wars.

“I doubt your interpretation,” said Yolande. “If I may be blunt, I don’t think you’d still be alive if you were a mere pawn.”

“I know this is pathetic of me, but sometimes I think I’d rather be a pawn. Okay, a live pawn.”

Yolande was smiling. She had that inward remembering look. “Responsibility is always a burden,” she said.

“Next you’re going to tell me it doesn’t get any easier.”

“Quite right. But you do grow more accustomed to it.”

“Wardskeepers have this whole rigorous training thing. So you aren’t doing anything—stuff doesn’t happen till you’re ready for it.”

She laughed, and it was a real laugh. “Only in theory. Tell me, what were your first cinnamon rolls like? And didn’t the recipe look simple and pure and beautiful on the page? And the instructions your teacher gave you, before he left you to get on with it, were perfectly clear and covered everything?”

I smiled reminiscently, stirring sugar into my tea. “They were little round bricks. I still don’t know how I did it. They got heavier. They can’t have weighed more than the flour I put into them, you know? But I swear they did. There’s a family myth that Charlie used them in the wall he was building around Mom’s rose garden. I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“The first time I cut a ward sign—cutting a sign is your first big step up from drawing all the basic ones, over and over and over, and you long for it—I managed to wreck the workshop. Fortunately my master believed my talent was going to be worth it. If we all survived my apprenticeship.”

“I blew out the ovens once, but that wasn’t entirely my fault…Okay. Point taken. But I don’t think anyone knows how to travel through nowheresville.”

“Then I hope you are taking good notes, to make teaching your students easier.”

“You are a hard woman,” I said.

She leaned forward and lightly touched the chain around my neck. “That is a potent thing. You have others, I think, but this is new. It has a great sense of darkness around it, and yet it is a clear dark. Like a bit of jewelry in a black velvet case. A gift from your friend, I imagine.”

I nodded, trying not to be unnerved by her perceptiveness.

“My master would be most interested, but he lives on the other side of the country.”

“Your master?” I said, startled out of politeness. “But you’re—”

“Old,” she said composedly. “Yes. Older perhaps than you think. Magic handling has that effect. Surely you know that?”

“I thought it was a fairy tale. Like pots of gold and three wishes.”