Ten Apprentices Read online

  She said not a word.

  “Bring me back the circle and I will take you in again,” I said. Her father had his use from it already. It would not hurt him to lose it now that he had what he wanted. She could bring me back my past, the talisman of what had made me the man I was.

  “No,” she said, her neck stiff.

  I wanted to be angry with her, to strike at her with magic, to make her stagger back.

  And then I saw my father, his face above mine, as my cheeks stung with his rebuke.

  Only now I was in his place, and she was in mine.

  She stood there, head held high, defying me as I had defied him.

  My father had given me an ultimatum, too. I had seen the anger in his eyes, and had held up my chin with pride in refusing him. We had stood on a threshold, as she and I were standing. The argument had been over sending magic into my mother’s grave. I could see no point to it except that my father wished to drain me and make me weaker than I was.

  Here she was, myself in female form. All but for one thing.

  “You must promise never to steal from me again,” I said.

  “You would not believe me if I did promise it,” she looked me in the eyes as she said it.

  “Then you must work with me to defeat him.” She must give me something.

  “That is the one thing I will never do with you,” she insisted. “Anything else, but not that.”

  She wanted me to take her in without a renunciation?

  I thought of myself, returning to my father’s house, after all that had been said between us. Impossible.

  “Leave, then,” I said, with equal measures regret and fierceness.

  But she did not leave. “I will always love him,” she said, the words forced through her twisted lips. She took a breath, and added, “But I need not love only him.”

  There was a long moment in which I thought that I was still too much like my father, that I could not accept what she could give.

  And then I looked her in the face and saw the absurdity of the two of us, apart. I laughed.

  She laughed with me, for a long while.

  And I felt her magic sputtering out of her in bits and pieces, as mine did.

  There was no one there to gather it. It fell freely into the world, back from whence it had come.

  “You are stubborn,” I said, when I could breathe again.

  “No more than you,” she said.

  “Indeed,” I admitted. We were as well matched as any father and daughter could be.

  From that day forward, I taught her all I knew. As I failed in strength, she grew. But she did not leave me.

  When I was on my death bed, she recited the numbers to me, as a comfort. I could not hold them in my mind long enough for them to be of use to me. She brought me a circle she had made for me on her own, one of tin, with no stones, but her name and my name written on either side.

  I held it and knew that when I was gone, it would be hers, as my father’s was mine.

  THE MAGICIAN’S APPRENTICE

  Oldest story in the book. I fell in love with my master. Then she died. Then I tried to resurrect her.

  Well, maybe not the oldest. But pretty old.

  I didn’t like her when we met.

  And yes, I know that’s a cliché, too.

  I thought she was one of those women who have it in for men. I thought she would make sure I never did anything right. I didn’t think she was particularly beautiful.

  She had a crooked front tooth that you might not notice at first, but if she smiled—or yelled at you really loud—then it gaped at you. She didn’t know how to dress. She wore the most godawful gowns. A hundred years old, at least. She had to have been shopping in the thrift store next to the cemetery or something. And they never fit her, either. She bought ones too long, so they dragged in back, or too short so they showed the dirty socks she wore under her less than feminine boots.

  Her hair was a non-descript shade of brown long and scraped back into a pony tail, except for the strands that fell lankly around her face. She had freckles on her nose, not so much like a little girl, but like someone who spent too much time in the sun and never bothered with a parasol (which was true; she didn’t.) Her nose was too big, and her chin was too long.

  The first thing she said to me was, “I hope you’re not as stupid as you look, standing there with your mouth open like that.”

  I closed my mouth immediately, of course.

  But that tells you the kind of woman she was. She spoke her mind and never thought twice about it. Not with me, her apprentice, but not with anyone else, either. She told the Duke what he could do with his offer to make her a court magician. And she told the magician next door what he could do with his marriage proposal.

  “I’m not interested in using my magic to soothe away the aches on your bunion-encrusted feet, or in making delicious meals so that you can belch in my company and then demand I kiss you.”

  He wasn’t happy with her, let me tell you. He retaliated by sending a cloud of rain over to my master’s doorstep constantly.

  My master just laughed the first time she saw it, and got out an umbrella, which she shared with me.

  Her clients did not tend to come to her, anyway. She was a good enough magician that they sent carriages to her.

  Eventually, the rain spout spell wore out, but she never retaliated, and whenever she stepped outside, she always checked to see if it was raining.

  I think I may have fallen in love with her then. She looked very fetching under an umbrella. It took years off her face.

  And a woman who does not get mad easily, or take revenge, is very tempting indeed. My mother had been the kind of woman who took offense at everything and burned dinners often. She glowered and grumbled all day long.

  I suppose I should have gotten enough of it early on, but then there was Lisette, the woman I first kissed. She was a year older than I was, and a shrew. Of course, I only discovered this after I kissed her and she decided that her new purpose in life was to make sure than I did not enjoy a moment of it, with or without her.

  She was one of the reasons that I was in the marketplace, the day my master came by. I’d originally planned to go to the university, taking classes one or two at a time, while working on the side at one of the assistant jobs the university offers. Lisette wasn’t happy with that. She wanted me to work for her father, who was a furrier. The thought of spending the rest of my life preparing animal hides was enough to make me reconsider my life plan.

  Also, Lisette knew where the university was.

  She’d find me there, no matter what I told her. I’d already tried twice to break our “engagement,” as she insisted on calling it, after that first stolen kiss. She wouldn’t listen. And by that I mean, she would start throwing things at me. Large things. Heavy things. Or things with sharp edges.

  I figured I needed to find a place to stay where Lisette could not find me. And it wouldn’t hurt if there were someone very powerful and large involved.

  So there I stood, in the marketplace, along with twenty-odd others, most of them from ten to twelve years old, as apprentices should be, most of them with lice or some other nasty disease, as apprentices are, whether their master want it not.

  I was clean, full grown, and intelligent. I thought I would be one of the first chosen.

  It was nearing dark when she came along.

  She had a light in her hand, obviously magical, but it was perfectly round and tinted slightly rose-colored. That was what I was gaping at when she made her remark about my intelligence.

  “I’ll take you, then,” she said. “If you’re willing.” She put her hands on her hips and waited for me to make up my mind.

  I had a choice. I could go home and be with Lisette again, then come tomorrow and hope that I had better luck the second time around. Or I could go with her.

  “The others like them young, so they can bully them.” She made a face. “Hardly more than slavery. They never learn to
think for themselves, magically speaking. What a waste. Some of them could be fine magicians on their own. But their masters wouldn’t want the competition, now would they?” she asked me.

  I did not know what to say.

  “Well? Afraid of me? I won’t unman you, if that’s what you think.” She stared me up and down, taking in all my attributes, and very nearly unmanned me then.

  It didn’t contribute to warm feelings for her.

  “Fine,” I said. “I’ll come.”

  “I’m grateful for your service,” she said, with a slight bow.

  At the time, I thought it was sarcasm, but I know better now. She had sharpness and kindness in equal measure, and she had been coming to the marketplace to find an apprentice for weeks at that point. She had decided she would have to wait until there was one very desperate indeed, who would be willing to work for a woman. That was why she had come so late.

  But even so, she had not expected me to agree to it.

  She had rather thought that a pretty boy like me would decide he had better things to do. Or at least, that it would take two days in the marketplace, possibly one in snow, before I would agree to go with her.

  I followed her, away from the marketplace, to her old, shambling farmhouse near the edge of the town. I thought she made me walk on purpose, to let me know my place. I didn’t figure she walked wherever she went. Or why.

  It wasn’t just the money, though that was part of it. You’d think a magician would have plenty of money, but it turns out a woman like her always gets passed by for male magicians who charge more and do less. Some women come to her, sure, but even then, those tend to be the ones who think she’ll be cheap. Or they’re the ones who have nowhere else to turn.

  She knew desperate, knew it from the outside, and from the inside, too. Which was why she was always doing spells for the women who came to her, even if they couldn’t pay more than a head of cabbage or a promise of a loaf of fresh bread every day for the rest of their lives. (Only one woman actually lived up to the promise, but the master never followed up on deadbeat claims. She wasn’t the type. Said she had more to do in life than look backwards and be angry.)

  The house was set pretty far off the road, and there wasn’t another living soul (at least a human one) for a good half mile. Right around the back of the house, there was an old garden. Sometimes the master found things in it she used for spells. Roots, mostly. There wasn’t anything worth eating. She planted mint once, and it took over, so you stepped off the road and were overwhelmed by that smell.

  There was an old well, too. The water from it was often muddy, but it smelled clean, and she used magic on it to make sure it wouldn’t kill us.

  The farmhouse itself was two stories high, but the stairs to the top floor were crumbling and I didn’t go up them. She had her own room up there, not the one for spells, where she kept her library, but her bedroom. She told me I could have any room in the house I wanted.

  Feeling spiteful on that particular day, as if it would hurt her if I didn’t want to go up those stairs, I chose the room off the kitchen. It had the advantage of being warmer than the others in winter, if either of us used the stoves for spells. She wasn’t much of a cook, and I only knew the most rudimentary recipes. She counted on me for cooked meal for breakfast, but the one time I tried to fry up cakes, she had to come down with her cloak on, in the middle of a difficult and complicated incantation, and put it out with magic spraying from her hands.

  If I hadn’t been in love with her already, that might have done it.

  Her hair was streaming in her face and she had such an intense look. I remember thinking, if only she would look at me like that—just once. It was all I would ask for, for the rest of my life.

  That’s what I told myself then. Of course, it was a lie. Lovers always lie. To themselves as much as to anyone else.

  If she had given me that look then, I would have wanted more.

  And more again.

  As it was, my wants were simple and small.

  I did not expect her to love me in return.

  The room off the kitchen in summer was horribly hot, tiny and dirty, with only a straw mattress on the floor at one end, just under the window that looked out to the road. I hated it, and I told myself stories, those first few weeks, about how I would be a great magician in years ahead, and when I was, I would come back here and she would beg me to let her be my apprentice, and I would send her in this room and let her see how she liked it here.

  I was a prick. Seventeen, yes, if you count that as some excuse. The only thing I can say for myself it was that it was only a few weeks before I stopped thinking like that. I learned how much I had to learn, for one thing. It wasn’t going to be years before I knew more than she did. It was going to be centuries. And since no magician in the history of the world had lived past the age of thirty-odd, what with the feuds between them, it seemed unlikely that I would know even half so much as she did. I did not know how she had learned all she had.

  She had stacks and stacks of books, books that would have taken me weeks to read, and she knew them all well enough that all she had to do was walk into the room, look around, reach for a book, and she opened it to precisely the right page for the particular spell for changing a man’s head into a donkey’s. Or a frog’s, depending on what his wife preferred, the one being rather better than the other for kissing. (Have you ever kissed a donkey? Enough said.)

  That first day, she told me to take a nap, and then she’d come tell me about my daily chores.

  I didn’t do what she said, of course. I went into my room and sulked. Then, when I was finished with that (about ten minutes later), I toured the house. I didn’t go upstairs, because I was terrified of her catching me, and of waking her up. I went down into the basement where she kept her books, and her other supplies. It was dank and cold down there, and there were no candles. She had no need of them. She had magic.

  I stumbled around, then fell and landed on something that was furry and—alive.

  I was terrified.

  “Nice kitty,” I said, and backed away. The sound in the animal’s throat had been vaguely feline. I’d had a cat when I was younger, before it ran away. Or died. I don’t know which and my parents would never tell me the truth so that I believed them.

  “I see you are a curious one,” her voice said behind me.

  I turned, trembling.

  She had a ball of magical light in her hand. With that, I could see more of the outlines of the basement, the number of books there, enough for anyone not magician to be wealthy with them. But a magician couldn’t sell them, except to another magician, and that never happened. Books were either inherited in the business, stolen, won in battle, or burned to the ground.

  “I—I—” I got out.

  “This is Emmaline,” she said, nodding to the animal I’d fallen over.

  I turned and saw it was a lion. A she-lion, but no less ferocious for all that.

  I think I may have pissed myself then.

  It didn’t make me like her any more.

  “Good. We can get to work, then. I like a curious boy. That means you will do more than I’ve asked of you, just to find the answer.”

  I nodded dumbly at her. I wouldn’t have contradicted anything she said then for all the warm baths and mutton in the world.

  She waved a hand and a book came dancing down from a shelf above my head.

  I ducked, afraid it would hit me. But she would never have used a book as a weapon. They were too precious to her. She had had to win every one of her books. She had had a master of her own once, but she never spoke a word of him to me, and I think she must have left him when she was quite a bit younger than I was.

  She hadn’t been “appreciated,” she said when I asked her. That was later. When she began to tell me a few of the details of her life.

  I wish I had known more. But she would not tell me. She was so busy making sure I knew how strong she was. Making sure she knew it herself.


  The book settled on a wooden table in front of me. I stared at it, expecting it to open to the page she thought I should read.

  She put out a hand and let the she-lion lick it.

  I shuddered.

  She looked for a book of her own, got it down, and only then looked back at me. “What is it? Afraid it will bite you?” she asked, nodding to the book.

  “I didn’t know where to start,” I said.

  She snorted. Not delicately. “Do you know anything about magic?” she asked.

  I shrugged.

  “Then start at the beginning. The book’s called ‘Beginner’s Magic.’ But don’t try any of the spells. Not until I’ve gone over them with you at least once.”

  I opened the book to the first page. I knew how to read, because my father had once been wealthy enough to do so, and he prided himself on not leaving his children worse off than he was. But I did not read often enough to find joy in it, unless the story itself was riveting. This was not riveting.

  It went through a list of materials necessary for making basic spells. A broom. A scrying bowl. Fresh well water. Fire. Straw. Blood. Salt. A familiar. A table. A good candle for light. A window, to air out a room after the fumes of magic had settled, so as not to asphyxiate yourself. A book for writing down your own observations and experiments with magic. A pen for writing. A servant. Food to keep up your strength.

  Honestly, it was so tedious that I expected to find on its list of necessities, a ditch to shit in and ale to celebrate with.

  I nodded off. Standing up.

  I woke up with a start when she poked me with a stick. Or rather, a wand, it turned out. An old one, with writing on it, mysterious and powerful words I didn’t know of yet.

  “Not so curious, after all,” she said. “What a shame.”

  Was she going to execute me right then? I babbled my apology and swore to her it would never happen again.

  “You can read, can’t you?” she asked, her eyes narrowed.

  I nodded.

  She wasn’t convinced. She pointed to a page in the book, the one about the window. “Read this.”

  I read it to her.