LITMIR.BIZ

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to set up the playing pieces for the game. She was sending us only furtive glances, gauging our reactions from under her eyelashes. ‘A séance. A summoning of spirits, often through a medium. Like me.’

      ‘A medium what?’ I asked her. She laughed aloud.

      ‘I am a medium. Or so I believe, for so the Queen’s medium said to me the last time I attended a séance at my mother’s side. I’ve only begun to explore my talent in the last four months. A medium is someone with the power to invite spirits to speak through her body. Sometimes the spirits are the ghosts of those who have died, but who earnestly wish to convey some final bit of information to the living. Sometimes the spirits appear to be elder beings, perhaps even the remnants of the old gods who were worshipped before the good god came to free us from that darkness. And sometimes …’

      ‘Oh. Those. I’ve heard some talk about them. People sitting in a circle in the dark, holding hands and playing at bogey-frights on one another. It sounds unholy, and completely unfit for a girl to be interested in,’ I told her sternly. In my heart, I was full of curiosity and longing to hear more, but I did not wish to tempt my own cousin to corruption.

      ‘Indeed?’ She gave me a disdainful look. ‘Perhaps you ought to tell that to my mother, for tonight she assists the Queen at her weekly séance session. Or perhaps the Queen herself would like to hear your notions of what is “unholy and unfit for girls”.’ She turned to Spink. ‘The Queen says that much of what is judged “unfit for women to pursue” are the very sciences and disciplines that lead to power. What do you think of that?’

      Spink glanced at me but I had no help for him. It struck me as an entirely peculiar conversation, not unlike Epiny herself. He took a breath, and the expression on his face was the same one he wore when an instructor called on him in class. ‘I have not had much time to reflect on that, but on the surface, it would certainly seem true. Women are not encouraged to study the exact sciences or engineering. The complete texts of the Holy Writ are forbidden to them; they only study the writings given specifically for women. The arts and sciences of war are judged unfit … if those be the paths to power, then, yes, perhaps women are denied those paths when they are denied those disciplines.’

      ‘Why should it matter?’ I spread my hands. ‘If there are disciplines that are unfit for girls, then it is only natural that those disciplines would lead to inappropriate ends. Why would any father put his daughter on a path that can only lead her to unhappiness and frustration?’

      Epiny swivelled her gaze to me. ‘Why would a powerful woman be unhappy and frustrated?’

      ‘Because she wouldn’t, well, a powerful woman, would not, have, well, a home and family and children. She wouldn’t have time for all the things that fulfil a woman.’

      ‘Powerful men have those things.’

      ‘Because they have wives,’ I pointed out to her.

      ‘Exactly,’ she said, as if she had just proven something.

      I shook my head at her. ‘I’m going to bed.’

      ‘You’re leaving me alone here with Spink?’ she asked. She feigned being scandalized, but the look she shot Spink was almost hopeful. He shook his head at her regretfully.

      ‘No, I’m not. Spink is going to bed, too. You heard your father. We have to waken early for Sixday services at dawn.’

      ‘If the good god is always with us, why must we worship him at such an awful hour?’ Epiny demanded.

      ‘Because it is our duty. It’s a small sacrifice he asks of us, to demonstrate our respect for him.’

      ‘That,’ she told me archly, ‘was a rhetorical question. I already know its conventional answer. I just think it’s a good idea for all of us to think about it now and then. For just as the good god makes rather strange requests of how men must show their respect, so do men make peculiar demands of women. And children. Are you truly going up to bed already?’

      ‘I am.’

      ‘You won’t stay and hold a séance with me?’

      ‘I … of course not! It’s unholy. It’s improper!’ I throttled a terrible curiosity to know how a séance worked and if anything real ever happened in one.

      ‘Unholy? Why?’

      ‘Well, it is all trickery and lies.’

      ‘Hmm. Well, if it is all trickery, then it can scarcely be sinful. Unless, of course …’ she paused and looked at me quite seriously, almost as if alarmed. ‘Do you think those mimes that pester people in the Old Square are sinful? They are always pretending to climb ladders or lean on walls that aren’t there. Are they unholy, too?’

      Spink choked back a laugh. I ignored him. ‘Séances are unholy because of what you are trying to do, or pretending to do, not just because they are all fakery. And they are a most improper activity for young ladies.’

      ‘Why is it improper? Because we hold hands in the dark? The Queen does it.’

      ‘Nevare, surely if the Queen does it, it cannot be improper.’ This, from Spink of all people.

      I took a breath, resolved to be calm and logical. I felt a bit affronted that they were united against me. I spoke coolly. ‘Séances are unholy because you are trying to take a god’s power to yourself. Or at least, pretend to have such. I’ve heard something of séances: foolish people sitting in the dark, holding hands, listening for thumps and knocks and whispers. Why do you think they hold them in the dark, Epiny? Why do you think nothing about them is ever clear or straightforward? All is mumble and mystery. We are of the good god, Epiny, and we should set the superstition and trickery and magic of the old gods behind us. Soon, if we ignore them all, they will fade to nothing, and their magic will be no more. The world will be a better, safer place when the old gods have passed away completely.’

      ‘I see. And is that why you and Spink both do that little finger-wavy, charm thing over your cinches each time you go to mount your horses?’

      I stared at her, astonished. The keep-fast charm was something I had learned from Sergeant Duril when I first learned to saddle my own horse. Before then, he or my father had made the charm. It was a cavalla tradition, a tiny bit of the old magic that we had kept for ourselves. I had once asked the sergeant where it had come from, and he had said, in an off-hand way, that most likely we had learned it from the conquered plainsmen. Then he had mentioned that there had used to be other little charms, a string charm to find water, and another to give strength to a flagging horse, but that they did not seem to work as well as they once had. He suspected that all our iron and steel was the cause of the magic fading. And then he added that it was probably not wise for a cavallaman to be using too much of the magic that we had learned from our enemies. A man who did that might end up ‘going native’. At the time, I had been too young to fully understand what was meant by the phrase, other than that it was very bad. So Epiny talking about that magic to me suddenly made me feel both exposed and ashamed. ‘That’s private!’ I exclaimed indignantly, and glanced at Spink, expecting him to mirror my outrage.

      Instead he said thoughtfully, ‘Perhaps she has a point.’

      ‘She does not!’ I retorted. ‘Answer honestly, Epiny. Don’t you think séances are an affront to the good god?’

      ‘Why? Why should he care?’

      I had no ready reply to Epiny’s question. ‘It just seems wrong to me. That’s all.’

      Spink turned to me, his hands palm up. ‘Go back, Nevare. Let’s talk about the keep-fast charm. You know it’s a small magic we use. And everyone says it works, when they say anything about it at all. So either we are as ungodly as Epiny is for tampering with such things, or there is no sin in investigating it.’

      Spink was taking her side again. ‘Spink, you should know séances are a lot of nonsense. Otherwise, why would there be all those rules about holding them in the dark, and keeping silent, and not being able to ask questions

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