New Tricks

“Are you sure the roof is the best place for this? Wouldn’t the training room be better?” Dmitri asks nervously once we reach the rooftop garden.

“This is where I’ve done all my practising thus far. I’d be most comfortable here,” I insist.

“You’ve been practising without my noticing? How?”

“I’ve gotten better at controlling my energy fields. The practise with you in the training room helped with that. Surely you noticed?”

“I was generally too busy getting drenched. I wish you’d spend more time learning to control the water.”

“If I have to get better at all of it, does it really matter where I start? It’s not like we’re in a war or anything, or like my skill really matters all that much.”

“Fair point. What else have you learned to do, then?” he sighs. He’s probably annoyed with me. Oh well. I draw a few deep breaths, getting myself into the proper mental state for this. I’ll have to work on functioning well in a crisis situation eventually, I’m sure, but for now it helps to be in a semi-meditative state. I decide to start with the simplest of sorcery tricks: witches’ lights. I shape the light in my hands as I would a ball of water, and mine look similar. I can’t get them to look like the ones in the book, with warm, happy, yellow-white glows; mine are tinged blue-green and are slightly murky, like lights viewed from underwater. They are enough to surprise Dmitri, it seems, as they bob merrily through the plants of the roof garden, taking advantage of the plants’ shadows to show off their glowing selves despite the afternoon sun.

“This is one thing. Might be useful,” I answer Dmitri casually.

“My flames are brighter,” he points out, pretending to be unimpressed.

“These cannot be extinguished by water. I’ve tried.” I release a jet of water from one palm, drenching a few of the lights. They bob along completely unscathed.

“Fair enough. Anything else?” Of course there are other things. I direct a hard stare at one of the potted plants nearby. Almost immediately it begins to slide across the ground, more fluidly than things have moved for me in the past. I’m getting better at this. “Well, that’s...useful. Can you lift things?”

“Not yet. I’ve been trying, but it’s still too much effort.” I stop pushing the plant and pluck a leaf from another one. With a few whispered words, the leaf turns into a dragonfly and buzzes away.

“You can transform things, too?”

“Thus far only into creatures that live near water. The influence of water on all of my magic is fairly apparent.”

“How does that explain the way you move?”

“Water flows, graceful and often silent, from one place to another, if not forced in a torrent. I don’t know how it explains my hearing, other than that the hearing helps with my sneakiness.”

“If that’s what you want to call it. I see you as having an otherworldly grace.”

“You might be a little bit biased, and it will take more than one kind remark to undo all of the comments Zira and the woman I called Mother made.”

“You shouldn’t let their opinions of you influence your own opinion of yourself. They never cared about you. From the sounds of things, they only care about themselves.” He and I have been talking a lot about families and growing up lately, when we meet on the roof under the stars.

“All true. But words stick sometimes. It can be hard to get rid of them.”

“I know the feeling,” he mumbles with a pensive nod. One of the witches’ lights bumps against his leg. I flick my fingers at it and it disappears, then do the same to the others. “The things critics have said about my art... It’s too deviant from the established norms for their taste, mostly.”

“That’s part of what makes it so incredible. You shouldn’t let their opinions influence you, either. Your painting is phenomenal.”

“You’re the only one who’s ever said so.”

“You’re the only one who has truly looked favourably on my noiseless movement.” Our eyes meet, and our lips, curved into matching half-smiles of gratitude and happiness, move closer to each other--

“Aerys! Dmitri!” Juniper’s shrill voice screeches from somewhere within the mansion below us, startling us both.

“We should go see what she wants,” I sigh irritably before heading for the ladder to my chambers. He goes reluctantly to the ladder to his own suite. It will not do for us to be found together in either of our personal apartments, not after Wesley caught us in bed together that one time.

I enter my suite just as soon as Juniper, unusually flustered, barges through the door. I have no doubt she at least half-expected to find Dmitri and me in bed together, and thus she is at least somewhat surprised when I emerge from my study room with an annoyed expression, quite as though I have just come from studying Russian or some other worthwhile and difficult pursuit.

“Whatever is the matter, Juniper? Must you go about the mansion screeching like a banshee?” I inquire in my condescending lady voice.

“My apologies, milady. I know this is most improper of me, but His Lordship, Lord Berkeley wishes your presence immediately, along with that of your fiancé. Know you where he is?”

“I trust he is in his own chambers. We were both studying ere this.” As if on cue, someone raps at the door of my antechamber and a moment later Dmitri strides into the room.

“Juniper, you’re making quite a ruckus. Whatever is the matter?” he inquires, only slightly less condescending than I had been moments before. Perhaps we really are well suited. I’ll think about that later.

“Your father has demanded your presence. He says it’s an emergency. I’ve never seen him so agitated. Come with me, immediately.” After exchanging bemused glances, Dmitri and I do as she asks, following Juniper through the halls of the mansion to the library. She wastes no time in making her way to the shelf of histories, genealogies, and supernatural books and pulling on the book on elementals. I cannot help gasping as the shelf opens, more for the shock that she’s done this in front of me than because the shelf is actually a door, which I knew before (naturally, Juniper takes my reaction as a matter of course and Dmitri is amused by my acting skills). I have little time to marvel over this rare instance of my fiancé’s family and staff trusting me with such secrets, as I am quickly propelled through the tunnel behind the door and then into a sort of study, but unlike any study I have ever seen. It has tubes in the walls, ceiling, and floors at regular intervals that all crackle wildly with wicked blue threads of electricity, filling the place with an unearthly glow. A window at the back of the study overlooks what appears to be the training room Dmitri and I have visited so many times, and a flight of stairs descends behind the desk, presumably to another entrance to the training room.

“Thank you for bringing them to me on such short notice, Juniper,” Wesley says sharply, emerging from behind a bookshelf. The electricity in the tubes nearest him crackles and sparks from his proximity. “You’re dismissed.”

“But sir, I think I’ve every right to know what’s gotten you so agitated,” Juniper protests, a rare instance of insubordination from she who embodies the Etiquette.

“You’ll find out soon enough, I’m sure. But I must speak to the two of them in private.” He looks pointedly at Juniper, who still refuses to leave the room. “NOW!” Thunder rumbles through the room and Juniper squeaks like a lapdog being stepped on and scurries out of the room as fast as her legs can carry her. Wesley waits until the bookcase slams shut to turn his attention to us.

“Well, Father? What seems to be the problem?” Dmitri asks, covering his own nervousness well. Wesley runs a hand through his hair and paces back and forth across the study, making the lighting in the tubes jump and twist and rumble in a manner I for one find quite terrifying.

“It’s bad. Perhaps not as bad as it could be, if the heads of state in Europe can keep their heads and resolve things peaceably. But I fear for the worst, son.”

“What’s happened? They’ve all been spoiling for war and building up their arsenals, but surely--”

“The Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria has been shot by a Serb. If all of the alliances across Europe are called on to resolve the conflict--”

“The entire continent could be plunged into war.”

***~O~***