The boy nudged Salt into a walk and motioned for me to continue as well. He had a long nose and small mouth, and his red hair was loose, curling where the ends brushed the bottom of his shadowed jaw. Freckles peppered his pale skin. “If I may be bold, what are you studying?”
I glanced around. I was the only girl in this crowd, but with so many people around, little could happen to me or be done to me. The thought shuddered through me.
There were far more dangerous things a member of the court could ask a country girl.
“You may,” I said, rising and stepping forward to keep time with the horse. “I would adore being a physician, but will settle for serving Demeine as a hack.”
“How noble of you—settling.” The wild grin he had possessed until now fell. “Good luck.”
Country girls could be hacks, but still, it wasn’t encouraged or favored. Most were shuffled off to study alchemistry or midwifery. Some were even made to study surgery, the bloody practice of healing without magic at all.
“Thank you,” I said in the sweet, soft voice Mother had taught me to use when the answer was one the listener didn’t want to hear. I was not good at talking, slow to catch on to the nuance of it, but my mother had spent years teaching me—watching me practice my smile in the mirror and correcting my inflection until it was perfect. “I appreciate it, Monsieur.”
His lips twitched back up into a smile.
To think my mother believed I possessed no manners.
“Would you like some advice?” he asked.
“It would be much appreciated,” I said, but I wasn’t even sure I believed me.
The noble didn’t look like he did either.
But still, he leaned down over Salt’s back to point to the rider who had run through the crowd. We were only a little ways off from the bridge now, and the three wagons that had been blocking the pack were almost done crossing. “That is the comte de Saillie, and he very much demands people call him ‘Monsieur des Courmers.’ All physicians and apprentices demand their titles be used, except Laurence du Montimer. Call him Physician du Montimer. Never call him monsieur, use grace if he uses it first, and only use his titles if you have to introduce him before a stuffy crowd.”
No wonder my father had hated him. Laurence was a genius, but his position as the king’s nephew could only save him from so much splitting with tradition. Grace was a Vertganan honorific.
He sat back up. “He’s the only one who doesn’t make people babble during emergencies. It’s so tedious.”
“What about you?” I asked.
He sat back up and shrugged. “Apprentice—I earned that honor.”
“Thank you for the advice,” I said, bowing my head. “Nameless Apprentice.”
He laughed. Then, he took off and caught up with the comte—Sébastien des Courmers if the memory of my lessons served me well—ahead of us. He was reading on horseback, waiting for the bridge to clear. The apprentice who had avoided giving me his name plucked the book, one of du Montimer’s journals by the look of it, from the comte’s hands. They laughed about something and threw back their heads.
If I did convince the university I would make a good physician, would I be free to be so open and fiery like them, or would I be forced to ascribe to the expectations of other ladies in Demeine—quiet, stoic, reserved?
I kept walking. The nobles made it easily over the bridge, the crowd splitting so they could pass, and vanished into the trees surrounding the school. The dense woods were the perfect training grounds, and the town of Delest had grown up around the school in twisting roads and dead-end alleys. The squat wooden buildings of town were crowned by stone spires, and the tallest, designed to channel and store the noonday arts so that the power could be used long after the sun had set, were glittering, gold-plated glass domes. The school commanded the skyline, every eave and tower gilded. I crossed Delest without stopping.
The raised stones over packed dirt of Delest’s roads gave way to dark, damp earth sprouting a carpet of thick grass. I knew this path as well as I knew myself, the descriptions of the university front gates my bedtime stories. I let my fingers fall, feeling the scratch of the grass against my skin, the heat of noon on my face, and the quiver of power in my bones. I neared