A hand touched her face and she blinked her eyes open. Cery was leaning over her, grinning.
Sonea pushed herself up onto her elbows. She was lying on an old bed in an unfamiliar room. As she slid her legs down to the floor, Cery gave her an assessing look.
“You look better,” he said.
“I feel fine,” she agreed. “What happened?” She looked up as Harrin moved to stand before her. “Where am I? What time is it?”
Cery laughed. “She’s fine.”
“You don’t remember?” Harrin crouched so that he could stare into her eyes.
Sonea shook her head. “I remember walking through the slums but...” She spread her hands. “Not how I got here.”
“Harrin carried you here,” said a female voice. “He said you just fell asleep while you were walking.”
Sonea turned to see a young woman sitting in a chair behind her. The girl’s face was familiar.
“Donia?”
The girl smiled. “That’s right.” She tapped a foot on the floor. “You’re in my father’s bolhouse. He let us put you here. You slept right through the night.”
Sonea looked around the room again, then smiled as she remembered how Harrin and his friends used to bribe Donia into stealing mugs of bol for them. The brew was strong and had made them giddy.
Gellin’s bolhouse was close to the Outer Wall, among the better built houses in the part of the slums called Northside. The inhabitants of this area called the slums the Outer Circle in defiance of the inner-district attitude that the slums were not part of the city.
Sonea guessed she was in one of the rooms Gellin let out to guests. It was small, the space taken up by the bed, the tattered chair Donia sat in and a small table. Old, discolored paper screens covered the windows. From the faint light shining through them, Sonea guessed it was early morning.
Harrin turned to Donia and beckoned. As the girl pushed herself out of the chair, Harrin hooked a hand around her waist and pulled her close. She smiled at him affectionately.
“Think you could fish us up something to eat?” he asked.
“I’ll see what I can do.” She sauntered over to the door and slipped out of the room.
Sonea sent Cery a questioning look and received a smug grin in reply. Dropping into the chair, Harrin looked up at Sonea and frowned. “Are you sure you’re better? You were out of it last night.”
She shrugged. “I feel good, actually. Like I’ve slept really well.”
“You have. Almost a whole day.” He shrugged, then gave her another appraising look. “What happened, Sonea? It was you who threw that stone, wasn’t it?”
Sonea swallowed, her throat suddenly dry. She wondered for a moment if he would believe her if she denied it.
Cery put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed. “Don’t worry, Sonea. We won’t tell anybody anything if you don’t want us to.”
She nodded. “It was me but ... I don’t know what happened.”
“Did you use magic?” Cery asked eagerly.
Sonea looked away. “I don’t know. I just wanted the stone to go through ... and it did.”
“You broke through the magicians’ wall,” Harrin said. “That would have to take magic, wouldn’t it? Stones don’t usually go through it.”
“And there was that flash of light,” Cery added.
Harrin nodded. “And the magicians’ sure got fired.”
Cery leaned forward. “Do you think you could do it again?”
Sonea stared at him. “Again?”
“Not the same thing, of course. We couldn’t have you throwing stones at magicians—they don’t seem to like it much. Something else. If it works, you’ll know you can use magic.”
She shuddered. “I don’t think I want to know.”
Cery laughed. “Why wouldn’t you? Think of what you could do! It’d be fantastic!”
“No one would ever give you any rub, for a start,” Harrin told her.
She shook her head. “You’re wrong. They’d have more reason to.” She scowled. “Everyone hates the magicians. They’d hate me, too.”
“Everyone hates Guild magicians,” Cery told her. “They’re all from the Houses. They only care about themselves. Everyone knows you’re a dwell, just like us.”
A dwell. After two years in the city, her aunt and uncle had stopped referring to themselves by the term the slums dwellers gave themselves. They had made it out of the slums. They had called themselves crafters instead.
“The dwells would love having their own magician,” Cery persisted, “especially when you start doing good things for them.”
Sonea shook her head. “Good things? Magicians never do anything good. Why would the dwells think I’d be any different?”
“What about healing,” he said. “Doesn’t Ranel have a bad leg? You could fix it!”
She caught her breath. Thinking of the pain her uncle suffered, she suddenly understood Cery’s enthusiasm. It would be wonderful if she could fix her uncle’s leg. And if she helped him, why not others?
Then she remembered how Ranel regarded the “curies” who had treated his leg. She shook her head again. “People don’t trust curies, why would they trust me?”
“That’s ’cause people think the curies make them sick as much as they make them well,” Cery told her. “They’re scared they’ll get sicker.”
“They’re scared of magic even more. They’d think I might have been sent by the magicians to get rid of them.”
Cery laughed. “Now that’s silly. Nobody’ll think that.”
“What about Burril?”
He made a face. “Burril’s a dunghead. Not everyone thinks like him.”
Sonea snorted, unconvinced. “Even so, I don’t know anything about magic. If everyone thinks I can heal them, I’ll have people chasing me around but I won’t be able to do anything to help them.”
Cery frowned. “That’s true.” He looked up at Harrin. “She’s right. It could get really bad. Even if Sonea wanted to try magic again, we’d still have to keep it a secret for a while.”
Harrin pursed his lips, then nodded. “If anyone asks if you can do magic, Sonea, we’ll tell them you didn’t do anything—that the magicians must’ve lost their concentration or something, and the stone got through that way.”
Sonea stared at him, the possibility filling her with hope. “Maybe that’s what happened. Maybe I didn’t do anything.”
“If you can’t use magic again, you’ll know for sure.” Cery patted her on the shoulder. “If you can, we’ll make sure that no one finds out. In a few weeks, everyone will think the magicians just made a mistake. Give it a month or two and they’ll forget all about you.”
A rapping on the door made Sonea jump. Rising, Harrin opened the door and let Donia in. The girl carried in a tray laden with mugs and a large plate of bread.
“Here,” she said, placing the tray on a table. “A mug of bol each to celebrate the return of an old friend. Harrin, Father wants you to go out for him.”
“Better see what he wants.” Harrin picked up a mug and drained it. “I’ll see you around, Sonea,” he said. He caught Donia about the waist and pulled her, giggling, out of the room. Sonea shook her head as the door closed.
“How long has that been going on?”
“Those two?” Cery asked, his mouth full of bread. “Almost a year, I think. Harrin says he’s going to marry her and inherit the inn.”
Sonea laughed. “Does Gellin know?”
Cery smiled. “Hasn’t chased Harrin off yet.”
She picked up a piece of the dark bread. Made from curren grains, it was dusted with spices. As she bit into it, her stomach made it known that she had been neglecting it for over a day, and she found herself eating ravenously. The bol was sour, but welcome after the salty bread. When they had finished, Sonea dropped into the chair and sighed.
“With Harrin busy keeping an inn, what will you do, Cery?”
He shrugged. “This and that. Steal bol from Harrin. Teach his children to pick locks. At least we’ll be warm this winter. What’ve you got planned?”