"Yes!" he said. "You have done well."
I couldn't help feeling a little uneasy about how I had dealt with the situation. The woman had seemed terribly afraid. It would have been kinder to have soothed her fears more. In other moments I knew that I had done the right thing. My pity for her was obviously a sign that she had manipulated my feelings. Whores made their own beds. It was their own fault if they had to lie on them. I would have liked to have been able to talk about her with someone. Anyone. She didn't seem like a bad woman. She didn't seem dirty. Mind you, I knew evil was not always ugly. But up close she had seemed so ... normal.
I just wished there was someone who was able to explain things to me. Like how she could do what she did for money and why.
But though I had a bad conscience about her, it didn't once occur to me to take her seriously.
I dreamed of witch manacles. I have always been a nervous sleeper, inclined to wake up rigid with terror in the middle of the night. Does studying magic make this worse, I wonder. You certainly learn that there are terrible things in the universe to be afraid of, things more terrible than other human beings. The fact that a mage is unlikely to come into contact with these evil powers unless he goes looking for trouble is small comfort in the dark. When, as a child, I cried out in the night, frightened by some strange noise or unrecognizable shape in my room, Michael would try to calm my fears by taking me through the spells for dealing with supernatural attack.
"I, too, am sometimes nervous in the dark," he would explain, patiently at first, but with increasing irritation as time went on, "but I reason with my fears and thus defeat them. You must learn to conquer this irrational fear."
Then he would go away, taking the light with him, leaving me alone in the dark again. His pearls of wisdom gave off insufficient illumination to comfort me, but fearing his irritation, I ceased to call out to him.
Instead, whenever I was afraid, I taught myself to cast a brilliant light into the room. It is a habit I have never grown out of. Eventually it became so automatic, I could do it even before I was properly awake. Once or twice at inns on the road to Gallia I had seriously embarrassed myself, and Michael, by lighting up a room full of sleepers before I realized what I was doing.
So now, when in my dream, the huge cast-iron manacle seemed to snarl like a mastiff and reach out hungrily at me, I started awake in a cold sweat with a terrible burning feeling at my throat, blasted a light into the room, and sat up.
And knocked the arm of the man in black, who had been bending over me in the darkness. I screamed. He dropped his thin, spiked club, but his other hand thrust a huge, open witch manacle at me. My skin burned with the fear of that dreadful thing. With all my being I wanted it away from me. He put his hand over my mouth as he tried to force the manacle through the crackling air. I clawed at him, and magical energy surged through me. Manacle and assailant hurtled across the room and smacked hard against the stone wall opposite. The man collapsed limply on the floor.
The door flew open. Another man rushed in with a drawn sword. I stood up on the bed. Tried to scream for help. My voice came out feebly. The man at the door looked at me and the bundle by the wall. Then he darted away. Someone began yelling.
After years and seconds, the room filled with people. They all seemed to be looking at me. Eyes and upturned faces. Maya made me sit on the edge of the bed with my head between my legs and wrapped a blanket around me. I could not stop shivering. She led me away through a crowd of staring faces, a babble of voices. She gave me hot, sweet tea and put me in a strange, cold bed which I could not make comfortable.
Although Maya spent the night sitting beside me, and though I could see for myself the guard outside the window and the shadow of the one outside the door, I did not sleep again until it became light.
"You are quite safe," she said. But I could not believe her.
Even when dawn came and I slept, I dreamed endlessly of cold iron and the crack of the body as it hit the wall. I awoke properly midmorning, feeling sore and dry and stretched to the limit. Maya was still sitting beside me.
"How are you feeling?" she asked kindly. Embarrassed and uncomfortable was how I was feeling.
"All right," I said, and then, with a prickling horror, "Oh no! The ritual."
I leaped out of bed.
"Hush," soothed Maya. "Someone else is taking care of your work. If you are rested, the Dean is asking for you."
"Then I will go to him," I said. "I can't rest any longer."
I'd never much liked Maya before. I'd thought her pushy and abrupt, but I was grateful to her that morning. She helped me dress, an intimacy I could not like, but afterward she rubbed soothing oil into my neck and temples. Then she gently brushed and plaited my hair.
"You have a visitor," she said. "I want you to look nice for her."
I was so touched by this my eyes filled with tears, and I submitted without a word. I rarely paid much attention to my appearance, and it was the first time I could ever remember having my hair brushed.
An atmosphere of deep dismay filled the Dean's office. The Dean and Master John looked ravaged. But the first person I noticed was a woman sitting with a straight back amidst a swirl of silk skirt. I could not see her head for the enormous befeathered hat she wore, but I recognized the cloud of delicious perfume that filled the room. Madame Avignon's hand rested emphatically on a gold-topped cane. It was hard to connect her appearance with what I knew her to be. She looked nothing short of regal. It occurred to me to wonder what the Dean felt about having a courtesan within the sober precincts of the college.
After the greetings there was silence in the room. I sat uncomfortably on my chair, staring at my hands, knowing myself to be the center of attention. Suddenly the Dean and Master John both spoke at once. They stopped; each motioned the other to go on, and then the Dean spoke.
"We have been discussing what happened last night. It is shocking to think that your life is not safe even here, and it is obvious to me and Master John, indeed all the staff, that steps must be taken to prevent a repetition of this dreadful incident."
I nodded.
"Madame Avignon here has reiterated her claim that you are not safe in the college, and that you would be best to reside with her where she says she can have you guarded properly. Indeed, while we cannot approve of her methods, were it not for her forethought in placing one of her own guards in the college, who knows what might have happened."
"Not at all!" said a voice from the corner of the room. A short, stocky man dressed in black stood there, his feet apart, hands behind his back. I was startled that I had not noticed him. Later, when I got to know Captain Simonetti better, I realized that it was usual not to notice him in a room.
"Give credit where credit's due," he went on. "I did nothing. By the time I got there she had already disposed of the bugger. Very nicely, too."
"Captain Simonetti is the man who raised the alarm last night," said the Dean.
A terrible fear had gripped me.
"Where is the man who attacked me?" I asked.
The two mages cast down their eyes. Captain Simonetti looked surprised. "Why dead, of course," he said. "Didn't I just tell you so?"
I had killed a man. I was a killer. And I felt nothing much. Nothing at all, except shame at my numbness.
The Dean cleared his throat.
"Captain Simonetti has been explaining to us the enormous difficulty of making the college safe, Dion. There is even a chance that your very presence here would put the other students in danger. This," he said, looking apologetically at Master John, "is what weighs heaviest with me. The man who attacked you was a Soprian assassin. The people who hired him are obviously prepared to go to