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An incoming letter, received by contraption — Madam Adina Arklaum, the Head Librarian of the Tower of Tomes, is travelling to the Naakiwan Downs by pegasus carriage to speak to her daughter, Agott Arklaum, on a matter of some importance. She and her attendant will be arriving shortly.
That was all the warning they received, before Tetia is shouting about the sound of wings, from somewhere beyond the hills.
“Coco, we have to hurry!” Agott shouts, her voice becoming muffled as Coco pulls her seafoam robes over her head, and two pairs of hands rush to fasten the buttons. Urgh, why had their master made their uniform so complicated? “Where’s my —”
“Here!” Coco retrieves her pointed cap from its place on the floor, knocked over in their hurricane — if her mother asked to see her quarters, she’d be finished — before rushing back to Agott. As her fingers work out a tangle in the tassel, Coco’s eyes flick up to Agott’s face, her brows drawing together. “Hey — hey! Agott, breathe.”
Agott forces herself to stop, take a breath. The darkness creeping into the corners of her vision recedes, and she can better focus on Coco’s face, near and worried. “Coco — why is she here? What do I even say to her —?”
“She just wants to talk to you about something. Maybe — maybe she was passing through the area, and thought to visit!” Coco’s voice grows more and more uncertain, towards the end of that sentence. They both knew how unlikely that was. “Um. You can ask her if she saw our performance at Silver Eve, I suppose?”
“She saw it.” Even after everything that happened afterwards with the leech — Agott had replayed in her memory the moment she saw her mother in attendance more often than she could count. She just hadn’t thought anything would actually come of it. What if Adina is coming just to berate her in front of her atelier? What if —
“Agott.” Coco takes her hands, and Agott goes still. For a moment, all thoughts of her impending confrontation with the woman who tossed her aside quieted, as Coco grasps her hands, a grounding touch. Her green eyes are bright, and a protective edge colours her voice. “If you don’t want to talk to your mom, Master Qifrey would send her away. You know he would.”
Breathe. Agott takes another breath, squeezes Coco’s hands. “I-I want to talk to her. I want to hear what she has to say.”
“Okay.” Coco smiles, and draws her towards the door. “And if you’re too tired after your talk, you can show us how to make your mariberry pie on another day, alright?”
The pie — Agott had almost forgotten. That had been their afternoon plans before her mother decided to step back into her life — another ordinary, sleepy day at the atelier. The ingredients were already laid out on their kitchen table, with the fresh mariberries washed, the flour weighed and measured.
In the main room, the front door is ajar, but by some small mercy, her mother is nowhere to be seen. Qifrey steps back inside, his shoulders tense as he notices Agott and Coco’s arrival. Other than Agott, only he has his cloak and cap on, appropriately dressed to greet the Head Librarian. “She is here, but has elected that we meet her outside — perhaps this is about something quick after all?” He kneels to meet Agott’s eyeline. “Agott, if this is not your preference —”
“It’s okay, Master Qifrey. Thank you.” The worry doesn’t leave his expression, but he nods and stands again. The chill of a winter day blows past her through the open door; they need to get going before the whole atelier loses its warmth. Agott casts a last glance back — at brushbuddy curled up by the hearth, at Tetia and Richeh hovering nervously in the kitchen, smeared flour staining their housedresses.
“Wait!” Something soft is looped around Agott’s shoulders, and Coco is before her, tying closed the ribbon of a fur stole. “You almost forgot this.”
Agott’s stole is hanging in her bedroom, still damp from a morning walk. As Agott tightens the bow, her fingers glide over the dark satin, tripping over something embroidered in the ribbon, black on black.
A small ‘C’. This stole is Coco’s.
“T-thanks, Coco.” Coco smiles, but it’s the strained, weak one she gives when biting something back for another’s sake. If things were different, Agott would try to lift some of that pain away, pull Coco’s true feelings out of her. This is an opportunity to practice, as Agott is still trying to teach herself how to uncover all the things Coco doesn’t say, but it isn’t the time for that. Today, there is an Arklaum waiting on her. So, Agott forces herself to back away from Coco and step outside. To greet her mother.
The chill is biting, even moreso after Qifrey shuts the front door to the atelier. A light smattering of fresh snow has fallen since Olruggio last cleared the path out to the hills, but the skies are clear.
Qifrey is tense, as he walks beside her. “I must say, I never thought she would come here.”
Adina Arklaum, in some rural backwater. Agott thinks back to when she had first arrived in the Naakiwan Downs herself — the shame she had felt, the despair! For having failed to prove her innocence, for having brought her family name so low. For having ended up in the middle of nowhere, with the only teacher who would take her, unproven and distrusted himself. “Me neither.” The Arklaum carriage is visible now, dark against the snowscape. Her boots crunch, as she walks down the plowed path towards it.
A sardonic thought comes. Walking up to the carriage instead of away from it, forever — this is the reverse of how she came to be Qifrey’s student. “I haven’t spoken to her since….” That day. Of Agott’s humiliation, and her mother’s.
“You have come a long way, and it seems your strides have not gone unnoticed.” Suddenly, Qifrey stops, and he gives her a smile. He is better at it, but it is like Coco’s. Agott would have never noticed, before. “I am so proud of you, Agott. Know that whatever you choose, I will support you.”
“Master Qifrey, what —”
The pegasi whinny, as the attendant dismounts the carriage. The door opens, and out steps her mother.
Adina is as Agott remembers, from both her childhood and the glimpse she caught of her at Silver Eve. Statuesque and perfect in all the ways Agott wasn’t, always trailing after her as she did with her incessant babbling and nervous manner. And Adina looks at Agott much the same as she had then, with a gaze as opaque as black glass, unplaceable and distant as the moon. Severe and acutely out of place, in these rustic climes.
She hardly spares Qifrey a glance. “It has been some time, Agott. You’ve grown up.”
“M-mother.” Agott hasn’t the faintest idea how to behave. Was this her mother visiting, or the Head Librarian, seeking to discuss a spell for cataloguing after a chaotic Silver Eve? Or even, perhaps, to discuss a candidacy for a future librarianship? She dips her head in a bow, a touch too slow after her hesitation. “It is — um, it is good to see you. You wished to speak with me?”
“I did.” Her mother’s face is unreadable, but for a moment, her eyes soften. “Will you walk with me? I expect a discussion will be necessary, but one best held in private. Your current atelier is… charming, though not appropriate.”
Agott glances at Qifrey, but he remains silent, his expression betraying nothing but polite geniality. “Of course, mother. But — um.”
“Are you still wondering why I came all this way?” Adina smiles. “Agott. I came to ask you to be my apprentice, of course.”
The world goes silent, the wild birdsong and rustling of branches vanishing into the snowscape. This is what Agott has been dreaming of. Her family to chase after her, beg her to come back. And beyond her wildest imaginations, her own mother was the one asking.
Her mother. Her mother, who is already walking away with every expectation that Agott would follow, her robes fluttering over the packed snow.
“Ah, wait —” Agott glances at Qifrey, but his eyes are carefully blank, devoid of an answer. He always did like letting them come to their own conclusions. “I….”
“Go on,” Qifrey says, gently. “A chance to be reacquainted with one’s family mustn’t be squandered, hm?”
Agott lingers further still, but he says nothing else. She has to rush to catch up, because her mother’s stride never slows. But soon, for the first time in years, they are walking side by side.
“I must admit, I was impressed by your performance at Silver Eve.” Acknowledgement from her mother, and now, even praise. It is everything Agott has ever hoped for. “That strange outsider turns out to have been a passable teacher after all. But I expect the lion’s share of your progress has been due to your own efforts and hard work, hm?”
“I….” What did her mother want her to say? Did she want Agott to agree and disparage Qifrey to win her favour, especially if Adina were to be her new master?
…Hasn’t Agott had her own fair share of frustrations with Qifrey, over the years? “I’ve worked hard to meet both Master Qifrey’s standards and my own.”
“And may we thank the stars that Olruggio of the Torch is here to keep him in check, though his talents are dearly missed at the Great Hall. I hope you are also taking the opportunity to learn from him.”
In the past few months since Coco has arrived, Olruggio has both enabled Agott’s progress and dissuaded it. In every instance, his judgement has always proven correct, even if she didn’t see it that way at the time. But Agott can’t quite bring herself to voice this thought now, to her mother.
Adina seems to notice her reticence, and casts her a sidelong glance. They’ve walked far enough that the atelier and even Qifrey and the carriage have vanished, laying somewhere beyond the white hills. “But that is enough about them. How are you, Agott?”
“I am in good health, mother.”
“Mm. You know, they all said you would grow up to look just like me.” Adina considers her with a tilt of her head, the ribbons on her cap fluttering in the cool wind. “But you’ve cut your hair.”
She couldn’t be rid of it fast enough. In the days after the incident, Agott hadn’t been able to bring herself to look in mirrors, even in passing. Qifrey had cut it for her after dinner, the day Agott arrived. “I like it this way.”
“Well, I expect you have questions for me,” Adina says, continuing down the path. “Please, ask freely. The Tower faces all manner of shameful upstarts attempting to gain entrance before they are ready, but the family is well. Your cousins have grown in skill tremendously.”
Her cousins. Not a day has gone by that Agott has not thought of her family, of what her mother was doing that day, of what strides her cousins were making without her. Agott remembers teaching her favourite one to draw a rainflinger seal, guiding his hand through the various signs, their even placement around the sigil. She helps Tetia and Richeh and Coco these days, making good on her promise from their second exam.
But her mother was here to collect her. Would Agott be breaking her promise to teach them, if she leaves to pursue what has been her dream since before any of them ever met? “…Why now, mother?”
“Your water demonstration drew many eyes, with your addition in particular as its saving grace. And the design — quadryphons and koi fish, was it?”
“Yes.” Agott nods, enthusiastically. “It was a bit spur of the moment, but I figured those would be symbolic, given what the seal was meant to do. But Coco — my friend — she was the one who came up with the idea. The credit for the spell should go to her.”
“Oh, the days and days you would spend poring over those frivolous sigils. Practicing them even in secret, where the tutors couldn’t see you,” Adina muses. “It’s nostalgic. To see you still haven’t grown out of that.”
Agott clutches her hands into fists, the cloak obscuring the movement. Donning her apprentice’s robes have always felt like donning armour, and never moreso than now. The fur stole brushes against her cheek, a kiss of warmth against winter’s bite.
“Beldaruit was beside himself, during your performance. Started going on and on about the story of your second test, for all the rulers and other Wises to hear — why at the end of it, even the peninsular king seemed impressed. And not to mention all the heroics afterwards, with the leech.” Adina stops now, her eyes falling on Agott. “These stories about you have been a boon to our house. You’ve grown into quite the powerful witch, haven’t you?”
There is something in the way she says it, in the way Adina’s voice shifted when she spoke of the king, that makes Agott think of Qifrey’s warnings now, of all of Olruggio’s lessons for her. To take care to not lose sight of what she creates. To use magic for the sake of those who needed it the most.
“It has been some time that a Silver Eve performance from one of our house has drawn such attention.” Adina glances back now, to the way they came. “Though it could be said that that effect was due to the outsider you were with. …Coco, was it?”
Outsider. What a horrid word, one Agott has used without thought herself through all her days in the Hall. She finds herself dreaming of a counterclock seal, one that could return them to a time before her mother ever learned of Coco’s name. If it could have kept Coco far outside of her mother’s purview, then Agott wishes she had never come here at all.
“Well, do show me your palm quire. Let’s see what you’ve been drawing.”
And Agott is seven years old again, getting her sketchbook pulled from her hands by her mother’s attendant, all so Adina could check on her progress when the chance suited her. Briefly, Agott wonders what would happen if she refused, but her mother was never one to be denied. She slips her palm quire from her belt, hands it over.
As in her childhood, her mother idly flicks through it, making the same indiscernible expression. She flips past the decorative sigil for the valence leech, which Agott drew only a few days ago on the road home, to impress that night in her mind, how it felt to lend aid through a magic that was solely hers. On the next pages — liongoat, scalewolf, and owlcat. The ones she drew for Coco before the procession, the night she couldn’t draw anymore.
Silly things, drawn by a silly girl, still not yet grown up.
“…How did you do it?” Agott finds herself asking, distant even to her own ears. Her mother closes the palm quire, her expression impassive, and Agott’s voice grows stronger. “How could you let me go so easily?”
Her mother’s face doesn’t shift, not even for a moment. It was something Agott admired, growing up — her mother’s control. Her lack of patience for when Agott cried or complained or wasted time. Agott remembers her astonishment, when discovering the lengths to which Qifrey and Olruggio would humour her, at their endless indulgence of her doodles.
Adina takes her hand, and for one wild moment, Agott thinks she is going to be struck. But Adina only folds Agott’s fingers back over her palm quire. Ever calm, ever collected. “Do I have your answer, then?”
On their kitchen table sits a mariberry pie, only half-made. “I want to discuss this first with my master.”
“Oh, Agott, that’s awful!” Tetia throws her arms around Agott, near knocking her over in the process. They’re in her and Coco’s shared quarters, for Agott to shuck off her icy outer robes. And perhaps to hide, for a little bit. “I’m so sorry the conversation with your mother went that way!”
“It wasn’t much of a conversation. She mostly talked at me while I struggled to think of what to say,” Agott says, frustrated. “She’s only concerned about our house. She’s so — urgh!”
“I can’t believe you turned her down,” Richeh says. She glances at the door and presses at it, to make sure it is shut. They were hardly shouting, but Agott understands Richeh’s need to check. A part of her wonders if she should be out there instead, to eavesdrop on their master relaying Agott’s refusal to her mother.
She would be gone and on her way, without Agott seeing her again. By Agott’s design — vindictively, gloriously. Let her be the one to be turned away now, not even spared a second glance.
“But wasn’t this your dream?” asks Coco, as she hangs up Agott’s robes to dry. “What you wanted all along?”
It was. Agott has dreamed of it ever since the day she lost everything. Hasn’t she? But if that were true… then why was this choice so easy? “I… I wanted my family to know what they lost. To come chasing after me. A-and they did!”
Tetia beams. “Then your dream came true, Agott!” And when she jumps in for another hug, this time Richeh and Coco join her, giggling. And Agott allows herself to grin too, while they can’t see it. Gently, Coco’s cheek comes to rest on her shoulder.
Her mother didn’t respond, when Agott asked how she could let her go. Why she didn’t believe her. Above all, Agott had wanted revenge… though she also wanted an answer.
But here in her arms were her friends. And by Agott’s side now is Coco, who never doubted her for a moment, even if she was so new to their world and their family. Coco, who knew Agott better than her own mother. Coco, who drew Agott back from the brink so often.
“Don’t we have a pie to make?” Agott says, when they break apart. Tetia claps her hands and Richeh pats at her stomach as it growls, and they rush for the kitchen, screeching all the while. Behaviour that was absolutely disallowed, in the esteemed and storied House of Arklaum.
Only Coco lingers, clutching the hem of Agott’s sleeve. “I know that was what you wanted for so long, but I’m happy you’re still here, Agott,” she says, her voice small. “I didn’t want to say it then, but… well. I was worried you wouldn’t come back.”
“Is that why you lent me your stole?” Agott lets the fantasy play out in her head — her mother whisking her lost daughter away to the life she should have had, in a tall, tall tower. Agott learning too late that she hated it, that the life she was born into was never meant for her after all. Imagines herself placing that embroidered black ribbon in a guidance orb and leaping from a window to soar through the open air. Always, always finding her way back to Coco. “But I meant what I said. I think… I want other things now.”
“Really? Like what?”
Oh, Agott wants so much. To make magic for Coco and Richeh and Tetia, to show off what her torchstag made of light looks like. To get Qifrey to teach her how he makes his sculptures, from his flowers to his dragons. To gift him and Olruggio a spell of her own when she graduates, in exchange for all the ones they have ever given her. Perhaps she should give Qifrey something far sooner than that, to thank him for his help, when her mother came calling. To thank him for being the one to take her in, all that time ago.
All of that and more. Agott wants to consider other futures, perhaps, beyond one as a librarian in the Tower.
To be young, for a little while longer. There’s still time for it.
To be with you.
“I want to be there when you save your mom,” Agott says, and a smile breaks across Coco’s face, a real one this time. “If you couldn’t meet mine… then maybe I can meet yours.”
Coco gives a teary laugh, and loops an arm through Agott’s. “She’d love you, Agott. I know it.”
Qifrey walks step by step with Adina Arklaum, ruler of the Tower of Tomes, and he can barely restrain his rage. To think that she would come here, unannounced, and for what — to test Agott? To get her hopes up, to unsettle her? He couldn’t understand it. “Well. I do hope you will respect her decision.”
If Adina has picked up on the simmering hostility in his tone, she doesn’t show it. “A disappointing outcome, certainly. But in the end, an apprentice must be the one to choose their master, yes?”
They are at the carriage. Qifrey should let the conversation end here, but he can’t hold himself back. Never let it be said that temperance was one of his virtues. “Why did you come here? What were you hoping to see?”
Adina hums. “You can feel it too, can’t you? Turbulent times lay ahead of us, Qifrey.” Hand on the door, she glances back to towards his atelier. Agott runs past a window with Coco by her side, laughing. “I suppose I wanted her to be sure. That she has made the right choice, in siding with you.”
His first apprentice. As much as he has taught her, so too has Agott taught him. And Qifrey knows she never deserved what happened to her, never once deserved the cruelty of a cold-hearted house that has shaped so much of her life until now. “Then I hope your curiosity is sated. For good, this time.”
He has gone too far. But Adina only looks amused, as she steps into the carriage. “Take care of my girl, would you?”
Qifrey doesn’t deign to give her an answer.