Pentagrams and Pomegranates

by Gabi-hime

It's all well and good to promise to honor and protect someone, but the devil's in the details. Hieronymous Grabiner marries Amoretta Suzerain with the intention of protecting her from a family servitor. Little does he know that the manus is the least of her problems.

10. It Has to Be Made, Like Bread

Pentagrams and Pomegranates

Part I: An Ideal Husband

Magical Diary

Heroine x Hieronymous Grabiner; Damien Ramsey

By Gabihime at gmail dot com

Chapter Nine: It Has to Be Made, Like Bread

---

As it so happened, Hieronymous Grabiner and Amoretta née Suzerain did not study grammar "from morning until night" the following day, despite that professor's ardent desires, because the headmistress turned them out of the school for the day, declaring that they both needed fresh air, and this being a vacation, they ought to go on a picnic.

She had thoughtfully provided the victuals for this picnic in a pretty wooden box filled with sandwiches and pastries, which she passed over into Grabiner's keeping.

"Headmistress," Grabiner had protested, clearly disgruntled, "I might remind you that it is not quite five degrees outside. It is hardly the season for a picnic."

"Which surely poses no difficulty for a wizard such as yourself," Petunia Potsdam had glibly replied. "Take your wife out of doors, Hieronymous. It will do the both of you good."

And so, that was how Amoretta and her testy husband found themselves preparing for a picnic on the first morning of the spring vacation. But there is still a little to tell before that morning, for a very singular event happened the evening previous, before all of the students had quite left the grounds of Iris Academy for their own vacations.

---

Grabiner was sitting in his desk chair, his chin propped against his palm, and reading the final climactic scenes of the novel he had acquired from Amoretta's dorm room when he was disturbed by a firm knock at the door. Glancing sidelong at the door in distaste, as he was never pleased to be interrupted while reading, no matter what manner of thing he was reading, Grabiner carefully placed a scrap of paper in the book and closed it. The book was older than it had first appeared, and he wished to treat it gently.

"Who's calling?" he asked deliberately by the door. If it were someone whom might easily be sent away, then he was resolved to send them away. At this very moment Nancy was in the middle of a gun battle between burglars and the somewhat ineffective police.

"Ellen Middleton, sir," came the serious, well-modulated reply. "I've brought some things for Amoretta."

It seemed clear that Miss Drew would have to wait, because Miss Middleton trumped her in terms of precedence. Although he would have often liked to, Grabiner did not actually ignore students in favor of books. With one last sidelong glance at the book, Grabiner unwarded and unlocked his door to allow the freshman student into his rooms.

Students always underfoot, he thought to himself, disgruntled. This used to be my sanctuary, the one place I could be sure not to be disturbed by those delinquents. I suppose now my rooms will become Grand Central Station for all the worst offenders of the freshman class. That girl gets into positively everything.

When he opened the door he found Ellen Middleton standing with her arms full of all sorts of things that he was not entirely certain he wished to cross the threshold into his rooms. There were two totebags, one over each of her arms, and they both seemed to be bulging with all manner of things: jars and bottles, socks, books, pajamas, sweaters, and the dainties required of a girl as dainty as Amoretta. Ellen also carried several hangers on which hung blouses, skirts, and one worn pair of blue jeans. Over one of her arms was draped a pink robe, and the other held a bedraggled looking stuffed rabbit.

Ellen stood in the hallway, scrutinizing Grabiner most intently. At last it became clear that she was not going to cross into his rooms without express permission, so he waved her in.

"Thank you for bringing up Amoretta's," Grabiner paused thoughtfully, raising one eyebrow, "Things. After the school had quieted down a bit I had planned to take her downstairs to fetch what she required, but now I see that we do not need to make a trip." He moved to take the hanging clothes from Ellen and put them away in a wardrobe that had shelves built all around it. "Amoretta is currently in the bath, otherwise I am sure she would be pleased to thank you herself."

While Grabiner had put away the hanging clothes, Ellen had divested herself of the totebags, putting them neatly to the side of the desk. The rabbit she placed without invitation between the pillows on the bed, and then she returned to face Grabiner, the robe clutched against her chest.

"I wonder," Ellen began in a tone that seemed conversational enough, despite its vaguely icy undertones, "What it was that Amoretta was planning on wearing when she got out of the bath, since she didn't take a change of clothes with her when she left last night."

Grabiner's eyes narrowed at Ellen's pointed implication and he answered caustically, "I really haven't the faintest idea, Miss Middleton. I cannot claim to have any special understanding of how my wife's brain operates. Much of the time, what she does is as mysterious to me as it is to everyone else. Perhaps she simply intended to put on the pajamas she had worn earlier. Such things have been known to happen."

Ellen frowned briefly, then said, "I'd like my robe back, please."

"Would you care to explain?" Grabiner asked.

Ellen apparently cared to explain. She told Grabiner that the robe that Amoretta had worn the night before had been Ellen's robe, since it was very clean and had been freshly pressed. Amoretta's robe was now pristinely clean as well, and Ellen wished to affect a trade of the two garments.

The problem being: the robe in question was currently hanging in Grabiner's bathroom, where Amoretta was bathing. Grabiner told her as much.

"Please feel free to retrieve it, Miss Middleton," he said, returning to his desk chair and the book that lay marked on the desk. "I wouldn't dream of disturbing my wife at the moment." He pointedly turned his desk chair so that his back was toward the bathroom door.

Behind him, he heard Ellen Middleton make a slight huffing noise, and then she went to the door to the connected bathroom and lightly knocked. She carried on a muffled conversation with the occupant of the bathroom, and at last was apparently granted entrance.

She was in there quite a lot longer than was required to simply switch one robe for another, and it became clear soon enough that the two girls were engaged in a lengthy conversation. Grabiner finished reading the perilous exploits of one Nancy Drew of River Heights, and then was left to sit with his hands folded in his lap for want of anything else to do. One minute passed, and then another, and finally he got to his feet to select another book off the shelf. He was in the mood for something dramatic, whether it was history or fiction.

His finger was poised over the spine of a particularly well-loved copy of Le Rouge et le Noir when Ellen Middleton, apparently at last finished interviewing Amoretta, excused herself quietly from the room, looking troubled. Grabiner pulled the book from its place on the shelf, then absently crossed the room to lock and ward the door again. He was just considering sitting to read again when Amoretta herself appeared, fresh from the bath, her dark hair still damp and looking even longer than it usually did, an effect of the fact that her curls were loose and wet.

She wore only the newly delivered pink bathrobe and mildly approached the desk to rummage around in the totebags that Ellen had left against it.

Grabiner turned his back on her out of politeness, but apparently she was as little disturbed by him as she had been of her roommate barging in on her while she was in the bath. She took a little time selecting pajamas, and then she mercifully went into the bath again to change. When she emerged again she was clad in pale blue pajamas dotted in a halftone pattern. She sat down on the bedside rug near his feet with a plain white shirt and began methodically squeezing sections of her wet hair. Grabiner was utterly mystified by her behavior, but thankful that she was clothed.

"What did Miss Middleton wish to discuss with you?" he asked idly, turning the book over in his hands as he watched her pale fingers busy in her dark hair.

"Statutory rape," Amoretta answered benignly, not missing a beat as she patiently squeezed her hair.

"What?" Grabiner asked without meaning to, leaning forward reflexively in alarm.

"She had quite a lot of things to say about it, really. Ellen's just full of information when you want to know something, and even when you don't care to know it. Even more than Minnie, I think," Amoretta noted conversationally. "Where she comes by this information, I don't know. Maybe she looked it up in the encyclopedia? She wanted to tell me that although the legal age of consent in Vermont state is sixteen years of age," she raised an authoritative finger, "Which I made last September, that if the other partner is in loco parentis, in this case a teacher, the age of consent rises to eighteen, which I think is downright silly. She also reminded me that while we are married, our marriage has not been sanctioned or recognized by the state of Vermont."

Somehow Grabiner managed to keep from choking during this calm explanation of facts. He refused to be driven out of his own quarters by an uncomfortable topic of conversation. He had also learned by experience that if he gave her an inch by falling back, unsure of himself, she took however much space she required. The only way to face her successfully was to be utterly implacable.

By the end of her explanation he was able to remark, in a rather normal tone, given the situation, "I had not realized that you retained Miss Middleton as your legal counsel."

Amoretta shrugged eloquently. "She appointed herself, naturally. If you're wondering if I asked about all this," she affixed Grabiner with a curious eye, "I didn't," she said loftily. "I don't care," she further explained. "I think that upset Ellen more than anything. I think she's really very worried that I'll be taken to jail and my life ruined forever."

"If someone were likely to be taken to jail in such a situation, I imagine it would be me, and not you, the in loco parentis perpetrator, as it were. My imagined misconduct seems to have become a new morbid fascination of Miss Middleton's," Grabiner said dryly. "In future you should tell her that her mind should rest at ease. I have no plans to violate the law of the state of Vermont."

"I think if you take me across state lines, it becomes a federal crime," Amoretta paused, suddenly quite interested in the way the conversation was developing.

"Where do you come by this information?" Grabiner asked, for his own curiosity could be quite as morbid as Ellen Middleton's.

"Television," she volunteered candidly.

"I have no wish to break Federal law either," he finished with some sarcasm.

"Well, I would," Amoretta said defiantly.

"You have made that abundantly clear," Grabiner said, opening his book, because he wished to declare this topic of conversation closed and finished.

"I understand that law exists to hold society together," Amoretta went on philosophically, quite ignoring the fact that Grabiner obviously wished to read. "And I respect it. There are plenty of laws that function as they ought to: to protect the weak and the disadvantaged from people who would hurt or exploit them. I'm happy to uphold those laws. But if I think a law is unjust or harmful, then it is my obligation to stand against it."

"Forgive me if I don't find your motives particularly altruistic," Grabiner remarked, rolling his eyes.

"Oh, I'm not altruistic at all," Amoretta agreed enthusiastically, at last apparently having finished squeezing her hair out, and sitting back, pleased with herself. "I'm terribly selfish. I want to be happy. First and foremost, I want to be happy. And I want other people to be happy too. I want everyone in the world to be happy. I think that's incredibly selfish, don't you? I want everything, absolutely everything, there is, that there can be. I won't be satisfied with anything less."

"You're really a very terrifying girl," Grabiner said very seriously, although not without the barest touch of exasperated affection.

Amoretta only smiled in response.

---

After the headmistress advised them of her intention to turn them out of doors for the day, Grabiner stood on the steps of the main building, frowning. The chilly breeze blew his hair around his face.

"Where would you like to go?" he asked Amoretta, his arms folded into his cloak. "That woman won't leave us in peace if we try to go against her wishes. I can take you out to lunch, if you like."

Amoretta shook her head. "No, I really would rather go on a picnic. I know it may not be the warmest day, but I do like being out of doors. I've been cooped up quite a lot since..." she trailed off and he didn't press her.

"Very well. If that's what you'd prefer, then I know a place that would be suitable," he said, looking out across the campus grounds. "Go back upstairs and bundle up well. Layer your clothing. You're weak, right now. I don't want you catching a chill."

"Yes sir," she said smartly, saluting, "I will!"

And then Amoretta was off to do as she had been told and Grabiner was left to put the rest of their picnicking gear in order.

---

Before they left the main campus, Amoretta was anxious to survey the damage to the accounting room. Grabiner was reluctant to escort her there at first, until she rebelliously declared she would go see the wreckage on her own if he didn't take her. Her own impressions of the scene were hazy and indistinct, marred by overwhelming impressions of terror and pain.

What surprised Amoretta the most when she walked through the open space where the back wall had once stood was the strange lack of debris. Although she had told the students of the academy that Grabiner had 'blown up' the back wall of the accounting room, as this had seemed to be the best description of the act, now that she inspected things closely, it was more as if the wall had been vaporized.

Walking in soft shoes over the floor, which had melted and cooled like a strange flow of basalt, she paused to stand with one foot inside the room and one foot outside, on the dark earth, which had also been melted into something like pliable stone. Amoretta let out a low whistle.

"It's like there was some sort of volcanic catastrophe, right here in the accounting room," she observed. "Remind me not to cross you, Mr. Grabiner."

"The spell is called Gigant Animus," Grabiner said, touching the cauterized edge of the wall with one hand. "It actually does mimic the effects of a mantle plume. Terrific heat and pressure are involved, and both must be carefully controlled. It is a difficult spell to master, and not something that a novice should attempt under any circumstances," he warned sternly. He paused, then added, "One must always select the appropriate spell for the appropriate moment. Gigant Animus is useful because although it is a heat spell, a fire spell, it is not really an explosive spell, as you have noted. The trajectory of explosive shrapnel and debris is too difficult to plot in circumstances of active combat. That boy had you as a hostage. However well I might control my spell, I have no ability to control causality. Even under Kavus's shield, you could have easily been injured by flying physical matter, and I knew I could not bluff that boy with less dangerous, less effective spell. Whatever I may think of Mr. Ramsey, the headmistress was right in her assertion that he is not to be underestimated. Although he rarely exhibited his skills while at this school, that boy has the makings of a killing duelist."

Amoretta moved to stand in the clean circle of floor that stood like a strange island in the midst of the sea of melted floor basalt. This is where she had fallen when Damien had dropped her, and where she had lain when Kavus had shielded her as the spell passed over them like Armageddon.

She looked back at the familiar table, which had been pushed back against the far wall, and the chairs that had been overturned.

"Do you think this room will get repaired any time soon?" she asked, folding her gloved hands and bringing them up to rest in the hollow of her throat. "I am very fond of it. I remember the first time we sat together here, and you gave me this lecture about running for political office - all I could think of at the time was 'what an awful, charming man he is.'"

"I'm flattered," Grabiner remarked dryly, although he too turned to look at the table and the upset chairs. "Although it was only October of last year, I suppose it seems like a very long time ago," he snorted and it was something like a laugh. "Miss Marianne Amoretta Suzerain, the dancing dragon who ran for freshman student council treasurer. I have to say, of all the class elections this year, I looked forward to the freshman election least of all. Only you and Mr. Blaising were in the running. It was a Morton's fork."

"I really can dance, you know," Amoretta insisted.

"So you claim," he said and then quickly raised his hands, "And I still have no need of a demonstration." He paused thoughtfully, considering. "You won them over then the same way you won them over at your press conference: by telling them what they wanted to hear."

"You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, Hieronymous," Amoretta advised pleasantly, folding her hands behind her back as she leaned forward winsomely.

"I have very little interest in catching flies," he said shortly, and she laughed easily. He was not altogether distressed that she had laughed when he had meant to be crisp. He was beginning to become accustomed to the fact that she did not always take him entirely seriously. "In any case," he said, "I shouldn't worry overly much about the accounting room. I imagine the headmistress will arrange to have it repaired over the spring holiday. You'll be back to delivering mail soon enough."

"Good," Amoretta said nodding so that her hood bounced a little around her face. "A girl likes to feel useful," she said. "And besides, you get to know things about people when you deliver their mail. I've got my thumb on the pulse of this school," she finished her Machiavellian statement with a cheerful smile.

At this point he was well aware of the fact that there was always more going on in her strange little brain than she had cause to let on to most people. It was one of the reasons he found her mildly terrifying.

"Your finger," Grabiner corrected absently, still thinking.

"What?" she asked curiously, turning to face him.

"You've got your finger on the pulse of this school," he began pedantically, drawn out of his musings by his impossible to disregard lecture reflex, "If you attempt to take someone's pulse with your thumb, then your own pulse will keep you from taking an accurate measurement, as the princeps pollicis artery runs through the thumb."

Amoretta bit her lip and admitted, "There really are a lot of things for me to learn, aren't there?"

"There are," Grabiner agreed seriously, "But you have a great deal of time to learn them, so don't feel as if you need to be in a hurry. Now, shall we go?"

They went.

---

As if worried for her long term stamina, Grabiner was careful to keep Amoretta on his arm for the length of their easy walk. If she was worried about her own health, she gave no sign of it, simply chatted amiably as they walked, making all sorts of observations about the trees around them.

"This is all boreal forest," she said helpfully. "All the Green Mountains are pretty much covered in boreal forest, except I think a couple of the higher peaks have some alpine habitats. It's funny, I know it seems really cold, like it couldn't possibly be springtime yet, but right now, this is really the beginning of spring here. New things are starting to be born and some things that were sleeping are starting to wake up. You know, I think a lot of people think that the whole world goes to sleep during the wintertime, but it really doesn't. There are plenty of things living hard and living well in the wintertime. These trees, for instance," she said waving an arm lightly around her, "White pine, spruce, balsam fir: they weather the snow and the storms just like they weather the sun and the rain. And then there are some birds that stay all year round, and most of the mammals too. Not very many insects and reptiles are active during the winter because they aren't very good at regulating their body temperature."

"And suddenly I'm walking with Sir David Attenborough," Grabiner said dryly, although it was clearly not meant as a cutting remark. "You have revealed your unusual schoolgirl expertise as a trail guide."

"I like being outside," Amoretta admitted. "When I was a little girl I used to climb an awful lot of trees. I got stuck in one once, and Uncle Carmine had to climb up after me. I got a spanking that night, I can tell you!" She rubbed her backside ruefully, as if the memory of that punishment were still fresh enough to provoke phantom pains. "I guess I just really feel at home outside, like I can feel the world just thrumming and pulsing around me. There's always something to see. There's always something to listen to."

"You must have grown up near a ley line," Grabiner commented. "Even as a child you would have felt it, even before properly awakening. It is a simple truth that in the wilds and in solitude it is easiest to hear the voice of the world. That is why wise men go into the desert."

"Wise women too," Amoretta pointed out with amusement, looking up at the canopy of dark needles that shaded them from the pale sun. "I guess it's true that other people can be very distracting." She paused. "But you, Hieronymous, I don't find you distracting. I can be at peace and listen perfectly well, when you're with me. I don't think solitude necessarily has to be absolute."

"I find you excessively distracting," Grabiner said, and Amoretta laughed again, but then her laugh stilled in her throat, because they had just then come upon a clearing and the object of their short hike.

Before them was an old building, half gone to rack and ruin: simple, old-fashioned, and plain. In style it was certainly old colonial, with clapboard siding that still hung on in most places. The windows that still stood in the casings had only fragments of glass in them, and the roof had collapsed in places.

As he brought her into the clearing, Grabiner indicated all of this with a sweep of his arm and declared, "Welcome to Iris Academy."

Staggering forward on unsteady feet like an excited toddler, Amoretta let go of Grabiner's arm and ran out into the center of the clearing, spreading her arms out and turning around so that the heavy cloak she wore spun out around her.

Grabiner watched her idly for a moment before going over to the half-ruined building and putting his shoulder bag as well as the blanket down against the outside wall of an old classroom. She soon came over to investigate what he was doing.

"How come I didn't know this place existed?" she demanded. "This would be a really nice place to spend a Sunday."

"Of course you are naturally drawn to condemned buildings," he noted somewhat darkly, rolling his eyes. "As to why you did not know it existed, that reason is simple: the old campus is forbidden to freshman students. To visit is a privilege of sophomores and above. It is simplest to keep freshman out of it if they simply do not know about it. That being said, I ask you do not remark upon it for the remainder of the year."

"You're not worried I'll come here on my own? Get myself into trouble?" Amoretta asked with a wry smile.

"I believe that you may find it more difficult to spend your evenings bending and breaking school rules, since I now am acutely aware of where you sleep," Grabiner threatened with some gravity.

"I told you, I only disobey rules that I think are unjust," Amoretta said with some certainty, and a deliberate nod.

"The road to hell is positively paved with good intentions," he said, then turned from the picnic things and moved to the center of the clearing before the old school house. "Come along," he said, waving her after him. "Before we have lunch we're going to have some lessons."

If he thought she might complain about having to do lessons on a holiday, he found she did not, only obediently followed him into the center of the clearing and stood, as he indicated, about fifteen feet away from him.

"Now," Grabiner said clearly, "Draw your wand."

Amoretta pulled her wand out of one of the interior pockets of her cloak and Grabiner only barely managed to contain a groan. The wand was familiar to him, for it was one she used regularly in all classroom exercises. It was green and whippy, perhaps ten inches long, and topped with a golden star. It looked like something a very small girl would employ for princess dress-up, not like the serious tool of a nearly adult witch. He had commented on its ridiculousness in the past, but the girl seemed to like it, and it performed its duties adequately enough, so he chose not to remark upon it this time.

Instead he drew his own wand, and then stood casually at the ready. "Cast a push spell at me," he indicated simply, waving her lightly forward with his empty hand.

Amoretta shifted a bit uncomfortably from foot to foot, then shook her head. "I don't want to," she said.

Grabiner frowned slightly, and prompted, "Why?" although he was already certain of the reason.

"I don't want to hurt you," she said, and the look on her face was very difficult. She was clearly intensely uncomfortable.

"There is very little chance of you hurting me in any exchange of spells," Grabiner reminded her calmly, choosing not to be sarcastic in this instance because she was so very clearly upset. "Cast a push spell," he prompted again.

"No," Amoretta denied vehemently, shaking her head, and Grabiner could see that she was almost trembling.

"You can't," Grabiner supplied simply, and Amoretta looked up, startled, as if a very dark secret had been discovered. "Don't be so surprised by my powers of deduction," he said blandly. "It was plain to me once I consulted my records. You have attended my red magic lectures exactly one time, and that was during the very first week of school. I can't really say how I didn't notice it before, except that you are so commonly present for my blue magic lectures that the two must have blended together in my mind. Still, I can't say that I don't find it baffling that a student in good standing, near the end of her freshman year, cannot cast a push spell." He paused carefully. "You are not a stupid girl. You are quite adept in your own way. Frankly it is amazing to me that you managed to get to this point without having your deficiency discovered. The headmistress is in the habit of pairing students up for dueling lessons a few times a year. How did you survive those?"

Amoretta looked down at her feet. "I was paired with Donald for dueling lessons. He was surprised I couldn't cast a push spell then. But I didn't really end up practicing much because - well, what happened is complicated, and I'm a little embarrassed about it. He cast this big, awesome fire breathing dragon thing after telling me to duck and cover - I didn't actually see it, because I was face down on the floor, I tripped when I ducked, you see - but it was supposed to have been really impressive looking," It was as if she were hoping to earn Donald some retroactive merits for his artistic display, but as Grabiner did not seem keen on granting any based purely on her assurances that she had heard it was impressive, she continued with her explanation, "But I guess the big dragon thing would have really hurt me if it had actually hit me, so Professor Potsdam was going to give him detention. See, she thought he was trying to hurt me on purpose, when of course I knew he wasn't. I told her that, and then she wanted to give me detention too, only I had to work the booth selling candles that weekend, so I begged for demerits instead, and a deferred detention. She was surprised. She said that it wasn't particularly common for students to ask for demerits, since they're sort of hard to get rid of. She gave me demerits and deferred my detention, just like I asked, so I got a chance to work the booth at the shopping center that weekend."

Grabiner's mouth twitched briefly in recognition. "The day you stood stock still for hours, like an idiot," he said, "Yes, I remember." Then he paused and said, "The headmistress mentioned to me yesterday that you had never used one offensive spell in any of the examinations this year. You have passed every single one, but your refusal to cause any type of injury or infirmity to your opponents, or even inanimate objects is worrying to me."

"I blew up a treasure chest in the last examination," Amoretta pointed out, searching feebly for a means of defense.

"Amoretta, you forget that I was the one proctoring that examination," Grabiner remarked dryly. "You did not blow that chest up. That chest blew you up."

"It still blew up!" Amoretta cried out, raising both of her arms above her head in distress.

"And I am sure you would have avoided blowing it up if it were within your abilities to have done so," Grabiner argued. "Out of curiosity I reviewed your examination records, and I noted that you regularly rely on a single method when you encounter a possibly hostile entity. And that jarred my memory. I have had, on more than one occasion, to rescue hodags and even other students from oubliettes in the dungeons. Teleportation," he finished with a wave of his hand. "You always rely on teleportation."

"It doesn't hurt someone to teleport them somewhere," Amoretta said defensively, balling her hands into fists at her sides. "They just have to sit still until they're rescued, or if they know enough, they can teleport themselves out."

"It takes a great deal of confidence to regularly teleport living targets at your age and skill level," Grabiner pointed out seriously. "A failed teleportation could easily result in a much more dangerous injury than a spark or a push. I know you understand that."

"Then I won't fail," Amoretta insisted passionately. "I'll study. I'll practice. I won't fail. I don't want to hurt anyone. I won't."

Grabiner raised up one hand to calm her. "I did not meant to call your abilities into question. It cannot be denied that you have a certain facility for blue magic." The corner of his mouth twitched again. "I cannot say I have ever proctored another freshman entry exam where one of my students ended up outside, upside down in a tree."

Amoretta frowned. "Ellen teleported out of the dungeon too. She said so."

Grabiner nodded once briefly, conceding the point. "Miss Middleton is exceedingly clever. She would probably be my best student in blue magic if she did not suffer from a lack of imagination. She certainly works harder than you do, and I would say that in a classroom setting she has a better technical understanding of the theory and practice, but when Miss Middleton successfully teleported out of the dungeon, she did it with poise and control, to a safe, known destination. When you teleported, you did it with verve."

"Are you complimenting me for ending up hanging upside down in a tree?" Amoretta asked him dubiously. Grabiner never complimented her for anything. She dropped her eyes and flushed slightly. "Also, you know, I'm sorry for landing on you."

"Certainly," he agreed dryly, "That was certainly a unique examination experience as well."

The spots on Amoretta's cheeks darkened slightly, as she continued, "Also, you shouldn't say that Ellen lacks imagination. She has plenty of imagination. She's been imagining all sorts of things about the two of us," Amoretta pointed out as she looked up, crossing her arms over her chest. "Besides, she's always bringing up all kinds of things that I've never thought about! She studies all five colors, and she does really well in all of them. I don't think it's fair to say that she lacks imagination."

"It may not be fair, but it is accurate," Grabiner said evenly. "As I said, Miss Middleton is a much better student than you are, but she is very driven to acquire and process facts. It is a compulsive behavior, and it sometimes gets in the way of her ability to complete tasks." He paused before noting, "You can be quite the wildcat when an ill word is said about one of your friends. Keep your mind at ease. I do not play favorites. I said only what I meant. When Miss Middleton teleported out during the first examination, she performed a standard teleport to a known destination using mental recall. You performed a free teleport based purely on an understanding of local spatial coordinates, which is much more advanced technique, even if it was not carried off gracefully. Additionally, Miss Middleton cannot perform so-called 'fast swap' teleports of multiple objects to different locations."

Amoretta looked at her feet again. "Ah," she murmured. "So you noticed that I was practicing that."

"It is my business to know what you are practicing," Grabiner said, frowning. "As I am your professor. It is my responsibility to make sure that your independent research does not get you injured or killed. But all of this is quite outside my original point: you are incapable of defending yourself in a combat situation, whether it is a play-duel or a dangerous confrontation."

"But you said yourself that I could teleport them - " Amoretta protested.

"That will not work on any opponent of even a moderate amount of skill. It would not have worked on Mr. Ramsey. It would not work on me," Grabiner pointed at her with his wand suddenly, as if calling her out. "You cannot cast a push spell, so I know you cannot cast a bind." He paused and then waved his free hand at her. "Perhaps it would be easiest for you to understand if I simply demonstrated this to you. Teleport me," he said, and then pointed to a spot at her left. "From here to there."

Amoretta bit her lip again, troubled, but at last she nodded. She was confident in her blue magic. She knew she would not hurt him. She began to trace out symbols in the air with her wand, and focused her eyes on the space at Grabiner's feet, where a blue circle began to form, lettered by arcane runes. With his cooperation, it would only take a moment or two for the spell to acquire his person as the target.

But then, Grabiner side stepped, and he was no longer within the focus of her teleportation circle. Amoretta frowned and with some concentration, she shifted the focus of the spell over to where he now stood, attempting to acquire him for a second time. As soon as she had, he moved again, three steps back, and two to the right. He was more nimble on his feet that she might have supposed. She struggled to shift the focus of the spell again, and she failed, and her spell collapsed and fizzled, leaving her panting from the effort.

"You kept moving around," Amoretta protested weakly, catching her breath. Energy seemed to flow into her easily here, so she had soon recovered herself.

Grabiner raised a sardonic eyebrow. "Do you expect your opponents will very kindly stand still until you finish whatever spell you cast on them?" He shook his head. "You're still just a freshman, so you haven't had much practical work outside of simple dungeon examinations, but I will now teach you a very important lesson: a still wizard is a dead wizard, and a slow wizard doesn't fare much better. Past your third year of instruction, no one will politely make themselves a target for your convenience, even if they themselves are casting a spell. Spells cast while moving require more concentration, more discipline, but that is something that comes with time and practice." He considered her carefully. "If you are serious about using teleportation magic in combat, then you must learn how to use binds." Grabiner eyed her calmly and steadily. "I'm going to cast a teleportation spell on you now. Avoid it if you can," he said.

Amoretta tensed all at once and readied herself to move. Grabiner had given her fair warning, and she knew he would not give her another before he cast his spell. If she wanted to avoid being teleported, as he had, she would have to be light on her feet, a hostile target who denied his spells when he attempted to acquire her. He would probably not expect her to move closer to him, so that was what she chose to do, moving forward and slightly to the right, so she was not exactly in his line of sight. Before she had even come to a complete stop at this new position though, she felt something lock around her ankle, like a hand had come up through the earth to grasp after her. She looked down in alarm, but of course there was no corpse hand, only a shining band of light like an anklet made out of magic. There was another on her other ankle, and she was now rooted to the spot. Before she could begin to recover, her wrists were also braceleted, and in such a way that she could only have cast a spell with great difficulty. She squeaked in distress, but before her squeak had even properly finished she found herself rapidly transported around the clearing, first at Grabiner's back, then at his left side, and finally in front of him again, so she ended up at arm's length.

Her squeak finished and she let out a deep breath.

"A multi-vectored teleport," she said, folding her hands in front of her chest. "You make it seem so easy, like it doesn't take anything. You just do it."

"I'm sure you've noticed that magic power flows easily here," Grabiner said, "And although the teleport was multi-vectored, it was not particularly long. With the way your studies are progressing, you will be able to do that within the year. It will not be easy at first, but that will come with time, as most things do when one applies the appropriate level of effort." He snapped his wrist briefly to the side, as if this were not of any particular importance. "As you can see, you were unable to avoid being teleported because I used a bind spell."

Amoretta frowned a little, and thought about it.

"I could have used an interrupt, or a disruption, or a shield spell," she said after a moment of thought, raising a single finger in protest. "That would have kept me from being teleported too."

"Each of those spells depend on your speed and your stamina," Grabiner said, leveling his wand at her again, as it might have been a pointer, "And they do nothing at all to address the root of the problem. No matter how many spells you interrupt, no matter how many spells you misdirect or ground, in the end, your opponent will still be standing, and they will still bear you ill will." He shook his head briefly. "But for the sake of argument, we shall examine your strategy. Go back to where you were standing before. I will teleport you again. Avoid my spells for as long as possible using any means in your possession."

Amoretta nodded once, then trundled back to the spot where she had stood before, looking much more like a hapless child on a playground than a dueling opponent.

"Prepare yourself," Grabiner indicated and she nodded with so much force that her curls and her hood bounced again.

Now that she knew what was coming, he would have to be quick to catch her. In the end, it really did not matter if he caught her the first time, the second time, the third time, or the fourth time, because the truth was, eventually he would catch her. That was the purpose of this exercise. Still, Grabiner was not a man who was willing to give less than his best, particularly when he was trying to instill such a valuable truth.

He had begun moving immediately after his warning, circling to the right, keeping her in the center of his field of vision. He had begun to build the binding spell as he moved, tracing figures in the air with his wand and running through the words of the spell with ease and practice. Despite all this, he had only half finished the incantation to the binding spell when he was jarred by Amoretta's interrupt.

She had turned to follow him as he circled her, and her feet were about shoulder width apart, her knees slightly bent. As soon as she saw him jolted by her interrupt she was already busy casting a second spell, a long one with a complicated incantation and a long gestural component. Grabiner recognized it immediately as any suitably experienced duelist would.

Forewarned. I will not allow it.

He built a second bind spell, even as he kept circling her, gradually closing the distance between the two of them. Amoretta was forced to abandon the casting of her white magic spell to break his bind with another interrupt. This time after interrupting him she focused on casting another white magic spell, this one with a shorter incantation. It was a sanctuary spell. As soon as she cast it, she retreated out of it, putting that space between the two of them. He took advantage of the opportunity to cast while she was moving, and built another bind.

This one was not interrupted, and Grabiner was sure that he had at last caught her, but at the last moment she painted a sigil across the space in front of her with light and blurted out an incantation as if her tongue had been loosened by spirits. Before her bloomed a rune circle of light, and his bind splashed against it and dissipated like water against glass.

Shield.

She had cast a shield while moving. That was impressive for a first year student, but then, she was the girl who had teleported herself out of a dungeon and into a tree.

But she was at her limit now, that was obvious. She was panting even as she threw another sanctuary spell down and backed out of it again, taking small steps without lifting her feet out of the grass. He had now come to the edge of her first sanctuary spell, and he could not cross over it to follow her without dispelling it, but he had no need to. She would not be able to avoid him again.

This time his bind flowed like music, and he caught her before she could either interrupt him or ground the spell. He had her in a moment, and had shortly teleported her around himself four times, before leaving her in the spot he had pulled her from. After the fleeting effects of the teleportation spell wore off, she sank down onto her bottom in the grass, clearly exhausted.

He fished in one of his interior pockets and pulled out a small, round object and tossed it so it landed in her lap.

She picked it up with gloved fingers and turned it over curiously.

"Chocolate?" Amoretta asked.

"Eat it," Grabiner suggested. "It will help relieve your fatigue. You will find that wizards need more sugar in their diets than regular humans because we expend so much energy casting spells. A banana would also be suitable, or slices of apple, but chocolate is very easy to carry."

Amoretta stripped off her gloves and unwrapped the chocolate readily, taking a bite out of the ball was perhaps the circumference of a quarter.

"It's really good!" she reported happily, her cheeks flushing as she savored the chocolate. "I'm starting to feel better already."

"When sugar hits the bloodstream, it immediately improves one's mood," Grabiner said. "As for the chocolate, there are luxuries in life one finds one cannot live without. That is one of mine."

"It is a little bitter," Amoretta admitted wryly, as if such were to be expected by candies provided from his pockets.

"It is bittersweet," he corrected. "It is complex. It is interesting."

She finished the bonbon in two more bites, and then he leaned down to offer her a hand. He helped her to her feet, his gloved hand against her bare one, and then said,

"You need to rest for a while. I'm afraid that I've made you overtired. Come along, and we'll have lunch."

She helped him lay out the picnic blanket on the grass near the old school building, and then he paced a circle around it, laying half a dozen spells in quick succession. When he beckoned her in with a hand, she crossed into the circle he had laid and found that far from feeling like the chilly northwoods, the space around the blanket felt like a sunny day in May. She half expected flowers to begin blooming, and was soon shrugging out of her heavy hooded cloak and kicking off her shoes. She flopped down on the picnic blanket as if it were paradise itself.

Grabiner stood slightly outside the circle of warmth and watched her.

"Come inside?" she suggested, tilting her head slightly to the side.

"I do not normally engage in picnics, Miss Suzerain," Grabiner said in reply, and made no attempt to move.

"Well, I imagine that you've at least read about them, Mr. Grabiner," Amoretta laughed. "Anyway, I'm no great audience. I promise not to comment no matter how you behave. Come inside, Hieronymous. No one's here but me. I swear that I won't tell anyone that you're a normal human being that might possibly enjoy a picnic."

He had done things like picnic at a remote point in the past, when the sun was warm and he felt as if he owned the entirety of the world. But he had put all of that away, had put it all away when he had seen his heart torn apart in front of him and eaten. He had locked himself in a room full of books and thrown the only key into a fire.

All of this was very difficult. After that unforgivable sin: that he had lived when she had died, that he had lived when she, the Peerless, had been torn apart, he had sworn to himself that he would never share his life, never share his pain and his sorrows, never share his anguish. He would never share anything again. He had held a priceless unnamed treasure in his hands, the treasure of his heart, and he had let it all go to sand. He had had one role to play, one thing to do, and he had done it wrong. At least if he kept himself apart, he could not hurt anyone else. At least if he brought no joy into the world, he could hope to bring no further sorrows either. That was the sort of life he had consigned himself to.

But then he had made an oath. He had broken all the tenets of his life to swear that oath, had bound himself permanently to a silly little girl for not one lifetime, not two, not a dozen, but so many that they ran together like wet paint, smearing into a line that stretched off into the distant and unknown future. He had done it to save her life, because he could not bear to see her die, because he could not bear the knowledge that again he had failed to do the one thing he had meant to do. He had weighed the cost and paid the price, buying her life with his own, and now he had no choice but to share his life with her: spare and mean though it was. They were bound through his doing, and he was not the sort of man who would have tied her to himself and then denied her solace and kindness. He had responsibilities.

He knew all of this in his clear, careful, waking mind, but it did not make it any easier to accept.

But she was waiting, and he had no excuses to offer, none that the dark haired girl that sat patiently waiting on the blanket might have accepted. She said 'come in' and so he went in, sitting down on one corner of the blanket awkwardly, as he was not accustomed to sitting on the ground unless he was engaged in drawing a circle in chalk. Amoretta noticed his hesitation and did her best to smile encouragingly.

"Hieronymous," she began, a laugh in her voice as light as a breath of air, "I don't really think it's a crime for you to have a little fun."

"Fun," Grabiner echoed, frowning. "That word makes me uneasy."

Amoretta laughed, and it was like a sudden summer rain storm, a happy accident of the weather that came and went with haphazard freedom.

"I really ought to start writing down the things you say," she teased. "You're really as quotable as Kennedy."

"I'm not sure I should take that as a compliment," Grabiner replied dryly.

"I meant it as one," she assured him, then affably admitted, "I'm flirting with you."

"I had taken some notice," he said slowly. "That you do that."

"You don't like it?" Amoretta asked, a little uncertain, her brow knitting together faintly.

"I don't dislike it," Grabiner admitted quietly, then somewhat hastily added, "So long as you behave yourself."

"I always behave myself!" Amoretta cried indignantly.

"Badly," Grabiner supplied glibly, with a grim smile.

"Now you're flirting with me," she pointed out a little smugly.

"I don't think so," Grabiner replied with the haughty disdain of someone who was born feeling his authority.

"You wouldn't," Amoretta shrugged very eloquently, then waved to his shoulder bag. "Let's have some sandwiches," she suggested. "That's what a person ought to do at a picnic: eat a lot of sandwiches."

"You would be the expert in this case," he admitted, and pulled the lunch box out of his bag, "But don't become accustomed to the position."

"Touché, Mr. Grabiner," Amoretta complimented.

There were sandwiches of three kinds in the neatly packed box: chicken, liverwurst, and tuna salad. Grabiner raised an eyebrow at them and observed,

"Naturally, she had a lunch packed for us that she might have enjoyed herself, with little concern for what we might like to eat."

"Are you a picky eater?" Amoretta teased.

"I am discerning," Grabiner said, frowning.

"Well then," she said practically, "I'll let you discern which sandwiches you find most appealing, or perhaps least upsetting? And you can have those. I'll eat whatever is left over."

Grabiner ended up selecting the chicken sandwiches, and Amoretta soon found herself munching away at the liverwurst. A companionable silence fell between them, one broken only when Grabiner opened the thermos and poured out a cap full of a steaming beverage.

Amoretta held out her hands for it and Grabiner frowned slightly.

"It's tea," he warned, and took a deep breath of the wafting steam. "Chinese gunpowder, I should think. It's likely just as bitter to you as the chocolate. There's a bottle of milk in here as well. I imagine that's for you."

"I'd still like to try it," she said. "If it's an acquired taste, then I'll never acquire it if I don't start sometime."

"There's only one cup," Grabiner protested, and he was correct. Petunia Potsdam had not thought to supply them with anything other than the top to the thermos.

"So there is," Amoretta agreed pleasantly, and Grabiner grunted something unintelligible as he finally passed the little cup over to her hands.

Amoretta blew the steam away, and then took a sip that burned her tongue. She inadvertently made a face.

"Don't like it?" Grabiner asked with some superiority.

"I don't like being scalded," Amoretta complained, sticking out her burnt tongue to exhibit it. She patiently blew on the tea again and finally took a second drink.

Then she passed the cup back to Grabiner. She didn't give him time for a suitably sarcastic remark, saying immediately,

"It's warm and it's wet," with a laugh. "It tastes like the secret heart of something, moist and phantom sweet and a bit murky. It doesn't really taste like any tea I've ever had."

"I imagine most teas that you have had have come in little bags sold by Lipton, or some such awful establishment," he said grimly, accepting the cup back with good grace and taking a sip of it himself. After a moment, he said, "Why is it that you only ever attended one of my red magic lectures?"

Amoretta's brow knit again as she searched for a response. "Well, Professor Potsdam said we ought to explore all the areas of magic before selecting a serious course of study, so we could get a feel for what we liked. During the first lecture in red magic, you made it abundantly clear that red magic was used for destructive purposes. I have no interest in throwing fireballs or blowing things up. It takes a lot longer to build things than it does to destroy them. I don't like - " she broke off and shook her head, letting the sandwich drop into her lap. "I don't like hurting people."

Grabiner frowned. Red magic was one of the most popular courses of study at Iris Academy, and nearly every student ended up with at least a passable utility in it by the time they graduated. The channeling and use of raw power was seductive and appealing. The effects of red magic were always readily apparent, and often quite ostentatious. When one cast red spells, one looked as a fairy tale wizard looked: calling down thunderbolts from the sky, or conjuring walls of fire. Students flocked to learn it because it was romantic and dangerous and exciting: they flocked to it even though he taught the subject and he was not particularly popular. And so, in the first red magic lectures of the year he always endeavored to put fear into the hearts of the students. Red magic was seductive, but it was also very dangerous, a lesson most students needed beaten into their heads.

Of course, besides the seductive nature of raw power, there was a more practical reason students were drawn to red magic. All of them, witch and wildseed alike, had some understanding that they needed offensive spells at their disposal for their own protection. Life as a wizard was not always easy, and when one entered the wide, wild world, one ought to be equipped to defend oneself, since quarrels, duels, and assaults were not uncommon: and these were only the dangers posed by human opponents.

And so it fell upon him to instill in them a proper respect for the power they wielded when they cast red spells. It fell upon him to teach them how terrifying and dangerous the spells of evocation were, how it was easy to maim a friend, or oneself, if one did not keep total control over one's magic at all times.

In essence, that was what red magic was about: control.

It was easy to call up overwhelming power, but another thing entirely to master it.

The great spells, the terrible spells, those were for the novice to fear. Let them content themselves with sparks and breezes and pushes until they had learned the meaning of control, of restraint.

Only then would he allow them to progress.

But in his zeal to cow the overzealous, in Amoretta's case he had done his job too well.

"Red magic isn't only about destruction," Grabiner corrected patiently. "It is true that the simple-minded often employ it toward such ends, but at its core red magic is simply the manipulation of energy. The headmistress is fond of saying, 'there is no good magic and no bad magic, there is only magic, and the meaning comes from how it is used.'" Grabiner looked pointedly at her shoulder, "I cannot entirely agree with her, but in the case of red magic, in the case of the magic taught at Iris Academy, she is correct. With sufficient control, red magic can be used to many positive ends. It doesn't need to be used only to harm and maim. Red magic cannot heal, but it can quench. It can warm. It can cool. It can comfort."

"I'm sure it can," Amoretta said with a gentle smile as she picked up her sandwich again. "Otherwise you would not have learned it." She took a bite and thoughtfully ruminated. At last she said, "If you think I ought to, I'll learn how to cast binds. I don't want to learn anything else, though," she warned, "No push. No spark. Nothing like that. Teach me how to use binds?" she asked. "I think, I think it would be very difficult to learn on my own."

"Nigh on impossible," Grabiner agreed, rolling his eyes skyward. He sighed with some frustration. "You really are an incredible creature. 'Teach me binds without teaching me anything else!' you say, as if it were that simple. You want to leap into reading Shakespeare without having learned the alphabet."

"I have confidence in your abilities as a professor, Mr. Grabiner," Amoretta leaned forward, amused. Then she paused as a memory overtook her. "Oh, that's right!" she said, waving her sandwich around in excitement. "Miss Raven Darkstar is utterly convinced that you were born to play Richard III," she said, trying her best to remain serious and not betray herself with manic giggles. "She wanted me to ask you if you'd consent to star in next year's fall production!"

"How very," he paused, searching for the right word, and at last finished, "Flattering." It did not seem to be a particularly accurate depiction of his feelings on the subject, however.

"She thought it was," Amoretta laughed helplessly into the back of her hand. "And I think you may have a new admirer, Hieronymous. She's dead set to play Lady Macbeth beside you. Has me slated for Lady Macduff. Maybe she'll rewrite the play so she can do me in herself, on stage."

"That's just what Macbeth needs," Grabiner remarked dryly, "Some sort of gory catfight, perhaps right after the scene with the bloody child. Audiences will be delighted by your ingenuity, I'm sure."

"Hieronymous, it wasn't my idea," Amoretta defended herself weakly, at last falling helplessly backward onto the blanket, consumed by her fit of silliness. Grabiner rescued the sandwich from her lap, which otherwise might have gone flying or been rolled upon.

Grabiner frowned as she enjoyed quite a good laugh at his expense. "I'm half tempted to tell Miss Darkstar that I'm willing to do it, just to force you to be publicly murdered on my behalf. But you will tell her that I gracefully decline," he said with a wicked turn of his mouth. "Alas, I have no experience acting at all. Pantomimes were forbidden at school when I was a boy: there had been some sort of heinous catastrophe in the past."

"A heinous catastrophe at a pantomime?" Amoretta stopped giggling and asked incredulously, one eyebrow raised. "What sort of catastrophe?"

"The building caught fire - " he shrugged, throwing one hand up. "How should I know?" He finished his sandwich and took a long swallow of his tea. "Are you really set against learning anything but binds?" he asked seriously. He frowned slightly. "I am rarely in a position where I must argue the merits of red magic. The headmistress's own vision for this school is one in which the students seek after the knowledge that they desire, with very little regard for a well-rounded education. As I said, she is a libertine, given to pleasing herself and seeing that others please themselves. This school could do with more discipline and order," he waved his hand briefly, as if swatting a fly or an unpleasant reality. "But that is all beside the point. I am not the headmaster of Iris Academy, nor do I ever wish to be, but I do have a very personal stake in your education. I have no wish to see you killed."

"Because you'd also be killed," Amoretta agreed, nodding seriously, although she did not sit up, but stayed lying on the blanket, staring up at the sky.

Grabiner's reply, when it came, was fiercer than she had anticipated. "That is not the reason," he said sharply, and her eyes were drawn to his face in surprise. His mouth was a hard line, as if he were thinking about difficult things. "You are gentle and genuine, and you have no wish to harm any other person, even if that puts you in danger. You're an idiot, a terrible idiot, but your sort of idiocy - you would stand in the rain without an umbrella, getting soaked to the bone, perhaps for no reason at all. I would - " He turned his face away from her and finished lowly, "I would bring you an umbrella. I know I could not compel you to come in out of the rain, not so long as you felt you had some reason to stand in it, but I would bring you an umbrella and stand with you. I think perhaps," he said slowly, "That you have a sort of madness, but it's a madness," he paused carefully, "That I wish to protect."

Amoretta had rolled on her side to look at him as he had spoken, sitting there with her unfinished sandwich in his lap. She raised one slender finger and traced a series of lines in the air, movements she had learned by heart very early on, and spoke the short incantation to the spell that she meant to lay.

I abandon myself before your eyes. Look upon me, and know. Communion.

It was empathy inverted, and not a spell that they regularly learned in classroom exercises, but one she had sought out herself.

It seems dishonest, she had thought to herself as she had paged through heavy books looking for variations on the spell, To ask for someone else's feelings, without revealing your own.

As she finished laying the spell, the only thing she felt was a slight shiver that ran down her spine. Then she closed her eyes briefly and took a deep breath, and thought about what he had just said to her, what she felt about the man who would say such things. It was very easy to be honest in one's own heart, even when that heart was shared. It was like turning her back to him and writing her feelings in dark letters on a blank wall, where he could read them clearly, over her shoulder - only they weren't really words. They were too mixed up for that. They were messy and complicated, tumbling over one another like scruffy, unruly children, all vying for attention at once.

The effect on Grabiner was immediate. He turned his face away from her, passing a hand across his eyes. His shoulders shook once before he threw out a hand and in a trembling voice dispelled her.

"Please," he said in a low voice, "Do not do that again."

"Hieronymous, I - "

"I cannot," he answered her sharply, and the pain and the despair in his voice were evident. "It is not something - It is not something meant for me. I cannot. Forgive me. I will not. This cannot be allowed - "

"Whose permission do you need?" Amoretta asked with a smile that was wistful and sad, as bittersweet as the chocolate that he liked.

His eyes flashed in anger as if she had challenged him. "No one's," he denied angrily, and then he had taken her hand, the hand that lay closest to him, the hand that bore the slender band of gold that matched the one he wore like a brand burned into his flesh. He had captured her hand, and he held it captive, bringing it to his mouth as he closed his eyes and bowed his head, letting her cool fingers rest against the skin of his face.

"I love you," he said, and it was as if each of the words were bitten off, hard and mean and naked. "I didn't intend to. I never meant to. It was not something that I wanted, but now I find myself unable to deny you anything. It is awful and I am wretched and this is not something that you deserved, however idiotic you may be. I cannot offer you anything. I have nothing to give except for my protection and a pitiful, self-indulgent kind of comfort. I did not even have the will to turn you away, as I ought to have. In the beginning, there might have been a way to avoid all this, if I hadn't been so selfish."

Amoretta's laugh was pale and quiet with exasperation. She got to her knees and moved close to him. He still had her hand captive, as if it might have been a tree he had lashed himself to in a hurricane.

"Hieronymous, I don't want to avoid any of this. I never did," she said, shaking her head lightly before laying it against his shoulder. "If I could do everything over again, I would do it just the same. I would choose all of the pain, and the fear, and the terror, and the happiness and the laughter, because they're what led me here, to be with you. I love you," she said very earnestly. "And you may think I'm silly. You can call me an idiot as many times as you want. You can tell me that I'm wild, that I'm terrible, that I'm unreasonable, and that I never listen to anything you say. All that's probably very much true. I am young and silly, but there are some things that I understand, and I understand that I'm much more terrified of facing a life without you in it, without you here with me, than I am of all the devils and curses and misery in the world. I wouldn't wish for anything different," she finished very simply. "I'm very happy now."

He squeezed her hand so hard she thought he meant to break her bones, and he tensed like he was going to spring up, but at last he relaxed, and again spoke very lowly.

"You will have to be patient with me," he cautioned. "I cannot go about this quickly. I must have time to think." He raised his head at last and looked at her, where she leaned against his shoulder, and his eyes were very honest as he said, "I really find you quite terrifying."

Amoretta's smile in return was brief and private. "You can take the time that you need, Hieronymous. We really have all the time in the world. Forty-nine lifetimes of it, at least." She leaned against his shoulder hard, as if she could push through the physical barrier that separated them, so that they ceased being two things, but became one combined thing.

"It's as if you dropped from heaven," he said quietly, "Right into my lap."

---

After that somewhat messy declaration, Amoretta finished her liverwurst sandwich feeling that everything really was right with the world. Grabiner had brought some grammar texts with him in his bag, but she begged off studying, just for the day, and since he was feeling much relieved and rather charitable, he consented. And so he sat with a book open in his lap and pretended to read, and she rolled over onto her belly with a book open in front of her and pretended to read, but really they just sat together, thinking and enjoying the quiet.

It wasn't all quiet, though. Amoretta had been right about the birds that remained even during the winter. Some of them were perhaps new arrivals from down south. They practically filled the trees, singing and courting, and chasing one another about. Since neither Grabiner nor Amoretta were commonly loud or striking individuals (although they certainly could raise Cain between them, depending on the circumstances) birds were soon on the ground in the clearing, hunting for their own lunches.

Amoretta's eyes swept over the gathered songbirds briefly, and then the corner of her mouth quirked up as she tugged on Grabiner's sleeve, pointing unerringly with her wand.

"That's a Northern Cardinal," she said, "Some people call him the redbird, for obvious reasons. I've always thought of him rather like a monarch of the forest. See his little coronet?" she asked.

"If he's a cardinal, then that's a miter, not a coronet," he disagreed, eyeing the bird with mild distrust.

"Cardinals don't wear miters, Hieronymous," Amoretta said, clicking her tongue. "Archbishops wear miters. Cardinals wear galeri or zuchetti."

"Regardless of whether they wear miters, they certainly don't wear coronets," Grabiner objected.

"Well these cardinals do," she said importantly, then her smile quirked again. "Really, he reminds me a little of you, Hieronymous."

"And why is that?" Grabiner prompted with a raised eyebrow.

"I suppose because he's such a gentleman," Amoretta laughed quietly into the back of her hand, so as not to disturb the assembled birds. "Although he has quite a temper, let me tell you. That bird will fight his own reflection, and that pretty song of his? That's a warning to trespassers that they ought to get out of his home if they know what's good for them. But he's very kind to his wife," Amoretta tugged on Grabiner's sleeve again for emphasis. "Northern cardinals mate for life, and when they travel, they travel together. When she's nesting, he watches for trouble, and he brings her food, and he'll drive off even a bird as big as a jay or a hawk if he thinks she's threatened."

"That's a very sentimental way of looking at it," Grabiner pointed out seriously. "That bird defends the nest because eggs are in it, and eggs are his way of passing on his genes to the next generation. It has been argued that that is the only purpose for life: the perpetuation of life."

Amoretta shook her head slightly, and would not be influenced. "I'm sentimental because he's sentimental," she said, "And his lady wife is too. If it were just about perpetuating his genes, if something happened to her, he would take another mate, but that's not what happens. Life is more complicated that you're making it out to be," she teased, then grew serious again. "For purely monogamous birds, if they lose their partner, they mourn for the rest of their lives. You could even say that they start to seek after death. That's not practical, that's sentimental. That's the heart of that brilliant red bird, the cardinal."

Grabiner looked away and the silence was uncomfortable. "Then perhaps you shouldn't compare that bird to me. I am not quite so selfless and altruistic, nor am I so brave and willful."

That girl, she realized immediately. He's thinking about that girl who was killed. Petunia Potsdam had called her the Peerless.

Amoretta bit her lip. "Hieronymous," she began quietly, "You don't have to be alone. I don't want you to be alone."

Grabiner frowned and studied the treeline. "Sometimes I believe you have a very mistaken impression of my character, and that worries me. That is the danger of making up romances to suit the tastes of other people. Don't confuse the pretty air-castles you spun for your public with reality. I am not a fine man. I am not even a dependable one. I am no one's hero. In fact, in most stories I would plainly be the villain. That's clear from Miss Darkstar's obsession with seeing me play Richard III."

"Sometimes I can't tell if you're English, or just horrible," Amoretta said definitively, sticking her tongue out at him for emphasis. "I love you, the real, flesh and blood you. You're really very awful. I wonder if we went on some sort of Newlywed game show, and I accurately guessed your favorite color, would you believe I had a proper picture of your personality then?"

"You have no idea what my favorite color is," Grabiner scoffed haughtily. "We have had no occasion to speak of it, and you might be clever, but you're not telepathic."

"I know what it is, Hieronymous," Amoretta insisted, leaning her cheek against her palm as she studied the birds in the grass.

"Very well, Pythia," Grabiner said, leaning forward slightly. "Please dazzle and impress me with your vast knowledge of my character."

Amoretta didn't look up from the birds, only stated calmly, "Your favorite color is indigo. It's the color that you can find hidden somewhere between blue and violet. People have difficulty defining what that word means. It's almost like an imaginary color. You know, not many people can distinguish true indigo in the visible spectrum, not if you also define cyan and blue and violet. It also happens to be the color of my eyes, incidentally."

It happened in a moment: the sound of the book dumped unceremoniously from his lap, and then he was on his hands and knees next to her, putting a firm hand under her chin so he could turn her face up to the light. The sun glittered across eyes as deep and rich as Persian indigo, their color as brilliant and intense as lazurite.

It was, perhaps, the first time he had really looked into her eyes.

He swore, then let her go, and retreated to a far corner of the blanket.

"You didn't know," Amoretta observed wistfully. "You really didn't know."

"That is obvious," he growled, turning his back on her.

"But I am right," she prompted. Grabiner's sudden movement had scared the more skittish of the foragers away, but some still remained, and she now found that the birds were watching the two of them curiously, as if they were the subject of their own nature documentary.

"You are correct," he admitted quietly, although he would not turn to face her.

Amoretta sighed and decided to try changing the subject.

"What ended up happening with Minnie and Kyo?" she asked, "So much has happened since then, it really slipped my mind."

She thought about Luke's healing scars and fading black eye. She supposed that Kyo's broken nose was likely on the mend as well.

"I suppose you now expect me to supply your hungry mind with gossip," Grabiner remarked dryly, recovering himself, as she had hoped he might.

"I'm not asking for gossip," Amoretta denied. "Just information. I was intimately involved with the situation, I'd like to remind you."

"Because it was trouble," Grabiner noted with some force. "And wherever there is trouble, I am afraid I will always discover that you are in the thick of it."

"I am a responsible, civic-minded, duty-bound citizen," Amoretta agreed. "Now tell me what happened."

Grabiner sighed, and then apparently resolved to give her what she asked for, in moderation, of course. "Mr. Katsura was given a one week suspension, to be served out following spring break. He was also warned against further harassment of Miss Cochran and by extension Mr. Blaising, and was explicitly directed to stay away from you. Of course, it seems unlikely that anything will actually come of that."

"Why is that?" Amoretta asked curiously.

"Mr. Katsura's parents have withdrawn him from Iris Academy," Grabiner said, shrugging his shoulders briefly. "They did not take kindly to the way I handled him prior to his suspension, or so they told the headmistress."

"Oh Hieronymous," Amoretta worried, sitting up at last. "You didn't do anything to him did you?"

Grabiner gave her a grim smile before shaking his head. "As much as I would have liked to, no, I did not do anything to him besides lecture him. I told him in no uncertain terms that his behavior was entirely unacceptable. He copped something of an attitude with me, and I made it clear that I was not interested in listening to his sorry excuses. He had none worth listening to, at any rate. He never tried to deny anything," Grabiner said with distaste, shaking his head slightly. "Do you know, that vile little prat was proud of all the things he'd done? He was so self-satisfied - If it had been left in my hands, that boy would have been expelled, and I'd have put in a request that his magic be sealed. He has a vengeful, unstable personality, and he is entirely unwilling to listen to reason or to accept responsibility for his actions. No matter what his talents may be, that is not the sort of boy who ought to be taught the skills that will allow him to blow up whatever he pleases."

"Whether you teach him or someone else teaches him, if he really wants to hurt other people, to threaten them and control them, then he will learn what he needs to know," Amoretta said, shaking her head.

"That's a rather pessimistic stance," Grabiner observed with a sidelong look.

Amoretta shook her head again, "It's not pessimistic, I'm just trying to diagnose where the problem really is. The way you keep someone from being violent is not by taking away his weapons, it's by teaching him that violence is wrong."

"Forgive me," Grabiner delivered another dry command. "I sometimes forget who I am talking to."

"I don't see how you can," Amoretta said with a small smile.

"I don't see how I can either," he admitted, then turned toward her again to look at the birds that were still digging about in the grass.

"I wonder where he learned it: that preservation of self and disregard for others," Amoretta wondered aloud. "At home, I suppose, or possibly at whatever school he attended before Iris Academy."

"At home, I imagine," Grabiner noted darkly. "The Katsuras are a witch family, and as far as I know, Mr. Katsura was taught exclusively at home before coming to Iris Academy. That is not altogether uncommon. I suppose now he will return to being home schooled, unless they choose to enroll him in another of the arcane finishing schools."

She leaned forward and hugged her knees, pensive. If Kyo Katsura was simply going home then there was a very good chance that he would grow into a man who possessed and coveted and controlled, the final form of a boy who prized ownership and obedience. She hoped he was done with Minnie Cochran, but she worried for anyone else he might encounter, friend or foe. He was passionate and he was spiteful, the sort of person bound to either kill someone else, or be killed himself. He was just the sort of person to end up involved in a fatal duel, or a crime of the heart.

Grabiner broke through her troubled thoughts with a confession of his own.

"I grew up in my father's house, but I never saw him," he said quietly. "It was an ancient rambling house, out in the Pennines," he shook his head briefly, as if recollecting that her knowledge of English geography might be a bit lacking. "That's in the north, in the hills. It's very scenic country, not terribly different from this," he waved his arm to indicate the surrounding hills. "Although it's mostly unforested moorland, not your boreal forest. The house has been the family seat for generations, although it feels as if more people have died in it than lived in it. The foundations might as well have been laid in bones," His eyes narrowed, because his memories were not the fond recollections of childhood. "It's the family seat of the Viscount Montague: Inglewood. What a fanciful name that is, conjuring images of a stately Georgian home at the end of a beautiful park," he snorted. "That name was an invention of the twelfth Lady Montague, my great grandmother, in a failed attempt to make the place seem less dreadful than it actually is. It's original name is more honest, if less picturesque: Dernegrave. The damned place has been a tomb since before I was born. My father has certainly never used it for anything other than a repository for an unwanted child." Grabiner frowned savagely. "Oh, it wasn't as if I was entirely unwanted. He wanted an heir, someone to carry on the family name, someone to use as a chip in the game he's spent his life playing. What is a son but the chance at living a second life?" Grabiner smiled very bitterly. "I saw him perhaps four times when I was growing up. He never spoke to me, or paid me the slightest attention until I went away to school. He never cared to know me except as a reflection of himself."

Amoretta had crept close to him during his embittered monologue and leaned against his shoulder.

"What about your mother?" she asked gently.

He laughed and it was hard and tired. "Like you, I don't have a mother, although I suppose I'm more like Zagreus than Dionysus," he said, and his smile was very grim. "My parents were married when I was conceived, a trial marriage of one year and one day. In a way, I wonder if it wasn't something like a business transaction. When I was born, my mother gave me into the keeping of my father. I want nothing to do with her."

Grabiner looked up at the sky, as if expecting rain. "When I was a very small boy, my nurse used to play piano in the evenings. She had a very little girl, an awful little thing that everyone called 'Button.'"

"How Dickensian!" Amoretta interjected warmly, and this evoked the ghost of a smile from Grabiner, who nodded once before continuing.

"Button used to get into everything and tumble down the stairs head first, and I was always sure that she had killed herself, but Nanny never minded. She would say 'Button is stronger than she looks. Don't worry yourself about her.'" He paused, his brow knit together. "I suppose," he said, "I suppose you're rather like Button. I rush to the scene, always expecting that you're dead, but somehow you're in good health and good spirits. It's like your life is charmed."

"Was Button a very nice little girl?" Amoretta asked anxiously. "You were fond of her?"

"I hated her," Grabiner denied with an honest laugh, but this time there was less pain in his voice than there had been before. "She was a terrible bother, always wrecking things. She could never sit still, and always made the most horrible noises when she was upset, just like she was being murdered. She always had a snotty nose and she clung onto me like ivy on an oak tree."

Amoretta cringed a little. "As nice as all that?" she asked, wincing.

"She was dreadful," Grabiner responded, "But she was my playmate, and I suppose my friend. I often think that Button and Nanny were the last two people at Inglewood to honestly care for me. When I turned seven my father decided I was too old to have a nurse and had the two of them sent away. He made that decision without having seen me in two years. I had tutors after that, until I went away to school." He frowned. "I haven't thought of Button in years," he said.

"I bet she's thought of you," Amoretta said with certainty.

"What makes you say that?" he demanded.

"Because I would if I were Button," Amoretta answered simply.

---

The rest of the spring vacation passed away easily. True to his word, Grabiner kept her studying grammar for hours at a time, and when he was not making her parse sentences he had dragged her off to the dungeons for more practical lessons. Before he would begin to teach her how to cast a bind, he was determined that she learn to get out of one, no matter what position she was caught in. These lessons were very physically exhausting, because he was relentless and merciless and bound her in most uncomfortable positions, demanding that she dispel herself no matter the circumstances.

But he was careful to keep both his eyes on her, and when he sensed that she really could go no more, lessons ended abruptly, just as they had begun, and she was free to recuperate at her leisure.

In this strange hour after his confession, he was not really any more physically demonstrative than he had been before. He had demanded time, and he clearly needed it. When he spoke to her, he was much the same as always, and rather than making her feel cold, this made her feel warm.

He's loved me for a long time, she thought, because she was the sort of girl who thinks such things.

Somehow, despite very little outward change in behavior, Petunia Potsdam seemed to sense that things had changed between them, as if she employed a hidden third eye. It wasn't as if she said very much about it - Grabiner's tumultuous expression when she tread anywhere near such a subject saw to that - but she just looked so supernally pleased with herself, as if she had eaten a whole pet store full of canaries, that it was impossible to mistake the fact that she knew.

Is that why she sent us on the picnic in the first place? Amoretta wondered. She's really terribly good at recognizing people's weak points, and estimating their breaking strain.

At night they slept tied together by the wide red ribbon, and the nightmares Amoretta feared did not plague her.

It was strange to spend hours in the familiar halls of Iris Academy when they were mostly empty due to the spring vacation. There were a few hangers on, it was true, but there were less than a dozen people on the campus during the holiday. It created a strong sense of family among the inmates who had remained at school, and Amoretta developed a habit of popping by the rooms of the students who remained, just to give them a smile and see if they wanted company.

Most of her time, however, was spent in the company of her husband, whether they were reading together, or he was endeavoring to teach her something, or he was simply listening to her as she chattered. When he felt he could, he would share a carefully guarded morsel of his past, which she would devour with gusto. It was through these halting discussions that she discovered he liked music, likely thanks to Nanny and little Button, who had learned to play a little before she had been deported. She also discovered that he had learned to play the flute due first to obstinacy on his part, but that his obstinacy had eventually blossomed into genuine love of the instrument. He also revealed that, on occasion, he enjoyed wine, which she thought quite unusual for an Englishman.

"I'm not very fond of wine," Amoretta admitted.

"I assume not, since you've never had any," Grabiner had said crisply. "You may be a delinquent, but I somehow doubt you are a teenage alcoholic."

"I'm not," Amoretta agreed primly. "I've had wine at communion."

"You're Catholic?" Grabiner asked with some surprise, turning toward her where she sat at his desk.

"You know, Episcopalians also celebrate the Eucharist," she pointed out, "And Lutherans and Methodists and even some Baptists."

"I am aware of that," he answered back a trifle sharply, but she paid him no mind.

"To answer your question, I'm not anything," Amoretta said with a smile, leaning her cheek against her palm. "But I'm interested in practically everything."

"Most people hold communion as a sacrament," he commented. "I don't believe you're supposed to partake of it to satisfy your own curiosity." His words were perhaps an indictment, but his tone was warm and faintly amused. He was now well-used to the fact that she would do what she liked when she liked, with no regard for authority. Perhaps it was a bit satisfying to hear of her thwarting someone other than him.

"Well," she said practically, "I didn't tell them that I wasn't an honest supplicant, so how are they to know?"

"You would have made a splendid heretic, I think," Grabiner observed, clearly amused. "They could have burned you in the city square." Then he shrugged lightly. "If you are interested in actually learning about wine, I will endeavor to broaden your horizons in the future. If what you've had is 'communion wine' at some protestant village church then your experience with wine is very nearly the same as your experience with tea."

"You could begin teaching me now," Amoretta suggested teasingly, but he dismissed this thought with a sharp flick of his wrist.

"Absolutely not," he said. "If I did such a thing, Miss Middleton might well come after me with an ax."

"Ah!" Amoretta brightened triumphantly, "You are afraid of her."

"Perhaps I simply do not want to have to explain why I had to subdue an angry student who came after me with an ax," he responded simply.

Halfway through the week, Grabiner disappeared from campus in the morning and reappeared after lunch, bearing with him a small trunk. It was a very pretty trunk, of dark leather with brass buckles, and of a size even Amoretta could manage with a little difficulty.

There was really no obvious place to put it in the room filled up with books, and so Grabiner patiently moved a few stacks of books from one corner to another, and turned up a place just large enough to slot the little trunk.

"There you are," he said with a brief wave to the trunk. "You can't simply leave your things in totebags for the remainder of the year. I guessed that that would be large enough for your needs, but if it isn't, I'll go buy you a train case or something." He waved vaguely at her totebags, "It is my understanding that women generally require quite a lot of luggage."

"Says the man who owns his own Library of Congress," Amoretta returned like the professional she was quickly becoming from having had so many sparring matches with Hieronymous Grabiner. "It is nice," she admitted, pulling her totebags over to the side of the trunk and settling down to unpack. "And this'll do pretty well in terms of space, I think. I really didn't bring much in the way of clothing when I came to school. All of that's really in these tote bags or hanging up in the wardrobe. I think the only things that are still downstairs in my dorm room are my books. I could bring them up, if you'd like to read some more Nancy Drew," she baited with a wry smile.

Grabiner waved her off with a roll of his eyes, because he was on his knees in front of his own trunk, the one that contained most of his worldly possessions that were not the printed word. The trunk was in some mild disarray, owing to the circumstances of its last opening, but Grabiner soon set it to rights, and came away with the small marquetry box before he closed and latched the trunk again.

He brought the box that was covered by its patchwork of inlaid wood over to Amoretta, and knelt to offer it to her seriously.

"My father meant this box to be in your keeping, so I'll now give it back to you." He paused and his voice rose slightly as he delivered a dire warning, "However, you will not even consider opening this box if you are unsupervised, is that clear? There are some dangerous artifacts in this box, and you could easily do us both great harm."

Amoretta accepted the box tentatively, and laid it down in her lap on top of the sweater she was busy folding. "If they're so dangerous, then why not keep them locked up yourself, Hieronymous?" Amoretta asked, worried.

"Because they were meant for you," he answered simply. "I trust you to keep them safe."

He stood and crossed the room, turning so she could only see his back, as if there was something incredibly interesting to be discovered on the far wall.

She smiled fondly at his back and very carefully tucked the box into her trunk.

"Thank you, Hieronymous," Amoretta answered very sincerely, but he only waved her off idly, not bothering to turn around.

As she continued to pack away sweaters and pajamas and underthings, Amoretta thought about the box, and the circumstances of its arrival at Iris Academy.

"Hieronymous," she asked curiously, "Do you by chance know the person who delivered this box? She seemed to know you - "

Although he didn't turn around, Amoretta could hear him frown. "Juliette the Jackdaw," he answered shortly.

"The Jackdaw?" Amoretta asked, clearly confused.

"Juliette Lore," He corrected himself with a dismissive wave of his hand. "'The Jackdaw' is her appellation," he paused, as if realizing she required a fuller explanation, as she was a wildseed girl who had not come from witch traditions. "Wizards and witches of any notoriety come into possession of unique epithets over the course of their lives. If your current ability to find trouble is any indication of your adult propensities, you are sure to end up with one yourself. The Jackdaw is quite accomplished with the magic that governs travel, and besides that, she has for years been the primary mistress of Aloysius Grabiner, the Viscount Montague," he said his father's name with a great deal of disdain, "He is, lamentably, a very notable figure. She earns some distinction just by association."

Amoretta's cheeks flushed pink and she stammered, "Ah, but she told me that she was your father's courier - "

Grabiner shrugged once and turned toward her, and his expression was difficult to read. "And so she is," he said. "The positions are not mutually exclusive in my father's house."

"But she's so young," Amoretta interrupted again.

"Which is how he prefers his wives and his mistresses," Grabiner said with a dismissive wave of his hand. "She's nearly my age. He's kept her for years, so she must be entertaining. When I was a boy he rarely kept a mistress for more than a year or so before he tired of them." He shook his head and waved his hand again. "Oh, I never saw them, not at Inglewood, but the servants were always full of gossip, as servants are. He really is a disgraceful character, even for a wizard."

"If he likes her so well, then why doesn't he marry her?" Amoretta asked, pressing her teeth against her bottom lip.

Grabiner shrugged. "I wouldn't know, nor do I care to know. Perhaps he has asked her and she's refused. Perhaps he's unwilling to make her Lady Montague because of her humble beginnings. Perhaps it is simply because he cannot abide being tied down. I really think he'd sooner be dead than married."

Grabiner had given her much to think about, and Amoretta nodded, bowing her head slightly as she focused on folding her clothing.

He came over to watch her put her things away idly, and let a hand fall to rest on her head. "If you are ever so unfortunate as to meet Aloysius Grabiner, and you will not if I have anything to say about it, I warn you to be on your guard." He paused to look down on her and he was very quiet before adding. "He's very fond of pale girls with dark hair."

Amoretta looked up, startled, but Grabiner had already gone away, out of the room, leaving her put away her possessions in relative quiet.

Thoughts of Grabiner's childhood filled her mind after he had left, pushing out any worries she might have of the dubious character of her father-in-law.

---

The next notable incident at Iris Academy happened the following Saturday, the day before the students were slated to arrive back at school for the short term before the summer holiday. Although it was a Saturday, since there were very few students at the school, Amoretta was excused from her duties as a mail carrier. Allowances, at any rate, were not delivered during school holidays.

But whether or not she delivered it, the mail still arrived as the mail ought to.

When she and Hieronymous Grabiner were summoned to the headmistress's office, it was on account of the mail: or rather, on account of two letters, one addressed to her, and one apparently addressed to her husband.

Although there was no return address, the headmistress had divined almost immediately that the letters were from Damien Ramsey.

Grabiner's face was grim as he looked at the two letters lying neatly on the desk of the headmistress.

"And now it's come to this," he said darkly.

The headmistress nodded once, "I imagine it is as we feared," she said. "But we shan't know until the letters are opened and read. I suppose you'll want to read yours first, Hieronymous."

Grabiner scowled. "I have no reason to read that letter," he said, picking the letter up between a thumb and forefinger, as if he could pinch the life out of it. Amoretta saw that rather than bearing his name, the letter was addressed only to 'the Blind Icarus.' "I am already certain of the contents, so I would rather not permit that boy to anger me further than he already has. I do not negotiate with murderers and fiends."

And then before either Amoretta or the headmistress could say much of anything about it, he had lit the letter with a brief word and calmly held it as it burned.

Petunia Potsdam shook her head, sighing. "Well, I suppose it is your prerogative." Her eyes swept to Amoretta. "I do hope you'll read your letter before Hieronymous puts it to the torch. It might not be the most pleasant experience you ever have, but we need to understand Mr. Ramsey's intentions."

"His intentions are plain," Grabiner growled, extinguishing the letter expertly when all that remained of it was a corner. He threw the remaining corner unceremoniously into the headmistress's waste bin. He raised a warning finger to Amoretta. "If you had any sense, you wouldn't read that letter either, as it comes from a liar and a scoundrel. Whatever comes will come, and we'll face it head on. You'll get no good out of that letter, I assure you." He shook his head, clearly angry and frustrated. "But I know you're already set on reading it, and that nothing I say will dissuade you."

"Hieronymous - " Amoretta began, biting her lip.

"Don't apologize to me," Grabiner denied bitterly, turning his back on the both of them. "It's your letter and you have every right to read it. It concerns your future. Far be it for me to hold you from it."

Amoretta bit her lip and studied Grabiner's back, trying to think of something to say. She turned her own letter over in her hands and looked at him again, raising a tentative hand to touch his shoulder, but Petunia Potsdam only silently shook her head, and Amoretta reluctantly withdrew and moved to sit in one of the pretty floral arm chairs that stood before the headmistress's desk.

The headmistress leaned across the desk and passed a slender letter opener with a handle of polished wood into Amoretta's hands, and the sidelong look she gave to Grabiner's back indicated she thought the girl might need to use the miniature dagger to subdue him after the contents of the letter had been read.

After taking a deep breath, and with some trepidation, she slit open the letter that was addressed only to 'Amoretta.'

My darling, it read, and Amoretta's fingers instinctively tensed against the heavy parchment, wrinkling it. Her shoulder had begun to hurt.

I hope this letter finds you well, or as well as can be expected, considering I left you in the care of that horrid old man. You will forgive me for my hasty retreat, my own, for at times discretion is the better part of valor. I had other battles to fight that evening, with more terrifying enemies than that friendless recluse. I am sorry that I could not take you with me, but circumstances being what they are, I believe that at the moment, the safest place for you is Iris Academy. Let that old dragon guard my treasure well. When the time comes to have you, I will have you back, and not simply as little Amoretta, but as the Grand Duchess Marianne Amoretta Ramsey Balam, and you will eat your fill from platinum dishes and sleep on pillows stuffed with the dreams of lesser mortals. Quite a change from dreary little bed at Iris Academy and dinners of bland chili, I'm sure!

But, my darling, what is well does not always come easily. I have been away from my home province since my birth, and there is much to be done here before I will be ready to collect you. Although I returned to find myself in relatively good standing, things have been somewhat unsettled since my father's untimely death. The crown that is rightly mine by birth I must fight for, and fight for it I shall. I have, fortunately, the support of some of my father's most trusted advisers and while my enemies are not few, you should not worry your tender heart about my safety. I am fully capable of reminding these curs of their places. I am, of course, the only son of the Grand Duke Balam, baptized in fire and reared in Eden. I will reclaim my throne, and once I am appropriately settled I will return to claim you.

You see, my own, you have very little choice in this matter. You are mine, and you have been for ages now. I adore you. I worship you. That is quite an accomplishment for a little girl from the countryside of New Hampshire, isn't it? You have the worship of one of the Grand Dukes of Duzakh. You will come to love me in time, for how could you not? I imagine there will be a time, not so very long distant, where the only word you will be able to think of is my name.

So content yourself for now playing house like a little school girl. I am a patient man, and quite ready to forgive all your transgressions. Let that bitter old fool keep you safe. I would not trust anyone else in the world with the job. I will come for you when the time is right, and you will come to me because that is your joy, your honor, and your place.

I will keep you appraised of the situation here, as it develops.

Until then, I remain faithfully yours,

Your devoted husband,

Damien Ramsey Balam

As she read the final lines of the letter, Amoretta jolted up as if she had received a strong shock. Near hysteria, she waved the letter around as if it might have been a flag, although whether it was a flag of surrender or a flag signalling a cavalry charge was not clear.

"What is this?" Amoretta demanded, her voice rising in keen panic.

Petunia Potsdam rounded the desk to the spot where Amoretta stood prancing and nearly shrieking, and effortlessly relieved her of the offending letter.

"May I?" she asked without raising her voice.

Amoretta got hold of herself long enough to nod, and then wrapped her arms tightly around herself, as if she could squeeze the discomfort from her body. Her shoulder hurt awfully.

Petunia Potsdam sat on the corner of her desk and briefly perused the letter. She was apparently unsurprised by the contents.

"It is as we imagined, Hieronymous," she said at last, looking up at the back of the other professor, who was standing very still.

"Of course it is," he answered, and his voice was curt and poisonous.

"But what is this?" Amoretta asked, the panic in her voice causing her words to tremble, "What does he mean, saying he's coming back for me, calling himself my husband?"

"By law," Petunia Potsdam said slowly and carefully, "Old law, incontrovertible law, he is. By your own choice you accepted his suit, you wore his token, you ate of his bread, and now you are marked by him. By all the laws of devils, and the laws that devils do abide by with mortals, you are his wife."

Amoretta sat down in the floral chair again and drew her knees up to her chest.

"But how is that?" Amoretta began unsteadily, hugging her own knees. "I'm already married. I'm married to Professor Grabiner - "

The headmistress smiled and it was grim. "Yes," she said, "Normally, being married protects a mortal from such suits, but I am afraid your marriage with Hieronymous was unconsummated. This fact made you more vulnerable to Mr. Ramsey's advances than if you hadn't been married at all."

Amoretta turned very pink despite her distress. Grabiner spoke sharply, although he did not turn around.

"That is not a matter for public discourse," he said with some violence, and Petunia Potsdam frowned at him, but said no more.

Amoretta had already begun to cry, feeling beaten upon by all sides, and she struggled to gain control of herself so she could understand the situation she now found herself in.

"My marriage to Professor Grabiner - "

It was Grabiner who answered, at last turning to look at her, curled up in the chair and feeling miserable.

"It still stands," he said, and it was clear that he was minding his temper only with difficulty, for fear his eventual explosion would only make things more difficult for her. "There is nothing that boy can do to change it, no matter what he may claim."

Amoretta's brow knit in confusion.

"Then I - " she began uncertainly.

"Currently have two husbands," the headmistress supplied calmly, folding her arms over her chest. "Yes, that would be the long and the short of it."

"But I don't want to be married to Damien," Amoretta denied with some force.

Petunia Potsdam smiled pityingly, and patted her rather ineffectually on the back. "And yet you are," she said. "I am afraid you are not the first girl who has found herself married without her consent."

"Can't anything be done?" Amoretta asked, and the back of her mouth tasted like cold salt. She was going to be sick. She knew she was going to be sick.

The headmistress looked troubled, her mouth set to a thin line. "We could ask for an inquiry," she said, "Because it is true that he did mark you against you will, but such cases have stood in the past."

Grabiner had come to stand behind her chair, and laid one of his hands on her shoulder, over the curse burn. Amoretta trembled.

"It is best not to attract the attention of the Magistrates," he said, and his voice was very heavy. "They will cause her more troubles than they will solve."

Petunia Potsdam nodded once, briefly, as if agreement with Grabiner on this one point.

But Grabiner was not finished.

"What the headmistress neglects to tell you is that something can be done about this, and it will be done. If the boy is killed," Grabiner said grimly, "Then you will no longer be his wife. You will be his widow."

"Hieronymous," the headmistress called him out with a grimness of her own, "You cannot mean to duel that boy. He is in Duzakh, and you haven't passed through the Spiral Gate in years," she reminded fiercely. "If you go to your death, then that girl dies as well," Petunia Potsdam said, throwing out a finger to indicate Amoretta, who was still curled up in the chair. "What a fitting way to protect her," the headmistress finished with venom.

Grabiner's own voice rose in anger. "I have no intentions of running off toward my own death, madam," he said, gripping the back of Amoretta's chair and leaning forward. "I am not an imbecile. But I will never," he gritted his teeth, "Never allow that monster to put his hands on her again."

Far from angered, the headmistress smiled fondly at that, as if her wrath were spent. "Oh Hieronymous, I never imagined you'd give her up without a fight," she laughed. "I trust you to keep her well, as best can be managed." Her eyes moved to Amoretta, who had leaned her head against Grabiner's arm. "This will not be an easy trial for you, my duckling. It will be difficult. There may be times when you wish yourself dead. Best bear in your heart and your mind that if you die, so does he," she said, briefly flicking her eyes upward to Grabiner, whose face was very difficult to read. "Let that be your strength. At times, it may be your only strength," she finished wistfully.

Amoretta squeezed her eyes shut. "It all seems to have been so impossibly easy. If I could do all that accidentally, without even thinking a thing of it, then why aren't all girls carried off by devils?" she cried. "I never even kissed him."

"I am afraid the simplest answer is because devils don't want them. It is very uncommon for a devil to take a mortal woman for a wife and not a sacrifice. Of course, there's a great deal of folklore concerning how a girl might turn away the suit of a devil," the headmistress admitted, "But it is rarely taught because although it seems simple enough for a devil to carry a girl off, they almost never do. Devils prize their bloodlines and value their birthright. Generally devils marry other devils, so they can beget children that grow stronger with each generation. The world of devils and demons is quite brutal," she said, "As you might imagine. There is little room for romance in the courts of Duzakh."

"But then why choose me?" Amoretta asked, rubbing her forehead with both her hands.

"If he wants you, then he wants you for a reason," the headmistress said, as if there could be no doubt. "But what that reason is, remains to be seen."

Amoretta bit her thumb and closed her eyes tightly.

Whatever the reason might be, it remained unseen.