Nemienne shifted uneasily at this thought. Was it disloyal to her family to be glad she was in the mage’s house, to like the strangeness of it? The solitude? She felt the occasional twinge of homesickness, yes; she missed her sisters, yes. The knowledge that her father was gone was a constant ache at the back of her mind. And yet… and yet, it seemed to her that she had fallen into the mage’s house as a fish falls into the sea. Already she could not imagine living anywhere else, and though she read them avidly, letters from her sisters seemed like messages from another country.
Ankennes’s house always struck Nemienne as oddly outsized, but now, with the mage absent, it seemed even larger than usual. Nemienne had accepted halls that stretched out for surprising distances and turned at odd angles. On the uppermost floor of the house, besides the workroom, she was aware of only two small libraries and a musty scriptorium. Well, usually these were all on the uppermost floor. She had never been down to the lowest level of the house because the door at the bottom of the stair was always closed.
On the main floor, Nemienne could almost always find her own room, though occasionally she had to hunt back and forth for its door. The room was small, but she had it all to herself. Nemienne liked her room’s small size; it felt very private and enclosed. The quiet of the room, in which she might think or read or study without interruption, had quickly gone from seeming like extraordinary luxury to seeming natural. She found her room now without difficulty and wandered in, glancing around possessively.
The room had a soft rug, tawny gold and brown, on the floor beside the narrow bed, and walls painted in dusty green and taupe. Above the bed was a shelf on the wall, which held the half-dozen books she was reading. Including the dense Iasodde, from which she was to write her essays. Nemienne opened the volume, thinking she might start that at once, but then, finding herself for some reason restless, closed it again and set it aside.
Karah’s letter lay on the table. Karah had written with descriptions about lessons and clothing and small details of daily life in a keiso House. Nemienne had read her sister’s letter eagerly, but found it hard to write back; she found her own lessons and the details of her own life difficult to put into words.
The kitchen, almost as stable as the workroom or the scriptorium, could usually be found along the hall and down a short flight of stairs from her room. It was a large, friendly room with a heavy iron stove capable of producing prodigious heat. Enkea was often to be found stretched out in the chair nearest the stove, luxuriating in heat that seemed as though it should have been too intense for any reasonable creature. She jumped off Nemienne’s shoulder now and leaped up on her chair, purring.
Exploring the ice pantry, Nemienne found cold roast chicken and noodles dressed with a spicy brown sauce and pink pepperberries. Nemienne, wondering where the mage might have gone—the possibilities seemed endless, and endlessly exotic—ate her supper and fed bits of chicken to Enkea. The cat accepted them with the air of one conveying a favor.
Nemienne washed her supper dishes, but found herself abruptly consumed, as happened at odd moments, by the memory of doing such homely chores in company with Tana and Miande. Tears prickled suddenly behind her eyes. Nemienne put the dishes to drip by the sink and, lifting Enkea back to her shoulder, hastily left the kitchen. She turned into the long hallway that led to the stairs. She meant to go up to one of the libraries and distract herself by looking at the books there, but when she came to the main landing and began to turn to the right, Enkea leaped from her shoulder and disappeared instead down the stairs to the left. The slim cat blurred at once into shadow, save for her white foot, which flashed in the dim light as she moved. She looked back at Nemienne once. Her eyes caught the light of the landing and cast it back like smoky green lanterns.
Nemienne hesitated on the landing. When Enkea did not return, she slowly went down the stairs after the cat. They were not quite level; each step was worn a little in the center where traversing feet had fallen for many, many years. Nemienne wondered whose feet those had been, before her master’s. It seemed impossible that ordinary folk had ever dwelled in this house.
The walls held tall candles in sconces, none lit. The walls, like the stairs, were stone. Cold rolled off them in almost visible waves, so that Nemienne was shivering before she had gone halfway down.
At the bottom of the stairs, there was a small landing and a great oaken door bound with brass. Nemienne had seen this before. But this time, the door was standing ajar. Beyond the door was the featureless dark. Enkea was nowhere to be seen.
For what seemed a long time, Nemienne stood on the lowest step and simply looked into the darkness. She was afraid of it, and yet… if she learned to call light into the darkness tonight, then tomorrow she could impress Mage Ankennes with her confident skill. She liked that idea. And there was the door, right here, so if she couldn’t summon light, she could always back up a few steps and find herself again in the safe—well, familiar—well, sort of familiar—house.