Nemienne nodded. “Have you heard from Karah? She wrote me about becoming a keiso.”
Enelle managed an almost natural smile. “Two years early, we are told. Yes. She writes.”
“I’ll write! I’ll write! Anyway, I told you that woman, Narienneh, would be too clever to let Karah be unhappy,” Nemienne said, allowing a little smugness into her tone to cheer her sister. “I told you everyone would love her and she would be happy. And there she is, made keiso two years early!”
“And happy, I hope. Well, she has a gift for happiness… I wish she would come visit! Though not precisely as you have done.”
Nemienne laughed and peered out the door to where the carriage already waited, with Tebbe standing at the horse’s head with the reins in his hand. “Tell Ananda I am sorry to have missed her. And Petris, if you think it wise.”
“Neither of them is able to keep a thought in mind for more than a moment.” Enelle was amused and exasperated at the same time. “Ananda has the attention span of a butterfly, and Petris trips over his own feet and can hardly speak to her without stuttering. It’s sweet, really, except it is hard to persuade them to settle down when I need them to go over contracts. Well. I’ll tell them you stopped by. They will think nothing of your visiting at night for a scant hour.” She embraced Nemienne. “Write and tell me you are well.”
Nemienne promised, and drew herself away into a night that was no more than normally dark. She had never, she reflected, appreciated the streetlamps properly. She appreciated them now. Nodding to Tebbe, she jumped up into the small carriage and dropped onto the bench with a sigh of mingled relief and sadness.
What she had not expected was that, arriving in the middle of the night at Mage Ankennes’s house, she would not be able to open the door.
Nemienne leaped down from the carriage, ran up the walk, jumped up the stairs onto the porch, and waved to Tebbe, who nodded and turned the horses back the way they’d come. Nemienne stood watching him out of sight, then turned and stroked the cat statue outside the front door. But the door did not click open. Nonplussed, she stepped back and regarded the mage’s house. It had an unaccommodating look to it tonight. Its rough stones and blind windows could not be said to look friendly. But she’d thought she had reached an understanding with this house, because it seldom hid important rooms from her, and usually when she meant to go to, say, the smaller library, she got there without too much trouble.
Mage Ankennes would, of course, return eventually. Nemienne had not expected to hide this evening’s adventure from him, but she had also expected to tell him about it in a civilized manner. In the morning, for example, over sweet cakes and tea. She had not expected and did not want to meet her master on the porch of his house because she couldn’t get a stubborn door to cooperate.
The door itself yielded nothing to Nemienne’s exploratory touch. Certainly it did not simply swing open as she set her hand on it. She had not really expected that it would, but this was still disappointing. She sat down on the house’s top step—she could feel the cold of the stone even through the heavy robe Enelle had lent her—and studied the door. It looked heavier and more unyielding than ever.
Nemienne sent her thoughts into it, as Mage Ankennes had begun to teach her. She meant to coax the tumblers to drop in its lock, but she discovered that she couldn’t find the lock at all. Her mind was caught instead in the grain of the wood, so that she wandered in ragged circles that led one into another but never resolved. Baffled, she drew herself out again into the ordinary night.
Perhaps mages did not trouble with ordinary locks. Perhaps they spelled their doors shut and the keyholes were only meant to puzzle thieves ignorant enough to try to rob them. Perhaps all their doors were made to confuse apprentice mages, if the apprentices were foolish enough to get locked outside in the middle of the night.
It was growing colder, too, and Nemienne shivered despite the warmth of her robes. She supposed that, if the night continued as it had begun, she would manage a little too successfully to summon fire and set the house aflame. If it would burn. Probably only the neighbors’ houses would burn. That would… probably not be the best thing for Mage Ankennes to find when he got home.
But it was cold. And Tebbe was long gone with the carriage. It would be extremely embarrassing if she were forced to find a conveyance to take her home again simply to avoid freezing because she couldn’t get the mage’s door opened.
Nemienne was fairly certain she had at least learned to tell the difference between fire and light. Taking the precaution of settling down in the middle of the bare stone of the porch, she thought about light. Warm light. Indeed, warmth alone would be fine. Better, even. Less, well, eye-catching. Not the warmth of a fire, no. The warmth of stone that had been lying under a blazing sun all during a long summer afternoon, say, and was now giving back the sun’s heat into the night. That kind of gentle warmth from the stone would be very welcome. She laid a hand on the stone beside her.