Nicodemus started to protest but then stopped. “You’d want to get married?”

“Oh, a bloody donkey’s ass-crack on that!” she snapped. “I damned well don’t want to get married.” She began stirring her stew with trembling hands.

Nicodemus could not think of what to say, so he sat in silence and waited until she appeared calmer.

“Dev,” he said at last. “Last night I asked you what Smallwood meant when he called me Shannon’s new pet cacographer.”

“Forget it. It’s nothing important.” She scowled. “Though it proves my point about being illiterate.”

Nicodemus touched her elbow. “Tell me? Please?”

Devin looked at him. “It’s all hearsay.”

He nodded.

After laying her spoon down, she scooted a conspiratorial half-inch closer on the bench. “Well, years ago Magister was a rising star in Astrophell, both in research and politics. He was also an oddity because his father came from Dral, but his mother from Trillinon. That’s why his names sound so different-Agwu Shannon. Anyway, his faction, The Sons of Ejindu, wanted the wizards to take a more active role in keeping any rogue spellwrights from joining the Spirish Civil War. Shannon was their Long Council speaker. And…” Devin lowered her voice. “And… he got the provost’s grandniece pregnant!”

Nicodemus looked dubious. “But spellwrights can’t conceive. We’re all sterile.”

Devin smiled at him. “Nico, sometimes I forget how young you are. That’s what we tell the acolytes. Together we’re all barren. No two spellwrights have ever conceived. But every so often, a spellwright and an illiterate produce a child.”

“Shannon got an illiterate pregnant!”

“Shhhh!” She swatted his shoulder. “Not so loud. Now you see why we authors swear off families. We would outlive them and have to watch them die. That’s why it was a huge scandal when Shannon got the provost’s grandniece with child.”

Nicodemus could only shake his head.

She continued, “So Shannon tried to hide the baby, but his opponents discovered the boy and started the scandal. The provost of Astrophell was furious and made Shannon Master of the Drum Tower in Starhaven. To get rid of him, you see.”

“And then?”

“No one knows exactly. Some say Magister did something desperate with his research, hoping a breakthrough would earn him forgiveness. Some say he’s blind because his research spell burned out his mundane vision. But whatever happened Magister ended up here at Starhaven. He couldn’t visit Astrophell for twenty years or so. By then his wife had died and his son was married. Magister tried to patch things up, but apparently his son hated him for abandoning the family and denounced Magister in public.”

Nicodemus blew out a long breath.

“So Magister came back here and became a champion of cacographers.” Her wide eyes darted up for a moment. “He chooses one cacographic boy from every generation and tries to help him earn a hood. Before you it was Tomas Rylan. Tom lived with John and me. Magister helped him become a lesser wizard in Starfall Janitorial.”

Nicodemus felt his face burn. Had Shannon chosen him as an apprentice only because he wanted a new pet cripple?

Devin stirred the dregs of her stew. “From the moment you came to the Drum Tower, you were Magister’s favorite. We weren’t surprised when he moved you into the top floor with John and me years before you had earned it.”

“Oh” was all Nicodemus could bring himself to say.

Devin looked at him. “So that’s what Smallwood meant.”

Nicodemus’s mind reeled. Shannon had taken him as an apprentice only out of pity? He felt sick. “Thank you, Dev,” he said quietly.

“Nico, you shouldn’t hold it against Magister; he only wants to help.”

He stood. “I should go.”

Devin caught his hand and squeezed. “Nico, everyone loves you in the Drum Tower. John and I… Don’t feel bad.”

“I have to meet the old man in the compluvium.” He squeezed her hand in return. “I don’t want to be late.”

“Okay.”

He picked up his bowl and cup. “See you tonight,” he said and walked away.

CHAPTER Eighteen

Six of Starhaven’s twenty eastern towers held the Sataal Landing more than four hundred feet above ground. Nicodemus tried not to think about the height as he walked eastward along the thin stone concourse. Every fifty feet or so, he climbed a few broad steps to the next plaza.

The surrounding towers and nearby mountains blocked direct sunlight from the landing for all but a few hours during the day. The Chthonics had once cultivated a shade garden here. Antiquarians wrote of tall mountain laurels and soil beds bursting with angel wings, fetterbush, and barronwort.

Now the soil beds nurtured only weeds and ivy. Moss bristled between the wall stones. Feral cats skulked about the place looking for fresh water. Nicodemus couldn’t see anyone following him but guessed a subtextualized sentinel was near.

As he ventured farther east, the towers crowded closer. At each new level, the plaza was smaller, the stairway narrower.

Finally the landing terminated in a small, mossy cloister. Nicodemus found his way blocked by the thirty-foot wall that ran between the abandoned Itan and Karkin Towers. A row of metal rungs climbed halfway up the wall to a narrow walkway. Voices echoed from above.

Nicodemus scaled the ladder and found its rungs spaced too closely for human comfort. The Chthonics must have had small hands, he decided. Or maybe small claws? Or perhaps they had had no claws or hands at all but had gripped the rungs with their teeth.

On top of the walkway stood a smiling Magister Shannon with Azure on his shoulder. The old man was cheerfully lecturing four Northern sentinels: “… obvious reasons the compluvium’s constructs are written aggressively. So we mustn’t-ah, Nicodemus, you’re here at last.”

The sentinels, three men, one woman, all were roughly sixty years in age and wearing gold or silver buttons on their sleeves. They examined Nicodemus with narrowed eyes. Shannon laughingly introduced them as his personal guards.

Nicodemus bowed. He understood their confused looks. They had been sent to investigate Shannon and were taken aback by the old man’s enthusiasm. Nicodemus couldn’t blame them.

Shannon grabbed Nicodemus’s arm and pulled him through the crowd. The old wizard’s grip felt like a vise.

The walkway on which they were standing ran into a crevice where the Karkin Tower met the wall. Here a narrow staircase climbed to the wall’s top. A seven-foot-tall gargoyle stood guard on the bottommost step.

Its muscled body would have been humanoid, save for the two extra arms growing under the expected pair. And the stone wings bulging from its back would have resembled bird wings but for the two additional carpal joints that allowed the limbs to fold into tight, fiddlehead spirals. Its giant hawk’s head glared at the spellwrights with stony eyes.

Shannon was again lecturing the sentinels. “Those of you who’ve dealt with a war-weight gargoyle will remember that they are dangerous, valuable, and fractious. So use great care when presenting these passwords.” The old man produced a scroll from his sleeve and began pulling off Numinous paragraphs.

Nicodemus watched as Shannon handed a set of passwords to each sentinel. The Northerners, however, were studying the massive gargoyle and glancing at one another.

Suddenly Nicodemus realized that Shannon was allowing the golden paragraphs to fold into pleated and stacked sheets: this conformation stabilized much of its language but strained those sentences that folded the text. Such tension could cause rearrangement or fragmentation.

Sure enough, when Shannon handed a copy of the passwords to the female sentinel, two bending sentences snapped.

Nicodemus spoke up, “Magister, her text has-”