Page 16 of Apt to be Suspicious
Edmund managed a smile, though now the exhaustion was in fact hitting him hard. “Tea, Uncle Alexander? Or one of the biscuits? Something else?”
“I am fine, thank you, other than the tea. I am looking forward to supper with your parents.” Uncle Alexander looked him up and down, opened his mouth, then shook his head.
Edmund settled himself more comfortably, tucking his ankles under the sofa and reaching for the plate. He was in fact starving now. “You were about to say something?”
“I do not need to remind you to tend your body. You are eating, you will not stay up all night over your books. You know better than that.” Uncle Alexander waved a hand. “It continues to be a pleasure to have the time and scope to train you.” He poured the tea, then offered a cup to Edmund.
The way it was framed presented a number of questions, some more obvious than others. “May I ask why you say so right now?”
“You have your father’s touch with the magic. His approach. I suppose that makes sense, but it is—” Uncle Alexander hesitated. “There are ways you are exceedingly like Perry, and ways in which you are not.” He left that sentence unexplained for the moment. “I will have some new exercises for you, but it might be a week. I want to explore some of my less used library.”
That was a fascinating comment, and also a compliment, but Edmund was not entirely sure how to take it. Perry Judson had been Uncle Alexander’s previous apprentice and chosen heir. He’d been killed in the Great War. Edmund had known, as soon as Uncle Alexander had made the offer for this apprenticeship, that he’d be dancing delicately with some of those memories.
Perry had been bright and shining in all the stories Edmund had sought out. He had been the quintessential flame that burst with brilliance, far too briefly. Arcane magic had flocked to him like eager puppies. But he’d also been inventive, finding new applications. Edmund aspired to that, even while he wasn’t sure he was up to that particular self-imposed task. He kept looking at the generation before him, his parents and their friends, and finding himself wanting. He was like Telemachus, eternally behind, unable to become an adult because of circumstance and timing.
He sipped his tea, which provided both a pause and refreshment. Then he cleared his throat. “Is that a problem, Uncle Alexander? Is there an area I should focus on instead?”
“No problem.” That was immediate and also reassuring. “Perry was interested in, hmm. The range of grammatical scope. He never used half of it, not in reality, but the idea of it? You, however, shape what you do around a particular approach. Obvious, given the horses and the hawks and Geoffrey’s approach to both. Training and encouraging, rather than commanding.”
Edmund’s papa was indeed known for coaxing horse or falcon to do what he wanted, rather than training by punishment or fear. Not that it worked with falconry. A hawk abused so would just fly away given the chance. Uncle Alexander went on, though he was feeling his way through choosing his words, Edmund could hear that. “Collaborating, trading what is known. It’s an interesting trick to do with an inanimate object that begins without intrinsic desire.”
“I am uncertain how well it would work on a person,” Edmund admitted. “Command is simpler there, yes?” Humans had their own will. That was the trick of it. Also, something he’d been thinking about rather a lot recently.
“Oh yes. That’s the principle of the Word of Command or the Word of Silence.” Edmund knew the theory of those. Some people had particular options as a gift. Several of Uncle Alexander’s colleagues on the Council. Those were a single word, deeply and intricately coded magic, that worked much like Naming did, only for an extremely limited range of action.
One could command someone to stop, or be quiet, or anything else that could be said in a word, maybe two. What Edmund was doing his best to learn was far more expansive and thus far more difficult. Uncle Alexander gave him a minute to think about it, then said, “Will you share your thoughts? I’m quite certain you’re contemplating at least three topics. I do know you. And various influences on you, including my humble self.”
“Uncle Alexander, you are often reticent, but rarely humble,” Edmund pointed out. “Or do I need to repeat back the lecture you gave me on how Naming magic relies on an understanding of the truth, unvarnished and unpadded?”
It got Edmund a warm chuckle of a laugh. “You needn’t. I know you have the lecture down. Something is on your mind, though, and not just your coming exams.” Edmund was, in fact, entirely aware of his Honour Mods looming next month, but Uncle Alexander was correct. That was a rumble in the background, constant but not currently the loudest. He considered which topic he wanted to bring up first.
“At the moment, I am thinking about what people have been saying— and not saying. And I can’t decide whether my last few years make me unreasonably paranoid or not. Perhaps you might help me work through it?”
“If it is a matter of actual espionage— or concern about it— surely Lap is a better choice?” Uncle Alexander, unlike Edmund, could entirely be informal about Major Manse.
“Nothing that clear, though I mentioned it to him over solstice hols.” Edmund knew there were concerns about many things, in various forms. Communism, at the moment. But also other factions unhappy with the current balance of power in the world, and potentially interested in recruiting from the best and the brightest Britain had to offer. Certainly, it was something to attend to. “No, it’s subtle. And of course, I come to you for subtle.”
It made Uncle Alexander chuckle again before he said, “Magical, or not?”
“I don’t know.” Edmund tried to gather his thoughts. He really was drained. It was taking more effort than it ought. He’d set aside his planned study tonight for tomorrow. He could focus on reviewing some of the Roman history he already knew well, thanks to his tutor’s preference for the topic. “It’s no one thing. But I’ve heard comments from three or four people in the past few weeks— since we came back up— about someone not being able to do the usual things. Money being an issue, not that anyone comes out and says that. But you know the way people talk about it.”
“Sufficiently, yes. Magical folks?”
“The name I heard come up twice is non-magical, but I also heard something about Robert Everby.” Everby came from a respectable but not highly notable magical family. “And in neither case did it sound like gambling debts or something of the kind. It’s awfully early in term for someone to have hit the limits of their allowance or whatever. I’d wondered about blackmail with Major Manse, but I’m not sure it’s that, either. People wouldn’t mention that at all.”
“Anything else odd like that?” Uncle Alexander frowned. “I thought I heard something.”
“Jewels?” Edmund offered. “I’ve heard the same thing, well, once. A house party early in January, but I haven’t been able to track down all the names. It’s the sort of fleeting gossip that people titter over, and no one admits to having been there. I gather there was also a spot or three of adultery or near enough the equivalent. Not the sort of place I get invited.” Edmund didn’t want to be, but also his reputation at Oxford was for being a bit stodgy when it came to women.
“Indeed.” Uncle Alexander set down the tea and tapped his fingers again. “What would you like to be able to do about it?”
“Find out more,” Edmund said a little unevenly. “But I can’t think of how. I’ve tried a few times to ask. Deftly enough, I think, for ordinary conversation, though perhaps not.” He let out a small huff of breath. “I don’t think I can do it by myself, but I can’t think of anyone I’d trust to help me set up a conversation.”
“Ah.” Uncle Alexander nodded. “I am familiar with that problem, yes, having been rather lacking in trustworthy allies for a large stretch of my life. You are far more naturally gregarious than I am. May I think on that part and see what suggestions I come up with? I do not wish to bother with those you’ve already considered and discarded.”
“I appreciate that.” Edmund nodded. “I feel like I’m missing something, and I do not care for that.” He then went on, into what else he’d been considering, since it was relevant. “I have been thinking a great deal about allies and collaboration— in various modes— as seen in Homer. It keeps coming up in the portions I’m focusing on translating.”
“Do say more. Also, eat your food, please, so I do not worry.” Uncle Alexander was not normally so direct on that point. Edmund applied himself to his soup for a moment while Uncle Alexander stood to tend the fire again. When he came back, Edmund more or less had an idea of how to talk about what he had been pondering.
