Inheritance by Simon Brown Page A

order can help me.”
    It was the magister’s turn to pause in consideration. With something like exasperation he regarded the young woman with the sandy hair and spray of freckles across her too-short nose. She stood with legs apart as if steadying herself in expectation of trouble. She looked as pugnacious as she really was.
    A bad sign, the magister told himself. Always a bad sign. And she possessed such a promising mind…
    “If it is the text you are presently studying, we could rearrange your schedule,” he offered.
    “You mean give me yet another book on interpreting the movement of the stars,” she said, her hazel eyes seeming to spark with frustration.
    “You are in your third year of study, Student Alucar, and interpreting the movement of the stars is the prescribed course. Without it, how could you go on in your fourth year to study interpreting the movement of the planets?”
    Jenrosa picked up the book she had been reading and waved it at the magister. “But the summaries of interpretations included here directly contradict many of the summaries in the book we had to read last term.”
    The magister shrugged. “That, regrettably, is one of the great conundrums of our art. We hope, through constant observation and analysis, to explain away those very contradictions. And yet, without being aware of those contradictions, how would we know where to direct our efforts?”
    Jenrosa nodded wearily. “I know the argument, Magister. I just do not see the sense in it. We have been observing and analyzing now for hundreds of years but have managed to do no more than collate even more contradictions. We now have more contradictions than there are stars in the sky. Why don’t they have these problems in any of the other theurgia?”
    “Dealing with the vagaries of the soil and of metals, even of rain and the sea, are straightforward compared to the vastness of the Continuum. If it takes a magicker in the Theurgia of Fire, for example, a decade to discover that certain chants and routines produce a harder steel, then how much more time is needed to discover the secrets of those bodies that traverse the night sky and their influence on our lives?”
    “But I don’t…” Jenrosa bit off the sentence.
    “But you don’t have centuries in which to make great discoveries?” the magister guessed.
    Jenrosa blushed, making her freckles stand out more brightly. “I am sorry. I know that reveals abominable pride on my part.”
    The magister sighed deeply. “Perhaps it is the heat as much as your frustration that irks you so. But the frustration is something you will have to learn to deal with. As for the heat, even those in the Theurgia of Air have little control over it in summer. You may go. Take the rest of the day off. Do not read any more summaries. Clear your head and come back tomorrow, refreshed.” The other students now looked up eagerly. “Jenrosa alone,” he continued. “The rest of you, obviously less befuddled by contradiction, may continue with your study.”
    Jenrosa left the school and found herself on an almost empty street. A woman carrying a basket of bread on her head walked by, the sun’s heat adding to her burden. A dozen steps away a street vendor, sweating and swearing at the lack of customers, was packing away his stall. Air shimmered above buildings and stone pavings, and the harbor was aflame with reflected light.
    Jenrosa put her hand in her tunic pocket and jingled a few loose farthings. She decided to make for a local tavern that promised shade and a beer, but when she got there, she discovered the tavern was filled with other refugees from the summer sun. After buying her drink, she ended up sitting on the street under the shade of the tavern’s eaves.
    She had intended not to dwell on the incident at the school and instead think about the cooling swim she would have in the local baths west of the docks once the sun was down, but her frustration at having lost her temper thwarted her