‘They weren’t his family.’ Theodora shook her head, her expression severe.
A scatter of motor cars thrummed along the ruined roads below them. The sky was a pale autumn blue, and Theodora wrapped her coat tightly around herself as she looked out across the city from the hill of the Ollianne Shrine. She let out a breath and watched the mist unfurl and rise.
‘I want to . . .’ began Lio, but he trailed off. He shook his head and laughed at himself.
‘What?’ asked Theodora as gently as she could.
‘Never mind,’ said Lio. ‘Ridiculous idea. Glad I caught myself before I said it.’
‘Say it.’ Theodora gave him a nudge. ‘What is there to stop you now? No Opal. No Acanthi chasing after us. No contracts or debt or any of it.’
Lio scrubbed his fingers through his hair. His beard was overgrown again.
‘I want to make it up to Rupert,’ he said, and then hesitated a long moment before adding: ‘I quite liked teaching him magic, and I think I would like to do more.’
‘You want to be a teacher?’ asked Theodora.
‘Perhaps,’ said Lio.
‘At what school?’
‘A school of my own,’ said Lio. ‘Or, perhaps not. Perhaps a school of someone else’s. I haven’t yet thought about it.’
‘Lio,’ said Theodora. ‘Unless you intend on visiting your mother and father soon, you haven’t a single silver to your name.’
‘For heaven’s sake,’ said Lio, throwing out his hands. ‘Iknowthat, which is why I had decided not to say it.’
‘It takes a lot of capital to open up a school,’ said Theodora.
‘Obviously.’
They were silent for a long moment, watching the battered city beneath them.
The cogs of the witch’s brain were whirring. She went on, ‘You don’t have a licence. You, I am sorry Lio, do not have the skill to teach at the university. It will need to be a small school and it will need to be hidden.’
‘It was an idiotic idea,’ said Lio.
‘It wasn’t,’ said Theodora. ‘We just need the money.’
‘We?’ asked Lio.
‘Obviously. It’s one thing to take on a private student here or there, but a school is a business, Lio. Do you want to teach or do you want to spend all of your spare hours raising funds and administrating records and writing curriculums?’
‘Well,’ said Lio, rubbing the back of his neck, ‘the former, I suppose.’
‘The first step is obvious,’ said Theodora. ‘But in order to achieve it, we would need a lot of silver. My pay from the King will bring in a nice sum now that it’s not being pinched by Salamander. The man is beastly, but the best way to hamper his perverse goals is from inside the palace. My benefactor at the studio should have a few pieces stored away. That’s a few hundred silvers, there. You’ll have to work, Lio. Pull your weight for once.’
‘Hold on,’ said Lio. ‘What is the first step?’
‘Why,’ said Theodora, eyes sparkling, ‘we have to rebuild the tea shop, of course.’
By the time Dot awoke and had strength enough to walk about the shrine grounds, winter was whispering in. In only a few months, the jacarandas would bloom again and send flurries of lilac down on the city.
Now, Dot’s affliction adorned her left shoulder, the side of her breast, her ribs. It had stopped, thankfully, just before reaching her heart. Fatigue and dizziness dogged her. Even sitting up made her tired. To speak made her tired. Her limbs were heavy. When she walked, it was again upon a choppy sea.
After she had woken, Dot had taken one look out at the spires of Alliaster, at Saint Penelope’s Cathedral, and felt heartbreak. She could not bear to look at it all, not at the jacaranda trees, nor the stone architecture, nor the pretty women with their little dogs and rouged cheeks. Gone was the naive girl who had arrived. Replaced, was she, by a person scathed and scarred. Dot wanted to go home.
She was a tepid thing made of sand and sea foam. Dot told herself that, back home, she could continue her study of magic, where no daemon and no witches could find her. She would send Theodoraand Lio letters. Perhaps she would visit. She was too fragile for this place. She knew this now.
