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encountering the chancellor twice in one hour was not so terrible a trial. Some blissful months, she need not see the Chancellor of Precious Enchantables at all while the bureaucrat was out collecting funds.
    “Has Enchantress Symera fallen…” Hiresha caught herself. “…that is, has she fallen ill?”
    “She is running about searching for her teaching assistant.”
    Hiresha felt as if an icicle had lodged in her throat. “Her assistant, she’s not to be found?”
    “Sadly, you are not the only undependable enchantress in the faculty,” the chancellor said.
    Fos angled his jaw and head away from the chancellor at this, muscles flexing along his neck.
    The chancellor adjusted her sleeves. So many frills of fabric branched from her wrist that the layers resembled an artichoke. “A pity you lack the time to make yourself more presentable. You are wearing, what, only half of your honorary gowns?”
    “Eight dresses,” Hiresha said, “plus or minus one depending on Janny’s mood. Now about that assistant—”
    “Only eight? At this rate, you will soon be traipsing about the halls wholly denuded.”
    Hiresha could not flex her drowsy mind to respond to that ridiculous statement. “The assistant wouldn’t have worn a green gown, would she? With copious ribbons?”
    “Why ever should I know that?” The chancellor’s lip curled upward.
    “I regret that I am too out of sorts to lecture. The Skyway climb fatigued me more than expected.”
    “If you feel yourself inadequate to perform your duties, Provost, you could always resign. No one would blame a woman of your relative youth from buckling under the weight of an office beyond her capacities,” the chancellor said. “Barring that, you have a classroom waiting for you.”

 

    5
    The Grindstone
    Hiresha opened the door of the lecture room to find Minna already close to tears. Another novice was taunting the girl. The heckler seemed too engrossed in her sport to notice the inrush of the enchantress’s gowns through the doorway.
    “…nomad men all wear veils. Are you a shiftless nomad? Are you a man? The Minister of Orbiting Bodies is a man, too, but you’ll have to hide it or they’ll expel you. The nomad’s blue veils stain their faces. Did yours stain your face yellow, Yellow Face?”
    The enchantress was pleased to see Alyla holding Minna’s hand in support. Hiresha waited in the doorway, hoping Minna would stand up for herself. Or at least feign disinterest. Hiresha had learned the power of ignoring bullies after an adolescence of being called “lazy idiot” and “sleep for brains.”
    Minna pressed a hand over her veil, cowering over herself. She drew her legs to her chest, sitting on the carpet among the other novices.
    Hiresha sighed. She thought Minna might have more in common with the timid Alyla than the enchantress had hoped.
    The enchantress strode to the front of the room where a window opened on a view of a glass-domed building. The structure slid out of sight to be replaced by sky.
    The hems of Hiresha’s gowns fluttered over the sitting women and girls. As the enchantress carried the fennec past the bully, the fox flattened his ears and gave a muffled bark.
    The heckler had a narrow jaw and compact mouth so that her front teeth resembled an ivory beak. She was seemingly undaunted by the presence of the enchantress and continued speaking to Minna.
    “You should love to meet Emesea. She’s a prude, too. Won’t even bathe with the rest of us. I think she’s scarred under her cotton, that her matron beat her for getting into trouble too often and left her hideous. Is that right, Emesea?”
    The bully cocked her chin at a woman of squat build who wore her novice wrappings all the way up her neck. She shifted and fidgeted though she held her chin high. She was gazing out the window that now displayed the Skiarri Mountain Range. The white peaks pointed downward in relation to the classroom. By then all the rest in the class were looking