Thirteenth Child

CHAPTER 21

STRICTLY SPEAKING, THE GRUBS AND THE SETTLEMENT SPELLS WEREN’T my worries, I suppose. But Papa had been part of the group that invented the new spells that were supposed to keep the grubs from spreading, so when the grubs showed up in three-quarters of the settlements—nearly all the way to the river, in some places—people came to him and the others to complain. Papa was very annoyed about it. He said that he and the other professors didn’t have time to waste settling down a bunch of bureaucrats when they ought to be figuring out what had gone wrong and how to fix it.

Professor Jeffries came around to our house on the second or third day after the news about the grubs reached Mill City. “Good afternoon, Miss Rothmer,” he said when he saw me on the porch. “Is your father about?”

“Papa isn’t home yet,” I said. “I can send Robbie over to the college to fetch him, if you like.”

“It’d be a mercy, if he’s still tied up with those idiots from the governor’s office,” Professor Jeffries said, so I went and found Robbie. When I got back, the professor was staring west, toward the river, though you couldn’t see it from our porch. “This is a bad business,” he muttered as I came up.

“You mean the grubs, Professor?” I said.

Professor Jeffries nodded. Then he looked at me as if he’d only just realized I was there, and his eyes narrowed like he was seeing me for the first time. I’d put up my hair and lengthened my skirts since last he’d seen me, and I couldn’t deny it made me look like a grown woman, though I was only middling tall. “It has been some time since we’ve seen you at the menagerie, Miss Rothmer,” he said after a moment.

“I…didn’t want to be in the way when everyone was so busy,” I said.

“The stacks of notes that have been piling up are much more in the way than you would be,” the professor said. He looked at me over the tops of his spectacles. “I shall expect you on Thursday at the usual time. Do not hesitate to interrupt if I am occupied with persons from outside the college when you arrive.”

The next Thursday I went over to the menagerie office. Professor Jeffries hadn’t been exaggerating by much when he’d said he had stacks of notes piling up. I started with the most recent notes and worked backward. It wasn’t easy, with so many people around. When I was copying out Wash’s notes, I could use a table somewhere else and get away from the visitors, but when I was updating the professor’s map, I had to be right there in the office, and it was very distracting.

Even so, I was nearly finished by the time Lan and William came home at last. Lan was taller again; he said he’d gotten nearly to six feet and he didn’t want to hear any jokes about beanpoles or the air up there from any of us. He’d grown himself a pair of muttonchop sideburns, and he wore a green paisley waistcoat under his single-breasted frock coat. William was taller, too, but not by much—he was a good four inches shorter than Lan, barely taller than me. He was wearing a pair of eyeglasses and a beaver hat, but he was just as sandy-haired and serious as ever. I was quite startled when he greeted me with a bow and called me “Miss Rothmer.”

“What do you expect?” Lan said. “How long has it been since you put your hair up? You ought to be used to it by now.”

“Months,” I said. “And I am used to it, from other people. It just sounds strange coming from William.”

“‘Miss Eff’ would sound even stranger,” William pointed out. “And I don’t think you’d like ‘Miss Francine.’”

I rolled my eyes at him, and then Lan asked William about the school he was attending. The two of them spent a few minutes comparing the larks they’d had when they weren’t in class and the scrapes they’d gotten into. Well, the scrapes Lan had gotten into, anyway. Then William turned to me. “What have you been doing while we’ve been gone?” he asked. “Are you still helping Professor Jeffries?”

I explained how I’d stopped for a while, but now I was back at work and nearly caught up despite all the visitors. William gave me a sharp look, but Lan just nodded and started asking questions. The next thing I knew, all three of us were heading for the menagerie office.

Professor Jeffries was bent over his desk, muttering. He looked up as I hesitated in the open door and smiled at the three of us. “Ah, Miss Rothmer, Mr. Rothmer, Mr. Graham! Come in.”

“I didn’t mean to disturb you, Professor,” I said. “But William and Lan were curious about your map.”

The professor sighed. “I’m curious about it myself. Perhaps one of these days I’ll have time to look at it again.”

“If you’re busy—”

“It’s just more Settlement Office foolishness,” Professor Jeffries said. “Harrison was in here this morning and saw that.” He waved at the wall map with all the colored pins. “Now he wants one that shows where these grubs are.”

“That sounds reasonable to me,” William said.

“Well, that part of it makes sense,” the professor admitted. “But he wants a portable map. With pins. That stay put when he folds it up. The man’s a magical imbecile; does he think spells like that are easy?”

“Could you use an illusion for the pins?” Lan asked.

“That’s an idea,” Professor Jeffries said. He considered a moment, then shook his head. “Illusions don’t last long enough. I’d have to renew the spell every few days, and if I have to trot over to the Settlement Office that often, I’ll never get anything done.”

“I could try it,” Lan offered. “I’ve always wanted to see how long I could make an illusion spell last.”

Professor Jeffries frowned, and I thought he was going to turn Lan down. But then he reached into his desk, fumbled around for a minute, and pulled out a piece of paper. “See what you can do with this map, young man,” he said. “The settlement layout has been out of date these five years, but the geography hasn’t changed. Just duplicate this pattern here.” He spread out a newer map beside the old one and ran his finger along a penciled line.

William and I crowded around to watch. Lan studied the two maps for a minute, then asked, “Might I have some string, Professor? And a couple of those pins you use, please?”

While the professor brought the string and pins, Lan took a small leather case from his pocket. It was full of little vials of powder, held in place by loops of leather. Lan slid one of them out, opened it, and carefully dusted the first map with the powder. He replaced it and dusted the other map with something from a different vial.

“That’s an unusual design for a magician’s case,” Professor Jeffries commented as Lan replaced the second vial. “May I?”

Lan handed the case to the professor, who tipped it this way and that, studying the vials without touching them. “Nice workmanship,” he said. “You’re a bit low on sulfur.”

“I haven’t refilled it since my exams,” Lan replied.

“Do so at your earliest opportunity,” the professor advised. “You don’t want to be caught without supplies when you need them.”

Lan gave him a startled look, but accepted his case back without comment. William, the professor, and I watched in silence as he cast the illusion spell. I was half afraid it would fizzle, but after a minute, a network of pencil lines appeared on the old map, with pins at the places where the lines crossed.

“Well done!” Professor Jeffries said.

“Did you miss a spot?” William asked. He looked at the original map. “No, it’s on this map, too.” He pointed at an area almost in the middle of the map that had no pencil lines at all, and squinted. “Why don’t they have any grubs?”

“What’s that? Oh, that’s just a gap in the reports. The Oak River Settlement doesn’t have a settlement magician, and they’re not on any of the regular circuits for some reason, so I haven’t any information about their infestation level.”

“Oak River is the Rationalist settlement,” I said. “Where Rennie is. My sister,” I added in response to the professor’s puzzled look. “They aren’t on the regular circuits because they don’t use magic.”

“That’s right, one of you girls married that Rationalist fellow Dr. McNeil was so pleased with,” Professor Jeffries said. “So she’s out in their settlement now, is she? I don’t suppose you could get her to send us some data about the grubs in that area? I’m sure they’re as bad as they are everywhere else, but it would be nice to have actual figures.”

“Professor, I’m not sure they are,” I said slowly. “I mean, I’m not sure there are as many grubs there. We just got a letter from Rennie last week, and I remember she said they’d finished planting and it looked like being a good crop this year. She couldn’t have said that if they had grubs all over the way everybody else does.”

Professor Jeffries stared at me for a minute. Then he went to the coat hooks and took his hat. “Where’s your father?” he demanded. “I need to talk to him about this immediately.”

Papa was with a summer class, but the professor collared him as soon as it was over. Then we all had to go back to the house to look at Rennie’s letter, and after that, things really started jumping. By evening, there was a special courier on his way to Oak River. Two days later he was back with word that the Rationalists had had a few grubs, but nothing like what the other settlements had been seeing.

That set everyone looking for reasons why. People pretty nearly tore the college and the Settlement Office apart, getting hold of records of wind and rain and temperature for every settlement in the North Plains, and marking up maps to see if there was a pattern that fit where the grubs were. Lan was kept busy making more illusion maps, and William volunteered to help me copy some in pencil, so we wouldn’t need to have the illusion spell renewed. Right in the middle of it all, Mr. Harrison came storming into Professor Jeffries’s office, waving the first map that Lan had done up for him.

“Jeffries!” Mr. Harrison shouted. “What do you mean by this?”

“Blast it!” Lan muttered as all the lines on the map he was trying to enchant disappeared. He straightened and walked around the table where we were all working. “Professor Jeffries isn’t here, Mr. Harrison,” he said a little too politely. “Is there some problem?”

“There certainly is, young man,” Mr. Harrison said. “This map is incorrect.”

“It’s an exact copy of the professor’s,” Lan said even more politely than before. “I made it myself last week.”

“You made it?” Mr. Harrison growled. “You mean Jeffries has been passing off student work on the Settlement Office? What’s your name?”

“Lan Rothmer.”

There was an awful silence. Then Mr. Harrison said in quite a different tone, “Oh, I see. Then—you’re the one who enchanted this map? You’re certain.”

“Quite certain, Mr. Harrison. What seems to be the problem?”

Mr. Harrison spread the map out over the top of the one I’d been working on and jabbed his finger at it. “This clear area is supposed to be around the Oak River settlement, but instead it’s around something called River Forest.”

“It’s the same thing,” William said. “This is an older map that shows the name of the first settlement, that’s all.”

Mr. Harrison reddened. Then he huffed and glared at the three of us. “I require a map that is up-to-date,” he said stiffly. “I can’t be forever explaining this discrepancy.”

“I’m sure that’s made this past week very difficult for you, sir,” William said. Mr. Harrison looked at him suspiciously. William picked up one of the maps he’d finished, and held it out. “I’m sure this one will suit you.”

“Very good,” Mr. Harrison said after a cursory glance over the map. “I’ll tell Jeffries about this myself. Good afternoon.” He tucked the map into his pocket and left.

“I see why Professor Jeffries says he’s an imbecile,” William said in a thoughtful tone.

“He didn’t even thank you!” I said. “Or ask your name.”

“It’s just as well,” William replied. “He really hates my father. He’d probably have exploded again if I’d told him my name. That is, if he’d realized I was Professor Graham’s son. He might not have; it took him a week to notice the difference in the map, after all.”

“I’d forgotten that the Oak River settlement site had been used before,” Lan said. “How long ago was that?”

“The River Forest settlement collapsed about eight years ago,” William said. We both looked at him. “I was curious, so I looked it up. They didn’t make it the full three years from when they started, and their claims reverted to the Settlement Office.”

“Eight years,” Lan said slowly. “It’s a long time, but there’ve been cases where there were still traces after ten or even fifteen years. I wonder if anyone has checked?”

“Checked what?” I asked.

“Checked for traces of old spells,” Lan replied. “I did a special project on the subject last year. The River Forest settlement wasn’t run by Rationalists, so they must have had settlement protection spells and a settlement magician like everyone else. There might still be shadows of those spells around. It takes a long time for them to fade out completely, if the magician doesn’t erase them on purpose.”

William bent over the map Mr. Harrison had left. “Look. When it was founded, the River Forest settlement was right at the far edge of the frontier. Way out there, they’d have needed a really good magician to make it even for two years.”

“Wash said once that the magicians in the farthest-out settlements are always trying things to make the protections work better,” I said.

We looked at each other, and I could see we were all thinking the same thing. Lan was the one who put it into words.

“I wonder if something that old settlement magician did is what’s keeping the grubs away from Oak River?” he said.