Inyanga's Star and Other Constellations

II.iii When Inyanga Gets In

The doors opened out onto a cliff of bookshelves and into the anti-grav area. The al-Maysan core library was the hollow, perfectly spherical, massive space in the center of the floating building, where books lined every curve, held in place with sticking spells, and more bookshelves free floated in the air.

One didn't need to be able to work a flying spell to float into the middle of the study tables and shelves in the center, so Storm, of course, didn't even hesitate. She took a running jump and dived, then used the momentum she had generated to swim across the air to the stacks.

It wasn't that Inyanga was afraid of heights — she flew a moto part time. It was just that she didn't have much practice with free-style floating and her pulse always started to get crazy when she knew she would have to steer, brake, navigate, and avoid collisions in three-dimensional traffic. Without her moto's steering wheel, brakes, and protective shell.

But to get her answer out of Storm (and to recover important tomes for her studies), Inyanga was willing to swim out into the air, wade across the wide pool of space, and give Storm chase. She shout whispered when she got to her, conscious of the no-talking rule, "What do you mean, like I don't already know?"

"You know about the taboo," said Storm. She picked up a book off the shelf and started to read aggressively, hiding her face behind the barricade of its pages.

Inyanga swam around behind her to ask directly into her ear, "What do you mean, I know about the taboo?"

"The point of it being taboo is we don't talk about it," Storm hiss whispered back.

"But how do you know what you're talking about if you can't talk about it?"

Stormed grabbed her wrist and with a demonstrated mastery of steering magic, she pulled Inyanga along deep into the stacks as if being pursued by angry library staff.

"What? Why are you asking me that? Why are you still talking about this?"

"Tell me the taboo."

"No. I can't talk about it."

"Why do you know and I don't?"

"Maybe your brains are more defective than we thought, starfire brains. Did you forget?"

"Be helpful. When did you learn about this thing we're not supposed to talk about?"

"We learned it the first day of second semester. The evening tutorial of the required magical economics course. Instead of breaking into the smaller tutorial groups, the first session was held here, in al-Maysan library, as an assembly. That way every second semester student could hear all at once. It was like . . . an announcement. For everyone. Haven't you been coming to the tutorials?"

"I missed that day."

"Seriously? They said not to miss it. No exceptions. Yanyu sat there with a nosebleed from an accident in practical astrophysics. Ala was dying of fever. Literally dying. Girl has an immunodeficiency."

"I didn't know it was mandatory. I don't have time for bonus classes. I work a night shift making deliveries in my moto."

"You missed the most important lecture of all time just to go work for cien solidae an hora?" Storm shook her curls. "You are not going to last here."

Inyanga shifted with discomfort. If her feet had been on the ground, she would have shifted her weight from one side to the other. Instead, she found herself subconsciously wiggling in the air.

Maybe opening up to Storm would create some empathy — if the girl was capable of it. "My umama and grandmama work full time to pay for my tuition. Both of them. And they have to shell out for immortal life fees, or they'll grow old and die, and pigment spells, or we'll lose our color and everyone will know how poor we are — there's three of us, three immortals, three of us in a family with no magicians.