The Floating Islands by Rachel Neumeier

you hadn’t knocked into me. Come on—the stairs are usually just up the hall here, and sometimes around the corner.”
    Araenè fell into step beside the round-faced boy, her arms full of awkward stacks of papers and the wicker box of feathers. “Um … I was trying to get back to the street.… I thought the door was just here.…”
    “Was it?” The boy gave her a surprised glance. “The outside doors aren’t usually anywhere near here. Look out there—” He indicated one of the dusty windows.
    Araenè squinted obediently out through the glass. They were at least four stories up, and the curving wall she could make out was white. The height and the color and the curve all told her they were in a First City tower. She stepped back, blinking. “But—” she began, and stopped. Then she said, almost a wail, “But how am I supposed to get home?”
    “Oh,” said the boy, surprised. “Are you trying to leave? I thought you were a new student.”
    “Master Tnegun—I—he said—but I can’t stay,” Araenè explained incoherently. “He said I’d have to come back, but I can’t, I really can’t, he doesn’t understand —” Her voice rose too high, and she stopped.
    But the boy seemed not to have noticed anything amiss. He whistled through his teeth. “Master Tnegun!” He peered at her with a serious air. “If Tnegun says you’ll have to come back, then probably you’ll have to, you know. He would know! I expect you have a lot of magery waiting to come out. You have to let it come, or it’ll die, and what good would that do anybody? But if you’ve got family things in the way … The masters don’t always make enough allowance for that. They’ve been mages too long to remember what it’s like, at first. Look, help me get all this to Master Kopapei in the south tower, and I’ll get a door to take you home. All right?”
    “Yes,” Araenè said, a little numbly. “Um … my name’s Arei.…”
    The boy nodded, pretending not to notice Araenè’s failure to give her father’s name. Or maybe he wasn’t pretending, because he answered, “I’m Kanii—I’m a fifth year,” and he didn’t give his father’s name, either.
    “Fifth year?”
    “I started young,” Kanii said matter-of-factly. “I’m Master Kopapei’s student, you know. All his students come in early. Look, here are the stairs, cooperating for once. That’s the Quei feathers, I expect. Up three flights, here we go. Usually there aren’t any fledgling basilisks or anything on these stairs; that’s why I came out of my way to take them. Here we are—” He guided Araenè into a large, cool chamber whose single window looked out over endless waves. A salt breeze came in through the window, along with the shouts of sailors on a bright-sailed fishing boat: they were now far underground.
    “But we went up,” Araenè objected, peering out that window. “And now we’re down? I thought we were going to the—the south tower?”
    “The school’s odd that way,” Kanii agreed, barely glancing out the window. “Through here, watch your step.” He held the door for Araenè, awkwardly because of the scrolls bundled in his arms. There was a step up, and they were standing in a spacious tower room. The room was round, with a high ceiling painted with birds and stars. There were three doors in the room, three tables, three chairs, and nine windows. Every window showed clouds streaming past in a stiff breeze.
    Araenè realized that Kanii was watching her with amused appreciation and closed her mouth.
    “It takes practice to learn your way about,” he said, and unloaded his armload of scrolls on a nearby table, gesturing for Araenè to do the same.
    “Kanii!” roared a voice from an adjoining room. “You’re late!”
    Araenè jumped, but Kanii, completely unruffled, only shouted back, “Yes, sir! Entirely my fault, sir!” He added to Araenè, rolling his eyes, “I don’t think I’ve ever been on time for anything in