from my 2009 nanowrimo

One

In the year of the Wind Snake

Anaya considered trying to chew on the end of the pen, but it was a good goose quill, not a stick sharpened and charred on the end.  It'd taste funny, so, no chewing.

She looked at the book's page again blank and creamy.  She knew how to read, of course, and write, even if Mother hadn't wanted her to know that, Geoff would've insisted, and he'd given her the book and pen and ink. "To write things in." Like a stick and a bark scrap weren't good enough for lists and such.

She looked up, Mother and Geoff stood across the table from her. "But what do I write?" she asked them.

"Important things." Geoff said. "Observations.  You can draw in it if you like.  What you've learned from lessons.  Magic." He gestured, and a faint trail of light followed his fingers and lingered for a heartbeat, two, in the air behind them.

Mother slid him a look that said "enough of that now" with folded arms. "Whatever tha likes, dear." Mother turned back to her work counter and returned to making dream pillows stuffed with lavendar and other herbs. "'Tis tha book." Sunlight glinted off her brown hair, finding red lights in it, like embers.

"The cover's real river dragon leather." Geoff sat down at the other chair at the table, Mother's chair. "You can tell by the shimmer."

Anaya put the pen down and closed the book.  She'd never seen a river dragon, they didn't come this far south, and anyway, this far from the ocean, the Ousel was more a stream than a river.  She'd never seen the ocean either.  The leather was smooth, a pale tan that showed a little green like a beetle wing when she tilted it and the light hit it.  Her name was stamped on the front in plain script. "Anayah-se sept Lumos of clan Merefftor" and the year, Lumos and Merefftor, those were Geoff's clan and sept.  Her name too, since he was her father, and children took the father's clan, if the father didn't mind.

She opened the book again and picked up the pen again, saw that the ink had dried while she dawdled and dipped again.  It dried right quick if you weren't careful, she'd learned that already.

Mother began measuring herbs into her mortar, one scoop of lavendar, two of half ground pine needles, accompanying the measuring with a softly hummed song.  Anaya could feel the magic began to gather as she worked.  It felt a little like the the air before a thunderstorm.

Anaya knew what to write now.

"Mother says, 'all fire is fire on the heart, all air is the breath you use to cool your soup, all water is the stream outside the garden, all earth is the path outside my door.  That is the whole of the elements.'"

That didnt't take up much space on the page.  She looked up and saw the look on Geoff's face. "Did I do wrong?"

He blinked, bit his lip, then shook his head. "No.  Libby's right, it's your book, you write what you like in it.  I'd be a poor giver if I told you what to do with what I gave you." He coughed, smiling and shaking his head again. "Though I'd be sore disappointed if I gave you a dress and you put Mud Hund into it."

At her name, Mud Hund lifted her head and thumped her tail.  When neither a second call nor a treat followed the name, she put her head back down on the rug that she slept on.

Anaya giggled and started to close the book.  Geoff put his hand out, stopping her. "Let the ink dry, it won't smear then, and you can read it later."

"I wouldn't put a dress on Mud Hund, she'd get it all dirty."

"And I'd not let her do it, tha' knows tha' Geoff." Mother had finished measuring the herbs in.  She picked up the pestle and began grinding, accompanying the task with a different soft song.  This was the song to calm nightmares.  Anaya knew it already, she'd made no-nightmare pillows with Mother.  This dream pillow must be for Johann-the-Forge, he tended to bad dreams of fire burning down his home.

Geoff looked at Mother, grinning and looking younger. "And it's right tha'd be to do so, Goodwife Magistra.  New clothes do not belong on a dog, even one as fine as Herself the Hearth Hound." He leaned down and rumpled Mud Hund's ears when the dog looked up again.  He'd copied Mother voice almost perfectly, but there was something about it, Anaya frowned, and Mother shot him another speaking glance, this one more complex than Anaya could read.  She said nothing though, and didn't even pause in her song.  Johann-the-Forge could wake the village with his night terrors, and it upset his poor wife and children more than him.  She'd been the one to come to Mother's door last summer eve, asking for a magic of some sort to help them all.  Mother'd thought, closed her eyes, and opened them, measuring and grinding, giving Johann-the-Forge's wife Bithan a calico pillow for under his head.  She'd decorated it with thread sketched sigils to keep the herbs strong for a bit longer than they would unprotected.  Anaya had worked the thread sigils on the one Mother worked on now, her stitching had finally gotten beyond simple hems and seams and blood spots every so often because she'd pricked her fingers.

Johann-the-Forge still had bad dreams, time and time, but he had a bit of magic to him, to bend metals to his will as he did, and damping down magic was an ill done thing.  The pillows drove away ill dreams only, let him rest, and that was enough, for him and his family.  Night terrors might invite in other things, worse than nightmares, and the village and its cares was enough for one magistra to look after.  As well, Johann-the-Forge was a kin of a sort, though his mother'd come from three days travel down the Ousel, his father, Johann-the-Older-Forge had grown up in the cott hard by the forge on the village green, and his father, and so back to when a half dozen families had chosen to push south into the wilds to cut and grow.  Magic had come with them, with the daughter of one of the families, city-trained and certified, and it trailed down through her daughters and sons, though only the strongest one took the title of Goodman Magister, or Goodwife Magistra.  Most everyone could trace a kinship to Goodwife Magistra Elsbeth even if it was a cousin's son'd wed a daughter of her nieces's granddaughter.  Things like that happened, in a village three hours walk to the next vill over.  At least the land was all freeheld, not fiefheld, beholden to someone in a manor squatting to one side of the village.  They paid their taxes once a year direct to the collector, not through someone who paid someone who paid someone, each step taking a bit from the total.

Anaya dipped the pen in the ink again, and added to what she'd written.

"Magic tamped down in one fashion will come up in another.  Bind the hearth with well and with path, and it will come out the chimney and catch the roof afire."

She nodded, she'd written enough for now.  She waited for it to dry and thought of the fire that'd almost burned down Johann-the-Forge's cott before Bithan finally came for help.  Trying to keep his family safe from fire, he'd bound his hearth so tight that the cooking fire'd sought escape the only way it could.

Once she'd done, she closed the book and watched Geoff help Mother work on the dream pillow.  Sunlight found no redlights in Geoff's hair, only black, and a bit of silver threading through it.  Geoff was a city trained and certified magister, so Mother said, Anaya believed it, he'd certainly strange ways of doing some things.  City ways, Mother said, smiling and shaking her head, even if she took to using them if they worked better than what she'd been doing.  Tradition was all well and good, but they were no reason to discard new ways just because they were new ways.

"Anaya." Mother called. "Come and give the herbs their last grinding, and remember tha to keep the song going." Geoff had his hand at her waist, his nose in her ear and his mouth moved as he whispered something that made her go red.

Anaya got the stool so she could reach the counter and dragged it over. "How many more songs to go."

"Just three." Geoff said. "I've been keeping count." He used his usual voice again, crisp and sometimes full of strange words. "Libby and I are just going down to the river to sit and watch the sun. "If we're not back, finish the pillow.  Your mother and I think you're old enough for that."

Anaya didn't know whether to be scared she might do it wrong with nobody to watch over her, or proud that Mother thought she could do it on her own.  She took up the pestle as Mother and Geoff walked to the doorway, arms around each other's waist.  She remembered to thank the herbs for giving their power to the pillow and the easing of Johann-the-Forge's dreams, then she began grinding, singing under her breath, not even looking up when she heard Mother giggle and Geoff's answering laugh.  Grownups did that.

#

Two

In the year of the Fire Kiang

"All fire is fire on the hearth ... " Anaya traced the faded words, closed the book and sighed.  Had she really written so messily when she was that young.  She must have, she could trace the changes in her writing through the years, every year with another book from Geoff to mark her birth, a quarter of the year late.  Eight books now, all of them, and she took down the eighth, opening it to the last page she'd written on.  It still hurt, she'd stopped writing in them last winter, when Mother died.

All the same the wheel of the year turned, spring was coming, and it was needful.  Mother had never been one to put off the needful because it hurt, whether it was telling Bithan that the lump might grow and might kill her, if it weren't taken out some how, and even then another might grow in its place, worse than the first, or digging out the outhouse to mulch the garden.

"Taxes expected to be three gold rois or the equivalent.  Holding a bushel sack of dried apples, two peck sacks of acorns, a half peck of dried lavendar.  Also a maple smoked ham of venison, paid by Goodman Farmer Thamas-the-Orchard, offered by way of work done protecting against birds last harvest.  Will know after tax time."

She considered that, then added. "Previous taxes were four gold rois, accepted dried apples and acorns in same amount, but twice the lavendar, three ginseng roots and a half roi coin left from Geoff."

She heard a thumping sound and looked at the hearth rug, Mud Hund had her head up, looking to the door of the kitchen workroom, her tail wagging and striking the stone floor, the pup Anaya and Mother had kept from her last litter looked up and "chuffed"  The pup had been named Snow-n-Coal for the shaggy black and white coat she'd taken from whatever strange dog had fathered her.  Probably the dog that'd accompanied last year's tax collector, Mud Hund'd been in season then.

Someone coming up the path from then.  Not a villager, or Mud Hund'd would've gone on sleeping, and Snow-n-Coal would've barked.  Not a full stranger, or both dogs would have come to alert to protect her.  Anaya slipped both feet out of her clogs and toed the stocking off one foot.  Pressing the sole of her foot against the cold stones that paved the room, she asked the path who was coming to her home.  The path gave back a familiar feel, but not too near, and her memory of other times she'd felt that signature gave it a name. "Geoff."

She pulled her stockings on, put her feet back in their clogs, and stood, pulling her winter shawl around her shoulders.  Even with the hearth giving forth what warmth it could, the room was not comfortable, and outside colder still, with snow still lying blue under some fo the trees farther into the wild, and even under some trees just ouside her garden.  She exhaled, not liking what she'd to tell him, and saw her breath, magic echoed through her fingertips, Geoff must've felt the question she'd sent out and sent one of his own out.  It outlined her, and returned to him.

She greeted him at the doorway, opening it before he'd even a chance or a reason to lift his hand to use the iron ring and striker Johann-the-Forge had made three years ago.  His face was crumpling though his eyes still held hope. "Libby's away then?"

She heard the fear and the hope, saw no reason to spare him. "No.  She's in the cold shed hard by the clark's hall, waiting on the graveyard to thaw further than a shovel's depth."

He staggered, reaching for the door frame with one hand, and for her shoulder with the other. "I was afraid.  I'd dreams, I came as soon as I could."

She let him enter, because he was her father after all, and the trip from whatever northern city he lived in for the rest of the year was probably half way through spring by now, and he didn't look dressed for the weather this far south. "She died three hands of hands gone, you don't live that far distant, not even if you walked."

He went to the scrubbed table she'd been sitting at, staring blankly at the candle and open book.  Mud Hund lurched awkwardly to her feet and came over, resting her head on his knee and looking up at him with more soulful eyes than Anaya could muster at the moment. "I discounted the dreams until -- It took me this long to get things in order before they'd let me go.  Hard enough to get away for two h'hands in late spring." He rubbed the dog's head, seeming to take comfort from her and giving it back. "She boxed my ears and woke me up and I knew it was Libby, and I had to -- " He sighed, resting elbow on the table and supporting his head, the other hand rubbing the loose skin on Mud Hund's neck.

Despite the pain clawing at Anaya's heart, she had to smile, "That sounds like Mother." She'd taken a cuff to the head on more than one occasion if Mother felt she wasn't paying enough attention.

He looked up, tears staining his face and making lighter marks in the skin of his face.  He must've fallen somewhere.  The nearest lift ship didn't come any closer than two days walk.  Nobody'd rent a cart to a stranger, though with a long cycle of visit to remember him by, someone might've.  She looked out the doorway, annoyed that he might've left a blown kiang out in the cold while he hurried up the path.  She chilled her toes again, but there was nobody out there.  If he'd taken a cart, it'd been seen to before he came.  She closed the door and took the seat opposite her father.

"Nobody would tell me." Geoff rubbed at his face, smearing the tear marks and rubbing mud into his stubble. "I asked at Johann-the-Forge's cott, at the baker's, but they just looked away and said I'd to speak to you.  At least, I made it here before she was buried -- " His voice broke on the word. " -- I can see her a last time.  See more than just dirt."

"She's not going to be pretty." Anaya said, with the knowlege of how the weather'd been.  She'd spoke with the village headman and the clark.  The ground would be thawed enough in a day or two, unless a late storm came through, she'd gone to look at Mother to make sure nothing'd been nibbling on her toes or fingertips.  Hedgehogs would do that, or mice, or even cats, if they'd not enough vermin to eat.  Even kept free of that, Anaya'd made enough preserving sachets and charms to keep her mother's remains unmolested through a famine, a body changed with death and time.

"They kept my father above ground two h'hands to make sure I could see him when I came home.  I know." Geoff's voice was bleak.  Anaya blinked.  He'd never spoke much of his life when he wasn't in the village, with Mother. "At least it was cold, that preserves, in its fashion."

Geoff always came in late spring, and stayed through mid summer, Anaya remembered, if his father'd died while he was away -- She made a face. "Are you hungry?  I've some soup with the last of the carrots and winter murzels, with a bit of bacon for the flavor.  I can make some tea if you like, there's still some left from last year." She moved to the hearth, not sure what to do.  She'd not had much liking for tea, it reminded her too much of Mother and evenings spent working on what to do with the troubles of the people in the village.

"Anaya, sit." Still scrubbing at Mud Hund's neck and tugging on her ears, Geoff pointed.  Something in his voice -- She sat. "What are you planning to do?"

She hadn't thought much on it, still too much pain waiting to stab.  She looked around the room, at the bunches of herbs hanging from the rafters, mints, basil, vervain, rosemary and aconite, plaits of sweetgrass and vetiver, the tight lidded jars of roses and lavender and other herbs, for magic or cooking. "Stay here.  'Tis my home, the village needs me, with Mother gone, I'm the Magistra."

"You're not seventeen yet, still a child." Geoff scowled.

"Been doing the work since Mother came ill.  Nobody else here as can work magic like Mother and me, or with the training to do the work.  The land is freeheld, and we always made enough to live, pay the taxes." Anaya sat back, folding her arms.

He started to say something, closed his mouth, shook his head. "We'll talk tomorrow.  The news -- Libby being gone, it's knocked me down.  If I say anything, I'll say it wrong, I don't want to do that."

Anaya nodded, knowing if they talked tonight, she'd say it wrong too.  Mother'd said she took her temper from Geoff, "I'll have to run a warming pan in Mother's bedding, heat a brick for you, it's not been used since -- " it was her turn to shake her head. "I'll have to get fresh bedding for you, from the chests."

"You didn't -- ?"

"No." No sense in telling him it'd felt wrong some way she couldn't put to words.  That bed was Mother's bed, and Geoff's when he came.  'Twould be frigid as well, she'd closed the room off, she couldn't stand to go in there, expecting to see Mother, and she couldn't afford to heat a room that nobody used.

She still slept in the loft over the kitchen, pretending that the rustling and settling she heard was Mother, not the cott missing her.

"I'll put my things there, Geoff went to the door, stepped outside, came back with a tapestry bag, very similar to the ones the tax collectors used, to keep their records. "Bedding still where Libby always leaves -- " he stopped, a grimace of pain passing over his face like a cloud crossing the sun, then smiled ruefully, "-- always left them?"

Anaya nodded, hiding a grimace of her own, going into the front room and getting the heating pan.  Forgetting, then remembering, that was hard.  Mud Hund didn't follow her, but Snow-n-Coal did, hanging at her heels and nipping at her skirts for attention.  She patted the dog's head, then gripped her jaw shut. "Stop, tha.  'Tisn't meet to nip at me, tha knows that ." Chastened, the half grown pup returned to the dog's rug before the hearth and lying down, head on paws and watcing her with pained eyes.

She knelt on the hearth and pulled her sleeves up, then began scooping up coals, humming softly to the fire so the hearth wouldn't take offense and burn her.  The hearth was like that, quick to take offense if bound, or not treated with what it considered respect.  When she had enough coals to coat the bottom of the pan and then a little more, she closed the pan, sealing the coals and the warmth within.

She got to her feet, pointing at the rug when Snow-n-Coal's head came up. "No.  Stay."

Geoff still had his coat on, but the room was chill enough to warrant it.  He was struggling with the bed covers, trying to fit them onto mattress properly.  Mud Hund sat in the doorway, watching him and whining softly, and Anaya almost tripped over the old dog. "Tchah.  Has tha been waited on all thy life, tha can't tuck a sheet at all?" She snatched the sheet from him with one hand, gave him the warming pan with the other, and went to work, tugging and folding and tucking efficiently, grief drowned in the need to be doing something, anything, to forget where she was.  She'd been making her own bed since she was old enough to tug the corner up, and she let memory guide her hands, pinch here, push there, tug the sheet tight there, beg breath enough to loft the upper sheet and guide it so it settled just so, then the covers for the pillow, and the thick quilt she and Mother had made, from old dresses and goose down.

Geoff was still standing stupidly by when she finished, holding the warming pan, at least not upright so that it opened and tipped the coals out.  She took it from him, passed it between the sheets, once, twice, thrice, and a final time to make sure the worst of the chill was off the worn cloth.  She turned back to him, shifting the warming pan so that she didn't strike him with it. He had half his mouth crooked in an odd smile, his head tilted to one side. "Libby used to say that to me.  In just that tone."

She nodded, remembered that he was her father after all, and deserving of that respect.  She bound her resentment away, promising that she'd let it loose to run, most likely when she was setting the gardens up to take the seeds she and Mother had saved.  She could let a deal of resentment fuel her arms then, wear it out and let the path take it, dirt was not mindful of that sort of treatment, so long as respect was given where needed. "I've to set a brick to heating, the warming pan's for quick work, your toes will freeze by morning if that's all the warmth you have."

He nodded, the odd half-smile falling away. "Of course, thank you." He nudged the satchel he'd brought in with him. "I don't know if I have clothing warm enough for this far south, this early in the year."

She bit back a snap, reminding herself the garden needed tilling, and over winter, the ground got full hard.  A hoe and anger would do wonders to make the seeds grow.  It'd been his choice to return each year to the north and whatever life he lived there. "Best to get some food into you's well." She led him back to the kitchen, kneeling and returning the still hot coals to the hearth with thanks for the work they'd done.  She got the brick Mother'd always used and nestled it in one side of the fire.  The hearth curled warmth around it, seeming to recognize the shape of it, if not the hands that handled it.  Anaya felt saddened anew as she told the hearth, again, Mother was not coming again to put brick to fire to heat to warm toes through the night.  The breath added to the reminder, as the path would remind, until finally the well would, and then Mother would be truly gone to those elements she tended.  With the cold keeping the graveyard earth frozen, only air knew, and remind as it could, the hearth, the breath, the well were forgetful things without reminders.  The sadness the hearth felt echoed in her, echoed "I know.  I forgot." So did she.

"There's a bowl on the shelf above the fireplace, could you hand it to me?  I'll get some soup for you.  'Twill warm you in and out." She kept to the formal mode speaking to Geoff, she didn't quite know why, but it felt safer, better to keep him at that distance.

He took it down and handed it to her.  She ladled up enough soup to near fill the bowl, making sure to get some of the few bits of bacon left, warning Mud Hund and Snow-n-Coal to the dog rug again, lest they come to begging at the table.  She'd gotten a bit lax about dog manners, slipping both dogs bits, time and time.  Mother'd been the one to remind her that people were people and dogs were dogs and only one sat at a table to eat.  The food and the better bits were only proper courtesy to the guest.  She gave it to Geoff, fetched a mug from the same shelf as the bowl, and filled it with some of the last cider she had, cut a heel of bread and put them, and a spoon out before him.

"Eat, drink, and be welcome beneath the roof." She spoke the guest welcome formally, hands out before her, palm up. "An' you harm none beneath it, this roof shall shelter you, this door shall not close you out, in the name of Flame, Wind, River and Land." She felt a flicker of magic as the welcome took, and remembered, this was her home now, not Mother's, hers was the right of open door or closed.

Geoff blinked as the magic washed over him, hearth, breath, path and well acknowleged his presence, "I've not been given guest welcome beneath this roof in almost seventeen years."

She sat down, picked up the mug she'd been drinking from and sipped it. "Mother left cott and land to me, freeheld, same as the village, same as she held it." She put the napkin from her own supper over her books.  Geoff'd always said they were hers to mark as she desired, and she had, there were likley as many sketches of flowers and methods for making soap, breads, soups or sausage as there were words about magic.

He opened his mouth as if to say something, thought better of it and picked up the spoon, dipping it in the bowl and taking a mouthful of soup.  He blinked, then took another spoonful. "It's good."

"Mother owned as I'd become a better cook than her two years gone." Anaya rested her chin on a fist. "She said I'd as deft a hand with the spicing as her mam."

"That's powerful praise, Elsa would've been a kitchen witch to reckon with in any place she chose to cook." He applied himself to the food, not looking up until bread and soup and cider were gone.  He took the napkin from her books, wiped his mouth, and stifled a belch. "I hadn't realised how hungry I was.  I hadn't eaten since the last change of kiangs."

"You come by cart?"

"It's by the forge, and the drover staying in the tavern for the night." He stood, taking the dirty dishes to the dishpan and putting them in. "I'd thought as Libby and I'd talk, make sure she was well, and I'd be leaving in a hand or so." He gestured, taking in the workroom, the cott, even Anaya. "This's thrown me, I've decisions to make, we've need to talk."

"But not right now." Anaya stood, taking the kettle hanging in the midst of the heat heading for the chimney, poured enough hot water into the dishpan to make it steam, pumping cold water to add to it so the dishes could soak, then re-filling the kettle with more cold water. "In the morning."

"Yes." He nodded. "In the morning." He snapped his fingers. "C'mon Mud Hund." The older dog lurched to her feet and walked to his feet.

She pulled her shawl around her again, "Do you need me to wrap the brick for you? It should be hot by now, I asked the  hearth to hurry it warm."

"No, no." He looked around, finally picking up a length of towelling that hung by the fire. "I know the ways to pick up a footling  brick." He knelt, and she heard the soft words of formal thanks to the hearth for the warmth, as he reached in and picked up the brick and quickly wrapped and tied it into the towelling, with a carrying strap by the knot.

"Very well." She dithered for half a heartbeat, caught between about picking up her own footling brick or secreting her books, chose practicality and another length of towelling.  Geoff would have scant reason to pry into her writings, not that they were all that secret, and the early spring night would freezer her own toes off as willingly as Geoff's.  She knelt and thanked the hearth as she banked the fire, picking up the other brick and tying it into its own wrapping with a knot she could grasp. "Leave the doors between the rooms open so you get some warmth in the night.  Sleep well, fair dreams." She headed for the ladder that led to the loft where she slept.

He nodded and left, leaving the door into the front room open.  She heard the latch lift on the door to Mother's room, did not hear it click shut behind him.  She put the brick at the foot of her bed, stripped down her shift and ducked beneath the covers and pressed her toes to the brick, trying not to let her resentment overflow. Aye and he'd lost his Libby, but she'd lost her mother.  It wasn't fair that she had to step soft around his feelings, she hadn't asked him to come barging into her home, ordering her around -- .

She stopped herself, binding the resentment, the anger away.  Come spring she could till the soil and release it, she had to not snap at him while he held guest right beneath her roof. She began speaking the words, making the gestures to call on breath and hearth, give her a rein for her temper.  It didn't help, the feelings ached like a missing tooth, and she couldn't keep from probing at it, even as it hurt.

"Libby.  Ah, Pantheon, why'd you not write me.  I'd have come if you sent me." The words came through muffled by the wall, followed by a sob.  Anaya's resentment melted away like spring snow.  Aye, and she'd lost Mother, he'd lost her too, and his loss was like a fresh wound, still bleeding, and no comfort of being here, doing what he could to stave off her death.  She'd been able to fight that battle at least, for all it'd been futile.

#

Three

Anaya couldn't see her breath when she woke in the morning, she counted that in her favor.  There'd been days she woke to fearing she'd scrape frost if her nose if she scratched at it.  She pushed the footling brick away and dressed, pulling on the same clothes she'd worn yesterday, tugging her stockings up to her knees and tying the garters tight enough to keep them from sliding down, climbing down silent to the kitchen, kneeling to call the hearth from its own sleep and giving it some kindling, then a log from beneath the loft.  She unearthed some cheese and the last of the bread, toasting them together, carefully leaving two portions to her one for Geoff, he was bigger than her, he'd wake hungrier most like.  She'd heard his crying as she fell asleep, half embarassed, half resentful of his tears, it felt ... uncomfortable and intimate somehow, as bad as as some days when she'd heard Geoff and Mother in bed talking while they thought her asleep, or heard Mother crying softly after he'd left her each year.

She let the dogs out to scent the morning out and tend to dogly things, walking down to the outhouse at the head of the garden, grumbling at the necessity.  It was warm enough to make a piss pot in the kitchen luxury or laziness, even if the cold wood made her flesh cringe away.  She went out to the shed, tending the animals, only two small eggs from the half a dozen chickens, only half a rat from the cats that shared the shed, and enough dirtied straw to fill the winter sledge from the kiang she used for the gardens and tithed to the village for larger work.  Geoff'd brought the kiang three years ago, a foal mare, all things being good, they'd hoped to breed her at this summer gather in, but that wouldn't happen, she feared coin would be too scarce for the stud fee.  She worked in mostly silence, shovel and pitchfork and movement enough to drive the chill off.  She spoke as she worked, small words to the breath to keep the smells of animal urine and manure from clogging her nose worse than it was.

There was a floorboard outside Mother's bedroom that always creaked when anyone stepped on it, even as lightfooted as Mother'd been, and Geoff was no lighter footed than her.  It gave Anaya warning and then some to snatch her books and toss them up onto her bed, sort of hiding them. "'Morning." she said, looking up as he came in. "I'll not ask if you slept well."

"No,  I didn't."  The chair legs thumped against the flagstones that paved the floor as he half-fell into it. "Not well."  His stubble had darkened his chin further, his hair looked rumpled, and his shirt looked like he'd slept in it, or crumpled it up and tossed it into a corner when he went to bed, then had to pick it up and put it on in the morning.

She scooped a tisane blend into the pot and poured hot water over it to steep, putting the lid back onto it to keep it warm. "Outhouse hasn't been moved, if you're needing it."

"Not at the moment." He looked around. "Where're the dogs?"

"Out and about.  Dog things." She put the bread and cheese before him, "Do you want it toasted?  I can stick it on a fork if you like."

"No, no, this is fine." He scratched his head, "Is the black and white dog from from the litter that Mud Hund had last year?"

"Aye, 'tis." She nodded, going to the dishpan and lifting it free of the rinsepan, She added hot water from the kettle to both, scooped a fingerful of soap from the pot by the pans, stirred it, then tempered the rinse water with more from the pump. "The litter was a gift of the tax collector's dog.  I think Mother told you that he'd a fine black and white beast with him last year?"

"So she did.  I remember the puppies.  Three that time, wasn't it?" She heard him chewing, and worked on scrubbing the mugs clean so they could be used for the morning's tisanes.  "Nobody wanted the last?"

"No."  She finished one mug, dipped it into the rinse and put it to dry and started on the next.  Mud Hund was showing her age, nigh on twelve now, and a dog was needed, to mark strangers' approach, and to help hunt vermin and the like.  She lived close by the rest of the village, but on its edge, and a dog was welcome, an' it earned its place.  The same with the cats that shared the shed. "We chose to keep Snow-n-Coal.  Traded the other two at the summer gather in after the taxes were paid."

"Ah.  And how is the kiang?  What did you name her?"

She tapped one of the soap bubbles to burst it, frowning and wondering why he bothered.  They'd bury Mother in a day or two, he'd return to his other life, she'd remain here, return to life in the village. "Lilac.  We named her Lilac." She finished the second mug, rinsed it, set it to dry and began working on the bowl he'd used.

"Libby always did love them." He sighed.

The silence settled on them like a too thick blanket, but neither broke it by speaking, however stifling it felt.  Anaya finished the dishes, emptied both pans outside the door, poured them each a mug of tisane, took a jar of honey from the stores and put it between them with a spoon.  She sat opposite him, sipped the bitter, strengthening brew. "You said we'd talk in the morning."

"And it's morning." He avoided her eyes and stirred some honey into the mug. "This won't be easy."

"Then best begin." She watched him, still not certain what he'd say. "Gets no easier with avoiding." She remembered a splinter she'd suffered as a child, she'd fought Mother and avoided her until the hand was swollen and needed the knife to cut it out, and the puss that came with the poison that'd grown around the wood.

Geoff swallowed, looked at the still thin sunlight coming in the window, looked at the hearth where the kettle still "I can only stay a hand of days.  When I go, you're going with me."

"No!" the clatter the chair made as it fell over startled Anaya, she looked behind her at it, not recalling how she'd come to be standing.  She hadn't moved, had she?

Geoff had risen to to his feet as well. "You're not even sixteen, a child under the law, I'm your father."

"With Mother gone, I'm Goodwife Magistra for the village, and all the land half a day's walk around.  I can't leave, who'll look after them, tend their ills and cares?" She picked up the chair, half slammed it down at the table, gripped the back of it so hard the carved battern dug into her fingers.

"I don't care about them, I care about you, living out here at the edge of civilisation.  You deserve better, Libby deserved better." Geoff gestured dismissively at the room, the cott's workroom and kitchen wasn't much, but it was home to her.

"This is my home.  These are my people.  I've an obligation to them, to their health." She pushed away from the chair. "Flame and Wind, I'll not forsake folk I've known all my life on your words."

"Not just my words, the law's to my side.  Until you're full grown, and that's more than a year off, I've the keeping and ordering of you." Geoff slammed a fist onto the table, upsetting the spoon from atop the honey, making both mugs rattle and spill a bit. "And I'll keep you by me, I owe Libby that much."

"No.  I belong here.  I'm the Magistra." She paced the room, finding it suddenly too small. "I don't want to go."  She turned back to Geoff, stamping her foot. "I won't go with you."

On the hearth, a coal snapped and spat out a piece of itself, it landed on the dog rug and began smouldering.  The hearth sensed her upset, Anaya knelt and slapped at the smoulder.  'Twasn't fit the dogs suffered for her temper.

Geoff left the table and knelt by her, trying to take her shoulders, she twisted them and pulled free, thumping her rump on the flagstones, feet out towards him, to kick if he came closer. "Anaya -- "

"No!"

They both heard the dogs barking at the same moment, Geoff rose to his feet, of balance and grabbed at the table, returning to his chair and looking at the doorway.  Anaya rolled onto her knees and got up as well, taking her mug and going to open the door, still thin lipped and angry.  Mud Hund and Snow-n-Coal spilled into cott, jumping around her and then bouncing away to her guest to leap at her skirts.  She forced herself to smile, though she felt nothing like a smile. "Fair greeting, Goodwife.  Tha could've sent Johann-the-Younger or Elisheba to fetch me to tha cott, I'd not have minded."

The elderly woman leaned on her walking stick and thumped it against the door stoop, nudging at the dogs if they bounced too close.  Her faded brown eyes twinkled with amusement, and wisps of gray hair still with a hint of rust from her youth escaped braids and peeped out from beneath her fine, onion-yellow hood. "Na, na.  I'd not have troubled them.  I need to stir these old bones 'ere they grow solid as an oak trunk.  The lass would get lost walking from the outhouse to the back door, and the lad -- " She cackled, looking up at Anaya as she walked into the cott. "Oh." Her surprise was too elaborate, Goodwife Irena-the-Forge's-Widow lived with son and daughter-in-law and grandchildren and had to have been awake when Geoff arrived. "Goodman Magister.  To the village be welcome, I'm that sorry tha' love passed.  We all are."

"For the sorrow offered, be thanked." Geoff sounded as thin-lipped and sour as Anaya felt.  Drat Goodwife Irena for interrupting.

Anaya called the hearth to heat the kettle and settled Goodwife Irena at the table, she added herbs to the rinse pan, filled it with water and let the result steep while she bespoke the words that drew the power from the herbs, wintergreen and vervain, st john's wort to ease the aches.  She finished the words and dipped the Goodwife's hands into the pan, swirling the water around her knuckles, drawing the swelling away from them, letting the water soak in and draw out the rheum that twisted her fingers into knobby twigs, 'Twasn't a cure, the goodwife had been old when Mother was born, and suffered with the disease all that time.  The best Mother or Anaya could do was ease her pain, until the next cold snap or rainstorm came and the rheum came back with it.

She sang the pain, the rheum into the water, leaving Goodwife Irena's hands limberer than they had been, for all they'd never be the lithe and lissome hands she'd had once upon a summer gather in, when Johann-the-Older-Forge had spied her with her farmer family.  She finished the work and lifted the old woman's hands from the now cloudy water, drying them gently with a cloth she kept for such things, worn soft with time and work. "Needs tha the same for tha feet?"

"If t'would.  It does gift a body with easement, it does, tha magic." Goodwife Irena smiled gratefully. "I'll ask my boy to make certain tha gets a bit of the chicken, when Thamas-the-Orchard pays for his nails."

Anaya took the pan to the doorway, and poured it out, asking the path and the breath to devour the waste, asking the well to take the water back to itself.  She rinsed the pan, took the herbs again and checked the kettle, it was hot enough.

She turned back with the kettle and almost bumped into Geoff, "I'll do that, since I'm here."  He reached for the kettle's handle, tugging on it gently. "I need to be doing -- something."

Resentment flared, and she started to grip the kettle tight, how dare he try to take that duty from her, but she caught it fast and examined it.  Twasn't resentment that he was doing magic, 'twas resentment that he would get Goodwife Irena's gratitude for easing her pain.  He'd take her glory, and anger at that was wrong.  She released her hold. "Thank you," she managed, though the words tasted like rocks.

He poured the water for the old woman, and she could almost taste the magic on her skin as he began to stir it, bespeaking the same words she used, as well she should, she couldn't think as how much of her magic had she learned from him after all.

She picked up her tisane and went out into the yard, going to the overhang where the winter's firewood seasoned.  She set down the mug and gathered up an armful of wood, picking up weighty chunks, her fingertips cringing away from the roughness of the bark, and how cold lived in the crevices where the wood had been split.  Frost still clung to some of the wood lower in the pile, and made her regret not taking mittens.  She took it in back into the workroom, and felt like she'd walked through into a bank of mist, the magic was so thick about Geoff, wrapping around Goodwife Irena's legs and feet, sliding down her and into the pan, spilling over the pan and puddling around them.  Anaya wondered if magic behaved that way when she worked it.  It seemed so ... odd.  She'd never noticed that about Geoff's magic, Mother's magic had always seemed lighter somehow, like a wave of spring flowers.  Geoff's was like a chill pool, though not of water.

She made as little sound as possible, stacking the wood, ruffling Mud Hund's ears as the dog watched Geoff, tail disturbing the dog rug as it dragged back and forth.  Snow-n-Coal felt neglected and butted under her hand, whining softly, supplanting her dam's.  Anaya slid her hand down and gripped the dog's muzzle, silencing her with a shushing sound.  Sometimes outside sounds disturbed magic, made it twist.  There'd been a bit of Mother's magic she'd made explode once, herbs, bowl and all, magic splattering everywhere, because she'd come running into the room, yelling about some child's outrage.  The resulting spanking had shrunk the outrage to its proper place, that, and having to help bandage Mother's hands and face, and clean up the mess.

When Snow-n-Coal fell silent, she patted the dog on the head and stood, going out to the wood and getting her mug again, then returned to the workroom.  She knew to expect the magic this time, and set her mind to slipping unobtrusively into the room.  She watched Geoff work, watched the magic flow around his hands, watched him pull away the thick ropy net that was Goodwife Irena's rheumatism laying it into the pan and watching it dissolve into the water.  He lifted the water and let it wash down her thin legs, taking with it the last of the net.  Anaya blinked and looked at the old woman's hands, comparing Geoff's work with hers.  She had left traces of the knotting disease there.  She wasn't as good a magister as him.

Goodwife Irena sighed as Geoff sat back, reaching for the cloth to dry her feet and calves. "Ah, tha did well, young Magister," she extended one foot and twisted her ankle in a circle. "I've not felt so near to dancing since my Johann passed." She giggled. "Nor had a man to kneel at my feet."

Geoff helped her to put her stockings back on, and her shoes, then helped her to her feet. "Well, all women should have a man to kneel before her, just as all men should have a woman throw herself at his feet." He bent over her hand. "Do you need help to get back to your home, Goodwife?"

"Na, na." She waved a hand, picking up her walking stick. "Be a poor sight if I needed aid walking home after the seeing the Magistra for my aches."

She nodded to Anaya as she left, and Anaya closed the door behind her, then turned back to Geoff. "You'd have me turn my back on folk like the goodwife, or Thamas-the-Orchard's wife, who just had a child this past winter, and suffers yet with the croup?"

He grimaced. "They'll get along without you.  I wanted to take you back with me last summer, but Libby insisted on keeping you one more year.  We agreed you were to stay one more year with her."

She folded her arms. "I've responsibilities to the folk of the village.  They need me."

Geoff got to his feet and picked up the pan, gripping it so tight his knuckles bled white. "We'll talk on this later." Anger flowed from him, thick and almost choking both of them. He shuddered, the expression on his face melting into blankness.  "I'll keep silent until I've seen Libby's below ground, it's not right we tear at at other like this, she'd not have liked it."

She glared at him, but the anger had fled from him, and his eyes were calm and sad as he looked at her.  Her eyes fell away, "No.  She'd not like it."  She nodded. "Aye, peace between us until that's dealt with."

#

Four

It was two days before the ground was soft enough for a grave.  Anaya felt as if she'd covered the floors of the cott with eggshells she dared not break as she trod on them, and wondered if Geoff felt the same.  They worked together, walking spring wards for the fields ere they were planted, taking care of the last of the lambing for Jath-the-Herds.

Geoff that first afternoon went to the cold shed by the clark's hall and spent it with Libby, returning with a face as cold and hard as the ground after a frost.  Anaya took Lilac and the sledge and an axe and went picking up deadfalls, leaving him to his pain, and came back to the cott with a sledge of firewood and cold rooms, the fire banked, Geoff abed and asleep, or pretending to be.  She stacked it next to the wood from last summer, last autumn.  If Geoff insisted she leave with him, she'd never burn it, never smell the pine she'd gathered, hear the sap pop and hiss.

On the morning of the burying, she dressed carefully, in the dark gray kirtle Mother had picked out last gather in, stockings of heavy undyed wool, and her clogs.  Over it went a kerchief in a plaid of madder, woad and onion, and a double layer of shawls, the lower one brown, the upper lacey knit, green, greenweed overdyed with weld.  Last winter they'd spun the wool, she and Mother, sitting at the fire across from each other, keeping their fingers supple, Mud Hund between them and snoring, lying on her back with all four paws in the air.

Geoff was waiting when she left the cott, Mud Hund and Snow-n-Coal at her heels, filthy from their claws to their elbows from rooting in the spring mud.  They'd be late to the burying if she cleaned their paws, so she whistled them close and tied leads to their necks. "They got into the compost." Geoff gestured helplessly.

She thinned her lips, counted to five and tugged the two shawls close.  Too late to wash them, just take them along and pray Snow-n-Coal didn't take to jumping on folk.  She didn't think anyone'd be pleased to have dirty paw prints on their better clothes.

Geoff took Mud Hund's lead and began walking.  He wore a crisp cut suit of some kind.  City made she guessed, black cloth of some kind, coat cut close to the chest and flaring in skirts that draped around his knees, black shirt, close collared to his neck.  He'd shaved, and she saw a half healed nick he must've missed.  He'd fought his frizzy, black and silver hair into a tail at the nape of his skull, and for the first time, she saw how bloodshot his eyes were, and the bags under his eyes were deep.  His hands shook as Mud Hund ambled, pausing to sniff a suspicious tree trunk.

She'd not been awake when he came home, but Goodwife Anghara-the-Orchard's-Wife had said he was sitting at the Mair-the-Brewster's table at mid-afternoon, a mug before him and a pile of coppers at his elbow.  She didn't blame him, and Anaya found it difficult to blame him, every year for all her life he'd come to the village, spending more over a pair of h'hands with them.  He must have loved Mother she supposed, to keep coming back.  When Jath-the-Herd's wife died after an unlucky fall, he'd wobbled drunk to the burying and for half the year after.

A man had a right to mourn a love, Goodwife Anghara said. At least he wasn't breaking things, like Johann-the-Forge did when his first, foreign wife died.

Anaya nodded, mixing up herbs for a tisane brew to strengthen Anghara's blood against the last cold of the season.  A daughter had a right to mourn her mother, but she didn't answer with that.  She'd already wept enough to fill the Ousel, and she could remember the horrible knife-sharp freshness of the pain three h'hands ago.  'Twas a shape now to her pain, an aching hole that used to be where Mother was, and the edges of the shape were starting to soften, as she'd been told cliffs softened their edge and crumbled away beneath the work of wind and water.

At the burying ground, someone'd already dug the hole, and the bundle of what used to be Mother lay beside it, opposite the pile of dirt, wrapped in a coarse sack, only her bare feet showing, so, tradition said, she could return, to Well and Path, to Hearth and Breath.  They looked gray and her heels were mottled, her toenails turned half to claws as though she was changing as Anaya watched, slowly, into a cat or the like.  'Twas but a fancy, the stuff of a nightmare some night when she'd the chance to ponder on it.

Most of the village was there, waiting for her.  Markus-Club-Foot the Clark she'd expected, and Jath-the-Herds, but Thamas-the-Orchard, Bevin-called-Wanderer, Johann-the-Forge, most of their families, even the children, that she'd not.  They'd all taken time from days growing busy with spring coming on and tax time.  She nodded greetings to them as she passed, grateful and wanting to flee the sympathetic pats and murmurs.  They slid from her, touching Geoff in turn, offering comfort that words didn't encompass.  With the ground soft enough to dig, there were seven people to be buried here, from this village, Mother, Jath-the-Herd's grandfather, Kethin, an infant that'd barely had time to be named Beth, to breathe thrice, and from the farms that lay more than a short walk from Clark's hall, four more, a grandmother, a hired man who'd fallen and broken his neck, another infant, a boy child named Payton for his father, dead between his second summer and his third.  The holes were there, to receive them, piles of dirt to one side, cloth wrapped bundles to the other.  Anaya met the eyes of each who'd lost family, nodding acknowledgement of the pain.  Aye, those families or hirers were to be expected, but Thamas, Bevin and Johann, no.

Snow-n-Coal capered and barked, excited at all the people and the attention.  Anaya shushed her, half angered and almost wishing she'd left her at the cott, but knowing the dogs had a right, for nigh on twelve years Mud Hund had been Mother's companion, pet, and friend.  Snow-n-Coal had been whelped into Anaya's hands, Mother standing by in case she needed help.

Both dogs had the right to be here.  She and Geoff stopped, at the foot of the grave, and she nodded to the clark, Markus-Club-Foot, and he opened his book. "Elsbeth, called Libby, called Magistra, born in this village in the cott where her mother Magistra and her father, Magister lived, second of three children, the only one who could work magic.  Thirty-five years ago in the h'hand called Planting, in the year called Ocean Dragon.  At the age of nineteen, in the year called Water Cat she became a mother herself, to Anaya, called magistra, in the h'hand called _MONTHNAME_ at twenty she and her mother buried her father, Airk-the-Magister, called Iron Bender, and at twenty seven, in the year called Fire _ANIMALNAME_ she and her daughter, now seven, buried her mother, Elsa-the-Magistra, called Soft Hands.  She paid her taxes, worked among us, lived among us.  Now she is to be buried, by her daughter Anaya, called Magistra, and her man, Geoff-from-Away, come to do the work of returning her to the land, the water, the air and the fire." He closed the book. "Mourn not.  For what she was is gone already, save in memory, kept green within our hearts, fled to return to the gods and to turn upon the wheel, to return in time when it is meet."

Anaya felt tears burn her eyes, and let them loose. Snow-n-Coal sat and nudged her hand, whining.  She glanced at Geoff, saw he was crying too.  Johann-the-Forge bent and gripped one of the ropes that ran beneath Mother's shroud, as did Thamas-the-Orchard, and Geoff, and Johann's oldest son, called Johann-the-Younger. "On -- now." Johann-the-Forge said, grunting as they lifted her.  Awkwardly, they lifted Mother and stepped around the hole, letting her down into the ground.  Johann and his son released the rope, letting Geoff and Thamas pull the rope from under her, looping it over their arms.

They moved to the next grave, Kethin's.  Markus read his life from the Clark's book, the year he was born, his parents' names and when they died, who he wed,  which of his children he buried (all of them twenty years ago, with his wife, a year when sickness harvested lives like wheat).  He'd lived seventy three years, a long time, long enough to see his grandson become a father, long enough for his great-grandson to learn his face and carry the memory of him ahead for a life almost as long as the one he'd lived.  Fingers eased around Anaya's free hand, and she looked up at Johann-the-Younger.  He bumped his shoulder against hers, rested his head briefly against hers, then let go her hand to go and stand by Markus.  That he'd grown up too slender and too little strength to take up the Forge had been a disappointment to his father, but Johann-the-Younger was clever, he could read without need of finger or pointer to mark his place, and he didn't need to mouth the words.  It helped that his next oldest brother, Airk was strong and sturdy and took to the Forge like a fire to wood, and that Johann-the-Forge had enough mother wit to know forcing his oldest away from livelihood that suited him into one he would come to hate would break his heart and his life, and leave Airk resentful in turn, maybe even driving him away.  Johann-the-Younger would be clark, here or another vill.

Johann-the-Younger spoke the words for the infant, Beth, his voice cracking.  Not many words, but her mother sobbed and collapsed into her father's arms, both parents barely managing to keep from following the far too small bundle into the ground.  Anaya left Mother's grave and went and stood by them, putting an arm around each.  She'd known Beth's mother, Elissa,  since they were both children, they were cousins, of a sort, and this her first child.  She didn't tell them lies, tell them there would be other children.  The wheel turned and sometimes things turned wrong.  Elissa rested her face on Anaya's shoulder and sobbed, almost staggering her.  Her husband, Adath, stood by, unable to release his pain as noisily, unable to comfort her.  Anaya took the green shawl off and wrapped it around her, releasing her to her mother-by-marriage, Mair.  Markus limped over and rested his hand on Adath's shoulder, offering what comfort he could, tugging him to turn into his father's hold and release his grief in a noisy sob.

The words for Beth ended, the grandmother was mourned by a family of sons and daughters and son's wives and daughter's husbands, and a gathering of grandchildren half- and fully-grown.  The hired man took few words, he'd been half vagabond who began working and was gone before he'd earned half a year's wages.

The last, Payton,  was the hardest, Beth had been born and gone in a day, and aye, it happened.  How did the words in the Clark's book describe a child who loved to tug on braids and belts, who'd begun to walk and to get into everything, making mother and father and older kin half mad with keeping him out of mischief.  She'd met him a time or two, at the gather in and tax time, and she wept for him, for the life he'd not have.

But it ended, this last duty of the the winter, the first of the spring, this return.  Markus-Club-Foot closed his Clark's book for the last time and nodded to Anaya.  This duty was hers now.  She handed the Snow-n-Coal's lead to the nearest person to her and knelt on the cold ground, digging fingers in through the mat of winter brittle grasses, past the spring shoot beginnning to push past the old dead growth, striving for the sun.  She dug into the ground, calling to it, the bespoken words making their way past the lump in her throat.  She felt a thrum of power beside her, and looked over.

Like her, Geoff had handed off Mud Hund's lead and knelt, hands buried to his wrist in the ground.  He met her challenging look with one of his own.  If she had this duty, he had this right, as magister and mourner.  She looked down again, looking into the ground, threading magic and bespoken words through the ground, through the Path --

"All earth is the path outside my door." The truth of that settled over her like her winter quilt.  She reached out, and felt the path she'd trod to come here, felt the stones that made the foundation of the cott where she'd been born.  It anchored her, and she retired to the graveyard, to the seven holes in the earth, and what lay within those holes, to the mounds beside them.  She swept over them, through them, moved them gently from beside the holes into them.  Cliff edges crumbled beneath rain and wind, she moved faster than that, moving like a team of draft kiang, pulling a plow, cutting into the earth, pushing aside as they passed.  She could feel the dirt move, returning to where it'd rested until the shovels came.  The earth remembered what it had been, she returned it, her magic blending and now vanishing beneath Geoff's, now rising above it, a shoulder added to his to move a stone, a hand that removed a twig holding back a logjam.

At last the words ended, Anaya felt the magic ebb back unto the ground, felt her senses return to her self, losing the knowlege of rock and water, of how the unfurling leaves and tree flowers were beginning to flutter in the air, how the fires banked on the hearths of the village pushed smoke out the chimneys, looking, always looking, for more fuel to consume, but that was its nature.  She closed her inner eyes, and opened her outer ones, pulling her fingers from the earth and looking around.

Raw earth still dotted the graveyard, but no longer in piles beside holes.  The holes had vanished, replaced by gentle mounds, each mound topped by a rock.

They had done this, she and Geoff, wreaking magic on the earth, burying the dead.  He staggered a little as he got to his feet, reddish mud staining his knees.  Anaya took her time getting to her feet, accepting a hand held out to her, mindful also of the wet seeping through her skirts and the toes of her shoes.  She felt strong and weak at the same moment, magic had flowed through her, but little remained.  Thus it was, with magic.  It would find a way to escape, but it might not remain once loosed.

Geoff nodded to her, then his gaze slid past her, to the grave closest to them both, Mother's grave, marked with a plain stone, no larger or smaller than the others. "We should go back to the cott." Geoff took the leads for both dogs and turned, holding Mud Hund's out to her.

Anaya nodded, they had an argument to have, and she didn't want to have it before half the village. "Aye." She took the rope, trying not to jerk her arm free when he took hold of her elbow.  No fighting before everyone.

"Magister." Markus said, from Geoff's other side. "We of the village have need of words with tha."

Anaya peered past the clark to see Johann-the-Younger, his father, Mair-the-Brewster, Thamas-the-Orchard and most of the leaders of the village and the farms about standing between them and the way back to Anaya's cott.  Behind them their families stood, all of them dark clothed, looking for all like a murder of crows, lightened here and there with the green shawl Anaya'd given Elissa, Goodwife Irena's yellow hood, the crimson scarf Jath-the-Herds wore to honor his grandfather.  Markus seemed to have been named spokesman. "We've had word, Goodman Magister, of something grave, gives the village concern."

"Nothing too bad, I pray." Geoff managed to keep his voice light, but his fingers tightened on her arm.

"We heard tha has plans to return north, tha's ordered cart put to in two days." Markus held the Clark's book to his weedy chest.  It contrasted oddly with his gut, and his formal Clark's robes always put Anaya in mind of a pear dipped in soot.

"That is true." Geoff nodded gravely. "I've duties at -- where I live, I have to return to them."

"And when tha goes?  It's taking Anaya, tha plans, when tha goes." Johann-the-Forge asked, earning him a look of rebuke from the clark and an elbow in the ribs from his wife.

"She's my daughter, and a child yet by the law." She felt Geoff stiffening at the words. "I can't leave her here."

"She serves the village as Magistra.  Child, aye, by the law, but if tha take her away, what shall we do?"  Markus lowered his book, letting the bulk of it rest against the top of his belly. "The village has need of a Magister, much as it needs a Clark." He smiled sadly. "I fear we cannot let tha take our Magistra away.  Child or no, we need her."

Geoff scowled. "You told them." he accued Anaya.

"No." she glared back at him. "Did you say naught when you got so drunk yesterday, or that we cannot count twice to two and manage four?  Do you think us fools here, or that your hired driver was bound to silence?"

He released her arm. "Go back to the cottage then, I've to speak with the elders.  Hash this to a solution." He handed her the lead for Snow-n-Coal. "You've a fire taking the chill from the air in the Clark's hall I hope?"

"No.  This affects me.  I will participate.  It's my right."

"Nonsense."

"When this village was founded," Thamas-the-Orchard said. "We counted each voice that spoke sense.  One of the first families here were headed by a fifteen year old boy."

"Johann-called-Eldest." Johann-the-Forge nodded firmly, proud of his ancestor. "His mother and father died on the trip here, left him with a younger sister, two younger brothers, and a pair of cousins to look after and speak for."

Anaya could feel the anger coming off Geoff in ripples as the villagers fell in around them, escorting them to the Clark's hall.  She'd not wanted this arguement to be public, or to involve the vill, but it had, and she felt a shameful sense of triumph that Geoff couldn't order her about without consequences.  She wouldn't have to leave her home, after all.

#

Five

She'd have to leave her home after all.  Anaya threw a clot of mud at the outhouse, and crowed when it thudded and splattered on the weathered wood.  Aye and Anaya had served as magistra for the village since she'd been old enough to measure even, but Geoff'd promised to get a city-trained and certified Magister sent south and the village's objections vanished like summer dew.  Anaya had objected, and was brushed aside.  All she'd managed to get for a concession was time to pack up her possessions.  Freeheld or no, the new magister would live here when he arrived.  Or maybe he'd be a magistra.  It depended upon who was sent.

They'd live in her cott, pay taxes for her, and that would serve for rent.  Geoff had agreed in her name while she fumed.  She was a magistra, aye, but with the idea of a city-trained magister, maybe to wed into one of the families of the village, as Airk-Iron-Bender had, when he was assigned to the village and found a half-trained magistra already there.

She didn't want to go, but nobody'd asked her, and all she could do was pack up her things and make ready.  Word had come by a courier making rounds of the villages hereabouts to set up the tax time, and Geoff was accompanying the magister assigned to the village, they would arrive in four days, there would be two days to settle what stayed for the foreign magister to use, and what Anaya could take with her.

Snow-n-Coal would go with her, Mud Hund would not.  Two days after Geoff left, the old dog lay down before the fire, went to sleep, and did not wake up.  Anaya had chosen a spot just within the woods, bespoke the ground, and Mud Hund was gone, becoming part of the earth.again, as Mother was, as Grandmother Elsa and Grandfather Airk were.  Snow-n-Coal still sniffed around the cott for her dam, but there was nothing she could do to call back her mother, either.  Anaya understood, though she didn't want to.

The bedding was likely to go with her, the herbs hanging from the loft to stay, the same for the measuring tools.  Lilac would stay, as would the sledge and the cart the kiang had been trained to pull.  Geoff had said that there would be kiangs a-plenty where he lived, but Anaya didn't want other kiangs, she wanted Lilac.

She wanted Mother too, but she'd not get that, either.  Anaya went into the cott workroom and sat at the table, staring at nothing.

The h'hand was First Greens, the h'hand after Planting, tax-time would come after Anaya'd left, and she wondered if she should leave what she'd planned to offer for taxes for the strange magister. She wondered if she should offer them to the village to sell, she'd not need them, she suppoed, going with Geoff. He'd never spoken of it, but she supposed he'd money enough, enough to come each year to the village to stay with Mother for two h'hands.

She wouldn't think on it, they would talk on it. She would pack up her clothes and river-dragon hide books, and she would go north with Geoff and she would live there for as long as he made her.

When she was an adult he wouldn't be able to tell her what to do. That would be onlyl a little more than a year. Come the summer after this, in the year of the Air Dragon, she'd own herself, and could go where she liked, and live where she chose.

She could return home, thank the magister Geoff had arranged, and send them to their home.

Snow-n-Coal thumped over on her feet and looked up at her, whining. Anaya looked at the window, somehow the day had slipped past her, and 'twas time to eat, time to feed the dog and tend the chickens and the kiang. She'd dithered half the day away. She had to walk the wards for another of the outer farms tomorrow, and another the day after that, First Green wards to protect the new growth from late frosts and stronger storms than they were ready for. "Aye hound." She got to her feet, getting fresh water and food for the dog, then taking down the lantern and lighting it at the hearth, and going out to look after the rest of the animals.  She took her time over the tasks, giving the chickens a bit extra feed, staying with Lilac and brushing the kiang's hide until it gleamed in the lantern light, putting her blanket over her and strapping it down. The season was still close enough to winter for the shed to get cold.

Come morning, she hitched the kiang to the cart and they walked. The farm was one of the farther ones, where Payton-Green-Eyes and his wife, Jennan-from-Away lived, with their other three children. The greeting Anaya received was subdued, she'd only seen them once since the younger Payton was buried, when she'd walked the wards for Planting.

Jennan offered her a cup of last fall's perrine, but she declined until after she'd done her work, and set Lilac lose to mingle with their small herd of kiang, to exchange tail swishes and nose sniffs in kiang greetings.

She was finished the wards by mid afternoon, put on stockings and clogs again after washing her feet, took the perrine offered, and sat listening to Jennan talk about Payton while his father sat silent behind them. Jennan's older girl sat on Anaya's lap and sucked her thumb, while the younger girl, still crawling, was trapped on her father's lap. "I'm that concerned about the new magister." Jennan said. "Tha and Libby, you have looked after us. With the new babe coming, I'm hoping the new one will have gentle hands, my mother told me the magister in the village where I grew up'd dreadful hard ways, and him a city-trained magister."

Payton nodded and rocked his daughter. "I do not think Geoff-from-Away would so ill serve our Libby's memory to send us an ill-skilled magister."

Jennan nodded, but still looked doubtful, and stroked her belly, as if to reassure herself.  Anaya sat with them for a while longer, talking of nothing of any more import than whether the rain they could all smell on the breeze would come tomorrow or the day after.  She tacked up Lilac and they went back to the village, the cart emptied of the herbs that'd been used in the ward-walking.

She got back to the village with the twilight starting to paint the sky.  There was a larger cart by the Clark's hall, and Anaya wondered if Geoff and his magister had arrived a day early.  She nodded in passing to the villagers she passed, heading for the cott.

Light streamed from the windows of the cott, and she frowned, hand on Lilac's halter lead.  She'd left the lanterns unlit when she left, and the fire banked.  The doors not locked, of course, but what reason had anyone to stay when it was apparent she wasn't there, and most folk knew she'd begun the First Green wards, and that meant going to the most distant farms first.  She was too short to look in the windows, but she put Lilac in the shed and put up the wagon and the tack, before going in.  Payton and Jennan had paid only with promises, but she'd expected that.  Most wards were worked from before Planting thorugh Last Harvest and not paid for until after the last of the food was under shelter.  She knew that she'd be fed if the work happened to cross a mealtime, and coins didn't spill across villages like she heard they did in cities.  If someone was helping themselves to her fireside and the like, they were almost welcome, though most neighbors knew enough to not take everything.

She opened the door, startling the two men who sat at her table. "Where have you been?" Geoff tipped over his chair as he stood abruptly. "I was worried sick you'd taken run off."

Anaya's back stiffened, "Why would I do that?  The village set the terms for you taking me off, I'll not go against the terms the village set.  I was working, it's First Green, there are wards to walk, unless you'd rather I let half the village starve because a late storm came while I sat with folded hands because I was waiting for my father -- " she spat the word like a curse. " -- to come fetch me."

"Why didn't you tell anyone where you were?" He demanded.

"Because I didn't need to, and you weren't expected until tomorrow." Snow-n-Coal whined at the arguing, then cringed her way to Anaya and licked her hand, her tail thumping on the flagstones.  She scratched the dog's ears.  Some of her anger waned in the face of the dog's unease.  Poor hound. "Warding work needs to be done."  She guessed the other man sitting at her table was the city magister Geoff'd managed to get. "You'll have your schedule full with it."

"We caught good winds in the lift ship and were able to get here early.  This is Goodman Magister Evin sept Hannas of clan Gredeal." Geoff gestured. The seated man stood, bowing slightly to Anaya, looking her over and dismissing her with a rise of his nose and a raised eyebrow.

"Anaya, called Magister. We don't use clan and sept much here." She started to hold her hand out to him, but at the raised eyebrow she let it fall.

"The village was settled mainly by folk from the clan Edole, sept Malan?" She nodded to Geoff at the question he'd made of it. "They mainly use bynames here, you'll find half a dozen Johann's here, all with different bynames."

Goodman Evin looked around, scowling. "It must make tax records interesting." He all but sniffed. "Is this the whole of where you live?"

Anaya disliked him already, bad enough she had to leave her home to some stranger, but it was a good snuggery of a cott. "Aye." She folded her arms. "There's a bedroom, though I sleep in the loft up there." She gestured to the ladder behind her. "There's never been much need for more'n that."

His scowl grew deeper and he turned to Geoff. "You told me there'd be adequate space for me and mine."

"You and your wife can share a room, surely, and you've only the two boys.  Do they need separate rooms?"

"Surely they need more than a board hanging in the air." Goodman Evin's crisp voice dripped scorn. "The thought of them in here on a rainy day -- " he shuddered.

Anaya thought of all the days she'd run around in the rain, coming home as drenched as Mud Hund, to be towelled dry as roughly as the dog.  A little rain would do the boys good.

"You knew the conditions when you accepted my offer." Now it was Geoff's turn to stand with folded arms. "You knew the village was two days by wagon from the nearest lift ship station.  You knew the cott had three rooms and a loft and a shed, you accepted the contract knowing that you and your wife and your children would have to tend a garden and animals."

"This is too much." Goodman Evin gestured with pudgy hands, encompasing Snow-n-Coal, the cott, the village. "I agreed to work with farms and animals, but this -- it's in a backwater village on the edge of the wilderness.  It's a hovel."

"This is my home." Anaya took a seat on the stool by the hearth, Snow-n-Coal's head heavy on her knee. "I'll thank you not to insult it.  The cott has housed nigh on a dozen generations of magister and magistra to the village."

"Anaya -- " Geoff spoke gently, but she heard the stone beneath it. "I've a need for speak with Evin in private."

"This is my village, and folk I've lived with all my life." She folded  her arms. "I'll stay."

He shrugged, as if her presence or absence made little difference to him. "Goodman Magister, if you insist that I misled you, I point you to the contract you signed.  You took payment in advance for the first quarter to settle your debts to your sept and clan, as well elsewhere." He bit the words out like pebbles in a clock. "Your wife and children are coming with what you could not bear to sell or gift away.  If you insist on breaking the contract, I'll insist on immediate repayment of what was advanced you, and payment of your travel here.  Overfond of requesting roasts, were you not, and good ale?"

The Goodman collapsed like a stuck bladder, falling into his chair.  His face leached of color.

"Do you understand me, Goodman Evin of clan Gredeal, sept Hannas?  I have been happy here, the people are good folk, and they'll work with you if you work with them."

"I'd report you to the Guild." The goodman bleated like a one of Jath's sheep. "You mis-represented this horrid little place."

"If anything, I described it worse than 'twas."

"The roof only leaks when it rains." Anaya offered. If this pig's bladder of a man was the best Geoff could find, and he left, maybe she could stay.

Geoff shot her a look that could split wood. "Even if it leaves this village without a magister, tha leaves with me in three days. This -- " he waved a hand at Goodman Evin, "-- puffed pasty thinks to turn a better bargain, now we're here and there're no other magisters to haggle against."

"He's a bad bargain then." She rumpled Snow-n-Coal's ears while the half-grown dog grunted her pleasure and leaned into her hand. "Couldn't you do better?"

He shot her another log splitting look. "The pay for a magister in a place like this is not so great as they can get in a larger village, or a town."

She nodded.  Mother'd sometimes compared what she did, what she wore, against some of the other magisters at the summer gather in, finding her clothes more patched, her hands harder with work.  Some of the other magisters spoke of servants, riding in wagons pulled by teams of kiang, while Mother's servant was Anaya, and a single kiang pulled a cart while they walked beside.  Anaya hadn't ridden in a cart since she was old enough to walk along side one.

"Then why come here?"

Geoff slid a look to the other magister. "There are times when a magister answers to higher duty ." He re-seated himself, his chin rising while his face hardened. "Goodman Evin is one such."

The goodman frowned. "Fully paid training for my sons, or any others we have whilst we are here."

"An' they prove to be talented enough." Geoff nodded. "So Merefftor agreed."

# 

Six

Anaya spent the next day packing, while Geoff walked Magister Evin around the village and introduced him to the people he'd be working with. Magister Evin hadn't much in the way of tools, or herbs, so she'd have to leave most of Mother's things for him to use. At least he'd sons, not daughters, so she didn't feel obligated to leave any of her clothes. She could take them, though, and she packed them away, even the clothes that'd originally belonged to Mother. They fit, there was still wear in them, and if she held some of them close, they smelled of her.

Geoff said they'd be going in three days, telling her this morning when she came back in from tending the animals, Snow-n-Coal at her heels. She'd told him about Mud Hund, because the older dog being gone had been half the reason he'd thought she'd run off. As if her word meant mothing.

The door to the cott opened and both men came in. "Ten farms?" Magister Evin was saying. "And a herd of sheep? And I'm expected to tend them all?"

"Mother did, alone for three years, until I started showing my magic, and could help." Anaya put her books in the pile of things she'd take with her. She'd have to ask if anyone had a chest she could use. Maybe Johann-the-Forge would know, his son Airk sometimes woodworked. Maybe he'd have a plain box readymade she could ask Geoff to buy. Otherwise she'd have to bundle everything up in a blanket.

"The clark said your grandmother passed when you were seven?"

"Aye." She took down a mortar and pestle, wishing she could take them with her.  Mother'd bought them at a gather in haggling the price down because the glaze was marred in places, and an odd shade of orange beside.  She'd put it aside, 'twas but a thing, and Goodman Evin could use it.  In the meantime, she began measuring the herbs for a sachet for Mair-Brewster.  She suffered from dreadful headaches, time and time, and it seemed to help. "Do you know a sachet for headaches?"

"Of course." She stepped aside, watching.  He used most of the same herbs as her, leaving out feverfew, but adding more skullcap than she used, and adding some rosemary.  She recognized the words he bespoke as he worked, power to the herbs, breath bring ease with the scents.

"I don't suppose you have a bag for this." He said when he finished.  She got one of the ones Mair used, watching as he stuffed the crushed herbs in and used a needle and thread to close it. "Who is it for?"

"The Clark's wife, the brewster.  She's most likely at the Clark's Hall, this time of day."

"She's the ginger, isn't she?" He looked at Geoff.

Anaya shared a look with Geoff, scowling faintly. "You were introduced to her today.  She was the one with the cider."

"Oh, her.  The one with the three children."

"Most of her family have red hair.  I'm going to her brother's farm tomorrow, for First Greens wards." Anaya sat and Snow-n-Coal came over, sitting on her feet, the dog didn't like the new magister.  She'd have to take the dog with her, 'twouldn't be fair to leave her behind.  And she'd miss her, there was something comforting the dog.

"We'll come with you." Geoff said. "It will be help you get accustomed to the work you'll be doing."

"If I must."  Goodman Evin tossed the sachet onto the table.

Anaya picked it up, "I'll take it to Mair.  She likes to have one about, in case."

"I'll go with you." Geoff said.

Sunlight filtered through the tree branches on the path that led from Anaya's cott to the the main part of the village.  They walked in silence for part of the way, Snow-n-Coal playing return the stick to both of them, capering into last fall's leaves and snuffling through them for any number of amazing to a dog smells and bounding back. "She's easily distracted." Geoff said.

"She's not even a year old." Anaya tossed the stick away and Snow-n-Coal bounded away after it, until she was distracted by a squirrel in a tree.  Barks filled the air as the dog leapt for the branch where the irritated creature chittered at her.  Anaya laughed.  "Mud Hund used to do that, every spring." She whistled the dog back, picked up a stick and let her tug on it. "I think they're cursing at her." She threw the stick, and this time the dog managed to avoid being distracted.  She didn't come back quickly, something in the leaves smelled wonderful and she had to follow it, half burrowing through them. "Must be a rabbit." She stood, watching the half-grown dog play for a bit, then turned to Geoff. "Is the magister going to work out?"

He sighed. "Probably.  He needs to remember this isn't the city, and payment would be more likely in kind than in coin.  He dreamt larger than his skill and chance could provide."

"If he's city born and bred, how will he deal with Lilac and the chickens?" Snow-n-Coal came back with another stick, but danced away when Anaya tried to take it. "Silly dog." She began walking again.

"His wife's from a farm.  They'll do." They left the trees and Anaya lifted her face to the sun. "She was happy for the appointment, happy to get her husband and sons away from the city, swore they'd do better in a village, even if it was 'a backwater village at the edge of the wilds.'"

Anaya scowled, "You'd have done better to get someone who grew up in a village.  At least they'd know what to expect." She waved to Mair's oldest daughter, sitting on the stoop of a cott, plucking a chicken. "Minta, is your mother about?"

She jerked her head at the cott behind her. "She's with the man, woke well enough, but had a head like a puff adder by midday." She returned to plucking, stuffing the feather she took into a sack by her knee. "She'll be glad to see tha, Markus'll be gladder."

Anaya winced, "Thought as much.  Could smell it on the wind.  I brought her a sachet.  Send if she needs the tisane's well."

Minta held up hands covered with feathers and blood. "An' tha thinks I'll take that?  She drove me from the room when I came with the chicken, I'll not take myself back in there and have her puking on me."

Geoff chuckled.  Anaya nodded and stepped past Minta as the girl shifted on the step.  This cott was larger than the one she'd grown up in, with a proper floor above, and four rooms below, and stairs running from the kitchen to the two bedrooms above. Geoff and Mair shared the bedroom below.  The girls shared the larger room above, the boy, Markus-the-Younger, had the other room to himself, though both were little more than more than spaces beneath the slated, slanting roof.

Geoff stayed at the door to the kitchen and talked with Minta, while Anaya want to the door the bedroom and tapped on the wall beside the door. "Clark Markus?"

He pushed the curtain blocking the room aside. "Ah, Magistra, please.  Mair is -- "

" -- going to rip your head off if you don't shut up and stop hovering." Mair growled.

Anaya slipped past him and let the curtain fall down.  The room within was dim, curtains over window and doorway, the hearth cold, only the warmth leaching through from the kitchen fire to take the chill from stone and wood. "Good day, Goodwife Brewster.  I heard tha'd head pains."

"It's tha fault." Mair buried her head under a pillow. "The sun's too bright.  Go 'way."

Anaya sat down on the bed by her, taking the sachet from her sash. "I thought tha'd say that." She took the pillow away gently, slipping the sachet down by Mair's nose. "Here, smell this."

Mair pushed it away. "Smells like crap."  She turned her head away and burrowed under a different pillow.

"No, it doesn't." She pushed that pillow away and gave Mair the sachet. "Here.  Breathe." She put her hand on Mair's sweaty forehead feeling the pain.  She waited until Mair sniffed and began whispering, bespeaking the the words as Mother had taught her, for head pains like those Mair suffered from.  'Twasn't easy, to draw this out, it had to come bit by bit, breathe in, breathe out, taking in the scents of the herbs in the sachet, ridding herself of what gave the pain a place to grow and thrive.

It would not last, this easing, there was something that did not allow healing like this to do more than ease, not fully cure.  She could not unmake the ill formed foot that gave the Clark the name Markus-Club-Foot, she could not rid Goodwife Irena forever of the rheums that twisted fingers and feet, could not banish pains except for a time.

Thus 'twas.  She finished the words and sat back, Mair looked to be sleeping now.  She got up and crept from the room, passing Markus who gripped her hand almost painfully tight, with a whispered, "Thank tha, Magistra."

Minta looked up at her and smiled widely. "Tha eased her?" She nodded.  Minta sighed happily, getting to her feet and wiping her bloody hands on her apron. "I'm sure Ma will have a jug of ale for tha, 'ere tha goes.  If she doesn't, I'll steal one from the stores myself."

Geoff took Anaya's hand, pulling her down the path to the village green. "Pay the new magister.  He's the one as made the sachet, and he's the one as is serving the village now."

"But -- "

Anaya shrugged. "No matter, give Magister Evin what tha'd have given me.  Geoff has the right of it."

Minta scowled. "If tha says so."

#

Seven

Somehow, the days passed, and suddenly it was time to go, Johann-the-Forge gave her a box Airk had made, and what she planned to take filled it, almost.  Two sets of clothes, plus what she wore, underclothes, three pairs of winter wool stockings, and the quilt she and Mother had made.  There'd been more, but Magister Evin's wife arrived yesterday evening, trudging beside a cart pulled by a quartet of kiang, their boys riding atop a pitiable small pile of possessions.  She'd been slender, almost unhealthily so, her eyes tearing up when she discovered that there was chicken stew with lumplings for supper and eggs for the morming meal, and cheese.  Evin's nose-in-the-air melted as he greeted his family, asking after their travel, putting his arm around his wife's waist as he walked her to the cott.

Anaya took one look at her and unpacked most of what she'd planned to take.  She only needed a three sets of clothes, two to wear turn and turn, and one for best.  She didn't need four pairs of winter stockings, even if she and Mother'd made them.  She unpacked most of what she'd crammed into Airk's box, leaving it half empty.

She kept the important things, the quilt she and mother had made, the mug Mother'd taken as pay from a travelling potter when she was six, for poulticing a sore on his kiang's hind quarters, a poem Johann-the-Younger had copied for her from a book in the Clark's Hall, a bottle of cider from Mair for the trip, enough wool from Jath-the-Herds to stuff a small pillow, a clump of different colored chicken feathers from Minta.

She finished packing for the second time and tied the straps that'd seal it, then hefted it by the rope handles and took it outside.  She and Geoff would sleep in the guesting beds in the Clark's hall tonight, with the drovers and leave in the morning.

The boys, one named Rios and the other Jadeth, about six, and four, sat on the chopping block in the cott's yard, looking around fearfully.  They jumped, spinning to stare at her when the box landed with a thump.  Anaya looked at them, catching hold of Snow-n-Coal's neck when the dog started to go investigate them.  They'd cringed from the village dogs, and Magister Evin's wife explained with a half whisper that dogs in the city, where they'd been born and grown up, ran wild as cats and sometimes attacked children, or even grown ups.

The boys, she hadn't figured which was Rios, which Jadeth, peered over the chopping block then the larger pushed the smaller from behind it. "You ask," he hissed.

She pushed Snow-n-Coal's butt down so the dog sat, and seated herself on the top of the box, waiting.  She'd never been shy of strangers, growing up in the village where everyone knew everyone else, and was likely related to them.  It must be strange, to see nothing but strangers or close family near.

Then she remembered, she'd be among strangers soon, with only Geoff a familiar face.  It'd be strange, not knowing by face who belonged, who was kin to whom.

The smaller boy edged towards her, cutting wide of Snow-n-Coal. "Won't bite, will it?"

Anaya shook her head, still holding the dog's ruff when she tried to get up. "Lick tha clean maybe, but not bite." She kept scratching the dog, tugging tufts of winter fur from her coat.  She waited until she had a bare handful, then rested it on the palm of her hand.  Mother'd used to use chicken feathers for this, not fur. "Pah," she whispered. then bespoke a word, and the fur, no heavier than thistledown, rose a little bit above her hand.  She bespoke the word, adding a puff of breath for emphasis.  The shed fur bounced up, and she lifted a leg over Snow-n-Coal's chest, to hold her close.  She shifted hands beneath it, bouncing the airy fur puff from hand to hand, giving it all her seeming concentration.

She bounced it from right hand, to left, and back again, aware of the boys leaving the shelter of the chopping block, coming closer, still afraid of Snow-n-Coal, but more curious than fearful, now.  She kept on bouncing the fur, whispering the words that lofted it, on breath, on air, beginning, ending it with a whispered, "pah."

"What're you doing?" the older boy asked.

Anaya let the fur sink to her hand. "Magic." She told them.

"Our da canna do that." the younger one asked.

"Aye, he can, 'tis a training bit.  You two can do it, if you've magic in you."

"Canna," the older boy said, while the younger stuck his thumb in his mouth.

"Would tha' like to learn?"  She gripped the fur and divided it in parts, three of them, two much smaller than the third.  The older boy nodded for both of them.  Snow-n-Coal whined and she released the dog, who must've smelled something delightful beyond the edge of the gardens, in the edge of the woods.

They sat beside her, one to each side, while she showed them, how to hold the fur bit, how to hold their hands, palm out and fingers straight where the merest breeze could blow it away.  She told them the words, and began bespeaking, lifting all three of the puffs of fur at first, then releasing the boys' fur as their own magic began to rise, and they lofted the fur of their own.  The boys were young yet, to have much magic of their own, but she lent them of hers, letting it curl around them, like smoke, like water.  They bounced the fur bits from hand to hand, back and forth, bespoken words and puffs of breath.  Slowly she let her own words lapse, let her own puff of fur sink to her hands and rest there.  The boys concentrated, almost cross eyed with it, bespeaking the words too loud for need, they bespoke a puff of breath, not a tornado or dust devil.  They needn't shout to be heard.

"Soft, soft." Anaya chided, eyeing Snow-n-Coal as she came back panting.  Whatever she'd chased, she hadn't caught it.  Anaya caught her as she charged back, wincing at her breath. "Dung eater."

The boys stopped bespeaking the fur puffs and hid behind her box, though there was only room for one that size. "'Twon't eat us?" one asked, she couldn't tell which, both were trying to be smaller than they were.

"No." She got to her feet and caught the dog, tripping her onto her side and dodging her nipping puppy teeth, rubbing her tummy and poking her ribs, catching her muddy paws and tugging on them.  Snow-n-Coal yipped happily, wriggling and squirming. "She'll not be a year old until summer.  She's just a puppy."

The boys watched, wide eyed, the younger one holding the fur puff in a death grip.  Their mother came out of the cott and called them in, away from the garden and the dog.  Anaya picked up the box and headed for the Clark's hall, and the women's visiting room there.  She'd spend the night there, letting Magister Evin's family settle in to their new home.  The cott wouldn't fit all of them anyway.  At least this way she and Geoff could leave early in the morning.  She'd said enough goodbyes in the past h'hand to leave her throat dry, her eyes and nose sore from crying, and her spine thumped through her chest.  In some ways, she just wanted to be gone.

Both the drovers for the wagons were men, so she'd the women's room to herself,  the beds mere cots, stripped to bare frames.  The mattresses were stored on shelves in an alcove off the main room, she took two, they were thin, and took her sheets from the box, and her quilt, making the bed.  Markus and Mair would feed them tonight, hosting for the village was part of the Clark's duty, recording how many they dealt with over the course of a year, couriers riding to deliver news to the outlying villages and such, drovers with caravans of wagons, visitors.  Some were paid by the guests themselves, some by the government, distant and slow to pay.  Mair's ales made up for the slow government pay, although Markus had admitted that Geoff had paid for the night, the food, the two drovers and their kiangs without even quibbling.  He'd even paid for extra wood for the Clark's hall fire, and enough goat meat to make stew. "Paid cash tha father did," he chuckled. "not a quibble over it.  Cash to me, and cash to Jath-the-Herds for the meat."

Anaya tucked the sheets and the quilt in, and took the dog rug out to the hall fire and setting it down, so that Snow-n-Coal might know she would sleep there tonight, then went to the door for the Clark's office. Geoff and Magister Evin had left after settling his family into the cott, going to one of the nearer farms to walk the wards.

There were a few books for visitors to read. She took one down at random and went to the entrance to the hall, sitting on the front step and opening it. It was a book of poetry, and made little sense. The poems were mainly about water and where the Ousel ended, down by the ocean, and the city that'd grown up there. She got bored with it, soon enough, and took it back, putting it back on the shelf, and returning to the entrance, taking out the wool and her spindle. Her hands felt odd, without work to do, she'd no herbs to grind or blend, no wards, nothing.  She didn't spin well, but at least she knew how.  She put the wool in her lap and pulled a tuft of it out to begin working

If this was how her life would be, as Geoff's daughter, she'd start chewing sticks, like Snow-n-Coal did, when she was bored.  She hoped Geoff had some sort of work for her to do, even if it was casting accounts, and she did badly at that.  She'd even rather stitch hems than sit with naught to do.

Geoff found her there, when he and Magister Evin returned.  They were both mud spattered and looked disgusted. "I hope your day was better than mine." Geoff went to the Clark's cott and came back with a pitcher and two mugs, without a word, he handed one mug to Evin and filled them both.  Both men took chairs from the hall, setting them out in the spring sunlight. "The farm's pig pen is not so well tended.  Some of the shoats got loose."

"You went to Adath and Beth's did you not?  Matters not if the pen is well walled, the sow is a burrower.  The shoats always get loose." She finished a length, and began plying it with itself. "Needs a ward for the pen first, then the fields, don't know how, but the pigs sense the magic and it uneases them."  She shrugged.

Evin finished his mug and held it out to be filled again "You might have told us."

"You've a duty to ask.  Everyone hereabouts knows about that one." she shrugged. "Haven't they have pigs in your city?"

"Not where magic is worked.  We're civilized." Magister Evin would've sniffed, but he'd a mug to his mouth, and it might've slowed him. "Have you any more village secrets to trip me up?"

"None I can think of." She put the spindle down on her lap. "Have you begun teaching your boys magic?"

"What?" Magister Evin snorted. "They've not even been tested for talent, not until they're ten."  He wiped foam off his nose with his sleeve. "Good ale, but that's a foul thing to breathe."

"That late?  By then I was bespeaking tisanes and dream pillows.  Not by myself, but I was magic-crafting when I was their age.  Mother said it kept me from mischief."

Magister Evin shook his head. "They're children, you make children work out here?"

"Aye.  Small hands can at least scatter feed for the chickens, or wave a flag to frighten crows.  They can't clean stables or speed a harrow, but they can do something." Anaya jerked her chin at a child across the green, driving chickens ahead of him with the help of a stick and an elderly dog. Johann-the-Forge, his father, stood in the entrance to the Forge, watching. The chickens seemed more interested in the spring worms and such than in moving, but they were moving. Denni was taking them out to the edge of the village to let them forage for an hour or four, then luring them back with a handful of grain. He'd do it again tomorrow, with different chickens. The meat tasted better if the chickens did more than just set, and it gave the boy something to do.

"Surely you ought to keep the children closer. Isn't the wilderness -- dangerous?" Evin frowned.

"Not so dangerous this close to the village, and the children know better than to wander too far off." Anaya said. "Our families came out here five generations back. There are places further into the wild, there I'd say it was wise to keep children close by, but here?" She shook her head. "Jath-the-Herd takes his children to the far meadows for the summer, to graze the sheep and goats. He's only lost a few creatures to dogamounts, or wild cats, and no children. Take care, and there's little danger here."

"So my wife says." Magister Evin beat at the front of his coat, where a line of pig manure smeared gray and brown across his chest. "I will reserve judgement." He made a face.  She wondered what he'd do the first time he had to go elbow deep in a sheep to turn a lamb.  Faint most like.

Anaya shrugged. Folk like him, they'd change or die, and she'd yet to see one die.  He mightn't like it, but he ought to survive.

She went back to her spinning, as the afternoon went on.  Geoff and Magister Evin talked, but she didn't pay much attention, she'd warned folk to give the city-bred magister a helping hand, though she guessed that not everyone agreed, if they hadn't been told about the way pigs behaved around magic.

Mother'd always warded the pig pens first, or waited until they'd been set to forage in the woods before she worked.

Evening came, chicken stew with lumplings as Mair had promised.  Anaya thanked her, and Minta, who she knew was the one who'd actually cooked.  Mair-the-Brewster made good ale, known in the villages around, but for cooking.  She was lucky in her eldest daughter had turned out to a cook, though she'd loose her soon enough, Johann-the-Younger's presence at table was clue enough.  A pity if he planned on setting up house elsewhere.  Markus-the-Clark's paunch would vanish soon enough, unless Denni showed himself able to cook.

Anaya retired early to bed, joined by Snow-n-Coal, who decided that the foot of her bed was a better place than before the fire, she slept, and woke when the first birds began chirping to greet the morning.  She lay listening to them, her feet both warmed and squashed by Snow-n-Coal, then got up and dressed, stripping down the bed and packing her bedding away.  The dog ran off to a bush, smelled, squatted, dug dirt to cover what she'd done and came charging back to Anaya for praise and ear tugging.

She sat and watched the village wake, watched Johann-the-Forge come out of his cott and go to the forge, taking down a leather apron and tugging it over his head, then tying it behind his back.  She heard the hiss as he began waking the fires, the bellows squeaking as he tugged on the pumping stick.  Airk waved as he joined his father, taking down another apron and joining him.

Johann-the-Younger came from his family's cott, dressed in his workaday clothes, shirt, coat, pants, boots, a brown flat brimmed hat in his hand.  She waved to him, and he ambled over, joining her on the front step of the Clark's Hall. "'Morning." The sun was behind him, she had to squint to look up at him. "Nice weather, at least the rain's holding off for another day."

"'Morning." He folded his legs and sat down by her, on the other side of the doorway. "Today's the day, isn't it."

She dug her fingers into Snow-n-Coal's fur as she sat by Anaya's side.  She nodded, looking out across the village, storing it up. "Before noon, most like."

"Ah." He tossed the hat in his hands, catching it and spinning it. "That soon?"

She nodded again.  If she ever got back here, he'd be wed to Minta, most like, they'd be good together, her mother a Clark's wife, and Johann-the-Younger destined for a Clark's robes.  He'd be a good one too. "Geoff cannot afford to be away from his home for very long, he said." She shrugged, "So we leave today."

He squinted and looked at the two wagons waiting beside his father's forge. "We will miss tha." Their teams of kiang milled in the pens on the far side of the forge, mostly hidden by the buildings between the Clark's Hall and the fences.

"I will miss this place."  She looked at him, looked at the morning again. "I'd take it as a favor it you helped the new Magister find his feet."

"Ah." He put his hat across his knees and clasped his hands over the crown. "The pigs."

"The pigs, and nobody told him about Adath's sow."  She tugged on Snow-n-Coal's ears and the dog rested her head on Anaya's lap. "'Twasn't kind.  Not telling him."

"True enough." He chuckled. "Tha must own t'was funny."

She tried not to giggle in turn, failed, and buried her face in Snow-n-Coal's ruff. "'Twas mean." Her words came out muffled, and the dog smelled like she'd been rolling in something that'd been dead for a hand of days.

He shrugged, "Still funny."

  She shrugged. "He's tha Magister now.  He might turn 'gainst tha and thine if he feels the jests turn around him, not with him."

"'Tis no different than selling snipe hunting kits to the tax collectors." Johann tried to sound official, but didn't.

She shook her head, refusing to look at him or talk to him again.  Aye and someone should've told Geoff and the other magister.  She wanted to stay and tell him about the myriad of small ways he could be tripped up, accustomed as he must be to city ways and city people.

Johann sighed heavily, got to his feet and went into the Clark's hall.  Anaya looked over her shoulder at him, sighed, and went back to scratching Snow-n-Coal's ruff.

#

Eight

By mid-morning, they were ready to go.  A pair of wagons pulled by a quartet of kiang each waited, mostly empty, their drovers beside them.  Anaya looked up at Geoff. "How far do we go today?"

"Twenty mile today," The nearest drover pointed northwards, "Though only six afoot, there's a ferry two miles on, and four more, to the barge head.  We stay there, you go on."

"So he said." Geoff handed her a stick. "You'll need that."

She nodded, taking it, she'd need it.  She whistled for the dog.

She turned to the road and blinked.  Where had everyone come from?  It seemed half the village had appeared in a blink, lining the road as it formed from the village green.  She smiled at all of them, light and tears starting to burn her eyes.  Markus stumped forward, leaning heavily on his cane. "Magister." he nodded to Geoff. "Magistra," he nodded to Anaya. "We shall miss tha." She looked down at her feet, embarassed. "Not just for tha mother, but for tha own self.  Tha has looked after us well, when the title and duties of Magistra fell on tha unexpected."

"Thank tha.  Thank all of you." She couldn't look up, if she looked up, looked at anyone she'd start crying all over again.

She saw another pair of feet join Markus's and looked up.  Johann-the-Younger had joined the senior Clark, his hat on his head and his coat brushed clean of dust and dirt, though she saw, and focused on a bit of one cuff that had frayed.  Markus nudged him. "Say what tha meant to, lad."

"Uh, Anny." Johann's voice cracked, he coughed. "Anny."

She made a face. "Tha's not called me that in six years."

"Since you bloodied my nose." Johann-the-Younger shifted on his feet and looked around. "I -- " he looked around, and was nudged again by Markus.

"Well, say it." Markus planted his hand on Johann's back and pushed him gently.

He stumbled, caught himself on Anaya's shoulder and stood upright again "I -- uh -- I didn't want it to be like this."

"Didn't want what?" She demanded, losing patience.

"This." He caught her shoulders again, twisting his head and kissing her.

As a first kiss, it was specatularly disappointing, she'd been caught with her mouth half open, and their teeth clicked together.  His hat shaded them, until his arms slid around her and it fell off.  The sudden sunlight blinded her, and she closed her eyes, to save her sight.  Something was roaring, and she realized it was the blood in her ears.  Under the roaring, she heard someone laughing, and Snow-n-Coal barked, she felt the dog tugging on her skirt.  He pulled her against him, and she didn't know what to do with her hands, she wasn't sure she wanted to hug him back as tight as he hugged her, she moved them, resting them on his sides, the cloth of his coat scratched her hands.  He shifted his mouth, his hands rising to dig into her hair like she dug her fingers into Snow-n-Coal's fur, half caress, half holding.

He tasted -- he tasted --

He let her go and stepped back.  His face was red as a boiled beet.  She blinked up at him.

As a first kiss, it was -- "You broke your fast on garlic sausage." She accused him.

"And you ate some of Minta's apple pasties."  He licked his lips and she started.  She hadn't thought he'd taste her like that.

"Uh." She swallowed. "I thought you were courting her."

"Anny you're thick as an oak a'times." He still held onto her head, bumping foreheads together. "You've to go with your father, you're a child yet, in the law, but In a year and a bit you'll be seventeen.  That's grown up, eno' aye?"

"Uh.  Aye." She blinked, all she could see was one distorted gray eye, a huge nose beneath it, and someone past him. Airk, Markus, Johann-the-Forge, most of the rest of the village grinning at them. "For what?"

"For more'n kisses. I said tha's thick." He shifted, kissing her forehead, then let go of her, stepping back, he'd the beginning of chin whiskers and they scratched her nose in passing. She realised she still had her hands at his sides and dropped them. "I've learning to do too, to become clark here, or when I've finished, somewhere else that needs one." He still stood close enough to whisper and not be overheard.

She nodded, still half shocked. She could see where he'd scraped a pimple in the crack by his nose, the shock of dark hair that he had from his father, falling over his forehead.

"In a year and a bit. Write to me? I know tha can write, and at least there's regular courier service to Reintown-on-the-Ousel, because of the liftships." He wasn't as red as he'd been, but Anaya wondered if she was that red. "I'll write to tha, if I can get the coin."

"I'll try." She didn't know how often she could get coin, didn't know if she'd be allowed, didn't know what Geoff planned for her.

"Good." He grinned. "It's settled then."

She made a face at him, then pointed at the shock of hair in his eyes, and gathered a bit of breath and magic. "pah!"

He laughed as his hair flew back then flopped back down over his eyes, stepping back and picking up his hat.

She grinned up at him, then Geoff was taking her arm, and they had to leave, walking away. She kept looking over her shoulder as they walked. The people of the village stood for a while, but returned to their lives. Johann-the-Younger stood in the middle of the way, grinning, holding his hat before him, watching her leave.

She didn't know, but she lifted her hand and waved as the path led them around a curve, and the trees would block the village and him from view. She saw his arm rise, wave, and then he was gone, lost behind her. She sighed, tugging on Snow-n-Coal's lead as she stared back.

"So." Geoff said, eventually. "That young man has ambitions?"

"Johann-the-Younger?"

"The forge's son, he's apprenticed to the Clark, or was he dressed in his best to see you off?"

"Apprenticed to the Clark. Airk's like to become forge after Johann-the-Forge, Johann-the-Younger hasn't the talent for it. Fire, aye, and air, but not enough earth in him to work metal. Airk has enough earth for metal working." She jabbed a leaf from last fall that'd drifted onto the path. "That's what Mother told Johann-the-Forge at least."

"Wise woman, Libby." Geoff nodded. "He'll be tested and assigned soon. He's eighteen, isn't he?"

She shook her head. "Seventeen, but he's not going for testing for three years at least, Markus said."

"Oh." Geoff sounded disappointed. She looked at him, startled to see a thoughtful look on his face, and wondered what caused it.

They walked, six miles was a distance, but Anaya'd travelled by shank's mare since she was too large to straddle a kiang, and the drovers walked the length and breadth of the world in their travels. After about five miles, Geoff cried sore feet and got into the empty wagon. The kiang grunted at the weight, but pulled. Anaya walked beside him, the drovers at the kiangs' heads, guiding the animals.

"I wanted to take you with me last summer, when I came." Geoff said, stretching out in the wagon bed. "You needed training more than Libby could give you, or more than I could, in the time I was there."

"I wouldn't have wanted to go." Anaya said, looking at the horizon, half hidden by the tree groves. "I don't need that much training.  I can do most of what I needed to do."  The dog spotted a squirrel and tried to chase it, then whined when she came up short and rose on her hind legs, pawing at the air before she fell onto all four paws, returning to Anaya's heel.

"No, more training seldom comes amiss." He shook his head. "Libby didn't want you to go, I think she was afraid that she'd lose tha if tha'd the view from a wider horizion."

"Not like to." She snorted.

"She made me promise to wait a year."

"Well." Anaya looked over at him. "She got what she wanted, and now you're getting what you wanted." Nobody'd bothered to ask her what she wanted. "I wouldn't have wanted to go." She still didn't, but she bowed to the inevitability of it. Winter could rail all it wanted, with late storms and wind and sleet, but it gave way to Spring, and Spring to Summer, in turn.  She lifted Snow-n-Coal when the dog sat down, and putting her in the wagon with Geoff. "She's tired.  Keep her with you."

"I'd rather have Libby angry at me than -- " Geoff sighed explosively. " -- this." He took the dog's lead and let her lie down beside him

"So would I," she admitted.

They fell silent after that, coming to the ferry head. There was a building on either side of the river, a heavy rope crossing the river between them. The buildings were dorms and kitchens, the ferry a flat raft tethered to the rope, the ferrymen a trio of silent men, a woman on either side of the river tending the kitchen. Geoff left the wagon and haggled with them while the drovers bought bread and cheese from the kitchen on the near side of the river. Geoff finally finished and gave them a handful of coins. "You get the rest when we're all across."

They rode over, one wagon at a time, the kiang blindfolded and tied to rails on the sides of the raft. The drovers rode with their teams, a single ferryman poling them along, while another man held a rope tied to the raft, pulling at one end, feeding out at the other. The trip back was faster, though the ferrymen squabbled at travelling empty. Anaya and Geoff rode with the second, empty wagon. Anaya went to the edge of the raft, holding the railing and dipping her fingers into the river. This far from the village she'd been before, almost every other year for the gather in, but always with a delegation from the village, bringing the goods to pay the taxes.  She hadn't been allowed this near to the water though.  She knelt, still holding tight.  The water was a shock, it felt so fast and alive, so very unlike the stream at the foot of her garden, and so very much alike.  It was set, it held yet the chill of the winter just past and the snow melt that made it up, it leapt and bounced and splashed the edge of the raft, straining away for the ocean it knew lay far distant as a destination.

It was a strange sensation, she wondered if the water would feel even more strange when she was where Geoff lived, if she'd still be able to sense the bits of her stream mingling in the overwhelming rush of water.  Would Path and Hearth and Breath feel as strange as water?  Did it feel as strange for Geoff when he came to the village and bespoke magic there.  She'd ask him, but not now, not here.  She took her hand from the water, got to her feet, and returned to the wagon, waiting by it, silent.

They left the ferry behind, and Anaya took a handful of dirt from the roadside, crumbling it in her fingers and letting it sift and return to the ground.  It too felt strange, but again, she could sense the ties to the path outside her door, it was the same, for all she would be far from where she'd grow up.  She brushed her hands clean of the dirt, and began setting the stick's tip into the ground, letting it serve its purpose, helping her pick her way.

Four miles to the barge head, where Geoff paid the drovers off and they boarded the barge.  It was larger than than the raft, with walls, not railing, no ropes tethering it to one shore of the water or the other.  A shack of some sort sat on the deck, and Anaya crouched and touched the ground, feeling the water that flowed through the wet earth, sensing the hull of the barge where it dipped into the water, pushing it aside, the forward part roughly pointed to cut through the water, the rear blunt, with a board stcking down to steer with.  Cargo lined the barge's deck, and its master looked dourly at Geoff. "You're late."

He scowled. "You were paid to wait on us."

"Aye, and well enough, or I'd have taken the wood and left you waiting on the next cargo, Magister.  Mind that." The barge's master spat into the river. "Get yer doxy aboard. and your boxes.  I've waited long enough."

Anaya picked up Snow-n-Coal and carried the dog onto the barge, tied her to a cargo rope and returned for her box. "Doxy?"

"That means -- " Geoff reddened, following her to the front of the boat and settling them into a sheltered bit of deck.

"I know what it means.  I'm not stupid."  She pulled the dog onto her lap. "Are we going to travel the night on this?"

He nodded. "He'll put out lanterns soon, and his sons'll take the sweep.  They use the current going downriver, and watercraft -- bespeak the water going back up.  The bargemaster's the only one with enough strong enough for the bespeaking needed.  When he's too old to do it, they'll either have to give up the barge, or hire someone to do it."  He sighed, "His sons and daughters are all without magic."

"They were tested?"

"I suppose so." Geoff shrugged. "I've never seen one of the younger men do the watercrafting."  He settled himself on the deck, feet planted. legs bent, his wrists resting on his knees.

"Oh." She chewed on that idea for a while, wondering why Geoff didn't know, and didn't care, then returned to something else. "Why did he think I was a doxy?"

"I -- I am known here, as is -- " he paused, scowling at the air before him, shrugged, and looked at his hands resting limply. " -- as is my wife.  We have to travel, and some of the travels bring me to the other end of this barge's journey."

"Wife?" She blinked. "But I thought Mother was your wife.  You couldn't live with us year round because you'd other duties, but I always thought -- "

He sighed, leaning his head forward and scrubbing at his hair with one hand. "I was twenty when I met Libby, a third son, a spare to a spare to my father's mantle.  I went out from the city to spend time certifying village magisters, make certain that they were adequately trained for theur duties, report when they weren't so one could be assigned.  I returned to home to tell them I was going to become the magister of some village at the edge of the wilds, that I'd met and fallen in love with -- " He sighed. "The most wonderful girl I had ever me, and ever would.  I wasn't needed, one of my older brothers would take our father's place in the world, and the other, the other had planned out his academic career, terrorizing any student who crossed his path."  He sighed again. "We planned out our life together, Libby and I.  Lots of children, Libby and I growing old together -- "

"Normal dreams."

He nodded. "I returned home to discover my father had been felled by a sickness that swept through our sept, our clan, through the city entire just after I'd left.  Father was dead, Harn was dead, Lesor was dead.  I was eldest, and now I had to take my father's place.  It -- It was a large place.  It'd been a warm season, and they had to keep Father above ground, to prove him dead to me, and so that I could bury him."

Anaya tilted her head, scratching Snow-n-Coal's ears. "He was head of your line?

Geoff nodded. "Yes.  He had been, and now I was.  And more."

"Your sept as well?"

"And more."

"Your clan?"

He nodded again. "Clan, sept, line, all of them.  I went from the extra son to the one everyone had to report to.  I couldn't leave."

"Is it so important, your clan?"

"Our clan." Geoff said. "Our clan, but yes.  Every time you spoke of a 'city trained and certified' magister, you spoke of one that clan Merefftor trained, or at least oversaw the training of.  Our clan are magisters, and magistral trainers.  The academy that Magister Evin's sons will go to, if they have talent to get there, is Merefftor's Academy.  I had to stay, everything was in turmoil, it was a year before I could return to Libby, and by then, everything had changed."

"You couldn't come to stay."

He shook his head. "The city was in turmoil, I had to be strong, show that the academy at least remained stable.  I wanted to take Libby back with me, but, she refused.  She was too important in the village, she said, and loved me too much to inflict a wife I'd come to hate, with her 'tha's and ways from the edge of the wild.  She loved me too much." He shook his head again. "She let me stay though, then sent me back.  I swore I'd come back.

"It was another year before I leave again, but by then, the clan entire had moved against me, I returned to the city and found that old alliances needed strengthening.  I wed, for power and alliance, knowing I didn't love her, or her me.  She'd been betrothed to Harn first, was two years older than me, but we managed." He grimaced. "I think it was better that way.  We managed to not hate each other, even learned to respect each other.

"And every year I was allowed to leave after the end of classes, to return to my home, to Libby, and you, and then to return to the city, where duty kept me."

Anaya sat in silence.  She'd never thought of where Geoff went when he left them, never thought he might have a life there, duties. "So." She managed.

"So." Geoff said, looking at the thickening twilight. "You likely have a thousand questions."

"No." She said. "Yes.  Maybe." She considered. "Have I brothers and sisters?"

He nodded. "Two boys, named Harn who is twelve, and Lesor who is three, for my brothers.  Three girls, Mincha aged ten, Teyana, aged six and Elsbeth, who is less than a year old.  You would like them, I think, mostly.  When they're not being -- " He gestured, "They're children."

Anaya nodded.  They sat silent while a pair of young men came, hanging lanterns on poles over the front of the ship.  The younger of the two sat on the point at the front watching the water and calling back if he saw something.  Twilight gave way to full night, and stars began coming out.  Snow-n-Coal sighed heavily and went to sleep, snoring softly.  Geoff put an arm around Anaya's shoulders and pulled her against him.  She stiffened, still trying to come to grips.  Geoff had a family in the city, five children, a wife, he was important there.

"No more questions?" He rubbed her back. "We'll be in the city within a hand of days, once we reach the liftship."

She rested her chin on his knee.  "Did she know?"

"About Libby?  Yes.  I was honest with her, I felt I owed her that much, since I could not give her love, I owed her honesty, and she has gifted me with the same."

"No.  No." She sat up. "Mother.  Did she know you'd another life?"

Geoff was silent for so long she wondered if he would even answer. "She knew there was a wife, that there were children.  She never asked to know more than that."

She thought she understood a little better now, why Mother'd always wept the day to two after Geoff left, and moped for another month or so. "So now they think I'm your doxy."

He shook his head, "I'll go tell them you're my daughter, not some -- "

She shook her head. "It don't matter.  They're not travelling with us, are they?"

"They shouldn't be thinking -- "

"Folk think what they will.  I can call Snow-n-Coal a cat all I like, but she still barks and wags her tail.  Most words, they won't change the nature of things."

"Most words," he agreed, and bespoke a word, trailing his fingers through the air so that a colored trail followed it.  It was one of the first she'd  learned from him.  She took up the complimentary words and trailed her own magic through the air.  He changed the colors of the air, she made it dance, and he made it race in circles before them like a blackpowder pinwheel.

"So.  What did you teach Evin's cubs?  He was complaining that you were showing them things you shouldn't." Geoff said when the colored bits of air had dissipated, he grinned at her.

"I showed them 'dust,' 'pah!' 'ripples,' and 'ember' The older has a chance of magistry, the younger," she shrugged. "Earthcraft, and watercraft, farmer belike, though he needs windcrafting, and he might come late to fire.  It happens time and time, and doesn't others.  Johann-the-Younger never did find enough earth to work the forge."

Geoff nodded.

Anaya yawned. "We sleep out on the deck?"

Geoff nodded, "That's why you packed blankets, I presumed."

"I packed a quit, and I packed it because Mother and I made it."

"Wrap up then.  We'll be at our destination come morning.  Another day's walk should see us at Reintown-on-the-Ousel.  This branch joins the Ousel, but if we took the barge, we'd be a h'hand getting to the nearest lift ship dock."

She got the quilt from her box, wrapped up in it and went to sleep with her head on Geoff's thigh, Snow-n-Coal lying atop her legs.

#

Morning came, the bargemaster left them at another village, larger than the one Anaya'd grown up in.  A wagon with team and drover waited for them, he took Anaya's box and stowed it among bundles and boxes that half filled the wagon.  Geoff looked at the wagon. "Making extra money?"

"Yep." The drover took the kiangs' lead rope and began walking. "Why not?  You can't think I'd stay twiddling my thumbs and letting the beasts get fat on the pay you give me, now do you?"

"I paid you well enough to wait on our arrival." Geoff put his own possessions into the wagon.

"You don't pay enough to graze the poor things on grass, little enough though there is here."

"Why should I?  You'll just pocket it and run your side jobs."

Anaya watched them talk, scowling faintly, catching an underlying laughter to their arguement.  They fought more like old friends than strangers.  Geoff turned to her, grinning. "This is Petan, who used to work for his father as a drover, and when I went on my trip and met Libby, hired on with me to look after my equipment and possessions."

Petan grinnned widely, showing a gap where one tooth had gone missing. "And to keep him from being cheated at every turn.  Unfortunately he learned that lesson too well, and he's been underpaying me ever since." He slapped Geoff's back. "'Tis good to see you, though."

"This will likely be the last time I come this way though."

Petan's face fell. "So you told me, I'm saddened to hear that." His gaze slid to Anaya. "This the girl then?" Geoff nodded, and Petan stuck one oversized hand out to her. "Petan, sept Greyth, clan Odost.  I met your your mother once, and you, when you were a babe.  She was a joy to behold."

She allowed her hand to be swallowed in his, squashed and returned. "Thank you."

"You favor your father though.  Your mother never had hair that dark."

"She has her mother's eyes though.  Merefftor never showed eyes that shade of gray." She could hear the pride in Geoff's voice.

It comforted her to hear that, she'd always admired Mother's eyes, wide-set, gray, with dark rims.  That part of her remained. "Thank you," she told Geoff.

The way to the liftship dock was overland, five miles, but hilled miles, harder on the legs than flat miles.  The kiang strained too, and Petan took some of the bundles from the wagon to save them, handing them to Geoff and Anaya, slinging a pair over his shoulders.  They walked up the hills, and at the top, Petan took back the bundles and returned them to the wagon.

"Why don't the roads go around the hills?" She asked the second time they handed back the bundles.

"Sometimes when it rains, the areas between the hills become mud pits." Petan turned his head and spat. "Spring mostly."

"The view is better from the top of the hills as well." Geoff said.

"They had their reasons, when they set the roads this way." Petan shrugged. "Yep, it's hilly, but it's easier walking up and down hills than 'tis shouldering a wagon out of the mud."

They stopped at midday to eat after crossing the third hill.  Petan had bread and cheese and sausage.  It featured a different mix of spices than Anaya was accustomed to, but it was sausage, and there was a skin of river water to share between them.

They reached the liftship dock mid-afternoon.  This had a proper town clustered around it, with a trio of stubby towers.  A fluffy white mass bobbed near one of them, tetherd by a thread, beneath it, a brown basket clung.  Ants crawled over the basket.  Anaya's jaw dropped as she realized she was looking at a liftship, the ants were people.  Petan slapped her back. "Never seen a liftship before?"

"I've never seen one that large." Nor so close.  Liftships crossed overhead, from time to time, but they were distant things, clouds given shape and dotted with small brown growths beneath them.  They didn't land anywhere near her village, and the liftships that came to the gather in were crewed by a dozen or so.  The one she stared at looked like it'd need that many just to empty its chamber pots.  The liftship from the gather in landed as far from the people as possible, and most of the dozen stood guard to it, keeping the curious away from it.

"They come bigger." Petan said. "That's the Fat Cloud, I think."

"It should be.  The schedule had her berthed until tomorrow noon." Geoff said, then turned to Anaya, "We'll board today and sleep on her tonight, but once we're closer, stick close.  There are people here who can't be trusted.  You'd be lucky to end up only robbed."

"I have three copper denirs, the clothes on my back, and a dog.  I'm not worth robbing." She gestured. "If they're that desparate, I'll give them the coins."

Petan shook his head. "Don't.  They'd likely think you were holding something back and cut open your gut to find it..  In the city, there are those who'd crack your heard open for the clothes on your back." He hefted his drover's stick and gestured to the town before them. "This isn't your village.  These aren't friends you haven't made yet, they're strangers, with all that entails."

Anaya nodded.  The town wasn't as crowded as she'd feared it would be, but it was crowded enough that she took hold of Geoff's sleeve with one hand and clung to Snow-n-Coal's lead with the other. Drovers guided laden wagons through streets barely wide enough, cursing at each other good naturedly.

They parted from Petan at the foot of the liftship laden tower.  He put down Anaya's box and Geoff's bag and began leading the wagon away.  Geoff took Snow-n-Coal's lead and let Anaya pick up her box, leading them to a small building at the foot of the tower. "Keep quiet.  Let me do the talking."

"Aye." She watched a woman strolled past, wearing less than Anaya'd ever worn in public, away from swimming in the stream.  Uncovered arms, legs, and even chest, wasn't she cold?  Then a man caught the woman's arm and they talked intently.  Finally the man dug into a pouch he wore around his neck and coin exchanged hands.  The woman smiled and gestured down the street, and they walked that way

Ah, a doxy then, and the scant clothes displaying her wares, no more or less.  Mother'd warned her about such, though where Mother learned about them, she had scant idea.  Most likely from Geoff.  A trio of children ran through the streets, chased by a man hefting a cudgel, the children laughed and tossed fruit form one to the other, while the man yelled about what he'd do to them when he caught them, brazen thieves that they were.  Some of the people watching the chase laughed and offered encouragement to one side or the other.  This was nothing like her village, and she gripped Snow-n-Coal's lead a little tighter.

She realized that Geoff was talking to a man who wore a brimmed cap, though his coat was almost as formal as that of a Clark.  They were haggling over something while she'd been gawking.  Geoff put his foot on her box, leaning forward and hissing something at the man. "No.  Two rooms, I confirmed it when I came out.  The owners agreed.  The dog stays with the girl, and not in the holds in a cage."

"A roi, as surety the beast doesn't soil the rugs or stain the wood, all but ten denirs refunded at the end of the trip.  I'll not have my passengers complaining of dog piss." The other man was a bandy legged rooster of a man, glaring up at Geoff as if he expected a wildly slung fist at any moment.

Anaya started to protest that she'd trained Snow-n-Coal to not mess indoors, but Geoff must've heard her indrawn breath and shot her a glare that reminded her of his instructions.  Keep quiet.

"I'll want a dirt tray for it then, and service to clean out the shit." Geoff demanded.

"This isn't one of your city high pleasure yachts.  This a cargo ship, I don't have time to chasing after a dog with a shovel." The rooster-man glared at Snow-n-Coal, who yawned up at him, tired from all the walking she'd done getting there.

"Oh, I see your plan.  Leave the animal without even so much as a dog's chamber pot and then scream she left the place stinking.  Do you plan to make us make water over the rails because you can't be bothered with providing us with a place to piss?" Geoff's own chin came out. "I'll have you arrested for intent to defraud me."

"Do it and I'll ensure you have to walk to the city.  The cost of transporting the beast's gone up,  Twenty denir fee, and a two roi surety."

"You thief."

"I'm the man as captains the liftship." the rooster man jabbed his thumb at his chest. "So long as I stay within the fees set by the councils, you take what bargain I offer, or walk.  The last man as crossed me is still walking."

Geoff muttered under his breath and dug into a pouch he wore at his belt.  He counted out the coins he needed,  and took up the box again. "Come along, Anaya."

The stubby towers had stairs.  They had a great many stairs.  A line of men carrying sacks over their shoulders trudged up one set, the same men, with no bundles, trudged down the other set.  She looked at them and wondered why nobody'd ever thought of a better way of doing things.  Even the barns in the village had pulleys and hoists.  She and Geoff joined the line of men and were soon at the foot of the stairs.

By the fifth turn, her legs hurt.  By the seventh, Snow-n-Coal was lagging, at the eighth, to silence the grumbling of the man behind her, she hefted the dog in her arms and carried her the last three.  At the top, the sack carrying men put them down, walked across the top of tower and headed down the stairs that twined with the first set.  Different men picked up the sacks, full of winter wheat, if they had the truth painted on them, and carried them across the gap between liftship and ground, and into one of the sheds that dotted the deck.

Anaya set down Snow-n-Coal. "Come along." Geoff huffed a breath, two, then stepped surefooted across the gap between ground and air.  She swallowed, approached the edge of the tower and made the mistake of looking down.

The next thing she knew, the rail at the far edge of the tower pressed to her back and she was trying to bury her face in Snow-n-Coal's ruff of fur.  The ground was so far away.  She couldn't even see where they'd been standing.  It was all so tiny, if she mis-stepped, she'd fall forever, until she hit the ground and cracked open like an egg.

She wanted to close her eyes and wake up in her own bed, with Mother making something to break their fast, singing to to the fire to wake it up, Mud Hund groaning as she got up and went to the door to scratch at it.

"Anaya." She felt Geoff's hand on her shoulder, felt his breath stir her hair. "Come along, now."

She whimpered and buried her face further in Snow-n-Coal's fur.  The dog, at least, felt as she should, soft fur and a tongue licking her ear. "I want to go home." She said into Snow-n-Coal's neck.

The boards under her knees creaked and moved as Geoff knelt by her. "Give me the lead." He pried her fingers away from the rope, handed it away to someone else. "Get the dog aboard the ship, I'll get her on board."  He sat beside her, putting his arm around her shoulders and pulling her against him.  She gripped the front of his coat and cried, eyes tight shut to the horizon so dizzyingly far away, farther than the ground beneath them.  She could feel the tower sway as the liftship bobbed in the wind, could feel the wooden bones of the tower creak as the wind sang through them.

She wanted to go home, where the only things that were high up were trees that grew, and the wild was out the back door of the cott and through the garden and past the outhouse, where there weren't so many people they could crawl in lines like ants up stairs and down stairs, where she belonged.  She wanted Mother.

Geoff rocked her, rubbing her back and letting the face of his coat get wet with her tears, murmuring nonsense words like he'd used to, when she was just a little girl and she'd gotten sick and he sat up because Mother was too tired from looking after her for three days already.  He'd rocked her in G'mother Elsa's sledge chair, back and forth, until the tisanes he'd made to ease her throat took hold of her, and she fell asleep.  She'd forgotten that.  He'd sat with her through a night and a day, until Mother woke, rested,and they could, between them, banish the sick.  She'd forgotten that, and Mother'd given G'mother Elsa's chair away to her brother after his third child was born and turned colicky as her teeth came in.

She didn't resist when Geoff pulled her to her feet and picked her up.  She kept her eyes closed so she didn't have to look at the sweep of air all around them as he walked across the top of the tower and then crossed the gap.  The ground bobbed and she the wind changed.  She gripped his coat and whimpered, feeling the sudden lack of ties to the ground.  Still murmuring, Geoff turned and she felt shade take the sunlight away, as he carried her.  She dared open one eye and peeked, but all she saw was the top of the tower, only it was bobbing and dipping, the men dropping sacks while other men picked them up, and beyond them, bobbing in every stray tongue of wind, the horizon lay.  She shut her eyes immediately and buried her face.

"The lass turned tower sick?" A stranger's voice said.

"It's her first time on a liftship." Geoff rubbed his cheek against her hair. "Never thought she'd be afraid of heights."

She wasn't afraid of heights, she just wanted to go home.  Geoff walked along and she heard a door open, then Snow-n-Coal yelped and three more steps, and the door closed.  She couldn't hear the wind any more, except where it whistled at the cracks of the door.  That was a familiar sound, when winter howled through the land.

Geoff put her on her feet and patted her head. "You can open your eyes, we're within walls."

She looked around cautiously, seeing a tiny box of a room, with little more space than her loft, with a narrow bed cut high into one wall, a slatted ladder leading up to it, and a chair with a shelf pretending to be a table and washstand against another wall.  A lantern, not yet lit, would light the room at night, but for the moment, light came in through parchment covered windows.  The rug that'd concerned the rooster-man so much was a length of painted cloth that lay askew on the floor.  She rubbed at her eyes to stop crying, looking aroud.  Her box was under the shelf. "I -- I didn't mean to -- "

Geoff rubbed her back a last time and gave her a brief hug. "It takes different folk differently.  I should've warned you."

"It was that we were so high, and the ship's deck was moving, and I was afraid that if I tried to step onto it, it'd shift and I'd fall -- " She felt the panic, the tears welling up again and swallowed. "I wasnt afraid when I climbed trees, and some of them are high."

"Not this high, and not so cut off from earth below.  I've known certified, experienced magisters who cried like babies the first time they stepped onto a liftship." He led her to the chair, made her sit down and leaned his hip on the shelf.

"Did you?" She rubbed the heel of one hand on her cheek, wiping at her tears.

"No, but Harn?  The first time he went by liftship, from the city to meet -- " He shook his head " -- he told me he was sick and puking the whole trip, he said he always said he spent the first day of any trip in bed, wishing he was dead.  He said he had too much earth to be full comfortable in one.  It never bothered me, but I've more air and wind than he had."

She shuddered, then nodded slowly.  Johann-the-Forge or Airk-Young-Forge would hate being in a liftship, both of them all but grew roots when they touched the earth. "I -- I understand."

"Do you feel better now?  I can take Snow-n-Coal with me, look after her, if you want to stay in here.  I'll even arrange to have your food brought -- "

She shook her head. "No.  I'll have to get used to it, I guess."

"Just for a while then.  I'll find out when the ship casts off and come get you when we're well away from Reintown-on-the-Ousel, it'll be easier when there isn't a town under our feet."

Someone scratched at the door and Geoff opened it.  A man stood there, holding a steaming mug in both hands.  He nodded ot Geoff, "Compliments of the ship's cook.  She got told your girl took tower sick and sent along a ginger and pepperment tisane for it.  It'll calm her stomach right down, and if that don't do it, the dollop of honey in it will."

Geoff took it, thanking him and gave the mug to Anaya.  She smelled the herbs, felt the waft of magic that came with the scent and curled her fingers around it, sipping at first, then tipping the mug up and emptying it.  She finished it and put it down on the deck. "Ah, feeling better?"

"Yes." She got up.

"Then we can take that back to the cook.  You can't leave things about on a liftship.  Things have to be put away." He picked up the mug and handed it to her. "Will Snow-n-Coal be well alone here?"

"She squatted just before we got to the town." Anaya opened her box, got out the dog rug and put it down. "Here." She patted the rug and the dog smelled it, then went to the door and scratched at it, her lead dragging behind her. "And she wants to come along."

"Very well." Geoff shook his head, and took the lead.  Out on the deck, he let Anaya stay on the side away from the edge of the deck and the railing.  He seemed familiar with how the ship was built, and led her to one of the small buildings, then in and down stairs to a small, crowded room.  A woman worked in there, a metal boxed cookstove pouring out heat, pots bubbled softly atop it, and she stood, cutting something at a table to one side of the room. "Goodwife, we brought this back with our thanks.  The girl is feeling better." Geoff nudged Anaya and she handed back the mug, smiling faintly and nodding.

"Ah, I understand." the woman said. "Nothing like a bit of peppermint and ginger to settle yourself.  I always have a waterpot on the hob, in case anyone on the crew is wanting a bit of warmth.  Got most of the carmatives, as well, and some other things, in case you eat too much." She chuckled. "Not too likely, but it happens, when we're carrying dignities."

"Don't carry them too often?" Geoff asked.

"Not too often.  The captain's said he's got one of the high muckers coming aboard, full of himself and demanding food as can't be cooked on a liftship galley." She turned her back on them, stirring something that bubbled. "Maybe bread if we've docked recently, but otherwise it's crackerbread with your soup or stew, though the latter looking mighty thin this time of year.  So it's soup and crackerbread for the trip, and no apologies.  I'm not given but denirs to spend on the food."

Anaya took Snow-n-Coal's lead. "So, where do we eat?"

"You?  Eating room's next over, though we eat in shifts when the winds are running, and grateful for the speed, if not the need for carmatives." She lifted a spoon and pointed. "Not so likely in spring. Winter storms're past, but there may be a blow yet."

"Thank you." Geoff said. "Anyone likely to object if we walk about and familiarize ourselves with the layout?"

"Stay out of the holds while they're loading, don't let the dog into my galley, or let it poop on the deck, and stay clear of the captain when he's aboard.  He's still below, waiting on the high mucker."

Geoff bowed slightly and they left the cook.  He led them through the ship's inner hallways, both of them flattening against the wall when a member of the crew came by.  The ship full of twisty little halls and small rooms.  They stopped at a door with a man standing before it. "What's beyond there?"

"No place you can go." The man said. "Machinery for the liftship.  Not even all the crew can go there, just the windcrafters, the captain, and the cook."

"Why not?" Anaya let Snow-n-Coal loose enough to sniff at the corners of the hall that ended at the door.

"Can't have folk without magic in around the machines.  It's dangerous."

Geoff took her arm and led her away. "Another time.  They're probably preparing for casting off and flying."

#

Nine

The ship shuddered as the ropes holding the ship to the tower gave way, lashing back on themselves.  Crewmen began rolling them up, and the ship leapt away from the town.  Anaya gripped the railing with closed eyes.  A pan of dirt had been put into the room where she was to stay, and she'd left Snow-n-Coal there, to get used to the smaller space and hopefully sleep.  She'd drunk a second mug of the stomach tisane, but she hadn't eaten, even when Geoff spread something on a slice of crackerbread he'd gotten from the cook and offered her some.  She wasn't hungry.  Her stomach still jumped at the thought of food, and flying, and anything but covering the windows and pulling quilt to cover her head.  The day had sped to evening while Geoff showed her the ship.  There was a solid railing that ran around the edge of the deck, there was that to be thankful for.  The gap where the ship had been nearest the tower was a section that'd been replaced when the last of the sacks of wheat had been loaded.  The captain was the rooster-man from below, who'd come aboard, marched up to Geoff, made a "hrumph" noise at him and marched away.

"Why did he do that?" Anaya asked.

"He doesn't like me." Geoff sounded faintly amused.

"Why not?"

"He's sept Ganage, clan Devez, I'm Lumos, clan Merefftor."

"And that explains it?"

Geoff smiled. "In the city it would.  Devez is not as powerful a clan as Merefftor, and he resents that I can order him to do something, like wait for us to get here, and make it stick." Geoff shrugged. "I was willing to pay fair value, but that's not enough.  Devez doesn't like Merefftor."

Anaya wondered if she'd ever get enough of an explanation.  Most likely, Geoff had lived with the arguements of clans and septs in the city for so long it was like trying to explain magic to someone who couldn't make fire without flint and steel.

#

She nodded, opening her eyes and closing them again quickly when the horizon bobbed and tilted.  Maybe it would get better once they'd been underway for a time.  Geoff caught her wrist and squeezed slightly. "Anaya, open your eyes."

"Don't want to."

"No.  Open them and look up.  They're starting to windcraft."

Reluctantly, she obeyed, tilting her head to look up and then opening her eyes.  Overhead, the liftship's huge envelope was filled to bulging against the netting that secured ship proper to it.  Around it she could see the blue of the sky, and within the sky --

-- within the sky she could see shimmering veils of color, blues shading from yellow through red, warmer, cooler, stroking the envelope and crashing into each other, mixing and parting and returning to themselves.  Gradually, they assembled themselves, ruddier blues towards the bottom of the ship, more verdant shades above, while the ship lifted and turned.

They seemed -- muddy somehow though.  She couldn't understand how, but they didn't seem as pure as they could be.  She knew she could make it clearer, but, if she closed her eyes she could sense what bespoken words the windcrafting used, could sense better words, smaller gestures.  Why didn't they use them?

She opened her eyes again, lifting her nose and sniffing at the wind that flowed past them like Snow-n-Coal might sniff at a rabbit upwind.  It was intoxicating, like having a bottle of Mother's best berry cordial, all to herself, or some of Mair's best winter ale.  She clung to the railing, because she was afraid that if she released it, she might try to reach out and take the veils of wind and try to wrap it around herself, try to fly away.

People could not fly, the amount of Breath needed to lift a person was too great.  But still, the wind called to her, and she tried to recognize the parts of it that were like to near the cott, her homeward air.  She knew it was there, knew it had to be, all air was the breath she used to cool her soup.  She knew that, knew she could sense the familiar among the strange.

She found it, felt safe enough to release the railing with one hand and reached up, touching the wind that felt familiar.  It curled around her fingers, slid down her arm and around, comforting, the color clearing into a shade just to the ruddier side of the sky.  She breathed in, and then out, stroking the bit of air and its color cleared a little.  It didn't belong down here with her, she lifted her hand and released it, letting it trail back up to wrap around the liftship and guide it to where ever they were going.

"You shouldn've have done that." Geoff said.

"What?" She held onto the railing again, lowering her gaze, for some reason the horizon wasn't dipping and tilting as it had before.  Perhaps the windcrafting had settled.  At the rear of the liftship she heard shouting, and then wood crashed against wood.

"What sort of magistrial nonsense is going on up there!" The liftship's captain bellowed, now looking a bit like a bull as he charged at Geoff. "You were warned about mucking about with my ship, Merefftor."  He jabbed his finger into Geoff's chest. "I warned you, one illicit bespoken word and I'd tie a rope to your ankle and pitch you overboard to dangle the rest of the way to the city."

"I didn't do it." Geoff stepped back, his face stony.  He batted the shorter man's hand aside.

"Then who did, the dog?" The captain stepped back, gesturing wildly. "You expect me to believe that you didn't stick your fingers into my crew's work and muck up half a day's bespeaking?"

"I did it." Anaya said. "I'm -- I'm sorry.  I didn't know it was wrong."

"You?" She winced at sound level. "I'd sooner believe the dog did it.  I'll not have Merefftor hiding his mischief behind a child's skirts, though that'd be like him."

"I'm not a child."

The captain snorted, hawked and spat over the railing. "Prove it." He folded his arms and sneered. "Bespeak the wind," he glared at Geoff, "if you can."

Anaya looked at her father, who shrugged and glared, thin-lipped at the ship's captain. "You don't have to prove anything to him, lass."

She turned again towards the railing, lifting one hand and reaching for another veil of almost-green blue, letting it twine through her fingers and letting the proper words come.  She whispered them, and the color grew clearer, the color flowing forward and back from where she touched it, until the colors near to the portion she touched lost their muddy feel, they rippled, welcoming her touch, breath returning breath, almost scarlet to almost gold, all blue touched, wrapping around the liftship and evening it until the horizon didn't dip and tilt.

The taste of the wind changed slightly, its sound grew a little louder, sounding like water falling over rocks, although not close though.  The breeze that played with her hair lifted more of it.  She gripped the railing tighter, released breath back to itself, letting her hand drop to the railing, almost staggering as she fell silent and the magic fled her.  She could still look up and see the wind wrapping the bag of air, and as she watched, the muddiness began to return to the colors, creeping up from the rear of the ship.  The horizon rose, then fell, and she wanted to fall over as it tipped.  She wanted to push it back, to steady the ship again, but she knew her limits, she couldn't do so much that it would make a difference.  She wondered how much crew the ship had, to wrap it in the wind and hold it steady.  Beyond the wind, the sky was fully dark now, ripples hiding then showing the stars.

"Anaya?" Geoff put his hand around her waist to hold her up. "You're going to bed.  You shouldn't have bespoken that much."

She turned, and saw the captain staring at her, bug-eyed and gap jawed.  Geoff helped her past him and back to her room.  He put her up in the niche bed and tucked her quilt around her. "Sleep.  I'll wake you when I've gotten you some soup.  You need to eat." He nudged Snow-n-Coal and tried to order the dog back to her rug.  She sat down and scratched her ear, the bangles on her collar jangling.

She nodded. "Why'm I so tired?"

He stroked her hair off her face, patting it into place. "You bespoke the ship, lift and steer and speed entire, for over two hours."

"Is that a long time?" She blinked, her eyes too heavy to keep open.

"For what you did.  Yes." He went to the doorway. "Go to sleep."

#

Ten

She slept through until just past dawn, then got up, dressed, and went in search of a place to wash her face and teeth.  She found the galley, and the cook gave her a bowl of hot water and a length of towelling to use.  She used them in the deserted eating room, returned the bowl and exchanged it for a bowl of soup and some crackerbread to dip in it.  Nobody was in the eating room when she returned, and she ate, scraping the bowl clean.  She felt as if she'd lived on winter rations for a year, maybe more.

"Thank you." She returned the bowl to the cook. "Do you live in here?"

She shrugged. "It's warm enough when the ship's aloft, and at least this way I can keep an eye on the things.  More soup?"

It was the decision of a moment. "Yes.  Thank tha."

She ate a second bowl of soup, and begged a bowl for Snow-n-Coal, taking it to the dog, still trapped in her room, then put the lead to her neck and they headed out to circle the deck, up in the open.  The colors of the wind wrapping the ship had shifted, but were still muddy.  She looked up, felt the tug of wrongness that made her want to bespeak it better, but she didn't.  She hadn't the strength to keep doing it, and the ship's captain would probably get angry with her.

She found herself at the rear of the ship, where a building rose and blocked the back of the ship, from rail to rail.  A ladder went up the side of the building, and atop, more railings kept anyone up there safe.  The captain stood there, a pair of seeing tubes to his eyes, looking down from time to time to shout directions.  He must be steering somehow, like a drover steered a wagon, only with words, not a stick.  Another man came up from inside the building, and the captain handed him the seeing tubes, and stretched, then went down inside the building.  The second man put the tubes to his eyes and began looking through them, shouting down.  Steering the ship must be a constant thing, like the bespoken words that kept it aloft and moving.

Anaya let Snow-n-Coal tug her away, and lead her to other corners of of the ship., where the dog could sniff to her heart's content.  Anaya didn't know what she was smelling, but the dog enjoyed it. Which said something, since part of what'd woken her was the smell of used dog food.

One of the crew approached her, tugging on his forelock, "Beggin' pardon, goodwife, the captain'd like your company to table."

"I already ate." Snow-n-Coal tugged, sniffing at the cuffs of his pants, her tail brushing the air as it wagged.

"'Tis words he's wanting, goodwife, not sharing a plate." He held out his hand. "I'll see to your dog. What's her name?"

"No. I will." She remembered too well the threats the captain had made. "Her tray needs clearing, you can do that."

He grimaced, "Aye, goodwife." He followed her back to the room, getting a bucket and a small shovel and clearing out the smelly clumps and mud. "Leave the dog, and with me, goodwife."

He led her to the eating room by the galley. The captain was sitting at a table, the other chairs at it filled with stolid, blank faced men, all of them shovelling food into their mouths. The crewman coughed, then left Anaya there. The captain looked up, scowling.

"You. Girl. Sit there." He pointed at a stool at the foot of the table.

She went there, sat, tucking her hands beneath her legs and waiting, wondering why Geoff hadn't been called to this talk. She looked at the eating men, and caught them glancing at her, then returning to their food. Guess she wasn't as interesting as their food. She couldn't blame them. She was still half starved from her bespeaking.  She hadn't controlled that large a mass of magic in her life, not even when she'd buried Mother this spring.

The captain shovelled a messy spoonful of soup into his mouth and followed it up with a mouthful of regular bread.  He levelled the spoon at her and glared. "Do you know what you did, girl?"

"I was walking my dog." She said, playing stupid. "Your man came and got me."

"No.  Last night.  Do you know what you did?"

The other men at the table seemed to slow, putting down their spoons and their heads swung, and they looked at her.  Their eyes were dull with fatigue.

"I just -- bespoke the air." She curled her fingers under her legs, still hidden. "You said I hadn't done it, said I should prove it."

"You bespoke us a hundred miles along our path, gained us six hours travel time, with that 'just bespeaking'." The captain tapped the table top with the bowl of the spoon. "I want to know how some -- child could bespeak air better than trained windcrafters." He gestured in a circle with his spoon, spattering the table top with a bit of carrot.

The men's looks gained something other than tiredness.  One scowled at her, one blinked and a third rested his head on a fist, his elbow on the table.

"I just did it." She wished she'd sat closer to the door than she was. "I don't know what they do, I could only do what I do."

One of the crewmen scratched his forehead. "Can't say as there's much more than that can be said." He yawned, pushing up from the table. "I'm for bed, on duty again too damned soon."

"No." The captain said. "I want to claim the girl's bespeaking for the ship.  If she takes a regular shift we'll be to the city a day early."

Anaya shook her head. "I don't understand."

She jumped as the bowl of the spoon thumped against the tabletop. "No.  I'll not have Merefftor claim some obscure law of passenger and pay and deny me the skill of a magister on my ship because they're not crew.  He can sit on his ass like a lordling if he wants, you're a magister and I'll have your skill to speed our way and ease the wear on the rest of my crew.  They work their skill to their skulls're like to bursting, because of the schedules set by folk with no idea of what a windcrafter can do."

She shook her head again. "I don't think I can.  What I did, left me shaking, I don't think I could do it again."

"You'll do it girl, or I'll file claims that you're disrupting the running of this ship." The captain shot his head forward, reminding her again of a rooster searching to strike an opponent. "The fines would make even Merefftor's coffers cry."

Anaya slid off the stool, shaking her head and putting her hands on the table. "I have to ask -- "

"Ask who?  You're passenger here, you owe the ship service, would you rather bespeak or serve on your back?" The captain stood as well.

"No." Anaya eyed the doorway, wondering if she could run there faster than the captain, wondered if the crew would aid him if he chased her, or trip her.

"Captain -- " She looked up and saw the cook in the entrance to the eating room, a large cooking spoon in her hand. "Leave the girl be, or you'll be facing claims of disrupting the running of the ship yourself." The cook's face was shiny with sweat, her braided hair a graying frizz surrounding her head, her apron stained and tucked up in her belt. "The crew's not that overworked, and you're just greedy to get the early arrival bonus for yourself.  We all know there's no sharing of that when you get it.  Into your own hoard it goes, and barely a denir for the crew or much to the upkeep of the ship that's not dicated by law."  She held a hand out to Anaya. "Come with me, girl."

Anaya left the eating room with the cook, retreating to the galley with her. "Old blowhard," she muttered, "belike he wouldn't even have offered to let your passage decrease by so much as a quarter-bit denir even if you collapsed on the towers once you were off the ship."  She stirred the pot on the stove and returned to her worktable, taking up a knife and slicing worzels. "That fond of his coins, the captain is, and showing up the Merefftor as well."

"Why does the captain dislike -- the Merefftor?" Anaya stopped herself from calling Geoff by name.  She had the feeling it wouldn't be smart.  Geoff wasn't just Geoff-from-Away, not away from home.

"Get some mugs, can you make a tisane?  I'm fond of ginseng and chyrsanthemum when I'm working, myself.  It's in the yellow jar, and labelled.  Make yourself something you like, I've more'n just peppermint and ginger." The cook finished the one worzel and started the next, brushing what she'd finished aside with the blade. "'Twixt Merefftor and Devez is no love lost.  They're both old clans, but from what I can tell, and I'm clan Challen, the fortunes of one rose while the other fell.  Then Merefftor passed to that young clan head, and didn't Devez think they could trip the other clan up.  More fools they, a head on his shoulders he had, and a heart cold as stone." She chuckled. "Devez fell on their face the first time they tried their tricks, and didn't the city entire laugh for almost a h'hand at the spectacle."

Anaya got down the yellow jar, and sorted through pre-made herb sacks until she found one that was labelled as ginseng and chrysanthemum, wondering if the cook was talking about Geoff's father.  She measured out a spoonful into a mug and sniffed the mixture, before she put it back and got herself plain peppermint.  She'd never know either grandfather, Airk Iron-Bender was dead when she was a babe in arms, and from what Geoff had said, her other grandfather was gone before she was even born.  She filled both mugs with hot water and returned the pot to the stove. "And clan Devez dislikes clan Merefftor because Devez was foolish?  It seems a small enough reason."

The cook nodded, pushing aside the cuttings of another worzel. "Those for the soup for tonight.  Aye.  As I said, a h'hand of laughter?  That'd set anyone's back up, even as minor a member of the clan as our captain."

"He takes his clan so close to heart?  Seems foolish, but we don't look much to sept and clan where I grew up."  Anaya held onto her mug and pushed the other towards the cook.

She nodded, taking up her mug and curling her fingers around it. "'Tis different in the city.  You'll see.  You're not an age for coming to the city for testing and training.  Did the Merefftor find you windcrafting where you grew up?"

Anaya shook her head, uncertain how much she could safely tell this woman.  She ought to talk to Geoff first.  At least she wasn't thinking as the bargemen had, that she was her father's doxy.  She drank her tisane, and went to Geoff's room, knocking on his door. There was a scraping noise, then the door opened. Geoff blinked at her, his hair standing on end from sleep, wrapped in a robe that she remembered Mother'd given him, several years ago. When he wasn't there, Mother'd worn it on winter nights, for the warmth, she said. Anaya wondered if he took it for the same reason Mother wore it. Comfort came in strange forms. "Wha -- ?" He blinked at her, yawned. "What's the hour?"

"Not far past the fourth. I've been up since dawn." She looked and saw that none of the crew was about. "I want to talk."

He grunted, stepped back, opening it further. "Come in then. Couldn't this have waited?"

"I don't know." His room was larger than the one assigned to her, a pair of chairs flanked the shelf-table, his bed niche wasn't so high up as hers. "I don't know what I should tell people, if they ask me."

Geoff sat at the table, gestured to the opposite chair for her to sit. "This could've waited, Ana'."

"Then I should tell folk you're my father, and that I'm traveling with you to the city because my mother died?" She sat down and propped her elbows up on the table, resting her head on her fists.

He flushed. "Oh. Yes. I see. No. You shouldn't." He looked at the windows of the room, at the floor, at the door.

"Then what should I tell them?" She folded her arms, waiting. "Can't I tell them the truth?"

Geoff sighed explosively, studying his fingertips. "It would be -- embarassing if you did, for my wife, for my other children, for me, even you." She waited. "Merefftor oversees the academies where people learn magic, six schools, a lower school, a magisters' school, and a school that specializes in each of the elements. Magisters are known to send a promising child to the city for schooling, to test them. Merefftor does that, as do other clans, you're a little old to be sent, but all anyone needs to know is that I'm escorting you to the city to be tested, educated."

"I'm a magistra already, why should I -- "

He gestured flatly, to silence her. "All anyone needs to know is that I'm escorting you to the city for testing.  Keep quiet about the rest."

"Why?" She bit her lip. "Are you ashamed of me?"

"No," he said quickly. "I just want to explain you to my -- my other family.  Gossip flies faster than the wind sometimes, and grows.  You know that."

She nodded, she'd seen a rumor start at one end of the village and change from tale to fact, and from egg to phoenix before it finished the trip.  She wasn't certain she wanted to agree to his restrictions though.  If he wasn't ashamed of her, why couldn't he admit what she was.

"As well, I've done this before, escorting a child to the city, so have other travelling magisters.  It's not that rare a thing."  He yawned. "Who asked?"

"The captain.  The cook.  He said he'd accuse me of disrupting the ship, because I wouldn't work with the ship's windcrafters.  She said he wanted some sort of bonus he'd get for arriving early."

Geoff nodded, "Liftships have a schedule, but there are bonuses if delivery is made before time for perishables, like eggs and fruit.  It's frowned on, but some merchants do it anyway." He got to his feet. "Wait outside for me, we'll go talk to the captain together.  He won't bother you again."

"The cook told me some about why Merefftor and Denez don't like each other.  Are all clans like that?" Anaya stood.

He put his hand to her back and walked her to the doorway, kissing her forehead. "Be a good girl, aye?  We'll eat and go see the captain."

Outside his room she waited, while a crewman walked past, heading toward the front of the ship.  Geoff came out, dressed and his hair slicked back into a tail. "Did you eat already?"

She nodded. "It's soup."

"Always is, this time of year on a liftship." He shrugged. "About the only time you eat well on a liftship is during harvest.  You can probably finish off another bowlful, I always can, if I've bespoken a large magics."

The cook had a bowl of soup for Geoff, and let Anaya take a piece of crackerbread and grease.  They went to the eating room, and Geoff ate slowly, savoring the soup. "It's not bad." he said, when they returned the bowl to the galley, "Thank you.  I think I actually got some meat."

She cackled. "Hsst, don't tell the captain.  He'd charge you extra."

Geoff took Anaya's hand and led her out onto the deck.  They went to the building at the rear of the deck, and she waited while Geoff went up the ladder and spoke to the man watching the horizon and talking into the hose.  He came back down. "The captain's abed, I think he should be woken up for this talk."  He took her hand.

"That's not kind of you." She followed him as he led the way into the building that covered the center deck.

"After what he threatened you with?  He should be glad I don't make answering charges for his threat.  Threatening the health of a passenger, for example." They came to an unmarked door and Geoff knocked on it.

There was no answer.  He knocked again. "It seems our captain's not answering."

"It can wait." She caught his hand when he lifted it to knock a third time. "Bad news always waits."

He frowned, but he let her lead him away.

They found the captain about noon, after a morning sitting in a corner of the deck, spent playing alquerque on a painted playing cloth that belonged to a crewman.  That was about when the windcrafters changed shifts, the one coming off shift walking leadenly into the eating room, sitting and staring blankly at the table until the cook came out with a tray of bowls of hot soup and mugs filled with something else that steamed.

The captain helped the cook, and took his seat at the head of the table, joining them. "Wait here.  Say nothing." Geoff told her, pointing to the hallway just outside the eating room. "It's best you not be in the middle of this more than you are."

"But -- "

"Or does tha want to be told to wait in tha room with Snow-n-Coal?" he hissed, scowling, slipping into informal mode.. "This will not be easy.  I can't afford to be worying what tha'll say."

She nodded, reluctantly. "I don't want to."

"Yell at me later." His face softened into a smile, and he stroked her hair. "Times like this, tha is so much tha mother's child.  I was never so stubborn," he said softly.

"That's not what Mother always said."

He chuckled, "Hush." He let her go, his face hardening and he went into the eating room. "Captain, you and I need to have words."  He stopped halfway to the table, folding his arms and setting his feet.

"About what?" The captain stopped, spoon in mid-air.  The rest of the windcrafting crew kept eating, ignoring both men.

"About suborning a passenger, a child, with threats."

The captain snorted, returning to his meal. "As if Merefftor's never done aught for the law to look sideways."

"She is a child.  She does not need to be threatened with fines and lies so you can surpass your schedule."

"Perhaps you'd rather join the windcrafters, do your duty instead of drag upon the ship like a piece of meat.  My windcrafters are overworked as 'tis."

"Your windcrafters are well paid, and if they are overworked, you are overworking them."  Geoff gestured to the men eating. "Six hours working, twelve off, and that is the law." He folded his arms, his intended audience having ignored his sally. "If you threaten the girl again, I will see charges made against you.  The captain of a liftship is responsible for the saftey of the passengers, crew and cargo, as well as the ship itself.  Threatening a passenger could have your captaincy removed, and fines heavy enough to have Denez crying beggary in the streets."

"It's for a clan leader to claim charges, not some stranger, unless -- " The captain leaned forward, peering at Geoff, then Anaya, standing by the doorway, his eyes narrowing.  The sounds of the crew eating softed, as some of them stopped, to watch the arguement.

"The girl is travelling under my protection.  Until she is delivered to the city and her proper clan, I stand as clan leader to her." Geoff barked. "Merefftor, Devez, even Thesa, it matters not what clan she is, she is under my protection, and I will protect her.  Threaten her, her dog, threaten me, I will see you pay."

The crew stopped eating, watching in silence.  The captain's face went red with anger. "I will have you before the clan council for this."

Geoff stepped forward, leaning his knuckles on the table and glaring at the captain. "Go ahead, if you think your clan will agree." He turned, striding from the eating room, taking Anaya's arm and pulling her along.

#

Eleven

The rest of the trip was quiet.  The crew chose to take the captain's part, the cook chose to take the crew's part.  Anaya was not invited to the galley again to make tisane and gossip, nor was there talk beyond an offer of food, and a grunt when the dirty dishes were returned.  The crew delivered a bucket and garden fork to Anaya's room for Snow-n-Coal's tray, and she was met with blank looks when she asked to have the bucket changed.  The playing cloth vanished, and Geoff ended up spending the balance of the trip discussing magic with Anaya. "It's all elementary work," he explained, drawing with a stick on the deck."not practical work, but useful."  They couldn't do any bespeaking, the captain had forbidden it, but not all magic training required crafting magic. "Magic actually begins in theory, and ends in it as well." Geoff stood with one hand to his chest, the other pointing at the sky, posing in some fashion Anaya didn't understand.  At her puzzled look, he relaxed, taking up the stick."You'll meet that teacher, in the city."  He drew a circle on the deck. "Let's start with how the elements react to each other -- "

She made a face, scratching Snow-n-Coal's fur. "Someone talks like that?"

"Aye.  Now, the nexus of the elements is -- "

"And he's a teacher?"

"Aye.  Pay attention, Anaya."

"Why?" She tugged on the dog's ears, softening her touch when the half-grown puppy yelped and shook her head. "Sorry, pup."

He sighed. "You need to know this, and you can either learn it now, or later.  The nexus of the elements -- "

"Mother made me read the books you left with her, and the ones my grandfather brought with him.  I know most of that already.  'The nexus of the elements is sometimes called the void, and sometimes called the center, where lives the spirit.  It is neither fire nor water, not air nor earth, but partakes of all of them.' I know most of it already." She took the stick and added to the circle, adding the symbols for the elements, and a central circle that she left blank. "'Air and fire blend and become knowlege, water and earth becomes flesh, while potters partake of water, earth and fire to craft their gift unto the world, although water, air and earth are a farmer's gifts.'" She added the symbols of those crafts. "I always thought it was twaddle." She patted her lap, and Snow-n-Coal settled on it. overflowing on both ends and licking her chin.

"Well.  Some of it is.  That theory has fallen from fashion, although it's useful to begin from." Geoff smudged the drawing she'd made. "Now, Spirit remains with the Center, or the Void.  The name given it is less important than what it is, what you take from it, and what you give back." He redrew the his original circle, a smaller one within. "Here the Center is, and the elements about it.  Earth, opposite it Air, between them on one side, Water, and across from that, Fire."

She nodded, "I know the wheel.  Spirit the center, the elements around it, each in turn, sometimes called the wheel of fortune, for gamblers."

He smiled. "Aye, true enough, where earth touches fire is the crafting that potters do, and carpenters, and the like." Geoff made the symbols for the elements outside the larger circle, and touched a section. "Not all crafting is magic, nor is all magic crafting.  It's best to be respectful of anyone who knows their craft, whether it is done with hands or bespeaking."

"At one of the gather in's I went to, with Mother, I met a magister from one of the other villages who thought all people without magic, should show respect to magisters and the 'crafters."

"Which is likely why he was a village magister, more fool him." He shook his head. "He was probably assigned there to gain some humility.  Magisters, windcrafters and the like have power, but we still need to eat, and a farmer is more powerful than me when it comes to growing things."

Anaya snorted. "Can't grow up in a farming village without learning that."

Geoff scratched Snow-n-Coal's head and smiled when the dog licked his hand. "Lesson ended.  I'm not a teacher, and you're not behaving like a student.  Time enough for that when you enter the academy system.  If this liftship runs like most of the other ones, it'll dock at a tower outside the central portion of the city.  The winds there get -- odd."

"Because of the academies?" She was curious about the academies he'd told her about.  Six of them, one each for each element, one for magisters, and a school where everyone went, before they went to the one that suited them best.

"No." He scratched Snow-n-Coal's neck ruff. "It's something in the way the buildings stand, or something.  No crafting, just wind.  No magic that anyone has ever been able to discern or influence." He shrugged. "So, no liftships over the center of the city, though the winds make bespeaking air -- interesting."

"How interesting?"

He got to his feet, tugging on Snow-n-Coal's lead.  The dog got to her feet and bounced around his.  "Tha shall learn, child, tha shall learn." He chuckled.

#

She woke the following morning as she had the previous morning, just about dawn, Snow-n-Coal squatting over the the dirt tray, and a line sunlight drawing slowly down the wall opposite the windows.  She couldn't tell when the ship changed direction, but the line of light did, shifting from one wall to another, flashing briefly across her eyes until it vanished, and the light changed from a light to a soft glow.  They'd moved enough that her cabin was on the shaded side of the liftship.

She got up, dressed, brushed and braided her hair, taping it close to her head.  She went to the galley and another bowl of soup, sat in solitude in the eating room to spoon it up.  The ship wasn't between shifts, everyone was either asleep or working.  She went back to her room and took Snow-n-Coal for a walk around the deck.  Overnight, the land had changed.  Where they'd been travelling over half wildlands when they boarded the ship at Reintown on the Ousel, and over open fields yesterday, today the fields were smaller, and move buildings lay on them.  She gripped the railing and tried not to feel dizzy as she looked down.  She could do this, the people didn't look like ants scurrying, much.

She could do this.  She pushed away from the railling and continued her walk, not looking up, half afraid if she did she'd want to pet the murk from the breath around the ship.  It could be such lovely colors, if she was allowed to clear it, but she'd wear out, and the murk would return.

Maybe this was the way that the ship did this.  At the small building at at the rear of the ship, the captain within his railing on its roof, looking and barking into the hose.  He took the seeing tubes down and rubbed his eyes, then spotted her and glared at her. "Are you happy?  We're an hour late."

"No." She gripped Snow-n-Coal's lead. "But you shouldn't have threatened me."

"I acted for the good of the ship." He put the seeing tubes to his eyes again, "And I haven't begun to threaten.  Go away."

He was ignoring her.  Anaya left him and walked twice more around the deck, tiring Snow-n-Coal out so the dog would lie down and go to sleep.  She cleaned the smelly mess the dog'd left in the tray, got one of grandfather Airk's books from her box and settled with Snow-n-Coal in the corner of the deck where Geoff'd tried to play teacher.

Geoff found her there. "We're almost ready to dock.  Do you want to go see?" She nodded, closed the book and got up, taking Snow-n-Coal.

While she'd been reading, the land had grown more crowded, and the liftship had lowered.  The people looked more like water roaches than ants now, and the buildings looked more like squared off stumps, where they'd looke like a child's blocks before.  Geoff stood beside her at the railing and pointed ahead. "We're going to moor there, I think."

She could see the tower, in a forest of towers, most with liftships bobbing at them, or some of the larger ones tethered between two of them.  People, ant sized because of distance, scurried up and down.  Behond the forest of towers, buildings rose, none so high as the towers, but massive, stone, shading from gray to brown to black to a dazzling white.  Further still, the horizon flattened, and light glinted on water.

A great deal of water, more water than she'd ever seen before.  It ran from one end of the horizon to the other, and she wondered if she was imagining that it -- it bent.  The water bent.  Geoff put his hand on her shoulder, "That's the ocean, lass.  The Ousel empties into it, about a day west of here, and the city stretches from here to there.  If you ask nicely, and it's scheduled, you can go dip your toes into it."

"Why would I want to do that?" It was so very huge.  She'd never seen something so large, even the sky had never seemed so huge to her, until she boarded the liftship.  The ocean dwarfed the Ousel, even as the Ousel dwarfed the stream that flowed past the village.  She wondered if it'd even feel the same to her hands.  Belike it would, though it wouldn't be quite the same.  The branch of the Ousel she'd touched on the barge had been water, had felt like her stream, but it'd been different.

"Is it very far from where we get off this ship to tha home?" She looked at him, he slouched against the railing of the liftship.

"An hour or so, though I'll send a message to the clan's house so that someone will meet us."  He looked at the city with something like longing.

"How's that done?"

"Pigeons, trained to fly from section station to section station, and runners from the section stations to the homes.  Clan Merrefftor keeps a pair of runners at each of the nearest sector houses.  We should be met at the sector house.  I daresay they'll send a cart and we can ride in comfort."  He stood, his attitude changing as he tugged on the front edges of his coat. "You should pack up.  By nightfall we'll be home."

He must not live that far from a station house then.  Anaya nodded and returned to her room, putting away her quilt and Snow-n-Coal's rug, the smock she'd slept in last night, Grandfather Airk's book, and strapped the lid down.  She took Snow-n-Coal out again, this time walking the other direction around the ship's deck.  She wondered if she'd have offered to take a shift with the windcrafters, to keep from getting quite so bored on the trip.  She didn't like being so idle.  Even in winter, trapped by snow in the cott,  there'd been work to do.  But the captain had demanded, and Geoff had taken offense, and she'd been idle, and bored.

She got midday food for herself, for Snow-n-Coal, soup and a tisane for herself, only soup for the dog, eating alone again, a foot bracing the bowl so the dog wouldn't chase it all over the floor.

The timber of the ship changed, she went out and looked up again, looking at winds.  As she watched, a strip of ruddy blue peeled away from the envelope, vanishing into nothingness while she watched and then another fled, this one a greenish-blue, melting, vanishing like dew as the sun struck it.  She watched, the veiling was falling away, more like petals falling from a flower now, falling back, going away.  She dragged her gaze away and looked at the towers, they were closer now, nearer, the people on them distinguishable now, as people, though still not folk she could distinguish by face yet.

About a mile away, at another tower, a liftship rose, and as she watched, a bud of color began to grow around it, blues, remarkable as she looked through them at the stone and water beyond them, changing color from the clear blue of the sky, ruddy into violet, green into cool gold, but still blues, glorious blues, the colors of breath as it moved through her.  She could see where some of the blues lifted the ship, others steered it, a nudge, a tug, the ship titled and the envelope filled until it bulged at the ropes that held it.

Around her, the crew of the liftship moved, calling as they scrambled over the rope rigging that covered the envelope, that held the ship to the envelope, sinking the liftship a little, but not much, as they moved towards their docking tower.  She looked up, and the lift ship had almost no wind wrapping it, and what remained was wispy, weak.  She turned and looked at the tower again.  The men there held ropes, twirling them, ready to toss them to the ship.

One of the crewmen bumped into her, caught and steadied himself on her arm. "Get back to your cabin, you've no place here, we can't have you tripping over a rope and the Merefftor threatening us with fines because you're a clumsy brat."

"I'm not -- "

"Get!" he yelled at her.  She got, returning to her room and staying there, waiting until she felt a thump as the ship touched the tower and then shuddering, the liftship was caught, anchored by ropes to the tower, and from the tower to the earth.

She waited, the ship around her creaking, feet pounding on the deck, on the roof over her head, somewhere beneath her feet.  Snow-n-Coal whined and she sat on the floor, pulling the dog onto her lap.

The ship quieted, and someone knocked on her door.  She got up, opened it. Geoff stood, waiting with a pair of strangers behind him. "I sent a message and hired some carriers.  Come along." he led her out, and pointed at her box. "Just the one," he told the strangers.

One went in and picked up her box, the other carried a larger box as well as Geoff's bag. "That all?"

Geoff looked to Anaya, who nodded.  It was easier, leaving the ship this time, Geoff held her hand and kept up a steady flow of nonsense chatter, taking Snow-n-Coal and carrying the dog onto the tower, then coming back and holding her hand for the step over the gap.

Walking down all the stairs was easier than walking up, as well.  The carriers followed them down.  Geoff turned to the carriers. "You know the place to take them?"

"Merefftor Clan House." the larger man said, shifting the box from one shoulder to another.  He looked a little bored by the whole proceedings.

Geoff nodded, handing them some money. "The other half on arrival." He turned and left them, taking Anaya with him.  "I told the House that we'll be taking an omni and not to send a chair or a cart." he told her when the carriers had left, trotting away. "I though you'd enjoy seeing the city that way.  The routes aren't the most direct, but it will give you a bit of an idea of the city's regions."

Beside them, walls rose.  Geoff strode along, threading his way through crowds of people hurrying on their way. "The liftship we took was a cargo lifter, so it docked at a tower in the warehouse district.  Not unexpected, the liftships that go to your area tend to ship cargo, not that many people ."

"Why not?"

He shrugged, tugging her to one side as a drover prodding a kiang cart bellowed for a clear path.  The animals strained to pull a wagon full of sacks. "I have no idea.  Perhaps the prices.  They walk, they use barges or boats, not liftships, it's a charming part of the land, but -- " he shrugged again.

"There's an omni stop not far from here.  If you ever get lost, look for that, the red signs, that's a mark of where an omni stops." He came to it, pointed. "There, you can read the route and the schedule."

Anaya nodded. "What's an omni?"

He blinked. "Oh.  I forgot, you've never seen one.  It's short for omniwagon, oxen pull them, and they will carry anything."

"Oxen." She'd never seen them up close, either, her village used kiang, they were smaller, easier to feed and care for, and could be trained to work together easier.

"Aye.  Three denir and you can ride one a full circuit.  It's a cheap entertainment.  A half denir'll get you from home to work."

"Three denir, cheap?  That's not cheap.  That's a month's pay for a hired man." She stopped, "Well, after board and bed."

"Folk don't work for bed and board and scant pay here.  This is the city.  You work, and tend to your own board and bed.  Prices of things are different here.  That's a day's pay for a laborer." He gestured towards the men carrying things. "The carriers got four denir each, to take our things to the clan house.  That's an hours work."

Anaya was saved from asking when she saw massive, horned beasts pulling a wagon coming down the street.  A man sat on the front of the wagon, a drover's stick in one hand, and in his other, lead ropes that ran from rings in the beasts' noses.  Geoff held up his hand and the drover tugged on the rope, slowing the beasts. "Where to?" he asked flatly.

Geoff walked around to the rear of the wagon, walking up a step and sitting on one of the benches that lined the sides of the wagon. "Merefftor Clan House." He gestured sharply for Anaya to join him. "Two, and a dog."

"Elmory District, then." The drover said, his head tilting to one side as he spoke.  Anaya pulled Snow-n-Coal aong and joined him on the wagon. "Have to change at Kroeber Plaza then.  A denir for me, no discount, take the Ferry omni from there to Geisel and Hatton, take the Silk omni from there.  Probably run you four denir total.  Kroeber to Geisel and Hatton runs long." He held out one hand to Geoff, who put a coin in it.  Once he'd stowed the coin, he flicked the stick at the beasts, who began moving again, slowly.

The wagon kept moving, a quartet of tired men got on a few blocks later, paying the drover and sitting opposite Anaya and looking past her.  It was as if she didn't even exist for them, and she moved closer to Geoff.

The tired men left the wagon, replaced by a woman with a crowd of children who squabbled with the drover about the cost of all of them riding.  They left the warehouse district, riding between high buildings with a multitude of small windows, some shuttered, some open, people leaning out of some, talking, yelling.  At a glance, Anaya figured that one building could hold more people than her village, and she'd always thought it large enough.

The woman left, at one large building, though the wagon had to stop when one of the children began screaming for "dolly, dolly" and had to come back aboard for it.  It'd fallen under a bench.  Once the child had left, a trio of women got on the wagon, eyeing Geoff with varying degrees of boldness.  They came to an open area, ringed with booths and a statue in the center, of a smiling, bearded man, barely taller than the sculpted bushes that dotted the area.

The wagon came to a stop, and the drover pointed with his stick. "Catch the Ferry omni over there, south side of the plaza.."

Anaya picked up Snow-n-Coal, following Geoff.  The way they were sent was crowded, people bumped into her, jostling her, and the dog squirmed, trying to get down.. "Geoff!!" She almost lost sight of him as he dodged and wove through the crowd, juggling Snow-n-Coal when she saw a cat that streaked past, chased by a child.

He stopped, waited for her to catch up. "Let the dog walk." He took her arm. "It'll do her good."

"Aye." She let down Snow-n-Coal, made sure that the lead was secured to Snow-n-Coal's collar, the other end wrapped around her hand.  The dog danced at her feet, and promptly squatted.

Geoff chuckled, "Guess that explains that." When she'd finished, he tugged gently on Anaya's arm, "let's go."

The red sign this time was in a corner of the plaza, with a bench beneath it.  Some youths  about Anaya's age sat there, looking uniform in gray robes and cream shirts, but they stood quickly when they spotted Geoff. "Merefftor," one said.

"Don't you have classes?" He asked, releasing Anaya's hand to fold his arms and glare at them. "'Tisn't a holyday by my reckoning."

"No, Merefftor," their spokesman said. "We were set to working in the warehouse towers, working on docking the liftships, observing how the windcrafters' work." His voice stumbled over the words. "An hour of it, then back to the class and report tomorrow on what we learned."

While he spoke, his companions' eyes flicked over Anaya, who resisted the urge to step back behind Geoff.

Geoff nodded, "Very well, we can ride the omni together back as far as the academy."

The spokesman looked to his companions. "Uh."

"We -- we thought," the self-appointed second said, "since we'd the balance of the day free, we'd go enjoy it, you don't get much free time outside of holydays at the academies, and -- " He looked down, tapping the cobbles of the street with his boot toe. "Holydays are too busy."

"Ah." Geoff nodded, and took a seat on the bench. "Here," he told Anaya.

She sat down.

"Well, you'll just have to enjoy your free time without someone else paying for the omni ride." Geoff looked up at them. "Try not to drag the Academies' reputation through the sewers if you please."

"Yes, Merefftor," and they were gone, like a flock of pigeons startled by a rock thrown in their midst.

"Those," Geoff said after they were gone, "are students of the windcrafter academy.  About third year I think, if they're being sent to the towers to study.  First years are too busy with theory, second years can't understand the nuances, and fourth years are starting to be sent out on the ships for practical work."

"If I was a student in the windmaster's academy, would I be going out for study?" She watched the crowd the boys had vanished into.

"If you were.  I don't think you'll be sent to the windcrafters though.  You've too much earth and water, if you're anything like Libby." He smiled. "I remember being that young.  If I'm lucky, they won't have sent skirts flying from the shore to the wilds."

"They do that?"

"If they're light enough.  Certainly.  They teach each other."

"Do the girl students teach each other things like that, for the boys' hats?"

"I suspect so."

The wagon came, and this time the drover demanded two denir, and got it, reciting almost the same route as the first drover had.  They rode through smaller buildings now, though they were made more and more of stone, not wood, and were set farther apart.  They rode until they came to a small green area, "Geisel and Hatton." The drover said, stopping the wagon.

They got off, and there was another bench. "Not much longer now.  If we're lucky, Tracen will not have decided to have her usual afternoon card party, and we can enter and get you settled without much fuss."

"She plays cards?"

"It is -- " he pursed his lips, " -- an afternoon gathering of likeminded people.  Tracen enjoys them."

"Who -- " Anaya swallowed. " -- is Tracen."

"My wife." He sighed. "She will like you, I hope, or at least tolerate you."

Anaya thought of Bithan, coming to a household with two boys who were inclined to resent her, inclined to resent them in turn, and the daughter she'd had the following year, and the arguements that'd almost sent Bithan and her oldest child back to her parents. "I would not mind being tolerated."

He patted her hand. "You're a good child."

She wasn't, but she clasped her hands and nodded. "Does she like dogs?"

"I -- I don't know.  The children have dogs I think, but I don't recall if -- " he fell silent as another omniwagon approached.  This time, the horns of the beasts had been cut short, and were capped with brass cups.  They got on, and Anaya wondered how large and formal the house was, if Geoff didn't know whether or not his wife liked dogs. "She will like Snow-n-Coal."

  "I hope so."  She reached down and scratched Snow-n-Coal's ears, putting a leg on either side of her.  The dog rested her head on Anaya's knee. "Will the carriers have gotten there first?"

"No.  They'll get there by evening."

They rode in silence until they came to a large gate in a gray wall that was higher than Anaya could reach. "Here." Geoff called.

"Next corner.  Not far," the drover responded.

They were let down at the corner and walked back.  The gates were open, but within the gates, a man sat at the entrance to a small house. "G'afternoon, cousin." he grinned at Geoff, showing gaps where his teeth had fallen out.  He was a wizened man, resting his hands on a knobbed cane. "This the girl?"

Geoff nodded, "Is the Lady at her usual?"

The wizened man nodded. "Twenty carts at the door, until dusk, except for those who'll stay to evening kitchen."

He nodded again. "There may be two carriers coming, with a box each.  Make sure they get a pair of denir, and a meal if they ask after it."

The wizened man cackled. "I shall, if I'm not to my food as well.  I'll tell the boys to keep an eye out."

"Thank you." Geoff said, and began striding up the road that led from the gate to a large, lumpy building, made mainly of gray stone, with sections of lighter gray, and brown, and even a blunt tower that looked to be made of some black stone.

Anaya followed. "'The girl?'"

"Most of the clan knows of you.  I told Tracen about you before I left the first time, and by the time I left this time, word had spread." He sighed. "There will be talk."

"If you'd let me stay -- "

"No.  You're my daughter, I will not leave you out there, with no parent and no guidance." He cut the air with his hand, and she blinked as she saw the breath trailing the motion, fainly gold. "You need education and training, if nothing else."

She scowled, but fell silent.

The building grew larger as they approached, more imposing.  The road ended in a circle, and she saw a dozen or so kiang drawn carts waiting in the circle.  They were painted in gay colors, and some of the kiang had feather crests on their heads.  Geoff walked up to the doorway and used a heavy bronze ring to knock on a metal plate.  The door opened quickly. "Master Merefftor." The man who answered the door grinned. "You're home earlier than expected." He widened the door. "The lady is entertaining." He glanced over his shoulder.  The hallway was large, a pair of doorways opened on either side, while stairs larger than the cott rose at the far end of it.  Hearths were between the doorways, with fires hissing and crackling and warming the chamber.

"We'll just go upstairs, no need to -- "

"Who's to the door?  Is that Magistra Ev'yane?" Something clicked on a tiled floor, growing louder.

Geoff stopped, took a deep breath and looked ruefully at Anaya. "So much for quiet." He stiffened and smiled at the doorway to the right. "Not Ev'yane, Tracen, just me."

The clicking -- footsteps stopped, and then began again. "Well.  You're back early -- "

A woman, clothed in something bright as spring grass came to the entrance and rested a narrow hand on the frame that surrounded the opening.  Hair more gold than wheat was piled atop her head, and curls spilled over, accenting her neck.  Crystals sparkled in her hair, at her ears, at her neck, distracting from the fine lines beginnning to web her throat, and the silver beginning to thread her hair.  Her other hand rose to her throat. "Oh."  She stared at Anaya, eyes flicking at her clothes, at Snow-n-Coal at her feet. "Oh my."

Her surprise didn't sound real.  Anaya looked at the pattern on the floor.  She thought she recognized protective sigils in some of the patterns.  That one there looked like Ureth, a protective sigil Magistra Elsbeth had carved into the hearthstone of the cott.  Though why it was in a circle in the middle of the hallway she didn't quite understand.

"Greetings, lady wife." Geoff's voice had gone stiff.

"Husband." She looked up in time to see the woman, she must be Tracen, incline her head equally stiffly.  Her face was a tranquil mask.

"We'll just -- " Geoff gestured to the stairs, taking Anaya's arm and starting to walk.

"Is that the Merefftor?" A man's voice came from behind Tracen.  She looked over her shoulder, distaste flashing across her face before it settled again into tranquility.

Geoff started to shake his head, but another emotion flashed across Tracen's face, something ugly and smug, and she turned, smiling. "It is, but he's worn to the bone from his trip.  Do let him have a quiet evening at home before you start pestering him with Academy business."

"Damn," he muttered, releasing Anaya's hand. "Go wait at the top of the stairs." he pushed her gently in that direction.

"Nonsense." A pouter pigeon of a man walked past Tracen, tugging a brown robe closed and fastening it. "This is important."

Anaya stepped away from Geoff as he walked to meet the man. "I do hope you can make this brief."  he rubbed his face, "Tracen's correct, I'm worn to the bone, Bev."

Bev waved one hand, the other holding onto a half eaten chicken leg. "This is about the incoming class for the Earthcrafter Academy.  There are just too many of them." He stopped in front of Geoff. "Surely there weren't that many who tested so much more earth bound than anything else.  We're already bursting at the walls -- "  he took a bite of chicken, and grease ran down into his beard.

"You have no more new students than any of the other academies.  We are just seeing more children who test as talented, and who can afford to pay for the schools, and who fail to leave."

"Yes, but we have fifty available beds, and we have seventy five children coming in." Bev finished sucking on the chicken bone and held it out to Anaya. "You, dispose of that."

"Then make room. You don't need three rooms of office, there's six beds." Geoff snapped. "I'm sure the other faculty can manage to keep to one room offices. Some of them are never opened from one year to the next, there are faculty are never there except to teach their classes."

Anaya backed away from them, heading for the stairs, tugging Snow-n-Coal along with her.  It wasn't that hard, the dog smelled the bits of chicken still clinging to the bone and followed it hopefully.

"I can't help it if there are so few good earthcrafters available that we must use any who offer to instruct.  There's little enough pay in teaching." Bev wiped his beard on his sleeve.  Anaya noticed that the sleeves of his robe had other stains, it seemed he habitually

"There's enough prestige in adding 'Teacher at the Earthcrafter Academy' after their names though, I notice.  You have no more and no less to pay your instructors than the other academies." Geoff snapped. "You are expected to teach the same number of students as the other academies.  If you cannot do that I can begin searching for a new head for your academy."

"Geoff wouldn't do that." Tracen left the doorway to stand by Geoff, smiling at Bev.  "I am afraid you really should have waited until tomorrow to talk to him." Her gaze slipped past him to Anaya, then back to Geoff, "Husband, cannot such a decision wait until morning?" She turned to Bev. "Magister Bevodeth, come by tomorrow, before noon, and sit with Geoff, surely you can talk reasonably."

Geoff closed his eyes, and Anaya could almost see him counting to ten. "Yes, that would be better.  In the morning." He took his wife's hand and bent over it. "You are my diplomacy, Tracen."

Bev turned to her and clicked his heels together. "Always soothing words, Lady Merefftor."

"Why don't you go back to the gather and I will join you after I've greeted Geoff properly." She smiled like a courting girl and dimpled up at Geoff, although she stood near to his height.

The Magister Bevodeth ... Bev nodded and went back into the side room.

Geoff and Tracen walked to the foot of the stairs, and Geoff gestured for Anaya to follow.  The three of them, plus Snow-n-Coal went up the stairs to the first landing.  Geoff put his arm around Tracen's shoulders. "I am sorry for that scene." He kissed her cheek. "Sorry for your cosmetics."

She sighed, shaking her head. "Bev has been here every afternoon for the past hand.  If I didn't know better I'd think he was stalking you."

"He likely has been." He turned her face Anaya, still with his arm around her shoulder, "Tracen, this is Anaya'se, Libby's daughter."

She nodded, her mask slipping to show a trace of sadness. "I never got to meet her, but I am saddened for your loss." She slipped form under Geoff's arm and held a hand out to Anaya. "I know she made Geoff happy, even if he never could persuade her to leave her village."

Anaya blinked, then looked down at her hands, one holding Snow-n-Coal's lead, the other the chicken bone.  She nodded, willing at least to try. "They fought, you know, time and time."

Her laugh was a trill. "Families do that, you should hear Geoff and I go at it." She took the chicken bone. "Bevodeth was born an ass, and I daresay he'll die one, with forays into outright idiot."

"Geoff tells me -- " she looked around at this upper hall, smaller, with wooden floors and cloth hangings. " -- Your littlest girl is named for her."

"Elsbeth?  Yes, I suppose she.  Libby comes from Elsbeth, doesn't it." She looked sideways at Geoff. "No wonder you were so insistent on that name, when neither of our clans have it for a heritage name."

He shrugged, "Libby insisted on naming you for my mother, and when Elsbeth was born, she didn't look like an Anaya'se." He gestured. "Did you get rooms ready?"

Tracen nodded, "Mincha would not leave the First Daughter's suite for love nor new clothes, so I readied the Earthcrafter's suite." She turned to Anaya. "We've suites for each of the 'Crafts, even a Magister's Suite, but the servants would gossip like jackdaws with a fresh corpse if we put you there.  I've never even put the head of the Windcrafter's Academy in there, and I like him."

"And putting you there means that if Bevodeth ever has to stay the evening, you can put him into a common suite." Geoff smiled at her.

"Of course." She began walking down the hallway. "The suites are towards the back of the house, with the family sections.  You'll find this is a dreadfully large place, it took me nigh on a year before I stopped asking where I was of the servants.  Most of them are kin, from lesser septs who chose not to strike out on their own." She nodded to a woman wiping a table top. "Thank you Tanis."

The came to a door with a sigil on it. "Earth." Anaya read.

Tracen nodded, and opened it. "Yours now.  Geoff was planning on announcing you to the family at the evening kitchen."

"Evening kitchen?"  Anaya stepped cautiously into the room.  It was tones of brown, wooden brown floor, wooden brown walls, picked out with gold at the ornamental borders of hearth, doors and windows.  green, gold and russet rugs were scattered across the floor.  Chairs and cushioins were grouped thorugh the room, as if people had just left their conversations.

"Evening meal for the clan.  It's served in the main kitchen, although there are smaller kitchens scattered through the Clan House.  Some of the septs and smaller families prefer to eat apart from the rest of us, though most will come through the main kitchen at least once." Geoff stepped into the room behind her. "That's the best place to get gossip."

"You should probably join us at evening kitchen." Tracen said, still standing in the doorway. "Though we'll understand if you don't wish to.  I know Geoff's tired from all the travelling."

She was, but she let Snow-n-Coal go and the dog began investigating the corners and scents of the room. "Will you be there?" She asked Geoff.

He nodded. "It's my duty, I'm Merefftor, clan head."

She understood why his hair had seemed to grow gray quicker than it ought, every year he'd come back with deeper lines and hair running more and more to the color of old wrought iron.  "Then I will too.  Tha shouldn't tell everyone alone, and I want to meet the rest of the family, I guess."

Geoff's face brightened, and he pressed a kiss to her forehead. "Thank tha.  Get a nap, Tracen and I will come get you when it's time.  Bedroom's through there, and I don't think the hearth hound will need to be walked again until evening, since she was squatting every few feet.  Your things will be here by then."

Anaya looked at Snow-n-Coal, who was digging at one of the rugs, rumpling it. "'Twas a new territory, she needed to make it her own."

Tracen's eyebrows rose. "So long as she doesn't do that inside the Clan House, there shouldn't be a problem." She turned to Geoff. "And you.  To bed, you need rest."

He nodded, "I fear tomorrow there may be a protest lodged with the Clan Council, the liftship was captained by a Ganage of clan Devez who thought to get a bit of free work out of Anaya by threatening her with the welfare of the ship."

"Indeed.  You do manage to stir things when you go off on your own." Tracen shook her head. "Come along now." She reached into the room and took Geoff's hand, pulling him from the room. "You need your sleep, or you'll start stuttering at evening kitchen."

On her own, with the door closed behind them, Anaya explored the suite.  There were six rooms to the suite, the room she'd been shown into first, a bathing room, a bedroom dominated by a bed that looked like a dozen people could sleep in it without touching, a second bedroom, smaller and plainer than the rest of the suite, with out windows, but with a door into the hall that opened behind one of the hangings, a workroom with shelves that held some books.  She considered taking one down and trying to read it, but shook her head and kept exploring.  All the suite was earthtoned, decorated in greens and golds and russets, she could all but feel the earthcraft that hummed in the rooms.  It seemed larger than the Clark's Hall in her village, certainly larger than the cott.  She was still puzzling over the second doorway when Snow-n-Coal jumped onto the bed, turned three times 'round and lay down.

In the middle of the bed.  Anaya laughed and untaped her hair, unbraiding it and combing her fingers through, until the worst of the knotting was dealth with, then stripped down to her smock.  It took a bit of puzzling to figure out the bathing room, but she managed to turn the handles and got cold water to flow, and then to turn it off.  It seemed a little strange, not to pump the water up, but she guessed that wouldn't work in so large a building as this clan house.  She filled a bowl with water, stripped off her smock and hung it up, and washed off the worst of the grime of travel, and emptied the bowl, rinsed it, then filled it again with cold water, for Snow-n-Coal to drink.

There were cloths to use to dry off, she used one, and wrapped another around herself and went back to the main bedroom, shoving Snow-n-Coal over and getting under the covers.  She was asleep before the dog finished finding a new place to sleep.

#

Twelve

There was someone nearby, Anaya could tell it, breath disturbed with the other's breath, feet shifted weight and the path responded.  The bed framed in stone, and whispered to her.  She wasn't certain if she liked it.  It certainly gave warning. Snow-n-Coal whined and her tail thumped on the bed.  She didn't sound frightened, Anaya opened one eye.

And looked into a pair of eyes almost level with hers, they looked as dark as Geoff's, but she couldn't tell if that was because that was their color, or because of the heavy curtains covering the windows.  She blinked, the eyes blinked, then the child who belong to them looked away. "Mama, she's awake." he yelled.

She put the boy's age at six, which would make him -- "Are you Lesor?"

His gaze swivelled back, and his eyes widened. "Mother, she knows who I am!" He ran out of the room.

Anaya sat up, keeping the cloth around her.  Her hair had done what it always did if she slept without braiding it.  She yawned again and snapped her fingers to call Snow-n-Coal over.  The dog came, squirming and licking her chin and getting a thorough scratching of her ribs and tummy.  It left her on her back, all four paws in the air, wriggling in delight.

"Anaya?  May I enter?" Tracen asked from the entry room.

"Aye, I'm not dressed though, and my hair -- " She stopped, Geoff's wife would see soon enough.

Tracen entered, still in green, but a softer green, bare of ornaments, and her hair wasn't as stiffly ornate.  Something yellow was draped over one arm.  She stopped in the doorway, "Oh, dear."

Anaya shrugged, "And my combs in my box.  It's not come, has it?"

"I'm afraid not.  Geoff is starting to become concerned, for all they had carriers' guild sigils on their arms." She tilted her head. "Would you like to borrow a comb?  I might have one you can use until have your own again."

She nodded, wondering if Tracen's habit of tilting her head to one side to look up at people, even if they weren't much taller than her was natural or something she'd learned. "Thank you."

The boy peeked from behind her skirts, and when Snow-n-Coal made a "chuff" half-bark, hid behind them again. "I'm afraid Lesor is shy."

"'Tis his age, as much as anything."

Now it was Tracen's turn to nod. "He will warm to you." She came into the bedroom, laying the yellow cloth on the bed. "I believe you are close enough in size to your cousin Spira to wear this.  It's similar in cut to what you wore when you arrived,  but has the advantage of not looking like someone one hands chicken bones to." She moved back to the door. "I'll send someone with the comb."

With the dress was a smock, stockings, but no clogs, Anaya dressed and laced the dress up, slipped her clogs on and went out into the entrance room.  She wondered if it had a formal name, or was just ... a room.  The windows were curtained here as well, she pulled them back, grimacing at the weight and dust of them.  It was still dim in the room, she looked and saw fat lamps in holders around the room.  It was simple enough to bespeak the hearth and walk around the room, touching a finger to the wicks, lighting half of them, no sense in wasting lamp fat, lighting someplace this large must run dreadfully expensive..  She returned to the fireplace, thanking the hearth for its work, returning it to itself.

A woman knocked on the door into the hall, and then opened it and entered without waiting for a response. "Oh."

She was older than Tracen, about as old Goodwife Irena or G'mother Elsa'd been.  Iron gray threaded through otherwise white hair, which lay across her shoulder in a single thick braid.  She was taller than Anaya, though not so tall as Geoff.  She eyed Anaya with bright blue eyes, and shook her head. "Oh, no, that will never do." She held out a comb. "Tracen, the dear girl, sent this for you."

Anaya took it, began attacking her hair. "Thank you."

"You know, I originally approved of what Geoff planned, but now I see, it just won't do." She walked around Anaya, her hands clasped together at the small of her back.  Anaya stepped away from her, once in each direction. "It won't do at all."

"Pardon?" Anaya reached out, felt hearth and breath and path respond, readied something, in case.  It was harder, without bare feet to touch path, or her hands by the fire to touch hearth, but she could.

"The boy's plan.  He thought he'd pass you off as a child of a cousin, sept Wevet or the like, but it just won't do." She sighed heavily. "You're Lumos, by face and form, and as like to your father as an acorn is to the tree it fell from.  You're Geoff's child, more certain than any child Tracen birthed."

"She is his wife."

The old woman snorted. "She was Harn's first, and her heart in the grave with him when she danced at her wedding to Geoff, poor girl."

"I thought it was an alliance of clans." Anaya went to one of the clusters of chairs and seated herself, calling Snow-n-Coal over and scratching her fur.

"So 'twas." She nodded, seating herself in one of the other chairs in the cluster, brushing her skirts smoothed. "'Twixt Geoff and Tracen, alliance, 'twixt her and Harn, begun so, but not by the end of the h'hand."

Anaya nodded, finished scratching the dog and set to combing her hair out so she could braid it and stitch it up into the braided coronet she was accustomed to. "You say she -- " She knew the words she could use, but she was afraid the old woman would faint at some of them.  The village had words for it, but she didn't know what a city-bred woman might think.

The old woman waved her hand, heavy with rings, in the air, dismissing Anaya's words. "If she did, it was with Geoff's blessing, once they'd an heir between them.  He had his country doxy."

Anaya stopped, comb in the air, and looked at the old woman. "Do not call my mother that." she said, biting each word out like it was a stone.

"Well, she's dead now, so no matter what she's called." Another dismissing wave of the be-ringed hand.

"She was my mother.  You do not call her a doxy, or a trollop, or any kind of insult."  She felt hearth at her command and curled her fingers to hold it. "She is dead, and buried, and I am a child yet by the law, but I will not hear an insult to her and let it go unanswered."

She raised her hand and let the other woman see the fire she held within. "Do we understand one another?"

The old woman blinked. "You are disrespectful to your elders."

"I am respectful, where earned." Anaya released the hearth back to the fire, watched it flee from her hand, returned to combing out her hair. "You haven't earned it." She kept an eye on the old woman, as she combed.  Under her

"Arrogant too."

"Mother said I took that from Geoff."

The old woman snorted. "I doubt that, Merefftor does not run to arrogance."

"No, Geoff said I took it from him as well."

With a face that might've accompanied finding half a worm in a sour green apple, the old woman pushed herself to her feet and glared down at Anaya. "He will not succeed in hiding you in the clan if he tries to call you anything but sept Lumos.  We have always bred the truest to type."

"And you are kin then?" She raised her eyebrows, keeping check on her temper, but not easily.

"I am Geoff's aunt Trifta, wed into clan Aniel, and widowed back into Merefftor." She pursed her lips.  She'd said that like it was some pronouncement, like when Markus-Club-Foot read the proclamations from the government.  Anaya sat with still raised eyebrows, combing her hair and taming it. "He'd do better calling you a bastard left by Lesor or Harn on some country wench, found when your village was examined for talent.  You seem to have a mild skill with firecrafting, at least."

"I do not care what he calls me.  I am here because he said I was too young to remain in my village." She kept silent on the matter of Magister Evin, and the rank she'd left in the village.  It was no concern of this meddlesome old biddy.

"You will care quick enough." The old woman said sourly and left.

Anaya relaxed into the chair and let the comb drop from fingers now too numb to grasp it.  She leaned forward, holding her face in her hands, shaking.

She wanted to go home.  Was this aunt Trifta a common sort of kin she'd have to deal with now?  Bad enough with the squabbles and rivalries of the village she'd grown up in, and she feared the whole of the village would fit in one massive wing of this "Clan House." and still rattle like the last beans in the box.

She wondered if she'd be left here until she died of starvation, or if this Trifta had been sent to fetch her to the "evening kitchen".

Someone knocked, and she looked up. "What?" Had the old biddy come back to needle more at her?  She'd not find it so easy, drat her.

Tracen opened the door and peeked in, "Anaya?" She took in Anaya's expression and came in, pulling a chair close and taking her hands. "What's wrong?  Are you missing your mother?  I am not her, I cannot be her, but I had hoped we could become friends."

Anaya shook her head.  Tracen opened her hand and pressed a comb into it. "Here, I'm sorry it took me so long, but I wanted to get one I thought you'd like.  Geoff made it for me when we were first betrothed.  It was when he told me about your mother, and we came to our bargain."

She curled her fingers over the wood, feeling whorls and lines in it. "I thought you sent a comb with that woman."

"What woman?"

Anaya reached down and picked up the comb her aunt had handed her. "She said her name was Trifta."

"Oh." Tracen turned the comb over in her hands. "Her." She tossed it into the fire.

"You do not like her?"

Tracen shook her head. "Nor she me.  She is doubtless pouring poison into Geoff's ears as we sit." She took back her comb, got to her feet and went behind Anaya, combing her hair. "Here, the sooner we finishe this, the sooner we can go face her down."

"She said I was disrespectful, and arrogant." Anaya looked blindly into the fire. "Is everyone here like her?"

Tracen sighed. "Is everyone in your village like you?"

"No."

"Then.  No.  Everyone is different, most do not know about you yet, but they will by tomorrow." She tugged on a knot in Anaya's hair, then set herself to working it out.

There was something comforting in her task.  The last time she'd had someone comb her hair, it'd been Mother, and she'd been what -- twelve? "She said Geoff planned to say I was a minor cousin from some sept 'Wevet' but that I looked too much like him."

"Well, you do look too much like Geoff to be a not-so-close cousin." Tracen chuckled. "I told him so, before he lay down for his nap."

Anaya nodded.

Tracen finished combing her hair and divided into four, plaiting it. "We are not certain if it would be best to acknowlege you as his child, and face the scandal it would cause, or call you Harn or Lesor's child.  Lesor more like, Harn -- didn't."

"Harn wasn't unfaithful?"

She sighed. "No.  He wasn't."

Anaya wondered at what hadn't been said. Tracen finished plaiting her hair. "There.  Leave it down.  Are you ready to go?"

Anaya stood. "Can we take Snow-n-Coal outside?  She's been a good pup."

"Will she allow other people to look to her?  We can hand her off for a walk to one of the servants if she will."

Anaya nodded, and got the lead, which meant that Snow-n-Coal had to be chased down through the suite of rooms before she allowed herself to be caught and the lead attached.  They met someone in the hall, and after addressing him by name, asking after his daughter and hs wife, Tracen gave him the dog to walk in the garden and return to the suite Anaya'd been assigned to. "Thank you." Anaya said.

He looked a little startled, nodded and headed off, chirping to the dog and chuckling as she capered and bounced around him.

They went up stairs, down stairs, across corridors and ended at an ornately carved door. "The Merefftor's office.  We have a little while before the evening kitchen begins."

"Why do you call it that, and not 'evening meal' or even 'supper'?"

""Tradition." Tracen knocked on the door, they heard something muffled from the other side, and she opened the door.

The old woman who'd been rude to Anaya, Trifta, was in the room with Geoff, sitting by the fire, a cup too delicate to be called a mug in her hand, " -- dreadfully rude to me, Geoff, it won't do.  She'll drag the clan into scandal, and I am warning you now of it."

"Aunt Trifta." Tracen swept into the room, leaning over and kissing the air by the old woman's cheek. "Nobody told me you'd chosen to leave your rooms.  I thought you had decided the evening kitchen was too disrupting one of your 'delicate nature.'"

The old woman snorted. "As if I'd let the boy foist his bastard on the clan without looking her over first."

Geoff came over to Anaya and hugged her. "I hope she didn't upset you too much." He whispered, then stepped back. "That does look good on you.  I'm glad Spira had something you could wear.  She said you don't have to worry about returning it, and that she wants to take you shopping."

Tracen laughed. "You offered to pay Spira's tailor bills?  Geoff, she'll beggar the clan entire and Anaya still won't have anything to wear."

"Nonsense, you're going along with them to hold the reins.  I said Spira could take Anaya shopping, I didn't say she could take herself shopping."  Geoff smiled at Tracen, his arm still around Anaya's shoulders. "Aunt Trifta was advising me how we should go forward with you." He smiled down at Anaya.

"The boy's got a want-wit idea of admitting the whole of it, his country lover, the girl, and that he plans on forcing her on the clan as his eldest." She shifted her cup, aiming it at Geoff, then Anaya. "Shameful."

"I am tired of the lies, aunt."

"And I don't mind.  It would make young Harn pay attention, knowing he's not likely to become Merefftor automatically." Tracen's voice sounded alittle strained, but when Anaya looked sharply at her, she tilted her head, smiling. "It won't be the first time the legitimate line of Merefftor's been challenged."

Anaya wanted to deny that she wanted to lead a clan, but Geoff squeezed her shoulders. "I think you should go, aunt, we've yet to introduce Anaya to the bulk of her brothers and sisters."

Trifta sniffed, glared sourly at Anaya, then at Tracen, and slapped down her cup on a small table  beside her chair and left.  The weight of Geoff's arm increased on Anaya's shoulders as he relaxed.  Tracen remained by the door.

"Shall we go?"

Geoff nodded.  They walked through more stairs and hallways, ending up at another door, almost as ornately carved as the one to Geoff's office. "I asked that the children be gathered here, all but little Elsbeth." Tracen said, her hand on the latch lift. "We can send the staff away and talk to them in private."

"Well reasoned." Geoff said, bowing to her slightly.

Tracen smiled, and they walked through the door into chaos.  It took time.  The children ran towards their mother, all but burying her in their affection, then bowed to their father.  He shook hands, patted heads and then when all four had been greeted and were assembled in a line, put his hand on Anaya's back, and pulled her to a spot before all of them. "Harn, Mincha, Teyana, Lesor, I want you to meet your older sister, Anaya."

"No she's not." the one called Tenaya said, and stuck her thumb in her mouth. "Jus' got one, and that's her." She pointed at Mincha.

Mincha nodded. "I'm the biggest sister." She pointed her thumb at herself. "She's just a 'nuther grownup."

"No." Geoff said. "She's your older sister, she grew up in the country, but she's come to live with us now."

"Don't want her." the oldest boy, Harn exploded. "I'm oldest."

"You're the oldest son." Tracen said gently. "There's nothing changed about that."

"Don't care." Harn stamped his foot, "I'm the oldest, not her."

"Harn -- " Geoff started.

The boy ran at Anaya, fists up to hit at her.

"Harn, no!." Tracen called.

She side stepped, caught him, trapped his arms at his size and put him on the floor, holding him while he yelled at her, trying to kick her.  She'd dealt with children that didn't want to take their medicine, and as opponents went, Harn was a bit pudgy and not much of a fighter.  She nodded to Tracen and stop Geoff's wife from coming to her son's aid.

She knelt by him, gripping his arms and ignoring his attempts to kick.  They weren't very effective, with his face to the floor. "Let me up!" he demanded.

"Why?" Anaya asked calmly.

"I'm the heir of the Merefftor." He squirmed rather like a frog in a pond, now she thought on it.  She was thankful that she'd been a rough and tumble child when she was Harn's age.

"So?  I'm older than you, and you attacked me." She pointed out.

"Anaya, let him up." Tracen wrung her hands, standing over them. "Please."

Anaya looked up at her, at Geoff, behind her, and released her half-brother.  The first thing he did on getting up was swing at her again, and again, found himself on the floor. "That was stupid," she told him.

"Is he always like this?" Anaya asked Geoff and Tracen.

"He's been upset since Geoff left last time, and told him he was bringing him back a sister.  He thought -- " Tracen's hand went to her waist, and she shrugged.

"You're not my sister." Harn yelled. "I want you to go away." His oldest sister, Mincha, she recalled, stood by, wringing her hands like her mother, looking uncertain if she should join in, or stay out.

"We've neither of us a choice, so we may as well try to get along."

"Anaya, let him up." Geoff ordered. "You shouldn't bully your younger brother."

"Then tell him to stop trying to hit me." But she let Geoff take hold of him, standing up and brushing her knees off.

Harn lunged at Anaya again, but Geoff held him back, and shook him. "Stop that.  You know better."

"Don't care.  You made Momma cry."

Anaya looked at Tracen, and decided that she and Geoff's wife should talk.  Soon.  She looked back at Geoff, "I don't mind if you claim I'm the child of one of your brothers, it never made much difference to me."

"But I want to claim you."

"It matters to him." With her chin, she indicated Harn, still trying to pull free, but seeming to come to turns with his captivity. "Might consider that."

Geoff nodded, "Lesor it is, then."

"But I didn't do anything." the smaller boy wailed, and launched himself at Geoff's legs, latching onto one. "I didn't."

"No, no." Geoff reached down and rubbed his hair, almost as black as his own. "Uncle Lesor who you're named for.  Not you, little man."

He was fond of his children, Anaya could see, even Harn, now that Tracen'd taken him in her arms and was rubbing his back.  The boy cried noisily, nose in her shoulder.  Anaya stood back from them, envy rising like a bloated dead pig after a flood.  Wasn't pretty, wasn't sweet smelling, but there it was.

"So, to the clan you are a gift from a visit Lesor made out of the city before he passed away.  Most folk won't ask too closely, you're Merefftor by the look, no denying that, just the charge that Devez might make about their ship."

Anaya nodded, and the children were gathered up, and they all left the children's rooms.  Walking down, Anaya brought up the rear of the line.  Harn held his mother's hand, while Geoff held Lesor on one arm, and Teyana held onto his other hand.  Minta walked ahead of them all.

Harn looked back at Anaya and stuck his tongue out at her.  She made a face back at him and stuck her tongue out.

The evening kitchen was held in a large room, filled with triple rows of tables, and a true kitchen to one side.  Geoff, Tracen and the children headed a table that lay across the head of the room, and places had been set for all of them.

They ate, roasted bits of meat over crackerbread, a pickled vegetable salad, weak ale, plates shared between dining partners.  Unfortunately, Anaya'd been gifted with Geoff with a plate partner.  He grabbed the meat up and stuffed it in his mouth until he drooled meat juice, his cheeks straining.

"You know." Anaya took up a radish and bit into it. "If you keep eating like that, you'll turn so fat they'll oink as you walk down the road."

He blinked, then spat the meat out all over the plate, ruining the salad as well. "Don't care.  I'll be the Merefftor, nobody'll dare insult me."

"Oh, they will." At least the ale wasn't shared, Anaya took a sip from her cup and another bite of radish.  She wished she'd taken a larger piece. "Just not to your face.  They will laugh at you too."

"No they won't.  I'll stop them."  He picked at the plate, picking up a piece of the meat he'd spat out and nibbling on it.

"No matter to me." She shrugged and looked to the kitchen to see if there was more food coming, or if a single pickled radish was all her supper.

There was more food, and after the meat and salad, Anaya picked up a serving fork and held it on one hand, eyeing Harn when he started to snatch the fish stew that followed, and readying the fork to stab.  He let her eat, glaring at her, until she finished about half of the bowl and sat back from it.

He picked at it, having eaten too much of the meat and crackerbread.  Someone came and took the first plate away, then the fish stew.

Next came a bowl of apples from last fall.  She took one, passed the bowl, after watching it make its way down the table.  Harn banged his on the table surface, bruising it beyond use and then leaving it to dribble apple juice and stain the cloth that covered the table.

Geoff waited until most of the people had finished their apples, then stood up and walked to stand before the table, holding up his hands.  Anaya felt him pull magic, and then she felt Breath respond. "Clan Merefftor, we are increased today."

Ah, he'd bespoken breath to make his voice carry.  Mother knew that one too, as did most folk who could windcraft. "I was away from the city, and happened upon a woman who had known my brother Lesor, before he passed, and he had left her a gift." He held out his hand to Anaya, "dear child."

Anaya stood, hiking her skirts up to get over the bench, almost tripping when Harn stepped on her hem.  She went to Geoff's side, and he positioned her before him. "Clan, I gift you with the acquaintance of Anaya'se, of sept Lumos, daughter owned of Lesor, sept Lumos."

She winced, there was one thing that particular bespeaking couldn't do, and that was make the voice only loud enough to be heard, regardless of the distance.  Either those nearby were deafened, or those distant heard nothing.

Geoff chose to ensure that the distant heard clearly. "She is a bit old, but she shall be going to the First Academy to test and train, and from there, to Wind, or Ocean, Mountain or Flame."

She felt a stirr of breath at her back and turned, Tracen stood, cup in hand, "Perhaps she shall even go from First Academy to Second Academy."

"Perhaps, my dear." Geoff turned and gestured to the room again, "Kins folk, please, make my brother's child welcome."

Cups began tapping the tabletops, first a few, then more, then finally most of the room was tapping.  Anaya looked at them, spotted a group in the back, an old woman with plaited, almost pure white hair.  She sat with both hands on the table, glaring at the head table, as did the small cluster of people around her.

The cup tapping tapered off, and Geoff let the bespeaking that'd amplified his voice lapse, they were allowed to return to their seats. "Is that all of 'evening kitchen?'" She leaned forward, looking at Tracen and her father.

"More or less.  If you report to the kitchen proper you'll end up doing dishes.  but not in that dress." Geoff said. "I do it every month or so, to keep myself humble.  It's difficult to forget you are merely human, when you're up to your elbows in greasy pots and suds, although it's soothing."

"I, of course, sometimes work as well, we all do." Tracen said, "I allow myself to be caught to assist the cooking normally, that is my strength."

"If you go see the head of staff, I'll take you in the morning, or Tracen will, everyone works, a little, beyond tending to themselves."

Anaya nodded. "What sort of work?"

"Cooking." Tracen said.

"Washing dishes."

"Dusting a hall." Minta said.

"I he'p feed the ducks."

"I help Minta." Tenaya said.

"And what do you do to help?" Anay asked Harn, trying a last time to be pleasant to him.

"I am studying to be the Merefftor when Father can't do it any more." he said, as if that answered everything.

"Good, you can walk my dog." Anaya told him.

"You have a dog?  You got to bring a dog with you?" Harn demanded.  He turned to his father. "Why can't I have a dog?"

Geoff exchanged a look with Anaya. "We'll see how you look after Anaya's dog first.  A dog isn't something you can have and then ignore.  It's a pet, a companion, not a toy, and you can't let someone else take care of it, just paying attention to it when you want something to play with."

"But I'd take care of it." Harn bounced a little on his seat. "She's got a dog," he was almost whining.

"Let's see how you help me with Snow-n-Coal first.  There are times I don't like how much work a dog is, she has to be brushed, and fed, and walked, and picked up after, and cleaned up after.," She ticked things off on her fingers, "I have to make sure she's got something to chew on, and toys to play with, so she doesn't get bored and start tearing things apart."

"But I -- "

"We will see how you do with this for a h'hand, Harn, and if you do well, and Anaya says you do well, we'll talk about a dog."

"But she'll lie, for spite, say I did -- "

"No, Harn." Tracen said. "You heard your father."

"Now, why would I lie?" Anaya got to her feet.

He glared at her, but his eyes fell first. "'Cause you're a meany doo-doo head." Lesor piped up.

Anaya bit her lip to keep from laughing. "If I ask, someone can point me to the gardens, or to my rooms?"

Tracen nodded, "I'll be by in the morning.  Geoff promised us both to go shopping with Spira, and you'll probably have to go to the First Academy, to arrange testing to see where you fit there."

Anaya nodded.

Back up in the Earthcrafter's suite, Snow-n-Coal was starting to chew on the corner of a familiar box.  Anaya knelt by it and hugged the dog, smelling the out of doors that clung to her fur.  The dog licked her face, her tail thumping Anaya's legs. "Silly hound."

She unpacked her books, the dog rug, put a chunk of wood down for her to chew on, and undressed, going to bed.

#

Thirteen

Come the morning, the sun was barely lightening the narrow space between the two halves of the curtains when Snow-n-Coal began whining at the doorway.  Anaya got up, dressed in one of her favorite kirtles, and got the dog's lead.  She might get lost, but the dog knew the way outside, and led her down to gardens that looked more civilized than anything she'd seen as a garden.  It was all still winter-dark and sterile, but when she slipped her foot out of her clog, and touched the ground, she could feel the path.

It didn't feel like the path outside her door, but it was the same path, she could sense that, stronger here than locked away in the Clan House.  She let Snow-n-Coal off the lead and found a bench to sit on, letting her feet touch the ground and acquaintting herself with the feel and voice the Path took here.  It was different, strange, she could feel others touching the ground as she did, but they seemed ... oddly deaf to what the Path had to tell them.  It reached towards them, but they were like deaf men in the fog, feeling their way, but unknowing that there were others out there.

It seemed rather pitiful, but she took her feet away from the ground and slipped her clogs back on.  The sun had finished coming up while she'd been listening, it painted the sky in brilliant streamers of colors, tinted the buildings around her with gold, warming the world.  She was hungry too.  Snow-n-Coal was probably starving.

She called the dog, put her lead back on and took her back to the Clan House, letting both of their noses go in search of something to break their fast.

The evening kitchen seemed to be the place where most meals were held.  Anaya took Snow-n-Coal, got them both bowls of porridge, crumbling bits of bacon for the dog, putting a bit of butter and salt in her own, adding a bowl of water for the dog, and a cup of small ale for herself.

She found the dog in the middle of a group of children, trying to lick all their faces at once.  She shooed them away, putting down the dog's food before she sat by herself.

The children, most of them, went away, only one or two staying to try to pet Snow-n-Coal. "You'd be better off not doing that." Anaya told them. "It's not smart to bother a dog when she's eating."

"Why not?" one asked.

"It's like poppa, when he hasn't had his tea yet." another one said.  The first child nodded, and they left.

Anaya ate in silence, took the dog's bowl back and refilled it, then sat by her, sitting and sipping the ale while she thought about her own normal morning tisane, peppermint, bilberry leaves, and chicory, sometimes a little honey if she thought she needed a little more sweet, or if someone'd paid Mother in honey.

But all the stores she'd earned and Mother had left had been left for Magister Evin.  Even her morning blend.

She allowed herself half a rasher of bacon, giving the other half to Snow-n-Coal as a final treat.  They went outside again, and the dog ran around the garden, until Tracen found her. "I was looking all over for you." She sat next to Anaya. "I finally had to use bespeaking to locate you."

She nodded, "I felt the magic.  You used -- air, didn't he?"

Tracen huffed, "Yes."

"I felt it, but not how it was done.  I would like to learn it, if you are willing to teach me."  Anaya watched Snow-n-Coal dig at something in one of the spaded plots of ground, and hoped there wasn't anything there that shouldn't be dug up.

"I -- " she blinked. "I could do that.  If you don't mind learning from me.  I barely passed First Academy, and there was never a question of going to one of the others.  There is a lot of competition."

"But the man in charge of the Windcrafters' Academy, he said he was crowded."

"Yes, but for every hundred children who apply to First Academy, only ten are accepted.  Of twenty who begin learning, half will go home after their first year and be told not to waste the coin to come back.  The remaining ten, one will manage to be accepted into Wind, one to Ocean, one to Mountain, one to Flame.  One, maybe two, will have balanced enough magic to go on to Second Academy." She shrugged, "I was one of the four who managed to survive my second year, graduate, and be told I could go no further."

"Still.  Ninety never began First Academy, and five more never got to their second year." Anaya offered, gripping the rough stone of the bench. "One of two's not bad, when you think, ninety-five didn't even get that far."

Tracen sighed. "It's hard to remember that, when I'm wed to the Merefftor." She pushed off from the bench. "Come, we have to spend the morning shopping, Spira is waiting."

"What is she like?"

"Spira?  You will like her, everyone does.  She is wed to your cousin Frey, he is named Geoffrey as well, but -- " She gestured. "We have too many Geoffreys."

"I understand, my village has -- six Johanns, and that many Elsbeths, or more."  Anaya stood and whistled for Snow-n-Coal.  The dog looked up, then went back to digging, clumps of dirt flying out behind her.  At least her concentration allowed Anaya to catch her the easier.

They returned Snow-n-Coal to Anaya's rooms, then went to another section of the massive building.  The door opened as soon as Tracen knocked on it. "Ah, I was just waiting for you." The woman who answered the door bounced and clapped her hands. "Shall we go?  I have such ideas."

She was older than Anaya, but not as old as Tracen, a little larger than Anaya, a little shorter than her, but Anaya could see how clothes for her would fit.  She wore a bright red gown, trimmed with gold and with the edges of an embroidered smock showing at neck and wrists.  A large hat in the same color as her gown with white feathers sat on top of her dark, swept up hair.  The brim was larger than a platter.

"You were?"

"Of course, dear Frey told me that the Merefftor wasn't letting me take the dear child out unaccompanied.  Your husband is so very very cautious, really."  She stamped her foot, but then ruined it by peering at Anaya. "Oh, i see why I had to give up one of my gowns.  We're quite the same size, though you're a little less -- " she patted her breasts. " -- well, after three children, I wouldn't fit into that one any more, not without looking like I earned my coin on my back."

She left the rooms, closing the door behind her after calling in to someone whose answer was indistinct. "Are we taking one of the kiang carts?"

"I requested one, it depends if there is one available." Tracen began leading back, the way they'd come.

Spira took Anaya's arm and giggled, the sound odd to Anaya's ears. "I hope there is, I really prefer one of them to an omni, although you have to admit they are dreadfully convenient.  You have no control of who gets on them though.  I rode one to go see dear Frey in his office the other hand, and I swear that the most smelly men got on.  Like fish they smelled, and not fresh fish, either." She waved her hand in front of her face. "I am still not eating fish, though the stew last night smelled delicious."

"It was good." Anaya admitted, dodging a particularly ambitious feather as Spira turned her head to greet someone going up the stairs.

They reached the front of the building, and there was a cart with seats, a quartet of kiang harnessed to it, a young man standing at their heads. "Oh good." Spira interrupted a tale of finding just the perfect blue cloth for robes for her husband. "Hello Durin."

The young man looked up from giving something to the kiang. "Goodwife Spira." He touched a finger to his forehead in respect to each of them.

"Are you driving us?"

"No." Tracen accepted his hand to step into the cart. "I am.  I didn't want you to be tempted by having someone who could carry packages for you.  Did your little brother get back yet?"

"Yes, Lady, out of breath, but he said it's done." Durin touched his forehead again. "Thank you for asking.  He's getting another first meal."

"Oh, pooh." Spira let herself be seated, arranging her skirts so they took up most of one bench. "You know me too well, Tracen."

"Indeed I do." Tracen took the leads as Anaya got into the cart. "We are shopping for Anaya."

"Not even a feather for myself?"

"No."

Spira laughed, and after a moment, Tracen joined her. "I enjoy clothes.  When Frey and I were first married I would get new clothes at the thought of an occaision to wear it.  I've gotten better."

Tracen snorted, clicking to start the cart moving.

"I have.  I just enjoy re-making what I've already bought."

"Unfortunately, that is almost as expensive as buying new." Tracen tossed over her shoulder, stopping the kiang as the cart came to the gate. "Gaffer Dur.  It's morning, we're not at quarrel with any other clan, why are the gates still closed?"

There was a mumbling noise from the cott beside the gates, and a woman opened the door and came out. "The postern gate's open, you have feet, are you so -- " She blinked at Tracen, putting a pair of lenses to her eyes. "Pardon, Lady, I thought it was one of those self important laggards."

"I understand." Tracen handed Spira the leads for the kiang and got down from the cart. "Let me help you."

"I'd not have been so rude if I'd known it was you.  The laggards, some of them fuss at having to to use the postern gate.  Think they're too important."

"Any names?" The gates squeaked as they were pulled open.

The woman flushed, shaking her head and backing away from Tracen. "I'd not cause trouble where none's meant.  It's high spirits, nothing more."

Tracen nodded and returned to the cart, taking the leads and clucking to get the kiang moving again.

Tracen took them to a district filled with small shops, leaving the kiang cart at a park where other carts waited, and paid a boy to look after it. "We are in your hands now, Spira.  Lead on."

Spira giggled like a young girl again, and strode off, leaving them to trail behind her.  Anaya exchanged a worried look with Tracen, but Geoff's wife just smiled serenely and kept walking.

Almost the whole of the morning vanished in a rainbow of colors and cloths, in buttons and lacing cords, in linen and wool and pins that jabbed Anaya in places she'd rather not think about.  Spira and Tracen tried to talk her into braids and trims other ornaments, but Anaya refused.  Between the quality of the cloth and the clarity of the colors, she knew Geoff was spending a fortune on her, she'd not spend money that wasn't hers and on things she wouldn't enjoy.  She refused to go to the hatmaker too, although Tracen agreed with her there.  She asked the tailor for squares of plain, undyed linen and a pair of needles, and thread.  She would hem her own kerchiefs, even if Tracen and Spira insisted that she couldn't make her own clothes any more. "You are being tested for First Academy, and like to enter it, if Geoff is correct about your talents.  Your time is better spent studying, not stitching." Tracen tried to take the needles and thread from her.

Spira shook one of the squares of linen out with a snap. "I've not enough talent to fill a quarter denir, and I can hem." She wrinkled her nose. "And you should use finer cloth than this.  It reflects ill on the Clan."

"It is calming work." Anaya tried to take the cloth away, but Spira flicked it away.

"If you insist." She lifted her chin and called over the head tailor. "Not this, the smock linen you offered us before.  Five of them." She turned to Anaya. "Would that be enough of them?"

She nodded.  She'd never had more than three kerchiefs in her life, and two of those hand downs from Other

The tailor bowed and went to do as she asked.  She returned with a small stack of different cloths.  Tracen and Spira sorted through them, picking one set out. "This will do, and two squares of veiling silk." Spira said, "For special days."

The squares were rolled around a smoothed stick, the thread and needles used to secure the cloth, and the whole wrapped in turn with a piece of coarse cloth to keep them clean.  Anaya took the bundle.

They went to something like a Clark's Hall, only it fed people, it did not offer shelter.  There were shelter halls, and eating halls, and seldom were they the same.  The meal was simple, a mostly vegetable soup, with a few bits of mutton, softbread, and a tisane.  They returned to the cart, and Tracen drove them to another section of the city.  The buildings here weren't so close and massive as the ones Anaya had ridden on the omniwagon through, but they were still larger than anything she'd seen, other than the Clan House.

There was a wall, an open gate that gave way to a small yard laid out with flagstones.  An impressive entrance faced the gate, and the building had a large number of windows, some shuttered, some open.  Young voices drifted through the open ones.  Tracen and Anaya left Spira in the cart, and went into the room.

Within the building there were children, many children, they sat in rooms they passed, they hurried through the halls, they stopped and stared at Anaya, at Tracen.  Tracen held onto Anaya's hand and led her to a room, "I believe you were told to expect us?  I am Tracen, wed into Merefftor, and this is Anaya'se, sept Lumos, also clan Merefftor."

The man behind the desk stood. "I'll tell the head of academy, and be right back."

He entered another room, closing the door behind him.  Tracen patted Anaya's hand. "If they can test you today, I'll be back to get you before evening kitchen, or send someone."

"Will it take that long?"

Tracen sighed. "When I was tested, I was ten, and it took two days, but that was the annual testing, and there were a great many other children.  I do not know how long it will take if you are the only one being tested."

The door opened again. "The head will see you." the man said, holding the door open and gesturing them in.

The next room had a large desk, chairs, a rank of shelves filled with books, and behind the desk, a woman with fading reddish hair flowing over her shoulders sat. "Lady Merefftor." She stood, pointing at a pair of chairs before the desk. "The Merefftor told me to expect you, before he left the city so quickly last time.  Is this the girl?"

The gaze she turned on Anaya was blank, neither welcoming nor threatening, but certainly measuring.  Anaya blinked, she'd not felt the bespeaking, but there was an aftertaste of magic when the academy head re-seated herself. "Aye, 'tis." Tracen said. "Anaya, this is Magistra Leorenz, sept Agave, clan Dipatze

The academy head looked through papers on her desk, picking one up and peering at it, her lips moving as she read. "You are ... fourteen?"

"Fifteen, coming onto sixteen." Anaya corrected.

Magistra Leorenz pursed her lips. "That is old for testing.  Why were you not seen to at ten, or even elven at the latest?"

"Seen?"

Tracen leaned forward in her chair, putting a hand on Anaya's arm. "Anaya grew up at the edge of the wilds, there is no formal training, or testing there.  I do not believe it has been visited for other than formal certification of the village magistra."

Leorenz winced, shuffling her papers. "And the Merefftor wonders why I push for more stringent testing in the outlying lands." She sighed and picked up the same piece of paper again. "When word came of the Merefftor's return last night, I contacted my best testing teachers and asked them if they could wait at my convenience today." Still looking down, she shifted her eyes to look up at them. "I expected you earlier."

"We went shopping." Tracen raised her eyebrows. "You were told of that, I sent a runner from the Clan House before I arranged for a cart.  He had returned before I left."

"That does not excuse your lateness." Magistra Leorenz pursed her lips. "Even Merefftor ought to know better than to -- "

"You were told that the Merefftor believed there would be a child of some talent, who would need testing to see where she belonged within the Academies." Tracen's voice was almost apologetic. "I do not know how you discovered my husband returned last night, though I can guess."

The ripples that flowed through the room tasted of magic, though again, she could sense no bespeaking.  Was it a function of the room itself.  She slipped a foot from her clog and touched the floor, allowing Path to speak to her.

 "I also told you that we would be here after midday, and would wait on you then.  If that is not convenient, shall we make arrangements for a later time?"

Magic.  Old magic steeped in the bones of the buidling, layer on layer, in the stone that built it, old power serving to heighten the power of the Academy's Head.  She wondered if magic like this served the master by title or if it was something Magistra Leorenz had developed.  It was woven, Path and Breath, Well and Hearth, but there were gaps.

"Perhaps we should.  It is rude to expect the whole of the Academies to dance because a chance begotten child happens to have enough talent to impress -- "

Anaya pushed, clenching one fist tightly around the source of the push.  The power that'd been allowing the Magistra to intimidate Tracen, to intimidate anyone who entered this, her place of power flowed away.  It wouldn't last long, there was too much of Well to banish it, and tamped down in one fashion, magic always found a way out.  It worked though.  The magistra stopped talking, mouth open.

"Anaya?" Tracen looked at her.

She pushed herself to her feet, still holding the room's magics at bay. "She doesn't want to talk with us today.  We'll go back to the Clan House."

The magistra gaped at Anaya. "What -- what are you doing?"

Tracen blinked and rose to her feet. "Are you -- ?"

Anaya nodded, not daring to speak  When it came back, the bespeaking would be -- loud, and maybe messy.  The room began to recede, the magic didn't like to be pushed aside, it pushed back, murmuring into her ears.

"And she's never been tested?" The magistsra's voice sounded tiny, like someone talking into a well to, or around a corner.

"No.  Anaya -- " The murmur was growing, now it sounded like the winds rushing past the liftship, when they were coming here.

Anaya felt the rushing grow to a roar, and realised she couldn't hold it at bay much longer.  She unclenched her hand, and the bespeaking rushed back.

Magistra Leorenz's hair flared out, standing almost on end, the papers on her desk scattered, as well as her ink pot, her pens, and several books flew from the shelves.  A thunderclap roared in Anaya's ears, deafening her for a heartbeat.

She decided she wouldn't try that again.  Her legs didn't want to hold her up right now.

Both Tracen and the magistra were staring at her. "Are you all right, Anaya?"

Anaya swallowed. "I will be." Tracen's voice didn't sound quite normal yet, she considered trying to shake her head, but was afraid it'd fall off. "Since she doesn't want to see us today, we'll make an appointment and come back then." She got to her feet, moving slowly as Goodwife Irena in a flare of her rheum stiffness.  She swallowed, practiced breathing and stepped to the side of her chair, then held onto its back.

"You did that." Magistra Leorenz looked shaken.

She risked nodding.

The magistra stood. "Stay here."

"No.  We want to leave." Tracen came to Anaya's side and helped hold her up. "We'll make an appointment, since you're too important to to see us."

The Magistra ignored her, striding to the door and opening it. "Tell the testing Magistrae to come to the school meeting room immediately."

"Certainly, may I ask -- "

"No.  You may not, and you will not talk of it."

"Yes, Magistra." Magistra Leorenz closed the door and returned to her desk, her hair still half standing up from the backwash. She dug through the papers still on her desk and finally dropped to her knees, scrabbling through the ones on the floor.

"Here." She picked one up and returned to her desk. "The presence of talent is established. Who taught you?" She gestured at the the chairs. "Sit down, sit down."

"My mother. She was our village magistra, certified, her father city-trained and certified." Anaya sat down confused by the Academy Head's abrupt change of mood and helpfullness

"What clan was he?" she demanded.

"I don't know, I never asked.  It wasn't important."

The magistra left the room, and Tracen dragged the two chairs around so they faced each other, and sat in the other, taking Anaya's hands in hers.  They felt so warm. "Anaya, what did you do?  The room went -- strange for a short while, then I felt it all rush back, and the papers, and the books, and Magistra Leorenz's hair -- what did you do?"

"This room, this place, has bespeaking in it, to make us feel small, or her bigger.  I pushed it away, but when it came back, it -- it splashed.  Magic goes that." It was the best explanation she could think of.  Mother would've understood, but Mother was gone.

Tracen released her hands and sat back. "And you asked me to teach you the bespoken finding?"

Anaya risked another nod, glad to feel her head not want to keep falling forward or back. "But, I don't know that one."

Tracen laughed.

#

Magistra Leorenz came back and led them to a large room, empty of all save a seeming crowd of people sitting at a table, wearing pale brown robes. "Come with us." Tracen started to accompany Anaya, but Leorenz stepped between them. "No.  No kin at the testing.  You know that, Lady Merefftor."

Tracen's lips thinned in irritation, but she nodded. "Someone from the Clan House will be waiting for you when you are finished.  Do you know the clan sigil?"

Anaya shook her head.

"I'll send Snow-n-Coal then." She pressed her cheek to Anaya's then left her.

"Well, Anaya'se of Merefftor, shall we begin this?"

She nodded.

#

It wasn't pleasant, but she did what they asked.  The magistrae, some men, some women, asked her things, she answered.  They handed her a lit candle, told her to keep it from being blown out, then asked her to blow out one that one of them held.  She didn't use magic for all of them, but picking up a cup of water and pouring it over the candle worked to extinguish it.  The man who ended up with wet sleeves and a drenched candle didn't enjoy being the butt of the laughter.

"You asked to have it out.  Nobody ever said you had to use wind to do it." Magistra Leorenz said, sitting at the head of the table and writing on some paper.

The next test was to make water go into a cup, from the puddle on the table.  This time the man asked her to use magic, so she pushed it, whispering to Well and Breath for their help.  Once she'd done that, she gave the man his cup, filled.

Last, a thin, spare stick of a woman put a rock on the table before Anaya. "Well?" she asked.

"What do you want me to do with it?" Anaya looked at the rock.  It didn't look like much.

"What would you like to do with it?" the stick woman sat back and folded her arms, hiding them inside her sleeves.

Anaya picked it up, and turned it over.  It looked like a piece of one of the paving stones in the front yard, flat, the edges looking a little bit like ill trimmed sheets of paper.  She bespoke to it, then put it back on the table. "Why did you break it off from the rest?"

"What?" the stick woman looked startled.

"It used to be bigger, it remembers, so I guess it was part of a paving stone.  It misses the rest of itself.  It misses the mountain it used to be part of."

The man with wet sleeves laughed. "You've always been so proud nobody could figure that rock of yours out, Merren."

Magistra Leorenz nodded. "I think that will do, for now.  Ask someone in the hall to take you to the library.  We need to talk without you listening in."

Outside was a boy about Harn's age, she tapped his shoulder and asked him about the library.  He pointed at a sign on the wall and ran off.

Different arrows pointed out different things, classrooms, the kitchens, the library.  She found her way there, and was startled at the size of the chamber, larger than the cott, at the height of the shelves, over her head, with stools to allow shorter children to reach the upper shelves, at the number of books.  She wondered if anyone had ever read all of them.

"You're a bit old to be a student here.  Are you visiting kin?"

Anaya started, looking at the short, ugly woman who had appeared seemingly out of nowhere. "No, uh, I -- " she stopped, taking a breath, beginning again. "I am here for testing.  They told me to wait here while they talked."

The woman smiled, and suddenly her face didn't seem to matter. "Ah.  At least there may be something here to read." Then it was her turn to stop. "If you can read."

"I can." Anaya said, halfway offended that the woman assumed she couldn't. "And cipher past twenty, as well."

"Oh, good." Again a smile that lit up her face. "I am the librarian here, keeper of the books, what you will." She gestured with one stubby fingered hand to the shelves. "Have you an interest?  We have a great many types here."

"I -- I don't know.  I've never had the luxury of a choice of books."

"Oh, then wander through the shelves.  Doesn't matter what you take down, I can put them back.  There's a chair over by the window, just right for reading." She turned, stumping back to a desk that Anaya hadn't noticed sitting down behind it and gesturing a lamp into brighter light.

Anaya wandered through the shelves, taking down a book at random opening it.  It was a copy of one of the primers Geoff had brought.  She'd left the primers behind, Magister Evin's boys could read them and learn, if they liked.  She put the book back, having made note of the books to either side of it.

Another set of shelves, another randeom selection.  This one seemed to be a bit more advanced, one she hadn't read already a half dozen times.  She held onto it, picking another book from a different part of the library, this one a book of poems.  That'd do if the testing magisters took a long time or if she got tired ot the book she'd selected first.  She retreated to the chair by the window, opening the book, which seemed to be a book on the theories of magic.

It made a change from what she and Geoff had talked about on the liftship, at least.

The writer of this book called where the elements gathered the void, not the center, or the spirit, and this book claimed that there were gradations and blendings of the elements, but some of what the writer had put down made sense, in a crosswise fashion.  She finished a section and put it aside for poetry, until that seemed cloying and false, then returned to the magic theory.

She passed the time, trading off, magic theory,  until it grew too dusty, then poetry, until it grew too cloying.

The light was beginning to fade when she heard her name called. "Anaya'se.  This is the third time I've called you." It wasn't Magistra Leorenza, it was -- Merren, the woman of the stone.  Anaya put the books aside and stood.

"I apologize, I didn't hear you." Merren sniffed.  Anaya put the books on the librarian's desk, "Thank you for letting me pick."

The librarian read the titles and shrugged. "Interesting choices, though I find Dinam trying at time."

That was the writer of theory book, Anaya remembered, she nodded, then turned and followed Merren back.

Only Magistra Leorenza remained in the large room.  She had seated herself behind the table where the crowd of testing magistrae had, and held a handful of papers. "You are old to begin training, and personally, I would have recommended against it, but I am only one voice, and I was over ridden.  You will come back here tomorrow morning to begin discovering what trainiing you have already had, and how well you have learned it." Her voice seemed to include a bit of a supercilious sniff.

"My mother -- "

Magistra Leorenza held up a hand to stop her. "I daresay your mother was very powerful.  I'm sure she could banish clouds from the sky and calm dust storms and make mountains crumble and raise a fire to burn away a forest entire."

Anaya scowled, Mother wouldn't have done any of those things.  She'd be more likely to call clouds than banish them, their village wasn't troubled overmuch with dust storms, and they didn't have any mountainsm crumbled or otherwise, and so far as burning away a forest.  Why would anyone want to do that.

"You may go.  Classes have ended for the day, and I daresay you can find your way back to Merefftor Clan House, Lady Mereffetor said she would have someone waiting for you." Magistra Leorenza turned her attention to her papers.

"How do I get back to the entrance?"

"Look at the signs.  You want to find the front hall." She didn't even look up.

She found the kitchens, and someone there scrubbing a stove pointed her to the front hall.  She felt a little nervous going out into the front yard.  There was no cart, as she'd hoped, but there was a slight figure by the gate to the street outside. "About time." Harn said. "What were they doing, checking to see if your turds were gold?"  He picked up a half filled haversack and put it over one shoulder.

"No.  Are you the one set to get me back to the Clan House?"

He nodded. "Mama said you don't know the city yet.  She left me money so we can take an omni.  So?"

"So what?" She walked over to him, wondering if he was going to continue their fight from last evening.

"Are they gold?"

It took her a moment to understand. "Oh.  They didn't tell me.  I have to come back tomorrow."

He nodded, obviously feeling superior. "It took three days for me to finish testing.  They like to make sure you've enough talent."

"I finished testing, they want to see what I know.  I think they know I have enough talent."

Harn stopped, hands on his hips. "What'd you do, make a table burst into fire?"

"No.  Just scattered papers."

He snorted and began walking again. "I can do that.  There's an omni station down this way."

She nodded. "There was a -- a bespeaking the Academy Head's room.  I pushed it away, and when it came back, it made all the papers scatter."

"You pushed the bespeaking out of Magistra Leorenza's office?" Harn stopped.

"It was letting her bully Tracen."

He looked up at Anaya with gaping mouth, respect dawning in his face. "You pushed a bespeaking away?"

She nodded. "It takes bespeaking to do it though, and it's not that easy."

"Could you show me?"

"I can try.  It takes studying though." She looked around. "Where do we wait for the wagon?"

"Here." She saw the sign now, although there was no bench.  Harn leaned against a wall and took a book from his haversack. "It'll probably be a while."

"How do you know that?" She looked at his haversack, wondered if he had other books, and if he'd lend her one to pass the time.  She'd left her drop spindle at the Clan House, and Tracen had taken the kerchiefs, needles and thread.

"People going home from work, the omnis fill up, and run slower." Harn looked over at her. "Could take hours, might be faster to walk."

"How far is it to the Clan House?" She hadn't done much walking, or much of anything, other than stand and sit and hold her arms out, and bespeak magic, and be tested for magical talent.  She was tired.

"An hour's walk.  Mostly uphill."

Anaya smiled inwardly, remembering some of the tales G'Mother Elsa used to tell. "Always is."

"Huh?"

"The journey is always uphill, both ways, over your knees in snow, in summer."

Harn snorted and buried his nose in his book.  Anaya slipped one foot from her clog and put her foot, flat to the ground.  She could feel the ground through the thin cloth of her stocking, it was much thinner than the stockings she preferred to wear, the cold struck through sharper, but she could feel it better, the Path, the ground beneath her, through the stones that paved the street.  There was water here, and other bespeakings, other Magistrae and students reaching into the ground for -- for strength, for other reasons she couldn't tell.

For her it was enough to lose herself in this strange ground, learning how it was the Path she'd grown up with, how it was different.  Water bound it to one side, but the ground ran beneath it, for all the water permeated the ground that lay beneath it.  She'd felt it thus, when she went down to the stream that ran by the village.  This water was more vast though, the Path could reach no other side to it, to the edges of her reach.

"Anaya!" Harn poked her arm. "The omni's coming." He pointed past her at an oxen drawn wagon.

She snapped back into herself and staggered, almost fell on her face.  She shook her head and blinked, looking at Harn. "Sorry, I was -- elsewhere."

"Huh?" He waved an arm at the wagon drover, and it slowed to a stop.  Someone got out of the wagon, there was enough space for both of them now.  Harn told the drover, "Merefftor Clan House." and was told a route, and a transfer point.  Harn nodded, gave the drover the denir he asked for, and settled down, pulling out his book again. "I have to study, pay attention, will you?  No sense in daydreaming."

"I wasn't -- " she realized he was ignoring her, perhaps deliberately.

The transfer point the drover listed was Geisel and Hatton, the omni to take from there, the Silk.  She had ridden from there with Geoff.  She ought to remember, the small green area, there was a bench.  She amused herself watching the city pass by.  This area seemed to be filled with larger building.  She wanted to ask what they were, but Harn was happily ignoring her, reading.

They came to the small green area, and the drover slowed the wagon. "Geisel and Hatton."

She nudged Harn, who grumbled at having to put his book away, but they got out, and sat, waiting, for the next omni.  It came, and this time, Anaya waved it down, pulling Harn from his book. "Merefftor Clan House," he said.

"Elmory District.  A denir then."

Harn turned to Anaya. "Pay him."

"You said Tracen gave you money for the omni."

His lower lip trembled, "But, Mama said you were older, you could keep track of money better than me."

"What?"

"Mama said you shouldn't spend all your money on geegaws." He sounded sanctimonious now, the picture of an annoying younger brother, she'd seen Airk and Johann squabble so, and envied them the companionship. "She said you had enough ribbons and fripperies and girl stuff like that, and she'll get upset if she found out you spend all the omni money."

She gripped Harn's arm.  The other people on the wagon were starting to look angrily at them. "Then I guess we walk."

She led him off the wagon, and held him by her side while the wagon left, despite his jerking his arm to pull free.  She waited until the wagon had turned a corner before she let go. "What'd you do that for?"

"You lied to the drover."

"So?  I could've gotten us the ride for free."

"So now you've gotten us a walk back to the Clan House, and if you complain about it, I'll tell why we had to walk."

"You wouldn't.  I'll tell Mama that you were mean to me."  Harn pushed his lower lip out. "You made me walk half the way back to the Clan House."

"You lied to the drover.  Now the sooner we start walking, the sooner we'll get back." She pointed the way the wagon had gone. "Start walking."

He complained all the way to the Clan House, his feet hurt, it was all uphill, it was too far. "How do you get back from the Academy when you are not supposedly making sure I get back to the Clan House."

"I walk."

"Then this isn't that bad a walk." She recognized the wall to one side of them now.  They'd come to the gate soon. "I've gone farther than this walking wards."

"And you're a bully." Harn put on a burst of speed and raced to the gate, running through it and up to the entrance to the Clan House.  By the time she reached the gate he was halfway to the House, and by the time she had finished nodding to the old man who sat by the entrance to the gate cott.

At least he hadn't barred the door behind him.  Anaya let herself in and followed the sounds of a crying boy to the first room to the left.  Harn was sobbing dramatically, holding onto his mother's waist. "-- and then she hit me." He finished and pointed at Anaya as she entered the room.

Tracen made soothing sounds and rubbed his back.  Harn shot Anaya a smirk and buried his face in his mother's side again.  Tracen turned a stern face on Anaya.

"I think something this serious needs to be addressed by both Geoff and I.  Would you wait in the other room until he's home?  He's away on Council business."

Anaya felt as if she'd been slapped. "I -- I see."  It would be like Bithan with Airk and Johann-the-Younger then.  She nodded. "Over there?" She pointed across the hall.

"That would be best." Tracen nodded, still rubbing Harn's back as he sobbed.

The room across the hall was a mirror to the one where Harn poured his poison.  There was a fireplace, and chairs before it, Anaya sat down in one, staring dry eyed at the fire.  It was close enough kin to the Hearth she'd grown up with, she could bespeak it, could probably even wave her hands through it without burning them.

She wanted to go home.  She wanted to be back in the village, wanted to be where she belonged.  She didn't want to be here, didn't want to be where Magistrae bespoke rooms so that they could bully anyone who entered, she didn't want to be in a place so big they had to have wagons pull people, and where half-brothers lied and hated her.

Anaya sniffed, kicking off her clogs and stockings, and pulling her knees up, she didn't want to get the chair dirty, after all.  She wanted to go home.  This wasn't home.  She almost hated Geoff for using the law to make her come here.  Child or no, she didn't belong here.

"Anaya?" Tracen put a hand on her shoulder.

She started and scrubbed at her wet face, swallowing air so she'd stop crying.  She looked up at Geoff's wife, grimacing, maybe that'd stop the tears. "Whaddaya want?"

"To hear your side of it.  Harn spun a wonderful tale of a bullying older sister, who's got less talent than he does in his little finger, who out of spite, made him walk all the way home from First Academy, and took the two denir I gave him to ride the omni." Tracen sat down on the next chair. "What is your tale?"

"We took the omniwagon," she swallowed, "but we were supposed to ride two, and when we got on the second one, Harn said that I had the money and that I -- I must've spent it all, and so I made us get off the wagon, and he admitted that he was trying to ride for free, so I made him walk back to the Clan House." She swallowed again, because it was hard to talk past the knot in her throat. "Because I was angry at him."

Tracen nodded. "Thank you.  I set Harn to his assignments, that should keep him until evening kitchen.  I am going to give you a task as welll.  I think we should wait until Geoff gets home, so that we both give what punishment you deserve."

She was taking her son's side.  Anaya nodded miserably.hoping the task wouldn't be something like digging out the cess pit under the outhouse, or emptying chamberpots.

"I have the kerchiefs we bought, I'll have them brought to you, and you can work on hemming them."

Anaya nodded, not quite trusting herself to speak.  Tracen left her and shortly afterwards a girl brought the roll of fabrics.  Anaya unrolled one, straightening an edge and taking one of the needles.

She stitched until the girl came back. "The Merefftor want you in his office."

She stood, folding the kercheif up, she'd only gotten one full side and part of a second done, and taking up the roll. "Where is it?"

"I'm to show you."

"Thank you." She'd managed to stop crying, somewhere in the concentration of stitching, but she wondered if her face was blotchy and her eyes red.

The office was on the next floor up, over the entrance she'd come in.  The girl knocked, opened the door and she could see Geoff, Harn, and Tracen inside.  She entered. "Close the door behind you please." Geoff's voice sounded cold. "There's a chair for you."

It was a wooden chair, little more than a stool with a back.  Anaya saw that Harn's chair was similar, but took no comfort.  She seated herself, and Tracen took the half finished kercheif, the roll and put them on Geoff's desk.  His eyebrows rose at seeing them.  She felt like the accused at a tribunal.

"Now.  Harn, you say that Anaya made you walk all the way home from the Academy, and besides, you took the money meant to pay for the omni.  Anaya, you say that Harn tried to lie to the second omni driver, crying poverty, and you made him walk the rest of the way home."

"And she hit me." Harn added.

"I never."

"You did, you hit me in the arm, in the omni."

"Which omni was that?  I thought you never rode on one today." Geoff said, his voice still that eerie cold.

"Uh -- " Harn realised he'd been caught. "She still took the money."

"No I didn't, I've three denir, a denir piece, three half coins, and two quarter coins, that's all, and they're still in the box I brought with me." She held up three fingers, for the coins she had.  Mother had worked hard for those coins, taking less than proper value if the person offered coin instead of kind.

"And anyway, you're ugly, and nobody wants you here, and you don't have any talent, they'd just let you go to First Academy because Papa's the Merefftor, and they're afraid of making him mad." Harn spat at her. "They'd let your stupid dog go to First Academy if Papa said he should."

"That's not true, I am talented, my mother -- "

"Enough!" Geoff slammed his hand on the desk.  Anaya started at the bespeaking that powered his voice. "Harn, stop that, jealousy is uglier than lying, and you're showing both.  I already had word of Anaya's testing, and she starts tomorrow at First Academy, for testing."

"No!" Harn jumped to his feet and stamped one foot. "I don't want her there, it's my Academy."

"It doesn't matter, and what will you do when Mincha is tested and proves talented enough to attend First Academy, and yes, even Second Academy.  How will you behave when you have to share the Academy classrooms and halls with her?"

"That's different, she's my real sister, not some bastard from the wilds."