Zal

Torian’s words had chilled me to my marrow. I’d always depended on my Stone for my spells. What mage didn’t? But had I been leaning on it for more than that? Had it become a crutch, one that I couldn’t manage without?

Now that I was aware of it, surely I’d be able to adjust. Compensate. Adapt. I snorted softly. Better do it right sharpish, then, before I face the Trine.

I considered our journey so far. It hadn’t been so bad. Granted, I was more tired of an evening, but we’d been forcing our pace a bit so we could reprovision in Market Spinney before winter loomed so close that our trip to the capital would need snowshoes as well as boots.

I’d still reached for my magic often during the day before I’d remembered. But that was instinct. Habit. Just as I’d fashioned a walking stick—on Torian’s advice—to aid my gait, I would have to find new, nonmagical ways to handle tasks that had been second nature to me for fifteen years.

It wasn’t as though I had much choice.

Still, the Earth-born could live without magic. Shite, I’d done so as a child before I’d left home to go to school, and even there until I began training in earnest. I just needed to remember. Practice. Become accustomed.

And stop bloody moping about it.

I carefully picked up the leather roll containing the Sun Stone shards. Now that I knew how valuable they were in trade, I wanted to secure them better. I didn’t want to chance losing any if they spilled like they had in Ranolt’s shop.

When I unrolled the leather across my lap, the double handful of shards winked in the sun like the golden tracks under Torian’s pale skin. I lifted one long splinter and laid it across my palm with a sigh.

“Do you reckon I’ve enough here to last us until I master a new skill or two?”

“Hmmm.” Torian’s hum was as sweet as a bird’s trill. They touched the shard with a tentative finger. “Have you tried to manipulate any solar power…” They smirked at me, and I didn’t take them to task because I was so relieved they’d recovered from their earlier upset. “Excuse me, work any magic since it shattered?”

“Nay. There was no point.”

“Try it now.”

I frowned. I’d never known Torian to be needlessly cruel, yet pretending I hadn’t lost a part of my soul wasn’t kind. “Torian—”

“Please, Zal. Humor me.” They took the shard from me and scooted a little way across the boulder to hold it up in the sun, where it sparkled and glowed and made my throat close as a pit of loss opened in my belly.

“All right,” I croaked. “What do you want me to do?”

They nodded at the pile of twigs and small branches next to the fire ring. “Pick up a twig and… start the fire.”

“Start the fire,” I said woodenly. “Just like that?”

In the past, I could have done that without a second thought. Sun and stars, I’d hefted a boulder the size of the House of Mages out of the Byrne the day I’d met Torian. Lifting a twig and setting it alight would have been nothing, needing only a scrap of my attention.

But now? I curled my fingers into fists and pressed them against my thighs. I took in a shuddering breath. Held it against another wave of loss. I can’t. I don’t want to. How can they ask it of me?

Yet Torian asked me for so very little, the least I could do was humor them as they’d pleaded with me now.

So I stared at a twig that was precariously balanced atop my pile of kindling and reached for that place in my core that had always answered me before.

Aaand… nothing. The twig moved not a whit. My shoulders slumped and I exhaled, letting my chin drop until my braids curtained my face. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” Torian lifted my right hand. “Open your fist, please, Zal.” When I did as they asked, they laid the shard across my palm and carefully folded my fingers around it. “Now try again.”

My eye widened as I stared at them, understanding what they were saying. Perhaps I didn’t have an intact Stone, but I had its parts. I’d always used a shard in my divination, so it wasn’t as though using one was new. Part of me wanted to rejoice, but another part wanted to kick myself for being so dense.

I gazed at the twig and didn’t even have to think twice. It rose, catching fire midair, and sailed into the ring. The wood ignited, its pop and crackle drowned out by my whoop.

“I did it!” I said, grinning so widely that my eyepatch dug into the top of my cheek.

They smiled back warmly. “You did.”

“I want to do it again.”

“Zal—”

“Watch.” But when I tried to move a second twig, nothing happened and my grin faded. “Shite.” My fingers tightened around the splinter until I could feel it slice into my palm. “Do you suppose it failed because I don’t have all the shards anymore? Because I traded some away?”

“Please don’t be discouraged.” Torian laid their palm against my cheek. “That tiny piece can’t hold much energy and I didn’t charge it for long. You probably just depleted it.” When I uncurled my fingers and Torian spotted the bright gash of blood, they made an unhappy croon. “Let’s try another experiment, okay?” They selected a slightly larger chip and held it up to catch the sun.

I set the noticeably dimmed shard aside and tipped a little water from Torian’s waterskin onto my palm to sluice away the blood. “What do you want to do?”

“I’d like you to do whatever”—another smirk, although I was positive this one was simply to bolster my spirits—“magic you ordinarily do with your healing stones, what you did to the water when you treated my feet that first day, but do it to yourself. Localized on that cut. See if you can close it up.”

I peered down at my palm. Sun Stone was sharp—Ranolt had been right about that—but the cut wasn’t long or deep. I hadn’t gripped it hard enough to drive it far into my flesh. A surface wound only.

Torian hummed again, holding the chip up and squinting at it. “Still just a low-level charge, approximately ten percent, at a guess. But if this works, we can spread the lot out and keep going until you’re good as new.”

I took the chip in my other hand and… sure enough, the cut knitted nearly all the way closed. I met Torian’s gaze, and I could almost swear that the hope shining from my eye bathed their face in a golden glow.

But that was probably only the power grid under their skin absorbing the light of the sun.

I gathered the edges of the leather together and stood carefully, not willing to risk losing a single piece of my shattered Stone, of my past, and possibly of my future. I arranged it atop the flat boulder at Torian’s back, making sure all the pieces were exposed in a single layer, then sat down next to Torian again and wrapped an arm around their hips below their bare back.

“Thank you, love. Thank you for thinking of it and thank you for not letting me drift into despair.”

“It’s one of the things I’m trained to do.” They leaned against me, gesturing with both pale, elegant hands. “Frame a question. Test the hypothesis. Evaluate the results. Reframe the question. Test again.” They tilted their head to gaze up at me. “This was an easy one. I just wish there was a way to… to…” They cupped their palms and brought them together as though they were shaping a ball of dough. “I don’t know, daisy chain them, or link them in parallel.”

I chuckled. “I’m sure that made sense to you, but I’m still in the dark.”

They smiled crookedly. “Sorry. Always call me on it when I don’t provide sufficient context.” They bit their lower lip, brows drawing together. “I can’t think of a way to join them all, to merge their energy into a larger pool. I’m concerned you’ll be limited to the small energy in each segment individually.”

I kissed their temple. “Don’t fret about that. This is more than I had before. I’m content.”

They pulled away and glared up at me. “Well, I’m not. I don’t want you exhausted when we get to the capital. The shards are sharp, right? Maybe we can thread them onto your cloak so they can recharge as we go. That way, you’ll feel stronger when we face the Trine.”

“That would be a boon, and no mistake.”

“What is the Trine, anyway? There’s nothing in the…” Torian’s expression shuttered, in that way it had now and again since Edric’s death, but they only paused for a moment before shaking their head. “I don’t know anything about them. I don’t know anything about the capital at all really, other than it’s smelly and noisy—thanks for that, by the way—including why it doesn’t have a name. Corvel-on-Byrne has a name, so does Market Spinney. But the capital has got to be a lot bigger, and it doesn’t have one?”

I shrugged. “I guess nobody saw the need. There’s only one capital but there are hundreds of villages and towns.”

“I suppose that’s fair.” They tilted their head, considering, and chuckled. “I expect the capital is as good as a more whimsical name, given it’s unique. Otherwise mail could go seriously astray.”

I looked down at them. “Mail?”

“Mail. You know, correspondence.” They grimaced. “I forgot. No universal access to paper. I suppose that could be a problem. How do people communicate with those who live far away?”

“If the folk live far from each other, chances are they’re not acquainted and would have nothing to say to one another, anyway. Other than Sun-born circuit mages, we tend to stay close to our homes.”

“Is that from necessity or choice?”

“It’s always a choice. But nearly everyone chooses to remain where they’re known, where things are familiar, where they know how to manage. Since they’re usually trained up in an apprenticeship from the time they’re ten, they’ve already got a place to belong.”

“But surely some must move away. If there are too many apprentices for a particular craft, for instance, or if another village lacks someone with an essential skill?”

“It happens, but not often.”

I stared into the trees, frowning, trying to remember something I’d heard in passing, although I couldn’t recall where. Something my parents said of an evening by the fire, when my sister and I had already retired to the loft and they thought us asleep? Gossip in the dorms after I’d gone to the House of Mages for schooling? Something muttered in an inn on my rounds?

Somebody somewhere had hinted that things used to work differently. But that scrap of memory had no… What would Torian call it? Context? So even if I could call it to mind, it would remain meaningless.

“So how would that kind of arrangement get made? How do you communicate?”

“Well, we circuit mages—” My belly tumbled and I had to swallow twice before I could continue. “That is, circuit mages pass on the latest news and decrees from the House of Mages when we make our rounds.”

“But you only visit a village once a year, correct?”

“Aye.”

“The news must get awfully stale.”

I chuckled weakly. “It does and all. But the Congress of Mages and Seigneurs doesn’t move too speedily—they’re too busy arguing with each other for that—so once a year is usually soon enough. Then every three years, there’s a conclave in the capital. All the mages and the reeves from all the villages who want to make the journey converge on the capital.” I pushed my braids back and knotted them at my nape. “It’s bloody pandemonium, with all the inns at capacity, and merchants hawking their wares on every street corner.”

“Do you like that?” Torian sounded a little wistful. “The excitement? The novelty? The festivity?”

“Me? Nay, it gave me a headache when I had two eyes. This next one will be the first since I was half-blinded, and I’m not looking forward to trying to make sense of the chaos when I won’t be able to see what’s happening on my left. I nearly got bowled over by a stilt-walker last time, and I had both eyes then.” I squinted up at the sky, remembering. “Although that might have been due to all the ale I’d drunk with my supper.”

“So you don’t miss… other people?” This time, their voice was laced with hope.

I turned to face them fully. “Are you worried that I’ll forget you? That I’ll let you fend for yourself?”

“No,” they said hurriedly. “But you might want to spend time with friends. Do things for which it would be… inconvenient to have a hanger-on that causes as much comment as I do.”

I captured their hands between both of mine, gazing into their eyes. “Circuit mages tend to be solitary by nature. We have to be, because we spend so much time alone. Those who crave more company stay in the capital and work in the hospitals, the library, the scribe houses. This life”—I gave our hands a little shake—“our life suits me fine.” I dropped a kiss on Torian’s knuckles and let go of their hands. “Although I’m not certain what that life will look like after I report in and let the Trine know they’re down a circuit mage and will have to assign someone else to my rounds.”

“There’s the Trine again.” Torian smiled, seemingly comforted by my words, so I must have been successful at hiding my true worry about that report.

Once I’d been removed from the active mage rolls, and once I’d introduced Torian to the Trine, the chances were very good that we’d be separated. Perhaps forever. Because Torian was unique. Their wealth of knowledge, their experiences, their intelligence… Well, I wasn’t fool enough to imagine that the Trine would ever let a disgraced former mage like me deprive them of such a rich and singular resource.

But I refused to burden Torian with my fears. So instead I stood, brushing off the seat of my breeks.

“Let me make us some supper and I’ll tell you all about them.”