It was perhaps inevitable that we would talk, for the horses could not be ridden full-out and even the drake needed to recuperate. When we reined back to a slower pace, we could hear one another more easily… and if our numbers had been depleted by the delegation of tasks, there were still three students and two professors on this ride, and all of us had more than enough time for thinking.

“What I don’t understand,” Ivy said on the third day, chafing her thumbs on the reins, “is the shapechanging. You said the sorcerer changed shape, Morgan, but shapechanging is a female magic.”

“Maybe it’s demon magic,” Chester offered.

Carrington, looking from one to the other, could not help herself. “I thought you said the elves were not demon-spawn!”

“They’re not,” I said, before Ivy could say something cutting. “But we have been cursed by demons, and that curse has granted us some of their powers.”

“That’s true,” Eyre murmured. “You are incapable now of being killed without significant effort, and demons cannot be at all. The draining of energy… that is a demonic ability as well. One the elves did not have previously.”

“Save the prince,” I agreed. “The prince compels. But in all the annals, and in all I’ve heard—“ I glanced at Last, who nodded, “—he is the only one who can.”

“Say what you just said again.” Chester was frowning.

“That the prince compels?” I looked toward him. “That he is the only one—”

“Not that part. The part before it.”

“That the elves were cursed with the demonic talent,” I repeated, and his eyes lit. I recalled my epiphany before Roland had put a knife through my throat, though the events since had left me with little time to consider the ramifications. “Do you suspect it? I had seen something in the library that made me think so, but....”

“It makes sense, doesn’t it? The gift the angel made Winifred, the one that changed her, that isn’t an enchantment, it’s a blessing. Why shouldn’t what demons did to you constitute a curse?”

“That means elves now have demon blood in them?” Kelu said from behind me. I could hear her wrinkled nose. “Don’t tell me I’m drinking demon blood.”

“You drink blood.” To her credit, Carrington sounded only a trifle disturbed.

“I have to,” Kelu replied. “The stupid elves made it impossible for me to stay sane without it.”

“It must be what the angels put in the blood ladders that we need,” Almond offered, tentative. “I cannot think that the demonic traits would do anything positive.”

“But what does it signify?” Ivy asked. “Does it matter whether it’s a curse or an enchantment?”

“It does if it means what we need is not a spell, but the intervention of angels,” Chester said.

“God Almighty,” I murmured.

“It worked for Winifred,” Ivy said. “Why shouldn’t it work for us?”

“You don’t just call down angels to ask for help!” I said. “It’s impertinent.”

Eyre was laughing. “Impertinent, my student! Really. The only objection you can conjure?”

“Well, it is. Besides, if the matter had been as simple as ‘summon an angel to heal us’, someone would have done it by now. Yes?” I glanced at Amhric.

He hesitated.

“Oh, no,” Ivy said. “Did someone try?”

“Yes,” Amhric said. “But our blood does not call angels anymore. Even with glass to sanctify the offering.”

“Maybe it’s because of the adulteration,” Chester mused.

“Or because it is not capable of being symbolic of sacrifice,” Eyre said. “That was a good notion Miss Miller had in the library.”

“Human blood does not have demon adulteration,” Chester said. “Humans can die.”

The silence that followed his statement was filled by the thumping of hooves and the caress of the breeze. I was glad of the genets’ company, for my coat did little to ward off the sudden chill.

“I hope you’re not suggesting someone die in the hopes of making an angel appear,” Carrington said. “Humans have been doing that for centuries too without success.”

“She’s right.” Ivy frowned. “But why did it work for Winifred and not for any of the people who came after?”

“If we could answer that, we would be saved all our labors,” Eyre said.

“We’ve traveled far afield of our original question,” Ivy said. “Unless we mean to suggest that the sorcerer’s powers are demon-derived. Why can he change shape? It’s unfair that he might have a woman’s powers as well as a man’s.”

“Has he ever demonstrated a man’s powers?” Chester asked.

“He floats towers,” I said.

Carrington interrupted. “Men and women have different powers?”

“Different but equal,” Ivy said firmly. “Women affect living things. Men affect the natural world.”

“People not being of the natural world?” Carrington asked, mouth twitching, and I liked her better for her ability to tease even if Ivy obviously found it presumptuous from the narrowing of her gaze.

“So he has both a man's and a woman’s power,” Eyre said. “Are the rules different for sorcerers, then?” He looked at Amhric. “Sire. Do you know?”

The title gave Amhric pause, I thought. But as with everything, he answered with gentle grace. “There were no sorcerers before the enchantment that I have heard of. Men and women of great power, certainly, but not anything we would call a sorcerer. Last…?”

Last shook his head and said in his accented Lit, “I don’t know. But… I do not think so.”

“Perhaps sorcerers are an abomination made possible by demonic interference, then,” Eyre said. “Does that mean that nature abhors the possibility of equality between the sexes?”

“I thought the powers were different but equal,” Kelu said dryly.

Thinking of the elves who could choose to live as one or the other, I said, “Perhaps not.”

“Nevertheless, we have a problem,” Chester said. “If sorcerers are new to the race, then we know little of their limits, and so how to fight them. My lord, do you know of any other contemporary sorcerers? Or you, Captain Last?”

Last and Amhric exchanged glances. Last said, “I can’t think of any, my king. Do you…?”

“Know of any?” Amhric frowned. “No. I have neither heard of any nor can I recall them.”

“Wait,” Chester said. “Do you mean to tell me there is only the one sorcerer in all the world? And in all the history of the world?”

“We can’t think of any others,” Amhric said. “That doesn’t mean there are none.”

Eyre chuckled. “Stray not into logical fallacies, Mr. Chester.”

“What about you?” I asked Almond and Kelu. “The genets hear much that their masters say in carelessness.”

“Sedetnet’s the only sorcerer I’ve ever heard of,” Kelu said.

Almond nodded.

“That doesn’t necessarily mean anything,” Ivy said slowly. “There has to be a first for everything. Perhaps this Sedetnet is merely the first sorcerer.”

“I can’t believe that,” Chester said. “Not with circumstances as they are. There’s something here we aren’t seeing.”

“What I see,” Kelu said, “is that you’re riding off to find him with absolutely no plan, as usual. And he’s no less capable than he was before, and we’re no more capable than we were. So what’s to stop him from twisting us all into knots again and doing whatever it is he’s planning?”

“Releasing a demon,” I murmured.

“Right. That.” Kelu poked my back with a claw-tip. “Are you going to talk him out of it? That didn’t work on the ship when he took the king away.”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“It’s going to take divine intervention to keep you from failing,” Kelu said dryly.

“I know,” I said. “The horses have rested enough. Let’s make haste.”

The terrain through which we passed remained dead to every sense, in that particular way of the body when it has suffered too much: a numbness, as if scarred over. It troubled me to be riding over it, to be enfolded by it, for that sensation encompassed the entirety of what I could see save the sickness we rode toward, and that sensation was worse. There would be no trees until we reached the rumpled hills that led up to the northern mountains, and there was no scrub either; very little grew here, and if it was less dead than the fields south of Vigil, it still remembered the army that had trampled it with skeletal feet in its inexorable progress toward the living. Had the horses been able to bear it, I would have urged them faster and not stopped until we’d reached the foothills. As it was, I begrudged every halt and did my best to conceal it, and I fear I was poor company at the fire. When we retired I was glad to sleep and put the effort of polite conversation behind me.

But I woke abruptly in the middle of the evening, lifted my head. Ivy was sleeping against me, her head at my chest. At my back, though…

“You’re awake,” I whispered. “Is something wrong?”

Amhric shook his head. I carefully disentangled myself from Ivy and sat up. “What is it?”

“I am keeping the vigil,” he replied.

The vigil—I looked past him, found Chester missing, tensed. “Where is he?”

“Petitioning angels,” Amhric said, and set a hand on my wrist. “Leave him to it, Morgan. He cannot hurt himself in the asking… and he may even succeed.”

I subsided, reluctantly. “So long as he doesn’t believe he has to give his life to secure the audience.”

“Did he do so, he would have no breath left to make his petition.” Amhric smiled, a little. “All the stories say one must speak to the angel that comes, so as to make a decision. He’ll need a voice.”

I managed a huff of a laugh. “All right. Yes, I suppose that’s so. But… why did he wake you and not me?”

“I don’t think he intended to wake anyone. He wanted to steal off alone. It was an accident that I noted it.” Amhric tilted his head as he studied me, then shook it. “Don’t, my brother.”

“He could have confided in me,” I muttered.

“And you would have tried to stop him.”

Would I have? Only because I knew what such requests could cost. The angel had listened to Winifred only because she’d offered her life. Was it selfish of me not to want Chester to pay for the redemption of the elves? Even though, as a descendant of the race that had seen them cursed, he might argue that his was the price to pay?

“Now that you’re up,” Amhric said, “I will let you stand the watch.”

Rueful, I kissed his hands. “I am sorry. I am not as empty of sin as I could wish.”

“You are all that I need, and that your friends desire,” my brother said, smiling. “I think that enough.”

It was with a blush on my cheeks that I took up Amhric’s vigil, then, for who could hear such words and feel deserving of them? I certainly did not. Not knowing where Chester had gone, nor how far away, I repaired to the cold campfire. We’d found precious little fuel to burn as we’d traveled… another reason to look forward to the wooded slopes. As the cold couldn’t hurt me I’d taken to leaving my blanket over Ivy, but I was uncomfortable huddled beneath my coat as I waited. I may even have drowsed. But I woke when I felt him approach with the senses to which I’d become heir with my powers. He was a mage, and I was his prince, and his essence was all the warmth that a fire could not duplicate.

“And here I thought I was being quiet.”

“You were,” I said. “But you woke Amhric and that woke me.”

Chester let himself down alongside me. I could smell the blood, taste the magic in it, in the back of my throat where tastes become thicknesses. In silence I reached for his hand and he gave it to me, where I found the long cut on his tawny palm. It looked painful: perhaps purposefully so. He could have chosen a less fraught place to slice, but if it had been intended as a symbol of sacrifice, nothing less would have served.

I did not need to tell him to stay when I went to our packs. When I returned, he let me clean the wound and begin wrapping it in strips of cloth.

“I failed, of course.”

“Not for want of piety or virtue,” I said, gentle.

“How can you know?”

That sound in his voice that could become bitterness… I looked up at him and said, “So the man devout would place himself at the same level as the saint who founded his faith?”

Shocked, Chester said, “Never!” And such was the strength of his reflexive negation that we both paused, and a rueful smile curved his mouth. “I am, however, obviously lacking in humility.”

“I doubt it,” I said, smiling as I tucked the end of the strip beneath the others and gave it a tug to test the binding. “But you were preparing to turn the incident into a whip to mortify yourself with, and we will have more than enough wounds soon enough without requiring their self-infliction.”

Chester snorted, flexed the hand. “That’s good. Thank you.” He added, quieter, “It’s just that our need is so great. I had hoped—”

“I did too, a little. But apparently our need is not great enough yet.” I turned his hand. “I hope this won’t hobble you.”

“I won’t let it.”

“You did it to your writing hand,” I said, irritated.

He laughed. “Locke. Really.” At my glance, he said, “My writing hand! As if I will be writing anything anytime soon.”

“Fine. Your sword hand.”

He chuckled and grasped me on the shoulder. “I trained with them both.”

“Frustrating man,” I said. “There are grisly fates awaiting those who have an insolent answer to their prince’s every reprimand.”

“Was that a reprimand?” Chester asked, amused, but I could tell he was asking.

“No,” I said. Then added, “Well. Only that you insisted on not warning me before jaunting off.”

Chester folded his hands in his lap, head lowered. “I thought about it. But it was a thing between me and God.”

“Which is why I’m not angry.”

He nodded. Then added, quiet, “Your brother is all that you said he would be. Even his silences are magnetic. They draw the most astonishing confessions from one’s lips, and yet one is sure they repose in him as safely as they would in a locked treasure chest.”

“It is his gentleness.” I stared at the cold firepit, as if the memory of the flame there could still mesmerize. “There is no power in the world that can resist gentleness. It may take time, but....”

Chester nodded. “I find I adore him. But you spoke more truly before.” When I glanced at him, he said, “You are my prince, Locke.” He grinned then, and it was an expression more suited to my face than his: wry, touched with something too close to self-mockery for my taste. “Do you find it absurd?”

“I suppose others might. But I have fallen in love with a king. If it is absurd, it’s a failing we share.”

“At least the king was unknown to you! You have been... well... you.” He shook his head. “Do you recall how we met?”

“Vividly,” I said. “Classics I, and I was asleep on my desk.” I remembered it too well, how my illness had stolen my strength and made me look the delinquent: absent from class, or sleeping through it like someone who’d misspent the evening before. “I thought when you stopped to look at me that you were preparing to chastise me. Were you?”

“I don’t know,” Chester admitted. He smiled, and this was a gentler chagrin. “I thought about it, but something stayed me at the last moment.”

“And I woke and thought you passing judgment....”

“And you schooled me!” Chester laughed. “Rattled off quotations from the last seven texts we’d been examining. That was a difficult class. Baybery wanted us to memorize the entire canon, I sometimes thought.”

“Sometimes!” I snorted. “If I hadn’t been reading those books before I took the class, I would have foundered. It’s a rare cruelty, their requiring it first as a ‘survey’ of ancient literature.”

“In Baybery’s defense, by the end of the class, you had indeed surveyed just about every author of note from the previous thousand years.”

I chuckled. “Only if by ‘survey’ you mean ‘deeply studied.’”

Chester nodded, lips pursed in mock gravity. “They had to winnow out the dilettantes somehow.”

“Poor Baybery!”

“Poor Baybery.” Chester paused. “Locke. Tell me truly. Carrington—why?” When I hesitated, he said, “She was the one who spit you, wasn’t she?”

“You make assumptions based on little evidence,” I murmured.

“You have not refuted my assumption, and that is the evidence that convinces me.”

How could I explain what I did not myself understand? “They left her the duty, yes, but I was too far gone at the time to make complaint.”

Chester leaned toward me, close enough to see my face. His eyes were hard. “She raddled you with knives, Morgan.”

“She thought me already dead,” I said. “And my body did not answer her like a living one. You have seen it yourself, when I fell from the balcony. What remains for a time is not flesh, Chester. It’s meat. Confronted with my actual living self, she couldn’t bring herself to continue the task.”

“My, how comforting! She is only capable of atrocity when lacking witnesses.”

I shook my head. “I don’t think it’s that simple.”

“I would have thought ‘I am capable of putting a sword through another person’s flesh’ would be very simple.”

“Have you?” I asked, and when he paused, I said, “I have. I have killed an elf, Chester, and it is hideous.”

“You had cause—”

“She thought she had cause. But even when she did, she found it difficult.” I drew in a deep breath. “God counsels forgiveness.”

Chester squinted.

I tried, “Even the sages of Classics I believed it. ‘Be you not wise, for the quest for wisdom leads to wrong thinking and condescension. Strive rather to be kind, for even striving one is molded into finer shape.’”

Chester drew back, just a little. His mouth twitched. “Said by?”

“Darles Crell. In The Book of Living Platitudes.”

“Are you sure? I thought it was the second volume of Proverbs.”

“Absolutely not,” I said. “I ate, drank, and slept all four volumes of Proverbs. It was definitely the Platitudes.”

He snorted. Grinned. “I concede. I don’t recall clearly.” The smile eased from his face. “Why did you do it? Really, this time.”

I glanced at him, then to where Carrington slept, curled up in a blanket and stubbornly apart from everyone. “Eyre loves her.”

“And you trust him.”

“It doesn’t matter whether I do,” I said. “He loves her. And I find it impossible to part them, when we might not live another month.”

Silence then, but a less uncomfortable one than I’d feared. After a time, Chester looked north, his eyes losing their focus. “About now,” he murmured, “I would have been preparing for tomorrow’s classes. What do you suppose it would be if we were there? I can’t even remember the day of the week.”

“Neither can I,” I said, rueful.

He smiled, picked at the now worn knee of his breeches. “I fear I find myself missing some of the simplicity of the life we’ve abandoned, Morgan.”

“I’d be surprised if you didn’t. Even I do, and I have good cause to want never to return to those days. Besides, we didn’t abandon it. History thrust us into the crux of events that would have engulfed us anyway.” I grimaced. “Think, if I had not been what I am, then you would have been in Evertrue now, married to Minda... and about to be drafted into an army to fight the unkillable dead.”

Chester ran a hand over his brow. “Sadly, the most dreadful part of that scenario is the vision of being Minda’s lawfully wedded spouse.”

“Fortunately for you, she’ll probably want nothing to do with you when you return.”

“You think! More like she will see me as a war hero associated with a powerful new ally and wish all the more to marry me, that some of that cachet might devolve onto her.”

“Devolve is right,” I muttered, and he laughed.

“What are you two doing up?” Ivy asked, shuffling into view.

“Reminiscing,” I said as she sat and rested her head on my shoulder.

“About what?”

“Baybery,” Chester said.

Ivy shuddered against me. “Loving God, don’t remind me.”

We all laughed, low. I slung an arm around her, grateful for her warmth and weight and the love and trust that served far more than any blanket. Chester set a hand on my knee, cautious, and I answered him by covering it with my own. The bandages were tight. I would check them again later.

Many difficulties lay before us, and we might not return at all, much less as the war heroes I’d evoked. The knot of illness toward which we rode figured larger in my heart with every step north we took, and sickened me the closer we approached. And time, I knew, was racing us, and winning. But I found myself content with my choices. What little I could control, I was. The rest was in God’s hands, and apparently God had not decided we required divine intervention... yet.