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  [colpse]

  Setting up a tent in the rain was not the most fun thing to do. Getting all the poles in pce, moving the tarp around, not getting tangled in the lines, it was all the frustrating end of a frustrating day. My bs--which I had left on the floor of the wagon--were both sodden a. My ing spell took care of some of it, but it wasn’t a drying spell; they were still wet.

  I stepped out of my tent, rain pinging off my hat with a stant rap-tap-tap beat and took in our tiny camp. Milread had driven the wagon all the to a small cliff area that was higher off the ground than the rest of the forest. It meant that we got to sleep o a wall of stohat did a det job of keeping off the rain.

  There was a bit of a divot sliced into the rock, probably by some previous travellers. It served as a good spot to set up a little fire pit with all our tents in a circle around. The wagon ushed into the trees to one side and Missy was left to graze opposite it.

  Basically, the camp was tight, cramped even, but it made seo set it up that way. Our fire wouldn’t be visible from afar and if we had to fight something we would have a wall by our backs.

  I wished that such siderations didn’t matter. That we could all just enjoy a nice fire and a warm meal before snuggling into a warm bed.

  The others were all huddled around the anemic fire i. It wasn’t much, just a few tiny lie from some twigs and a small block of rune-covered wood that Milread had tossed in. It was growing though, and even with the tiny bit of warmth p out of it, the fire was wele.

  “I...” I started to say before three pairs of eyes looked towards me.

  The others had not been happy with me after the thing with the pixies, Milread most of all. It had worked out, in the end, and no one had died. That didn’t matter to her. It had been silly and foolish and I could have been hurt with one wrong word. She wasn’t wrong, irely, but I didn’t think I had been all that wrong in the way I acted either.

  I tried again. “I make tea. ile, if you want?”

  “Fire’s not hot enough yet,” Noemi said.

  I pulled out my tea kettle, tucked under my arm since I had left my tent. “Ented tea set,” I said. “’t do much more than boil water, but, well...” I sat down on a log that had been there long before we arrived.

  “Sure,” Severin said. He had a set of camping utensils o him, oin mug that he handed over to me.

  I added the herbs I had a fill with rain water as we waited.

  “Rainwater’s not good for drinking around here,” Milread said as she tossed in a log a up a small plume of embers that quickly died.

  “ing spell,” I expined.

  “Ah.”

  I sat around and waited for enough water to fill the kettle. At the rate it was raining it wouldn’t take long. “I’m sorry,” I said.

  Milread looked up from the fire. “You’ve said that already,” she said.

  “I mean it this time.”

  Noemi scoffed and got up. “I’ll get the food,” she said.

  Milread eyed me food long while, until I felt like squirming under her hawkish gaze. “ime you listen. Or you at least tell me of your fool pn before trying anything. I’m responsible for the lot of you. Severin and Noemi know what they’re about, they’re past their first rank, but you’re er than a kid. Plus Juliette would turn my head into a mantlepiece if you died under my watch.”

  “I’m... sorry,” I repeated. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I just, I just really don’t like fighting.”

  “Then find a y with big walls and stay in it,” Milread said. “Out here you fight or you die.”

  It was quiet food long while after that. No, not quiet. There was the croak of hundreds s, the occasional cry of a distant coyote, and that incessant pitter patter of rain on leaves. I brought my feet up onto the log so that I could hug my knees close to my chest for a bit of warmth.

  Noemi returned with a sack that she dropped o the growing fire. She pced a pot o her, the lid scrapping and pinging with every motion. “I’m cooking,” she said.

  “Got the skill?” Milread asked.

  “At apprentice. Got better?” Noemi asked.

  “Don’t even have it,” Milread said.

  Severin just shook his head.

  The grenoil woman started opening s and adding spices to the pot. It stirred it all together then added it to the top of the fire. “Going to take a bit,” she said. “Could use a hotter fire too.”

  “Right,” Milread asked. She poked the fire o time and then tossed the stick she was using onto the fmes. “We need more wood if we’ll keep this going all night. And we o set up a watch. Severin, you do mage lights?”

  “For the sombrals? Of course,” the mage said. He huffed as he got to his feet. I noticed that he had tossed his boots at some point, but he didn’t seem to mind having his feet in the mud. He moved over to Milread and they both ambled off into the woods around our camp until I could just barely hear them from the crackle of branches and the shift of cloth.

  “So, um, Noemi, right?” I asked.

  “Do you really have to?” Noemi asked right back.

  “Have to what?”

  “Do this whole thing where you try to chat me up. If you were a grenoil boy I’d think you were a flirt.”

  I shook my head, bits of rain slipping off my hat. “No. I just want to make friends.”

  Noemi sighed. “Yeah, that’s nice. Make friends with someone else.”

  I wasn’t sure what to say to that. I fumbled through a few openers, but none seemed to fit, and a direct response would just be so rude. I wondered if my Friendmaking skill could be of any use, but it felt more like a passive sort of thing. “So, why are you heading to Port Royal?” I asked.

  Noemi paused iirring of our supper. Her knuckles tightened around the spoon but she never looked away from her work. “I have family who died. I’m going to their funeral. Are you happy, now that you know?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Good. You apologize by keeping quiet.”

  I swallowed and looked away. The kettle was halfway full, leaves floating in lukewarm water. I fired an absent ing spell, then sighed when it made the flower buds I had left ier poof away. It wasn’t my night.

  The tea was boiling and my mana was slowly dropping whehers returhey settled down and I poured a cup for Severin then myself. The others begged off, but I left the kettle close, just in case.

  “This isn’t bad,” Severin said as he took a sip.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  Milread shook some water off of her hood. “We’re setting up rotations. Broccoli, you’re up first. I have some watch dles. You wake me when the wax hits the ring and the fme ges colour a little. Severin, you’re taking the te middle, Noemi, the st. We ge things around tomorrow.” She pulled a small fat dle from a pocket and, with the tip of a talon, made three marks around it before setting it to the side.

  “You trust her not to sleep?” Noemi asked.

  I stiffened.

  “Yeah. I’ll wake up for my watch either way,” Milread said.

  “Hrm,” was Noemi’s response. “Food’s ready.”

  We were each given a det bowlful of some sort of stew. No actual meat, just different cuts of veggies in a sort of gravy with some spices. It was a little light on solids, but tasted good all the same. I was one of the first to finish eating. “I’ll up,” I said. “I’ve got ing at, um, disciple rank.”

  “Thanks,” Milread said. “I’m going to get some shut-eye. Good night.” She left her bowl on the log she had been perched on and walked off to her tent. Noemi soon did the same.

  “Do you think I practice magic?” I asked Severin as I gathered all the utensils and pots.

  The renoil gave me his empty bowl, then refilled his mug with the st of the tea. “I don’t see why not. Don’t cast anyzing and you should be fine. Yht is nhter zan the fire.”

  “,” I said.

  Soon I was wishing him a good night aling in as best I could o the fire. I took a moment to fetch my spear, just in case. The dle Milread had left was lit with a twig and burned merrily despite the occasional raindrop that nded on it. Magic, maybe, or some clever alchemy?

  I focused on a hand. My right, because that was my dominant hand for day to day stuff. Magic moved into my limb until it tihen I pushed a little more. It was like shoving some of that dough stuff kids pyed with through a strainer. It didn’t flow out of the body easily, and pushing too much made my chest feel a little empty in a way that spending all of my mana didn’t.

  My mana didn’t dip down though, not unless I lost trol of the mana and it slipped out of my grasp. So, the number in my status was the amount of mana I could trol, not the amount I had in my body? No, that didn’t feel exactly right.

  Eventually I grew a little bored with just making my hand glow. Even shutting it off and bringing it back as quickly as I could grew tiresome, and it felt as if I was straining something inside of my hand when I did so. Like a new muscle, maybe.

  I formed the mana into a ball, then, when that didn’t work at all, I satisfied myself by cupping a blob of mana in my hand. Severin had said that my magic was ing aspect. That sounded... strange. I had grown up on stories with the usual magical elements. Fire, water, earth, air and so on. ing was definitely not one of those.

  Maybe magic didn’t care about what I thought was usual and I would just have to deal with it.

  I tried to make my mana turn into fire mana. Severin had made it look easy, but it was far from it.

  At first I tried to make my mana look like fire, but that only made it bob around like jello. Thinking hot thoughts didn’t work, aing angry was hard because I wasn’t an angry person. The hottest my emotions ever ran was mildly miffed. Maybe I’d mao unlock mildly miffed aspect mana, but a mildly miffedball didn’t sound as awesome as a fireball.

  I looked at the fire before me, then jumped when I saw that it was dying.

  Getting to my hands and knees, I blew at the embers until they were nid hot again, then added more sticks and brao the fire until it was crag merrily away.

  Maybe that was it. I had to treat my mana as a tiny fire?

  I spend an hour or so--occasionally looking around to the woods--trying to nurture a small fire in the palm of my hand.

  By the time Milread woke up I had almost seen a flicker.

  “You’re still awake?” Milread asked. She looked around, then scowled. “It’s still raining.”“It is, and I am,” I said. “Is it time for me to sleep now?”

  “Yeah, get some shut-eye. You’ll .”

  I slid into my tent and, after wasting some mana ing myself off, fell asleep under my moist bs. It was a long night.