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He added, inspired, “I should make the students do that. One of their lessons. Though that might be unfair. Jennet’s never lived outside a city.”
“They could work together. Learning from each other.” Alex’s dramatic eyebrows tugged together. “Didyoueat breakfast?”
“I had tea. And then I had to argue with Lorre about the existence of private property. And copy herb-lore out of scrolls. Foundations…if I were a better water-talent I’d just ask all that water nicely to behave…” The sun glinted from puddles, doubled its glare, dizzying. “Can you move a step to the right, please?”
Alex promptly moved. “Mystical configurations? Magical requirements?”
“No. The sun’s reflecting off your jacket-collar. Why are the silver pins there?”
“They’re decorative. Should I take the jacket off?”
“I’m not encouraging your displays of seductive shirtlessness around my apprentices. Was it the visiting baron of Tye, last week? Or was that the previous week?” Garrett pushed up one sleeve—it was sliding—and stretched out an intangible hand: testing the earth, the stability, whether it’d hold if he pushed water through it.
“Philippe is lovely,” Alex said, more amused than any other emotion, though something else hid there too, a note Garrett couldn’t quite catch, “and we only had supper, and did some fencing. I hadn’t seen him since we both shared the same fencing-master, years ago, and he’s engaged to be married now. It’s a love-match, if you were wondering. He talked about her the whole time. Did you say seductive? And I thought magicians didn’t pay attention to visiting barons and politics.”
“I didn’t say that and you know I didn’t. We have to pay attention. Or we’ll end up entangled with your Court. Be quiet for a minute.”
Alex didn’t answer; Garrett, glancing over, realized that the prince was, as requested, being quiet. That felt odd for some reason. Off-balance. The world less full of noise, chatter, color, decoration.
That was what he’d wanted. What he’d asked for. Wasn’t it?
Focus, he thought. Calm. Equilibrium. Solving problems.
He gazed at the shamefaced circular stones, and let himself fall inward, and outward: the affinity in his bones, heart, chest, for serene steady depths, for rhythms and bedrock, stone and mountains and boulders and pebble, and hidden heat and fire underneath, the molten core of the world that moved and turned and lived. It spoke back, sang, burned like lace made of gold, woven into the beat of his pulse.
He did not need all that power, at the moment. He needed stone, and ice, and a solution to the everyday questions of storing goat’s-milk cheese and feeding hungry apprentices.
First things first: the water. He was not Lorre, or even Quen, and the slippery fish-leap of ripples was difficult to catch. He could, however, ask the marble to curve, to form a bowl, to pour puddles into one shallow flagstone-saucer; the floor bent obligingly, because it knew he understood it, and it liked being understood.
Alex did not make a sound, but his lips parted. Even his posture shifted: ironic lazy amusement and tales of old fencing-partners replaced by wonder.
Garrett tipped the stone saucer into Lorre’s central pool—magic-brushed water would work nicely there—and put the cup back down, flattening it out; and turned his attention to the ice-house.
Other magicians would no doubt approach this problem differently. He could only do what he could, what he knew how to do.
He did not, he thought randomly, know how to fence. If that mattered. To anyone. It oughtn’t.
He touched the small stones, intangibly; and then tangibly, walking over to the beehive curve, needing contact. Alex followed like a shadow, still silent, poised and alert.
Garrett considered stone, heat, reflection, and dispersion. He explained, carefully, what he wanted: stones weren’t terribly quick, but they responded to his sense of purpose, and they did not mind being adjusted, internally. They remembered being malleable, once.
He opened both eyes after a while, and found himself surprised—when had he closed them?—and then blinked several times because the world felt indistinct and hazy, and he had the vague impression that his body was marble, unmoving, too heavy.
A hand touched his shoulder. Two hands. Both shoulders. Support. Alex’s voice. “You told me not to talk, but—look at me? Sorcerer? Garrett?”
Garrett blinked again; two tall worried princes of Averene shimmered briefly, in a halo of dark hair and midnight-blue coat, and then recombined. “You can talk. I didn’t mean you couldn’t.”
“You said—” Alex exhaled, shook his head. “I’m not arguing with you when you look like you need to sleep for a week. Can I get you anything? Water, tea, your figs?”
“I’m fine.” He was, more or less. The headache, oddly, was better: the wash of fulfilment, the ponderous comfort of being rock, had eased the sharper needles. He was generally tired, but that was ordinary, these days.
He met Alex’s eyes, gloriously alight amber, firelight and honey and topaz; and Garrett forgot words momentarily, though he knew the concern there was only the concern of a prince not wanting the Second Sorcerer of the Middle Lands to collapse under his watch. Politics. Rumors. Someone wondering whether Alex had had another mission, whether King Carillon hadn’t approved of the School.
He said, randomly noticing, “You took the pins off. The silver.”
“I—yes. You said they were distracting.” The bare spots shone undecorated along Alex’s collar, naked midnight velvet against his throat; he put a hand up, self-conscious. “Anyway they were ostentatious. I don’t need that. And you were…remaking an ice-house.”
Garrett turned to look, past Alex’s shoulder. The stone had settled benevolently in; the outside, gleaming sleek and adamantine, flung light and heat away. The middle layer would flow and move and conduct warmth down and into the floors, an added benefit, he decided. The inside, smooth and slick, ought to stay cool.
