Fortunately, before she’d been accepted at the university, she’d had another teacher.
Closing the distance and raising a hand to keep Tomas quiet, she murmured, “I heard the man with the green kerchief say your breasts had to be false. Is that true?”
The woman’s eyes were so bloodshot Mirian almost mistook the red for mage marks. “He said what?”
“That you stuff rags in your bodice.”
“That fucking bastard!” In spite of missing teeth, her snarl was impressive.
“He said they were too perfect to be real.”
“That flaming piece of shi…” Her eyes widened. “Too perfect? Did he now…” Tomas forgotten, she shoved Mirian aside and strode across the garden to apply her charms to the man in the green kerchief. Who cowered in the face of the sudden onslaught of smiles and breasts. He could consider it payback for urinating on the blackberries.
My mother would be so proud.
Tomas merely continued watching her like she was the only thing worthy of his attention in the immediate area. That was so Pack. Arrogant and secure in their power. It seemed she’d have to remind him daily that they weren’t in Aydori and that, although he could still invoke terror in fur, in skin he was only a young man who was going to attract attention for his looks and who couldn’t let anyone know he was Pack and, honestly, what had he been thinking just standing there looking superior?
“I traded the fire-starter for these,” he said, holding up a pair of wooden clogs. When surprise kept her from an immediate reply, he ducked his head and added, “We don’t need it and you can’t walk in those boots.”
Mirian actually felt her mouth open to point out wood didn’t go with her outfit, but managed a slightly strangled thank you before sinking to the ground and struggling with her boots. Wood didn’t go with her outfit? Lord and Lady, that was her punishment for allowing her mother back into her head. Before she could untangle the knots, Tomas knelt at her feet, set the bedroll on the ground, and dealt with them.
“Let me…”
As he peeled the first boot off her foot, she clenched her fists so tightly that the broken edges of her nails cut into her palms. The second either hurt less or couldn’t possibly hurt more.
Her heels looked like raw meat, the scabs scrapped off, the flesh below red and oozing. They felt as bad as they looked. In a just world, they’d at least distract her from her aching legs, but in a just world it was still too early for the maid to have opened her curtains.
“Can’t you…” Tomas waved a hand. “…fix them?”
They looked a lot worse than they had when she’d first exposed them. “No. That’s third level healing.”
“Have you ever tried?”
About to remind him one more time of why she hadn’t been returning for a second year of university, Mirian frowned. In fairness, she hadn’t ever tried. She’d been tested for second levels of everything save metal a hundred, a thousand times, to no effect, but she’d claimed sleep on her own. Twice. And she’d called metal to her. So why not a third level in healing? The damage was a little more than the tiny wounds the students learned to heal on themselves, but the principle was the same and she’d be no worse off if she failed.
Logically, her ability to perform the first level body equilibrium meant she knew her body. She knew it whole and undamaged. Water wanted to be water, her professors had said, and her body wanted to be whole. She could, logically, return it to that condition.
Logic, her professors had also said, is not applicable to mage-craft.
In this case, it seemed they were right.
They were alone in the garden when she looked up and shook her head.
Tomas closed a warm hand around her ankle. “It’s okay…”
She didn’t need to be comforted. She was familiar with failure.
“…the clogs won’t touch your heels. And they’re easy to kick off if we need to run.” He stood and held out his hand. For the second time that morning, she let him pull her up.
The clogs weren’t terribly different than last season’s summer shoes. Wood, rather than leather, and a lot heavier, but easy to kick off was, after all, fashion forward in Aydori. She wouldn’t call them comfortable, but the inside had been worn smooth and, while they were grimy, nothing stuck to her feet. She frowned as she realized the people who took shelter with the Sisters of Starlight had only what they wore and now one of them had even less.
“The fire-starter’s worth more than new clogs,” Tomas told her, as though he’d heard her thought. “We don’t know where to sell it and wouldn’t have the time even if we did.”
The color of the sky said it was no longer dawn, but early morning.
“Out! Out!” One of the Sisters stood in the doorway and Mirian got her first well-lit look at what they were wearing. In the lamplight, all that white had turned their bodies into featureless blobs. Mirian knew they couldn’t possibly be wearing nightgowns under the long white tabards, but the shapeless style was similar. No one would be joining the Sisters of Starlight for the uniform; that was for certain.
The Sister took a step toward them, waving both hands. “You must be gone!”
“Your boots?” Tomas asked, hanging the bedroll over his shoulder.
Mirian glanced down. A pair of well-made boots would no doubt come in handy, but it hurt just thinking of putting them on. “Leave them.”
All three Sisters flapped them through the kitchen and into the outer room where the door stood open and the air was distinctly fresher than it had been.
“What about…?” Tomas paused on the threshold, circling his hand.
Mirian had forgotten entirely about having set the air in motion. She’d been nearly asleep when she’d done it, certain that if the assault on her nose was any indication, Tomas must be truly suffering. Air drifted up the first spiral then across into the second where it spiraled back to the floor then crossed back to the beginning. Both spirals rotated slowly around the center of the room. Technically, the mage-craft was nothing more than blowing out a thousand specifically placed candles, but she had to admit she was impressed by the complexity she’d managed while unable to sleep. Except…“How did you know?”
Tomas tapped his nose. “Even with the door open, the scent’s so strong I can tell when I’m crossing the streams. And the power is unmistakably you.”
That made sense. Mirian had half thought she’d smelled the spirals while crossing them. “I’ll leave it. It’ll run down eventually…” Everything did. “…but until it does, this place needs all the help it can get.”
In spite of the early hour, the street outside the Sisters’ shelter was empty of everyone but a few stragglers heading toward the northeast. Toward the pall of smoke already building. Toward the factories.
“They’re going in the right direction.” Mirian turned on the ball of one foot, the clog pivoting easily over the cobblestones. “We could follow them.”
“Or we could go back to the market to pick up the road we know goes through the city.”
They didn’t know it, not for sure, but she had to admit that the odds were higher. Tomas’ nose was next to useless in the city, and the factories would have guards, and the coach had very certainly not gone by way of the factories unless factories in Abyek came with livery stables.
Tomas rocked back and forth, his clogs ticking against the cobbles. He shifted, created a different rhythm, and grinned as it became the same song the 2nd had been singing on their way to the border. About to ask what he was doing, Mirian realized he was waiting on her decision.