“It’s a good thing I’ve spent the last seventeen years translating for Jake,” Gryham sighed. “I mean, if you’re a Water-mage, how much healing do you learn?”
“Healing isn’t part of being a Water-mage.”
“And that, right there, that’s the problem. Used to be, everyone had to do a bit of everything to survive, but civilization means specialists because suddenly everything’s so bleeding complicated with foundries and gaslights and brass buttons, it takes all a person has to learn how to do just one thing, and if everything’s that complicated, then mage-craft can’t be simple. So mages in Aydori started making rules. And enforcing them. Soon enough, the rules started enforcing themselves. Go far enough up into the old country, and those rules don’t mean shit. There’s no Air-mages and Water-mages and all that one-color mage marks. There’s mages. You’re a mage.”
Mirian rolled her eyes. “I don’t have mage marks. Of any color.”
“And yet…” Jake spread his hands.
“You’ve got power. I don’t need Jake to tell me that. I’ve got a nose and you smell…” This time when Tomas growled, Gryham acknowledged it with a dip of his head, somehow making the small movement look patronizing. “You smell powerful. Too powerful to be confined by the dams and channels these made-up rules have put around what it is to be a mage.”
“I’m a river?”
Gryham smiled. “If you want, you could put it that way. River pulls water from all around—from runoff, from rain, from springs—power works the same way. You need to be a river, not a bucket. I’m thinking you’re already halfway there.”
“I’m not…”
“You’re not an athlete, you never did jack shit to build your strength, but you’ve run from Aydori into the empire. How do you think a pampered society girl…?”
Mirian felt her lip curl. “My father is a banker.”
“How do you think a pampered banker’s daughter got this far? Your mage-craft has been rebuilding your body.”
“That’s not…” Except body equilibrium had thrown off the sleeping drug without her consciously guiding it. Logically, it could be making adjustments to help her run.
“Not to say you couldn’t use a couple of days’ rest, mind. A little natural healing to wipe those circles out from under your eyes, a few decent meals. Anyway,” he continued before she could respond, “way I heard it, the power is everywhere, but the mage has to open herself and say fuck these bullshit rules.”
“Only less bluntly,” Jake muttered.
“Just as fucking bluntly.” Gryham kissed the top of Jake’s head.
Mirian frowned. “I tested high.”
“There you go.”
She shook her head. “But the more powerful you are, the more you need rules.”
“The more powerful you are, the more you need responsibility.” When everyone turned to stare at him, Mirian twisting around so she was almost on his lap, Tomas flushed. “It was something Ryder used to say.”
“And Ryder is?”
“My brother. My Pack Leader. He died. In the Imperial attack.” To Mirian’s surprise, he looked away from Gryham, caught up her hand in his, and added, “Jaspyr died with him.”
She tried to pull free, but Tomas hung on tighter. “Let go.”
“If you’re waiting for h…Ow! Why did you pinch me?”
“She pinched you because you were being an ass,” Gryham told him quietly as Mirian got to her feet.
When Tomas tried to stand as well, she glared him back onto the bench, considered explaining, decided it was no one’s business, and left the cottage. It was too warm and too close and too full of men.
The night was clear—no sign of the rain Jake had Seen coming, and the grass was cold and wet underfoot. Mirian walked over to the chopping block, finding it more by the way it disrupted the air currents than by sight. If her mage-craft had been rebuilding her body, it seemed to have forgotten to fix her vision. There were moments when it seemed no worse than it had ever been and more and more moments when she felt like she was looking through a veil. And not a cute net veil, either.
She sat, pulled her feet up under her skirt, heard her mother say, You’re not a child anymore, Mirian, and wanted to laugh. Or cry. Or scream. No, howl. She wanted to throw back her head and fill the night with sound, to bleed off some of the pressure she could feel building behind her bones. To consciously decide to let go instead of having the release controlled by circumstance.
When the cottage door opened, she expected Tomas, but she knew the space he filled in her world and, even in the dark, she could tell it wasn’t him. It wasn’t only that Gryham was so much larger, it was more that he didn’t fill a space in her world so much as push against it.
He circled the chopping block, rubbed up against her knee almost hard enough to knock her over, and changed. “You can’t blame him for trying to piss a circle around you. Lines need to be clear when two Alphas share space.”
She sighed. Tomas had no reason to be jealous of Gryham, not the way he and Jake were all over each other. “I understand.”
“No, you don’t.”
He was laughing at her. “Stop it.”
“Tomas isn’t the Alpha in your little Pack, little mage. You are.”
“That’s not…”
Gryham stood silently, waiting predator patient while she went back over every interaction she’d had with Tomas since he walked into the firelight pretending to be a dog. In spite of instinctive physical reactions, he’d barely tolerated her until…
Until she’d put him to sleep on the road to Herdon.
She must have made a noise or moved because Gryham was done waiting. “You put his ass back on that bench with a look. Pack’s not complicated; someone’s in charge, that someone’s you.”
“But I’m not Pack!”
“Pack, Mage-pack.” She could feel Gryham shrug. “Not saying you’d still be in charge if there were more than just the two of you. Not saying you wouldn’t be either. Just telling you what it is right now. Who’s Jaspyr? He the reason you and young Tomas haven’t shared skin?”
Startled, Mirian answered without thinking. “You can smell that?”
He snorted. “I can see that. You’re easy with him ’cause you’re not thinking of him that way and he doesn’t know what to do with his hands.”
“Jaspyr’s not…” He wasn’t a lot of things. But what was he? “Jaspyr was a moment that passed days ago.”
“Woke you up, though, didn’t he? You’d better let Tomas know this Jaspyr’s not the reason you two aren’t going at it like mink.”
“I don’t know what mink…” And then she parsed the tone, rather than the words, and stiffened. “That’s none of your business.”
“Like as not.” He held out a hand. “Have to admit, the boy’s got serious self-control because you smell bloody amazing.”
Mirian sighed and put her hand in his, allowing him to pull her to her feet. “So I’ve heard.”
“So what did you think of my Archive, Captain?”
Reiter watched the emperor watch the women down in the room. “It’s impressive, Majesty.” The large room had been lined with shelves and half a dozen huge scarred tables filled the center space. Junk covered every flat surface—old bits and pieces of tarnished jewelry, carved wood worn smooth from handling, stones with holes through them or runes etched into them. The whole room smelled as if generations of rats had died out of sight and slowly rotted, the smell too pervasive for one rat alone but too faint for it to be a problem solvable by a bringing in a terrier. Or a fan. Had Reiter not seen the tangles in action, he wouldn’t have given the whole lot a second thought.
The Lord Warder of the Archive had assured him that every item was rigorously tested using the most modern scientific criteria, and while they might not know exactly how every piece functioned, they would in time. The old man had either been impressed that the Soothsayers had prophesied Reiter’s presence, or lonely, or slightly crazy, because he’d been helpful above and beyond orders from the emperor.