Months of practice hadn’t made Kendall as strong as Sukata yet, but she had definitely made leaps and bounds in the tidying things with her mind stakes. She swept all the big chunks to one side with a satisfactory clatter, and began work on the shards.
"You will bring back your headache," Sukata said, standing under the arched entrance to the central courtyard.
"Don’t think I could make my head hurt worse than it already is," Kendall said, shrugging. "You just watch—you need to rest."
Sukata produced an uncharacteristically visible frown. "You will make yourself ill," she said.
"I suspect it’s fine, Sukata," Rennyn said, from around the corner. "Come talk to me a moment, Kendall."
Suspicious. Kendall had had a sense all day that she’d missed part of a conversation, but she wasn’t going to show her confusion, walking back to stand, arms folded, over Rennyn,
"Sit down," Rennyn said, and once Kendall had obeyed added cheerfully: "You don’t lack for pigheadedness."
"Thanks heaps." What the Hells had she done to earn a lecture?
"It’s a valuable trait in a Thought Mage. What you don’t seem to have noticed is you made a transition, holding open Nameen’s Walk. There is absolutely no way you could have achieved that without abstract Thought casting."
"What?" Kendall stared from Rennyn to Sukata, then shook her head. "I was just propping the roof up."
"Ideally, your day today would have involved a lot of meditation and carefully controlled exercises. Though I doubt you would have been much impressed by the meditation. On the whole I don’t hold a great deal of concern about you accidentally setting things alight: your control is very good. However, I would prefer you didn’t cast unnecessarily over the next few days while I am busy being unconscious."
Hot all over, Kendall started to speak, threw away a half dozen things she wanted to shout on the subject of important information that should be mentioned sooner, and finally said: "And if you kill yourself with this Nameen’s Walk stunt?"
"Then I have most conveniently written a little manual on how to become a Thought Mage in six simple steps," Rennyn said, and obviously thought herself funny. "Seb can take over your training—he truly is capable of focusing on the practical aspects instead of the theory—but I’d recommend not waiting until you get back to Tyrland before going through the exercises I outlined."
The roaring sound had come back, but it seemed to be all inside Kendall’s head. She glared at the source of her anger, snapped: "Shouldn’t you be concentrating on figuring out that spell?" and went back to clearing away glass. And not thinking about setting things on fire.
Sukata had followed her, but was being all hesitant, so Kendall made herself cool down a little and asked in an even sort of voice: "You knew?"
"I was not told," Sukata said, which meant Kellian hearing.
"And you didn’t tell me because—?"
That made Sukata turn particularly grave. "Because I do not repeat private conversations."
There was no answer to that which wouldn’t make Sukata feel all tied up, so Kendall dropped the point. "It should have been you," she said instead.
"Why?" Sukata started to hold out her hand, then lowered it. "I know I made it seem like we were in competition, that I was angry that you—"
"No you didn’t," Kendall said, sharply. "I never thought you were—well, not for more than five minutes. That’s not how you work. I’ve told you that."
"And avoided me. Stopped talking to me. Wouldn’t meet my eyes."
"That’s because of that stupid Emperor!" Kendall snapped, and then regretted it because she couldn’t just leave it there. "He—he went on at me about how people just go around doing what the Kellian want, and asked what you get out of me and…and…" Kendall had made it worse, and hurried on frantically. "I didn’t believe him, told him he was an idiot. I’m sorry. I didn’t believe him, but I kept remembering what he said. And I couldn’t answer his question. I couldn’t say why you were my friend and…" She hung her head, feeling worse than she ever had in her life because whatever she tried she just seemed to keep hurting Sukata.
And Sukata laughed. Kendall hadn’t even known that she could. It was a strange little muted sound, but definitely a laugh and though Sukata wasn’t smiling when Kendall’s head shot up, her eyes were blazing bright.
"Have you noticed," Sukata said, in her thin, broken voice, "that the best parts of being alive don’t need an explanation?"
Kendall had never been kissed before. She did not know what to do when Sukata bent her head. She felt clumsy and awkward and confused and resentful.
And happy.
"I am so proud of you, Kendall," Sukata said, and squeezed her tight, then kissed her again.
Someone cleared their throat. Kendall hastily let go and turned to find a woman standing watching with an air of patience, as if she’d been there for a while. One of the mages.
She didn’t have leaves for hair—it was braided in an elaborate style, though with strands sticking out all over the place—and dressed in what had once been a very nice dress and now…was not. But that was not the thing that made Kendall struggle not to stare. The deep brown skin of the woman’s cheeks was ever-so-faintly indented by the unmistakeable outline of a leaf, of an entire, interconnected pattern of leaves, as if she was a puzzle put together from ivy pieces.
She talked in Kolan gabble, of course, but didn’t fire up at whatever Sukata said in response, and followed without fuss when Sukata led her to the central courtyard. Kendall was not quite glad about the interruption, but it gave her a moment to try to put what had just happened into some sort of recognisable state. She felt as if she was Rennyn: as likely to fall down as to take the next step.
"Rennyn Claire!" the leafy woman repeated, when Sukata had made introductions, and then when Rennyn indicated the faint carvings on the wall, the name Nameen came up in all the gabble that followed—gabble that grew and grew as Captain Faille and the Pest escorted in four more mages, and Darian Faille and Aurienne brought five more, and left almost right away. Not all of these wanted to talk about Nameen, and one was shouting more than gabbling, and Kendall could see that Rennyn was going to be left with no voice at all if she tried explaining the same things over and over. She’d already moved past croaky on to hoarse.
Remembering she had a coat full of distractions, Kendall handily drew off almost all of the mages by offering the collection of focuses. And then the first woman they’d met, who seemed to be called Maja Keshkant, took charge. She shooed everyone away from Rennyn, and made them stand in line to take a turn scuffling through the collection in Kendall’s coat. She sent Sukata off for water. She examined Lieutenant Meniar, then snaffled his slate and chalk box and cast something on Rennyn to help with her throat.
Maja was Kolan for Magister, and since everyone in the room was an upper-reaches sort of mage, and they were all talking at each other, it was Maja, Maja, Maja all over the place. They sounded like a herd of cranky goats. But, Kendall had to admit, most of them soon shifted to quiet listening, explaining things to the next group of arrivals, and organising a hunt about for any focuses that had been missed among the roots of the vine.
When Sukata came back carrying a lot of water in a segment of golem, one mage figured out a way to smooth the edges of other collected pieces so they had some useable glasses. Another filched all the slates and made detailed sketches of the readable sections of the carving Rennyn had been studying.
"Do you think maybe we should try and talk Herself out of casting this Walk?" Kendall murmured to Sukata, when the Kellian girl had finally been freed of water duty, and Kendall couldn’t find any other way to shut up the argument in her head about whether to take hold of Sukata’s hand. "This lot can cast all the spells we need."