Professor Etia was as interested in our lessons as I was. I'd not had a chance to talk to her since I'd managed to pull off lighting with her techniques, but now I had all the time I needed. She was thrilled that I'd managed such an advanced bit of magic with dance, even in part, and insisted on making that the focus of our lessons. That was not particularly surprising, but It did at least give me something fun and physical to do.

She had managed to not be locked up because she was an elf. The good professor was quite clear, even before the war, that she didn't really feel any loyalty to the kingdom, as it was for and run by humans, and was only here for her own reasons. That had not won her many friends in the elites of society, but everyone could easily tell that she was quite good at what she did. Her skill had landed her a teaching position, even with her blasé attitude about governance.

So when the group of students she'd been leading out of the school got caught it was easy for her to prove that she cared about the welfare of her charges, but not who was in charge, because it was common knowledge. She'd been held for a time and interviewed, but could honestly care less about opposing the new regime as well, since they didn't seem that much different in her eyes from the previous. Not caring and having no connections had meant that she didn't pose a threat. She was still watched, and knew that if she tried anything they'd be on her, but I didn't think she would.

I now 'could' go out into the city if I took someone with me as a bodyguard, but that wasn't horridly appealing at the moment. Everything was deep in snow and mostly shut down. The places that were still open were limited in number and they tended to be filled with those who were just trying to get by with the destruction in the city. Said destruction wasn't too terrible overall, but a large number of houses had been destroyed in the fighting, so there were more refugees than were easy to deal with.

Which is why one afternoon I found myself going to a dinner meeting with my dad and Mystien. It was of the informal sort as I wasn't really involved in their official work, but I thought it still counted.

"How are things progressing?" Dad asked, looking over from his food. We all ate pretty simple fare here, it being a military installation and all, and he seemed to prefer that.

"Good, I'm learning a lot about dance-casting. There are some tricks to it, so it's slow going, but it's at least fun."

"Excellent, I'm glad to hear you've found something safe that you enjoy."

"I've been thinking." Both heads turned towards me and Mystien set up a privacy barrier. "Good grief, nothing that serious."

"And yet it does seem to become that serious when you start acting." Mystien was far more paranoid about me trying new things now.

"Is there any way we can help those who lost their homes in the fighting? Even food and stuff."

Both men let out a breath. "Alana," dad began, "we are doing things for them. There are a number of shelters set up and food is being brought in from the eastern part of the empire where it's more stable. Some of them aren't accepting it, but some are. Things will repair in time, but it's hard to do in winter, for now we're just trying to make sure everyone makes it through okay."

"But, a lot of homes are gone, and I've heard some of the men in the training hall talking about how people are still grabbing up all the food they can." That was true enough. I spent a lot of time there and some of the guards did talk to me. Many of them were a bit tired of the duties guarding supply locations and distribution points. It was apparently hectic most of the time.

Dad looked at me with very tired eyes. "Alana... John told me about what you went through in the village. About... about how the people starved. That isn't what's happening here though. Please believe me that between us, and the various temples, there is no chance of that kind of starvation. Even housing isn't as bad. While a lot is gone in the worst cases we can set people up in the undercity, it's not great, but it will serve."

He'd hit the nail on the head there. I knew that things were not great right after the siege and thought that they would certainly struggle through the winter. I was even prepared to go full on bakery mode again if it helped. His words did ease some of my fears, but apparently enough showed through on my face.

"Oh good grief," Mystien shook his head. "Why don't you just go and look around a bit. In fact, I'm heading down to the border of the temple district in a couple of days to have a meeting with Bishop Theodore, and hopefully young Dras. You can come along, it might even help."

"What? What do you want with Dras?"

"Well, we want him on our side obviously. Since you went and gave him a military secret. Barring that we want your little communicator back. If he's loyal to the crown then him having it would be an issue, particularly if he tells anyone where he got it. What is your opinion?"

I considered. "Dras is a commoner, and while he's skilled I don't think he's all that into the old royal family. We both had a pretty good interaction with Prince Lief though, so that might effect him, but overall I think he could be convinced to at the very least stay out of it all."

Dad added in, "I can't believe you just handed something like that out like candy."

I huffed, "Not like candy. I gave one to my only trusted adult guardian, one to my best friend, and one to my years long friend that I've been dating." I honestly hadn't gotten to see Kala much, but we had managed a few conversations via communicator.

My father stiffened a bit. "I see, then you should definitely go. If that's the case you probably can get this young man on our side. When you do though I'd like to have a chat with him, so he knows the things about you he should."

"I'd also like to talk to miss Kala. We can't get her on our end militarily, but if she understands things her order will make sure she keeps them quiet. I doubt they'll be willing to make her hand over the communicator, but we can ask for it." Mystien seemed a bit more pragmatic, dad was just being weird.

"Why do you want them back so bad?" I asked.

"Because we don't want anyone else listening in on our conversations." Mystien seemed to think this was obvious.

"Just change the settings."

"What?'

"If you want one on a different grouping just change the light settings." There wasn't an easy way to talk about light frequency in our language. It was baked into the core, but that was all in faux english, and so not really useful.

"Is that workable? Can we actually have multiple different lines for communications that won't overlap?" I often forgot that a lot of things that seemed rather obvious to me would be new ideas to others.

"Sure. Why not? I mean, obviously there are limits, but you could have a bunch if you really wanted." Mystien sighed and pulled out a piece of paper, on which he began to write furiously. "What's that for?" I asked.

"I'm writing up the requisitions I'll need for warding a private workshop with the wards I will want so we can explore the capabilities of these in actual privacy."

I just frowned. "There are a few I'd like to add if you really want to get into this too deeply." I was not going to be exposing myself to lots and lots of potentially high energy radio waves without some protection.

He gave me another look. "Once I've got my setup done we can add what you think we'll need."

Conversation after that was rather mundane. Dad asked about my day and how I was liking Etia. I really was enjoying our lessons, and was learning tons. He even said that he'd come to see some of our training against the team that had come over to the school, which was scheduled for the next day.

They still did want to go against me again. I think the failure had hit them a bit hard with all of their previous success and they needed to prove something. That didn't seem all that important to me, but if it helped them I was fine with it, they were polite enough about it all anyway.

Professor Etia had volunteered to join in with me. Since she wanted to know where my skills in that avenue had progressed and wanted to show me some of her own. I'd never seen her fight, so I was excited to get a look at how elven bards did things. It was a chance that was rather uncommon in our lands, and once I didn't plan to miss.

The next morning I joined my teacher. While I'd chosen my normal armor, which had been kindly dyed black, she showed up in her full dancing regalia.

The men assembled just gawked like idiots for a few moments. The whole capture team seemed stunned, my brother, who'd somehow inserted himself into this, was absolutely slack jawed. The only small mercy was that my dad hadn't shown up just quite yet.

"So, what are we doing exactly. Knowing the rules of the exercise are important." Professor Etia declared as she approached both myself and the capture team.

"Um... so this is a standard practice session. The goal is to disable your opponent, with minimal or ideally no harm from us. We'd appreciate it if you didn't bring in any magic that is too injurious, and a simple light ball or intentionally weakened spell to signal an attack is more than sufficient."

"Very well, what about weapons?"

"Right, right. We don't normally use standard weapons but we do use these." He produced one of their small needle-like tubes. "These are filled with a sedative and are generally thrown by one of our wizards. Since we don't actually want to knock anyone out we'll be substituting some small padded sticks instead. If you need an actual practice weapon we can ask some of the soldiers, I'm sure they'd be happy to loan you one."

"I don't think that will be needed. What about area constraints?"

The man briefly explained that we'd be using one half of the training room. They'd brought in a few small columns and the like to place here and there for cover, to imitate the things that were normally in a given space. There was even an old beat up table that had been taken from somewhere and a few ratty chairs. He told us that they liked using stuff like this when possible because real fights were almost never in wide open areas.

She seemed happy with that and after a few more questions to me about how exactly my barriers worked nodded. "Alright, I'm ready then."

Both sides moved to designated parts of the training area to prepare. We were planning on waiting for my father. We didn't have to wait long though as within a few moments he entered into the room. Then he did a double take upon seeing Professor Etia.

My guess was that dad had never actually seen Atali Dance or any of it's costuming. He'd been busy and never come down when she was teaching me, so I knew he hadn't seen me dance. John was certainly in that boat too and based on how he was full on oogling Etia I suspected that he would really enjoy what was about to happen.

"Alright then, let's get this started," dad declared after taking a moment to compose himself.