By the time they left the village, the rain had let up and the roads had dried out—a bit, at least—so it only took them six more days to reach the Bluewater River and cross the bridge. After that, it was another half-day’s journey to reach Tyrsall itself, farther along the bay.

From the outskirts of the city, it took several hours to reach the central district. Shavala accompanied Corec, Katrin, Treya, and Bobo to the stable where they’d left their old horses and mules during the trip to Circle Bay. Ellerie and Boktar went on ahead to find an inn that would have enough rooms for everyone.

“Socks!” Shavala exclaimed happily when she saw her gelding. He looked up and whinnied at her in greeting.

She opened the door to his stall and hugged him around the neck while he rested his head over her shoulder. Luckily, he didn’t seem too annoyed by her long absence. She’d explained to him before she’d left Tyrsall that she’d be gone for a while, but she wasn’t sure how much he’d understood.

Corec, who’d been speaking to the stable master, turned and called out to the group, “Have we decided which horses we’re selling?”

“What do you say, Broda?” Bobo asked his sturdy gray mare. “Want to go up north with me?” The horse ignored him, busy trying to make friends with Socks. Bobo turned to the stable master. “I suppose I should sell Rose, the dun you’ve been taking care of for me. Can you help with that? She’s too old to keep going with these younger horses, but she’s calm and would be good with children or working a plow.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” the man said.

“Willowbranch,” Shavala asked her new horse, “you like Treya, yes? Will you let her keep riding you?”

Once again, Treya had somehow been stuck with the worst of the horses. Shavala had switched back and forth with her during the trip, but hadn’t had any luck in retraining her friend’s mare.

Like Socks, Willowbranch was a gelding. Shavala had given him the new name when he hadn’t responded to the old one. He was only two years old and had had a cruel owner previously, but he’d become quite a good riding horse in the short time they’d been together.

He turned his head to Treya and nickered softly, which Shavala interpreted as a good sign. An animal could understand what a druid said, at least to the extent its mind could handle, but the reverse wasn’t true. Druids had to depend on reading the animal’s body language and the noises it made.

“Shavala, can you tell him I’ll be stabling him somewhere else, but we’ll meet up with the rest of you soon?” Treya asked as she switched Shavala’s saddlebags for her own.

“Of course.”

“I want Flower back,” Katrin said, referring to her riding mule, “but I like Duchess too, if we need an extra horse.”

Corec nodded. “With a group this big, it doesn’t hurt to have an extra, even if we don’t need her right now.”

The stable master was willing to buy the remaining horses outright, along with all the extra saddles and tack, and to help find a buyer for one of the pack mules. Corec decided to hold on to the other new pack mule, to add to the two they already had.

“Can you stable the ones we’re keeping?” Corec asked the man. “Just for a few more days? I’m not sure where we’re staying tonight, or whether it’ll have a large enough stable.”

“I can do that,” the stable master said. “Same price as before.”

They pooled their money and paid the man, then Corec said, “Now, which stall is Dot in? I’d like to say hello.”

#

After the others had left to find Ellerie and Boktar, Katrin accompanied Corec to a nearby armor smith that the stable master had recommended. They brought along the mule they’d kept, which still had Corec’s plate armor bundled up on its pack saddle.

It was late afternoon and the streets were busy, filled with people going about their day. Following the directions the stable master had given them, they reached a street lined with an odd mix of businesses—coopers, smiths, brewers, and even a cobbler. Katrin had the unnerving feeling that she was being watched, but glancing around surreptitiously, she didn’t see anyone looking her way.

“I think this is the place,” Corec said, stopping outside a smithy that had several pieces of armor on display. The smithy had been built half indoors and half outdoors, and the heavy sound of metal clanging against metal could be heard coming from behind a partial wall.

“What do you need?” asked the thick-armed, middle-aged man who strode out to greet them, wiping his hands on his leather apron. The clanging hadn’t stopped, so there must have been another smith working with him.

Corec unstrapped the damaged breastplate from the mule and handed it over. “Can you do something with this?”

The man raised his eyebrows as he looked over the piece. “This was expensive work. What the hell did you do to it?”

“Ogre with a club.”

“That’ll do it, all right. What are these scratches?”

“A drake’s claws.”

“Hmm,” the smith said. “I should be able to pound out the dent, mostly, but it’s never going to be as strong as it was. A little dent is fine, but this is just too big—too much stress on the metal. I can add something behind it as reinforcement, but if it fits tight, you’ll have to wear less padding.”

“I can do that.”

“The scratches, not much I can do about those. I can buff and polish them a bit so they don’t stand out so much, but I can’t get rid of them, not unless you want to completely rework the whole thing, and it’d be cheaper to replace it.”

“If you can buff them out, you might as well, but I don’t care so much about how it looks as long as it works.”

“Good, because I can’t save the etching. What was it?”

“Family crest, but don’t worry about it. Just do what you have to do to save the armor.”

“It’s gonna cost you some.”

While they were working out the price, Katrin heard a familiar voice coming from down the street. She stepped farther into the smithy and pulled her straw cloche hat down lower on her head, then peered around an armor stand toward the street. Two men she knew were walking past.

“I swear I saw her, boss,” Torse said.

“Right,” Dallo replied. “Just like you saw her last time and let her get away.”

“She did something to me last time! Magicked me up.”

“If you really believed that, you wouldn’t be so eager to find her again.”

“I’m just trying to get back the money she owes you.”

“No, you just remember that I promised to give her to you for your stable if you ever found her.”

Katrin grimaced. No wonder Torse had been so interested in her the last time they’d met—he’d branched out from thieving to running whores.

“Well, sure, boss, but you’d still get half the money, on top of what she owes you.”

“I’ll take it out of her hide if I ever see her again—or Barz—but you’re the only one who claims she’s in the city. If she’d been working here, we’d know it by now. Why would she even come down this street?”

The men’s voices trailed off as they continued on their way. Katrin breathed a sigh of relief, but resolved to be more cautious. She’d gotten used to spending most of her time in Tyrsall holed up in an inn, and it looked like this trip wasn’t going to be any different. At least Dallo and his men were unlikely to visit the type of inn she played at. They preferred seedy taverns for themselves and upscale places for their targets.

#

Ellerie read through the end of the spell again and again. Learning a spell was more than just memorizing the words. A wizard had to know them, in and out, and know how they interacted with each other. More than that, the wizard had to be strong enough to actually cast the spell.

It didn’t help that her mind kept wandering. She felt the need to work off some stress, but that was awkward in her current situation. On the trip north, she’d had a room to herself whenever they were able to find an inn, but the tiny places they’d stayed in seldom had tavern whores—at least not ones who were willing to accompany a woman. Now that the group had reached the city, she had more choices…but now she was sharing a room with Shavala, since Treya was staying at the Three Orders chapter house.

Of course, Ellerie could have still paid for a private room, but the longer she could stretch out her money, the better. Which was another reason to stay away from the tavern girls. The Baron of Pavik had offered them a small fee for taking care of the ogres for him, but he would have had to send someone back to his own keep to get the coin. They’d decided to continue on their way rather than waiting the extra two days it would have taken.

She turned her attention back to her spell book just as someone knocked on the door. Opening it, she found Boktar on the other side.

“We’re going downstairs to listen to Katrin play,” he said. “Are you coming?”

“I’m going to keep working on this. Maybe later.”

“All right. Don’t forget to eat this time.”

“I’m not that bad!”

He just waited, staring at her.

“Fine,” she said. “I’ll be down in an hour.”

He nodded and left.

She sighed and sat back down, taking up her book once again. Blanking her mind of everything else, she read through the entire banishing spell from beginning to end, and suddenly, it clicked into place. She could feel it take hold in her mind. She’d have to study it again from time to time as a reminder, but now that she knew it, she could cast it at will. Almost at will, anyway—she could tell from the way it felt that casting it would take a lot out of her. Still, maybe now she could do something about the binding spell.

She stood in front of the room’s small mirror and whispered the words to her arcane sight spell, would would give her the ability to see magic. When it was complete, her regular vision grew fuzzy. Arcane sight affected each wizard differently, though her teachers had never been able to give her a reason why. But despite her difficulty in actually seeing herself in the mirror, she could now see the binding spell clearly.

The ones she’d seen during her training had been simple things—thin, straight lines connecting one object to another, or an object to a person. This one was different. There was a glowing blue braided cord that disappeared after leaving her chest, though if Corec was in the room, she’d have been able to see the other end appear in his. For some reason, the cord was invisible outside their bodies, even to her arcane sight.

Tiny tendrils extended outward from the cord, and even smaller tendrils grew from those, looking like a series of vines growing along a wall. The tendrils were anchored in place, but she couldn’t see what they were anchored to. Every time she studied the binding spell, the pattern was slightly different, as if the tendrils had moved around. Her teachers had never mentioned anything like it. One of the tendrils extended up to her forehead, to the spot where the sigil would appear if she allowed it.

Muttering the words to the banishing spell, she focused it on the cord, the tendrils, and the sigil. She could feel the spell take shape in her mind, but when she let it loose, it passed right through her, ignoring the binding spell as if it wasn’t there. Which was exactly what Corec and the others said the result had been when they’d asked other wizards for help.

Having failed, Ellerie sat back down and put her head in her hands to cry.

#

After leaving Willowbranch groomed and happy in the Three Orders’ stable, Treya entered the chapter house. She waved to people she knew and tried to ignore the curious stares they gave her for returning home yet again when she was supposed to be out journeying.

Carrying her packs slung over her shoulder, she stopped at Ola’s office first.

“Back again?” the woman said, raising her eyebrows.

“I’m sorry, Mother Ola. The group I’m traveling with is heading north, so we came to Tyrsall to buy supplies and get our horses back. And I need to speak to Priest Telkin from the Temple of Allosur while I’m here—I never really got any training on how to use the healing magic, so I’m hoping he can give me some advice. Is my room still available?”

“Yes, yes, it is. We got two more girls while you were out, but they’re young, so I put them in the east wing. I trust you remember where the clean linens are?”

“Yes. Thank you, Mother Ola.”

The woman shook her head. “It’s probably good you’re paying a visit. Sister Shana was just asking me how you’re doing.”

“Shana’s here?”

“She’s hunting a bounty and tracked him into the city, but at the moment, I believe she and Kelis are talking to the younger girls about the Order of Mystics. They’re in the Little Hall.”

“I’ll go find them,” Treya said, then excused herself.

She dropped her packs off in her familiar room, then went to the Little Hall, which was called that because it was a smaller mirror image of the Great Hall. The Great Hall was where the Sisters and students ate their meals, but the Little Hall was used for lectures and larger classes.

Once she got there, she found Shana and Kelis facing a group of girls ranging between eight and twelve years old. It seemed the talk was over, and the women were taking questions.

“Ahh, and here’s another mystic,” Kelis announced. “Most of you should remember Sister Treya. She went off on her journeying, but she likes us so much, she keeps coming back.”

Treya blushed as the students laughed.

“So, does anyone have any other questions, either for us or for Treya?” Shana asked.

“What’s the scariest monster you ever fought?” one little girl asked.

“The scariest monster, huh?” Shana said. “Well, the drake was pretty scary, especially since I was alone. She was full grown, and her scales were as hard as armor. I had to punch really, really hard.”

The drake that Treya had fought hadn’t quite been an adult yet, and she hadn’t been able to hurt it at all, even with her divine magic strengthening her strikes. How had Shana been able to hit hard enough to break through an adult’s scales? Shana was stronger than her, but she couldn’t be that much stronger.

“Is a drake like a dragon?” another girl asked.

“It looks similar, but it’s much, much smaller. A drake could fit here, between these two tables, but a dragon couldn’t fit in this entire room. Kelis, what about you? Any scary monsters?”

“I’m sorry, girls,” Kelis said. “I’m afraid my stories aren’t as interesting as Shana’s. I only fought bad people. I saw a snow beast once, from a distance, but I didn’t have to fight it. Treya?”

Treya couldn’t tell if Shana was trying to recruit the girls into the Order or scare them away from it, and it took her a moment to decide what to talk about. The fight with the ogres had been over before she could get involved, and she didn’t want to mention the red-eyed men to the little girls. Shana had already described a drake, so Treya went with the next best thing.

“I guess the scariest would be the skeleton…but it was a skeleton of a huge bear. It was twelve feet long, and even on all fours, its back was almost as tall as the top of my head.”

“How did you fight it?” a girl asked.

“Umm, well, I cast a spell to make it stop moving. Once it couldn’t move anymore, my friend hit it with a sword.” Now that Treya thought about it, that story didn’t exactly show off her mystic abilities.

The same girl crinkled her brow. “You’re a wizard?”

“More like a priestess, but I’m a mystic too. Sometimes I fight, and sometimes I do other things.”

The students were dismissed after that, and Treya was left alone with the other women.

Shana burst out laughing. “You cast a spell and then your friend hit it with a sword? Do we need to take you back out to the practice yard?”

Treya winced. “Actually, that’s something I wanted to talk to you both about. Do you have time?”

“Sure,” Shana said.

Kelis nodded. “I’m not teaching any more classes today.”

Treya sat at one of the tables and took a deep breath, trying to put her thoughts in order. She hadn’t decided on exactly what she wanted to say yet, but with Shana being in town, she didn’t want to miss out on the chance to talk to her.

“I guess…I’m having trouble being a mystic. You both know about my magic. It’s getting stronger. That thing with the bear skeleton actually happened—I told it to stop and it did, but after that, I was too tired to fight it myself. The healing is getting stronger too. About a week back, we were in a little village that got attacked by ogres. The people there needed healing, so I took care of that while my friends made plans to defend the town from another attack. I should have been with them, helping with the planning. You would have been with them, Shana. But I had to be where I was instead—I couldn’t not help those people.”

Shana and Kelis had joined her at the table while she spoke. Shana said, “That’s a tough one. You still don’t know which of the gods blessed you, or why?”

“No. I have no idea what I’m supposed to be doing or how I’m supposed to do it.”

“You’re not thinking of leaving the Order, are you?” Kelis asked.

“No!” Treya protested. “Being a mystic is everything I’ve been working toward for years. I’ve never wanted to be anything else.”

“Then maybe you need to think of yourself as a new kind of mystic,” Kelis said. “If you’re healing someone, you’re fighting to save them, but in a different way. You just have more ways to fight than we do. You have to use your best judgment to decide when to fight one way and when to fight another way. That’s what it always comes down to in the end—use your own judgment to make the best decisions you can.”

Shana nodded. “That’s a good way to think about it.”

“But isn’t it a distraction?” Treya asked. “You’ve both said I need to eliminate all my distractions, so I can focus on learning who I am, but I’m not making any progress. I can’t do the kinds of things you can do, and I have to depend on my magic even for a simple fight.”

“Maybe that is who you are,” Shana said. “Look, magic isn’t the only distraction you have, right? What about the jobs you take, or the people here, or thinking about what you’re going to have for supper tonight?”

“Well, sure, and also the friends I’ve been traveling with. I like having company out on the road, but it’s changed things for me. I don’t know how I’m supposed to find myself when I’m constantly thinking about everyone else. I don’t have time to do my exercises; I don’t even have time to meditate if I need to take a watch shift during the night.”

“Let me tell you how I do it. When I’m here,” Shana circled her hand around to indicate the chapter house, “I take interest in others. I have friends; I allow myself to be distracted. When I’m out there, I’m different. I travel alone. I carry nothing but the clothes on my back and a few coins for food. I don’t bring a coat or a cloak because the weather doesn’t bother me—I don’t allow it to. I don’t ride a horse because I can run faster and longer on my own legs. There’s just me and the next job. You could argue that the job is a distraction, but I would say that it’s a purpose, and what’s the point of life without a purpose?”

“But I know all that,” Treya said. “That’s how I know I’m doing it wrong.”

“Ahh, but that’s my purpose. What’s yours?”

“What do you mean?”

“For me, my purpose is the job. That is, until I get home, and I remember that my real purpose is the people here. I know myself by knowing my friends, so are those friends truly a distraction, or are they part of me? What’s your purpose?”

“I guess I don’t know.”

“A smart answer,” Shana said with a grin. “You’ll learn your purpose as you learn yourself. Maybe your new friends are part of your purpose, or maybe they can teach you something about yourself, or maybe they’re just a temporary distraction. Only you will be able to determine that. Kelis’s purpose was to come back here and train the next generation.”

“No, I just decided my purpose was to not freeze to death in the middle of the wilderness,” Kelis said. “Not all of us have mastered the mystic arts as well as you. Teaching students is actually my distraction—it distracts me from my warm bed.”

Shana laughed. “Maybe. One thing though, Treya…”

“Yes?”

“Make time to do the damned exercises. Kelis taught them to you for a reason. The meditation, too.”

Treya grimaced. “I’ll try.”

Kelis cleared her throat and stared pointedly.

“All right, all right. I’ll make time. Somehow.”

“That’s better,” Shana said. “Now, where are you off to next?”

“Up north to Lanport and the Storm Heights.”

“You’ve got a job up there?”

“Well, I’m not getting paid for it, but there are some things I’ve got to do. It’s a long story.”

“Any plans after that, or are you just going to show up here again in a few weeks?”

Apparently Treya’s rather haphazard approach to journeying was going to be a source of amusement to her friends for a long time to come.

“We haven’t decided yet,” she said. “It depends what we find in the mountains. There was some talk about crossing the northern plains, but I don’t know if they’ll really want to do that in the middle of winter.”

“I visited the plains during my journeying,” Kelis said. “They can be strangely charming. The people are rough, but they don’t mind outsiders—most of them are outsiders, one way or another. And when you’re out on the real plains, the prairie, it can be desolate, with no trees or mountains anywhere in sight, and the sky is huge and overwhelming. It makes you realize how small you are.”

“But don’t get involved with all the little wars up there,” Shana added. “Just because you make friends in one town doesn’t mean you should sign on when they decide to raid the next town over.”

“I’d never do that!” Treya said.

“Sometimes it can be hard to say no, so just keep it in mind.”

“By the way,” Kelis said, “what’s this about some magic spell on your head, and why did I have to hear about it from Nina?”

Treya sighed. “That’s the long story I mentioned…”

#

In a city as large as Tyrsall, almost anything could be found, even a tavern that catered to demonborn. Razai shed her disguise as she walked through the door. She headed to the bar, ignoring the boisterous mix of humans and demonborn gambling in the back of the room.

“Whiskey,” she said to the bartender, a man named Meklos, as she placed a coin on the counter.

“Don’t I know you?” said another man who stood nearby. He was seven feet tall and well-muscled, with short horns sticking up from his temples. A blonde human woman hung off his side, smirking at Razai.

“Vash,” she acknowledged.

“Razai. It’s been a long time. That Valaran job, right? I almost didn’t recognize you. You did something with your hair.”

She rolled her eyes. “I cut it.” Vash would flirt with any woman around, but at least he didn’t take rejection badly. He never had a problem finding a bit of skirt.

“We made a lot of coin in Valara,” he said. “You got a line on any more jobs like that?”

“I thought you were going legitimate.”

“I did, but some little worm convinced me to invest in his trading company. Or at least that’s what he called it. The idiot didn’t know what he was doing and ended up losing it all. He took off with everything he could get his hands on while I was out running one of our caravans.” Vash shrugged and patted a battle axe that was leaning up against the bar. “He’s dead now. I could have used you—it took me a year to track him down.”

“I don’t know of any jobs,” she said. “I’m not working for myself right now.”

A hand grasped her shoulder and she whirled, grabbing the man behind her and slamming his face against the bar, then kneeing him in the chin on his way down. Vash’s blonde screeched and clung to his arm. The noise in the back of the room stopped as everyone turned to watch.

Growling, Razai drew her daggers and looked down to find an older demonborn man in tattered clothing, his nose bleeding and one of his protruding canine teeth broken off.

“Jus’ wan’ed some ale,” the man slurred, looking up at her.

“Hells of my fathers, Razai!” Vash exclaimed. “He’s just a beggar.”

Razai grimaced and sheathed her daggers, forcing herself to calm down. Sometimes she thought the rage was the true curse of her people, more so than their appearance.

“That’s old man Oldin,” the barkeep said, coming around to help the man up. “He’s harmless.”

“I’m sorry,” Razai said to the beggar, pulling a handful of silver coins from her belt pouch and setting them on the counter. “For your trouble and for a healer.”

“Don’ need a healer. Jus’ need some ale. Or whiskey’s good. I’ll have some whiskey.” Oldin blearily pushed one of the coins across the bar.

“You’re in your cups already, and that blow to the head’s just going to make it worse,” the bartender said, gathering up all the coins and tying them into a handkerchief before handing them to the man. Then he faced the back of the room and shouted, “Someone take Oldin to find a healer!”

“I will if you cover my tab, Meklos!” another demonborn called back.

The bartender growled, but then nodded curtly.

Razai leaned her elbows on the bar and rested her head against her clasped hands as Oldin was prodded out of the bar by the other man.

“Hells,” Vash said once they were gone. “What’s wrong with you?”

She looked up. “I don’t like to be touched!”

“Oldin’s one of us.”

“Then he should know better!”

Vash shook his head. “You need to relax. What have you been up to, anyway? I heard you’d gone hellside for a while.”

“I’m working for my father.”

He growled low in his throat. “Bad business. I thought you were out of that.”

“Things change.”

“No wonder you’re so tense.”

The woman tugged on his sleeve. “Vashi, let’s go. I’m tired of this place.”

“Yes, all right. Razai, take care, and try not to murder one of us by accident. If you hear of any decent jobs, I’ll be around. Some gang’s been going after the seaborn divers when they come in with their catch, so the divers have started hiring bodyguards. The pay’s not great, but it’s better than nothing.”

Vash left, with his blonde still hanging on his arm. Razai looked toward Meklos, but he just glared at her and shook his head. She didn’t recognize anyone else in the place.

She looked down at her untouched drink. So much for trying to catch up with old friends.