Tulia's head spun. Her friend, the merchant Ruyo, had just been through something so strange it was likely to affect the whole city. Supposedly she was a goddess now. Not some shining being of ultimate wisdom, just a trader with a cart of dyes and trinkets. The question was what Tulia herself should do about it. For the moment, Ruyo's supposed godhood meant that Tulia had a sort of second master.

"Tulia, my clothes are dirty again!" said the mason-mage Quintus. Tulia had come home to her master's studio and workshop to find he'd made a mess of it and couldn't find anything.

She forced a smile and began gathering up robes and socks. The man was brilliant but seemed hardly able to tie his boots without her. "Sir, will you carve the shrine for Ruyo yourself?"

"I suppose I'll have to. It'll be a good opportunity to see if she can actually use the thing, and to study how her power interacts with the stonework."

Tulia hauled a heavy wicker basket as she'd done many times before, making for the door. She left her master to his important work.

The wizard looked up from scratching notes with a quill. "What do you make of all this? The non-magical stuff I mean. The... the implications."

It was nice to be asked. "So far, she can create food and metal. If she can scale that up, she could reduce how much we pay here for iron. That'll affect your construction work since you'll be able to use more metal bracings and nails and the like. But the Khyberians might try cutting off our supply."

"Why would they do that?"

She hefted the basket. "Do you remember, sir? The Council was plotting some kind of action against Khyber."

"Hmm. I'll think about designs with more metal." He became engrossed in his writing again.

Tulia left for the public laundry, wondering just what had set off the tit-for-tat trouble with the northerners. Quintus probably had no idea, and the Council wouldn't tell him any more secrets if they had any sense.

#

The laundry had been a mansion, once, standing in the old stone streets of the Flask district by the aqueduct and main bath-house. It smelled unpleasantly of ammonia but a chilly late-spring breeze blew through the windows. A few other people, mostly women, were cleaning clothes this morning in the basins of soap and water and less pleasant stuff.

She recognized Martello, fellow slave, with a basket of robes nicer than anything he owned. He sported a fresh black eye and she didn't have to ask why; his owner was much more hot-tempered. Tulia worked beside him for a while.

He said, "So what happened outside the city? And I heard something about a kidnapping?"

"I don't know much about that part, but..." She told him about Ruyo, without revealing where the cave was. "And she said, 'No gift of Ruyo shall be used to keep people chained, save as just punishment.'"

He snorted. "I don't see your buddy handing out gifts to the likes of us."

"She will. I'm officially her priestess."

"What?"

Others were starting to listen in. Good. Tulia pretended not to notice. "She's going to learn how to grant people magic powers. Anybody, I bet. That's worth more than handing out a free glass bottle or something."

Because that was the real long-term thing to watch for. If having magic made you powerful, part of society's elite, what'd happen if it were suddenly not just for a few percent of the population?

#

She spent the day catching up on chores for Quintus. By evening he told her to fetch a prepared dinner somewhere for the two of them, and they sat down by the light of several green-tinged magic lights that Quintus could conjure easily. She envied him even that little trick; she could only use a self-lighting candle or other device built for the non-mage majority.

"I have a rough design," he said, and showed off a sketch of a shrine, immediately getting brown sauce on the page. The pictured altar wasn't much, considering that the kidnapped boy's family wasn't eager to spend a fortune on something vaguely heretical.

"How does it work?" she said.

"Since when do you care about the spellwork aspects?"

"I feel I should learn about these things if we're going to be working with Ruyo."

Quintus shrugged. "Very well. See this core here, slightly compressed?" He began pointing out literally arcane features she lacked the training to understand. Still, merely spending time with the man had been something of an education in magic theory, and she had some idea of how mana could be charged or distributed.

He said, "Our talk with that water spirit suggested that even the symbolic designs on the object have an effect. That's not entirely silly; the making of things helps impress the intent of the maker onto them and affect how it's used." He looked crossly over one shoulder.

"Looking for something?"

"Chisel."

Tulia got up from her vegetable casserole and fetched one of the mason's enchanted chisels. She held it for a moment, examining the etched arrow-like designs on it. "So these aren't just decoration," she said, handing it over.

Quintus played with it. "Indeed. They both affect how it's made, and how someone will use it, guiding the mana flow."

Tulia thought. "Isn't the shrine some sort of Lost World magic though? Won't we have to use the symbols of a forgotten civilization?"

The mason looked baffled. "But how could... ha, maybe they are different from ours. More powerful? What happens if we make something with ancient-styled carvings and give it to someone who's never seen the symbolism?" He reached over to a desk and grabbed his quill again. There was no room on the table for writing with it.

"Maybe take notes after dinner, sir?"

"Well, I have this idea fresh in my mind. Er... Listen to me ramble, will you? You might see something I don't."

So they talked magic over dinner by the light of spells. For a little while there were no chores to do, no services her master required.

#

The proposed shrine design was a stone cylinder carved with wave and cloud designs, decorated with seashells from Follyport down at the coast east of Averell. Tulia made one little artistic change to the design before it went into production. "I think the waves would look nicer like this," she suggested, showing off a sketch. "And you said this kind of angle to the carvings was best, right?"

Quintus shrugged and accepted the change. And that made Tulia feel bad, in a way. This first time the man had ever let her participate in designing an enchanted object, she'd deceived him about her intentions. The subtle change to the wave designs just happened to make them look like snapped chains.

#

Preparing the ground for the shrine meant that she was sent to the Vissio estate. She didn't often get to visit the fancy homes and gardens of the noble merchant families, but knew the lady of the house was a member of the city's ruling Council. It was her two older sons who ran the family business. They looked skeptically at her when she showed up at Quintus' orders to mark off a space for men to plop down a big heavy stone cylinder.

But she was a priestess now, and that gave her some authority. She'd tied her fortunes to Ruyo's, and needed the merchant to become wildly successful.

Just after she left, a plain woman in a leather apron, maybe a barkeeper, found her in the market. "Oh, you're that priestess, aren't you? What's going on up there?" The lady pointed to the walled manor that perched on a little hill above them.

So Tulia told her, "A friend of mine has gotten amazing power, and she's going to start offering it to other people."

"Is that so. How, exactly?"

"She's..." Tulia faltered, feeling silly. She'd have to get used to saying this. "Ruyo is technically a goddess now. But she can prove it; you'll see."

"A goddess of what?"

"Water." Tulia strained against her own instinct to add, and freedom. She wanted to shape what this new power would do, what people would see in it, maybe even influence the spells that Ruyo got. According to the spirit Nusina, that public perception mattered. Yet Tulia had promised not to speak falsely in Ruyo's name.

What was Nusina, anyway? A slave of Ruyo, or something better or worse? It seemed that the spirit couldn't escape from the goddess even if she wanted to, due to needing mana as her air and food. Whether that meant Nusina could attach herself to a different mage, Tulia had no idea. But the guardian spirit seemed bound to her own master by more than the laws of man and magic. And Nusina definitely had influence over Ruyo. And confidence, and knowledge. The skill to make herself a worthy adviser, not just a sneak with her own agenda. A true partner.

"You look troubled," the stranger said.

"I'm just thinking there are limits to what it's right to do with divine power. May I ask how you know about this?"

"The rumors have been swirling. My husband and I run Brotherhood House."

That was the local lodge representing the monks of the village of Brotherhood. The ones who tended to hunt and kill dark magical threats.

Tulia held up her hands. "No, no, Ruyo isn't at all evil. She's trying to help people."

The woman smiled sweetly. "That's good to hear. I'll have to keep an eye out for her; thanks for telling me."

She left, and Tulia found herself alone and sweaty. The priesthood business was getting more tricky by the hour!

She asked herself, "Am I some kind of adventurer now?"