Back in her room at the Vissio place, she could tell she was wearing out her welcome. She had a way to start making up for it, though. She sat down and got to work once more at her Flotsam power. Conceptually it had started out as creating the sort of junk one might find in a shipwreck, but she'd moved beyond that. She wanted to make useful, valuable things to provide for herself and others. Cloth in particular had been a problem. She'd always made barely adequate tangles of thread that began fraying right away.

She'd been thinking a lot about the people she worked with, back and forth across the road. This whole region was held together by traders, men guarding the roads, farmers pushing deeper into the forest, spies rooting out trouble. She hadn't even considered the importance of the lumber trade just to maintain the bathhouse's warm water; it was one of those details a really good trader ought to know. Most everything she learned about the towns she visited gave her deeper appreciation for how many moving parts a working society had. Ruyo had wanted to hide in her cave and slowly build up power, but to be useful she had to understand many different people's needs and desires.

A useful goddess didn't sit there passively or try to command everything. She saw many things and began to grasp how they all fit together, and how to weave herself into their lives so that they cared enough to make her part of their daily thoughts and prayers.

A flashing ball of mana in her hands swirled and stretched, becoming a square of tan cloth. She tugged at it and for once, there was no sign of it tearing. The threads held together well under her touch.

After a few moments' smugness she got back to work, doing it again at greater size. Soon she had a patch big enough to wrap around her as a skirt. "All right, something worth selling!"

She was waiting until tomorrow morning to get on the road, so she had time to keep practicing. With a pile of fresh cloth in a self-made bag, she headed back to market and found the tailor she'd worked with before. "I've got some raw material, and I'm looking for a new outfit or two."

After some negotiation, she handed over a few coins and the cloth, for two simple tan tunics and pants made of rugged canvas. It wasn't an especially pretty style but given her recent troubles, sturdy beat fancy.

And then the tailor took her aside while making measurements. They were in the little tent beside her booth, shaded from the sun. "You're the fire-killing mage, aren't you?"

"There were at least three others."

"Right, but you're the one that also killed that monster and rescued a kid or something, I hear. And you can make metal and cloth; did you make this?" She tugged at the material Ruyo had brought, enough for the tailor's next several outfits.

"I did. I didn't want to ask directly, but is the quality all right?"

"It is. I've never heard of a mage making fabric before. Can you do different kinds?"

"Probably, but I haven't tried that part much yet."

"Well, watch your back when the weavers start to notice you're competing." She sounded serious.

Ruyo sighed. "I don't expect to be a huge supplier, and I'm not trying for top quality stuff. Maybe that'll help pacify them. I can supply you with more cloth on my next trip, if you like."

#

It felt good to buy and sell, but there were bigger problems afoot. By evening, Marcellus Anemos of the powerful wind-mage family had come to call upon her at the Vissio house.

He said, "I have been in meetings all day. Could you give me a water elemental or two to destroy?"

Ruyo scoffed, and obliged. She gave him a bit of a challenge, making her little minions float around, but in seconds he blasted them apart. A rainbow effect hung in the air.

"Ha! Thank you. You could charge for that."

"I was thinking of doing that. Maybe having a ruin for people to explore and fight through."

The younger of the Vissio twins arrived with Virid, and they sat down for dinner together. There was a fine platter of herbed roast chicken and some dull but spicy fish from downriver. An ostentatious display of meat, and they thought nothing of it. Her stomach didn't complain though.

Anemos said, "Here's the gist of far too much argument. The Inheritors have several other branches. Some are nothing more than smugglers or innocent scholars. People who want to gather ancient knowledge and power. The leader who'd captured you is Veneri, a younger child of the family Mendrettos, who --"

"I know of that family. Shippers?"

"And owners of several fishing towns, yes. The Council is sending word to them about their wayward son, phrased somewhere between a polite request for information and a demand that they disavow him and capture him for us." He tore into a bread roll. "We argued about the wording for half an hour, talking about what we needed to not give away to agents of Khyber and so forth."

"So that's where I need to go," Ruyo said.

"I doubt it. The woman you saw him kill some time ago was literally his mother. He's not welcome at home, we think. So, we'll be working with them to track down which hole he's crawled into."

"And why?" asked Vissio.

"That's a puzzle too. My best guess is that all this is not international espionage, but a group of especially greedy treasure-hunters trying to get as much power as possible by uncovering ancient magic. They've obviously found a way to create, control and trap elementals, which is very interesting, and a way to trap even a more complex spirit like your friend."

Ruyo liked that he'd drawn a distinction between Nusina and the expendable waterballs. "Now that I can think about it a little more calmly, I'm surprised. They had some way to trap her so that she couldn't just slip out of the cage. And they think she... she won't just vanish if she gets far away from me. They know what they're doing."

Anemos nodded. "I'd like you to trust that we know what we're doing, too. The Council is prepared to continue offering support and training, and tolerance by the Church, if you supply us with more trained mages and find ways to do other things for us."

"For a possible war, you mean."

The wind-mage didn't flinch. "Possibly."

"I'm on board. Don't ask me to lead an army, but I'm improving quickly. Before the last attack I was talking about the idea of you guys building a bigger shrine for me and offering regular prayers."

"Why?"

"I can now target a good-quality shrine with my spells. Get you food or cloth or whatever without being there. And the more prayers, the more I can do."

Virid spoke up. "Miss Ruyo, I've been playing with the new element. Can I show you?"

Everyone was interested. The kid got up and fetched several buckets of mud and water. He knelt before them and chanted to help himself concentrate on the spell-work. Mana gathered in his hands, pulled the buckets' contents together, and then... A dog-sized mass of mud rose up like an ugly little statue, shambling toward them.

"A double-type elemental?" said Anemos.

Virid's older brother looked smug. "He's probably the world's expert on them now."

Ruyo said, "Mind if I fight it?"

Virid grinned. "Go ahead!"

Ruyo summoned one of her little ice constructs, with some trouble, and had it fire shards of ice at the muck creature. They thudded into it like arrows, freezing chunks of its body. The muddy beast lurched closer and slapped its upper body at the scuttling ice-thing, but it rapidly froze solid.

Virid said, "Well, that was... super effective."

Anemos looked thoughtful. "Arrows wouldn't do so well against it. And out of combat I can imagine many uses, setting up walls, roads, traps. One mage could do the work of several." He turned to Ruyo. "Can you teach the spell for creating elementals, the way you hand out magic itself?"

"Not instantly. It seems to be more advanced than the level of power I can directly grant, so far. But I was able to teach someone who was already a local water expert. Virid here might be the best teacher around."

Anemos said, "I'll see what we can do about the shrine. I assume you're going back to your cave for now? We'll be in touch, I hope."

#

She sent off another letter to her parents. She still worried about giving too much away to whatever nosy messenger carried the mail, but more of her activities were becoming public knowledge. So after some thought, she contacted Anemos again and got permission to send a message by a trusted courier. Since the information was going to leak, Ruyo had argued, getting at least one Starshore merchant family prepared to help was a good idea.

I am now a ruin-delver and monster-slayer,, she wrote, and then went on for pages trying to explain. She couldn't say much about Brotherhood, and the Averell courier made her ink out a section about the latest, biggest fire elemental. But she got the point across that her parents' daughter was officially a god now, and needed help to do the job well. What would they make of that? She included some indirect hints about business opportunities: not they need boots for soldiers but leather is in increasing demand. She even described shrines, both the basic pillar and a possible better version.

She finally returned west, feeling alone. Even so, she had the human guards Khulis and Hastro along, and a small cargo of tools and materials to set up a better camp.

The weather turned wild as they rode. Darkening clouds started off with a light drizzle, then began dropping hail on them. Ruyo took it as an opportunity. She took one hand off her horse's reins and cast a spell, extending a repelling effect as far to either side as she could. It was like a roof, knocking most of the hail and sleet away from them.

The men looked grateful. "Could we learn that one too?" Hastro asked.

"You might be able to get it already with practice. We'll do a group lesson."

#

She expected a simple stop at Sor's Hill to check in and rest, but ran into trouble right away. The usual wayside inn, the Stag and Nanny, was too quiet. She asked the bartender, "Is something wrong?"

"Hey there, miss Ruyo. I broke one of these glasses the other day; do you think...?"

Ruyo conjured a replacement. "Not quite a match, sorry."

"It'll do. Thanks!" He wiped it down as though it needed cleaning. "We ran into a little problem with Miras, your 'priest'. He and our best irrigation guy, Stumpy... Esuris is his real name; I think you trained with him. He got into a drunken bet, and now there's land in dispute."

"Land?"

"Half an acre of good farmland his surviving family owns, which mostly means his sister. But technically he owns it. And according to the bet, now he doesn't."

Ruyo groaned. "I'd better find him."