Quenti wasn’t thinking.

She had acted on pure instinct when she had jumped, pulling the magite Alara with her, whose mere presence had jeopardized Quenti’s freedom.

As the current tugged against her’s skirts, she felt the added weight of Alara clinging her wrist. Even with her abilities, wading through a fast-moving river wasn’t the easiest thing to do, but the weight of an entire extra human made the task doubly taxing. No one would blame her if she’d just let the foolish magite drown. All the same, Quenti felt her grip on Alara’s wrist tighten. She may not be able to kill the girl in good conscience, but she could at least prevent her from finding her way back home. The sooner Alara returned to the councilwoman and the others, the sooner they’d all come for Quenti.

But as she propelled herself and the magite through the river, there wasn’t much time or energy left to think things through, and with each passing minute, a fatigue started to send in. After some time—though Quenti couldn’t tell how much—she found herself slowing down. Her body grew heavy, powers draining as she fought against the water, who current now pushed against her and the dead weight of Alara. Quenti had turned them into another river a few miles back, and between the exhaustion and newfound resistance, she couldn’t keep them from drowning for much longer.

Using the last of her strength, she brought them to the shore, pulling Alara up against the rocks before dragging herself out of the water with a shudder. Her magia, which was usually an explosion of power within her was now just a dull pulse in her core. It wasn’t until she was lying on her back, staring up at the steep hillsides on either side of the river that Quenti realized how tired she was. Her whole body trembled and her fingers burned with a numbing cold.

Beside her, Alara sat up with a start, shoulders heaving.

“You…you could have killed me!” Alara gasped out, eyes wild and hair plastered to her face.

Quenti waved her hand weakly, trying to push the girl out of the way so she could sit up. “Please,” Quenti said between breaths. “I’m a water mage. I had it handled.”

“You’re not a mage.”

“Fine. Magite. Bruya.Whatever you want to call me.”

“You think you have a right to the word magite after you tried to slit my throat?”

“Bruya it is, then!” Quenti said, already getting fed up with the direction of the conversation. “And please, I couldn’t slit your throat if I tried. Have you looked at this stupid thing of yours?” She found the dagger still tucked into her skirts and slashed at her own arm. The weapon didn’t leave so much as a scratch on her skin. “It’s dull as a spoon. Hardly even worth being called a dagger.”

Alara’s eyebrows furrowed at the comment, studying the blade in Quenti’s hand. The magite tried to reach for it, but Quenti quickly slipped it back into her belt without comment. She didn’t trust Alara, even with even a dull weapon.

Alara didn’t protest, but an annoyed look crossed her face. “Why did you run?”

“Why do you think?” Quenti pushed her hair back from her face, the feeling slowly coming back to her fingers.

“We were trying to save you.” Alara attempted to stand. Whether from the sodden clothes or her own shaky exhaustion, she stumbled a few times before she could get her feet under her.

Quenti’s teeth clenched at the girl’s words. “Save me?” She was standing now, any weakness having been burned from her body by anger. “I was trying to save myself from you.”

“Save yourself how?”

Quenti sighed. She had no idea what she’d been expecting from this. “You really are a sweet, brainwashed child, aren’t you? Ever stopped to think about what the Council has to gain by keeping all magia users under their thumb?”

“You mean apart from a half a millennium of peace and prosperity?” Alara said. “Need I remind you that—”

“—that mages were the instigators in the great war, blah-blah-blah. Yeah, I know.” As much as Quenti wished no ill will on Alara, she was starting to regret taking her hostage. “Go on, then. I’m not holding you against your will. You’re free to go back, I guess.”

Alara narrowed her eyes and looked back toward the way they came. “How far did we go?”

Quenti had already done the calculations in her head. “A couple dozen or so miles—two waterfalls. You should be able to make it back to them by tomorrow if you can walk through the night.”

“A dozen—how…?” Alara’s eyes were wide.

“A couple dozen. And did you already forget that I’m a water mage?”

“Bruya.”

“Whatever.”

“Fine,” Alara said, crossing her arms and throwing herself onto the ground. “They’ll come looking for me if I just stay here.”

Quenti laughed. Just how stupid was this girl? “You’ll be eaten by a wild puma long before they find you. And you’d at least need to get to the split we took, since they won’t know which way we went. That’ll be like…five or so miles. It’s even downhill. Completely doable, especially with your powers to protect you. You might even make it down before nightfall.”

She could see Alara’s eyes tracking the river back toward the horizon, making her own calculations. At this point, Quenti wasn’t quite sure what the best move was. Even if Alara did make it down to the split and the councilguards found her—it would give Quenti hours of headstart to make it into the cloud forest and disappear. But then again, Alara was a mind-stalker, and though she wasn’t exactly in tune with her abilities, she had found Quenti twice already.

On the other hand, if she brought Alara with her, she’d slow her down. Of that she was sure. But it would also mean that Alara wouldn’t be able to tell the councilguards which way she had gone.

“You could come with me,” Quenti’s voice shook Alara from her contemplation. Her head whipped around and she sent a glare back that probably would have worked if they were both ten years younger. “Or…you could wait here as the sun begins to set and pray to El’dyo you don’t get eaten. The two of us can brave the wilderness much better together than apart.”

Quenti started to walk away from the river. “Either way, I’m going to go find a place to make camp. You’re welcome to join me if you aren’t too annoying.”

“Why can’t we make camp here?” Alara said waving her arms around the flat open ground they were on.

“Oh yes, let’s just stay here next to the lovely water source saying ‘come get me, predators, please.’” Quenti continued to walk away, eyes now trained on the incline ahead of her and the deepening shadows as the sun fell behind the western side of the mountains.

She could almost hear the thoughts whirring through Alara’s mind before the sound of stumbling footsteps followed behind her.

***

They walked less than a quarter of a mile uphill and through the dense forest before Quenti found a spot she was content with. The undergrowth was sparse here and the land relatively flat.

She could just hear the river in the distance if she strained her ears, mixing with the sounds of the forest. A few birds called back and forth in the high trees, and she saw a small group of monkeys chattering together just outside the clearing.

Alara crumpled on the ground, dropping her head into her hands. After their escapade through the river, Quenti couldn’t exactly blame the magite for her exhaustion.

After taking a labored breath, Quenti took stock of her sodden pack of supplies. The quinoa she had had left was beyond saving, but the jerky could be dried by the fire. She grabbed some branches scattered about the clearing and made a small pile away from the trees.

Her legs folded beneath her as she collapsed to the ground next to the pile. She took some deep breaths, staring at the damp wood, trying to reach for the cool core of her magia. It was weak and hard to grasp, but after a few minutes, she managed enough to suck the water from the branches, sending the droplets to a small cup she had pulled out of the pack.

A few feet away, Alara was still sitting, head in the hands, breathing heavily. Quenti could practically taste the panic and fear in the air. This was a disaster.

“Can you at least make yourself useful and start a fire?” she said, throwing Alara a small flint and metal ring. Quenti nodded to the branches she had collected as Alara gave her a blank stare. “I’ve dried them off, so they should light easily.”

“Right. I…”

“Look, if you want to sit around a wait to be rescued, you can go back to the river and waste time there.”

“No.” Alara said, her face flushed. “It’s just…I don’t know how to start a fire.”

“You’re a fire mage.”

“Wrong. I’m a magite.”

“You and your names!”

“And a bad one at that,” Alara said, ignoring the barb. “Have you forgotten already? Besides, do you know how to swim just because you’re a water bruya?”

“Yes.” Quenti looked over at the other girl with a mixture of pity and disgust. “It was like the first thing I learned.”

“Well, I’ve never much liked fire. So it never was at the top of my priorities.”

“Sol help me. What do they even teach you people at the Haven?” Quenti dragged herself up and grabbed the flint back from Alara. She pulled the branches together into a small tipi, before striking the flint a few times. Her frustration over the past few weeks seemed to build in her chest as she tried to get the sparks to light over and over again.

“Do you know how to start a fire?”

“Of course I do!” Quenti snapped, though she had always struggled to start fires, no matter how many times she had been taught as a child. Her mother had always said it was because it went against her nature—not that she would have said that in front of Quenti’s father.

“Let me see it,” Alara said, interrupting Quenti thoughts before they could spiral any deeper.

She stepped back, letting the other girl take the flint and ring from her.

“Can you just…back up a bit more. Just in case?”

Quenti rolled her eyes, and while she didn’t say anything as she stepped back, she did reach into her core and grab onto a thread of her magia, lightly, readying herself if she needed to throw any water at the problem. Or at Alara’s face.

The other girl was silent and still and she knelt in front of the wood. Quenti couldn’t see her hands, but she heard the sharp sound of flint hitting metal.

Even with her abilities, it took a few minutes, and Quenti was about to snatch the flint back from the fire magite when a spark from the flint suddenly flared to life. The wood in front of Alara caught, flames roaring almost instantaneously, blackening the wood.

Quenti’s eyes went wide in amazement before she saw the look of terror on Alara’s own face. The girl fell back from the fire, her powers clearly snapping into the place as the inferno settled into a small flicker. But the blackened wood was proof of what had just happened.

“I did it.” Alara’s voice was loud and strong despite her ashen face.

Quenti rolled her eyes and pushed the magite aside, taking over tending the fire back into something more substantial. She almost felt sorry for the other girl as she quickly moved to the edge of the clearing.

“You’re not going to stay warm from over there.”

“I’m fine here,” Alara said.

All the same, Quenti grabbed her sodden cloak from her bag, waved her hand over it to wring out the water and then threw it at Alara.

“You seem to have a plan.” Alara said, eyeing the rest of the supplies Quenti had laid out beside her pack. The other girl seemed particularly interested in the small array of weapons Quenti had—a bow, a quiver of arrows, a small club, and a set of bolas. It wasn’t her fault the councilguards were careless with their supplies.

“Yep. Although, you following after me was not a part of it.”

“Well, gee,” Alara said, her voice coated in irony. “I am so sorry about that. I just really wanted to join in on the fun.”

Quenti quickly shrugged off any pity she may have had for the magite. “I needed to get out of there. I didn’t ask you to find me.”

“Save you.”

“Recapture me.”

Alara’s eyes dropped at this comment and she actually looked unsure of herself.

“So where are you going?” Alara finally asked, still not making eye contact.

“We now apparently… are going to meet Khuno.”

“The girl that taught you magia? The villager?”

It was Quenti’s turn to avoid eye contact now. “Yeah. Her.”

“What is she even doing out here? Is there a village this way?”

“Yes.” Quenti was stabbing at the fire now. A part of her knew she was probably more likely to ruin the fire at this point, but it was an excuse to not look at Alara.

“You must have been close with her to run away like this.” Alara’s voice was questioning.

“We were—are.” Quenti stood up and brushed the loose dirt from her cream skirt. “I need to go catch us some fish for dinner. The quinoa is useless, but maybe you can go find us some fruit or nuts. You know how to not poison us, right?”

“I’m not an idiot.”

“Forgive me if I assume someone who grew up with a market the size of the Haven’s never had to scavenge for food.”

“I want to be a member of the councilguard—it’s useful training.”

“So you want to be a councilguard but are still too afraid to use your abilities?”

“You have a problem with that?”

Quenti looked at the girl standing in front of her. She was fit but still on the small side—a few good inches shorter than Quenti, who didn’t consider herself tall. Alara seemed to be able to read her thoughts, as the look in her eyes practically dared her to argue.

“Right, then you will understand why I’m taking these with me,” Quenti said as she grabbed the small store of weapons and walked out of the clearing without a glance back.

What was she supposed to do with this girl? She couldn’t very well just leave her out in the middle of nowhere. But what would happen when she showed up in Arbol with a councilguard-in-training?