Tibs sighed on seeing the man on the other side of the door. Unlike the usual guard Irdian had watching Tibs, this one’s armor was fancier. The metal work clean, the fabric draped over it in gold and black. Regalia, Quigly had told him it was called after those better dressed guards had escorted some of the caretakers off the platform. He also had an element, fire, which marked him as an adventurer. Epsilon for certain, maybe Delta.

“What does he want now?” Tibs asked, unimpressed that Irdian now resorted to an adventurer.

“Guild Leader Tirania requests the presence of Tibs Light Fingers and Don Arabis to a function held at the guildhall on the seventeenth of Mertal, two hours before zenith,” he said in a bored tone, then looked down at Tibs. “She will expect you to dress properly.”

“Is there anything else we need to know?” Don asked as the man turned away.

“Be on time.”

Tibs closed the door.

This was the month of Mertal, and the seventeenth was in three days. The schedule would be up five days after that, so he didn’t have to worry about it interfering.

He opened the chest and turned his armor over to access the hidden compartment. How many coins would he need? He wasn’t dressing like a noble, no matter what she might want, but even the set of good clothes Carina had made him buy wouldn’t do.

He put three silver in his coin pouch and hid two and zero more on himself.

“What are you doing?” Don asked as Tibs reached for the door.

“I need to buy the right kind of clothes for the event.”

“No. What are you doing, Tibs?”

He looked at the sorcerer, seated on his bed, book on his lap ignored in favor of studying Tibs.

“I told you.”

“You’re being summoned like some pet to be put on display,” Don replied, his tone growing hot. “And you’re just going to buy clothing for that?”

“I need to play the part if I’m to get the information I—”

“And you okay with that?” Don screamed, jumping to his feet; the book clattering on the floor.

The cracks in the ice refilled as quickly as they appeared without Tibs having to think about it. “It needs to be done.”

“You don’t have to be so fucking calm about it! The Tibs that saved me, the one that had me pulling my hair out, wouldn’t be standing there calmly going through the steps needed for his plan to word. He’d have slammed the door in that adventurer’s face. He’d be screaming and bitching about the kind of person Tirania is, and only then would he get on with his plan.”

“And that Tibs would have destroyed this building in the process of venting his anger. I can’t afford to have him around right now. Once the guild has paid, then I’ll have the luxury of getting angry.”

Don was next to him, grabbing his arm, before Tibs could react. Then the sorcerer looked at the hand holding Tibs, frowning.

“You’re suffused with water.” Anger gave way to curiosity. “How are you able to do that already?” He let go of Tibs.

“How can you tell? You can’t sense water.”

“I can sense essence, just like you can. We all can with enough training. When I grabbed you, there was a lot there. More than anyone I’ve touched. The only time I’ve felt it was when my teacher had me practice suffusing myself.” He paused. “You have to stop. The little I’ve read about suffusing says it’s a bad idea to do it for too long.”

“Is that what you’re reading?” Tibs nodded to the book on the floor.

“No.” Don picked up the book and looked it over for damage. “It’s a treatise on the role corruption plays in the proper functioning of the world. My teacher’s obsessed with demonstrating that corruption is a good thing, and he’s had me read all sorts of stuff that’s got nothing to do with my training, so I can echo his stupid beliefs.”

“You don’t believe corruption can be good for the world?”

Don snorted. “I know it is. I just don’t have a need to scream it in the ears of people who aren’t interested in listening.” He smiled. “Nice try at sidetracking me. How are you doing it?”

Tibs shrugged. “I just do. I had to learn ways to get around not having much of a reserve when I started. I don’t bother questioning most of what I figure out how to do. I can, that’s what matters.”

Don watched him, placing the book back on the bed. “I guess that makes sense, in a way.”

“Aren’t you going to tell me everything needs to be done in a specific way for it to be ‘real’?”

Don sat next to the book and leaned against the wall. He opened his hand and corruption floated above it, a cloud taking the shape of various animals.

“Why do you think you don’t use water the same way as archers, fighters, or sorcerers who share you element?”

“Because we don’t think the same way,” he answered with a shrug.

Don nodded. “Why does it matter? Water is water, Corruption is corruption. The elements are what they are. So how is it that who you are means it’s going to behave differently?” He waved his hand, and the kitten shaped cloud danced around it.

Tibs looked at his hand, made a cloud of mist, and moved his hand through it. It pushed the cloud out of the way, but it didn’t dance or move. He took hold of it, made ice crystals that reflected light, and moved that about. Colored lights glinted on the walls as a result.

“I don’t know.”

“Exactly.” Don smiled. “You don’t know. Unlike most of us, me included, you aren’t letting the guild tell you how it works.”

“I listen to my teacher.”

“What did he, or she, tell you about suffusing yourself with your essence?”

“That it’s a tool.” Tibs thought back on the conversation. “That just like the other ways I use my essence, I have to be careful, or I’ll end up hurting myself in the process.”

“And are you; careful, I mean?”

Tibs remembered the pain as he absorbed more and more of Bardik’s essence. What he’d thought of as his limitless reserve cracking open and spilling out into him. Of channeling air, thoughtlessly thinking that it couldn’t do much damage, even after seeing Carina use it as a weapon. Throwing himself into the pool of corruption without caring for the consequences because he’d had enough of it getting in the way.

He shook his head.

“That’s what I mean. Because you couldn’t learn the way I did, the way the rest of us did, you didn’t learn to blindly follow your training. I’ve stopped, but it’s hard to let go of it. To risk doing something I’ve been warned against.” The kitten turned into a cloud again, then became a triangle, a spearhead. It lost the cloudiness the previous forms held and seemed more solid. The surface wasn’t still, but it looked like the dark purple pool now, with small waves moving over it.

“Corruption isn’t hard.” Don’s breathing was slow; his gaze fixed on the spearhead. “By its nature, it oozes around and through. There are few places corruption can’t insert itself, then affect what is there. But being hard, rigid? I’ve been warned over and over that to go against my element’s nature is opening myself up for danger.”

Don made a fist, and something happened to the essence. Its structure changed and, in the process, the spearhead became sharper; the surface no longer rippled. Tibs startled when the sunlight glinted off the edge. Don’s fist trembled, and he was sweating, but he smiled with pride as he flung it at the wall.

Tibs coated it with ice and the spearhead embedded itself into that. The corruption spread as the spearhead lost its definition and started oozing down along the ice. He moved the ice away from the wall, not fighting the corruption. He then made it a ball of water that floated between them, with the corruption spreading.

“Maybe you shouldn’t damage the place we live in.”

Don flustered. “Sorry.”

“If corruption isn’t supposed to be hard. How did you make it like that?”

“The same way you make water ice. I put my mind to it.”

“I don’t have to strain like you did.”

“Because ice is something that comes naturally for water. But in the end, that’s always what it comes down to. We use our mind to shape the essence into what we want. Some ways of thinking about how to do it facilitate the process.” Don gestured, and the corruption flew out of the water, leaving it clear and untainted. “But it’s still what we’re doing. Using our mind to control our essence. Anytime a teacher says that something can’t be done, that it’s too dangerous. What they mean is that no one has come up with an easy way to do it.”

“Is that what sorcerers do? Look for easier ways to do what’s hard?”

Don shrugged. “Some do. Most just try something, write about what happened, and move on to trying something else. As a group, we don’t care for the world. Our ideas are more interesting than anything out there.”

“Is that how you feel?”

Don hesitated, the glow in his mouth intensifying, then dimming into nothingness. “I don’t know. Before I got here, I had all these ideas about what it meant to know stuff. I was going to be a scholar. My family had already paid the university. If…”

The corruption started dancing around his hand, shaping into a rabbit, and Don watched it in the silence. “Having to survive the dungeon over and over… doesn’t that mean that the only thing that matters is learning to be stronger for the sake of being stronger and nothing else?”

The glow was faint when it appeared at the end. Don wasn’t telling him everything, but then, when did anyone? It was the one thing Tibs had learned, being about to see lies and secrets. Even when there were no bad intentions, no one ever told the complete truth.

Except, possibly, Harry.

Don shook himself and absorbed the essence. “You, Tibs, are a master at sidetracking. This was supposed to be about you, not me. Suffusing yourself with water like you do, it’s not healthy.”

Tibs sighed. “I’m fine.”

“Was Harry fine?”

“He did his job; what he was told to. I don’t—”

“But was he fine, Tibs?”

Tibs didn’t understand what the sorcerer wanted.

“Did you see his expression, when Jackal told him he was a Wells after all? That, like all of them, he’d found himself a master to obey without having to think?”

Harry might have looked less pained if Jackal had punched him.

“That wasn’t the look of someone who was okay, Tibs.”

“I’m not like him.”

“Maybe not yet. How long do you think Harry was like that? So filled with light there was no space to feel anything? Especially that one think you don’t want to feel?”

“A long time.” It had to have been. How else had he gone against his family and given himself entirely to another group without realizing they weren’t all that different? “I’m not going to stay like this. Once I’m—”

“Done. So you said.” Don leveled his gaze on him. “But do you believe it?”

Tibs swallowed as cracks spread.

“I—” he closed his mouth as the light of the lie shone through his mind. It had to be his imagination. He often thought lies, and this never happened. He filled the cracks.

“I do.”

Don smirked, but didn’t comment. “Are you really going to spend money to look like her pet?”

“I need her to trust me if I’m going to pull this off.”

“So, you have a plan?”

“The start of one; now that I know—”

“Don’t tell me.”

Tibs raised an eyebrow.

“I’ll help however I can, but don’t tell me what the plan might be. When you have a definite one, and the part I’ll play in it, then you tell me.” He stood. “And if you want to look like she can trust you, you’re going to need my help with having something made that won’t have you standing out like…” he grinned. “Well, like a Runner in that crowd.”

“You know what that event is?”

The sorcerer rolled his eyes. “She trying to impress someone. That all those gathering ever are. And yes, I know what’s expected. I’ve had to stand at the periphery of enough of them to learn that much.”