Pater's Day. What would, on the farm, have been the prelude to a day of hard work fueled by a mountain of cornbread and stew, was in the dorms the start of a day of self-study and relaxation, such as Dalliance had never experienced in his young life. No one to tell him what to do. No one to tell him where to go, when meals should be, or even if he couldn't just turn right around and go back to sleep.

  But he didn’t do that. There were some things he still had to do. Whimsy would want picking up after he did his homework, and his homework was to find his classmate, his scrying target for his part of the two-part introductory exercise. What was her name again? Nonesuch.

  He couldn’t remember, but she had the paper he had written on, which defined her. He had had it, anyway, and hopefully he hadn’t already lost it. It occurred to him how fun it would be if she were to have to track down that paper separately from him. He wondered if he could track down the paper himself. The thought occurred that this was an immensely powerful spell. Lost your homework? Cast a spell and track it down. Amazing.

  The feeling lasted a whole fifteen minutes, through breakfast, during which he ate the remnants of the takeout the wizard had purchased for him from the icebox. And then, when he cast the spell, he realized why Professor Rainy had said it would be so difficult.

  Tears streamed down the face of the young woman he was meant to find. She wore a mourner's veil and stood in a line beside others in the same trim. They were in a temple Dalliance didn’t recognize, and he had no idea how to find them.

  His confusion lasted until, prowling the halls of the House of Air, he ran into an older student. Only a few questions were required to narrow it down from impossible to trivial. Funerals are performed by the priests of Firth. The temple, thus, was one of the temples of Firth, one of two. And when asked if he could see the open sky, to which the answer was yes, it became clear that she was at the Overlook Temple of Firth, as the Galton Temple of Firth resided in the Hall of Gods and featured a great hemisphere covered in the iconography of departed chancellors and their deeds.

  The Overlook. All the way across the shard to its extreme eastern tip. It was little wonder that she hadn’t been in class. Dalliance could scarcely imagine how she would make it to class tomorrow, even if she traveled all day today. Technically, he supposed, he hadn’t been given an impossible assignment. But only because he could fly.

  He cast the divination again. Now they were pouring out some sort of oil, great sweeping pours plastering down the hair of what he took to be the recently departed, and pouring down great handfuls of flower petals. Much like Cadence, the deceased had been laid out on a white sheet on a table, this one surrounded by candles on stands. Something filled the air with mist or smoke, giving the whole scene a dreamlike quality. Incense.

  Perhaps he thought the clerics of Firth stood in a neat line by the back wall, unobtrusive in their gray and black habits in the low light, their faces set in respectful contemplation, hands clasped in front of them, one hand folding over the other.

  He ascended into the air, a column of wind moving as quickly as he could, and the vision didn’t fade. Instead, since he could no longer close his eyes to focus on it, it remained as part of his awareness, as if he were in two places at once. Dalliance didn’t have a head to ache or ears to feel dizzy, yet he still managed to feel uncomfortable with the experience.

  As the wind that was Dalliance sped over hills and rivers, lakes and farms, past little bridges and towering steeples, the ascending columns of smoke for villages and cities, he didn’t know how fast he was going. But as the spell began to flag, he knew he was only a portion of the way there.

  In the end, he cast [Werewind] six times before arriving at the Overlook: four of them being required to get there, and two of them failing to cast at all, to his profound annoyance.

  He could, he knew, make that up with ten minutes' attention to drawing from his mana siphon, or else from the token, which had previously done its job. But either way, he would be out the mana that could otherwise have been used to buy dinner for himself and Whimsy at one of the nicer spots he had been thinking about going to, just to show off. Though perhaps it was for the best that he not go anyway.

  He needed to practice. It had nothing to do with not having to tell her about Da.

  [Cancel], as it turned out, required the same mana to cast as the spell you were canceling, and it wasn’t much of a spell at all. Instead, it was a lot more like the conscious reversal of part of the process of casting a spell in the first place, undoing some of what had been done—the power aspect in particular. What this meant in practice, from Dalliance's point of view, was that [Cancel] was the most expensive spell in his arsenal to practice, since to cast it, he had to first cast something else, which he must also pay to cast.

  And yet, he had already thought of applications for it. The downside of using [Locomotion] was that it put things down gently. But what if you picked something up and brought it to you quickly, and then canceled the spell once it had sped up? It reached maximum speed remarkably quickly. Dalliance had yet to try it, but as a possibility, it seemed full of potential.

  The wind that was a boy passed beyond the furthest prior reaches of his world as the landscape devolved from hills and trees and settlements to a seemingly endless, rolling series of farms and dusty fields. He had long since found the Imperial Highway; this far out, with the land narrowing towards a spear-tip's shape, its presence was obvious.

  The city of Overlook, though, was nothing like Galton and nothing like Tolbotton. It spread in concentric rings from the tip of the arrowhead, the tallest towers at the very edge slanting back towards towering walls at the heart of which, Dalliance believed he had been told, was the exact point where mortal man had first stepped foot onto the contested ground of the Galton shard.

  The sandy scrub, piled up against the wall by wind and time, swirled as Dalliance passed it by, aiming for the doorway and proper entry into the city, where he hoped directions might be forthcoming. There wasn’t much of a queue. The Overlook was manned by imperial military and temple interests, much less so by the rank and file and commons.

  When Dalliance spun back into himself before the city gates, he was the only one in line. The guards were each wearing lighter clothing than Dalliance would’ve expected, a leather chest plate instead of the full body armor of the Galton guard. Perhaps it was just that safe back here, where so little remained to tempt beasts from wandering, and where the walls were so far removed.

  "Neat trick," one of them said. "What brings you by the Overlook?"

  "I'm here for the funeral," Dalliance said, dusting off his shirt reflexively though the wind-form left no dust to settle. "Classmate of Penny-Ante Nonesuch's. Kings College assignment."

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  The guards exchanged a glance. The one who'd spoken, skin sun-weathered from years at this remote posting, nodded slowly. "Kings College, eh? That's quite a ways to come. Thoughtful of you.” The older guard nodded to himself, and stepped aside to permit entry. "You'll find flowers for sale by the path up. Purple and gold, if they have them. House colors. Know the way?"

  Dalliance shook his head.

  The younger guard pointed. "Follow the main road to the tip. Can't miss the temple. White stone, overlooks the edge."

  "Thank you."

  "Condolences to your classmate," the older guard added."Safe travels back."

  Dalliance walked into Overlook proper, following the directions. The city was strange—concentric rings spiraling outward from the point, buildings growing shorter as they moved away from the edge. Everything oriented toward that tip of land where, supposedly, the first mortal had stepped onto the shard.

  The flower sellers were exactly where promised, small stalls clustered near the base of the winding processional path, an elderly woman looking up as he approached.

  "For the Nonesuch service?" she asked, already reaching for purple and gold blooms.

  "Yes ma'am."

  "You're the first not-from-family I've seen come through from out of town. Good of you." She selected stems with practiced efficiency. "Pansies do well with their colors. These fresh of this morning."

  Dalliance paid—more of his dinner money—and accepted the small bouquet. Pansies. He wasn't sure why that felt appropriate, but they did match the purple and gold perfectly.

  The processional path wound upward, switchbacking against the ascent. Other mourners moved in quiet clusters, their dark clothes and veils creating a somber river flowing toward the temple. Dalliance joined the flow, keeping his distance, holding his flowers and trying not to look like he didn’t belong.

  The Temple of Firth rose before him, white stone gleaming in the sun. Its facade open to the sky, pillars supporting a roof that seemed to float. Through the columns, he could see the tiered interior, exactly as his scrying had shown him.

  The first tier, closest to the ceremony itself, was filling with family. He could see the Nonesuch emblem on several breast-pins, that of a free-standing doorway with the ashen manor behind it. They moved with the careful precision of people hiding their grief for an audience. None of the wracking sobs from the duel-site here.

  The second tier was high enough for the rising incense-smoke to give him a light headache despite the open windows, and held friends, invited guests, those with some connection to the deceased but not the inner circle. People were filing in, taking seats on stone benches worn smooth by generations of mourners. And in the back was where Dalliance belonged. Those paying respects without presuming intimacy. He found a place, setting his pansies with the other offerings already laid out, and settled onto the cool stone to observe.

  The ceremony was already underway. The deceased, a young lad a bit younger than himself, probably the victim of his Hunt, lay on a white sheet surrounded by candles, laid out much as Cadence had been. The priests of Firth moved through their rites with practiced solemnity, their gray and black habits rustling softly as they poured oils and scattered petals.

  Incense smoke drifted through the space, giving everything that dreamlike quality he'd seen in his scrying. The acoustics of the temple carried the priests' low chanting up through the tiers, surrounding everyone in sound.

  Dalliance spotted Penny-Ante in the first tier. Her veil was down, but he could see the set of her shoulders, the way she held herself with rigid propriety. An older woman—her mother, perhaps—sat beside her, one hand occasionally touching Penny-Ante's arm.

  The ceremony continued. More oils. More petals. The smoke grew thicker, the chanting growing to a crescendo. Dalliance found his attention drifting, his prediction quiet in the solemnity of the moment. Nothing was about to happen. This was a ritual, and it wouldn’t be over soon.

  He waited, trying not to fidget.

  As the priests completed their final blessing, and family members began to stand, to embrace, to move through the careful choreography of grief, Dalliance found himself merely rejoicing that he hadn’t made a point of leaving early to be respectfully on-time. He might have fallen asleep.

  Dalliance remained seated, watching as the first tier emptied slowly, then the second. He would wait until the every end, until people were leaving. Then he would descend to the first floor and politely ask Penny-Ante to sign his paper once it would no longer be so gauche.

  It seemed simple enough.

  He had been polite at the gate. He had bought appropriate flowers. He had observed from the proper tier, waiting through the entire ceremony with respect.

  Surely that would be enough.

  The third tier began to clear as well, mourners filing down the processional path in quiet groups. Dalliance stood, brushing imaginary dust from his clothes again—a nervous habit he was only just noticing—and began to descend.

  The first floor was less crowded now, family members clustered in small groups, speaking in low voices. The priests had withdrawn to the back wall, giving the family privacy for their immediate grief.

  Dalliance approached carefully, holding his assignment paper, and trying to catch Penny-Ante's eye without being intrusive.

  An older man—uncle, by the family resemblance—noticed him first. His expression shifted from polite inquiry to something harder.

  "Can I help you, young man?"

  "I'm here for Penny-Ante," Dalliance said quietly, keeping his voice respectful. "We attend Kings College together. I have an assignment that requires her signature."

  The uncle's expression didn't soften. "This is hardly the time—"

  "I understand, sir, but I just need a moment. I didn’t make the assignment, and I've come quite a ways."

  "Nevertheless." The uncle's hand found Dalliance's bicep, firm but not yet forceful. "I must ask you to leave. This is a private family matter."

  "If you could just ask Penny-Ante, Kings College has already notified her," Dalliance tried again, pointing to the paper again. "I’m sure she’d—"

  "Impossible," the uncle said flatly. "You have no business here. I must ask you to leave."

  The hand on his bicep tightened, no longer a polite request. Dalliance found himself being guided toward the exit, passing through small clusters of mourners who glanced up with varying expressions of curiosity and disapproval.

  They passed Penny-Ante.

  She looked up as they went by. For a moment, their eyes met. She had her mother's face, but the eyes were all her own: hard and cold, like twin beads of tiger's-eye.

  Her lip curled by a fraction, and she looked away with deliberate dismissal.

  The uncle's hand remained on his arm, steering him down the processional path, past the flower sellers, toward the edge of the temple grounds.

  Dalliance felt something cold settle in his chest. He'd flown across the continent. Spent his dinner money. Waited through the entire ceremony. Tried to be respectful, appropriate, proper.

  And she'd sneered at him.

  The uncle released his arm at the boundary of the temple grounds. "Good day, young man."

  Dalliance stood there for a moment, the assignment paper still in his hand, the wind from the edge billowing about him and buffeting his hair.

  He'd tried.

  He'd really tried.

  And it hadn't mattered at all.

  Fine.

  The nobleman, en route back,, couldn’t have even known what it was as the wind picked up, nearly gusting him off the path entirely and causing his tie to stand a flag upon the wind bearing down towards the Temple.