Walking up Lakefront Circuit, past the entrances to palatial grounds and gardens, was a different experience when done next to Effluvia Early. She was even taller these days than she had been during their hunt, her hair longer and allowed to hang with its natural straightness. Her outfit was all layers and buttons, dark chocolate on ivory.

  "I've never seen you wear your house colors," Dalliance noted.

  "Men," she said dismissively, "have no business selecting a color palette for their wives and daughters, sight unseen. You won't ever see me in my family colors because they make me look dead. They make my skin look jaundiced."

  Red and green, like the holly sprig. He tried to work out why that would make someone's skin yellow, but couldn't picture it.

  "Should you," she said thoughtfully, "ever find reason to found your own house and select your own colors, bear in mind that neutrals are widely acceptable and go well with most skin tone combinations. With the addition of intermediate colors, of course. Clashing primaries do not."

  She smirked. "My lady mother likewise refuses to wear the house colors on the grounds that she is not a lich and is not interested in appearing to be one."

  A halberd-wielding guard stepped out from the little sheltered guard shack he had been afforded for his duties. He opened his mouth to speak, looked at the unwelcoming expression on Effluvia's face, shut his mouth, and stepped back.

  "Did you never wonder about your own heraldry?"

  "It's okay," Dalliance said. "I don't foresee myself trying for that sort of thing."

  "A boar, rampant, on a field of scattered spears, in sable and oxblood," she said frankly. "Just because your line was never among the peerage doesn't mean its device deserves to be forgotten."

  Dalliance wasn't sure about that. Besides:

  "Not exactly my line."

  "I'm not seeing Pleasant making any motion to legitimize you. The boar works as well as anything else, doesn't it?"

  "Seems too much like Da."

  Crashing through the underbrush, blood in his eye . . . there was a certain something there.

  She gave him a sidelong look. "Your 'Da' wanted elevation for you," she said. "For him, for his own aggrandizement, but still, your father wanted that for you. And so, rejecting your father, you have to reject all the good things that could come from what he wanted? From personal fame? Besides, Pleasant's is awful: the oriole, against black and white."

  "However," he said, the words a question, "he was willing to let me die, if there was a good chance of me earning the family what he wanted," Dalliance said.

  She waffled. "Well, yes and no: that wouldn't have served his purposes. He thought the best way there was to gain glory was to risk death. You disagreed with him on that, and it escalated far beyond decency. But just because it escalated doesn't actually mean that you disagree on the ends, or it doesn't have to. You disagree on the means. And you're allowed to disdain glory too, I just wanted you to remember to think before you throw the whole idea out."

  Dalliance watched his feet pass over the cobbles for a moment.

  She thought he was going to go right back to seeking the attention of mage-knights, making a name for himself, 'glory in battle'? After all he'd gone through?

  "I don't know if you need to give me anything," Dalliance said. The words felt like he was betraying himself, but he didn’t want to owe her more than he already did, either, and the conversation was making him uneasy.

  She just shrugged. "Maybe you don't need anything today. Maybe you're going to need them in half a year, instead. Remember: it's better to strike early than to risk striking never. The Earlys are all about making investments. Don't feel bad."

  She paused, studying him with the analytical look she got sometimes. "When's the last time you did something just for yourself?"

  "What do you mean?" Dalliance asked, caught off guard.

  "I mean something that wasn't for Whimsy, or Earnest, or . . . the scholarship, or keeping people alive. Not me, not Charity. Something just because you wanted it. I don’t mean things you had to do to keep your father from killing you, either."

  He frowned. "I spend time with—"

  "—us. And with Whimsy?"

  "She's my sister—"

  "Exactly." Effluvia's voice was firm. "You're always being something TO someone. Brother, friend, protector, schemer. Even when you're relaxing, you're still working.”

  Dalliance opened his mouth, then closed it. “I could spend time with my cousin? Or Topaz.”

  "Take the magic," she said quietly. "Grow into the sort of mage that younger Dalliance wanted to be, or try, before you give up on the notion altogether. Take a day and think about it. This is your future."

  He stared at her, the question sitting uncomfortably in his chest.

  "I suppose I haven't really thought about it."

  "I know," Effluvia said. "Do."

  “Are you hoping I’ll be a Mage-Knight someday?”

  He was hoping to hear ‘no’, but she just looked at him for an instant. Considering. "'Hope' isn't necessarily the right word for it," she said at length.

  They were at the borders of her property now, First Ring, because of course the Earlys would be First Ring. They went all the way back to the bad old days with kings. Dalliance wondered how much of that was accurate.

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  They walked up along manicured gardens and carefully swept gravel paths. Dalliance discovered even gravel in a garden bed could be a work of art: blue-toned, white-toned, and pink-toned gravel swept into ovals, detailed like fish scales.

  "Mother loves her gardens," said Effluvia by way of explanation.

  Unlike the other estate he'd been on, there weren't just three or so main buildings here, but more like a dozen, all centered around a tall, octagonal building of at least six stories.

  "The tower," she said. "Heart of House Early, and home to its most unbearable frippery."

  "We'll be coming this way instead." Taking his arm, she turned him smartly down a right-angled path that led to a short building nearly hidden beneath the sod and gardens.

  "I suppose we're doing this, then," he said, half questioning.

  "Yes. Have you thought about what you want?" she asked.

  "I have," he said slowly. "I need a shield air can't get through. And I need to be able to drop it in an instant."

  "We," she said, "are a family of [Aeromancers]. All of our shields follow that philosophy. But maybe I've got some ideas as to where to start looking."

  Down they went, past five-foot-thick walls of bronze which buzzed with hidden energies writhing within their depths, then through a doorway beyond which his nascent air senses insisted there was nothing at all.

  "Air wards," she said. "No foreign air in or out. Of course, that does limit how long we can be in. Everyone expects that a wizard will know [Memorization] and that fifteen minutes will be plenty of time. I am rather afraid that may not be the case, but I can try to refresh you if you need."

  "Kind," he said.

  And then they were before the archive shelves.

  "I made it through classes okay. I'm going to be fine," he assured her.

  "Merely an offer. In any case, it is time to select something. I bargained with Father to get you three spells."

  "Was it difficult?"

  "In a manner of speaking."

  She smiled and put her hands in her lap, sitting down primly upon a velvet-inlaid, carved wood bench. "You're worrying too much," she said. "I simply told Father that you saved my life, and had been on the front lines on the Wall, but didn't know any shielding spells. That sounds like a father-daughter conversation over tea, and it was, but I had to get onto his schedule at the Citadel to do it. But I don’t want you to view my father wrongly: when I talked to him, he said that Earlys pay their debts, so of course you should have a shielding spell. And I said, 'Father, you've fought on the Wall. Is a shielding spell sufficient?' And he asked me what you did, and I told him basically you move from place to place and shoot things with a bow, so he tutted and said that wouldn't do at all, that everyone must have a damage spell. Everyone."

  "And he suggested a force-shot so you could never be disarmed and always have the equivalent of a sword. But I thought, and I may have been mistaken, that you usually use a bow. When I said that, he told me that obviously, for one who has a bow, over your career you'll invest a lot in it—whether it be enchantments or alchemicals or otherwise—and so you want to use the bow. Having a secondary means of damage besides the bow would be a waste of effort, because you want to use the bow."

  "And so," she continued, "he said to find you a targeting hex or an enhancement. A course correction, if you miss. Or something to make your arrows more effective."

  She stood up. "We've got dozens of force-manipulation spells for arrows, of course. Barrier sheaths for penetration, wind guides for accuracy, and contagion for coverage. But none of that sounded quite like you fought, when we were on the field against the elders, so I asked for him to suggest something less common."

  Of course, commonplace things were that for a reason.

  She walked along the shelves, fingers trailing across spines. "I asked what you'd be facing on the Wall, and he said enemies behind cover, armor, or who could dodge like goblins.” A small, smug smile, on her part, mirrored on his face without his willing it. “And he said, 'Then the boy needs to shoot through cover’.”

  "I've never seen this spell used before," she admitted, turning back to him. "It's called [Sparkjump Arrow]. It's voltaic thaumaturgy—pulls from my own spell school, actually. As the arrow flies, it builds up a sympathetic charge. When it hits an obstacle, it creates a matching charge on the far side and tunnels through space to reach it."

  Dalliance frowned. "Tunnels through?"

  "The arrow ceases to exist where it touches the obstacle and reappears on the far side. The farther you shoot, the more charge it builds, the deeper it tunnels. Close range might punch through a wooden shield. Long range could go through a stone wall." She paused. "The arrow glows brighter the more charge it has, so anyone watching gets a warning."

  "That seems powerful," Dalliance said carefully.

  "It has limitations. It tunnels better through metal and stone than through flesh, something about conductivity and crystalline structure. This prevents you accidentally shooting past your target, which sounds helpful. And it only tunnels the once, then it's a normal arrow. Additionally, there's a gap: the arrow disappears at the point of contact and reappears beyond it. Anything in between is completely untouched."

  "It skips over the part between—what does that look like?"

  "Arrow wound on the surface, pristine flesh, then arrow wound deeper in. Two separate punctures with undamaged tissue between them." She grimaced. "Father says that’s the downside, is it’s like your arrow hits half as hard, when that happens. But it maintains momentum perfectly: all voltaic thaumaturgy does. The arrow comes out the other side still flying true. Just, if it has to stick twice, it’s two holes to make."

  Dalliance considered this. "You said it's your spell school?"

  She nodded. “Of course, neither one of us had any idea if that would be enough to make you safe. We don't have any healing magic, of course. And so," she said, "he allowed that you might take a third spell."

  "I haven't got anything non-lethal," he said.

  She smacked her forehead. "Of course you don't. A curse? Did you like Ronan's ice trap?"

  "Sleep," he said suddenly. "Do you have a sleep spell?"

  "You do like your faerie magic," she said. "But yes."

  She readied a selection of spellbooks, thick leathery tomes illustrated in glittering ink, the pages letting off their own light. "Here's what I--we suggest, but feel free to glance around. I have some idea of what's prohibited and not."

  Dalliance wasn't going to get another opportunity to look around an archive, and didn't need telling twice.

  Dalliance followed [Prediction]'s branchings out, but not for the conversation. He hadn't even felt the urge. No, more 'what happens if I read this book'?

  [Sleep] was a nice option, but what if there was something more interesting out there?

  And so, as the minutes passed, Dalliance skimmed.

  After a few minutes of standing in silence, Effluvia started to give him an odd look.

  As he discovered the first item of serious note, his eyebrows going up, her eyes narrowed.

  "What are you doing?" she demanded.

  "I was just checking to see if there’s anything I would like better than [Sleep]," he said. "You said--"

  "How."

  "I'm reading the title pages."

  She was safe to tell, after all. "Whatever I can see, I can predict myself looking at."

  The hissed intake of breath told him that this was a bigger admission than he'd expected. "Please tell me that there are more inhibitions upon you than merely what you are able to do before being caught," she said.

  He considered that. She looked genuinely upset, and none of the responses he could see in the future made any sense.

  "If I wouldn’t do it," he said slowly, "then I don’t know what would have happened. And I don’t really get to check all that many options."

  She stared at him intently for a long moment, then huffed out a held breath. "Pick your spells, please." Her voice was no longer tense in the same way, but her attention was clearly no longer on the archive around them. "I suddenly realize I've been deeply wronging Charity. I shall write to her at once."

  "About?"

  "She's been doing the goddesses' work."