Advanced Grammar and Spellcraft with Archmagus Corbett was, under normal circumstances, one of Ettie’s favorite classes. They didn’t always stay on topic - in fact, it was something of a well known joke among the students at Bald Peak that the professor could be sent on a tangent with the most innocent or innocuous question - but the archmage simply knew so much that whatever they did end up talking about was bound to be fascinating.

  That didn’t, however, mean that Sidonie Corbett was oblivious, nor that she suffered fools.

  “Wake up, Lady Henriette!”

  A switch of blue mana cracked across Ettie’s desk, mere inches from her hand, and she couldn’t help but let out a strangled shriek as she threw herself backwards. The feet of her chair scraped across the granite floor of the classroom, and it tipped precariously for just a moment before Ettie found her balance.

  Once she was certain she wasn’t going to pitch over and fall on the floor, Ettie looked up at the archmagus’s stern face and winced. Sidonie Corbett’s spectacles were perched at the end of her nose, her hair tied back in a tight bun, and then the entire effect was of severity. Severity and, in this particular case, not a little bit of anger, directed at Ettie.

  “My apologies, Archmagus. My mind was wandering. It won’t happen again.”

  “It had better not,” the professor said, and, to Ettie’s relief, turned away from the desk to resume her lecture. “Now. After Ractia’s awakening and subsequent presence on the battlefield at Nightfall Peak, we have, for the first time in living memory -”

  Ettie caught sight of Ronja raising her hand, out of the corner of her eye.

  “- I am aware that there remain a handful of Vakansa elders, not to mention a few members of the Red Shield tribe, who have personal memories of certain specific V?dim,” the archmagus allowed, waving down the hand. “But those memories are not, by and large, concrete intelligence on V?dic combat casting, and also generally not reliable. Elder Aira, for instance, was a child when her mother died. Her memories are valuable, but they are also the thousand year old recollections of a child, which makes them somewhat unreliable for academic purposes. We can, however, point to specific and verified examples of Ractia using no less than ten words of power. That is double the number of words imprinted by the strongest living mage in our guild.”

  Ettie tried to stay focused on what was being discussed, she really did; but her mind kept straying back to the meeting she’d attended with the assembly of mayors, and to the two men she’d overheard at The Culler’s Rest. Now that she had her aunt’s permission to hunt them down, every moment she was forced to sit, useless, in class felt like being shackled in a dungeon.

  Still, she had enough of a self-preservation instinct to not give any further visible signals of her drifting attention. Instead, Ettie made certain to raise her hand twice before the class was over, even if her heart wasn’t in it. When the archmagus finally dismissed them, however, she fathered up her texts, notebook, quill pen and ink as quickly as she could, shoving everything into her satchel without much care as to what ended up where.

  “Where’ve you been?” Ronja asked, coming over to lean against Ettie’s desk. She maneuvered her crutch awkwardly, knocking it between her own bag and the desk twice before getting everything settled. “Because you looked about a thousand miles away all through the lecture, and usually you’re on top of every word that comes out of the archmage’s mouth like she was spewing drops of gold.”

  Ettie winced. “It wasn’t that obvious, was it?”

  “Oh, it was. She probably should have smacked your knuckles instead of the desk,” Ronja teased.

  Most of the room had emptied out while they spoke, and the last few students were making their way through the doorway and out into the corridor. Archmagus Corbett was speaking to a young man from Newport, Ettie saw, and didn’t seem to be paying the slightest attention to the two young women.

  “I have a mission,” she whispered, leaning in close so that her face was right up next to Ronja’s. “From my aunt. You want to help?”

  “A mission? From the queen?” Ronja raised those elegant purple eyebrows in a clear show of skepticism. Her voice was entirely too loud for Ettie’s comfort.

  “Shh!” Ettie grabbed her friend by the hand and tugged her toward the door. The sudden motion caused Ronja to sway unsteadily for a moment before she got her crutch situated beneath her armpit, and the sight made Ettie wince. Ronja always moved like a dancer: Ettie wasn’t used to her being hurt.

  “I swear by the Trinity I’m killing every crab I find for the rest of my life,” Ronja grumbled, as they finally got out of the room. “Now what’s the mission?”

  “I need to find two men,” Ettie said. “Both tradesmen, guild members. They have master tattoos on their forearms, and they were at The Culler’s Rest the other night when I went with Shooting Star.”

  “You went out for dinner with Shooting Star?” Ronja asked, eyes twinkling. “Ettie, I didn’t think you had it in you. I’m going to have to move a bit quicker.”

  “Stop joking around.” Ettie pulled her friend into an empty classroom and shut the door. “I overheard them saying all sorts of horrible things. ‘Knife-ears’ and ‘Pyre Queen’ and all that garbage, you know.”

  The smile seemed to run right off of Ronja’s face, and a spot of brighter lavender color appeared in her pale cheeks. “Hateful little shits,” she complained. “The alliance has been around for almost twenty years by now, you’d think they would have gotten over it already.”

  “Right, but that wasn’t all,” Ettie continued. “They also talked about killing my aunt.”

  “So you’ve got a couple of drunken, suicidal idiots,” Ronja said. “My father was one of the elders with your aunt in Varuna. Anyone who thinks they’re killing her with less than an army is going to learn a very quick, very painful lesson.”

  “Right, probably, but we can’t just let them wander around,” Ettie said. “And since I’m the one who saw their faces, Aunt Liv said I can look for them and when I find them let Commander Wren know where they are.”

  Ronja reached out, took Ettie’s face in both her hands, and looked her right in the eye. “Did your aunt come up with this plan, or did you?”

  “I asked her to let me,” Ettie admitted. “Um, begged her to let me look, really.”

  “That sounds about right,” Ronja grumbled, and dropped her hands away from Ettie’s cheeks. “Alright. Where do you want to start? I’m clearly not letting you do this alone. We might as well pick up Shooting Star, while we’re at it. Having a bat around might come in handy.”

  ?

  Shooting Star was promptly acquired; like the other few Red Shields who had come to the college over the years, his schedule was sharply limited by the fact that he couldn’t actually cast magic. Still, that didn’t stop him from dominating the other students in his Advanced Armed Combat course, where he went through, by Ettie’s count, two enchanted vials of blood in between his sparring matches.

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  “I’m not sure,” Ronja admitted, with a sigh, as the two women watched him towel the sweat off his bare chest.

  “About what? Coming along?” Ettie asked.

  “No, of course I’m doing that,” the Elden girl scoffed. “No, I’m not sure about kissing someone who’s always drinking blood. It doesn’t bother you?”

  “I haven’t ever kissed him,” Ettie sputtered. “And I hadn’t thought of it.”

  “See, this is why you need me,” Ronja said. “I’m thinking ahead.”

  “You’re ridiculous is what you are,” Ettie scolded her, then stood up to wave. “Shooting Star! Come over here, we need you!” As soon as the words had left her mouth, she wanted to take them back, but she also knew Ronja would only laugh harder if she showed any sign of embarrassment.

  Towel hanging over his shoulders, the Red Shield walked over, planted his spear tip down in the dirt of the training yard, and accepted a skin of watered wine from Ronja, who stood to join them, then gave Ettie a pointed look and a nod. Once he’d drunk his fill and wiped his mouth with the side of his forearm, he looked the two women over. “What’s going on?”

  “You remember the other night at The Culler’s Rest?” Ettie asked him, leaning forward and lowering her voice. By unspoken agreement, all three of them took a step closer, to close off their conversation from anyone who might be wandering past.

  “I recall you got really upset about those two men,” Shooting Star said, handing the waterskin back to Ronja.

  “Right. Well, I’ve got my aunt’s permission to try to find them,” Ettie said. “Ronja’s going to help, and we need you, too.”

  Shooting Star frowned. “What do we do when we find them?”

  “We go up to the palace and let Commander Wren know, or whoever else we can find,” Ettie said. “And once they know where these two are staying, I imagine an entire squad of soldiers is going to drop by to collect them, and then ask some very pointed questions.”

  “I’ll help,” the Red Shield declared, without hesitation. “It’s been ages since I got to hunt anything, and I can’t imagine two guildsmen would put up more of a challenge than a jaguar in the jungle. Where do we begin?”

  That judgement was, as it turned out, premature.

  The three of them visited every tavern or common room in Bald Peak, from The Blind Beggar, where Ettie saw a rat the size of a cat scurrying through the back alley where the garbage was piled in drifts ankle high, to The Prospect, which was built out the back of the Butchers Guild hall on a wide, wrapping wooden deck which extended out over the River Aspen, supported by wooden pillars the size of ship masts driven down into the riverbed. The workers there looked askance at the three young people until Ettie dropped her name and title, at which point everyone was all smiles and they were presented with three plates of steak so well-cooked that it practically melted like butter in their mouths.

  They found themselves good hiding spots to watch first the guild hall of the Brotherhood of Smiths, and then the Masterful Guild of Framers and Joiners, which were the guilds of the two tattoos that Ettie had recognized on the men’s forearms. The problem with that was that so many workmen went in and out of both halls, none of the three of them had the slightest idea what they should be looking for.

  “Alright, which one of them actually said the bit about killing her?” Ronja asked, finally. “The smith, or the joiner?” They’d climbed up onto the roof of a bakery which had gone out of business over the winter, and not been sold yet. It had taken a bit of pushing and pulling to get the Elden girl up, with her hurt leg, but they’d managed.

  Ettie thought back to what she’d seen at The Culler’s Rest. “The joiner,” she said, after making herself picture the scene all over again, just to be certain.

  “Let’s focus on that one, then,” Ronja proposed. “I think it's obvious by now that we’re not going to get lucky just finding them about town, and that we aren’t going to be able to see what’s happening inside either of the guildhalls from outside. I think we need to go in.”

  “I could probably get us in the door,” Ettie admitted. “But they won’t risk showing us anything that could possibly get them in trouble if I do.”

  Ronja was already shaking her head. “No, there’s no point in the sort of sanitized tour they’d give the heir to Whitehill,” she declared. “We need to go in through the shadows.”

  “Can you actually do that with three people?” Ettie asked. She’d seen Ronja use the word of darkness before, to slip in and out of shadows when sparring on the training grounds. It was, to be honest, sort of terrifying to watch.

  “Absolutely; just a bit more mana than normal,” Ronja declared. “But I can’t get us very far, and I need to be able to see where I’m going to. So I’m going to need someone to find us the right spot.” She turned and fixed Shooting Star with a stare, and he sighed.

  “How far can you go?” the Red Shield hunter asked.

  “Thirty feet or so,” Ronja told him. “Enough to get us past their wall and inside.”

  “Give me a few moments.” Shooting Star ducked down low and shifted. Ettie found it fascinating t o watch how his body seemed to collapse down into a sort of viscous, glistening mass of blood, then grow back out into a bat, leathery wings, delicate ears, wide eyes and all. With a furious flapping, the hunter circled up into the sky, then crossed the street and began to explore the Joiners Guild Hall.

  Ettie couldn’t tell precisely how long the two women waited up there on the roof, sweating under the hot sun. With every moment that ticked by, she became more and more convinced that Shooting Star had been discovered and captured somehow, or, worse yet, that he was already dead, and that it was their fault for getting him involved in this.

  When the bat landed on the roof next to them and shifted back into human form, Ettie wanted to scream in relief.

  “Alright, I think I’ve found what you need,” Shooting Star said. “There’s a wide alley between the Joiners Guild hall and the next building, wide enough for wagons, and there’s a wooden side gate there. The gate’s hung on the stone wall, and there’s a good two fingers of clearance between the wood and the cobblestones. That should be enough for you to see a shadow, right?” he asked Ronja.

  She nodded. “More than enough. Where does it take us?”

  “Into a lumberyard,” Shooting Star said. “There’s piles upon piles of aging timber, and sawdust everywhere. Plenty of cover to avoid being seen, and we can make our way to the building itself from there.”

  Getting into the alley was easy enough: Ettie and Ronja simply walked down the street aways, crossed, stepped into a bookbinder’s shop for a moment, then headed back out and changed direction, coming back up the street toward the guild hall. Shooting Star, back in bat form, circled overhead as they turned down the alley and hurried toward the gate. That was the stretch that worried Ettie the most: if someone saw them and asked what they were doing in the alley, she didn’t have the slightest idea what she was going to say.

  But before she knew it, Ettie was crouched down on the cobblestones next to Ronja, the two of them in the shadow of the gate, hand in hand, while the Elden woman pressed her face to the street and squinted her eye to see into the lumber yard.

  “Got it,” Ronja said, finally. “Make sure you’ve got a hand on my crutch. Ium'Vesēmus Ve Erēmus Merg Kveis.” Then, she tugged Ettie’s hand, and then fell down through the shadow of the gate. For the space of a heartbeat, Ettie could see nothing but blackness, feel nothing but cold, and when she tried to draw breath, nothing came.

  Then, the two women tumbled out at the base of a stack of lumber that must have been twenty-feet high, and Ettie found herself sucking in air like she’d just come up from the bottom of the Aspen River.

  “Sorry about that,” Ronja told her, placing a hand on Ettie’s back. “Should have warned you to hold your breath. Now you know for next time.”

  Shooting Star, in bat form, fluttered down to find a perch on an overhanging piece of lumber, then flapped his wings twice.

  “Alright,” Ettie said. “Lead the way to someplace we can get inside.”

  From the lumberyard, that didn’t end up being nearly so difficult. The presumption seemed to be that anyone who was back here was already supposed to be, and that no one else but members of the guild would be crawling about between stacks of lumber. They found a set of great double doors, wide open so that the guild’s workers could go in and out, and with Ronja to draw them through the shadows, that got them inside. From there, Ettie closed her eyes and let Bheuv do the work.

  “Downstairs in the basement,” she said, after a moment’s concentration. “I can hear his voice.”

  “You can hear his voice through the floor?” Ronja murmured, but Ettie simply nodded and insisted that it was the right man. Shooting Star found them a staircase, and down they went.

  “- the delivery’s been made, then?” a voice echoed down the basement corridor. This appeared to be where the guild stored tools that weren’t actively in use at the moment, as the two young women and the bat found themselves creeping past room after room of saws, chisels, planes, hammers, and every other kind of woodworking equipment that you could possibly imagine. The scent of sawdust lingered everywhere, and tickled Ettie’s nose.

  “Saw them there myself, sir,” came the voice of the man Ettie had first heard speaking about her aunt’s death. “Stacked neatly as you please, just beneath the council chamber. I’d make certain you get everyone you care for out in time, because there’s enough powder there to take the entire building down.”

  Ronja’s fingers tightened on Ettie’s shoulder, and the two women shared a look. The Elden woman’s lavender eyes were wide, and it occurred to Ettie that her friend might not have entirely believed just how serious this was until that very moment.

  “That’s enough,” Ettie whispered. “We need to get back and tell them.” But when she turned to retreat back toward the staircase, she was confronted by a familiar man with a stocky build and great, greying beard.

  “What the fuck’s this, then?” the man said, and curled his hands into fists.

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  Dramatis Personae

  Henriette Summerset aka Ettie- Daughter of Matthew and Triss, niece of Liv and Keri, cousin of Rei and Princess Rianne. Heir to the Duchy of Whitehill. Apprentice of the Mages Guild. Totally not in trouble. Not at all. Don't tell Aunt Liv. [12 Rings of Mana]

  Ronja t?r Taneli k?n Asuris - Apprentice of the Mages Guild. 100% planning on catching both Ettie and Shooting Star. [14 Rings of Mana]

  Shooting Star - A hunter of the Red Shield Tribe. "And my spear!"

  Sidonie Corbett - Archmage and professor at Bald Peak college. Enjoy's frightening her students when they fall asleep. [21 Rings of Mana]