Bonemaker

Part Two, Chapter One

2

Morda had stopped smiling when his sister did, on the other side of the door: he only smiled now to please her. His face as he moved outside was grim, and the oppressive heat did little to lighten it. The thought that another mage, should he be appropriately skilled, could have cooled himself with a weatherworking charm made him even grimmer.

By the time he had moved into the wood, where the shade gave some relief, his bronze hair was pasted flat to his skull with sweat, and the few threads of beard he had managed to grow contained droplets of the same substance. His tunic was soaked through, and he could see the wet spots under his armpits when he looked downwards.

Well. Walking had been a stupid idea, anyway.

He threw himself down beneath a tree. There were humbleberry brambles around the foot of it and he stripped them of their fruit idly, unbothered by the occasional thorn. The berries were purple, juicy, sun-hot and sweet. His mouth felt sticky after eating a few of them, and his hands felt sticky too.

He ate a few more berries, squeezing each one to find the ripest and juiciest of the lot. It made him a feel a little better to know there was a berry bramble the other boys hadn't found, the domestics hadn't plundered to make their dry excuses for tarts. If nothing else, he could strip a berry bramble others had missed.

As he ate, he took in the view. He had climbed, it seemed, to the top of a small hill--the Changing coven was visible in a slight valley below, white towers shining quaintly amongst the trees and vines. From this distance the Changers around it, in their varying shades of red robes, looked like berries themselves.

Berries, Morda reflected moodily, could be plucked. Squashed. These weren't berries.

He watched the scattering of bright red robes on the lawn, the periodic flash of a globe in the air appearing and disappearing. They were playing the old Changing game of Wills, where students battled over a large water globe--half concentrating on keeping it as water, half struggling to turn it into ice, disappearing it and calling it and hiding it about their persons throughout as a way of distracting the other team.

Such games, all the texts Morda had read said, were good for developing fighting reflexes in young apprentices. They would need them, as they grew older--there was an upstart clan of Weatherworkers not fifteen miles to the east in the Tonkin kingdom, and there were always the strange powers of the Clockwork Mage to the south. Today's young Changers had to be fast, using magic just as reflexively as they ever used strength. And pitting your skills against one another let you know exactly how strong each of your companions was, where their weaknesses lay. It was a good game, he supposed, for a world of unsteady peace.

Morda did not usually play in these games. The few times he had shuffled out with the other apprentices, he had been chosen last for teams.

But he knew how the other children played, just from watching them in class. Better in some ways than they knew themselves. He knew Alexei clammed up right before casting, Destrina doubted her own abilities. He knew of the badly healed thumb break that made Elsee's handwork subpar, the slight lisp that dampened Nortel's otherwise flawless chanting. He knew Wentworth's chants were slightly flat. He knew Forsien, from the way her hands flinched slightly away from the proper motions, feared she might accidentally hurt someone.

He watched them play, with this in mind, keeping one distant player apart from another by hair color and weight of step. He was surprised by very little, very little.

"Next," he murmured to himself, around a mouthful of berries, "Elsee will lose concentration, and the globe will turn to ice."

In moments, he heard the groan of Elsee's teammates.