'Beg pardon, your honour.' The woman bobbed a perfunctory curtsey and swept Casuel's books and papers aside to make room for her burden.

'Let me do that!' Casuel snapped, snatching a precious volume away from the danger of slopping soup.

'There's broth, roast fowl, a mutton pudding, some cheese and an apple flummery,' the woman said with satisfaction. 'Eat hearty, my duck, you could do with some flesh on them shanks.'

Casuel opened his mouth but was unable to think of a dignified retort before the dame swept out again in a bustle of homespun skirts. The savoury smells from the table set his stomach clamouring with reminders about how long it had been since breakfast.

'This looks very good,' he said with some surprise.

Allin leaped to her feet and went to serve him some chicken.

'Do sit down!' Casuel snapped, immediately regretting it as her eyes filled. She ducked her face, leaving him with a view of braids neatly coiled and pinned around the top of her head.

Casuel heaved a sigh of exasperation. 'You must understand, Allin. You are mage-born, you have a rare and special talent. I understand this is all new and somewhat alarming, but I will take you back to Hadrumal with me and you can apprentice to one of the Halls. Your life has changed and for the better, believe me. I know it will take time to accustom yourself to the idea but you are no longer the disregarded youngest daughter whom everyone orders about. Now eat some supper.'

He pushed the tureen towards her and, after a long moment, Allin dabbed at her eyes with the edge of her shawl and hesitantly ladled herself some soup. They ate in awkward silence.

Allin broke it with a hesitant murmur which Casuel didn't quite catch, her Lescari accent still oafish to his ear.

'Sorry?'

'I wondered when we would be going to Hadrumal.' Allin peeped up from under her fringe.

A gust of wind rattled the shutters, and the gold embossed on the tattered spine of one of his recent acquisitions gleamed in a flicker of candlelight. Casuel's mouthful of mutton pudding suddenly tasted leaden and fatty. It was an undeniably old copy of Minrinel's Intelligencer. The notes in the margins looked interesting, but it was hardly a rare book. He pushed the mutton aside.

'I don't think it will be until after Equinox.' He spooned up flummery absently. 'I need to have something worthwhile for Usara.'

'Is he a very great mage?' Allin asked with some awe.

Casuel could not help a laugh. 'Not exactly. He's not that much older than me, and hardly what you'd call a commanding personality, he's a senior wizard in the Terrene Hall, where I study, but with a seat on the Council and rumour suggests he has the Archmage's ear from time to time.'

'And you work for him?'

'It's not as simple as that.' Casuel sipped some ale with a shudder of longing for a decent wine. 'He's probably testing me to see if I'm worth a pupillage, the opportunity of working with him on a special project.'

He nodded confidently to himself. 'I'm Tormalin-born, the earth is my element, as is his. Who better to help him research the end of the Empire? I'll wager I'll know more about the last days of the Empire than any five Council members he could name.'

'The books you bought from my father are for him?'

'That's right.' Casuel stifled the unworthy thought that the price for those undeniably desirable volumes was proving higher than he had anticipated. He had thought he was getting a bargain; after all, the man had been desperate to turn what valuables he had salvaged into solid coin before winter set in. Driven out of their Lescar home by the uncertain currents of the summer's fighting, Allin's parents were struggling to provide for their numerous brood when they had heard about the travelling scholar interested in purchasing books.

Still, once Casuel had realised that the child who was always called to light the stove was mage-born, he could hardly have left her there. Besides, having one mouth fewer to feed was as good as coin in the hand for her harried father. Especially this particular mouth, he noted, watching Allin finish the flummery with inelegant haste.

He took another drink and leaned forward, succumbing to the temptation to confide in someone.

'The problem is, I rather think I'm not the only one being sent to the mainland in connection with Usara's projects. Once he'd approached me, I made it my business to keep a weather eye on him as well as his acknowledged pupils. Various people had conversations which could have meant something or nothing, it's hard to tell.'

He poked at the cheese with his knife and sniffed it doubtfully; it looked too much like the stuff his mother used to bait traps for his peace of mind.

'I can't decide what to do for the best. It might be to my advantage to be the first back, with a modest start and some good leads, because then Usara might retain me on a more formal basis, sign me to an acknowledged pupillage. On the other hand, with the Equinox coming up, there'll be all the various fairs, people buying and selling all manner of things, scribes with stocks of random volumes and so forth. It might well be worth waiting. I could find something really impressive.'

Casuel jabbed his knife into the cheese with savage irritation and pushed his chair back abruptly, rocking the table violently.

'Though I'd probably return to find Shivvalan Ralsere had come up with the self-same thing the day before.'

'You don't seem to like him very much,' Allin ventured timidly.

'I have nothing against the man personally,' Casuel lied firmly. 'It's just that things seem to fall rather too readily into his hands. It's simply not just. Shivvalan hasn't done half the work I have but, inside three years of arriving in Hadrumal, he was rag-tagging after mages like Rafrid and even Shannet. The woman hadn't taken a pupil in ten years and all of a sudden, she lit on Shivvalan Ralsere, overlooking mages who've spent seasons putting together a proposal for study, waiting for the offer of pupillage.'

The surface of the ale in the flagon stopped slopping and gleamed in the candlelight. A sudden thought diverted Casuel from that particular set of oft-rehearsed grievances.

'You see, I rather suspect Shivvalan's being a little underhand, using his powers for his own advancement. Scrying, for example. That's what Shivvalan's supposed to be so good at.

That's what Shannet had been working on, locked away in her tower, according to all the gossip at least.'

'Will I be able to scry?' Allin's rather small eyes brightened.

'Well, mages with an affinity for water are best at scrying. Your talent is for fire, but you should be able to master it. I have.'

Allin looked up at Casuel with an awe that flattered his bruised conceit.

An unaccustomed boldness gripped him. Trying to ignore the fluttering in his belly at his own daring, Casuel reached for a dish and poured water into it.

'Let me show you.'

He rummaged in his writing case for ink, and let fall a few careful drops. Amber light flickered stubbornly around his fingers before he could raise a muddy green to dimly illuminate the water. Biting his lip Casuel concentrated on picturing Shiv's seal-ring, something he could do easily. After all, he'd worn the reverse image printed on his jawbone for long enough after that disgraceful incident at Solstice.

The recollection distracted him, and he had to start again. The fresh trails of ink eddied in the water and then Casuel had it, a blurred image of Shivvalan sitting in an inn, evidently a far better one than this pest-hole, he noted with irritation.

'That's Ralsere.'

'Who's that with him?' Allin peered into the bowl, mouth open.

Casuel frowned at the lively-looking redhead sharing the ale flagon and playing runes.

'Some Forest maid fresh from the woods and fancying her chances,' he muttered. 'She'll have a surprise if she's got plans for tonight.'