“I haven’t forgotten.” Usara smiled wanly. “I think I can spare the time to amuse myself with a trip to take the Mountain air.”

“You certainly look somewhat overtired.” Planir looked at the image critically. “Go on your rest cure and let us beat our heads against the walls for a while. We’d better break this link before you exhaust yourself any further.”

“The nexus is supporting me,” insisted Usara. “It’s just rather early in the day here and we were traveling until late yesterday. Has anyone bespoken Naldeth recently?”

Larissa nodded absently. “I was talking to him a few nights ago. Everything seems fine in Kellarin.”

“And Guinalle?” persisted Usara.

“She said to pass on her regards, last time I was bespeaking Nal.” Shiv looked up from his thoughts a little guiltily.

Usara’s smile was plain in the image before them. Larissa looked from Planir to Shiv, a faint question in her face as the two other mages shared a conspiratorial look.

“I have other calls on my time, ’Sar,” Planir said abruptly. “We’ll speak again in five days, at noon by your reckoning, all right?”

Usara nodded, the reflection in the mirror fading rapidly as the magic unraveled, leaving the metal surface gleaming dully in the sunlit room.

“What’s between Usara and Guinalle?” demanded Larissa.

“Could be something, could be nothing,” Shiv said a little enigmatically. “I rather think he’s like to make it something, but she’s a lady who takes her responsibilities seriously.”

“That he be the one to find a key to unlock the mysteries of Artifice is important to Usara in more ways than the obvious,” agreed Planir. The Archmage’s eyes slid over to Larissa and warmed. “Don’t let me keep you, Shiv.” The dismissal was unmistakable.

“I’d like to discuss this further.” Shiv looked a little put out.

Planir rubbed a hand over his mouth. “Later.” His eyes stayed with Larissa and a faint smile hovered around his lips.

Shiv hesitated on the threshold. “Larissa?”

“I’ll be along in a moment or so.” She lifted her chin but a faint blush colored her cheeks. “Don’t let me keep you.”

Shiv arched a sardonic eyebrow at Planir but the Archmage’s face held impassive so the younger wizard left to walk noisily down the stairs. Shiv paused for a moment as he heard the lock secure itself behind him and his expression hardened. Emerging from the darkness of the stairwell, he blinked in the bright sunlight of the courtyard.

“Good afternoon,” a passing apprentice called out, crossing the well-worn flagstones from the arch of the gateway to one of the numerous doorways flanking the quadrangle. Shiv nodded an acknowledgment and took an apparently idle seat on the rim of the little fountain playing a cheerful pattern of air and water in the center of the court. He glanced around, as if waiting for someone, checking the position of the sun and looking toward the great bell tower that dominated the four courtyards that made up this Hall of wizardry. A maid went past with arms full of linen for the laundry.

Shiv dabbled a hand in the fountain’s spray and studied the basin intently. A shimmering image lay on the surface of the water. Planir was embracing Larissa, lips locked in a passionate kiss. The Archmage’s fingers deftly unfastened the buttons down the back of her dress. She released him for a moment to push the gown off her hips, dropping the garment disregarded on the floor. Planir’s hand around her waist drew her close, the other unlacing the top of her shift. Shiv could see little blue flowers embroidered on cotton so fine the rosy nipple showed hard and dark beneath it. The Archmage pulled away to strip off his own shirt and a certain regret mingled with the irritation on Shiv’s face as he gazed down into the water. Larissa caught up the hem of her shift, revealing lacy garters, and Planir unbuckled his belt.

“Halcarion’s tits, what is he thinking of?” Shiv shattered the image with an angry sweep of his hand, myriad glittering fragments dissolving beneath the patter of the fountain. “Other calls on your time, O revered Archmage? Yes, and we’ve all heard just what those might be.” He stamped out through the archway into the busy high road of Hadrumal.

Othilsoke,

3rd of For-Summer

“Keis!” Jeirran’s hail was blown away unheeded as he picked his way over tussocks of coarse grass. He left the track worn between the meager, wind-stunted bushes crouching among the rocks and entered a narrow gorge cutting in the broad sweep of the valley side. The breeze was baffled but the noise of metal on rock rang loud in the confined space. Jeirran stood and watched. Teiriol raised a pick high over his head, and then plunged it into the rocky soil with an explosive shout, ripping it back. He was at the uppermost narrow of the defile, digging waist deep below an outcrop of stark gray rock. A second man was shoveling the rubble with its blue-green streaks into a stream channeled on one side. A third raked and stirred, peering through water clouded with sand and soil. At his nod, another man shoveled stone into a long wooden trough where Keisyl was wet to his elbows, sorting through rocky fragments washed a second time in water brought down in a series of wooden pipes. All were dirty, sweating and grim-faced with concentration.

“Keisyl!” Jeirran picked his way uphill over the cording of rock and mud that marked the annual progression of the digging up the little cutting.

“What do you want?” Keisyl’s displeasure was uncompromising. He dumped a handful of tinstone in a sack and knuckled the small of his back. Swinging a dripping shovelful around to the pile of debris behind him, he splashed Jeirran’s polished boots.

“I brought some baking from my wife.” Jeirran opened the lid of his basket, unfolding the layers of cloth within, thick wool surrounding snowy linen.

“Food,” Keisyl bellowed, hands cupped around his mouth.

“Shut off the leat!” An answering wave beyond a rise in the ground was followed by the rattle of a sluice and the stream slowed to a trickle barely deep enough to dampen Teiriol’s mud-caked boots.

“It’s Theilyn should be ferrying the food. You should be working here,” Keisyl growled. “That would be one less share in the season leaving the soke.”

“It was your mother made the deal to bring in her kin,” Jeirran said curtly. He beckoned to the hastening diggers with a smile.

“If we hadn’t wasted so much time on your idiotic schemes, she’d have had no call to do so.” Keisyl bit crossly into a pasty.

Jeirran peered critically up the pitted and ravaged hillside. “This cut is just about worked out. You and Teir between you would have cleared it by the last half of summer. The stupid crone has given away half the paltry pickings.”

“She wanted this working finished before we started a deep mine,” hissed Keisyl. “The shaft paid for with the riches you were going to bring back from Selerima?”

“The old busybody had no business making any deal for labor.” Jeirran was intent on his own grievance. “That should have been Eirys’ decision.”

“Eirys wasn’t here, was she?” Keisyl’s sarcasm was unmuted by his mouthful. “You insisted on dragging her all that way and she hasn’t even got a belly on her to show for it.”

“Is everything all right?” Teiriol was the first to reach them, looking uncertainly between Jeirran’s appearance of good humor and his brother’s scowl.

“The women have been baking.” Jeirran gave the basket over into eager, dirt-speckled hands. “My wife said you deserved better than waxed cheese and twice-cooked bread. Caw, Fytch, Cailean, good to see you.”

“How do, Jeirran.” The rake man, wet to mid-thigh, nodded a greeting. “You look mighty prosperous for a man who wasted half his season being gulled by the lowlanders.”

Jeirran shot a hard look at Teiriol, who returned it with a defiant shrug. “Cailean asked. I wasn’t about to lie to him.”