The privy was just a hole in the ground, and Dalliance was shaking with cramps. He had no choice but to put out a trembling hand to steady himself on its edge. His thin frame shook as spasm after spasm racked him, his long-emptied guts trying to wring another droplet of bile from his body.

  Dalliance had believed his instructors when they said foreign mana in your body would feel bad. He had been dismayed to find out that casting spells outside your body's natural repertoire meant channeling them through your soul—drawing them in, surrounding them with a sleeve of your natural mana to insulate yourself from it, and then out the other side into your spell.

  Dalliance hadn't been explicitly aware that there was an other side. His soul didn't feel like it had an out—it was more like when his soul was full, his whole body was warm, and as it emptied, his body cooled. It wasn't quite accurate, but it was close, and it certainly had no directionality to it. But as the instructor talked him through it, Dalliance gamely attempted to open the surfaces of his soul and draw in the mote of fire mana from the candle on his desk, and near the end of class finally succeeded in casting his first fire-based spell. The dizziness and nausea that followed were a complete surprise. He felt betrayed—not only by his body and his magic, but also a little by his instructor. Why couldn't you have warned me? he thought. Unpleasant, they had said.

  Dalliance heaved again, a current of dark green bile burbling up from some unseen well inside him, though he had sworn his stomach had to be empty by now.

  "I'm very proud of you, Dalliance," said a voice, and he felt a small figure alight on his back. "Peace, child," said the faerie, and he felt something shift—his mana, which had been agitated like water in a boiling pot, stilled. "You must manage that on your own in the future," she said, "but I have shown you how."

  "Upon pulling in the mana," she said, "you must immediately expel it. Leaving it there for long enough to learn an unfamiliar spell is what triggered the mana—" she paused. "Pollution," she said, the softer word almost conciliatory. "The more mana of the wrong aspect in your soul at a time, the greater the pressure on your soul to change. Your soul is young and not yet hardened. As you use various magics, your soul will become more resilient. This is part of the process, I'm afraid."

  "All that effort," Dalliance groaned. "And I didn't even do much."

  "Well—no," she agreed. "The mote of fire was long gone before you cast your fire spell."

  "I don't understand."

  "Fire with air is revelation," she said. "Revelation with air is light. You cast your fire spell—ignite—with light, having kept it in your soul for far too long."

  "I don't understand."

  "Your soul is like a forge. It can—though it does not want to—take in mana of different types and forcibly combine them. This is how arc magi handle the rarer sorts of mana. Any mana type may be built from the basic four. Of course, you can imagine how painful—"

  Dalliance wrenched forward. His throat felt like someone had wrung it out, and for some reason the sensation applied equally to the back of his throat, his stomach, and his guts.

  "I am sorry," she said. "For what it's worth, it usually takes longer to refine advanced elements." She paused. "Your affinity—""

  it was a green," Dalliance said.

  She waved her hand. "Blue, green, red—people give so much weight to little symbols. Your mana is potent," she said. "It was potent when you were measured, and so it showed you as green and not red. As you diligently practice and your soul hardens, your mana will become more potent still. Don't be tempted to go through life thinking I am a green mage, as if that has any meaning. You were tested as green once, upon entry. Were you to be tested again upon exit, you might test as something else entirely."

  She patted him on the back. "You look absolutely dejected," she said. "For what it's worth, I applaud your choice to make a new fire spell instead of going the easy route."

  He spat into the privy.

  "I'll leave you to it."

  "Thanks," he said sarcastically—but she was already gone.

  Dalliance wasn't looking forward to this.

  "Didn't you want to talk?" he said.

  Sterling looked up from what appeared to be an entire platter composed exclusively of ham, various deli cuts, and something that might have been a sad attempt at a salad, as if it were an unwelcome shock to see him, as if they hadn't agreed just that morning to talk later.

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  "Sterling?" Dalliance prompted.

  "Not during lunch," Sterling complained, but put his knife and fork away to their respective sides of the plate. "Your breath stinks, Rather."

  Dalliance had to admit it probably did, but didn't want to give Sterling the satisfaction of acknowledging him, pulling up a seat next to him instead.

  The larger boy stared at him for a moment before beginning to speak.

  "You and I," said Sterling, "were never—I don't think rivals, though having nearly reached that point, I foolishly thought of us that way. But you have what I cannot have, and I will never be a wizard. And what I have, you cannot have—your father's dead. You'll have to build your own wealth." He shrugged. "There is nothing to gain from bickering. And nothing further we are permitted to teach one another on the field." He paused. "Yet for this short period of time we shall find ourselves again and again in company. After which time, I dare say we should run in different circles." He set down his napkin. "In the end, this is pointless. Let's do us both a favor and move past the petty wrongs of yesteryear."

  Dalliance just stared. "That's it?"

  "That's it," said Sterling. "It's more or less what my mother told me to do."

  "Move on," Sterling continued pleasantly. "You are dividing your focus at a pivotal time for no benefit."

  "Tell me it's not."

  "It is," said Sterling pleasantly. He picked his fork back up. "That said—don't ever sit at my table again, you sneaky shit."

  Dalliance stood up abruptly, stung.

  "Just because you're not worth my time," said Sterling, "don't go thinking you've made any friends."

  Dalliance emerged from the eatery with a sour face to match his stomach, but there wasn't any helping it: he'd planned to wait at the Hall of Healing for Charity during lunch, and he had a walk ahead of him.

  Or he could fly.

  The prospect of magic made his stomach queasy, though. Walking it was.

  The House of Healing was bustling, when he arrived: carts of linen and apothicaries burdened with crates of product scurried in and out of the labrynthine doorways, but the attendant said Charity wasn't feeling well and he would have to come back tomorrow.

  Rejected again, he was just leaving the courtyard when he caught sight of Whimsy.

  She was skipping, holding hands with Circe, the mellow girl serene beside the younger girl's excitement, her building skirts a stark contrast to the novice robes his sister wore.

  "It's my last day as a novice!" Circe sang in a singsong voice. "And that means no one can stop me from sleeping as much as I like. I shall take two naps!"

  Her sleep schedule had never made sense to him, and the assertion that witches were nocturnal was somewhat weakened by his knowledge that Circe and her mother both arrived at the Wall earlier than he did most days. All the healers tripped to and from the wall in singles or pairs as the day wore on, retrieving new bandages or leaving with spent mana, visible from high above as he shuttled goods up the citadel.

  "Circe showed me how to weave a hat," Whimsy said happily. She ran up and placed a small woven thing of grass in Dalliance's hand. It was a hat. It could have fit on the head of someone whose head was a walnut.

  "It's very pretty," he said gravely.

  "We're going to find some full-size leaves," Whimsy explained, "and make sun hats. When Circe goes back to Tol— back to the village."

  "Oh, that's—"

  "Mother has to keep the shop going," Circe explained. "Even if I'm on the wall. So sometimes, to make up for her supervision and the time it takes away from the shop, I go and help out a bit."

  Dalliance supposed a newly D-ranked healer likely got a fair amount of latitude. Valuable people usually did.

  Whimsy ran back over, eleven-year-old face still flushed and smiling from her skipping. "Are you going shopping," she said, "because you have a date?"

  Dalliance shot a betrayed look at Circe, who gave no sign of regret for her perfidy.

  "Don't forget the tie," Circe advised. She waved with just her fingers, a little curly motion, and walked off humming.

  "Cracked," said Whimsy, "but I like her."

  Dalliance rolled his eyes. "If you're done slandering my friends," he told his sister, "we need to have a discussion about what you think shopping means."

  Whimsy won that one.

  "I look ridiculous," said Dalliance.

  Whimsy, sitting back and regarding her handiwork critically, nodded slowly. "It's the hair," she said.

  His hand went automatically to the long parted hair, which, for want of a mother's care, had begun to fall in long ringlets of dirty blonde.

  "Do you want to shave it all off and start over?" she said grimly. "It's tragic. There's no helping it."

  If it was a bit sunbleached and shaggy, Dalliance could admit that. "A trim," he compromised.

  Skeptical, his sister followed him from the shop, still wearing his new date outfit. It featured a tie and a green that set off his eyes.

  The barber chuckled when Dalliance peered through the door.

  "Getting gussied up?" he asked. Whimsy's smiling face behind him seemed to be the final nail in the coffin.

  "Sure," said Dalliance.

  "And you've brought the little sister! It must be quite an occasion."

  "Dalliance is going on a date," said Whimsy.

  "Is it," said the man, gesturing to the chair with his razor. "Sit, sit—we'll get you cleaned up right and proper." He added, with a grave nod, the air of a workman delivering bad news: "Nowadays the only thing going is nice and close on the back and sides. We can save some length on top, though, if you want that rakish sort of look."

  "Dalliance," said Whimsy primly, "is not a rake."

  "Make it just long enough to curl."

  Dalliance, his head having been thoroughly disabused of the notion that he was to have any input in the selection of his own appearance, meekly took his place in the chair. Whimsy was having far too much fun for him to spoil it.

  The boy in the mirror couldn't possibly be Dalliance.

  It was clearly a younger version of Parsimony Pleasant. Dalliance couldn't imagine how he'd missed it before. Something about the eyes looked like Whimsy. But everything else—he could have been his blood father's twin.

  For all of that, he did look good.

  "Now that you've got your hair nice and proper," the man said, "I'd recommend you come back and see me every five or six weeks. Keep you looking sharp. Wouldn't want to waste all your sister's hard work."

  "He'll be here," Whimsy promised.

  "I'll hold you to it." He shook her hand gravely.