Dalliance walked right past the Divinations classroom. It wasn't good practice, he knew, to skip. But he didn't have the energy to center himself, and possibly have to talk to Effluvia immediately after what they'd discussed, or worse, Penny-Ante. No, he would have to make it up later.

  And so Dalliance walked the circuit around the lake, staring at the deep waters, mind drifting to their source over the next hours, even as he felt guilty for missing his class, and the guilt fossilized into an embarrassment that would preclude changing his mind.

  He pictured the unfathomable gateway to the home of water, where deep things lived. There were drawings of giant tentacles and sharks—every kid waited to hear about sharks, and even stranger things, or to tell their little brothers about sharks, and Probity had been no different with Dalliance.

  The ache of his estranged brother was faint now. It almost didn't even hurt to think about it. He'd left them all: Probity preferring the company of his intended family, which became his wife's family, when Dalliance was so upset that he didn't bother to seek him out, reasoning that he had to come home some day, and then he simply didn't, just went to the fields like the other farmhands, then home again, and Dalliance had just . . . let it become normal. That Probity was out there but didn't come to dinner, because it was normal for Probity to be out there and not come to dinner. They had their own lives now. And then it was normal not to see him on holy days, because of course he would travel to be with his wife's grandparents. And without ever really arguing, his brother had drifted out of his life.

  Now the farm would be his, and Dalliance, who had simply stopped talking to him, couldn't just start again. What would that look like? He'd waited until his brother had something to offer before wanting to make nice—no, he couldn't do that, or he wouldn't, and in the end the two were much the same thing. And anyway, his brother looked unsettlingly like their father, which was unfair, and the thought of his face was not a pleasant one.

  And they hadn't invited him to the funeral, either.

  Dalliance was deep in his musings when he saw the coach, emblazoned on the door with the symbol of House Worth, uncommon, but not unheard of in Talbotton, but unexpected here. A sharp, dash of homesickness came over him at the sight of it. Sterling, he though, would know what to do with regard to his friends and their inconvenient femininity. Perhaps Sterling wasn't really that bad—or at least, he wouldn't want his acquaintances to continue to be embarrassed. Surely not. Even if the two of them weren't on the best of terms.

  Dalliance had been deep in thought, and then overcome with the cleverness of his own idea, and so stepping forward promptly did not take the time to engage his [Prediction]. For this reason, he was startled—and briefly a little panicked—when the coach nearly ran him down. There was only just enough time before contact to turn into the wind, far too close for comfort, and an enraged Dalliance whirled in eddies around the coach and four for long seconds before mastering his temper.

  They hadn't seen him, obviously, he decided. And he certainly wasn't going to embarrass himself over something so petty.

  If he glowered, if the wind danced around angrily for an additional moment or two, no one present could see it, and no one was any the wiser.

  Dalliance heard Sterling before he saw him, an unaccustomed vigor and passion in his voice. "The thunder of the hooves on the way down," he was saying, "there's nothing like it in the whole world."

  Dalliance was completely unprepared for the voice he heard next.

  "It sounds lovely," said Charity.

  It was her. Charity was wearing a slim-waisted blue dress with white frills and lacework, and Forthrightly—a faint echo in black and sky blue, in far fancier garb than Dalliance was used to seeing him in—was bereft of his usual tome, and instead slowly applying the different faces of a triangular whetstone to a large hunting knife, to which he occasionally added a drop of oil. Snick, snick, snick.

  Dalliance noted with irritation that Sterling paid the chaperone no mind at all, as though he were not even in the coach with them. All of his attention went to Charity and his own excited dissertation on horse racing. "My own is a mare," Sterling was saying, "Caltrop's her name, father's idea—from how right-footed she was at birth. And from her early training, in his words, a pain in the, well, you know—"

  Dalliance lost all interest in asking that git anything at all.

  "I've been riding her since I was eight," Sterling continued, "and father says she's nearly old enough for a turn around the track, though we'll have to work with her on the jumps soon, while I'm still young and light enough to jockey her. Father says I may soon shoot up, and it would be a shame to miss out on her prime years." He paused. "Would you like to come and see her take a turn around the track, or take some hedges? She's doing very well this year."

  "That sounds like a lovely outing."

  To his shock, she looked like she meant it, and her chaperone looked perfectly placid about the whole business. "I haven't had a ride in ages," she admitted. "Daddy has been quite busy with his new book."

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  She looked despondent as she said it.

  Dalliance, for an instant, forgot to be angry with her for riding with Sterling in favor of feeling guilty for not having known she was lonely.

  "I will send a coach—" Sterling said enthusiastically. "No, wait, I'll just—I'll come around myself. While it's still light."

  She smiled a slight smile, acknowledging the mistake without punishing it.

  Dalliance allowed himself to flow through the open windows and back out into the city, to alight on the flat garden and rooftop of an apartment block, staring out over the market, coming to grips with this new and powerful feeling burning in his gut.

  He felt the poison of his dreary mood begin to settle again, alongside the ache in his shins reasserting itself, as it had daily these weeks.

  Humiliation. Anger. Resentment.

  Dalliance wasn't sure what term he needed: this was everything and nothing like he was used to, and none of this was any of his business besides. She could ride with who she wanted to.

  Dalliance sat on the rooftop, staring at tomato plants swaying in the breeze, and fumed anyway.

  The wind was rising when Dalliance reached his Principles class, a wax paper packet that once held pounds of popcorn chicken flapping empty in his hand.

  With no Charity to meet for lunch, and Earnest nowhere to be found, he'd resorted to brooding like a gargoyle atop the cathedral—at least, until the funk had passed and he began to feel silly for it.

  With no rain to drive them inward, the students were spaced evenly around the ring. Gusts tugged at hair, rattled interface bands, and worried the pages of open books. Effluvia looked up at his entrance, but he didn't meet her gaze.

  “Today,” the instructor said, raising his voice over the wind, “we will observe the mana cycle, with the help of the inestimable Mister Tempest. Most of you take his wife’s class, I believe. He is a gifted artist, an [Atelierens], and an alchemist of note.”

  A few students shifted, interest piqued. Magical portraiture had that effect on people.

  “Some of you know the answer. Kindly resist the urge to spoil it. Understanding grows best through participation.”

  He turned, scanning the circle. “When a spell is fueled by mana, where does that mana go?”

  Dalliance’s hand rose at once. The instructor did not call on him.

  “You,” he said instead, pointing to a short boy who had not raised his hand. “What happens to it?”

  “It’s spent,” the boy said, his voice thin and nasal. “Used up. No longer available. That’s why designers have to travel or use mana engines. Divination mana is rare in the world.”

  The instructor nodded. “That is true. It is part of the answer. Now—who can tell me about spell scars?”

  He pointed to a girl two places down.

  “I think alchemists prize materials from places where great spells were cast,” she said. “The residue makes them potent.”

  “Also true. Now put it together.” His gaze settled at last on Dalliance. “You.”

  Dalliance opened his mouth—and found nothing waiting behind it.

  "When the mana is spent," he said, "where does it go?"

  "I don't actually know," Dalliance said, realizing it as he said it. But that had never been the interesting part. Where do I get it? Mana engines. Who makes them? Alchemists. "But in this context, spell scars—" Dalliance said thoughtfully. "Is that how alchemists make mana? Do they use the stuff that is left behind after spells?"

  "I am the one asking the questions," said the teacher.

  "I think that's my answer," Dalliance said. "The magic doesn't go away when you spend it in a spell. It changes into alchemy."

  "They don't call it alchemy," said the teacher. "However well-reasoned. Mana engines do indeed return to the world mana extracted from the remnants of spells. It is a cycle. And while this is no great secret, it does, I find, so much undercut the mysticism a bit. The alchemist takes ordinary matter and makes it magic? No. First a wizard makes the matter magic. Only then can the alchemist extract those leavings and perform alchemy. They are, in the end, essential but supplementary."

  "It is a very old and well-worn variation on the chicken and the egg," said Mister Tempest in rejoinder. "Which is better: the mage with the magic, or the alchemist who can extract it? Do you see, kids, the soul produces magic unceasingly from the aspectless mana which suffuses the world. Your soul provides an aspect. We are, at the end of the day, mana engines—the very fancy ones with two legs." He smiled at his joke. "And like mana engines, our function is to convert aspectless mana—one thing—to another. Mana engines pull from alchemical ingredients to do their work. So there the difference lies, but the output is mana. And," he said, "you are sharply limited by the ability of your soul to contain it."

  "Alchemists," he warmed to this topic, "can do anything mages can do. It's true. A prepared potion can do whatever a mage can do, because it's all the same energy, spent in different ways. Thus I have the whole world to store my mana. You have only your soul. Can you produce your mana more quickly than I do? I can store mine for longer—indefinitely. In the end it is application, not discipline, which proves the victor. An alchemist requires resources, reagents, and time. A mage requires far fewer resources and far less time to become effective. And thus a mage, in general—with allowances made for certain outliers—may be considered a more effective combatant. Whereas the versatility of the alchemist makes them the more valuable investment for other matters. Were the world not at war, perhaps we would have grown up dreaming of becoming powerful alchemists instead of wizards."

  "So why aren't you?" The unexpected interruption came from Laken. "Of all the applications for alchemy," he said, "as opposed to being a doctor, maybe, why portraiture?"

  "Doctoring is years of study, so, hard," Mister Tempest suggested. "Art is more a hobby I've convinced someone to pay me to do. Perhaps if I were the sort to look up diseases in my free time," he shrugged, "I would've become a doctor instead. I draw, and I paint. I can extend your life, help you feel good—or at least remind you to smile, keep one's sons safer in war or peace."

  Laken nodded.

  "Going the other way, I could've spent a lot of time around sick people."

  Dalliance wondered how much a portrait might be. He suspected the answer would be far too much to commission one for Whimsy.

  "However," he submitted with a rueful smile, "I am somewhat wondering if we've drifted from the topic at hand. Simply: in alchemy, one spends that which was invested in the creation of the potion. And in magic, one must constantly expend mana from the soul in order to prolong an effect. And thus the most fundamental difference is made clear—whether expenditure is upfront or overtime. Whether one can simply create it and walk away, or must spend effort. There are exceptions to every rule, of course, but that should do. Now, who wants to know what I do for a living? Who wants to talk about art?"

  Several hands went up. Effluvia's among them.

  The rest of the class did not pass quickly.