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* * *
She maneuvered through a small market in the Merchant Quarter. She had her father’s lunch, a tavana roll with cream, wrapped in delicately thin paper and tucked under one arm. Her mother had started trusting her with small tasks like this. It gave Ren a chance to see more of the city. The delight of it was twofold. First, it felt rather adult to walk all on her own, with no one to watch or check on her. She felt she could have walked wherever she wanted. But there was also unexpected joy in completing a task. She loved trying to find the fastest route to wherever her father happened to be working. Ren walked and tried to ignore the tingle down her spine. The sense that someone was following her, tracing her footsteps.
Today she was headed for the canal site. There’d been tension at home the last few months. Ren knew that her parents’ arguments always had to do with work. She caught snatches of their conversations. Poor conditions at their current job. Her father had taken it upon himself to spearhead an effort against their employer. Apparently, it had worked. She’d heard him singing that morning as he helped her mother wash clothes. It was the happiest she’d seen him in months.
She found him waiting by the bridge. It was a pretty thing, stretching halfway across to its intended partner on the other side of the canal. Her father was always busy, always moving, always talking. She loved the way he stopped dead in his tracks, though, the moment he spied her waiting. The way he set down everything in his arms to sweep her into a hug. She handed him the roll. He winked down at her. She saw the quiet pride that he felt in simply standing beside his daughter in front of all the other workers. Her final glimpse was of him walking across that bridge with the others. He held his head high. He kept his shoulders straight.
A king without a crown.
Her vision of him flickered. She felt it again. A presence. This time a shadowed hand settled on her shoulder. The grip sank into her skin like sharpened teeth. She was forced to walk to the edge. Forced to witness it all over again. The shadowed figure placed her hands on the railing. He arranged her stance like a doll. Ren was forced to watch the part of this memory that her mind had worked so hard to block for so long.
A violent rumble. The stones of the bridge giving way. How their screams tangled in the dust-thick air. She could only stand there and watch as the blood spread. Her father’s body was easy to find, bent wrongways in the belly of the canal. She felt the grip on her shoulder tighten again, but before she could turn…
* * *
Ren gasped awake. The fire was low. The forest around them shadowed but motionless. She shook herself, blinking rapidly. A dream. It was just a dream. She turned onto her other side and closed her eyes, trying to put up those old barriers in her mind. Anything to keep the worst memory of her life behind the mental bars of its cage.
She never fell asleep fully after that. Her only comfort was in the restless turning of the others. A shifting of bodies. A rustle of clothing. A cleared throat.
Reminders that she wasn’t alone.
23
Morning offered a false brightness.
A sunrise that would have been beautiful if they hadn’t just watched a creature from myth murder one of their friends the day before. Ren tried her best to remain focused on surviving.
“That bridge spell cost forty-five ockleys,” Ren announced. “I’m down to three-hundred and five. Approximately.”
She couldn’t help adding that last word. Even out here she felt the need to give the most correct answer—as if this were a test and the others were grading her responses. It was true, though. No wizard could perfectly track their magical usage. Not even Ren. She always kept count. Force of habit for someone with such a limited supply. But a professor had demonstrated the limitations of their system in class. Four students with an equal supply of magic were tasked with casting the same sequence of spells. They all ran out at different points on the list. It was proof that even the slightest details—a person’s stance or focus or rhythm—could cause more or less magic to burn. Even so, Ren knew their group needed to keep the general range of their supply in mind.
Cora held up two rabbits she’d strung together. “My traps brought me down to two thirty.”
“I’m somewhere around one ninety,” Timmons said. “We can blame my bad choice in footwear.”
“I’ve already used two hundred or so.” Theo’s tone made it clear that he wanted recognition for the sacrifice he’d made thus far. No one offered him more than a nod, though. “Mostly for the camp protections each night.”
“And now we’re without Avy’s supply,” Ren added. “Which means we’re right around eighteen hundred. We’re going to be using warming spells from here on out, I think. Alford’s conversion is the easiest. The colder it gets, the warmer we’ll feel. Everyone know that one?”
Theo and Cora nodded, but Timmons shook her head.
“Never stored it.”
“I can cast it on you,” Theo offered. “Don’t I just use an extension charm?”
This was directed to Ren. Again she noted his casual reliance on her knowledge. The bridge incident was likely to live on in his memory for different reasons than she’d anticipated, but he hadn’t forgotten the cleverness of her magic, in spite of what had happened. Ren nodded in return.
“Just don’t forget to set a clear radius limitation, or you’ll end up trying to warm the entire forest. It’ll kill the spell’s longevity.”
In rare cases that mistake also killed the caster of the spell. The most famous example was a wizard named Henri Carver. He mishandled a warming spell in the middle of winter that resulted in the hottest day in Kathor’s recorded history. Everyone enjoyed the unexpected weather except for Carver, who was found melted into the stones of his own apothecary shop.
Their version of the spell would last for a few hours. They’d refresh it at least three times a day. About ten ockleys per person, per hike. At least losing Avy hadn’t meant losing much magic. It was a dark thought, and Ren felt awful for quantifying him that way. But he was the one who’d said that survival was the motto of the day.
“What do you think about strength spells?” she asked. “Today will be mostly uphill.”
“Let’s wait until it hurts,” Theo replied. “Until we feel like we can’t keep going.”
They didn’t have to wait long. Ren’s calves were throbbing halfway through the morning hike. Avy’s absence was proving to have a mental cost too. No one aimed them like an arrow at their target. No one drove them on with encouraging words. Ren tried at first but quickly ran out of lung capacity. It was difficult enough to keep walking and breathing.
