From there the mountainside fell away. We had a glorious view of the neighboring Battle Islands. Two of them were smaller than Starns. They looked sunbaked and dusty in the blue-green sea. Behind them rose another island, a big one, with real forests on the ridges that faced us. Cliffs rose out of those forests like castle walls. They seemed to frown down at the tiny fishing boats on the water between the islands.

“If the weather’s good, we can see if the neighbors are sending trouble our way.” Jayat took a spyglass from his pack. He gave it to Rosethorn and Fusspot, who viewed the islands with it. When they were done, he offered it to me. “Moharrin and the other villages take turns manning a watchtower just a mile from here, to give the alarm if that happens.”

Once we had all looked, Jayat put the spyglass away. Rosethorn and I unpacked the lunch. Azaze didn’t mean for us to starve: She’d sent bread rolls filled with spinach and lentils, pickled beets, and grape leaves stuffed with rice, pine nuts, and currants. While we ate, Jayat, Rosethorn, and Myrrhtide talked about the Battle Islands.

“Jayat, why don’t you go study with the mages on the other islands and learn more stuff?” I picked up some chunks of rock to juggle. “I don’t know about you, but the more teachers I meet, the more tricks I learn.”

He made a face. “I wish I could, but I can’t be spared. We’re both so busy. Tahar’s health isn’t good. She—”

“But you said yourself you’re stronger than her.” I know interrupting is bad manners, but I think I had my bad manners skin on that day. “She has to know you need more education than you’ll get here. Doesn’t she realize it does more harm than good to keep you ignorant? Just because she’s spent her whole life here doesn’t mean that helps—”

“Evumeimei Dingzai.” This time it wasn’t Luvo who used my whole name, but Rosethorn. And unlike Luvo, when she used my whole name, it wasn’t a good thing or even a normal one.

I looked at her.

“Since when do you have the right to comment on the way others choose to conduct their lives?” She had her eyebrows raised—a bad sign.

I felt very, very warm, and strange. I looked at Jayat. He stared at the ground. What had I been saying? I thought about it for a moment, and choked. Kanzan the Merciful forgive me, I thought, she’s right. “I just—I didn’t mean…” I whined, and clapped my hands over my mouth. For a moment I sounded like a street beggar again! What was wrong with me today?

We all heard the voices at the same time. “—ridiculous for both of us to come all this way—”

“It won’t kill Treak to see how hard it is to manage without us. You might never get a second chance for him to prove he’s learned. Oswin, you said you’d leave the management of the house to me. You either meant it or not.”

“That’s Nory’s voice.” Jayat stood as Oswin and the girl Nory rode into the clearing.

I sighed in relief. Now everyone would pay attention to them, not me.

“I told her she was to wake me the moment you came, so I could help take you around.” Oswin glared at Nory, who tossed her hair. “What have I missed?”

“Evvy stopped an avalanche.” Jayat was trying hard not to look at Nory. “Dedicate Rosethorn and Dedicate Myrrhtide have gathered a lot of dead plants and bad water.”

I sighed. “Luvo did the hard part with the avalanche.”

Rosethorn actually smiled at Oswin. “Once young people get the idea that they’re taking care of you, they become perfect tyrants. Besides Evvy, I have four others, so believe me, I know. Sit down and eat something, Oswin. All we did was collect samples from the destroyed areas.”

He got off his horse, which didn’t look as if it had liked its trip up the mountain road. “Five, Rosethorn? You have five of them doing this to you?” He passed his reins to Jayat, who took over unsaddling his horse. Nory dismounted and cared for her own animal.

Rosethorn patted the ground beside her. “My student Briar and his three foster sisters hover over me whenever they’re given the chance. Evvy here makes five young tyrants. Have a spinach roll, Oswin. Tell us when you first saw these dead places. Jayat, I’ll need the same information from you.” After she passed the food to Oswin and Nory, Rosethorn felt around with her hands.

I stuck my juggling rocks in my pockets, then got her map, notebook, and writing kit from her saddlebag. She opened her map on the grass and anchored it with cups. While she did that, I broke a piece off of her ink stick and ground it to powder, then mixed it with water until her ink was the thickness she liked. Jayat had brought his own notebook and writing kit. He set that up.

I could see that they were settling in for a long, dull meeting. I wandered across the clearing and through the stones that marked its limit. A short walk brought me to the dead canyon, among the sharp-edged granite slabs that made its rim. I squatted on my hunker bones and plucked a stem of grass to chew, looking at the streak of brown that marked the canyon floor.

Under the carpet of dead trees and brush, I felt stone that had been soured, touched with some nasty air. It had tainted the surface of the granite down there. I let my magical body pop free of my real one and slide down those poisoned surfaces, into the distant earth. The touch of bad air covered all the stones beneath that ground, as if the poison had swelled around it before bursting into the free air above.

These stones fizzed. The power that Jayat and the mages before him had drawn on had been there recently, filling them. I plunged deeper, hunting the source of that wonderful feeling. Here was the quartz Luvo had mentioned. It glinted in the crack, throwing the reflection of my power back at me from hundreds of its facets. There was enough white, clear, and smoky quartz to keep Winding Circle and Lightsbridge supplied for centuries. Bits of the fizzing power that had passed through here clung to them like echoes of a lightning storm.