“Very well, then,” Vedris continued. “I submit that by looking so conscientiously after your affairs and his own—I know he has properties in his own right—it is quite possible your cousin Ambros courts a heart attack.” He straightened. “Just because your Namornese inheritance is in land, and in Namorn, is no reason for you to treat it lightly, my dear.” He walked off down the hall.

Sandry put her hands up to cool her cheeks, which were hot with embarrassment. I’ve never gotten a scolding from him before, she thought with dismay. I don’t care for it at all!

She glared at the ribbons on the package of documents. They struggled, then ripped free of the wax seal and flew apart. With a sigh, Sandry grasped the edges of the folded wrapping and began to remove it.

The 18th day of Blood Moon

The year 1041 K. F.

The Anderran/Emelan border

After several side trips following their original journey to Kugisko in Namorn, Dedicate Initiate Frostpine of Winding Circle temple and his student Daja Kisubo finally crossed back into Emelan. Although it was late in the year, the weather still held fine. The skies were a brilliant blue without a single cloud, the breeze crisp without being cold. Daja sighed happily.

“Another week and we’ll be home,” she commented, turning her broad, dark face up to the sun. She was a big young woman with glossy brown skin, a wide mouth, and large, perceptive brown eyes. She wore her wiry black hair in masses of long, thin braids wrapped, coiled, and pinned at the back of her head, an elegant style that drew attention to the muscled column of her neck. Her traveling garments were light brown wool with orange patterns, sewn into a tunic and leggings in the style of her native people, the Traders. “I’ll be close enough to mind-speak with Sandry any day—well, I could now, but I’d have to strain to do it, and I’d rather wait. She’ll have a million questions, I know.”

Frostpine grinned. He was brown like Daja, but where her build was solid, his was wiry, his muscles cables that lined his long body. He wore his hair wild around a perfectly bald crown and kept his beard in the same exuberant style. His Fire dedicate’s crimson robes were every bit as travel worn as hers. “You can’t blame Sandry,” he pointed out. “We were supposed to be home the summer before this.”

“She’d have questions anyway,” Daja said comfortably. Before Sandry had moved to Duke’s Citadel, she had shared a house at Winding Circle with Daja and their other foster-brother and foster-sister, Briar and Tris. “She always has questions. Well, she’s going to have to come to Discipline for answers. I won’t spend forever mind-speaking, and once I get back in my own room, I’m not coming out for a week.”

Frostpine reined his horse up. “Discipline?”

Daja halted her own mount and turned to smile at her scatterbrained teacher. “Discipline cottage?” she asked, gently reminding him. “My foster-mother Lark? I live there when you’re not dragging me everywhere between the Syth and the Pebbled Sea?”

Frostpine ran a big hand through his flyaway hair. “Daja, how old are you?”

She rolled her eyes. “Sixteen,” she said even more patiently. “On the thirtieth of Seed Moon, the same day I mark for my birth every year.”

“I should have thought of it sooner,” he said mournfully. “But I swear, as I get older, the harder it gets to think…Daja, Winding Circle has rules.”

She waited, running a finger over the bright piece of brass that wrapped the palm and back of one hand. The metal was as warm and supple as living skin, a remnant of a forest fire, powerful magics, and Daja’s ill-fated second Trader staff.

Frostpine said, “You probably know the rule already, at least for most of the temple boarding students. At sixteen, they must take vows, pay for their boarding and classes, or leave. And only those who have not attended temple school as children may attend as paying adults.”

“Of course,” Daja said. “There’s a ceremony, and they give the residents of the dormitories papers to show they’ve studied at Winding Circle. But that’s not for Sandry or Briar or Tris or me. We aren’t temple students. We study with some temple dedicates, but not all of our teachers are temple. We live with Lark and Rosethorn at Discipline, not in the dormitories. And we’re proper mages. We’re—we’re different.”

Frostpine was shaking his head. “My dear, if you four still needed a firm education, we might be able to make a case, at least until you earned a medallion as the adult mages do,” he said quietly. “But the fact is that you have your mage’s medallion. As these things are measured, you were considered to be adult mages when you received them, fit to practice and to teach. Of course, you were too young to live on your own then. But now? Unless you are prepared to give your vows to the gods of the Living Circle, you will not be permitted to stay at Discipline.”

Daja put her hand on the front of her tunic. Under it, hanging on a cord around her neck, was the gold medallion that proved that the wearer was a true mage, certified by Winding Circle to practice magic as an adult. She, Sandry, Tris, and Briar had agreed not to show it until they were eighteen unless they had to prove they were accredited mages. It was almost unheard-of for one thirteen-year-old to receive it, let alone four. Their teachers had been careful to let them know they had gotten it not only because they were as powerful and controlled as adults. Possession of a medallion also meant they had to answer to the laws and governing mages of Winding Circle and the university at Lightsbridge. “A leash,” Briar had described it, “to prove to the law we won’t run loose and pee on their bushes.” Their teacher Niko had replied that his description was “crude, but accurate.” Given that warning, and the fuss people made when they learned she had the medallion, Daja showed it as little as possible.