Barefoot Pirate by Sherwood Smith

brought their voices forward. They talked a little
about winds and steering, then Joe heard the clicking of Tarly’s hooves as she
moved away.
    For a time the only sounds were the splashes of water and
the creaks of the boat. Then a voice he seldom heard spoke up.
    “Do you like sailing?” It was Kevriac.
    “Sure do,” Nan responded. “This is great. Why are the others
making a mess with those nets and barrels in the back there?”
    “Aft. We say forward when we mean the front of the boat, or
ship, and aft for the back part. Anyway, they are busy with our ruse. We make
the boat look like a fishing boat. We even fly a wart flag—one we stole from
the Fisheries Minister who Todan set up to control the fishers.”
    “I wondered how we’d get into the capital harbor without
them recognizing their own boat.”
    “Oh, we painted over the green and black stripes when we
first arrived at the island, and made a new suit of sails. They would never
recognize it, especially with our nets and things all over.”
    Nan said, “Why not make it invisible, like you did at the
island?”
    “I can’t make living beings invisible, and cloaking so many
things, especially large things, things is hard.”
    “So magic is pretty limited in what it can do?” Nan asked.
    Kevriac gave a laugh—the first Joe had ever heard from him.
“It’s not magic, it’s me,” he said. “I don’t know much.”
    “I think it’s great, what you can do,” Nan said.
    “I thought so, too—until I met a real magician,” Kevriac
said, and sighed.
    “What happened? Get trouble from a bad guy?”
    “No. Quite the opposite. But she warned me what could have happened—and still might, if it’s true what Blackeye reports about Todan
getting a wizard from Dhes Andes in Sveran Djur.” Kevriac was silent a moment,
then he spoke in a rush. “I study and study, but I just can’t get past a certain
level of control. I know I’ll get us into trouble if I try to tangle with a
wizard and lose, and I keep having nightmares about it. But I have to try. And
then...”
    “What?” Nan prompted in a quiet voice. “Not that you have to
tell me if you’d rather not.”
    “Well, it was this promise I made. You know, in order to get
the Gate magic to work, and to get you here. When the plan is done, I have to
go to some school for magicians way on the other side of the world. I don’t
really want to go.”
    In all the days they’d been on this world, Joe had not heard
so much from Kevriac. Even Bron, who everyone said was the quietest, had spoken
more in Joe’s presence.
    “Why?” Nan asked. “Some stupid adult making you do something
you don’t want to do?”
    “Well, I did promise. And I don’t think they’ll come after
me. She didn’t talk like the kind of person who’d force people against their
will. She just said that I’d learn more if I was taught—and also, that more
magic knowledge brings more responsibility to do it right.”
    “How about these bad wizards? Do they learn bad wizard
responsibilities?” Nan scoffed.
    Kevriac laughed. “I can just see it. Ten lessons on how to
properly subdue your enemies—”
    “And on how to dress for success in terror tactics—”
    “And there’s land-burning and mind-prying. Unfortunately,”
Kevriac’s voice sobered, “those things do happen. And I don’t want to learn
them. I guess I don’t see what she meant when she said that the most powerful
good magicians seldom use magic. It doesn’t make sense! But then she went to the
places I’d done things—the cave in the mountain, and our hideout, and so
forth—and she did magic to ‘restore balance’ and I, I felt it was really
powerful stuff.”
    “Well,” Nan said slowly. “This is all something to think
about. I was going to ask you if you’d teach me magic—”
    “Oh, no,” Kevriac said quickly. “I mean, no offense, but
until I do understand what’s going on, I don’t dare teach someone what might be
mistakes. But