Limits of Power by Elizabeth Moon

and stuffed his mouth with a meat pasty. He nearly choked and had to spit out some of it and quickly drink water.
    â€œBad dreams?” Mikeli asked. “What about? Not the crown, I hope.” He said it almost as a joke, but Camwyn felt his face heat up. “Cam?”
    If only he’d had a big brother who ignored him—or was not the king. “Not exactly,” Camwyn said. “I mean—I had been thinking about it when I went to bed—you said it talked to you, and I wondered how, and if it was a kind of magery, who had put it there—but it wasn’t in the dream, or I don’t think so. I can’t quite remember. Just that I woke up sometimes and it was hard to sleep after.” Which was a lie, and lying was, according to the Code of Gird, wrong, so no wonder he still felt the telltale heat of his face. But what could he do? And maybe his hand
had
been a dream—the whole thing.
    â€œYou’re maturing enough to start dreaming about girls,” Mikeli said. “That can be embarrassing the first time it happens. Finding that in the bed.” He wasn’t looking at Camwyn now. “If that happens, don’t worry about it. It happens to all of us.”
    Camwyn felt his blush deepen. It already had happened more than once, and he hadn’t mentioned it to anyone. “So…” he said, hearing his voice waver. “It’s not—it’s normal?”
    â€œYes. Uncle said if our father had lived, he’d have explained it. He told me and told me to tell you—so now I have. Was it that?”
    â€œI … guess so.” Partly. But he remembered now that magelords sometimes came to their magery about the same time.
    â€œWhen I was your age, I started needing more sleep,” Mikeli said. “If you need to sleep later, just let me know so they don’t bring breakfast for two. You can tell your tutors—they’ll understand.”
    â€œIt was hard to get up this morning,” Camwyn said. He applied himself to a plate of stirred eggs. “And some days it’s hard to concentrate.”
    â€œI know,” Mikeli said. “It was the same for me. You’ll get through this.”
    Having Mikeli sympathetic was new and troubling; Camwyn was used to being merely tolerated or in trouble. And he was in trouble … unless the glowing finger really had been just a dream, a very vivid one. He was on his way to his drill session with the armsmaster when he remembered the candle. That puddle of wax had been no dream this morning. He refused to look down at his hand to see if a finger glowed.
Please, Gird: no more of that. I didn’t mean to.
No answer. He didn’t expect an answer. He hadn’t expected the glowing finger, either.
    That day’s drill and lessons went by without incident; the armsmaster said his strength was growing as fast as it likely could. “The trick’s to keep the balance,” he said. “Too much strength isn’t good for growing bones, but neither is too little. You’re not to go beyond your training until the growth slows—is that clear?”
    â€œYes, Armsmaster,” Camwyn said. He’d heard that before.
    â€œNo playing around with a blade without me present.”
    â€œNo, Armsmaster.”
    â€œWell, then, let’s see what that extra muscle’s done for you.” He nodded to the chests by the wall. “A banda and a practice longsword. Number three.”
    Camwyn forgot he’d been tired and worried. As he put on the banda and took the assigned practice sword, he heard the armsmaster refuse the same to Aris Marrakai and Jami Serrostin. “You’re not ready yet. And you, young Marrakai, you’re muscling up more than you should right now. Do you want to be a head shorter than your brother?”
    â€œThat can’t happen,” Aris said.
    â€œAnd you know everything about physical conditioning, I suppose,” the