this up and be there in a moment!”
But she was in the doorway, short and stubby and brown as the bottle he’d just broken, arms folded, small sharp eyes flashing below a frown. “Wondering half the morning, I was, if you’d condescend to make a meal in the kitchen as usual, and not order me up the stairs with a tray. Famous tregetour now, are you? You’ll have your breakfast where you always do, though, until you can afford a servant of your own to fetch and carry to your whims! Oh, leave that, I’ll clean it up later. Come eat.”
He did as he was told. Everyone did as Mistress Mirdley told them—even Lady Jaspiela. The Trollwife had served the Silversun family for generations, although she was forever threatening to abandon civilization entirely and find herself a nice, quiet, secluded bridge somewhere to guard for a lord whose agent came round once a year, if that, to collect the tolls. Grumbling at travelers was preferable, she avowed, to raising a pair of miscreants passing themselves off as Wizards, and half-noble ones at that.
“Don’t you leave anything on this plate,” she ordered as he sat before a small table bearing a large meal. “Skinny as a stick, no matter what I do. Eat!”
He grinned and stuffed half a butter-drenched muffin in his mouth before she could do it for him—which she had been known on occasion to do. He knew better than to talk with his mouth full, and so waited until he’d washed the muffin down with fragrant cinnamon tea before saying, “I’ll bring my new glisker to dinner one night, shall I? Not a pingle in him, that Elf.”
“It would be nice, having all my hard work appreciated for a change by a boy with an appetite instead of an attitude,” she retorted. Quite without magic, although nearly as quick as, two more muffins appeared on his plate. “And talking of honest work, Herself left you a bit to do out front.” When he looked a question at her, she added, “Snowed last night, didn’t it?”
He hadn’t noticed this morning—well, he hadn’t noticed anything other than the broadsheet, even while standing at the window. But now he knew why his mother hadn’t berated him as he’d expected: The weathering witches hadn’t got round to Redpebble Square yet, and she’d want him to clear their front walk of snow. She enjoyed providing the neighbors with proof that powerful Wizardly blood resided at Number Eight. Melting snow might be the work of those with no other skills at all, a task for menials, but it was magic all the same.
Cade didn’t mind doing the little things that would keep her quiet about the big things. It cost him nothing but time and a bit of magic. As he dug into scuffled eggs with cheese, and the chicken sausages that were Mistress Mirdley’s specialty, he was more concerned with the fact that he honestly hadn’t noticed the snow. Sagemaster Emmot had admonished him day after day to pay attention to the world around him, not just the worlds inside his own head, and not let his mind dart about like a dragon perched on a fence between a sheep pen and a pigsty, unable to decide what to chew on first. The parts of his mind that he couldn’t control could get him into serious trouble. Another turn like the one on the stairs just now, and he might break something. Master Emmot had mentioned a few times that precautions might become necessary as he got older, if his foreseeings strengthened so that he had the longer sort of visions waking as well as sleeping. But in his almost five years of study, and the two years since, there’d been only a few waking turns and all of them very brief. Shock usually immobilized him for a minute or two, so he didn’t fall or knock into anything. But if the seeings were going to be as lengthy as the one on the stairs this morning …
… life could become very awkward. There had to be a way to control what happened to him. Other Wizards with Fae blood who were taken the way he was must have discovered a means
But she was in the doorway, short and stubby and brown as the bottle he’d just broken, arms folded, small sharp eyes flashing below a frown. “Wondering half the morning, I was, if you’d condescend to make a meal in the kitchen as usual, and not order me up the stairs with a tray. Famous tregetour now, are you? You’ll have your breakfast where you always do, though, until you can afford a servant of your own to fetch and carry to your whims! Oh, leave that, I’ll clean it up later. Come eat.”
He did as he was told. Everyone did as Mistress Mirdley told them—even Lady Jaspiela. The Trollwife had served the Silversun family for generations, although she was forever threatening to abandon civilization entirely and find herself a nice, quiet, secluded bridge somewhere to guard for a lord whose agent came round once a year, if that, to collect the tolls. Grumbling at travelers was preferable, she avowed, to raising a pair of miscreants passing themselves off as Wizards, and half-noble ones at that.
“Don’t you leave anything on this plate,” she ordered as he sat before a small table bearing a large meal. “Skinny as a stick, no matter what I do. Eat!”
He grinned and stuffed half a butter-drenched muffin in his mouth before she could do it for him—which she had been known on occasion to do. He knew better than to talk with his mouth full, and so waited until he’d washed the muffin down with fragrant cinnamon tea before saying, “I’ll bring my new glisker to dinner one night, shall I? Not a pingle in him, that Elf.”
“It would be nice, having all my hard work appreciated for a change by a boy with an appetite instead of an attitude,” she retorted. Quite without magic, although nearly as quick as, two more muffins appeared on his plate. “And talking of honest work, Herself left you a bit to do out front.” When he looked a question at her, she added, “Snowed last night, didn’t it?”
He hadn’t noticed this morning—well, he hadn’t noticed anything other than the broadsheet, even while standing at the window. But now he knew why his mother hadn’t berated him as he’d expected: The weathering witches hadn’t got round to Redpebble Square yet, and she’d want him to clear their front walk of snow. She enjoyed providing the neighbors with proof that powerful Wizardly blood resided at Number Eight. Melting snow might be the work of those with no other skills at all, a task for menials, but it was magic all the same.
Cade didn’t mind doing the little things that would keep her quiet about the big things. It cost him nothing but time and a bit of magic. As he dug into scuffled eggs with cheese, and the chicken sausages that were Mistress Mirdley’s specialty, he was more concerned with the fact that he honestly hadn’t noticed the snow. Sagemaster Emmot had admonished him day after day to pay attention to the world around him, not just the worlds inside his own head, and not let his mind dart about like a dragon perched on a fence between a sheep pen and a pigsty, unable to decide what to chew on first. The parts of his mind that he couldn’t control could get him into serious trouble. Another turn like the one on the stairs just now, and he might break something. Master Emmot had mentioned a few times that precautions might become necessary as he got older, if his foreseeings strengthened so that he had the longer sort of visions waking as well as sleeping. But in his almost five years of study, and the two years since, there’d been only a few waking turns and all of them very brief. Shock usually immobilized him for a minute or two, so he didn’t fall or knock into anything. But if the seeings were going to be as lengthy as the one on the stairs this morning …
… life could become very awkward. There had to be a way to control what happened to him. Other Wizards with Fae blood who were taken the way he was must have discovered a means
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