“First: scale,” Derevin said. “You decide your measure before you draw a single line. Here, each knot on this twine will represent one furlong. If the scale is inconsistent, the chart cannot be reconciled with the terrain.”

  That, at least, was firm ground. Proportions and ratios were quite my nguage.

  Derevin moved her hand. “Next, extend the measure. One knot to the next, careful, no drifting. That’s how you scale a map cleanly.”

  He guided Anabeth through the first few strokes: how to mark the reference point without denting the vellum, how to stretch the twine without warping the scale, how to check the compass angle against the plumb-line so your bearings didn’t slowly crawl off the page.

  Derevin watched Anabeth finish the st careful interval, then withdrew his hand from hers.

  “Quite decent for your first try. You understand the mechanics,” he said. “But mechanics are only half the craft.”

  He reached the side drawer and pulled out a rolled, yellowing map. The vellum crackled as he unfurled it beside her clean sheet, and the lines on it were bowed and faded, yet the draftsmanship showed through. I just didn’t know how accurate such an old map would be.

  “You could copy this,” Derevin said. “Many apprentices do. They memorize another chartmaker’s strokes, repeat them, and call it skill.” He tapped the warped river line. “But a copied error is still an error. And maps—especially rural ones—age faster than most people think.” He turned to the window slit, where a sliver of afternoon light cut across the drafting table. It meant that I’d been here for the greater part of the afternoon, unwashed with nothing in my belly. “So,” he said, “if a chart is to be trusted, the chartmaker must be able to extract distance from the world itself.” He nodded toward the door. “Let us see what you remember of the vilge square.”

  We stepped back out into the courtyard as the te-day light snted long across the cobbles. I pulled Silvermane along by the reins, and Derevin paced as though the whole manor were an extension of the chartroom, leading us toward the low stone wall that overlooked the vilge as he said, “You passed through the square not an hour ago. You saw the well, the bakery, the turning to the smithy. A chartmaker must take such impressions and convert them into measurements: estimated first, verified ter.” He tapped the end of the compass against his palm. “Distance by stride, by sight, by angle.

  He stopped at the overlook. “We begin with the simplest: retive position, where one thing stands in retion to another.”

  That, at least, promised something I could grasp. At st, a lesson grounded in reality rather than lofty abstractions. I could simply observe their process and copy it ter to produce my own map—

  Derevin folded his hands behind him. “Miss Anabeth, you can use spells, I take it?”

  “Yes, Master Derevin,” she said. “Of course.”

  Wait. Spells?

  “Of what element?”

  “My primary element is stone.”

  Derevin’s eyebrows lifted with quiet approval. “That is excellent. Very few excel in stone, but it is a naturally steady fit for chartmaking.” Derevin reached for a short brass rod at his belt, “There is a very simple spell for measuring retive position.”

  In my head, I was already colpsing face-first onto the parapet.

  No. Absolutely not.

  Not spells—not now, after all that beautiful, blessed talk of scale and ratios and knots.

  How was I supposed to learn if they started flinging magic like seasoning?

  Derevin said, “Once you understand the spell, we shall return to the traditional methods. A chartmaker must know the old ways. Magic can enhance speed and precision, but a map that cannot be produced by eye, by pace, by compass alone is a fragile thing.”

  That was better, but still... it would take the entire evening. And my stamina...

  [Stamina: 35%]My body ached from a full day of dungeon delving, and I needed food—badly.

  Anabeth tilted her head and looked at me, eyes bright with that irritating mixture of curiosity and good manners. Maybe, just maybe, with the right gestures she’ll get what I mean. I gestured weakly, first pointing at my face, hoping she’d see my exhaustion written pinly there, then at my stomach, and finally at my shoulder, a silent plea for reprieve. This was the universal human nguage. Surely she understood.

  She paused and gave the tiniest nod. My heart leapt. Yes. She understands. I can rest.

  With sparkles in her eyes, Anabeth walked over and said in the most cheerful, perfectly literal way imaginable, “Master Derevin, perhaps rather than expining to Sir Henry, it would be more effective if we begin the demonstration entirely with spells. He may learn best by observing with his very eyes and practicing with his very arms!”

  My inner scream sounded like a war horn. Everything? Entirely? Spells?

  There was no use. Anabeth’s hands had already glowed with aether.

  I opened my mouth, thinking maybe I could still salvage this, but one look at Derevin’s expression killed the attempt before it was born. His eyes had narrowed, not in anger, but in that particur academic patience that meant any interruption from me right now would be treated as insolence.

  Anabeth, meanwhile, practically vibrated with anticipation as the aether light pooled between her fingers. If I tried to beckon her to stillness, she’d only assume I wanted her to cast faster.

  There was no safe escape route. The cliff-edge had already given way beneath me.

  Dear Saints... at least I’d finally learn how low my stamina could drop before I colpsed.

  As with all masters in this profession, Derevin approached instruction like one handling votile aether, insistent on understanding the apprentice’s foundation before demonstrating a single technique.

  “Miss Anabeth,” he began, “before we proceed, I must ask about your training in thaumaturgy... it is formal, yes? Have you practiced consistently, under instruction?”

  “Yes, Master Derevin,” she rubbed her hands in a manner which should not have looked so delicate from somehow rubbing their hands together, and a spark of granur aether gathered at her fingertips, like the start of sediment settling in a pan. “Stone is my primary element, though I have dabbled in other minor forms.”

  “Good,” he said, nodding slowly, as if each word weighed the truth of her answer. “That should make our work easier. Thaumaturgy without discipline is dangerous; thaumaturgy without understanding is... well, merely entertainment. I trust you are acquainted with both theory and restraint?”

  “I am,” she said. “I am a Magus-Student of the Synod.” She didn’t puff up or raise her chin, yet the words carried a quiet, unmistakable pride. There was a literal light in her eyes (possibly from having an AP of above 3, unlike me) that said the title meant something to her, down to the bone.

  “Ah,” Derevin murmured. “The Synod of Thaumaturgic Studies.” Derevin’s voice thinned just enough to acquire a certain schorly dryness that was possibly only ever used by academics. “In earlier decades, only the most eminent houses could seat a child there. Matters changed, of course, once the Order...” He let the pause stretch, as though the next phrase tasted unpleasant. “... profited handsomely from their recent activities.”

  The word activities nded with the same acidic note Sir Rond used when he said ’well done’ to someone (me) who had clearly failed.

  Derevin continued as though nothing had happened. “However, tradition leaves traces. I trust, Miss Anabeth, that you come from a noble line?”

  Anabeth stopped dead for only a heartbeat, then—far too casually—gnced at me.

  Ah. She didn’t want me knowing whatever the answer was.

  She recovered with gentle politeness. “My family has always valued education, Master Derevin. They ensured I had every opportunity to study properly.” That wasn’t even what the atelier asked, which made it the perfect reply, entirely devoid of actual information.

  Derevin accepted it with a slow nod. A quiet interlude followed while he paced along the low wall, asking her a string of trivial-sounding questions that meant absolutely nothing to me but seemed vitally important to him:

  “How steady is your channeling under pressure?”

  “What is your tolerance for an unaligned surge?”

  “Can you maintain a stable resonance past a half-measure’s distance?”

  “What is your instinctive correction when the aether channeling bleeds?”

  Every answer Anabeth gave came quick and confident. I understood approximately none of it. I suspected all of it mattered.

  Finally, satisfied, Derevin lifted the short brass rod from his belt.

  “Very well,” he said. “We may begin. The spell for retive position is simple, but precision is paramount. Its formal name is The Foundational Manifold of Meridian-Coupled Vector Delineation. Or Meridian Vector Delineation, for short.” Even the short form wasn’t short.

  Anabeth’s hands were already lifting, far too eagerly, and grains of aether were collecting at her fingertips like sand pulled toward a magnet.

  [Stamina: 35% → 34%]Ah. The Knight code permits that I screw dignity. If they were about to unch into something called Meridian-Coupled Anything, I needed to conserve what little life-force I had left. I cast a quick gnce around the courtyard as if searching for a pce to tether my horse—tether, that was the word—but really all I wanted was a surface I could colpse against without looking like I was colpsing.

  There: the enormous shade tree near the corner of the wall. Perfectly respectable pce to ‘check my gear’ or ‘adjust my saddle straps’. I made a vague show of patting at my belt, nodding thoughtfully at absolutely nothing, then drifted toward the tree with the air of a man performing a necessary logistical duty.

  I dragged both Silvermane and Durand over to the tree. As soon as I reached its trunk, I leaned hard. My stomach was a hollow drum, and I doubted hunger would give any stamina back.

  “Observe,” Derevin intoned. “Meridian Vector Delineation functions by locating the aetheric median between two anchored points: yourself, and the chosen reference. The channel must be constant and uninterrupted. Any osciltion, even subtle irregur breathing, will distort the manifold.”

  He made a precise circur gesture with the rod, and a thin line of granur aether looking like flecks of powdered stone unspooled from its tip. It drifted toward a marker he’d carved earlier into the courtyard fgstones. The line bent, reoriented, and settled into a straight vector.

  Anabeth leaned in as though witnessing divine revetion.

  I, meanwhile, felt my soul slide gently out the side of my skull.

  Derevin continued, “You will note the alignment; a fixed meridian. From here, we couple the vector to the ambient field carefully, and then examine its deviation under minor influence.”

  He demonstrated a second movement, and I wondered, distantly, if the tavern two streets down still served honeyed rolls after dusk, or if I’d missed the window. I could practically smell roasted barley and imagine a pte full of food that was non-theoretical.

  I was imagining a bowl of stew so vividly I could almost taste it when a rustling sound disturbed my imagination. At first I ignored it—rustling could have been leaves, squirrels, ghosts of knights past judging me for poor stamina management, anything—but then it came again, and it sounded irritated. Durand; of course.

  I cracked an eye open and turned just enough to see him.

  He was fighting the cotton. He was braced awkwardly against the tree, hindquarters digging into the roots like he was trying to peel the wrapping off himself. I bent over to try to keep him still, but then...

  The cotton wasn’t white anymore.

  Where the strands pressed against the bark, the fibers had begun to leech color—no, absorb it—creeping browns spreading like stains. An aetheric sort of glow pulsated through the fibers, dull as banked coals, matching the exact earthen tone of the trunk.

  What in the miasmic colon of the Saints is this?