The brewery’s day off did not make moving easier, Lessa had hoped it would. It only meant she had nothing to hide behind as the few people around all noticed her leave.
Lessa knew that busy streets were kinder in one specific way. A crowd always had purpose, and purpose gave people something else to look at. People carried bundles, they argued over prices, children ran where they should have walked, carters cursed at everything, but everyone had somewhere to be. A person could pass through all of that, if she kept her head down, looked as if she belonged to someone else’s errand.
But the day off left too much space.
She carried her bundle herself. It was not heavy, which should have been a mercy, and instead felt like failure. All her clothing fit into a cloth wrap tied twice and held against her chest, anything she was not carrying she was wearing. There were no little keepsakes from the brewery that would make her smile fondly years later, no spare shoes wrapped in paper, no sewing basket with a proper lid.
Lessa stepped around a puddle near the corner of the main avenue and felt the first stare touch the side of her face.
She did not look up, she merely pulled the hood of her cloak up and kept her head down.
That was the first rule, and one of the few that had never failed her. Looking up could make a man smile as if she had invited him to. Looking away at once could make him angry, because some men considered attention a coin they had already paid. Looking down was safest.
People had stared at her for as long as she could remember, though she felt the tone of the looking had changed as she grew older. When she had been a child, women had touched her chin and said she would break hearts one day. Later, men stared too long and women stopped saying anything kindly.
She did know what made her beautiful. It had not made her feel lucky.
The old inn stood ahead, though people had begun calling it headquarters more often than not. Lessa still thought of it as an inn because it had the bones of one. A broad front, a common room visible through the windows, an entrance made for customers rather than servants.
She stopped at the door, shifted her bundle against her chest, and knocked.
The door opened quickly enough that Seren must have been waiting.
“Lessa,” Seren said, and stepped aside at once. “Come in before the cold follows you.”
Lessa managed a small curtsy, which was awkward with the bundle in her arms. “Thank you, Mistress Seren.”
“Seren will do while you live here,” Seren said, closing the door behind her. “Mistress is a term we use for noble ladies, some may get upset if you call me that in front of them.”
Lessa nodded because saying anything too quickly would usually draw ire for her specifically, less in others somehow.
The common room was larger than it had looked from outside. It was not grand in the palace sense, or even the merchant sense, but it had been made clean. The tables were scrubbed smooth. The hearth was laid properly though not yet lit high for the day. Shelves had been added near one wall, and a long counter held papers stacked beneath a cloth, as if the room needed to be ready to serve beer, meals, orders, or all three depending on who entered.
It smelled faintly of old wood, soap, and bread from a morning batch somewhere deeper in the building.
Lessa had expected the inn to feel busy. She had not expected it to feel managed.
“This way,” Seren said.
Lessa followed her across the room and through a rear passage toward the courtyard. The passage opened into cold air and hard-packed ground, and at once the building changed again. There were soldiers in the yard.
Not palace guards in polished lines or not hired men standing near a door because someone had given them a spear and a wage. These men were moving. Eight of them, broad in the shoulders, marked by old scars, sweat, and the careful ease of people who had been hurt before and didn’t regret it. They used wooden blades and short staffs, circling, striking, giving ground, laughing when a blow landed well enough to be admired after the pain had been accepted.
Brannick stood among them with a practice staff in one hand and the expression of a man who had found flaws in every living thing present and intended to correct them.
One of the guards looked toward the passage.
It was only a glance. Lessa knew that. She also knew the way a glance could catch, hesitate, and turn into something else. His eyes found her face and stopped for half a heartbeat too long.
Brannick’s staff cracked against the side of his head.
The guard stumbled, swore, and brought his weapon up far too late.
“Your skull is still attached for now,” Brannick said. “Keep it looking where the stick is.”
The others grinned. The struck guard flushed, adjusted his grip, and turned back to the drill.
No one laughed at Lessa or called her over. They had not made the look into a joke and handed the shame to her. The yard closed around its own business again reminding all that the interruption had belonged entirely to the man who had made the mistake.
Lessa lowered her gaze anyway.
Her body had already chosen the answer before her mind could understand that this place might have different rules. She tucked her chin down and moved closer behind Seren, watching the hem of Seren’s dress and the hard ground beyond it.
Then something tugged at her attention.
At first she thought it was sunlight on water, though the day had very little sunlight to offer. She glanced aside despite herself.
Margaret stood near the far wall with Battery before her. Lessa knew Battery by sight more than by speaking. He was the boy who had been brought in half-starved and hollow-eyed, the one people were careful around in the way households became careful when pity had been given work to do. He looked better now, there was colour in his face and concentration in the tight set of his mouth.
Three small spheres hung in the air before him.
They looked like water, each no larger than a plum, but there was something inside them that made Lessa’s skin prickle behind her ears. Not light or colour exactly. Something else she had never been able to describe.
Battery was trying to make them circle one another. Trying was the important word.
The spheres drifted apart, then sagged toward the ground. Battery drew in a breath and pulled one back up. The second followed too late, wobbling at the edge, while the third thickened strangely and nearly collapsed before Margaret lifted one finger.
“Do not chase the one that falls,” Margaret said. “Hold the pattern and correct it from there. If you follow each mistake, you will teach your mana to make more of them.”
Battery swallowed and nodded. Lessa stopped walking.
She had seen magic before, of course. Everyone had seen some magic if they had gone to enough festivals. She had seen sparks snapped between fingers, a juggler keeping beads of blue fire above his palm.
Other people clapped when the trick worked, but usually from a respectful distance.
Lessa remembered the one moment when a spell had failed. A bead of fire thinning at one side before it popped.
She had thought everyone noticed those things and simply had better manners than to speak of them.
Battery tried again. The three spheres rose together, and Lessa’s mouth went dry. It was wrong.
She had no word for how it was wrong, which made the knowing more confusing. The movement should have been clean. She was certain of that, but had no idea how to trust that certainty. The spheres should have poured through the air, should have followed his will with the lightness of water tipped from a cup. Instead they dragged like a spoon pulled through porridge.
It made her think of milk left too near the stove. Not spoiled enough for anyone to throw away at once, but changed. Reluctant to pour properly. Wrong in a way the tongue would find before the eye admitted it.
Battery’s brow furrowed. The spheres wobbled harder.
“Too much force,” Margaret said, but her voice changed near the end.
Lessa realised Margaret was looking at her.
Not the way people looked in the street or like the guard’s caught glance or even the old looks that made Lessa feel as though she had stepped accidentally into someone else’s hunger. Margaret looked at her as if Lessa had said something aloud without meaning to.
The three spheres fell.
One struck the ground and burst across Battery’s shoes. He flinched, then looked mortified. “Sorry.”
“No,” Margaret said, though her eyes were still on Lessa for another heartbeat. “That was better than the last attempt. You only fail when you stop trying.”
Lessa dropped her gaze so quickly the courtyard blurred.
Seren had stopped a few steps ahead and was looking back. Her expression did not ask questions, which was a mercy Lessa did not know how to answer. She only nodded toward the passage that led deeper into the building.
“This way,” Seren said softly.
Lessa hurried after her. The back of her neck prickled, but when she risked one brief glance, Margaret had turned back to Battery and was speaking to him about attention, and trying not to bully mana into obedience.
The living rooms were above and built around the courtyard, all doors faced it and most had shuttered windows facing into the courtyard. Seren opened one door, then another, explaining as she went.
“There are two choices here, you’ll see a small common room although Mister Alric calls it a lounge, then there are four connecting rooms. You can share the larger room with one of the other girls. It has better light, and there is more space for a trunk later if you get one. Or there is a smaller room at the end. It is narrow, but you would have it to yourself.”
Lessa looked toward the end of the passage.
“It has a door?” she asked.
Seren’s face softened by such a small amount that someone less practiced might have missed it. “Yes. It has a door.”
“The small room, please.”
Seren did not ask why the door mattered. Lessa noticed the kindness of it.
The small room was indeed small, but Lessa had known smaller spaces that belonged less to her. There was a bed with a proper frame, a folded blanket, a narrow cupboard, a peg on the wall, and a little window that looked out toward the courtyard instead of the street. The floorboards were swept. The latch worked when Seren showed her, and the door closed without needing to be lifted at the handle.
Lessa placed her bundle on the bed. It looked even smaller there.
She untied it because not untying might make her seem ungrateful or afraid, and both could become problems depending who was watching. Clothing unfolded onto the blanket. A spare dress, stockings, underthings, a comb with two missing teeth, a ribbon she no longer wore outside because it made people look longer, and a small bit of polished glass wrapped in cloth.
Seren did not comment on any of it.
“I will show you where the blankets are but you should take another,” she said. “The rooms hold the cold in.”
“This is more than enough,” Lessa said quickly.
“It is not Lessa,” Seren replied. “But it will be by evening.”
Lessa did not know what to do with that, so she folded the spare dress again and placed it in the cupboard.
Voices carried faintly from the courtyard. A wooden blade struck another. Brannick said something too low for the words to reach, but the shape of his displeasure did. A moment later, one of the guards laughed and then stopped laughing almost at once.
Lessa looked toward the sound before she could help herself.
“Is Mister Alric a lord now?” she asked.
Seren shook her head. Lessa waited, because a simple headshake seemed too small for what she had seen.
Seren followed her gaze toward the courtyard through the open shutter. There were guards outside. A mage teaching another mage. A common room large enough to hold work and orders. Staff moving through halls. Rooms being assigned. Doors being fixed. The whole place felt as if it had begun gathering people around a centre no one wanted to name too loudly.
“No,” Seren said again, more thoughtfully. “Though I admit these days, it is getting hard to tell the difference.”
Lessa looked down, but a smile touched her mouth before she could stop it.
Seren saw it and had the grace not to make it into anything by mentioning it.
“None of that changes your work today,” Seren said. “You are here now. That part is settled, the next thing is your uniform.”
Lessa’s hand tightened briefly on the cupboard door.
A uniform meant work. Work meant rules, and rules could be cruel, but they could also stand between a person and someone else’s opinion. A uniform would not stop people staring. Nothing had ever stopped that for long.
But perhaps it would give them something else to see first.
Lessa nodded. “Yes, Seren.”
Outside, Battery’s magic rose again, slow and heavy through the air, and Lessa felt the wrongness of it even through the stone.