"I only hope I'm as good as you one day," Sandry remarked softly. "You were so patient with me."
Lark shook her head. "You give me too much credit. It was very easy to be patient with you, and an absolute joy to teach you."
Sandry looked down, blushing with pleasure. Hearing that from Lark meant a great deal to her. Lark was pleas ant, but she also didn't believe in compliments unless they were earned.
When Sandry checked the heap of thread-bits, she saw they had woven themselves into one strand. Now they arranged themselves in a polite coil, as if they wanted to show Sandry they could behave. "Thank you," she told them. "You did that very nicely, and I'm sorry I frightened you before."
She didn't notice Lark's smile. She was thinking, Thread minds me—why can't Pasco? That wasn't entirely fair, and she knew it. This thread came from sheep, who were docile enough if you kept after them. Silk thread would have been harder to control, since the caterpillars that spun silk worked only for themselves.
Remembering her friend Briar at Pasco's age, Sandry wondered if he'd been as deliberately ignorant as Pasco was this afternoon. Briar hadn't been. He could be infuriating, and difficult, and independent, but he was also a realist. He would never argue when someone had pointed out something obvious, like his magic. That made her wonder, was it Briar who'd been unusual for his age, or the boy she had met today?
"Pasco seems so young. she complained. "But that's impossible. He's two years older than any of us were at the start of our studies."
"But by then you in particular were no longer young," Lark told her quietly.
Sandry looked down. She knew what Lark meant. Two weeks locked in a cellar in a country gone mad, with her parents and nursemaid dead and no hope of Sandry's ever being found, had worked a change on her ten-year-old self. The weeks she had spent afterward, staring at a ceiling and not wanting to leave her bed, had done still more to age her past her years.
"Give me a day or two," Lark suggested. "I'll ask some of the dancers I know to recommend a teacher—some one who won't be unnerved if Pasco's control over his power slips." Lark still kept the performer friends she'd made in her youth, before she took her vows. "In the meantime, begin his lessons in meditation as soon as possible. And be prepared to talk to his parents."
Sandry nodded gloomily. She didn't feel at all confident about teaching.
Lark came over and gave her a hug. "The wheel turns," she told Sandry. "The student becomes the teacher. And you'll do me credit—just you wait and see."
Sandry chuckled and returned the hug. "If I can do half as well as you, I'll count myself lucky."
Once baton practice started, it was a good idea to think about only baton practice, not about full nets or Lady Sandrilene. Pasco's mother Zahra was feeling brisk she made them all step lively that morning. The cousins' feet slapped the courtyard tiles as if they were step dancers all doing the same measures.
When a maid told Zahra someone had come to see her, Zahra ordered them to pair up and practice the latest drill. The moment she was gone. Pasco and a couple of the others sat down to rest..
A baton thumped Pasco's crown. "You heard, your mama, tippy-feet," his cousin Vani said, jeering. "Come prance around, with me a bit."
Pasco replied with a rude suggestion.
Vani growled, and rapped Pasco's head again. Pasco saw stars.
"Stop it, Vani," Reha protested. "You'd be cleaning chamberpots for weeks if Aunt Zahra saw that."
"She won't catch me, though, and you won't tell if you're wise." Glaring at Pasco, Vani added, "Guess who got stuck hauling wood this morning while somebody took his sweet time coming back from market? Wha'd you do, Pasco? Stop and goggle at them Capchen dancers practicing in the yard at Wainwright's inn?" Vani banged Pasco's knees, then his shins, with his baton.
Pasco surged to his feet and lunged at Vani, baton out. His cousin backed away, swung his weapon and knocked Pasco's from his grip. He surveyed Pasco with narrowed eyes. "I got to teach you not to stick me with all the hot sweaty work."
Pasco trembled. Vani was going to hurt him again. Even if one of the girls fetched help, sooner or later Vani would get his revenge. For some reason Pasco brought out the worst of Vani's mean streak. Now he shrank back, raising his hands to guard his face as his bigger cousin drew close.
A bit of flute music threaded through his mind. The Capchens had danced to it…
Humming the tune, Pasco took three quick steps to the right, his arms in the air, palm-to-palm overhead.
Vani halted and rolled his eyes. "Now what?" he demanded.
Pasco took another three quick steps to the left. He lowered his arms halfway, holding them like wings out from his sides. He arched his chest, head high. Long step next, then leap at Vani, one leg bent, the other trailing straight behind him.
Vani, Haiday, and the youth behind them flew up and back as if thrown. Pasco landed on the ground and waited for them to do the same.
They didn't, all three stayed in the air, four feet above the tiles. They hung, and they hung, and they hung.
"Pasco, what did you do?" breathed Reha, who was earthbound. "That was you, wasn't it?"
"No," he said quickly.
The three hanging Acalons flailed without shifting their bodies an inch. "Let me down!" yelled Vani. "Right now, you puling, puking little rat turd!"
Pasco licked his lips. Time. He needed time to think. "Promise you won't beat me up," he retorted, his voice squeaking.
“I'll mince you is what I'll do! Get me down!" Reha left the courtyard and returned with a tall stool. She thrust it under Haiday, as if she just needed a step down Haiday struggled, but the air held her fast. Reha tried the stool on the other two, without result.
Vani kicked it over when she put it under him. "Pasco, get me down, or you're hog food!"
"Promise," whispered Pasco, mind racing like a panicked mouse, All he could think was that Vani would need, to hurry to beat Mama to killing him.
A sharp voice demanded, "What is going on out here? You children know very well Great-grandmother rests at this hour!" Gran'ther Edoar walked out of his quarter of the house, as cross as a bear. Leaning on his walking stick, the tall old man went up to the three hanging Acalons and tugged Haiday's leg. She remained in the air.
Pasco fell to his knees with a whimper.
Gran'ther walked around the three, looking them over, pulling first an arm, then a leg. Pasco's mind had stopped running, frozen around the thought that he would never be allowed out of the house again.
Once his inspection was complete, Gran'ther halted and looked at the cousins who stood on the ground. "How did this come about?" he inquired mildly. "Surely you have not learned to fly, or someone would have mentioned it at supper."
"It's all Pasco's fault!" snapped Vani. He thrashed as if he thought he could swim through the air to claw at his young cousin. "He did this!"
Gran'ther's tufted eyebrows rose. "Did he indeed?"
"I didn't mean it," babbled Pasco. "I–I was scared, and he's going to beat me up again—,"
"Beat you up?" Gran'ther looked at Vani and then at Pasco. "Again?"
"He's lying to get himself out of trouble," growled Vani, but the girls were shaking their heads.
"He's beaten Pasco before," Gran'ther repeated, to confirm it.