"Yes."
He slid one finger under a long lock of hair that had fallen over her cheek, letting it wind and slip. Duchess Surclere went pink, the change of colour visible even in the stark moonlight.
"Let’s get out of here," Fallon said, alight with mortification. He grabbed Auri’s hand, but she pulled free, and then both of them froze because Duchess Surclere had stopped looking pleased and shy, turning her head sharply toward them.
"What?" Lord Surclere pivoted on his heel.
"Some kind of scry," Duchess Surclere said. "Very finely done, but definitely an observation. Tch—it will have to be someone on the ship, given the distance and the wards."
Lord Surclere stood just a little straighter, and what could be made out of his expression in the vivid moon-glow did not change at all. And Fallon had never wanted more to be anywhere but where he was.
"Let’s get out of here!" he said, pulling at his sister’s arm as Lord Surclere turned and walked out of the room—not hurrying, but not slow either.
"Don’t quail, Fal," Auri said. "If they find out the truth they’re hardly going to be angry."
"All they’d find is that I’m spying on them," Fallon said. "I won’t be able to explain more, and—"
"He’ll only see that you’re asleep," Auri pointed out. "No-one else has been able to tell you’re in the Dream. And she can barely tell we’re here. Calm down."
"Easy for you to say."
"Do you think we should push something over? Were you feeling well enough this morning?"
"Nothing out of the way," Fallon said. "I suppose she’d stop thinking we were a scry if we did. But—"
"But, but—you only ever think of objections, Fal."
"But what if she thought we were some sort of attack? She might try to dispel us."
"Where’s her slate? We could write Help on it."
"That—" Fallon shook his head. "You know what that will do to me." One or two quick actions, like triggering the page-turner or pushing something, would tire Fallon. Anything sustained, even only long enough to write a word, and he’d sleep half the next day.
"This time it might be worth it."
"So that they can question me when I wake up?"
"At least if you pass out they’ll start investigating."
"You don’t know what it’s like, Auri. I can’t—"
"I know what this is like!" Auri yelled. "Never touching, never eating, never doing! You don’t care! Don’t you want her to fix me?"
"I don’t want her to kill us," Fallon said.
Duchess Surclere turned her head as if trying to hear them better, then looked to the door as Lieutenant Meniar strode in.
"Scries, eh?" he said, just a little round about the eyes, as if startled. "Probably one of the ship’s mages being curious. Captain Faille told me to put an extra ward on the room."
"I suppose that’s the simplest solution," Duchess Surclere said. "It’s rare they’d find me doing anything but sleeping, but it’s still annoying."
Fallon left, knowing Auri would follow rather than be trapped in the room by a ward. They’d encountered wards only occasionally since the Dream started, and they were painful and impossible to cross, no matter whether they were trying to exclude Eferum-Get or magical intrusions. At least the ship’s wards formed a bubble over the masts, so Auri would be able to enjoy the view from the deck.
At the steep stair at the end of the passage Fallon concentrated on going up without slipping through, then headed toward the front of the ship. He hadn’t quite reached it before experiencing that curious, stretchy sensation that told him he was at the limit of the distance he could go from his body, but almost all of the deck was within range.
"I’ll take an afternoon nap tomorrow," he told Auri, when she finally joined him. "You definitely want to see what the sunset is like."
Subdued now, Auri eyed the nearest sailor fretfully. "Do you think Mrs Pardons will look after Father properly?"
"As she said, she’s managed him well enough when I’ve been at school. What worries me is if Uncle decides to get back at him for letting me go off with Duchess Surclere, but Mrs Pardons said she just wouldn’t let Uncle in if he gets too bad. She had all these plans for pretending the household had come down with Shaky Fever."
Auri didn’t respond, just stood shoulder to shoulder with him and watched the moon inch higher. Her way of apologising. Fallon doubted he would be able to handle the long isolation much better, but the chance of Auri letting her temper ride her to disaster was another worry to add to Uncle and Father and spells gone wrong and a seriously angry Lord Surclere.
He was so tired.
Chapter Nine
Rennyn glanced out the window at grey, damp sky, then back to the warm cabin that had been home for the past two weeks. "Can you hear music?"
The range of expressions in return for her question clearly told her no, and were also a nice illustration of the different personalities before her. Sukata concentrated, even though Kellian hearing meant she would ordinarily have caught any sound before Rennyn. Fallon was analytical, searching for a double meaning to the question, while Aven Meniar’s light smile gave way to a quick, professional survey, on the off-chance that she’d suddenly developed a fever. And Kendall was just suspicious, convinced as ever that half Rennyn’s actions were for her own quixotic amusement.
"Guess not. Sorry for interrupting." She gestured for Meniar to continue, though the impression of notes too distant to be truly audible hadn’t gone.
"For bone-work, caulding isn’t a replacement for a splint," Meniar said, with a shrug. "For all kinds of reasons, you don’t want to rely solely on magic to keep fractures in position. With a clean break, once the bone is set you don’t truly need caulding at all after the splint is in place, but where the bones have been shattered, where there are many fragments, caulding might be the only thing to save a limb. And to cauld a bone you need to see the bone, which is what this casting is all about."
The Sigillic was straightforward, but Rennyn had found the lecture interesting for the new words that stood for all the different layers of people. She’d only ever learned the most basic of healing magics, because the study of how living creatures worked required many more years than she could devote. This trip had become a good opportunity to explore new avenues, and she and her students had enjoyed a round dozen of these lectures from Meniar and the other Sentene mages, as well as the specialist ship mages.
This Sigillic had been written in a circle around a flat bowl filled with water, and as Meniar began to activate, the liquid took on a silvery sheen while a faint glow appeared around his left hand.
"There are many variations of this casting, depending on just what it is you wish to look at," Meniar said, touching his left hand to the back of his right. "Term substitution is possible, but only useful for issues that can be diagnosed simply by looking."
Rennyn leaned so she could see the bowl more clearly, watching a collection of bones flex in time with Meniar’s hand. It was an eerie sight.
"This isn’t the spell everyone uses when they look at my ribs," she commented. "At least, not illusions in bowls."
"This version’s mainly for when trying to set the bones," Meniar said. "When it’s necessary to see the movement. Sukata, you give it a try."
The Kellian girl was a confident caster. Her Sigillics were always precisely written, and she didn’t rush or hesitate, but had a nice surety. Rennyn enjoyed watching her, especially the pleasure in her eyes, for Sukata straightforwardly enjoyed magic. Fallon had said he liked it too much, but though he cast without effort she felt as always an underlying lack of certainty. Kendall usually pretended to be bored during Sigillic lessons, since she wasn’t yet permitted to use them, but this was far too intriguing for her not to crane forward wide-eyed.