TWO HUNDRED SEVENTY-SEVEN: Sip Water

277

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“It’s fine. I didn’t even know I wanted a set of armor rings until today. I can live without them.”

Alden sat on a large, glossy wooden chest, watching Stuart close the lid on a jewelry box that was only big enough for a couple of fists instead of a couple of people. This was the third place they’d checked after realizing the room-sized jewelry box hadn’t held the rings.

“They’re supposed to be here. They were here only days ago. I saw them! And they’re still on the library’s inventory. Someone has taken them without updating the list.”

“And that person should be force fed a cup of cooking fat as punishment,” Alden said, trying to match Stuart’s scandalized tone. “We have to find out who it was. Call the executioner, and may their wevvi forever be lukewarm!”

Stuart let his fingers fall away from the box. “I really wanted you to have those. Soon. I have an idea for where to quickly get a different set, but it won’t be quite as good.”

“Why soon?”

“I told you. To protect your casting ability.”

“I’m not planning to do anything dangerous with my hands this afternoon. I’m not likely to hurt myself.”

“I know, but…. Do you have a saying on Earth like, ‘He could have been a Master, but he forgot to sip water’?”

“I’m not familiar with one.”

“It means you can’t reach a high goal while ignoring your most ordinary needs. I’m trying to think of what those are for you. Your casting is limited by several factors we can’t control, so we ought to take near-perfect care of the ones we can.”

“Sip water,” said Alden. “Protect my hands.”

He got it. And hearing it put this way gave his own bouncing thoughts a place to land.

He had spent a significant amount of his time over the past few months trying to acquire abilities that would have made surviving his first trip into chaos easier. He said as much to Stuart, who’d just opened a wardrobe full of hanging bags that looked like larger versions of Alden’s new ingredient case.

“I should learn more about Goldbush so that I can anticipate what I might need there.”

“You should,” Stuart acknowledged.

“Could you give me a good spell for getting water? Either locating it or drawing moisture out of the air or turning something else into it.”

“You’re taking ‘sip water’ literally.”

“If those sprinklers had stopped working when I was running with Kibby I couldn’t have made it to your aunt.”

Stuart turned to look at him. “There are many spells for that. And you do need to learn some of them, but not for Goldbush. You need to do it for cultural reasons.”

Alden blinked.

“Remember, I told you that being able to provide food, water, shelter, basic protections, and some other types of help are graduation requirements for the Rapport school.”

“I remember. You can’t go to wizard university without being able to do it.”

“An adult wizard should be able to keep a small village of ordinary people alive through a hard winter. It doesn’t matter that that sort of thing is unlikely to be asked of many of us in modern times. It’s still the starting place for the path of higher onus,” said Stuart. “Of course, knights do serve in another way. Evul hasn’t attended a single class at DawnStep despite being enrolled for decades, which is certainly a decision that isn’t well regarded by everyone. But even she would be embarrassed if someone asked her for water to drink, and she couldn’t do it. In a practical sense, it rarely matters. In a social sense… ”

“Knights who can’t cast spells take a votary to the Here-to-There so that nobody has to worry about that embarrassment at all,” said Alden.

“If I hadn’t gone, one of the other wizards would have offered to serve as a caster for them, but that becomes awkward in a different way. You don’t want to end up with someone like Olget-ovekondo representing you at an event like that.”

“All right. I will learn to summon water. And farm. And build houses.” He didn’t want to be an embarrassment, but that was an intimidating collection of jobs already.

“Providing shelter and food doesn’t necessarily mean building houses and farming. First schools often teach a blend of foraging and agricultural spells. But Eeaner-ket—one of my housemates at LeafSong—attended a school dedicated to preserving the wizarding knowledge of the tribes of Ket. They meet some of the standard educational expectations in uncommon ways. He learned their traditional small-prey hunting.”

“Hunting might be a little more useful for me than farming in chaos.”

“They’re both useful. Just for different situations. I’ll give you some water gathering spells to choose from, but in your preparations for Goldbush, you should think less of such basic survival.”

Alden spread his hands. “First, sip water.”

“Yes, but you’re still picturing how it was for you on Thegund, where you were alone except for Kivb-ee. Actually, you seem to be imagining the worst possible version of Thegund. One where you are alone with almost no supplies. On Goldbush, we’re much more likely to die of sudden injury—with full stomachs and within reach of allies—than of hunger or thirst. And we aren’t likely to die there at all if we don’t behave stupidly. People will know where we are and what we’ve been given to do. If we miss a scheduled <<check-in>>, they’ll look for us immediately. Even if we’re not working with anyone else for some reason, we’ll be traveling with redundant supplies. I’m going to take one of these, and we probably won’t even get to use it if we’re with a squad.”

He reached into the wardrobe and touched one of the bags. “This one. It’s old-fashioned, but I like it.”

“What is it?” asked Alden.

“A tent. And it has two different ways of providing us with water.”

“Understood. I should eventually learn to obtain water for cultural reasons, but Goldbush won’t be a wilderness survival experience. The most basic things I can do to prepare are probably…gaining knowledge of how knights and wizards do their work in that place so that I don’t get in the way and improving my ability to defend myself from whatever kinds of demons are common. Self-defense spells would be good. So would learning to use all the equipment you’re taking; enchanted supplies I can’t figure out how to activate won’t help us.”

Stuart let go of the tent.

“All of that is fine,” he said. “You can learn defense spells if you want. But you’re ignoring the obvious so much it’s driving me into an itch thicket! The first step is making a decision about what powers you’ll have after your binding. So that you don’t have to choose moments before it happens. And so we actually know what you’ll be able to do and what you won’t! There are no spells you can learn, and few preparations you can make, that will affect us both more than that. You—”

Alden expected to learn a brand new Artonan word then. Like whatever the more irritated version of bonk-noggined was. But a high ringing sound drew Stuart’s attention to the bell around his neck.

He gasped. “Someone’s coming down here.”

Alden moved immediately to hide his sensitivity training kit in his messenger bag. His auriad was already around his calf, covered by his pants, but he checked it with his eyes anyway. Then he took a short string of white beads from the top of the chest he was sitting on and tossed it into his bag, too. They’d taken it from the giant jewelry box. It was supposed to wrap around a wrist or hang from a belt and detect what kind of magic was happening near it. Stuart said it wasn’t reliable, but that Alden might be able to use it to tell when he was on the right track practicing a new spell.

He tried to look innocent as footsteps hurried toward them. Stuart had just shut the wardrobe.

“The samples are from two years ago!” a voice shouted. “Will they be of any use to you? I can call someone who was in that patch more recently to see what they have.”

“I’ll take whatever you can get quickly!”

Two people had entered the supply library. The first voice was coming from the other end of the room, out of sight behind rows of shelving and roots. The other belonged to a man with very long black hair that had been pulled back in a loose tail.

He was dressed in flowing embroidered pants and a tight, unadorned gray shirt that didn’t match them.

Aymeg. One of Stuart’s parents. And the one who’d suggested they use the relationship with Alden to manipulate Stuart toward their way of thinking. Alden’s posture straightened, but Aymeg only turned an eye to glance at him as he swept past.

The shirt he was wearing looked a bit like an undergarment. In combination with the unbraided hair and the hurry he seemed to be in, Alden wondered if he had been interrupted while he was getting dressed.

Stuart’s face was worried. He slid the ring that was keeping his conversation with Alden private off his finger. “Aymeg Dad, what’s happened? Can I help with something?”

“I have this,” Aymeg called. “Ask your brother.”

“Jozz!” Stuart said, squeezing through a gap between the wardrobe and a shelf to get to the next aisle quickly. “I’m in here! Do you need me?”

“Stu? Find something that will amplify the origin of these samples! It’s fine if it doesn’t last long.”

“What kind of samples?”

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Alden wasn’t sure if he should follow Stuart or stay where he was and keep out of the way. Keeping out of the way seemed like the better choice as more seconds passed.

If Stuart hadn’t set the bell alarm and thought of the rings, they might have been overheard by these two, who definitely weren’t Alden’s favorite art’hs, given the little he knew about them. He waited, watching Aymeg since he was the only one in view.

He’d gone to a cabinet with wide shallow drawers. After only a brief look at the labeling, he pulled one out, and Alden realized that what he’d thought were drawers were more like frames. Aymeg removed one entirely, carefully studying the white and black drawing on it.

Alden could see the back of it, and whatever paper or fabric it was made from was thin enough for him to make out the dark lines on the other side clearly.

Looks like a map.

But it was one so simple it wouldn’t be very informative. No marks for cities, only a few squiggles that might have been rivers or borders, and a couple of symbols along each side that meant nothing to Alden—that was all there was to it.

Aymeg seemed satisfied with it, though. He adjusted his grip and started carrying it back toward the elevator, frame and all, still moving rather fast.

“Jozz!” he called out.

“I found it! We’ve got what we need!” Jozz called back.

Aymeg’s steps slowed only a little as he approached Alden again. His eye turned. Alden nodded and smiled. Then, the man was past him, and he relaxed. He saw a flash of movement that was probably Stuart heading back this way.

That wasn’t much of an interruption, he thought, relieved.

“Stu!” Aymeg’s voice rose. “Take that ring from Alden Ryeh-b’t, and put the set back where it belongs. You don’t need those for anything, and they’re five hundred years old. Who knows what effect a human wearer might have on them? They’re not <<playthings>>.”

Alden looked down at the rough stone ring he was still wearing. He hadn’t thought to remove it. He and Stuart had worn them before during the Here-to-There in full view of hundreds of people, so they didn’t feel like something forbidden.

He slid it off his finger.

Aymeg could have just said something to me when he passed.