And the things she bought were such harmless things, even if some of them were odd, and even though, as the months passed, she did buy quite a quantity of them. Nothing there that could cause any ... mischief. Hornmar had mentioned, very quietly, to one or two of his particular friends the first sol’s miraculous cure of old Talat; and somehow that tale got around too, and as the witchwoman’s easy smile was remembered, so did some folk also begin to remember her way with animals.

It was a few months before her nineteenth birthday that she put a bit of yellowish grease on a fresh bit of dry wood, held it with iron pincers, and thrust it into the small candle flame at the corner of her work table—and nothing happened. She had been performing this particular set of motions—measuring, noting down, mixing, applying and watching the wood burn-—for so long that her movements were deft and exact with long practice even while her brain tended to go off on its own and contemplate her next meeting of swords with Tor, or the nagging Teka was sure to begin within the next day or two for her to darn her stockings since they all had holes in them and lately she had perforce always to wear boots when she attended the court in the great hall so that the holes wouldn’t show. She was thinking that the green stockings probably had the smallest and most mendable holes, and she had to have dinner in the hall tonight. Since she’d turned eighteen she’d been expected to take part in the dancing occasionally, and there was sure to be dancing tonight since the dinner was in honor of Thorped and his son, who were here from the south; one of Thorped’s daughters was one of Galanna’s ladies. It was difficult dancing in boots and she needed all the help she could get. At this point she realized that her arm was getting tired—and that the bit of yellow-slick wood was peacefully ignoring the fire that burned around it, and that the iron tongs were getting hot in her hand.

She jumped, and knocked over the candlestick and dropped the hot tongs, and the greasy bit of wood skittered over the dusty, woodchip-littered floor, picking up shreds and shavings till it looked like a new sort of pomander. She had set up shop in a deserted stone shed near Talat’s pasture that had once held kindling and things like old axe handles and sticks of wood that might make new axe handles, and she had never gotten around to sweeping the floor. Her hands were shaking so badly that she dropped the candle again when she tried to pick it up, and missed when she went to stamp out the thread of smoke that rose from the floor where the candle had fallen.

She sat down on a pile of axe handles and took a few deep breaths, and thought fixedly about green stockings. Then she stood up, lit the candle again, and set it quietly back in its holder. She’d learned in the long months past not to waste her time and the apothecaries’ wares by making more than a tiny trial bit of each mixture, and the marble bowl where the final mashing and mixing went on before the experiment with the candle flame was no bigger than an eggcup. There was just enough in the bottom of the cup now to grease one fingertip. She chose the left index finger, which had been the one to get burnt with the result of her very first fire-ointment attempt, what seemed centuries ago. She held the fingertip steadily in the flame, and watched it; the pointed blue-and-yellow oval of the fire parted smoothly around her finger and rejoined above it to prick the shadows of the stone ceiling. She felt nothing. She withdrew the finger and stared at it with awe—touched it with another finger. Skin-heat, no more; and while it had remained stickily apparent on the surface of the wood, the ointment was not greasy on her finger. Kenet. It existed.

She checked her notes to be sure she could read what she had written about the proportions of this particular attempt; then blew out the candle and went off in a daze to darn stockings.

Teka asked her twice, sharply, what was the matter with her, as she tried to help her dress for the court dinner. Aerin’s darns were worse than usual—which was saying a good deal, and Teka had said even more when she saw them, but as much out of worry for her sol’s extraordinary vagueness as from straightforward exasperation at yet another simply homely task done ill. Usually, big court dinners made Aerin clumsy and rather desperately here-and-now. Teka finally tied ribbons around both of Aerin’s ankles to hide the miserable lumps of mending and was even more appalled when Aerin did not object. Ankle ribbons were all the fashion among the higher-born young ladies this year; when this first became apparent Teka had had a difficult time convincing Aerin not to lengthen all her skirts eight inches, that they might drag on the floor and render all questions of ankle adornment academic; and Teka was fairly sure the only reason she’d won the argument was that Aerin couldn’t face the thought of all the sewing such a project would entail.

Teka hung a tassel at the front of one ankle, to fall gracefully over the high arch of Aerin’s long foot (not that it would stay there; Galanna and the others had developed a coy little hitch and skip to their walk, to make their tassels fall forward as they should), and pinned a small silver brooch bearing the royal crest on the other, and Aerin didn’t even fidget. She was dreamily staring into space; she was even wearing a slight smile. Could she have fallen in love? Teka wondered. Who? Thorped’s son—what was his name? Surely not. He was half a head shorter than she and wispy.

Teka sighed and stood up. “Aerin—are you sure you’re not ill?” she said.

Aerin came back to herself with a visible jerk and said, “Dear Teka, I’m fine. Truly I am.” Then she looked down with a scowl and wiggled her ankles. “Ugh,”

“They hide your—dare I call them—darns,” Teka said severely.

“There’s that,” said Aerin, and smiled again, and Teka thought, What ails the girl? I will look for Tor tonight; his face will tell me something.

TOR THOUGHT that night she looked radiant and wished, wistfully, that it had something to do with him, while he was only too certain it did not. When, daring greatly, he told her as they spun through the figures of the dance that she was beautiful, she laughed at him. Truly she has grown up, he thought; even six months ago she would have blushed scarlet and turned to wood in my arms. “It’s the ribbons round my ankles,” she said. “My darning surpassed itself in atrocity today, and Teka said it was this or going barefoot.”

“I am not looking at your feet,” said Tor, looking into her green eyes; and she said without flinching: “Then you should be, dearest cousin, for you have never seen me thus bedecked previously, nor likely are ever to see me so again.”

Thorped’s wispy son could barely take his eyes off her. He remarked to his father that Aerin-sol was so splendidly large. Thorped, who liked a woman of the size to throw over a shoulder and run lightly off with—not that the opportunity had ever presented itself, but it was an appealing standard of measurement—said ah, hmm. Galanna, who didn’t like wispy men, was still furious that anyone should waste time looking at Aerin, and snuggled relentlessly with Perlith. She was about resigned to being married to him; Tor was truly hopeless. If only Perlith would play up a bit more; a little mock despair over her being the center of attention at every gathering (well, nearly); a little jealousy when beautiful young men wrote her poems, as she was able occasionally to persuade them to do. But he had the infuriating attitude that his carefully chosen offer for her hand had conferred upon her a favor. By the gods! She was a good match, after all.

But then so was he. Neither of them would ever forget it for a moment.

Aerin floated through the evening. Since she was first sol, she never had the embarrassment (or the relief) of being able to sit out. She wasn’t particularly aware that—most unusually—she had stepped on no one’s feet that night; and she was accustomed to the polite protests, at the end of each set when partners were exchanged, of what a pleasure it was to dance with her, and her thoughts were so far away that she failed to catch the unusual ring of truth in her dancing partners’ voices. She didn’t even mind dancing three figures with Thorped’s son (what was his name again?), for while his height did not distress her, his chinlessness, on another occasion, would have.