Leesha slapped her hand down on the table, glaring. “Get your cloak, Rojer,” she said. “It’s getting dark, and we’re safer out among the demons.” She shoved the blank books into her satchel and set it over her shoulder as she snatched her richly embroidered cloak from the peg by the door and threw it about her shoulders, clasping it at her throat with a silver ward pin.

Erny came over, hands spread in apology. Leesha embraced him as Rojer put on his cloak. Elona stayed at the table with the wine.

“I really wish you wouldn’t walk around after dark, magic cloak or no,” Erny said. “We can’t exactly replace you.”

“Rojer has his fiddle,” Leesha said, “and I have more tricks than wards of unsight, if a coreling were to somehow find us. We ’re quite safe.”

“You can witch all the Core to your bidding, but not a simple man,” Elona sneered into her glass.

Leesha ignored her, putting up her hood and stepping out into the dusk.

“Now do you believe me?” she asked Rojer as the door closed behind them.

“Seems I owe you a sun,” Rojer admitted.

The snow crunched under Leesha’s booted feet as she and Rojer headed to the village proper. Their breath fogged in the crisp winter air, but their cloaks were lined with fur and kept them warm enough.

Rojer hadn’t said a word since Elona’s comment. His head was down, face buried under long locks of red hair. His fiddle was tucked in its case, slung beneath his motley cloak, but she could tell from the way his fingers flexed that he longed to hold it. He always played the fiddle when he was upset.

Leesha knew Rojer shined on her. Most everyone knew, really. Half the women in town thought she was mad for not snatching him up. And why not? Rojer had a boyishly pretty face and a quick wit. His music was beautiful beyond words, and he could bring a laugh from Leesha when she was at her lowest. He’d shown more than once that he was willing to die for her.

But try as she might, Leesha could not bring herself to see him as a lover. Rojer had barely seen eighteen winters, a full ten years younger than her, and he was her friend. In many ways, Rojer was her only friend. The only person she trusted. He was the little brother she’d never had. She didn’t want to hurt him.

“Your apprentice Kendall saw me the other day,” Leesha said. “Pretty girl.”

Rojer nodded. “My best student, too.”

“She asked if I knew how to brew a love potion,” Leesha said.

“Ha!” Rojer barked. Then he stopped short and looked at her. “Wait, can you?”

Leesha laughed. “Of course not. But the girl doesn’t need to know that. I gave her a tincture of sweet tea instead and told her to share it with her would-be love. Watch out if she offers you tea, or you might be in for a night of kissing.”

Rojer shook his head. “Never stick your apprentice.”

“Another of Master Arrick’s brilliant maxims?” Leesha quipped.

Rojer nodded. “And one I’m happy to report he practiced as well as preached. I knew other apprentices in the guild who weren’t so lucky.”

“This hardly compares,” Leesha said. “Kendall’s nearly as old as you are, and she’s the one buying love potions.”

Rojer shrugged and put his hood up, pulling the edges of his motley cloak together to strengthen the wardnet. The last of the light had faded, and all around them misty forms were rising from the snow, solidifying into corelings that hissed and cast about, scenting them in the air but unable to find them.

Erny had set his house away from the village so that he would not have to endure complaints about the smell of his papermaking chemicals, but that distance also put it outside the great ward of forbidding that protected the village proper.

A wood demon wandered into Rojer’s path, sniffing the air. Rojer froze, not daring to move as it searched. There was a sharp movement under the cloak, and she knew one of the warded throwing knives he kept strapped to his wrists had fallen into the palm of his good hand.

“Just walk around it, Rojer,” Leesha said, continuing down the path. “It can’t see or hear you.” Rojer tiptoed around the demon, twirling the knife nervously in his fingers. He had grown up juggling blades and could put one into a coreling’s eye at twenty paces.

“It’s just unnatural,” Rojer said, “walking plain as day through hordes of corelings.”

“How many times must we do it before you tire of saying that?” Leesha sighed. “The cloaks are safe as houses.” The Cloaks of Unsight were her own invention, based on wards of confusion the Painted Man had taught her. Leesha had modified the wards and embroidered them with gold thread into a fine cloak. Demons ignored her when she wore it, even if she walked right up to them, so long as she moved at a slow, steady pace and kept it wrapped around her.

She’d made Rojer’s cloak next, embroidering the wards in bright colors to match his Jongleur’s motley, and she was pleased to see that he seldom removed it, even in daylight. The Painted Man never seemed to wear the one she had made for him.

“Nothing against your wards, but I don’t think I ever will,” Rojer said.

“I trust your fiddle magic to keep me safe,” Leesha said. “Why don’t you trust mine?”

“I’m out here in the dark, aren’t I?” Rojer asked, fingering his cloak. “It’s just eerie. I hate to say it, but your mother wasn’t far off the mark when she called you a witch.”

Leesha glared at him.

“A Ward Witch, at least,” Rojer clarified.

“They used to call Herb Gathering witching, too,” Leesha said. “I’m just warding, same as anyone.”

“You’re not the same as anyone, Leesha,” Rojer said. “A year ago, you couldn’t ward a windowsill, and now the Painted Man himself takes lessons from you.”

Leesha snorted. “Hardly.”

“See the light,” Rojer said. “You argue his own wards with him all the time.”

“Arlen is still thrice the Warder I am,” Leesha said. “It’s just…it’s hard to explain, but after looking at enough wards, the patterns started…speaking to me. I can look at a new ward and just by studying the lines of power, guess its purpose more often than not. Sometimes I can even change the lines to alter the effects. I’ve been trying to teach the knack to others, but none seems to get past rote.”

“That’s what fiddling’s like for me,” Rojer said. “The music speaks to me. I can teach my apprentices to play songs well enough, but you don’t play ‘The Battle of Cutter’s Hollow’ for the corelings to pacify them. You have to…massage their mood.”

“I wish someone could massage my mother’s mood,” Leesha muttered.

“About time,” Rojer said.

“Ay?” Leesha asked.

“We’ll be in town soon,” Rojer said. “The sooner we talk about your mum, the sooner we’ll be done talking about it, and can get on with our business there.”

Leesha stopped short and looked at him. “What would I do without you, Rojer? You’re my best friend in the world.” She put just the right emphasis on the word friend.

Rojer shifted awkwardly, walking on. “I just know how she gets to you.”

Leesha hurried after. “I hate to think my mum could be right about anything…”

“But she often is,” Rojer said. “She sees the world with cold clarity.”

“Heartless clarity is more like it,” Leesha said.

Rojer shrugged. “Rabbit in one hat, bunny in the other.”

Leesha casually reached out to take snow from a low branch in her gloved hand, but Rojer noted the move and easily dodged the snowball she threw at him. It struck a wood demon, which looked about frantically for its assailant.

“You want children,” Rojer said bluntly.

“Of course I do,” Leesha said. “I always have. Just never seemed to find the right time.”

“The right time, or the right father?” Rojer asked.

Leesha blew out a breath. “Both. I’m only twenty-eight. With the help of herbs, I can likely carry a child to term for another two decades, but never as easily as I might have ten, or even five years ago. If I’d married Gared, our first child might be fourteen now, and there would likely have been several more after that.”