Guild Mage: Apprentice

32. Seasons

The season turned to winter, and when southern Lucania was enjoying its first snowfall, Whitehill was already snowed in. Thick drifts of dry powder cut off the mountain passes, leaving no way out of the Aspen River Valley - save for a single waystone, at the foot of Bald Peak.

Liv’s days and nights slipped into routine. The excitement of the eruption was behind the town now, leaving a few scars, such as the one on Master Grenfell’s scalp. It had left Baron Henry crippled, of course, and he rarely left his room, preferring to spend his days with a bottle of brandy. The farmers of the valley, on the other hand, had been left with an exceptional amount of coin, the profits of selling mana-enriched fruit and produce to their Eldish neighbors to the north.

The farmers spent their windfall on warm winter clothing for their families, on new ploughs for their fields, or to make repairs to homes which had too long been neglected. The Eldish coins found their way, in this manner, to Master Gregory, the blacksmith, who had his apprentices busy shoeing draft horses while he turned out ploughs. The coins reached Master Jeremiah Thatcher, as well, who had barely enough time to repair every roof in need before the first snows fell.

Edme, the seamstress and dressmaker, got her share, mainly for skirts of thick winter wool that would keep the women and girls of the town warm until spring. The three inns of Whitehill cleaned and closed their guestrooms, forgetting the business of travelers until the thaw. Instead, the innkeepers at the Laughing Carp and the Gilded Star, in the Lower Banks, made their money selling cheap beer, ale and wine. They kept their hearths blazing, their common rooms warm, and their patrons well lubricated. The pickpockets of the Lower Banks did good business, as well, among the crowded tables.

At the Old Oak, the wine was better, and the food well-seasoned enough to draw shopkeepers like Master Gaunt. He carried a volume of poetry that had been delivered on the last wagon to make it in from the south. The new mayor, Master Porter, was seen there frequently, rubbing elbows with guild merchants and knights in service to Baron Henry, most of whom preferred to winter in town rather than at their country estates out in the valley.

Liv found herself at the Old Oak as well, many afternoons. Now that she was Master Grenfell’s only student, the character of their lessons had changed substantially. When they were not testing her spells, or taking measurements, they would work with a pile of notes and spellbooks. The older mage never told her what to do with her magic. Instead, he made suggestions. "Have you considered such and such a word?" he would ask her, and then open his own spellbook to give an example. She would work through the modifications, he would check the spell over for errors, and the next day they would go to the castle courtyard, the empty winter gardens, or up on the walls to test the changes.

She was incredibly pleased with Grasping Ice - not only the name, but the effect of the spell, especially once Liv had gone along with her teacher’s suggestion and inserted Veh to speed the effect up. When Master Forester took her and Emma hunting - he judged his daughter old enough to learn, since she’d turned six - Liv always took the first shot at any mana-beast they found.

At first, it was tricky to catch a buck on the move, but the more she practiced, the easier Liv found it. Curling pillars of ice would form around a white-coated hare or fox, gripping them tight in an instant. Master Forester rarely finished the trapped game; instead, he made Liv and Emma practice with their hunting knives, slitting the animals throats and then dressing the kills themselves.

They used snow-shoes or skis, now, depending on where they hunted. Master Grenfell had given up the fiction of making Liv pay for her lessons, apparently only having maintained it in the first place in order to prevent complaining from Mirabel Cooper and her horrid accomplice, Griselda.

"If you’re going to be hunting all up and down the valley," he told her gruffly, "you’re going to need a heavier cloak. Make certain it’s lined with fur. You can’t always be relying on someone else’s snowshoes or skis, either. And for the sake of the trinity, get yourself some good gloves."

It was a different sort of exercise than she’d gotten from James, the castle guard, and while going downhill was a liberating burst of speed and freedom, skiing cross-country was exhausting. Thankfully, Lady Julianne agreed that Liv was being worked hard enough on her hunting trips, so there was no more running circles around the castle that winter. By the time they returned from each expedition, encrusted with snow and ice, Liv’s calves and thighs burned.

Charlie, the black mouser, was a source of worry. Shortly after Liv’s thirteenth birthday, he’d begun to absent himself from her bed, where he’d previously been a constant fixture in the evenings. Indeed, no matter how they searched the castle, he couldn’t be found until finally, one day, he was discovered in a nest he’d made at the bottom of one of the old storage closets in the cellar.

"Look, Matthew, kittens!" she said. The fat-cheeked boy was adept at crawling himself into all sorts of trouble, now, but Liv had known instantly this would be a way to delight him. Lady Julianne leaned against the doorframe of the closet, watching her son with a broad smile. The little black balls of fur tumbled across the floor, into Liv’s lap, and around the sitting baby as he reached out and grabbed for them.

"It seems Charlie is a mother," Julianne remarked. "I’m not certain how you went for years without noticing that he was, in fact, a she."

"I never really looked!" Liv exclaimed.

"I hope you’ve learned enough anatomy now from Master Cushing that won’t be a problem in the future." The baron’s wife shook her head, but Liv knew Lady Julianne well enough to recognize a joke when she heard it.

"Liv, why don’t you come practice too?" he asked. The mornings were all warm sunlight, now, with the worst of the rains gone. Though Liv had never liked rolling out of bed, as far back as when she’d been getting up early to empty chamber pots and scrub dishes, the boy seemed to have an endless well of energy.

"Me?" Liv blinked.

"You," Matthew repeated. "Everyone I spar with is so much bigger than I am. It isn’t fair. At least you’re closer to my size. And you have that sword-spell, don’t you? You might as well learn how to use it."

"Why doesn’t Emma learn, then?" Liv suggested, trying to distract him. The boy was stubborn as a mule once he got something in his head.

"Not me," Emma protested. "I’m a hunter like my father. The last thing I should ever be doing is swinging a sword at anyone. Plus, I’m taller than both of you, and Matthew wants someone closer to his own size."

Piers, who was supervising the training that morning, was useless: he just shrugged. "If you want to learn, Liv, I can teach you. Seems a waste to have a spell you don’t know how to use, don’t it?" She shouldn’t have been surprised the man was a traitor: after all, he’d married Sophie two years ago. At least it had seemed to make her less miserable.

"Fine," Liv said. She handed Emma her spellbook and staff to hold, then, after a moment, slipped off her ring as well and put it in the pocket she kept under her skirt. The last thing she wanted was to have her finger pop open like a blister, caught between the metal ring and a practice sword. "I don’t think skirts are made for this sort of work, though."

"We start with footwork, like every morning," Piers said, and handed her a wooden sword.

Somewhere along the way, in spite of herself, Liv realized that she was having fun. It was a different kind of exercise than skiing, swimming or running. While her legs seemed to be in good shape for it, her arms were a different story entirely, and the practice swords were heavier than she’d thought they would be. All the same, the guards and parries seemed simple enough to remember: perhaps because she’d spent years memorizing charts of cases and conjugations in Vædic. Soon enough, it was time to learn cuts, set asides, and parries.

They had Liv cut first, while Matthew blocked her in whatever way the exercise demanded. The first crack of wood on wood made her jump, and Liv couldn’t quite get over a lingering bit of hesitation. She’d spent so many years avoiding just this kind of physical activity that even now she couldn’t shake the fear of an accident, of something happening that her weak bones couldn’t stand up to. In fact, she suspected that if Master Cushing had known what she was doing right now, he’d never have allowed it.

All the same, she made it through her cuts without incident, and for a boy his age, Matthew had been patient with her. It was when it became Liv’s turn to block, and Matthew’s to cut, that she began to feel like things were spinning out of control.

Matthew had been training for months already, since the first days of flood season, as soon as the courtyard was clear of snow and ice. Swinging at half speed didn’t satisfy him for long, and as he cut, he put more and more speed and force into his swings. Liv was able to get her wooden sword up in time to block, with a loud crack each time, but the whole thing was beginning to make her nervous.

"Slow down!" she told him, but Matthew was grinning by now and really enjoying himself. Liv’s skirts swished about her as she backed up, swinging her weapon up to block as quickly as she could. "Matthew!"

With a shout and a flourish, the boy swung down from over his shoulder, if not as hard as he could, than close to it. Liv knew what she was supposed to do, at least, and she raised the length of wood in her hands to block. But the moment the crack rung across the courtyard, she felt a jagged lance of pain in her right arm.

Liv dropped her practice sword and cried out, falling to her knees and cradling her arm against her belly. It was all she could do to blink away the tears gathering at the corner of her eye. She knew this feeling: it had been a long time, but she’d never truly believed that it was gone for good.

"Liv, I’m sorry," Matthew shouted, dropping his own sword and wrapping his arms around her. "I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to."

It was too late: Liv didn’t need Master Cushing to tell her that she’d broken her arm.