Guild Mage: Apprentice

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.

"Keep an eye on Matthew for the next hour or so, for me," the lady of the castle requested. "I need to meet with the guild leaders."

Liv nodded, picking up one of the kittens that had wandered away, and depositing it in Matthew’s lap. The baby clapped his hands in glee, and drooled. The guilds had mostly quieted themselves after Alban Cooper embarrassed them - at least publicly. Privately, Liv heard enough during her time attending Lady Julianne that she knew efforts had been made to make peace in the town. As near as she could tell, it was going to work out that Baron Henry would cast a small number of votes in their favor, the next time King Roland summoned his great council. Only the precise number was now up for negotiation.

After they’d bothered Charlie and her kittens for long enough, Liv scooped Matthew up and took him to the kitchen, where he was passed around from lap to lap while the evening meal was prepared. Lady Julianne’s meeting with the guilds must have run later than she expected, for Matthew was still with the servants when the footmen began carrying platters up to the great hall. Liv pitched in to help her mother and Gretta, and somehow, in the chaos, Archibald ended up being the one holding the baby when he finally fell asleep.

"I should take him upstairs and put him down," Liv said, brushing flour off her hands.

"Meredith can do that in a moment," the first footman said, brushing a finger over the child’s cheek. "He will be the third generation of this family I’ve served, you know."

Liv plopped herself down at the table next to them. "Have you ever thought about having a family of your own?" she asked. She couldn’t have said what put the question in her head: there was just something natural, in that moment, about seeing mean old Archie with an infant in his arms.

"No," Archibald said. "I didn’t have a happy childhood, Liv," he said, and there was something about his voice in that moment that consumed her attention entirely. "My father was not a good man. He was a drunk, and when he was in his cups his best friend was a leather belt. My grandfather was the same way. It is a curse, I think," he explained. "Not magic, but a curse all the same, passed down from one useless sot to the next. Well, it dies with me. I’ll never look at the bottom of a bottle to find my son’s weeping, bruised face staring back at me. It’s better this way."

Liv swallowed, and couldn’t for the life of her think of a single thing to say in that moment. Then, the doors opened, and Tom and Edward rushed in for the next set of dishes. "Here," Archibald said, passing the sleeping baby to Liv. "I’ll be wanted upstairs."

☙

The seasons turned.

The year that Matthew was seven, and Liv nineteen, Big Whit Cotter lost a bare-knuckle tournament, for the first time that she could remember. He’d been getting fatter and grayer for years, and it was his son, Little Whit, who finally dethroned him. Emma looked older than Liv did, now, though she was actually six years and change younger. She was taller, too: after that first spurt of growth, Liv’s diet had only kept her growing at a slow pace.

As best Master Cushing could guess, she grew at about half the rate of a human child. Liv was hovering right between four foot four inches and four foot five inches, depending on the heel of her shoes or her hairstyle when she was measured. Matthew had caught up to within less than a head of her, which according to his father, was big enough to begin learning the sword.

From the moment the winter snows melted that year, the off-duty guards had Matthew in the courtyard with a heavy wooden sword in his hand, going through his paces. Baron Henry, who was now quite broad in both body and face, got more sunlight than at any time since he could walk. For each and every training session, he was certain to be carried out and set in a chair on the balcony that overlooked the courtyard, so that he could observe. Occasionally, he would even call one of the guards over to pass a message or make a suggestion.

Liv could tell having his father take such an interest was working Matthew up to a fever pitch. The boy devoted himself to the task, desperate to earn a few words of his father’s praise. Most afternoons, Liv and Emma would find themselves a place to sit and watch. At Baron Henry’s suggestion, each day would end with what both Liv and Matthew considered to be a special treat. After James and Piers got through exhausting the boy, it was Liv’s turn.

Matthew was loaned a sharp arming sword, and took his stance at the center of the courtyard. Liv stood up, staff in hand, and walked closer - though she always made certain to keep a safe distance. At the baron’s signal, she would begin to cast. At her invocation, the sigils of her staff flared to life, and forms of ice rose around Matthew.

Behind him, to his left or right, sculptures of armed men, wielding shields, crossbows, pikes, or any other weapon Liv could think of, rose half-formed. The game was for Matthew to strike them down before Liv could finish sculpting them. She tried to spin him out of position, using one statue to occupy him while clandestinely beginning a second in the opposite direction. The first she might make slow, to force Matthew to wait, while the second snapped into place in the place of only a few breaths, thanks to a bit of extra mana and the inclusion of Veh. Or, she might take the opposite tack, and try to distract him with multiple quick castings, while slowly building a third statue in the hopes he would not notice it. By the end, Liv would be drained of mana, and Matthew would be soaked in sweat, but both would be grinning, while Emma clapped her hands.

At the beginning of the last month of flood season, however, Matthew caught Liv by surprise. Not by shattering her statues; in fact, he put her off guard at the very beginning of the training session.

"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.