“Is it chimeric, then? Does it power all the magik in the world now?” It was a guess, with the Tree gone.
“Suns, you really do want to know everything, don’t you?” He glanced at me, his dark hair spilling over his thick brows.
“There isn’t enough knowledge in the world to satisfy me,” I said. “There isn’t enough of anything.”
“Nothing?”
I grinned. “And no one.”
“Not even a prince?”
And there it was.
He was too fine, too bright, too gifted to be a common swab.
“As wretched as I am,” I said with a wicked grin, “I don’t fog above my station.”
He laughed out loud, and I was happy to have caused it.
“Poor sot,” he said. “Well, I suppose he’ll have to commiserate on the pup. Come on!”
Swiftly, he turned and made his way up the steps to the quarterdeck. I followed, brushing past Smoke at the wheels.
“Walking the plank?” he asked, raising a thick brow. “No? Alas, I live in hope…”
In the Navy, only senior officers walked the pup, but I reckoned rules were different here, being that theTouchstonewas a privateer and Fahr a fogging prince. Still, I had to admit it was a giddy thing as my boots stepped onto the polished wood. It was smaller than the quarterdeck or the main but big enough for a lesson or two. Besides, the view was unparalleled, and all of the ship lay before me.
“Casting stance,” Fahr said, bending at the knees and sliding one foot back. I did as he did, hands up, fingers flexed, remembering then to pull the gloves with my teeth and spit them onto the deck.
“Everything is rune,” he said. “From the tiniest of seeds to the moons in the sky.”
His fingers sparked. Mine did, too.
“All is connected by the Worldrune and the patterns that it forms. Ships, men, rocks, air, even the clothes on your back—all are shaped and bound by rune.”
He drew his hands apart, creating a standardCarmenline. It crackled and flared.
“And thoughtspinning?” I said as I mimicked him.
“Thoughts are how we understand the rune patterns,” he said. “Some mages are so good at thoughtspinning that casting becomes illusion. Ironmages can make you imagine a bridge and, even if you’re stepping off a cliff, you’ll walk without falling.You believe the runes are holding you up, and so, they do. That’s the power of the Worldrune.”
One hand made a circle, his fingers bending to a peculiar design.
“But that’s application,” he said. “You also need theory in order to spin.”
“Wylde mages don’t need theory,” I said, the chimeric crackling through my skin.
“Ah, you’re wylde, now?PraesidiumLumiereand all that?”
“Saved your life.”
“They wouldn’t shoot me,” he said. “Bracebridge wouldn’t let them.”
“Bracebridge shot his own man.”
“Not the first time.”
“One of these days, your luck will run out,” Smoke called from the wheels. He didn’t bother to look at either of us.
