I want it. But do I deserve it?
“Will you tell me about this house?” he asks evenly.
A request, this time; not an interrogation. He’s learning.
Maybe I can too.
I take a breath, and take his hand, and let him pull me to my feet.
His hand is solid in mine, and warmth spreads from the point of our connection all the way through me.
I stare at him, unsettled by the strength of my reaction to him.
Then his eyebrows slowly climb, and I step back abruptly.
Definitely have not been touched in too long.
Maybe don’t literally cling to the first person to do so in... however long it’s been? Great, good plan, self.
“The house,” the sage prompts in a tone I can’t read yet.
Right! The house. “The Sage of Wrath’s detonation—that’s what we’ve been calling it, do the priests have another term?—Anyway, it blew out most of the spells down in the village. And there are spells in everything, right? That’s how the priests keep people depend—uh. I mean, it’s what priests, um, contribute to society. Out of the goodness of their hearts.”
“I’m aware of taxation,” Kovan says dryly.
“Okay, well, in my defense, you’re not aware of cooking—”
“I’m aware that cookingexists—”
“—or that not teaching basic life skills is a classic abuse tactic to increase dependency—oh shit. See, now I’ve gone too far again.”
Kovan is silent for a moment but then says quietly, “No. No, I don’t think you have.”
Idefinitelycan’t help with the crisis of faith. I rush onward as I move around the common room, folding a blanket, picking up a mug, and although he doesn’t move, his gaze follows me as I flutter ineffectually around him.
“Um. So, a lot of buildings collapsed, basically, and a lot of the stuff inside them too. The spells in town are destabilized,so most people can’t safely get near them, so I’ve been going through the wreckage to sort whatever can be repurposed and separating out anything that still has a working spell on it by moving everything around it.”
“How can you tell?”
“If the spell is working? Well—”
“If it can be repurposed.”
“Oh! I’ve um. Tried a lot of jobs, and nothing really took, but—”
“What do you mean, nothing took?” he asks sharply.
I open my mouth to answer automatically, then point at him. “Interrogating.”
Kovan actuallyswears.
The sheer unexpectedness of it makes me laugh out loud.
Right up until I remember what he was asking about, and my smile fades.
The sage takes a breath. “May I ask if you were unhappy in your... previous occupation?”
I swallow, my hands clenching on the blanket I have folded and unfolded half a dozen times now like a lifeline before I finally set it down and gently pat it into place. “You may,” I say lightly. “And let’s say I think it was approaching its natural end point, so being able to contribute in a new way was really a boon.”
