“And you’ll agree never to argue with me when it comes to what I want?”

Arndel bowed. “Of course, Lady Grie. She who pays, says.”

“What about you, Mage Lindin?” Lady Grie demanded. “Do you agree, as well?”

“Certainly not,” she said, and met Lady Grie’s challenging stare with a challenge of her own. “If I believe you’re mistaken in your desire or design, I’ll tell you. I could hardly call myself an artisan mage and lie to you, could I? That would be disrespectful to both of us.”

“Mage Lindin!” Arndel’s voice exploded the silence. “You stand too high in your own esteem! Please, Lady Grie, I beg you, accept my most—”

But Lady Grie laughed again. “Restrain yourself, Arndel. Begging is so unattractive. Mage Lindin, it seems you have fire in your belly. I like that.” Her gaze flickered to Arndel. “It makes a nice change from being fawned over.”

Wary, Barl offered the woman a slight bow. “It’s not in my nature to fawn, Lady Grie. All I can promise you is my best work and my honesty.”

“And I’ll take them both, gladly,” Lady Grie replied. “Provided I’m thoroughly satisfied with my clock. Let me hear its tick and chime.”

A catch in her breathing. A hitch in the steady beating of her heart. She’d spent nearly eleven hours perfecting the nursery clock’s voice. If Lady Grie should find it displeasing…

But she won’t. She can’t. She doesn’t seem a lackwit.

Arndel was glaring, daring her to fail. If Lady Grie was displeased there was no doubt Mage Lindin would be held responsible and cast into the cold.

On a breath, in a whisper, she released the nursery clock’s voice. A ticktock of silence… and then the steady, rhythmic sound of a horse’s hooves on beaten earth filled the private viewing room. Clop-clop-clop-clop, ticking time with a jaunty air.

“Oh!” Lady Grie clapped her hands once, delighted. “How diverting. And the chime?”

Smothering her own pleasure, Barl silenced the tick-tock. Then, her heart hitching again, she sketched the brief sigil that would set free the nursery clock’s chime.

“Beautiful,” whispered Lady Grie, as the liquid music of a marsh warbler’s cry softened to silence. “Mage Lindin, that was beautiful.”

Yes. And so difficult to recreate with an incant that she’d thought until the last moment the task would defeat her.

“Thank you, Lady Grie,” she murmured. Relief and the crushing fatigue she’d been fending off combined to make her head swim and her eyes blur. “I’m very happy you like it.”

Lady Grie nodded to Arndel. “Mage Lindin is a credit to you, Artisan Master. I look forward to seeing what she creates for me next. Now, shall we discuss the particulars of our arrangement?”

Barl didn’t need the Artisan Master’s quirked eyebrow to tell her that here was her cue to depart the viewing room. Somehow, she managed a bow to Lady Grie without falling over. Another bow to Arndel, because he’d feel the slight if she didn’t. Then she escaped to the artisanry garden, where the sun shone unhindered by cloud and a riot of flowers scented the warm air. Safely alone, she folded to the short, sweet grass, pressed her palms to her face and let the joy bubble free.