And that was Mage Lindin put firmly in her place. “Oh. I see. Ah—” Barl bit her lip. “Did you have to spend a great deal?”

“Yes,” Rumm said. “I slipped the final tally under your pillow. The supplies I’ve hidden beneath the bed. They should be quite safe there. Dilys only remembers to sweep the bits of floor she can see.”

He sounded so peevishly resigned she had to swallow a laugh. “Rumm…” She shook her head. “I don’t know how to thank you.”

His guarded eyes warmed, just a little. “You can thank me by making Lord Danfey the most beautiful funeral clock in Dorana.”

Accepting that she might well be alone for hours, as Morgan kept his father company, she’d intended to pass the time in study. Instead she turned her thoughts to Lord Danfey’s memorial timepiece. Not knowing how many of her requested items Rumm could obtain, she hadn’t let herself dream of it. But since he’d managed to find everything…

Alone again, she fetched paper, ink pot and quill and settled herself at one of the library reading tables to chart the initial design of the most spectacular clock crystal ever created.

His father had drifted back to sleep, so Morgan put aside the book he’d been reading aloud and let his own eyelids close. He was exhausted. Couldn’t remember the last time he’d poured himself so passionately, so unreservedly, into his magework.

Never. I never have done. At least not like this. I’ve never had to. There has never been anyone who challenges me like Barl.

And if someone had told him there would be, he’d not have believed them. Because he’d never imagined a mage like Barl Lindin could exist.

Opening his eyes, he summoned to his hand the small wooden box she’d warded shut. Four days of trying and he still hadn’t breached her seal. For a whole morning he’d watched as she broke every one of his wards, unstitched them, unravelled them, barely out of breath. And when she tried to explain how she did it, how she saw his magework, all she did was baffle him. She baffled him. It was an unsettling thing.

But there is a trick to it, this unwarding business. And if she can learn it, so can I.

The trouble was, of course, that he kept getting sidetracked by the sheer elegance of her magework. She brought an artisan’s touch to the most prosaic of incants.

If only, for one day, I could see through her eyes.

In the bed beside him, his father stirred. Coughed. “Morgan? Morgan, are you there?”

He sent the warded box back to the attic, then leaned forward in his chair. “Yes, my lord. Here I am.”

“Good… good… I thought you’d gone.”