With the Artisan Master occupied elsewhere, Ibbitha shifted along her bench seat until she was close enough for whispering.

“Truly, Barl. You never learn, do you?”

Not counting Remmie, Ibbitha was the nearest thing she had to a friend. Talented enough, in a mundane sort of way, her fellow clock mage lacked energetic imagination or ambition and was a stickler for convention, uninterested in challenging a single rule or restriction handed down by Dorana’s Council of Mages or the Guild of Artisans or Artisan Master Arndel. Staid. That was Ibbitha. A friend of convenience, not of the heart.

She’d never had much luck when it came to making friends.

Mindful of their irascible employer, Barl risked a sidelong glance. “Nonsense,” she whispered back. “I’m learning every day.”

“Yes, but what?” said Ibbitha. “You—”

Daggered looks from the diligent mages around them killed what remained of Ibbitha’s scolding lecture. Not mourning its death, Barl returned to her clock-making, hardly needing to think about each incant and counter-ward as, with scant effort, she continued to build Lord Traint’s lamentable timepiece.

I am bored. I am so bored. I deserve much more than this.

Later, when the artisanry emptied for the midday meal break and they were sitting alone on a stone bench in the sunshine, Ibbitha resurrected her scold.

“You must be more careful, Barl,” she said, dabbing a napkin daintily to her lips. “And you mustn’t be greedy. It was nearly two years before I was permitted to create commissioned clocks. And you? Why, you were accorded that privilege after a mere seven months! Why can’t you be satisfied with that?”

Roaming her gaze around the other mages in the garden, lunch box on the bench beside her, Barl polished a plum on her green linen skirt. “Why is a babe not satisfied with crawling? Why does it struggle to first stand on its own feet, then walk, and then run?”

Ibbitha wrinkled her snub nose. “You are a babe if you think rubbing Arndel across his grain will get you what you want. Besides, there is nothing wrong with Lord Traint’s clock design.”

Barl looked at her in wonder. “You truly believe that, don’t you?”

“Yes,” said Ibbitha, prickling. “Why would I say it if I didn’t believe it?”

“You wouldn’t,” she said, and took a bite of plum. Rich purple juice tickled down her chin. Another bite splashed more juice to her skirt. She vanished it with a thought and a flutter of her fingers, then nibbled the rest of the plum’s sweet flesh off its stone.

“I’ll never understand you, Barl,” said Ibbitha, staring. “Why can’t you accept things the way they are? Given your family background…” She trailed away, uncomfortable. As a rule, such things weren’t discussed. Everybody knew what rank everybody else’s family was and how they fitted into the wider tapestry of Doranen society, and that was enough. Gossip on the subject was keenly discouraged. “Well. You know.”

Barl swallowed a bitter laugh. Oh, yes, she knew. Didn’t she beat her fists every day against the constraints of family and her proper place and what was and was not acceptable when one hadn’t been born with the right pedigree?