The wine was gone by now, but it wouldn’t have paired well with that pickle, and the water she poured for herself satisfied much better than more wine would have.

She decided she had just enough left in her to strip for bed and climb under the covers. Which she did, and was insensible until just before dawn.

—

Because she had gone to sleep much earlier than she usually did, she found herself awake at false-dawn, and was actually dressed when someone tapped softly on her door.

“Come,” she said, and recognized Isla’s familiar silhouette as her sister cracked open the door and looked in.

“Good, you’re awake. I suspected you’d be interested in whether or not your Gift worked,” she said. “It’s down to the cellars for us.”

Isla had a dim mage-light floating over her head, just enough light so they didn’t stumble. Down into the cellars they went, this time into a different one than the one they’d all been using for their Gate-magic.

Mage-lights sprang to life as they entered, and lines of light began to glow dimly on the floor and the ceiling, a pattern that centered on a simple wooden table with chairs around it. Isla extinguished the light above her, and took a seat in one of those chairs. Delia took another beside her.

“I left my maid sleeping in my bed, after I gave her a headache and insisted she lie down,” Isla said, with a grimace. “I hate hurting her like that, but I needed something that wasn’t an illusion in that bed.”

“I doubt she’ll mind, since she’s getting to sleep late,” Delia pointed out. “Give her the rest of the day off or something. It’s not as if both of us are incapable of taking care of ourselves for a few candlemarks.”

“True,” Isla said, and patted her hand. “Well, this will be the first time you see scrying, won’t it?”

Delia nodded. Since most of her sister’s education as a mage had come at Kordas’s instruction, and her father had not had so much as a hedge-wizard of his own, she really hadn’t seen much magic except the antics of performers at the Midsummer and Midwinter festivities back home.

“Normally I would be doing a sort of scrying that only I can see and hear, but since you’re with me, I’ll make it so that you can see it too,” said her sister. “Kordas will probably do the same for Beltran.” She smiled a little. “I must say, I am very grateful that with this sort of spell, distance is irrelevant; it’s the link between the two parties that matters, or the link between the scryer and the destination.”

She picked up what might have been a mirror, except that it was made of opaque black glass, and propped it on a holder so they could both see it.