I did not dream. The awareness that flowed through me was as unlike dreaming as waking is to sleeping. Magic worked in me, like yeast working in bread dough. I felt it quicken and grow, swelling in my veins. It gathered strength from my body, roiling through my flesh, drawing on the resources it had gathered against this necessity. With growing trepidation, I recognized that I had felt this sensation before. The magic had moved in me before, and it had acted. What had it done, without my knowledge or consent? I recalled the young man on the jankship, and how he had fallen after my angry words with him. That was one time, but there had been others.

The massed magic did something.

The languages I knew did not have words to express it. Could my flesh shout out a word, voicelessly, soundlessly? Could the magic, a thing that resided elsewhere than the physical world, speak a command through me, so that somewhere, something it desired happened? That was what it felt like. Dimly I sensed that something had begun. The first event that would trigger a chain reaction of responses had occurred. Finished, the magic pooled to stillness in me. Weariness washed through my body. I sank into an exhausted sleep. When I awoke, the sun had gone down. I’d slept the rest of the day away. I got up quietly and crept down the stairs. At the bottom, I paused to listen. I heard my father’s strident voice in his study.

Rosse was gone; I wondered whom he was lecturing. After a moment, I heard my mother’s soft response. Ah. I walked quickly past that door, and past the music room where Elisi drew a melancholy melody from her harp.

The young fellow at Rosse’s wedding had made no offer for her. Was that my fault? The house was a pool of unhappiness and I was the source of it. I reached the door and strode out into the night. I wandered through the dark familiar garden and sat down on a bench. I tried to grasp that my future was gone. I could think of nowhere to go tonight and nothing to do.

The ferry stopped at night, so I couldn’t cross the river to Burvelle’s Landing. I’d long ago read most of the books in our family library. I had no projects. I had no friends to visit. This was a foretaste of the rest of my life.

I could do manual labor on the holdings and then wander aimlessly about at night. I’d be a shadow in my old home, a useless extra son and nothing more. I gave myself a shake to rid my head of melancholy foolishness. I hitched up my trousers, left the garden, and walked over to the menservants’ quarters. My father had built them as a structure separate from the house, and my mother still complained that it looked more like a military barracks than servants’ quarters. She was right, and I was sure that it was deliberately so. One door led into a long open bunkroom for seasonal workers. At the other end of the structure, there were private apartments for married servants and rooms for our permanent help. I went to Sergeant Duril’s door. Strange to say, in all the years he’d taught me, I’d only rapped on it half a dozen times. For a moment I hesitated before it. For all I knew of the man who had taught me, there was much I didn’t know. I wondered if he was even awake or if he was off at the Landing. At last I damned myself for a foolish coward, and knocked firmly on the door.