“I had to spend a lot of time making my windwork so habitual that it’s like walking, or driving a car—I just do it, not thinking about it. But I couldn’t think of nothing. So I thought about my childhood, and that brought me to the birds that fluttered around my mother, and it made me think of her at her cauldron—that’s what she called it, ‘I’m a witch and this is my cauldron full of brew’—and the smells of her soaps, and then the cakes aging, sometimes in the sun, sometimes in shadow. I thought about my own life.”

Wad stopped himself from another retort. They had been through their arguments so often—but this was something new. Soap. Paper. Gates as a means of transportation. That’s what Danny North had done, when he gave portable emergency gates to his friends. He created a hub for them, and amulets that would take them there, and allow them to transfer on to another point.

And those gates on tiny coins, that could be flung at an enemy to send him far away—that was brilliant. And it wasn’t for Danny North or any of the Mithermages. It was for his drowther friends.

Instead of arguing with Ced, I should have been listening to him. He will never care about what I care about, unless I also care about what he thinks is important.

“So why aren’t you making soap?” asked Wad.

“Here? Who would it be for? Treemages like to be covered with dirt. It makes them feel like they’re rooting.”

Wad laughed. “Maybe,” he said. Then he remembered being inside the tree, feeling the life of the thing, how it clung to the soil, reaching ever deeper, gripping more tightly, drinking the elixirs of the groundwater, the fresh draught of new rain, while the branches and leaves fell ever downward toward the sunlight. For that was how trees experienced the world, upside down, their heads in the soil, reaching upward into the earth, while the visible part of the tree dangled, wading in sunlight during the day, but hardening and drying out for nighttime, for winter. Yes, trees loved the feel and taste of soil. So of course a great treemage would feel the same way.

“What if I help you with the soap?” asked Wad. “Help you get ingredients. Take you to where you can make the soap.”

“I don’t want to be a soapmaker, Wad. I want to teach soapmakers.”

“Can’t teach them without making it yourself, Ced. Let me help you. But let’s do it in Drabway. They’re a trading city. If your soap catches on with them, merchants can take it far and wide.”

“I don’t want to get rich from soap, I want to teach—”

“Teach soapmaking. But nobody will want to learn your methods unless they first learn to want your soap.”