Yellin was a Second, like Cordus. Well, sort of like him. Cordus was an émigré and one of the great powers of the Second Emanation, Earth’s multilayered parallel world. Yellin might be from that world, but he was no prince. Near as I could tell, he was some kind of courtier.

When Cordus claimed his First Emanation territory in North America, he brought a handful of people with him from the other world. People like Yellin. They lived in Cordus’s wing of the mansion and rarely came out to mix with the rest of us — never by choice, so far as I could tell. They pretty clearly held us in contempt. I’d never laid eyes on any of them until Cordus left. Then three came out of the woodwork to run things in his absence. But the other two, Kibwe Okeke and Elanora Wiri, had made themselves scarce, of late. I hadn’t seen either of them in weeks, actually.

I suppose it’s not surprising. The Seconds had realized only in the last few decades that Nolanders — people like me, born in this world but able to manipulate essence in a small way — had some use-value. That’s when they started collecting us. Before that, they’d enjoyed hunting us. That’s what a friend told me, anyway.

I got the idea that Yellin missed the good old days.

Well, maybe that was unfair, but he certainly wasn’t happy about having to be out among us hoi polloi with our ill-fitting pants and ill-parted hair.

I didn’t like spending time with him any more than he did with me, but he was in charge of things during Cordus’s absence. And according to him, Cordus had selected him as my new trainer, so he’d have been in charge of me, anyway.

Sometimes he sent me out with Andy or one of the other Nolanders, so long as what they were doing wasn’t dangerous. But that sort of thing was an exception. Most days I followed a steady routine of fitness and combat training, and lessons in Baasha and the human cultures and powers of the S-Em. I handled my own fitness program, with a little help from Gwen, and a Nolander named Tezzy oversaw my martial arts training, but I had to rely on Yellin for the language and culture stuff.

What I wasn’t getting was magic lessons. Well, not magic, exactly. Everyone insisted that essence-manipulation wasn’t magic, but it still seemed like it to me. Maybe once I could actually do it, it wouldn’t seem so mystical.

Yellin rose and buttoned his suit jacket.

“Alas, there is too little time to amend your appearance. Today we will be visiting resident Seconds, and we are already running late. The test on noun declensions will have to wait until tomorrow.”