“They could do no better for the paladin who saved their king?” Dorrin asked.

“They could, but I chose to move here,” Paks said. “I needed solitude, not care, for a while.” Her face had sobered, but now it lightened again. “Besides, this gives us the privacy I’m sure we need. Here—sit down on that bed.”

Dorrin sat, bemused by the shift in authority, as if she herself were a recruit facing a captain for the first time.

“Give me your hand,” Paks said next. Dorrin held out her hand; Paks’s hand on hers felt warm and dry and oddly soothing. Dorrin waited; Paks said nothing, but looked past her, into something Dorrin could not see. Slowly, she felt something else, something that seemed to pass from Paks to her, a strange tingle that ran up her arm and from there into her head, and down her torso. She wanted to pull her hand back, but Paks had a firm grip. She glanced up. Paks’s eyes were closed, her face unreadable, the slightest furrow of a frown between her brows, as if she were concentrating.

When Paks released Dorrin’s hand, she sat down on the opposite bed. Dorrin waited.

“That was … interesting,” Paks said. “Someone blocked your magery long ago, except for that light. Did you know that? Do you know who?”

“No,” Dorrin said. “I suppose my uncle, or a cousin.”

“I don’t think so,” Paks said. “From what you say, their contact would be evil, and leave a residue I should pick up. This was not an act of malice, but of protection. Who, that could do such a thing, might have chosen to do so?”

One name came immediately to mind. “The Knight-Commander of Falk,” Dorrin said. “When I trained there, when he found out who I was, I told him about my small talent. He let me stay, but said I must not use any magery while there, having learned only its wrong uses. He might have blocked it.”

“And not told you?”

“I can think of no one else,” Dorrin said. “He is the only one outside my family who knew that I had it.”

“Then we should ask him,” Paks said.

“He died,” Dorrin said. “Some years after I was knighted, I heard that he had died. The new Knight-Commander I have never met.”

“Ah. I wonder if he has the same powers. At least he is here; we can ask.”

“Do we need to involve him?”

Paks cocked her head. “I think so. I am not a Knight of Falk … I am not even a knight, for that matter, so I do not know what he did or how it was done. I do know we should not meddle in things like this without understanding them.”

“I will go—”

“No. I will go, and while I am gone, if you have such rituals as the Girdish knights have, to pray and prepare for a trial of some kind, that is what I think you should do. You have great deeds before you, Captain, and whether your magery can be restored and trained or not, you need time alone to ready yourself.” Paks leaned forward and patted Dorrin’s hand. “Do not worry, Captain. I will not be long.”