Isidore nodded. “That’s one of his gifted talents. He makes all sorts of things, everything from exquisite leather bindings heavily invested with wards for books of magic, to piles of edged weapons that cut in ways that steel alone can’t, to complex metal creations I couldn’t even begin to describe and can only wonder at. He even carves beautiful statues from marble.

“His place was littered with an array of metal objects left all over the floor, sitting around the statues, and piled in corners. There were knives stacked on some tables and swords neatly arranged on others. I’d never seen the likes of it in my life. It reminded me a bit of the blacksmith places I’ve seen, except cleaner and, I don’t know, more refined, I guess.”

Magda smiled. “I’m familiar with strange objects left in corners. My husband was a maker, though I rarely heard that name applied to him.”

“Really?” Isidore asked. “Baraccus was a maker as well as a war wizard?”

Magda nodded. “When I met him he was already First Wizard, so that’s the way people referred to him, the way they thought of him.”

In fact, people were hesitant about calling him a maker, so they were eager to refer to him as “First Wizard.”

“Despite his duties and responsibilities,” Magda said, “Baraccus was always making things. He would often sit at a worktable late at night and craft the most intricate things I’ve ever seen, yet I always knew that some of those things, despite how beautiful they may have been, were actually quite deadly.

“Not long after we were married I asked him why, with so many responsibilities and other things to do, he took the time to sit at that table and make things. He smiled and said that he was a maker, and driven to make things.”

“That’s a maker,” Isidore said. “That’s the way they are. Creativity in large and small ways defines their nature in everything they do.”

When he had first mentioned that he was a maker, Magda had confessed to Baraccus that, although she’d heard whispers about “makers,” she didn’t really know much about them. At that time, a lot of things having to do with his abilities were a mystery to her. He had patiently explained how the gift manifested itself in various ways in different people. He said that as a war wizard his gift contained a number of these discrete elements.

Magda had been surprised. She’d always thought that being a war wizard was a unique talent in and of itself. She remembered him smiling and saying that a war wizard’s power was not a singular ability, but its strength actually came from a combination of components.