“If…if I had to choose, I don’t know what I’d be,” Han said, feeling like he was rattling on against Dancer’s silence. “I’ve had lots of vocations already.”

“A vocation is different from a job,” Dancer muttered. “Trust me.”

“How is it different?” Han asked, encouraged by Dancer’s response.

“A vocation is not something you slap on, like a coat of paint, and change whenever you want. A vocation is built into you. You have no choice. If you try to do something else, you fail.” This last was said with deep bitterness.

Han nodded. Sometimes it seemed like he’d never escape his past life as streetlord of Ragmarket. If you were good at something, if you made a name, that something stuck to you, haunting you all of your days.

He fingered the silver cuffs around his wrists. They seemed to symbolize his lack of options. If he could just get them off, he might turn into someone else. At least he wouldn’t be so easily recognized.

“I guess it’s important to figure out what it is you were meant to do,” Han said. “What would you do, if you could choose anything?”

Dancer opened his eyes, squinting against the shafts of sunlight leaking through the trees. “I always thought I’d like to apprentice with a Demonai goldsmith, like Elena, and learn to make jewelry, amulets, and magical pieces.”

Dancer had always gravitated toward the gold and silversmith tables at the markets.

“Have you asked her?” Han asked.

Dancer closed his eyes. “She won’t take me on.”

That was strange. Elena knew Dancer, would know him to be a hard worker, and honest. “Well…can your vocation change? Are you locked in? Do you have to do the same thing all your life?

“It depends,” Dancer said. “Some of us have no choice at all.” He swiped at his eyes with the heels of his hands. Then he stood and walked away, into the woods, leaving all his fishing gear behind.

A week after his arrival at Marisa Pines, Han decided to visit Lucius Frowsley’s place. He had to let him know he’d no longer be able to deliver his product to Fellsmarch. He hoped Lucius would give him some other kind of job, something he could do without going to town, but he knew that was unlikely.

He descended using the Spirit Trail, then cut away on the path leading to Lucius’s place.

The cabin looked deserted as usual, no smoke curling from the chimney. But Lucius wasn’t fishing on the creek bank, or tending his still on the hillside. In fact, the fire under the boiler had gone out and the brick liner was cold. That never happened. Lucius might be slow, but he was consistent.

Han piled wood under the boiler and replenished the wash, but didn’t light it, and left the distillate where it was.