It was like she read his mind. “Wizardry is a gift, not an affliction. It’s not amenable to healing. I tried rowan, of course, and certain…talismans.” Her voice trailed off, and she looked down at her blue-spotted apron. “I should have acted sooner, when he was just a baby. Sometimes wizardry can be held at bay if the intervention is early enough. Otherwise it’s like a cancer that spreads until you can’t cut it away without killing the host.”

Right, Han thought. It’s a gift. Like a cancer. Willo seemed as confused as everyone else.

Maybe now was the time to press his suit. He felt nervous—Willo had turned him down before—but surely she’d see the sense of what he suggested.

“I’ve been thinking,” he said. “I need a trade, and I can’t go back to Fellsmarch any time soon. I could go to Oden’s Ford with Dancer and enroll in the warrior’s academy. We’d be in different schools, but I bet we could see each other, anyway. And we could travel back and forth together. It would be safer for both of us.”

Willo was already shaking her head. “You’re no warrior, Hunts Alone,” she said dismissively.

“It’s my choice,” he said. “I’m nearly grown. If I was clan I’d already be named.”

“Why are you asking me, then?” Willo asked, sitting back on her heels.

“I’ll need money to enroll. I asked Jemson about it, and it costs at least twenty girlies a year, plus board. That’s not counting travel money.”

Willo studied him. “Are you asking me for money? So you can throw your life away fighting in the flatlander war?”

This was not going well. Han extended his wrists toward her. “I can pay my own way. I just need you to take these off,” he said. “I know traders who’d pay good money for thick silver like this. They should bring more than enough to keep me on the way south, plus get me enrolled once I’m there.”

“No,” she said. “I’ve told you already. I can’t do that.”

“Willo, I have nowhere to go,” he persisted, perilously close to begging. “I need to make a living somehow, and I can’t go back to Fellsmarch. There’s nothing for me here. Dancer’s going to Oden’s Ford, and Bird is going to Demonai. Everyone else I know is apprenticed. Nothing’s going to be the same.”

“There are trades you can learn here at Marisa Pines,” Willo said. “You’re already good at plants and potions. I’ll take you on, if no one else will.”

“I can’t hide out up here all my life,” Han said, thinking there was little adventure in doing what he had been doing all along, only less.