“What do you think it means?” I wanted to know. “Earthquake?”
She shook her head. “No earthquake I’ve ever been through was so regular in its warnings. Nor did it send greetings by water like this.” She took a breath and started to wash.
When I joined Luvo at the window, I saw that he wasn’t looking east, where the hills were gold around the sun’s rim. His head knob was turned north. There, at the western edge of Lake Hobin, stood Mount Grace. It was tall enough to have snow at the peak, even in summer. Trees covered the lower slopes.
“Luvo, do you think there’s an earthquake coming?” I asked him. “Rosethorn says not, and she’s been through plenty. Have you ever been in one?”
“Small ones, many. Large ones? Only when my mountain—when I—was born, the earthquakes, and the volcano that created me. I know of that because the older mountains told me of it. Though some of what I feel now reminds me of my earliest memories. Terror, fire, bursting into freezing air as the warm earth spat me out. Growing higher, rising into the air, above everything around me. But I do not know if these are true memories, or what I was taught.”
“Then what is a true memory?” I wanted to know.
Luvo began to pace along the windowsill. I had to sit on my bed, I was so startled. Luvo never paces. He’s not the pacing sort. He’s the standing sort, or sitting. He did the new pacing slowly, but still…I glanced back at Rosethorn. She had stopped in the middle of tying the belt to her habit. Like me, she stared at him.
“I remember slow stiffness that began on my skin, and grew into my flesh, turning it from lava to stone,” he said. “I got hard and cold. I felt crystals and minerals form. The stiffness went on, bringing with it stillness. Silence. Indifference. It came closer to my heart. To this piece of me, that you think of as Luvo.” His stone feet thumped on the wood. “I had to make my first choice. I could let my heart, as well as my body, go solid and silent. I could dream my days away. So many of our kind choose that, unless they are awakened by great events. I could also choose to fight. I knew the battle would be hard and constant. It is easier to be still and to dream, harder to move around as I do. But I wanted to know more about the green things that were growing on my sides. I wished to see the water as it shaped my flanks into something different. I needed to feel the air as it remade me. I desired to meet the creatures that came, like the birds, and you. Those were my first needs. Evumeimei, Rosethorn, I have not thought of my birth, for many spans of your time.” He stopped, and looked at Mount Grace. “I do not know why this place makes me think of it. Why it makes me think of pain.”
Rosethorn came over to his window, drying her face. “Do you wish to return to the ship, or to Winding Circle? I’ll make the arrangements, if you aren’t comfortable here. I can find someone who will take you…”
But Luvo was shaking his head. He sat on his haunches. “I want to know why I feel these things here. And I do not wish to leave Evumeimei. You are a teacher, Rosethorn. You know the most dangerous students are half-taught ones.”
“Well, I like that!” I put my hands on my hips. Rosethorn was laughing softly.
“With the earth in motion, you might find yourself in a predicament,” my friend the upstart piece of gravel told me. “I must look after you and keep you out of trouble.”
“That’s not funny,” I cried.
Rosethorn was still laughing at me.
“Of course it’s not.” She gave me a wicked, wicked grin. “Come down to breakfast dressed for riding. We have another long day.”
Azaze was up, too. “I have everything ready for you,” she told us as we finished breakfast. “You’ve horses saddled and waiting, and a lunch packed. Jayat waits outside. Oswin will come to you later. He’s work of his own to see to, first. Your Dedicate Myrrhtide says he’ll be down as soon as he’s finished his breakfast.”
Rosethorn pursed her lips. “He had breakfast in his room?”
When she sounds like that, I’m really grateful if she isn’t talking about me.
“I was just as pleased.” Azaze filled Rosethorn’s teacup a second time. “He kept fussing at my maids. Men like that are best left locked away, where they can’t meddle with folk doing honest work.”
Rosethorn choked as Azaze walked off to see to something in the kitchen. When she caught her breath, she said, “I’d say our headwoman can handle Myrrhtide.”
Hearing that Fusspot was coming had taken the edge off my excitement. “Do I have to come if Myrrhtide goes? You don’t need me to look at plants or water.”
“But we need you as we go higher on the mountain, in case of rockfalls. Yes, you’re coming. Just think, Evvy. You could be snug in your bed at Winding Circle right now, if you’d kept your temper with those boys.”
I knew she would make me go. “Would you have done it differently? Would you have let those boys bully my friends?”
“That’s different,” Rosethorn told me. “I’m a dedicate initiate. When I pick on bullies, it’s called an object lesson. And I know when to stop. You didn’t.”
I hate it when she says things I can’t argue with. I finished my breakfast and went to get her mage kit. I left mine in my room, even my stone alphabet. I wouldn’t be able to study any magic on horseback, for certain. Myrrhtide chatters at me when I take out my alphabet stones around him. He’s afraid the magic I have stored in them will get out.