She’d felt tin recently.
Daja jerked the cloth off the metal she couldn’t identify before. A small pile of heavy black lumps met her eyes. “It’s tin,” she told Frostpine, gleeful. “Because it’s copper and tin that make bronze!”
Frostpine grinned. “Daja, we are going to have fun together,” he promised.
“Can I play too?” asked a forlorn voice. Unnoticed by them, Kirel had finished the piece he worked on and had come over to watch. He smiled ruefully at his master and at Daja. “I’ll be good.”
That evening, after supper and baths, the residents of Discipline made themselves comfortable in the main room. Little Bear, his belly round with the meal of scraps he had gulped, sprawled on the floor and slept, paws twitching as he dreamed. Bringing her new spindle and the rolags she had prepared that afternoon, Sandry took a chair beside Lark, who did her own spinning while helping the girl with hers. Briar had four plants that he had yanked from the ground by mistake, thinking they were weeds. Rosethorn ordered him to memorize them by sight and scent, and never pluck them again. She herself sat at the table, writing in a ledger. Niko was next to her, writing letters.
Like Briar, Daja had memorizing to do. Frostpine had given her drawings of several types of hammer, each with a written description of its use, to learn within the week. Tris had a library book, one that described the early lives of five great mages.
For a while the only indoor sounds were the scratch of pens, the rustle of paper, and Sandry’s mutterings when thread unwound or a rolag came apart. More noise drifted through open doors and windows: the soft chime as the Hub clock sounded every fifteen minutes or its deeper tones as it called the hour, the muted laughter and clatter as people went by on the spiral road, the night songs of crickets and peepers.
With nearly three feet of freshly spun thread—lumpy, too thick in some places and too thin in others—wound on her spindle, Sandry took a break. Rolling her head on her neck, as she often saw Lark do, she got up and walked around. Returning from a look outside, she discovered that Briar was toying with some stray pieces of wool. He twisted it in his fingers.
“What are you doing?” she asked as he added another tuft of wool to his string. “Your magic’s with plants.” If he didn’t hold down the piece he’d already twirled, it did not just unwind—it sprang apart. When he reached for the tufts he’d collected from her earlier mistakes, they puffed into balls or blew out of his fingers.
“But that spinning looks interesting,” he replied, grabbing more bits of wool. “Relaxing, like.”
Rosethorn looked up from her ledger. “Learning to spin isn’t a bad idea,” she commented thoughtfully. “We need a lot of string for our work. Forget wool and silk, though. Those are from sheep, or little worms. People like us are better off with cotton and flax.” Rosethorn grinned. “They come from plants.”
“Sandry, will you teach me?” asked the boy, still trying to get his tufts under control. “If I can find this other stuff to spin?”
“I’m only learning myself,” she pointed out. “And not very well.”
“I’ll teach you.” Lark wound almost a yard of thin, fine thread onto her spindle. “Sandry’s coming along nicely—”
“I am?” asked the girl, eyes bright.
“You’re learning to control magic and thread, and very well. Briar, you should learn straight spinning, no magic involved. And I should warn you, cotton and flax are harder to work with than wool.”
“Will you teach me the spell you used on my waterspout?” asked Tris.
“It wasn’t a spell,” replied Lark. “I had no time to think of one.”
“Then how’d you do it?” Tris demanded, puzzled.
Lark glanced at Niko, who put down his pen.
“Like yesterday,” he said carefully, picking his words, “we see times when a mage doesn’t know—or doesn’t have time to think up—the right spell. When that happens, open your mind. Think of the objects and processes that you’re comfortable with. That might be a spindle, waves, blows on an anvil, the growth of trees. Lark undid a waterspout. She had no spell for it, but she let her magic speak through her, and it worked.”
Tris shivered. “It’s that simple? Magic’s that simple?”
His thick black eyebrows snapped together in a frown. “Magic is never simple, Trisana. Working it this way has its dangers. It’s crude and sloppy. It burns up power faster than the magic that you take time with and use with control.”
“It didn’t hurt Lark,” Briar objected. “Did it?” he asked her.
Lark smiled. “You learn better ways to handle it as you study.”
“I don’t want you trying experiments with it,” Niko said forbiddingly. “Magic is not your toy. I tell you this only because you might end up in a situation where you are forced to act fast.” He returned to his letter.
After a moment, when it was clear that he was done talking, Tris asked Lark, “Would you teach me spinning anyway? Just in case?”
“If you want to learn, I’ll teach you,” replied Lark. “Daja? Are you interested?”
“If it doesn’t get into my time with Frostpine.”
“I wouldn’t dream of taking you from him.” Lark stared into the distance, thoughtfully. “This time of day will be good for lessons, I think. And once you get the hang of it, the work is soothing.”