Mister Best was up before dawn.

  Dalliance didn’t know how the man did it. There was no rooster crowing, no speck of light in the sky, but he was already up, chopping wood. The noise woke Dalliance. Chop… chop… chop… followed by the clatter of logs falling.

  Sleepy, grumpy, but unable to go back to sleep, and with no light to read by, Dalliance wandered over to his teacher at the wood block. His teacher was clearly sleepy. He heaved a chunk of wood, centered it on the block, and brought the splitting axe crashing down. The axe met the block cleanly, the wood seeming to just jump out of the way into pieces. He chopped twice more, glancing up occasionally, and then, without warning, handed the axe to Dalliance.

  “Your turn,” he said shortly.

  Mister Best was clearly more of a morning person than Dalliance was, but he still seemed tired himself.

  “Why are you up?” Dalliance asked, taking the axe. It was very heavy.

  Mister Best made a waffling motion with his hands. “A little of this, a little of that. Missus Best has a cold nature, and her interior 'furnace' is perhaps a few sizes too small.”

  Dalliance glanced up, checking whether he was meant to take that seriously.

  No, he was not.

  “That, and,” said Mister Best, “I’ll give you this advice for free: if you are married and your wife has cold feet, and you did not invest in a bed warmer, the outcome is that you will have cold legs. Suddenly. Unexpectedly. In the early morning hours.” He gestured at the pile of chopped wood. “‘Tis the season for heating the domicile.”

  Dalliance pictured cold feet wormed under his blankets and pressed to the side of his legs. He shivered in sympathy.

  “Now then,” said Mister Best. “Feet shoulder-width apart, one foot behind the other. The axe is going to do all the work for you. All you have to do is get it swinging along the right arc to hit the wood. The axe itself is heavy enough to do some damage without additional help.”

  Dalliance squared his shoulders and swung, letting his right hand hold the axe and his bandaged left help heft it up. The axe head hit the wood on the block at an angle, causing the uncut section to tip sideways and the axe head to clatter to the cold turf.

  “That’s okay,” said Mister Best. “This is one of those skills that you’re going to want to master. As of last year, for sure, you were too small. As of this year, you may still be too small, unless you invest in Might in preparation for your next Tier-Up. Because I strongly suspect you will want to do so.”

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  Dalliance nodded. He needed those zeros, just in case. Though with a bank of twenty and an intake of one, it didn’t feel urgent right now.

  “You will want to do some maths later,” Mister Best cautioned him. “Remember that to get a ten on each Tier, you must be able to bank twenty points. Overflowing is easier than it sounds.”

  Dalliance nodded again. He was no longer surprised. Mister Best predicted the confusion that arose from their conversations, though he sometimes wondered whether the man had his own version of his skill.

  “So,” Dalliance asked, not really sure the best way to phrase it and deciding to just go with it, “what is—what is Morality’s… what’s her deal? She told me to ask about logistics on the Wall. She wanted to join our prayer group.” He searched for words, not finding any. “What does she want?”

  “Friends,” said Mister Best promptly. “Morality wants friends such as you have. She’s been watching you and has decided that those are the sorts of friends she wants. I’ve tried to raise a girl who knows how to go and get what she wants. It is, in a word, gratifying to see it pay off so completely.”

  Dalliance heaved the axe again. As it fell, he pulled on the handle with all his weight, his feet lightening their press against the ground as the axe hurtled downward. His wrist acted as the fulcrum. The back of the axe spit into the wood, so it did not split.

  “Refine it,” said Mister Best. “You’re a quick study, Master Rather, though it would have been gratifying to me for you to display such acuity in the context of your lessons. Rhetoric, for example.”

  Dalliance cringed and covered for it by readying and assaying another blow. The poetry recital had been one of the greatest disasters in his academic career to date. Sterling, in front of the class, had expounded verbosely upon epic romance, flowers in a maiden’s hair, and favors won upon the field of tragic, doomed love. Dalliance had assayed a limerick and had stuttered from nerves at the unaccustomed weight of a silent, expectant class, their eyes all upon him at once. The stutter had quite ruined the punchline.

  But then, he was stacking Wit, wasn’t he? Not Charm.

  Mister Best looked faintly pleased with himself, and Dalliance realized he was being needled once again.

  “That’s not fair,” Dalliance complained. “I thought we were having a mentor-mentee conversation, and you have to go and bring up my most embarrassing moments.”

  “When you’re a father,” Mister Best said, “you’ll understand. You asked a question about my daughter with relation to yourself. I did you the favor, the courtesy, of answering the question—not all would have done so. And now, I am owed the pleasure of watching you writhe and wriggle.” He said this last word, “wriggle,” with verve and theatricality.

  Dalliance attempted the final chop on the wood, and as the pieces fell, Mister Best put a hand on his shoulder, much like Da used to do, but somehow friendlier.

  “As we are having a mentor-mentee conversation,” said Mister Best, “I ought to equip you with another useful rule of thumb. As you go through life, you’ll discover that the reward for work well done is more work. I’d say another six logs should be sufficient.” He paused. “I will be preparing the lesson. See you in class, Dalliance.”