It stung.

  All that hard work, all that time spent asking questions of someone who should’ve known better, and he had asked the wrong questions. What’s the best spell? Well. There was no best spell. There were spells that were good for one thing or another.

  Okay, fine. What’s the spell that has the most utility, that covers the most situations? Telekinesis. But you wouldn’t be able to cast that until mastering Aerokinesis.

  Well, if not that, then, what are the spells that people should use, but don’t? And she’d given him a list.

  So, leveling up, when he’d seen [Werewind] off of Topaz's list, he’d taken it. She’d listed it along with other fundamentals like [Shape Heat]; which she claimed was secretly among the most powerful spells known to mortals, though she’d never seen anyone use it well; or [Mana Channel], which was extremely basic, but she’d never seen someone use it in combat correctly. She didn’t understand why you wouldn’t want to cast your spells using your enemy’s mana instead of your own.

  That’s how faeries fight, she’d elaborated, after considering whether that information would hurt him and apparently deciding it would not.

  [Werewind]. Why was it one of the best? Because, just like [Prediction]—which, he had discovered, had hidden depths—[Werewind] itself offered a great many options. You turned into the wind.

  The wind, she had explained, can do a lot of things that people can’t do. Pass through a contested battlefield, for example. Survive being shot with arrows, or freezing spells. Fit through tight spaces. Fly. Other things that she was sure he would figure out in time.

  He had seen it on the list, newly reeling from the disappointment of the [Aeromancer] class, he had remembered. This is the underutilized one. This is the one that is going to make me special. And he had taken it.

  After Effluvia spoke up, he realized that there had been so many other options he’d neglected to value, because they didn’t speak to him being special.

  Or else because they’d disappointed him, because nothing could replace his fingers.

  He’d looked in vain for a skill that allowed for spell shaping without the use of hands, although irritatingly, he did find the opposite: [Silent Spell] allowed you to cast using only your hands.

  He had seen [Extend Spell]. He had seen [Spell Shaper]. He had seen [Liminal Spell] and [Maximize Spell], which had been tempting until he had seen the mana cost. He’d seen the elemental shift metamagics, [Animate], and [Ensoul]—but that last one sounded too much like necromancy, and he wasn’t sure it would be legal. [Entwine Spell], and of course, all the different wind spells themselves: [Frost Shot], [Grasp], [Levitate], [Displace]—he’d thought about that one—[Blink], [Lightning]—he hadn’t known that was an air spell—and [Thunder]. He had sort of known that sonic spells were air spells, but he hadn’t considered [Sonomancy]. [Ventriloquism], and [Smother].

  There had been some really good options. Even some more worrying ones, like [Fume] and [Entice]: wind spells at the edge of other disciplines, because of course they all overlapped in some way. When he had upgraded to [Redirect], that itself had been a Wind/Fortune spell. He felt lucky to have it.

  But he couldn’t cast either [Redirect] or the extremely cool [Werewind] as reliably as the skills he’d already had. Even using [Locomotion], as much as he loved his first spell, was another suboptimal choice. [Acuity to Mana] was locked behind the correct path, and now he had everything pulling from the same pool: mana. Except [Prediction]. Unless he found an artifact, he’d be doing without that once low-hanging fruit. And that hadn’t been his choice. But would he give it up for [Deflection]? Would he give it up for [Prediction]? Not really.

  It was hard.

  He felt a soft touch on his shoulder. Charity’s hand.

  “We all saw how upset you were,” she said. “And I’m sorry. So, I want to show you something. When I was a little girl, my mother took me to the most magical place in the world. And I was thinking… maybe it would cheer you up.”

  He smiled at her, and she took his hand and led him to the archive, the others trailing uncertainly behind.

  The archives were deep underground.

  What looked like a nicer part of Water Street ran between two eateries, outside of which lounged Magisters in their robes—or possibly wizards, or some other sort of robed professional. Dalliance didn’t know the difference by sight. He always assumed they were Magisters because he had been told by his father that if you offend a Magister, they will probably kill you. Better safe than sorry.

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  Beyond the eateries and their expensive clientele, the road continued into the darkness, plunging directly into the cliff face at the top of which was the third city tier. Here, Dalliance now knew, was the fish market—not located particularly close to the lake, but distanced just enough to keep the smell from noble nostrils. While just high enough, his cynical side said, to be inconvenient to those on the lowest tiers who might otherwise be able to afford such delicacies. Also on the third tier were the nicer of the homes in the city that were not estates in their own right, and the barracks of the City Watch. Possibly unrelated. But probably not. His mother had always told him not to talk to the watchmen because they get used to thinking like the criminals they catch. But she also told him that the city was safer for having watchmen, and that she wished Talbotton had any.

  Down and down the road went, under the city, under the mountain, and deep in the darkness. Light-globe lanterns hung from the peak of the roof, dozens of feet off the floor, shining every ten feet, a little linked line of firelights dancing in the dwindling darkness, keeping the gloom at bay.

  The street sign surprised him. Lapidarium Place, it said. He had some difficulty reading the unfamiliar word. Lapidarium. It sounded magical. Quarry Road intersected it, as did a simple, pointed sign that read: VAULTS. KEEP OUT. TRESPASS ON PAIN OF DEATH. There were eight guards posted beyond the sign that said "Vaults." The sign seemed unnecessary.

  There was a small, simple doorway set into the wall a short ways beyond, with stairs going up. It was to this that Charity led him, their hands clasped now, her eyes wild with excitement.

  “You’re going to love this,” she predicted. “It has everything that we’ve ever known.”

  When they emerged at the top of the spiraling stair, some several hundred feet higher, Dalliance realized she was correct. He had never seen or thought there could be this many books.

  The archives stretched out before them in a giant gallery room, stuffed with shelves and bookcases, each freestanding and joined with a twin facing the other direction, in sets of five apiece. Each of those sets was a dozen feet from the next, and despite this regularity, the room felt crowded. It was so big.

  Dalliance lost count after his first one hundred and fifty or so shelves, which was not accounting for the ones stacked vertically—dark wood, those, studded and banded with metal and runes.

  “It’s all here,” Charity told him. “Answers to any question. If you can find it.”

  “Awww man,” whined Whimsy behind them.

  And so Dalliance lost himself in the pages of books for a time.

  It was a few hours later, and they were walking along the street, just the two of them, Dalliance and his sister, Whimsy. She no longer looked inured to the sights around her. Earnest had dropped off Morality at her house, and the others had made their own plans.

  "How are you?" Dalliance asked. She’d carefully avoided mentioning anything about her accommodations. The others didn’t seem to have noticed. Dalliance wondered if it was on purpose, and as it turned out, he was right.

  "I don’t like being a novice," she admitted. "They don’t tell you this in the chapbooks, but when I reach sixteen, I have to move out or get married. We work all day, we rotate between the temples, and I'm the youngest one there. I still have to do my Hunt and Tier-Up next year. The Temple doesn’t protect you from that. But this way, I won’t have anyone I know. It’ll be me and the daughters of capital folk, and I’m afraid."

  Dalliance watched a woman with a basket of laundry climb the apartment stairs, which wrapped zigzag-fashion around the exterior of her apartment block. All she would have to do, he thought, is stumble into the rail, and the basket of clothes would pull right over.

  "We could be like her," he said. "Live in one of these. Get really good at climbing stairs."

  “It’s like you’re not listening to me. I have to Hunt. Without any of my friends, or Da looking over me.”

  “He wasn’t going to anyway.”

  Painful silence, in which a blonde woman and her gaggle of children pushed between them, carrying a basket of cabbages.

  “And Gremantle’s temple is weird, it’s all dark inside, and they’re chanting stuff like 'What is the sin of the half-measure? TO LEAVE A FIRE SMOLDERING. TO LEAVE A ROOT IN THE GROUND', and I have to scrub down altars with blood on them. Firth’s has bones. Crone’s has bones and ashes. Why can’t any of them be nice?”

  Dalliance shrugged. “They’re gods.”

  He sat on the edge of a raised garden bed. “My turn. Once I get into the academy, I’ll figure out somewhere for you to live, better than this. If you need it. Or at least start saving for one. That apartment isn’t out of reach, necessarily. To an [Aeromancer]. I’m not Da, but I’ll try to provide for you. And we’ll figure out the Hunt together. I’ll tell you all about mine, let you have a sword for your upgrade, whatever you need.”

  “I want a bow,” she complained. But she stopped and looked up alongside him. “I bet I could have a cat,” she speculated.

  He shoved her with his foot. “Wanna bet?”

  Geese passed overhead, a V-shaped flock. Whimsy shaded her eyes to watch them.

  "I’ve been going to Temple," she told him, a non sequitur. "I want you to go with me tomorrow. I want to feel like I have a family."

  "Well. You’ve got a family," he said. "I’ll be there."

  Be peaceful until you cannot. Then be ruthless until you can, that all shall fear the wrath of a righteous man.

  Yes, I wrote Gremantle's Catechism.