"Get along now," called a voice from the trees.

  Dalliance looked up from the tops of his shoes. He had been staring at the ground, carefully stepping around the occasional flower growing between the cobblestones of the Imperial Highway that stretched from Galton to Talbotton. He was hopping from larger paver to larger paver, avoiding all the red ones—a childhood game whose rule was that if you stepped on red, you'd marry the next person you saw.

  She knew what she wanted, he thought, the game bringing Flora to mind. She already has a plan. She was even going so far as to invite him to partake in it. And Whimsy. But it had hurt a little, hearing her earlier assessment—the one where she hadn't thought he would even get into the Academy in the first place.

  "Get along, you great lumps!" the voice called again.

  A herd of pigs tumbled out of the woods and scattered across the road. Along with them came the magic walls of shimmering blue butterflies, shining unnaturally as they reflected the sunlight, hemming the pigs in on both sides. Many of the butterflies simply zipped through things—through the nostrils of inquisitive, sniffing pigs, through tree trunks, even through the surface of the ground, dipping down and working up.

  Beautiful, but unreal.

  "Get along," said the man walking behind them. He poked the occasional straggler with his staff’s metal ferrule, to be greeted with squeals and reluctant shufflings forward through the underbrush.

  The swineherd nodded to Dalliance as he went, the pigs he was driving—all fifty or so—disappearing off the face of the road, the man himself following moments later, a wall of blue butterflies in his wake.

  What had reduced that man to life as a swineherd with magic? Dalliance wondered.

  Dalliance hoped it wouldn't happen to him.

  There were two paths stretching ahead of him. One branch led to the Academy, with the potential for a life of indolence, fame, and power. Even as an [Aeromancer], he would learn the basics of magic in and across multiple schools, serve his tour-equivalent on the Wall-top once a week, and provide for his sister.

  The distant future loomed, full of questions. Say he graduated. Then what? Dalliance didn't know. He wouldn't be making houses, that was for sure. Perhaps he'd be a courier, taking important information from one corner of the Empire to another.

  Or, he could be a soldier, but ‘Toppers’ don't get magic training. He’d be limited to whatever spells Topaz was able to give him, and what he already had for the next two years: [Werewind] and [Locomotion]. At which point, presuming he survived the Wall tour of duty, Dalliance would—by then a higher level, likely a mixed class, probably some sort of air-flavored soldier upgrade—be just another veteran looking to enter the workforce.

  Meantime, Whimsy would be going through her own Hunt. And then coming of age to leave the Temple, either as a wife or as a lay sister, if he couldn’t be there to take custody of her.

  He'd be eighteen by then. The idea of the age felt unreal.

  If he made it to the Academy, he'd have his own master-apprentice arrangement set up and be learning the intricacies of the universe.

  Or, as a veteran, he’d have already given up his dreams completely.

  He kicked a rock, and it bounced off a tree with a hollow, cracking sound.

  How did one go from being an [Illusionist] with prospects and great expectations of the future to wielding walls of illusionary butterflies to drive pigs?

  This sort of thing just didn’t happen in books. Power mattered. It was destiny.

  He had told the group that he was in this contest for the scholarship in order to take care of Whimsy, and this was true. It was just them against the world now. But he also wanted to be somebody. You could want two things at once.

  The problem was that wanting might not be enough. The swineherd had probably wanted things too. Had probably made reasonable choices—help your family, use your skills where they're needed. All defensible. And somewhere in those choices, the dream had died so quietly the man might not have even noticed.

  Six years. He had six years to figure out which choices led somewhere and which ones led here.

  A snuffling in the underbrush caught his attention. A pale nose coated with dirt pushed its way through the mossy soil of the forest floor like an impromptu plow, encountering the surface of the highway with a deep, dissatisfied grunt.

  "You little scoundrel," came the cheerful voice of the swineherd. "Sorry, Maybe's a real free spirit."

  "Maybe?"

  "'Maybe Bacon'," the man clarified. "My wife names the things."

  The man turned to walk away.

  “Is it worth it?” asked Dalliance suddenly.

  Faded eyes with crow’s feet regarded him for a moment. “This?”

  He made an all inclusive gesture at the magic butterflies and the swine they were herding.

  “Yeah.”

  Giving it all up for domesticity. Mundane life. You must have had dreams.

  “Do it again in a second,” the man said with a wink. “Gods’ truth.”

  Dalliance watched him go with a hollow feeling in his stomach.

  That could be me, he realized.

  What if Flora was right?

  Dalliance started walking again, the hollow feeling hardening into something more determined.

  He needed information.

  Six years to become Whimsy's legal guardian, to give her real choices instead of whatever the Temple decided. Six years to become somebody.

  When Dalliance returned to the Best estate, he scarcely had time to lower his burdens before there was a polite knock at the door. Opening it, he was greeted by slim hands and two yard-long sticks.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “Dalliance,” Morality Best said. “Don’t you think it’s time you learned to use that sword?”

  This would not stand. “All right,” he said. “That’s a little insulting.”

  He’d had just about enough of everyone, including himself, doubting him.

  She looked at him with feigned confusion, but she knew what she had done, he was sure of it.

  “You’ve never seen me swing a sword,” he explained. “I could be really good.”

  She didn’t apologize. “I don’t have to have,” she said. “You have no idea how to use it. You wear your sword belt three inches too high.”

  Dalliance blinked. “That’s my natural waist.”

  “Mama’s boy,” she said in response. She hefted the stick, holding it out to him. “Dalliance, would you like to learn how to swing a sword?”

  He took it reluctantly.

  They were out in the midst of the Best estate, on short, nibbled grass.

  Dalliance knew from experience that this would be the freshest, best, tender sprigs of spring grass, massacred heartlessly by a herd of gourmand cattle.

  She faced him. "Do as I do," she said, "but in reverse."

  "Why not stand next to me?" he asked.

  "Because I am also going to make you block," she said frankly. "And I don't know how to teach sword fighting."

  He grinned at that.

  "This is a guard," she said, holding the stick up between them at an angle. "This is high guard." She swept the stick down, pointing it low.

  "This is low guard," he finished.

  "And this," she said, holding the stick so it pointed toward the heavens, the hilt somewhat around her waist, "is the guard I want you to actually use."

  He adjusted his position.

  "Look at your feet," she said. He did. "Shoulder-width apart, correct. But one should be in front of the other. Knees slightly bent."

  He modeled his stance after hers.

  "No, you don't have to put your butt out," she said sternly. "And now, a slash."

  The tip of her stick darted up to the left, and with a rotation of her hand moving too quickly to track, it arced down to her mid-right.

  "Even I know that's not called a slash," he said.

  "It slashes. Here's a stab." She lunged forward, her front knee going into a deep bend, the tip of her improvised rapier starting for his lung on a nearly straight course and retreating along that same course as she rebounded backward, nearly skipping.

  "All right," she said. "And this is a parry."

  She flipped the stick sideways, moving both the hilt and the blade of her imaginary rapier.

  "Aim for the base," she said. "It's called the 'strong' because you can block with it strongly. If you hit with the tip, that's called the 'weak' because I can't block with it very well."

  He nodded at the advice.

  "All right," she said. "I'm going to attack you now."

  And she did.

  The stick jabbed Dalliance in the ribs. It hurt more than it seemed like it should, and he belatedly remembered that, as tier zero, he no longer had any Grit.

  He missed it.

  That made him mad.

  Dalliance engaged [Prediction]. It was humiliating to realize not only did she know exactly what she planned to do, and had no reason in her mind to deviate from it since she only considered the one option, but it was going to work: she was going to lunge and no matter where he went, she was going to hit him.

  An eleven-year-old girl, against an E-tier [Aeromancer], and he couldn't defend himself?

  With his increased ability with aeromancy had come some additional insights into redirection, but only some. As it was the skill still sat at 15%

  It could work, there was no reason not to try.

  He engaged [Redirection] for the first time. Unlike [Deflection], it wasn’t just a veto. Instead, there was an instant question: What did he want to have happen?

  He sensed a myriad of possibilities, but not enough time to think through them. He didn’t have time to comprehend the breadth of choices available to him, so he didn’t choose. The moment ended, and what happened happened: a random outcome.

  This time, as she stabbed and he dodged, her foot slipped. Her stick approached him at a sharper angle, her elbow too far out, and he moved in the opposite direction. She missed.

  And he bopped her on the head.

  Her smile, which had been a fierce, competitive thing anyway, broadened into true delight.

  “You,” she said quietly, her eyes bright with mischief, “cheated.”

  “Yes, I did,” he admitted. He felt inordinately pleased

  “Show me how,” she commanded.

  His eyes met hers with a vacant stare.

  “Show me how,” she said again. “Your skill.”

  “I… I don’t think I can,” he admitted.

  “Of course you can. That’s what a legacy skill is,” she explained. “You use your skill, telling me what it’s called and wanting me to understand it, and then, when I trier up, I’ll have the option.

  This changed everything.

  “To anyone?”

  “Only to the unawakened,” she amended. “And you can only give one of your three. Why? You didn’t know? Hasn’t your father taught you any?”

  “No? Has yours?”

  “I’m not going to be like Daddy. I shall be a [Duelist].”

  “The class?” he asked. “Isn’t that really dangerous?”

  “Less,” she said, “if you teach me your skill.”

  “I do have another skill,” he said, a sly thought popping into his mind.

  “No,” she said. “I know what I want. Not that you should teach me any skill for free.”

  She hadn’t seriously expected him to, surely.

  “What do you have to offer?”

  He asked bleakly, “You don’t have any skills, and I’ve already tiered up.”

  “I’ve got contacts through Daddy,” she retorted, “and information. When you start at the Academy, I can tell you who to befriend and who to avoid. All of Daddy’s old colleagues and the ones who taught them. I can tell you where Daddy says to seek training in the blade, or the bow, or cold reading and disguise.”

  “What are you planning on being?” Dalliance asked her bluntly.

  “Whatever I have to be,” she said seriously. “I told you, I’m going to avenge my father.”

  “From what?”

  She shook her head. “It’s a long story. He was a [Royal Scholar]—it’s a class they can’t take away from him—shortlisted for the Chancellor’s Council.”

  She shrugged. "Mama was very pretty back then. There was a fight, and the man lost. But Daddy never liked the catechism of the Gremantle and didn't pluck out the root. Left alive, his rival arranged a scandal. Daddy accepted a job on the frontier as a schoolmaster, and the love of my Mother, rather than see her disgraced."

  Pieces were clicking into place, but not enough of them.

  “I am going,” she told him, “to stab everyone who called my mother a whore.”

  Dalliance realized that this was a very dangerous little girl.

  “And I would like to be your friend. And I would like you to help me do it, friend,” she said, that last word casual, sly.

  “Okay,” he told her. He didn’t know what else to say. Someone believed in him, finally. What was he going to do, argue with her? “Does your daddy know?” he asked.

  “Oh no,” she said. “And he shan’t.”