Dalliance was the wind.

  He fell, flooding out into the streets and through the alleys, a mass of perception and motion the size of a peasant's house, seeking the source of the screams. It had been on his tier but questing, threading through the junk-strewn loading docks and passing through narrow spaces strewn with dry washing, which stirred madly at his passing. He saw nothing out of the ordinary: pools of shadow, circles of light under flickering gas lamps, strolling Watchmen seemingly unconcerned at the nighttime ululation.

  Another scream, this one close, accompanied by the sound of fists.

  Dalliance rushed over the incongruously barren tops of buildings, which would never see the sun or need shingles, and fell again into a closed courtyard where one rough-looking man held the garden door shut. The mage-lamps, which kept the plants alive, twinkled merrily as his companion sank a fist into the grey-leathered form of an alchemist's apprentice. His pack lay nearby, clearly ransacked, bottles lined out on the flagstone of the courtyard, none labelled.

  "What is it?" growled the thief.

  There was a tooth on the ground. Dalliance noted. The alchemist couldn't be much older than he was, maybe a few years, no more, and was short, with frizzy curls which stuck out every which way. His swollen, bruised face held vibrant pink-irised eyes, barely visible now.

  "You'll be sorry," he said thickly, red drool falling like syrup from crimson teeth.

  "What is it!?"

  The thief was holding a bottle, glowing faint blue. The alchemist spat.

  Dalliance collapsed into himself, [Prediction] flaring as soon as his form was human, bow rising, arrow catching slightly in the quiver before coming free, and then he was ready. "Let him go."

  The thief dropped his victim and looked up to where Dalliance stood atop one of the columns ringing the garden, a vicious, bully's grin stretching his features. "Look, it's your lucky day, pup! A little baby's come to save you."

  Dalliance was a bit surprised to see the heavy stone bench hurled at him in his predictions, but it was simple enough to sink a feathered shaft into his leg, right beside the kneecap, and the possibility went away.

  It was almost bizarre, how simple it was.

  The man was screaming, now, his erstwhile victim scrabbling forward on hands and knees to the vials, his compatriot running from the gate to forestall him, stooping to scoop up a heavy-looking ceramic bust on the way.

  Dalliance had shot someone.

  He could imagine the feel of the arrowhead grating against leg bone and knee cap. He felt sick.

  Why hadn't he felt this way before? Or seen it coming?

  Bile rose in his throat.

  "That fucking hurts," growled the interrogator, straightening, the arrow in his fist. Dalliance had an instant to realize that the diamond-headed arrows they distributed on the wall top were meant to be retrieved cleanly from corpses. For a man you wanted to stop, you'd want something barbed.

  He would have to jump. The clay bust would be passing through where he stood an instant from now.

  No.

  [Steel wind aegis], he cast, anchoring the spell effect to his left hand, outstretched fingers warding off the now airborne object.

  He had an instant to regret the waste before sturdy ceramic met spell-wrapped fingers—three of them, it probably looked stupid, he thought—shattering into dust with startling volume, and then his hand was just hanging in the air, completely unharmed, while fragments pattered off his sleeves and into the garden bed below.

  Casting [locomotion], and cancelling it an instant later felt almost instinctive, and the man who'd been at the gate sailed over the garden wall, a look of almost comical startlement on his features.

  In the classroom arena, throwing someone into the ceiling was a bit of a brute move, but he'd never used it against someone without magic before.

  Outside the walled garden, there was a heavy thud.

  In class, other mages had spells. They could take it. This guy probably hit someone's wagon, if he's lucky, or a sub-street stairwell or even a wrought-iron railing, if he wasn't.

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  Dalliance chose not to look down the future path where he checked. Not yet.

  "I yield," said the heavyset man who remained, dropping the bloodstained arrow slowly, as if that was the weapon he'd been wielding. His boots, big workman's hobnailed sorts, shuffled slightly as he did, and, as one was standing on the outstretched fingers of the apprentice alchemist, elicited a scream from his victim.

  "Get off him," demanded Dalliance.

  "Sure enough, mage like yourself, I wouldn't have a problem, wouldn't have been here if I'd known, of course not."

  The man kept up his patter as he stepped back, seemingly coincidentally knocking the alchemist's vials well away from him in the motion. The man didn't /look/ like he felt subservient or respectful. There was cunning in those piggy eyes.

  "We're going to go to the Watchhouse," said Dalliance, another use of [Locomotion] placing him gently on the ground next to the column's base -- it had been too far to jump cleanly. He kept his bow readied, just in case.

  "And what do you think they do at the watch-house, lad?" asked the man with deceptive gentleness.

  "I'm not arguing with you."

  Dalliance was trying not to gag.

  "Don--" began the alchemist, but a brutal boot knocked his head back, staring up at the stone ceiling above them, and the attacker was in motion again, flinging a vial of alchemical providence at Dalliance with one hand while diving into the shelter of a garden bench.

  Alchemist's fire, Dalliance realized. It would cling to him with invisible flames, purple at their very extremity, and burn away his mana.

  The wind-which-was-a-boy roared briefly, settling back onto the garden path behind the bench, as the alchemist's fire splattered on the garden wall and began to eat away at the mana lights. The soldier in front of him stared at him, then spat on the ground. "Kill me then," he said flatly. "Not going to jail."

  "He'd just die anyway," groaned the alchemist, still flat on his back. "Dame Linnorm burns them what goes after alchemists. Says it's to raise awareness."

  The patch of wall where the alchemist's fire had taken root darkened as the mana lights flickered and died. The flowers were wilting.

  Any that didn't burn would die anyway, he knew. It seemed like a senseless waste. This whole thing did.

  "So you die, no matter what," said the alchemist. "For a couple of bloody bottles you couldn't have sold anybody anyway."

  Who in their right mind would want this stuff? Dalliance had to agree.

  He still couldn't see the flame -- it would go purple when it was nearly spent -- but he could hear the retort as rocks popped under the heat.

  The robber watched him closely, poised for movement if given a chance. He wouldn't.

  "You were a veteran," Dalliance guessed.

  "Cartier now," he said, still watchful. "What of it?"

  Dalliance shrugged. There wasn't anything to say. He'd wanted to know what drove men to do this sort of thing. From the look of it—opportunity, and the misfortune of not having magic.

  Absurd, the difference a few spells made.

  "It don't have to end this way," suggested the robber. "Hard. You take your friend, and leave, and we'll call it a fair try, no harm done."

  The alchemist made a noise of outrage, but Dalliance considered it anyway. Would it be safer?

  The robber's eyes, fixed on him, were calculating. Dalliance knew his likely were as well. "You planning on following us?"

  "Nah, you'd kill me. Could, anyway. Besides, you've got more arrows, and I like my other knee just fine."

  The alchemist sat up gingerly. "I can probably walk."

  The alchemist's fire had spread over the garden and into the grass, so the vials stayed where they lay, slowly coloring yellow-green to blue-purple as the heat crawled over their surface and their glaze cracked and peeled. Liquid bubbled and smoked.

  The apprentice shuffled past Dalliance, dissatisfaction in his eyes, but Dalliance didn't turn to watch him. He wasn't going to take his eyes off the other man.

  Which was why he saw it in the man's face first—something going out of it—before he heard the boots on the gravel. He turned to find two broad-shouldered watchmen shoving their way through.

  It was over.

  [For the defense of the innocent, you have been awarded two (4) experience points. As the last fighter on the field, your reward has been doubled. Valor, wisely exercised, ennobles the valorous.]

  Dalliance watched the man be led away with a feeling of vague sickness lingering on the back of his palate. "I don’t like it," he admitted.

  "Yeah?"

  "I shot him."

  Dalliance shook shards of ceramic out of his sleeve, patting dust off his side too. His shirt might be ruined.

  "Yeah, thanks, man. Really sound thing to do."

  Dalliance shook his head. The street was dimly lit, and the alchemist was walking badly, so it hadn't seemed quite right to just leave him to his own devices. "I shot a man in the leg."

  Like repeating it would make it more real.

  The apprentice's grey leathers squeaked as he shrugged. "He knocked out my tooth. Teeth. Think I’m missing two of 'em."

  Yeah.

  "Dunno, I was gonna go to bed or practice spells and do homework, and now I’m maiming people."

  "I guess I understand, but don’t feel bad: it was him or me. Plus, you didn’t kill anybody."

  Dalliance didn't know why it mattered so much. But it did.

  "But I sort of did. Or anyway, the Dame will, later."

  Dalliance pictured flesh shrivelling and blackening under invisible fire.

  "It's not that she's a monster who just sets random people on fire," defended the apprentice walking beside him. Limping, really. "'Public deterrent', she says. Seeing as how we always has something worth lots in our pockets since … well it’s the job. And they’re not big, you can hide em or shift them quick for something else in trade and there you are, a few hunny thaums the richer and whose to say whereby eh? So she sets them on fire."

  They walked in silence for a moment.

  "Saw her take the wall top once," Dalliance mused.

  "Yeah?" asked the apprentice, "how’d that go?"

  "They sent the rest of us home. She warded it all off or killed everything there. Not sure. Looked like lots of golden light."

  "Transmutation mist, probably. Her potions change things."

  "How?"

  "All sorts of ways. One piece becomes lots of itty bitty pieces, or frozen solid, or made of glass."

  Scary lady.

  Dalliance left his new friend at the guildhouse, with the promise of visiting 'soon' for a tour as thanks. He wasn't in the mood, now.