Seth was leaning against a tree in a far corner of the school campus, past the coliseum. Duvessa was still talking about Lord Thurstan to Blaise, Selendrith, Owen, and Booth, but Seth wasn't listening anymore.

Instead he was remembering an explosion of fire and concussive force, the lady's house breaking around him, the light of flames, the smell of smoke and burning hair and flesh.

He felt like he was tasting the ashes again.

Then Mau landed heavily on his shoulder, snapping him out of the memory. He grabbed hold of her and hugged her tightly.

She bit him.

It was just a little nip, but the shock of needle-like teeth and unexpected betrayal startled him enough that he dropped her. She didn't fall. Instead, she clung to his clothes and climbed up to rub her face against his cheek. She was right, of course. She had snapped him out it and brought him back to now. He hugged her again, gently this time, and stroked her fur. Simply holding her was calming, and petting her was soothing.

Mau was watching him, and he had no doubt she would bite him again if he couldn't sort himself out. He chuckled a little. She would protect him, even from himself.

The others were still talking, and he ignored them. He didn't want to remember that day, but this was important. Seth sat down against the tree and continued to pet Mau. He tried to sort out what he knew, and how what happened then might affect now. He tried to be as detached in his thinking as he could.

Saben was at school then. Seth had gone with his dad and Gavin to meet with Lady Jonetta. Gavin was a Palace guard who had been friends with Seth's family for years.

Seth thought his dad had become friends with Gavin when they lived at the Palace. It was possible they'd been friends longer than that, but Seth didn't know.

Seth had liked Gavin. He was friendly and kind. His betrayal was devastating. Gavin had died along with everyone else when he exploded the house. Seth still had no idea why Gavin had done that.

Seth didn't know the lady. He'd been introduced when they'd first arrived and then left to his own devices in a parlor. He also didn't know what business his dad was meeting with her for or who the other people in the room were.

Lord Thurstan wasn't there. Seth hadn't known about him. But he was involved now, and was apparently a business associate of Benjamin's. Seth didn't know if that meant that Benjamin worked for him, if he was a client of Benjamin's, or how that relationship worked.

Seth supposed it wasn't strange that Benjamin would know and work with Lord Thurstan. Benjamin was one of the first people to arrive at the manor house when it was on fire. He was also the first one to help Seth immediately after. Since Lord Thurstan was Lady Jonetta's husband, then of course they knew each other.

But what were they doing?

Saben had advised Seth to leave it alone and not try to find out why Gavin had killed Dad. Saben said he'd deal with it, and at the time Seth had been willing to leave it at that. It had been too hard to deal with back then.

It was still hard now, but things were changing. That mess wasn't resolved. Sooner or later, Seth would have to deal with it, hard or not.

Before he left Rosia, Saben had been really uneasy. Seth wondered if Saben had discovered something, and he agreed to leave Rosia because what he knew was dangerous. He'd advised Seth to stay at school and implied that the campus would be safest.

How did any of this connect to Blaise? Or Arnold? Why them? Why Duvessa now? Was Duvess's situation something else?

And then there was Chicky-Chicky, the wyvern hidden beneath the East Well that Gavin had been feeding. That thing was alive and had escaped beneath the city. If it found a mana pool down there, it could evolve into a dragon before they saw that thing again.

With a silent apology to Blaise, Seth really hoped Brand found the wyvern and killed it.

Why would Gavin do that? Why put the city at risk like that?

Then Seth had a new thought. What if Gavin was actually working for someone in the Palace? He was a Palace Guard, could he be working under orders? But whose?

Seth really needed to talk to Saben. But so far, his brother hadn't answered a single one of his letters and Seth was getting worried.

"Hey!" Isaac called out as he approached the group, bringing Seth's attention back to the group.

Seth gave an annoyed snort at the sight of his roommate. Dealing with Isaac was so hot and cold for Seth. Sometimes he was fine and friendly, and others he was rude and difficult. Mau made the same noise, clearly agreeing with him.

"You guys weren't at dinner. I was worried." Isaac looked around with his hands on his hips. His gaze lingered on Seth and then Duvessa for a moment longer than anyone else.

"Is it that late already?" Blaise asked and looked up at the sky. The sun had long passed behind the mountains but the campus lighting masked the darkening sky.

"Damn, we missed it? I'm hungry," Booth said.

Duvessa stood up and brushed off her hands. "I planned for this," she said, and retrieved a large basket from behind the bench. "I planned our lesson to be a picnic, but I couldn't find a good spot for the blanket. We'll just have to eat standing."

"If people scootch over, there might be enough room on the benches," Selendrith said.

"Your roommate was looking for you, Booth. And did you say 'lesson,' Duvessa?" Isaac asked.

"I did! We are learning new things! Oh wait." Duvessa turned to Selendrith. "Is it okay to talk to Isaac about this? I don't think he was there when we were making the rules."

"I wasn't," Isaac confirmed and looked to Selendrith.

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"If he is willing to abide by the same rules as everyone else, I'll show him too. It's not actually a secret. Professor Laur talked about it in class. He just hasn't demonstrated it," Selendrith said.

"Right!" Duvessa clapped her hands and rubbed them together. "If you want lessons, Isaac, you need to agree to find three spells that Selendrith has not seen before and teach them to her. You can find the spells later. Do you like bacon?"

"Bacon? What–" Isaac started.

"Tuna!" Blaise shouted. "How did you get tuna?" She was handing out paper-wrapped sandwiches and had just opened one herself. "We're in the mountains!"

Duvessa waved her hand airily. "We are at a magic school. Use your imagination."

Owen piped up, "That guy Elias from the Celestial Tower got it for her. His familiar likes tuna too."

"Hush!" Duvessa scolded Owen. "Don't give away my best secrets!"

Seth watched Owen actually blush and mumble an apology. Blaise walked over to him and gave him a sandwich and a hip chuck.

"I appreciate it. I love seafood and I never get it," Blaise said.

Owen looked from Blaise to the sandwich to Duvessa and back to Blaise who was still leaning against him. He blushed more.

Mau was watching them too, and she made a soft wheezing noise that Seth thought was her laughing.

Blaise handed out the rest of the sandwiches, including a wrapped fish for Mau and a small bag of nuts and grapes for Reginald, and sat on the stone bench next to Duvessa.

Seth's sandwich had bacon on it. And lettuce, and something green that he didn't recognize. It was delicious.

"So," Blaise said, her mouth full of a bite of tuna sandwich as she tried to chew, swallow, and talk at the same time, "you gotta agree, Isaac. Three new spells for special lessons on mana control."

Isaac was looking skeptically at the sandwich he hadn't unwrapped yet. "What do you mean spells?"

After a moment of silence, Selendrith looked uncomfortable but answered. "I'm a student of the Ten Thousand. I'm trying to grow my library. I would like three spells not currently in my library in exchange for teaching mana manipulation using a mana vault."

"I don't have a mana vault and I'm not really interested in learning that," Isaac said. "Would you mind if I just hung out for a bit and ate my sandwich?"

"Sure!" Duvessa said. Blaise and Owen shrugged.

Selendrith scowled and narrowed her eyes at Isaac. "Just for today, I suppose."

Selendrith gave them all a lecture on manipulation practices. Professor Laur had taught many of the same things in their Structured Magic class but in more general terms. Selendrith focused on specific methods of not using talents to get the same effect.

A person's talent was their source of mana and most of their magic power. Seth could have his talent conjure a little wind even without any gestures or words. That wind wouldn't do anything specific, but he could call it.

Owen used his talent without any words or gestures. That was one of the problems they were having with it. They didn't know the source of the power and so couldn't channel it properly. Once Owen learned the cantrips in the book Professor Kaban had given him, that Seth had finished learning and could now teach, they should find one that resonated with his talent.

The nature of a talent was its aspect. Seth's was wind, Duvessa's was shadow, Blaise's was water. Booth hadn't explained his, but it was probably stone.

According to Selendrith, a person's talent did most of the work when casting a spell. Casting a spell without using talents would be significantly harder.

"It's like trying to write a letter with your mouth instead of your hand. You can do it, but it'll be messy and difficult. It'll take a lot of practice to do it right," Selendrith said.

"Why would you want to?" asked Booth. "Just cast normally."

"In Blaise's case, she doesn't have a talent anymore. She has to do it this way," Selendrith said.

"Right," Booth said in embarrassment. Selendrith continued.

Mana in a vault was usually preferred to be unaspected, meaning it wasn't mana from a talent. Blaise's pendant was different on purpose. If a vault was unaspected, it could be used in any circumstance the wizard needed it to while aspected mana could only be used for an aspected purpose. This came back to the idea that you don't want to use lightning mana to cast a healing spell.

When using a talent to cast a spell, you did not have to use it aspected, it was just easier if you did. That was why when someone with a fire aspect tried to use the Copy Spell for the first time, their aspect leaked in and they lit papers on fire.

However, when filling a mana vault, using a talent always aspected the mana. Its nature would invariably leak in, contaminating the whole vault.

"So what's your aspect, Selendrith?" Isaac asked.

"Hmm, I'm not going to answer that," Selendrith said.

Seth thought she looked offended at the question. She was the one who found power questions rude in their discussions earlier.

"Let's go on into attunements and how they work with vaults," Selendrith said instead.

Attunements were different from aspects. An attunement was a personal connection to mana. In short, it was a mana signature. A person always had an attunement to mana produced by their talent, and that mana was always easy to use.

To use the mana in a vault, you needed to be attuned to that mana. There were a few ways to accomplish this.

One, you could put mana directly from your talent into the vault. That was what Blaise had done with her pendant. That would result in aspected mana inside the vault, which was less desirable but fast and easy. Not all vaults would allow you to do this. Also, to change the vault to unaspected mana, you'd need to drain it completely and refill it.

Two, you could use an attuned formation to fill the vault with ambient mana. This was the most common practice. For someone else to use the vault, it must be emptied first and refilled with mana attuned to the new person.

The third method was similar to the second, but instead of using an attuned formation, you used an attuned vault. That was very simple to do. All it took was to have your name carved into the vault and channel a small amount of mana into your name. The problem with that was no one else could use the vault unless they had the same name and took ownership of it. It also restricted the vaults to objects that could have a name carved into them. Some vault types couldn't accept any carvings on them. Since it was the vault that was attuned, any generic formation could fill the vault. And some, like in the case of Seth's amulet, could refill themselves from the ambient atmospheric mana over time.

Seth examined his amulet as Selendrith gave her lecture. His name was carved on it, and so was Saben's. Either of them could use the amulet by changing its attunement. Mau's amulet was smaller, and she didn't have her name at the time, so hers wouldn't have any name on it. He looked over to where she was happily making a mess of her fish and left her be. He could always check it later.

After explaining vaults, Selendrith pulled out a tool. It was a small spoon made of clear stone with a Y instead of a single handle.

"This is a crutch," Selendrith explained. "It forms a connection between a vault and a person without using talents. By practicing with this, you can learn to use unaspected mana from a vault without tapping into your talent to do it for you. To use it, you'd put your vault in the bowl and the Y against your skin. I find it easier to use if it's right on your chest, but anywhere would work."

Vaults required skin contact to work. You couldn't have one in a pocket, or even in your hair, and have it work. It had to be directly on your skin, like a ring, or Selendrith's earrings.

Blaise practiced the most with it before Duvessa asked for a turn. She had a black and silver chain wrapped around her wrist that she used with the crutch.

"Oh, this is hard," Duvessa said. "It doesn't want to go on its own. It feels like I'm trying to make water move on my arm by making my skin wiggle."

Owen had joined Booth on the blanket and they were talking quietly. Isaac sat next to Selendrith and just watched silently.

"Hey, can I have a go?" Seth asked the next time Duvessa complained.

"Sure," Duvessa said. Seth glanced at Selendrith who also nodded.

Seth accepted the crutch and settled down to give it a go.