Seth woke up with a start and realized sunlight was streaming in the little room. It was already mid-morning.

"I'm late!" He bounded out of bed and Mau, who'd been sleeping on top of him, fell to the floor with a hiss.

"I'm sorry, Mau, but I'm missing class right now!" He darted to his trunk and jerked it open, and then came to a complete stop.

On top of his clothes from yesterday, that he hadn't bothered to separate from his clean clothes, was the minty green jar.

The seconds ticked by and he just stared at it. Mau jumped up and balanced perfectly on the open trunk lid.

"Meow," she said, and then signed, 'This, tell me more.'

Seth nodded. "Yeah. I guess I do need to talk this out with someone, don't I?" He picked up the jar, and then fished in the trunk until he found the gulliant case and both Saben's tree picture and his own ruined one. He set them on the desk and sat down. Mau sat on the desk in front of him and examined first the jar and then the pictures.

"When I saw Saben's jar, I noticed the color was very similar to mine. There's still a corner of it visible here, see? They are the same color. You got yellow ink all over it, so I can't compare them, but…" Seth put his picture directly over Saben's and held it up to the window.

'Same,' Mau signed.

Seth tossed them on the desk. "It's just a coincidence, right? It doesn't mean anything." They couldn't mean anything. What this was implying simply couldn't be true.

Mau paced the desk and flicked her ear. 'Tell me more.'

"I talked to the Princess. She said it's not possible for me to have a talent at my age." He stood up and walked away from the desk. There was only room for about three steps and no way to pace. "It's not me, Mau. I didn't do anything. I wouldn't do anything. Not to Saben."

'What do?' Mau turned in a tight circle, like she typically did when she didn't have the vocabulary she wanted.

"I'm worried my talent is actually Saben's."

Mau rocked back and cocked her head, considering. She shook her head 'no,' paused, and then shrugged. 'This. This.'

Seth puzzled at her meaning for a moment. "What is, is. You mean it doesn't matter. Either I have it or I don't."

Mau nodded.

"But it does matter, Mau. If I have it, if I somehow took away my brother's power, I took away the one thing he valued most. That means I took his future, too. It's unforgivable. That can't be true. I can't be that person."

'Fix it.'

"Even if I do fix it, if Saben ever finds out…"

Mau hopped over and walked along his shoulders to rub his face. After a moment she jumped back to the desk and tapped the jar. 'Now.'

Seth shook his head. "Maybe it's better if we don't know. I could just dump out the jar, and no one would ever know."

Mau growled at him and made the most disgusted expression. 'Lies.' She pointed a paw at him. 'Stay broken.' She tapped the jar.

"Lying to myself would just make everything stay broken?" Seth took a deep breath and held it for a couple of seconds.

"You're right. I can't get Saben his power back if I keep it. That would be so much worse, too, because I would be keeping it on purpose." Seth shook his head. "I hadn't thought of it that way." And now he was disgusted with himself for even thinking of dumping out the jar. He had to make this right, and that meant facing the hard truths.

Seth walked back to the desk and opened the gulliant case. He summoned a small amount of wind, just enough to ruffle the papers. The gulliant went from gray to a gray-green. Seth opened the jar and held the gulliant above it.

"Please don't be true, please don't be true." He touched the gulliant to the liquid in the jar and it darkened to black.

He laid it carefully on the desk with trembling fingers and resealed the jar.

"I didn't do this though," he whispered to Mau. "How do I have his power?"

Mau climbed into his lap and made grumbly noises.

Seth chuckled. "You should know that leopards can't purr, but you keep trying."

He hugged his cat for a few moments. "I think I knew. I was trying so hard to be like Saben. He was so much better than me at everything. Then when he lost his power and everything fell apart, I felt like I had to fill in, like I had to be the person he couldn't be anymore."

Mau growled and shook her head.

"I don't know why you think it's dumb to try to be like someone who's better than you. Ow! Don't you dare bite me!" Seth dumped the cat towards the floor but she leapt onto the desk instead.

"Bad cat. No! I don't care if you think I'm being stupid. Don't bite me! And stop calling me stupid!"

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Seth picked up the gulliant and Saben's jar and stashed them with the tree images in the bottom of his trunk. "I need to figure out a way to give him his power back."

'Talk.' Mau pointed to the trunk.

"Talk to Saben?"

'Yes. No lies. No secrets.'

"I have his power. He'll be beyond upset with me."

'Yes. Trust.'

"I should trust Saben? I do trust him. But he'll be so mad." Seth thought about what Saben would do when he found out. "He'd go fight that Hellena woman. And probably break into Thurstan's house, and fight him too. Maybe even Benjamin. Saben was always telling me to be careful around him."

Mau snorted. 'Bad do.'

"Those would be bad things to do? Yeah. If he did that, every lead we had would dry up instantly and we'd never know for sure who did what." Seth thought about his brother's temper. "Saben can be pretty aggressive at times. I think it would be hard to stop him from rampaging through all of our suspects looking for answers."

Mau nodded and looked lost in thought herself. 'Wait. Talk later.'

"Yeah. I agree I need to tell him, but we won't do it quite yet. Let's get some more info on these people, and see what else we can find out."

'Tell me more,' Mau signed, pointing a paw at him and then the trunk.

"Tell you more about Saben? No? About how Saben lost his power?"

At Mau's nod, Seth thought about it. "I don't know exactly when he lost it. There were several things that had happened around that time. He got injured in a fight with a beast, a reptilian type chimera. I wasn't in the city at the time. I was staying in Laureli at an inn with a friend of Benjamin's. A few days after he was injured, he came to visit and Benjamin came too. It was my dad's birthday that weekend, the first one since he'd died. I remember celebrating at the inn, and telling stories about Dad. We both drank a bit, but then just went up to bed. The next day Saben headed back to school, and we fought a bit because I wanted to go back to Rosia with him and he said no. Benjamin took me back to Vernar with him instead."

Mau sat calmly on the desk and waited for Seth to continue.

Seth remembered that day. "Laureli is a small village. It's actually pretty nice there, but I hated it. I felt so isolated and alone. It's also the town that belonged to Lady Jonetta, so we were a mile or so away from where my dad was killed." He shook his head. "I didn't want to stay. I tried to convince Saben that I could stay in his dorm." Seth waved to the tiny room. "Which I now know was impossible. Or I could get a job and find a place to stay in the city. Saben refused. I think he was worried about the same things that Booth is worried about for his siblings."

Seth moved the chair and sat down. "I told him I wasn't staying, and he tried to make me, so we fought. But I never did anything that would make him lose his power. I didn't."

Mau just grumbled and signed, 'More.'

"The end of semester testing was the next week," Seth said. "Saben flunked out. He couldn't cast a single spell. The Circle Tower told him that his power likely had a complication from his injury, or he'd burned it out during that beast fight. He left school and met us in Vernar. My power showed up about a week after that, so about three weeks from when his would have been lost."

Mau nodded and looked lost in thought. 'Tell me more, this.'

"Which this, about Saben? Me? Yes, so more about what I did. In Laureli? Yes. More about Laureli, or– yes. Okay. Laureli is out the north tunn–" Seth broke off. "Its outside Rosia in the same direction they took Blaise. Towards Mariglade. Mariglade is decent sized town, but Laureli is just a village on the way. You think it happened there?"

Mau shrugged and asked for more explanation.

"More about the night we drank? There's not much to say."

'Drink more more more?'

"Did we drink too much?" Seth thought about it. "I suppose. I mean, I never drank wine like that before, and it did affect me. I remember Saben falling asleep at the table and when Benjamin got back he helped me get him to bed." Seth frowned. "I think I fell asleep too. But we didn't go anywhere. We were still right there at the inn."

Mau's ears flattened.

"You think that was it? I thought it was something to do with that chimera. An infection or something, and that's why I wanted to get into the Circle Tower. I thought they would know how to cure it." He scoffed and shook his head. "They were part of the cover up."

Mau nodded.

"No wonder none of them wanted me there. That doesn't explain Arnold though. He's on that team. He thinks powers were stolen. No one is listening to him."

'Think him crazy.'

"You think he's the scapegoat. Anything they can't explain, they blame on Arnold and his known craziness."

'Yes.'

"He's the only one that got his power back. I know he's a jerk and he hates my guts, but do you think he could fix the power? Could he get it to go from me back to Saben?"

Mau considered for a bit as she paced the desk. Finally, she shrugged. 'Don't know.'

"I could talk to him about it. He might be on board just to have the opportunity to take my power away and I think he'd be willing to help Saben. And he might listen to me if I tell him he was right. What do you think?"

Mau flattened her ears.

"You don't like the idea. Arnold could screw me over. He could tell everyone that I have Saben's power. He's been telling people all along that powers are stolen, and no one believes him."

Mau nodded.

"You don't like it, and there are risks. Yeah okay. The only other thing there is Arnold is convinced Benjamin is involved."

Mau nodded, vigorously.

"You think Benjamin is involved too?" Seth was really unhappy about that. "What makes you think he's involved? He wasn't there most of that night. And he's been so kind to us."

'Sneaky, dangerous.' Mau paced in her 'no vocabulary' circle.

"Mau, this is the guy that saved my life the day my dad died. He looked after both of us. He's been a friend for a long time. I don't want to believe he could do something like this. There are so many other people involved. Thurstan. Hellena. The Skulls. That guy Jay that was doing the sabotage in the Circle Tower. Just because he knows some of these people and has been around when things happened, doesn't mean he did it."

Mau's ears flattened again. 'Bad trust.'

"If it's bad to trust him, then it's bad to trust anyone."

'Yes.'

"We're going to need to figure out who we can tell. We know the Circle Tower is compromised. You suspect Benjamin. We could possibly go to that Lord Derinheld that was investigating Blaise's capture? Or maybe one of the other professors? Laur, maybe?"

'Not now. Owen. Booth. More.'

"Heh. We never worked out names for the girls, did we? We have words for lies, trust, dangerous, and stairs, but not the girls' names or words like 'things'." Seth sighed. "Yeah. I'm sure I can trust my friends. They are all involved in this, too. But if they find out I have a stolen power, they might think I did it on purpose. They'd think I'm a liar and betrayed them. Blaise, anyway." Seth couldn't think of any realistic way that conversation could go any way but badly. "I will tell them when we know more. When it's okay to tell Saben, I'll tell them too."

Mau agreed. 'First.'

"What to do first? That's a good question. There are so many things to chase down." Seth looked at the bracelet Benjamin had given him. "I want to prove to you that Benjamin isn't involved, so I think we should start with this. I'll ask Selendrith to look at it and see if it is what Benjamin claimed it was. Then, we should find out what Blaise and Duvessa did about Hellena. We might be in the middle of an incident and not know it yet."