It was a complicated potion, one Mirk had been picking away at in lulls in between patients for the past two afternoons. They were all waiting for other shoe to drop, for the low-born infantry to finally be sent through the transporter to handle the mess that'd been made of the contract on the realm the Destroyer's arrow had come from. Mirk had found the grimoire shelved in the wrong place at the library, while searching out the recipe for a flesh-regeneration potion simple enough for him not to almost immediately forget. Tucked in between its onion-skin pages had been a fertility potion, written in Latin. Thankfully, it wasn’t too far off from the Latin he'd been forced to spend hours untangling at the Abbess's elbow, upon his mother's insistence that he be given a noble education instead of spending his days accompanying Father Jean in his wandering about the abbey's gardens and the village in the valley below.

He had no use for it himself. But everyone could see how things were going between Danu and Mordecai. Even Yule, with his constant pessimism and dismissive comments about Mordecai's character, was making preparations for their inevitable wedding, fighting against his instinctive distaste for everything related to his homeland and trying to find a way to bully or seduce a magicked horseshoe out of a cavalry officer. Though Mirk had only known Danu for half a year, he felt the need to make a good showing. And not by purchasing her something extravagant, which would only serve as a reminder of his odd position as a high-born son among the struggling and outcast men and women of the Twentieth.

Danu deserved something better than pearls or silver. She'd always been there for him, always ready with a kind word to counter Yule's sourness or a bit of fresh gossip to distract him from whatever was troubling him. Mirk knew how worried Danu was about not being able to conceive, though she didn't speak of it openly. It was in the way she watched the high-born women get spirited off by the nurses when they came in looking ill, half-apprehensive and half-envious. And it showed in her eagerness to help out whenever one of the washerwomen or maids snuck in the back door with an unruly child in tow who needed an arm set or a cut stitched, though they technically were only supposed to heal enlisted K'maneda. Full Deaths couldn't bear children with one another, and the odds of a union between a Death and any other person producing offspring were slim. Even though Danu was only half-Death, the product of one such marriage, he could tell that she wasn't thrilled about the prospects her lineage gave her.

Mirk wasn't thrilled by the prospects of his potion staying together. But he was blessed with the gift of fecundity. If he could direct it toward someone who'd welcome it instead of feeling sick at the mention of it, he'd feel better about things. And maybe if he shunted some of that fertile potential away from himself, no one would ever be tempted to take it from him by force again.

Shaking his head to keep his mind away from those thoughts, he reapplied himself to mixing the potion. It was a time-consuming, fiddly affair. All the components required laborious preparation, grinding and boiling and sifting. He'd needed to go to Ilya to find some of them, since he was the one most familiar with where to get uncommon and somewhat illegal materials. Currently, Mirk was trying to get a powder made of a stone from somewhere in the far east to dissolve into a tincture made principally of birch wood ash and water drawn from a well near a crossroads. The voices of all three ingredients were discordant, quarrelsome, none of them familiar with one another and unwilling to even try to make friends. Mirk could feel his eyes starting to go crossed as he held the glass he was stirring the mixture in up to the light, to see if he was making any progress despite how annoyed all the components sounded.

"You!"

Mirk saved the potion at the very last second, so startled by the door smashing open behind him that he nearly flung the glass aside in favor of taking cover underneath the workbench. He probably should have. The fury that came along with his unannounced visitor made it instantly clear that the only thing that'd saved him from getting decked was how pathetic his fright was. Fixing a poor, cringing excuse for a smile on his face, Mirk turned on his stool to face the door.

"I'm sorry, Kali...please, let me explain..."

Kali was furious, just as expected. Though he was a little surprised that she hadn't come for him sooner. He'd spoken with Comrade Commander Margaret a day and a half ago. She must have decided to put off telling her daughter about her trip to the Continent until the day before to make sure that Kali didn't have time to run off somewhere and avoid it. Kali glared at him down the length of her nose, now crooked from having been broken and not properly set, folding her arms tightly across her chest. To keep herself from deciding to change her mind and punch him, Mirk guessed.

"What is there to explain?" she snarled, drawing a few steps closer. But she didn't finish the job, didn't lunge forward and seize him by the collar of his robes and hurl him across the workbench.

"I had to tell Comrade Commander Margaret about it all in a certain way. Otherwise methinks she'd have never let me hire you. I'm not planning on introducing you to anyone. Honest."

Kali scoffed. "Hire me? I'm not getting paid for any of this! All I'm getting is that stupid dress uniform and nagged to the end of my wits!"

Mirk shrugged. Since his smile and conciliatory words weren't doing anything, money was the next best option. As was fitting, for handling an angry K'maneda. "Your mother said it wasn't necessary, but I'd be happy to pay you myself. What would you like?"

Like he'd been hoping, the offer gave Kali pause. Though she didn't step back from him, she unfolded her arms, her hands falling open at her sides. "What is your plan, if it isn't helping Margaret marry me off?"

"I do need to go see the Circle. It'd be rude if I didn't come with attendants. That and it would...hmm, prove a point to them all if I came alone, maybe? Not everyone in it was friends with my grandfather, and there was that duel I had to fight a month or so ago-"

Kali cuffed him in the shoulder, as if trying to knock some sense into him. "You were in a duel?"

"Euh...it's a little hard to explain, but yes. That's half of why I need to go. I need to fix what happened after. So, really, it'd be good if I brought along someone who could fight if need be. But also someone who knows the rules, more or less. Methinks that coming with people like Niv and Gen wouldn't go over well. I don't think Niv would fit in the carriage, for one thing...we had to have him sit on top when he was with us back at home..."

Though Kali's eyes were narrowed, the tension was flowing out of her — Mirk wasn't sure whether it was the prospects of getting into a fight with the other nobles that was calming her, or his reassurance that he didn't plan to set her up with any of them. He decided to press the latter point, so as not to get her hopes up too high.

"I mean it, Comrade Kali. I'm not trying to play matchmaker. Besides, no one other than Seigneur Rouzet isn't married, and he's got much better marriage prospects in France. It's the same with everyone else's grandsons and nephews. There are dozens of ladies lining up for each of them. You and your sister will just be something interesting for them to gossip about over tea. And I know how you feel about marriage, even though you think I'm on your mother's side. You should be able to choose your own path in life. That's the K'maneda way, non? At least, that's what Genesis always says."

Kali deflated, yanking out the stool beside him and thunking gracelessly down onto it. "I wish she'd quit all this. She has Catherine, she’s twenty-five this spring. She'll spit out a baby for her soon enough. Why can't she just leave me alone?"

"Do you never want to get married?" Kali tensed at his words. Mirk rushed to explain, before she could begin to rant at him. "I don't either, and I really should. My family has no one left other than Uncle Henri and the children. And Henri married into the d'Avignons, so he doesn’t really count."

Shrugging, Kali began fussing with her cuirass, as she always did when she was uncomfortable, trying in vain to get it to stop digging into her ribs. "It's not that I never want to get married. It's just...I don't want to end up locked in some tower like the rest of the women. I want to fight. I want to do things. And you can't do things with a husband nagging you and a bunch of brats clinging to your skirts."

"Methinks there has to be someone in the K'maneda who'd rather have a fighter for a wife than a mage. I don't think any of the Easterners would mind. A lot of them like women with...euh...fire to them? That's the word they use for it, anyway."

"Me? Marry one of those idiots? I'll pass."

"They're really not so bad, once you get to know them...anyway, you're still so young, Comrade Kali. There's no need to rush into things when you're a mage. Methinks your mother should know that."

"I'm thirty this year," she said with a sigh, giving up on tugging her cuirass down and settling for picking at a bit of loose stitching instead. "Practically dead, as far as Margaret is concerned. She was already married for a decade by the time she was my age."

Mirk reached over to pat her on the shoulder, reflexively projecting a spark of sympathy along with the gesture, though he knew Kali wouldn't be able to feel it. "It'll be all right. I'm sure you'll make your way somehow. Maybe it'll be like you're thinking, and things will settle once your sister's married."

"You healers are all too optimistic," she grumbled.

"Have you met Yule?"

"He's not normal. He should be a combat healer."

"What would you like for coming with me, hmm? It's really not fair of me to keep you from your work without paying you for your time. There has to be something I can do for you..."

Again, Kali shrugged in response, her frown deepening as the thread she was picking at came off, taking a bit of crumbling leather with it. It gave Mirk an idea, presented him with the opportunity to manage two problems that had been weighing on his mind at once. "How would you like some real armor? You'd be doing me a favor there too, actually..."

"What do you mean?"

"My Uncle Henri is an armorer. Well, he makes swords too, but methinks you already have one of those. Anyway, he's been cooped up here in the infirmary with nothing to do for weeks and weeks now. I'm sure having a project to work on would make him feel better. You know how some men are...always need to be proving their worth..." Kali felt the same, Mirk thought, but it wouldn't be diplomatic to mention it.

Kali shot him a skeptical look. "And you'll pay for that?"

Mirk shrugged. "Henri will do it for free, methinks. Not that his work is so poor that he has to give things away, but...well. We d'Avignons like to help people, even if he wasn't born one of us. It rubs off, I suppose..."

She stared down at her fraying, undersized cuirass for a time, shifting awkwardly on the stool. Kali was always like that, Mirk had noticed — one of those never-sit-still types, always striving, never resting. "You'll probably just nag me until I say yes, won't you?"

"Look at it this way. You won't have to come visit me so often if you have better armor," Mirk suggested, flashing her an encouraging smile.

Throwing up her hands in defeat, Kali shoved her stool back and rose to her feet. "If it's rubbish, I can pawn it off on one of the other girls. What floor is he on? I assume he'll want measurements."

"Up on the far end of fifth," Mirk said. "He'll be the one with five children worrying over him. Did your mother tell you where we'll be meeting Seigneur d'Aumont's carriage?"

"Yes. Hopefully I won't be seeing you before then," she muttered to herself, as she turned on her heel and tramped out the door.

Mirk listened to her walk down the hall, chuckling to himself. He had been honest with Kali about not wanting to find her a husband, but he hadn't been entirely truthful about why he'd sent her upstairs to talk to Henri. His uncle would be happy to have something productive to do, of course, but Claire had been seeking him out at least once a day ever since he'd first visited to ask him if he'd found a lady sword master to give her lessons yet. Mirk got the impression that Kali wasn't fond of children, but he thought her distaste might waver a little if presented with someone who could remind her of herself at an earlier age, an eager young girl who'd rather fight than hide and endure. Henri wouldn't be happy if Kali agreed, but hopefully putting together her new armor would keep him occupied enough not to complain.

…maybe Yule did have a point about him being underhanded at times. Mirk dismissed the thought and set in on trying to cobble together the fertility potion again, with renewed optimism about his odds of getting all its components to finally start agreeing with each other.

He was just about to combine the three mixtures he'd painstakingly assembled into the largest potion bowl he could find when he was interrupted again. That time, his visitor knocked on the door behind him instead of throwing it open and barging in. Mirk gingerly set down the second jar he'd been about to dump in the bowl — its contents were still blue, he had time — and turned on his stool to face the door once more. "Euh...can I help you?"

Mirk almost didn't recognize him, upright and smiling and dressed in the casual-looking yet expensive blacks that the richer K'maneda favored. It was the mage he'd pulled the Destroyer's arrow out of. Mirk did his best to return the mage’s smile, despite how startled he was by his unannounced appearance up in the infirmary's workrooms.

"You're a hard man to track down!" the mage enthused at him.

"Euh...I'm sorry, Comrade...ah..."

"Elijah. Elijah Oliver. But please, no comrade. Having a title hurled at you all day gets old, doesn't it? I see why you healers don't bother with them."

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Doing his best to keep himself from cringing over having forgotten the mage's name, Mirk nodded. "Yes, Elijah. That's it. How can I help you? Are you not feeling well?" he asked, looking the mage over. Mirk didn't feel certain enough about things to prod at Elijah with his magic.

There was something disarming about him. Perhaps it was his offhand friendliness, the way he spoke with the same offhand lightness that the low-born infantrymen and healers did. Mirk had spent enough afternoons in noble parlors to know that sort of thing could go one of two ways: either Elijah was genuinely happy to see him, or he was looking for something. Information, or a concession, or simply to catch him unawares. Knowing the K'maneda, Mirk was hesitant to accept Elijah's smile as genuine, though he couldn't sense any immediate threat in him.

Elijah sat down, unprompted, on the stool to his left that Kali had vacated less than an hour ago. "Oh, no, I feel great! Thanks to you, ah..."

"Mirk."

"Right! Mirk. Like I said, I had a devil of a time finding you. Ambras insisted that he was the one who'd healed me, but I knew it couldn't have been him. I felt what kind of magic was in that arrow before I passed out. Ambras is very good, one of the best, but that arrow...it felt like it was eating me alive."

Mirk shrugged, helplessly. At a loss for what else to do, he allowed his shields to lower, just a hair, not enough to make it obvious that he was searching Elijah’s emotions rather than relaxing after being startled by his sudden appearance. He couldn't feel a thing from him beyond a strange, restless sort of curiosity. Either Elijah was skilled in handling empaths and was using the emotion to conceal his real intentions, or he truly was as happy as he seemed. "It was a little complicated, yes."

"No one was willing to tell me outright who healed me for some reason. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought that arrow had to be a Destroyer's doing. So I asked Emir where the healer who takes care of Genesis was, and he sent me up to see you." Elijah leaned in closer toward him, looking Mirk over with keen interest. The mage didn't even try to be subtle about how he prodded him with his magic, but Mirk couldn't sense anything in it beyond curiosity. And he didn't detect a hint of mind-magic in him besides. "Interesting. I would have thought you'd have to be chaotic to do it."

If Emir had told Elijah where to find him, then the mage couldn't pose that much of a threat. Emir had been with the K'maneda for over a hundred years; he was well-versed in the City's politics, as all commanders needed to be. But it still didn't set Mirk completely at ease. He tried to remain casual nevertheless, shrugging again. "It isn't so hard, once you know the trick to it. Methinks anyone could do it, if they took the time to learn."

Elijah laughed. "Ah, and modest too!"

"Euh...well, it's never very good to be prideful."

"Tell that to my officers," Elijah said, rolling his eyes. "Everyone is always going on about something...which Grand Master they trained with, who their father is...it's exhausting. Same as the titles."

"I'm sorry it causes you so much trouble."

"Ah, well. I chose this life. And so, I pay the price."

The comment, thrown out as a casual aside, piqued Mirk's interest. That was one of Genesis's sayings, almost word for word. Though when Genesis said it, it almost always had to do with something much more grim than having to deal with polite society. "Are you from one of the old K'maneda families? Your name doesn't sound like one, but I'm still not quite sure how all that works..."

Elijah pressed an incredulous hand to his breast. "Me? Oh, Lord no. I'm just another no one from nowhere. Brighton, if that matters."

Mirk shook his head. "Sorry. I'm still not very familiar with English cities."

"That's right! You're not from here, are you? French, is it? Or was it Italian..."

"French," Mirk confirmed. "Nantes, if that matters."

"Then we're both lost. I couldn't even tell you where Paris is. In the middle, somewhere, I think."

It wasn't quite right, but Mirk had no desire to correct him. "Methinks that's close enough."

"I really am wondering, though, what's a healer like you doing in the Twentieth? I know some of the commanders have a bee in their bonnet about wherever it is people are from, but usually they snap up talent fast. And you have to be talented, if you figured out how to heal the Destroyer. Seen him hurl healers clear out the front windows before when things are really nasty."

"That's exactly it, methinks," Mirk said, debating how much he wanted to expose, how far he wanted to press his luck. It'd be better to be honest. If Elijah was putting on an act, trying to woo him over to the Tenth or attempting to recruit him to serve as a personal healer for one of the noble commanders, the mage was going to be disappointed.

And if he had been sent to gather information instead, he'd gone to the wrong person. It wasn't as if Genesis had ever sat him down and explained the intricacies of his plans; Mirk doubted he knew much more than a keen observer with a bit of common sense could have sorted out on their own, their trip to visit Am-Gulat aside. "Genesis is my friend. What's it called...guilt by association? And I'm a half-blood too. Methinks some commanders feel even more strongly about that than they do about foreign born men. Just look at how much Comrade Commander Emir has to deal with."

A wistful look came onto Elijah's face as he leaned his head on one hand and looked off into the middle distance. "Ah, you're lucky. What I wouldn't give to just listen to him talk for an hour or so...now there's a man a mage could be proud to say he trained under. Genesis."

Mirk allowed his shields to slip lower still. It was the oddest reaction Mirk had ever seen anyone give in response to Genesis's name being brought up in conversation. At best, speaking kindly of the commander usually earned him a frown, and at the worst, the other party would go on ranting and cursing for a good ten minutes, since ranting at Genesis himself usually didn't do much good. Never before had he seen someone talk about Genesis with a dreamy look on their face, like a young lady waxing poetic about a handsome man who refused to look her way.

Though Mirk didn’t detect a hint of that kind of fascination in Elijah. He wished he could have said the same about himself. "Euh...really? Most of the mages from the high-born divisions aren't very kind to him..."

"Oh, of course they despise him. Someone who came from nowhere, who'd never even think of setting foot in a lecture or a guild circle, besting all of them without breaking a sweat? They're all dying of jealousy. I certainly am. But they just roll their eyes and complain instead of really looking at what he's doing. I've watched him work. It was that one time...ah, I forget which contract it was, somewhere off-realm. The Fourteenth was laying siege to a city. Burned through their men in a hurry and hauled in the Seventh to finish the job. Genesis wasn't having it. So he said he'd break the gates himself and then it'd be over and done with.

"I'd been working on them for a week. A week! And I had half the other mages from the Third supporting me besides. Genesis walked right up to it, arrows flying off left and right all around him, took a hard look, and then...ah, it was beautiful! Like watching a master conductor. No wand, no channeling devices, no charge stones or enchanted ink. Just a bit of charcoal. The spell he wrote on that gate was magnificent! Took it apart like it was nothing. A half hour, and the whole wall fell to dust."

While Elijah rambled, Mirk listened to his emotions rather than his words. And by the end of it all, Mirk was convinced: there was no artifice in the mage, no cunning flattery or hidden desires. His wonder and excitement were pure, almost childlike. Even if Mirk hadn't been an empath, the way Elijah was grinning at nothing and punctuating the high parts of his story with great sweeps of his free hand would have given him away to anyone with eyes to see.

But Mirk still wasn't entirely certain what to do with the realization that the one mage in the whole City who would have gladly sat and listened to one of Genesis's lectures for hours without complaint had found him. A mage who was firmly on the side of the high-born commanders. At least, for the time being.

Mirk felt too guilty about it all to lead Elijah into things directly. He settled for buying himself more time with a non-committal response. "He is very...euh, intelligent, yes. He's up all night reading."

"Have you seen his library?" Elijah asked, leaning in closer to Mirk again. His gray eyes were bright with curiosity and eagerness. "It must be astonishing! How many grimoires does he have?"

He'd never given Genesis's bookcases a second thought, knowing full well that everything there wasn't suitable to his magic. And probably written in some ancient, incomprehensible nightmare language besides. "I'm...methinks I haven't seen all of it, not really. But there's at least two or three hundred."

"Three hundred! I've been collecting for thirty years, and I've only just made it over one hundred!" Elijah sighed, rubbing his hand over his face. "Why does Alistair have to hate him? We could learn so much from him! The things we could do!"

"Why does everyone dislike him so much?" Mirk asked. He knew plenty about why Genesis hated the rest of the commanders, but why the feeling was so mutual was something of a mystery. Though Mirk could make a few assumptions, most of them relating to Genesis never tempering his opinions. "I know he can be...euh...a little particular, but it doesn't seem like enough..."

"I don't know, politics or something," Elijah said, waving him off. "Ideas about this and that, I've never been able to follow it. I'm a mage. I do magic. Everything else doesn't matter."

"Politics mean a lot to Genesis. I don't really understand much of them either...but methinks it mostly has to do with how the infantry is treated. And the djinn."

At the mention of the djinn, some of Elijah's enthusiasm dimmed. "A shame about the djinn. I've read a few books on them. Alistair doesn't let me hang around them too much, and they don't want to talk to me when I do get close, but I know that most of them are Am-Djinn. Can you believe it, making Am-Djinn fight hand-to-hand? That kinship line's all scholars and strategists. They probably have as much to teach us about magic as Genesis, if only Alistair would take his head out of his ass...but what can I do? The teleporters take me where I'm needed, I call up a bit of fire or enchant some canons, then they send me back. That arrow was the first time I'd ever gotten a scratch on me, believe it or not."

Considering the derisive way Yule had talked about Elijah's armor, the solid enchanted breastplate he'd been skewered in and the useless leathers, Mirk could believe it. But he only nodded, sighing, letting the worry he always felt when the topic of the djinn came up show through on his face. "I don't really know if there's anything we can do. But methinks Genesis has some ideas, maybe."

They shared a moment of troubled silence. Then, without warning, Elijah straightened up out of his slouch, slapping the workbench. "Say, I've just had one too! Why don't we do a trade? I'll listen to a politics lecture from him, and I get to ask him a few questions about his magic. We'd have to make sure Alistair didn't find out, but what could a bit of talking hurt? I've really just about had it with him, you know. Alistair. I thought he had to really appreciate magic, bringing a person like me along with him…but apparently I was wrong.”

Mirk had a hard time picturing anyone being mad at Elijah, if his sunny disposition was as constant as it seemed. “A person like you?”

Elijah nodded. “Blacklisted by all the guilds, no permit to practice magic. Persona non grata. I was stuck running a bookshop for the mortals, you know. Awful! Then, one day, Alistair shows up and says I can do as much magic as I want, and he'll give me every grimoire they find out on contract, as long as I help him out now and then. Even gave me a copy of Hirscher's Mysteries of the Immortal Flame as a token of good faith! I'd been looking for it for years! I thought, a man who knows that Hirscher's worth more than a whole ledger of gold has to be a real mage. But here I am, casting spells anyone could do. And Genesis and the djinn just get the same. Even you," he added, with a pointed gesture at the workroom's careworn selection of enchanted materials and three-quarters empty potion bottles. "If you can sort out how to heal the Destroyer with just this junk, think of what you could do with real tools!"

It was far too convenient, Mirk thought, a man of Elijah's station waltzing into the infirmary and offering him another way to worm his way in amongst the high-born K'maneda on a silver platter. From what he'd heard around the infirmary, the mere thought of protesting any of Ravensdale's actions could be enough to get someone killed, depending on the situation.

By all means, Mirk should have been more suspicious. But he could sense Elijah's enthusiasm as clearly as he could see the grin on his face. The mage felt as incapable of guile as K'aekniv did. An open book. It made Mirk wonder exactly what sort of arcane knowledge he possessed, what hidden power he'd mastered that was fearsome enough to grant him the privilege of living such a carefree life.

"Euh...I don't mean to be so blunt, Elijah, but what exactly are you asking for?"

Again, Elijah leaned in closer to him, grinning. "I'd give anything to learn even just a little from the likes of Genesis. Any grimoire, any armor, anything!"

"No, methinks that wouldn't be the sort of thing he'd want..." Genesis would want something much more dear, something dark and cunning. Something more dangerous. Though the commander always was adamant about people having a choice in things.

"Can you ask him if he'd speak to me anyway? Please? I'm sure we can work out some way to keep Alistair from noticing. I just...I don't know. I thought there'd be more to the K'maneda than this," Elijah said, with another vague gesture at the workroom's sparse implements.

"Tiens, let's do this, then," Mirk said, after a long pause. "I'll tell him what you've told me. And we'll let him decide things. It's impossible to get him to do much of anything he doesn't want to." Unless one had hold of Genesis's bindings, and Mirk was almost certain that Elijah didn't. If they were too difficult for Genesis himself to master, he doubted Elijah could, no matter how much enthusiasm he had for magic.

Elijah couldn't contain himself any longer. He bounced to his feet, grasping Mirk by the shoulders. "Would you? Would you really?"

Mirk smiled, unable to keep from laughing as he nodded. "Methinks no one would notice you coming to the infirmary now and then. And you can trust the Twentieth completely."

"Of course! Mum's the word! Lips sealed! Oh, I could just kiss you!" Elijah caught himself just before he did, releasing Mirk's shoulders and rubbing sheepishly at the back of his neck. "I won't! Though, don't the French do that? Or is that the Spanish..."

"It's no trouble," Mirk reassured him. "And since it's such an important thing to you, methinks it wouldn't be fair for me not to help. But you have to be patient with Genesis. Give him a week to think about things, maybe? Then come back here and we'll talk again. I'll have good news for you, hopefully."

"You healers are too kind. Well. I always get the feeling Ambras is working at something, but it's hard to tell with him," Elijah said, his eyes falling on Mirk's half-assembled potion. "I should let you get back to work. I don't know much about potions, never had the knack for it, but that looks complicated."

"It's a little tricky, yes."

Again, Elijah clapped him on the shoulders, treating Mirk to a grin that looked like it belonged on the face of a child who'd been given an extra dessert rather than on a mercenary mage. "Well! In a week, then? Be well, Mirk."

"You too. If you need anything else..."

But before Mirk could finish his thought, Elijah was already hurrying off, humming to himself happily and no doubt already wracking his brain for what sort of things he'd like to ask Genesis.

Mirk sighed, rubbing at his forehead and drawing his shields back up. He was getting a headache. Not from the strength of Elijah's emotions, but from his own over-thinking. No wonder Emir and Genesis and all the other serious, long-time K'maneda were always in such a mood. Mirk had always thought that the French noble mages were the foremost masters of plots and counterplots. The mechanizations of the K'maneda put them all to shame.

He still felt adrift, lost in a way that he never had back at home when having to deal with personalities and politics. Everything made sense there; everyone knew one another, and even the highest grandees were still cordial enough to the rest of them. Above all else, the French mages didn't normally kill each other. The fate that had befallen his family was an exception to the rule. But there was little sense in worrying over whether or not Elijah had just outwitted him, somehow. Genesis would know how to handle it. One way or the other.

Trying to put it all out of mind, Mirk turned back to his potion. The second jar full of potion was still blue, but it'd be turning any moment. He dumped it in the bowl, where the first third of the potion was still percolating away.

Much to his dismay, rather than turning the bright, sparkling purple he'd been hoping for, the potion turned dark brown and big, congealed chunks of it rose to the bowl’s surface. He must have let the three parts sit too long before combining them. There was nothing to be done other than start over again. Wearily, Mirk got up from his stool and went to empty the ruined potion into the slop bucket beside the workroom's sink.

Apparently, his luck only went so far.