“It’s not your fault that you didn’t know about your subclass,” Cal said as he spooned tea herbs into the pot ready for the kettle to boil. “It’s the fault of the silly prohibition that the wealthy and powerful have against using or displaying magic. A person with your talents should have been recognised early. Your talent should have been nurtured and explained to you. As part of that process, your subclass would have been recognized as well. As it was, you had to discover your magic for yourself, without training, so it’s no wonder that there are gaps in your knowledge.”

The kettle began to bubble and Cal lifted the lid to have a look. The water was not quite boiling yet.

“You’re an elemental mage, Max,” Cal continued. “That means you can manipulate the materials that make up the world using magic. Elemental mages are the most common in our world - Stone Singers, Steel Singers, Wood, Water, and Earth Singers, all are widespread and well-known. But everyone who is a Singer also has a subclass. Nearly always, that’s what’s called their Weaver class. It might be something related - a Water Singer might have a subclass as an Ice or Steam Weaver. Other times it’s not related at all, for example with Jason, who is a Stone Singer as his main class and a color weaver as his subclass. While the Singer class magics are generally based on the manipulation of some fundamental substance, Weaver class magic can be more varied and subtle, like Sealth or Color.”

“I knew that some people have two classes - Singer and Weaver - but I didn’t know everyone who was one was also the other,” Max said. He’d recovered himself a little now, and some of the color had come back into his cheeks.

“That’s how it works,” Cal said. “It’s pretty much unheard-of for that not to be the case,” Cal said. “Most - but not all - elemental mages specialize in one or the other. Some even let their Singer or Weaver class slip completely as they put all their effort into mastering only one. This street that we live on, for example, Sandweaver Street, is named for a particularly skilled Sandweaver who helped in the construction of this part of the city. He was a Stone Singer too, but it was said that he was hopeless at it, because he put all his effort into the manipulation of sand.”

Max chuckled. “How did that help him build the city?” he asked. “Surely stone would have been better?”

Cal was pleased to hear his friend laughing, and he smiled as the kettle boiled.

“I don’t know,” Cal said, lifting the kettle and pouring the steaming water over the tea herbs that lay ready in the pot. “I’m sure we could find out if you wanted to.”

“What I want to know,” Max said, “is how you knew about my subclass.”

Cal looked at him in surprise. “I saw it in the eyeglass, that night when we first met.”

“Ahh!” Max said. “So, that was it! I remember you looking at me through the glass. That was how you discovered my father’s former name attached to me. I never knew that he’d called me by his old name, and I was so focused on that at the time that I didn’t pay attention to anything else. So you saw my stats then, just like you do when you look at a monster core?”

“I did,” Cal said. “And as part of that, I saw that you have the Stealth Weaver subclass. I thought you knew, I just assumed - seeing as you broke into my shop and all - that you were actively using your stealth magic.”

Max gave Cal a look and raised one eyebrow. “Don’t you think,” he said dryly, “that if I’d known I was a Stealth Weaver and was using the magic, I might have been a bit more… well, stealthy?”

“I suppose so!” Cal laughed, pouring the tea into two cups, stirring in a bit of honey and handing one cup to Max. “To tell the truth, things happened so quickly after we met, and we’ve been so busy since, that I never had a chance to really think about it. You know how it is; when you assume something and don’t have it contradicted, there’s a tendency to forget that it’s an assumption rather than a fact.”

Max nodded. “I guess so,” he said, taking a sip from the sweet tea. “But what do I do with this knowledge now that I have it? You’re right, of course, my talent for Steel Singing was never picked up when I was younger, and that meant that I never received any formal training. I’m good at Steel Singing, and I’ve practiced a fair bit, but I’m completely self-taught. If I’d been properly trained from an early age, I guess the Stealth Weaver part of me would have been noticed and trained as well, as you say. But in reality, I have no idea how to access this new magic, never mind practice.”

Cal thought for a moment. “I wonder,” he said. “Perhaps we ought to think about how we might get you some formal training,” he said. “We were discussing the enchanting exam earlier; there are formal training centers for your magics as well. Would you like that?”

“Surely it’d be too expensive,” Max said, looking a bit crestfallen.

“Not as expensive as putting you through enchanting school,” Cal said. “Yeah, it would cost, but it’d be worth it for you to learn more about who and what you are. You could do the initial training in stealth weaving and find out if it’s something you want to pursue further. And even though you’ve practiced, it could be good for you to get some formal training in Steel Singing too.”

“I don’t know,” Max said, still doubtful. He glanced at the cores on the table. “It feels like it would be a bit of a big investment from you, for something that wouldn’t help your business any. It would be purely for me.”

“We should find out how much the training would be, at least,” Cal pressed. “And it doesn’t necessarily have to just be for you. You’ve already helped me out a lot with your Steel Singing, and you’re working here unpaid - we could consider it back payment once we get enough money.”

Max brightened a little at that idea. “I suppose we could do that!” he said. “That feels like it would be a bit more fair on you at least.”

Max furrowed his brows as he thought it over. “Okay,” he said after a moment’s consideration, “let’s find out how much the training is. But if we’re going to be paying for anything, we’d best get back to our enchanting. I was feeling a bit faint there when you first said that about me being a Stealth Weaver, but I feel better now. Come on, let’s do some enchanting.”

Cal and Max took their tea back over to the table with the cores, after Max had put a few more logs on the fire to boost the warmth in the room. Cal considered taking a rest before going on to the eyeglass, but on balance he decided that he was too interested in the result - there was no way he would be able to sleep again, even for a short while, before he’d done the eyeglass.

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“Oh, shall we take a look at the extras before we start?” Max suggested.

“The extras?” Cal asked. “Oh, you mean the ores, the feathers, and the little essence bottles? Sure, let’s take a look with the eyeglasses.”

But they were bound for disappointment. Cal looked carefully through the glass at each item, but there was no information available at all on any of them.

He frowned. “That’s really unexpected,” he said. “I’d have guessed there’d be at least some information available there, but there’s nothing. The colors don’t even change or flicker the way they would through a regular enchanter’s eyeglass. Even an eyeglass unmodified by the application of a blank core shows a bit of extra information - a bit more depth to the colors, maybe a halo of light around the object to give an idea of its potency. But these have nothing!”

“Why do you think that might be?” Max asked.

Cal shrugged. “It’s hard to say, really. My only guess is that maybe these bits simply don’t have any magical properties. I can’t see any other explanation than that.”

Max shook his head. “That seems hard to believe. These appeared in the core collection chamber from monsters - surely there must be some magical quality to them. Maybe it’s just some property that the eyeglass doesn’t pick up? Perhaps these aren’t useful for enchanting, but for some other purpose?”

Cal looked at the assortment of new items, and he felt certain - for no reason he could explain - that there was something more to the lack of information, and that neither he nor Max were correct in their assessment of the situation. There was something about these items, some feel, some tingle in the air around them that made him certain not only that they were magical, but that they could be used for enchanting.

A handful of feathers on the table colored a bright, clean purple, the same shade as the Fateweaver Phoenix cores. Cal picked the feathers up and ran a finger over them. They were soft to touch, much softer than the feathers of any other bird he’d ever come across. He thought of the black feathers he’d found in the items Darkworth had left here in the shop when Cal had first explored the shop. Those had been phoenix feathers, and what was more, the eyeglass had shown data about them, including the beast they’d come from.

Not so with these.

“I must ask Laria if she remembers more about how these feathers dropped,” Cal said. “And the other items, too.”

He examined the other treasures. The lumps of ore looked like very rich, high-quality gold ore, mostly gleaming metal with just a few smaller bits of dark rock through them. They were heavy, and cool to the touch despite the heat of the room. The bones were thick, short, and stubby, very strange to look at, and unlike the bones of any animal Cal knew of. They were too short to be anything but bones from a hand or foot, but too thick and sturdy for either of those. For their size, they weighed unexpectedly light in his hands.

The last group of items was the strange little collection of bottles, all filled with some dark liquid. The bottles were tiny, about the size of Cal’s thumb, the kind of bottle that one might find in the shop of a healer, containing a valuable tincture for medical use. The bottles were firmly stoppered with a dark blue substance that looked like wax, but when Cal picked at it with his thumbnail he found it much tougher than wax. His nail made no dent in the stuff. It was as hard and slick as glazed, fired clay.

“Do the bottles contain monster blood, do you think?” Max asked.

Cal held one of the bottles close to the light of a candle to see it better. The glass itself was roughened and opaque like seaglass, and it was hard for Cal to tell exactly the color or consistency of the liquid inside.

“I don’t know,” he said to Max. “Maybe, or perhaps it’s some other kind of monster essence that we’ve never heard of.” He tilted the bottle. “The bottle’s so full that shifting it about doesn’t allow me to see the consistency of the contents. If there was any air in the bottle at all, I’d be able to get an idea if the liquid is thick or thin, but there doesn’t seem to be even a single bubble in the bottle.”

“We could try to break it open,” Max suggested doubtfully.

Cal shook his head and put the bottle down. “Let’s not mess with it. I want to know more about what might be in the bottles before we start trying to break our way into them. For all we know, this might be really dangerous stuff out of the bottle, or at least breaking the bottle might make the fluid inside lose whatever properties it has. I don’t want to risk that.”

There being nothing more they could do for now with the bottles, bones, feathers, and ore, they gathered the items neatly together at one end of the table and left them there.

Cal went and got the new eyeglass that Laria had purchased from the catkin glassmaker. Then he got a Fateweaver Phoenix core and laid it on the enchanting table, but not in the enchanting groove just yet.

He took the new eyeglass out of its soft leather pouch, laying the pouch to one side as he held the eyeglass up and looked closely at it. The unenchanted eyeglass was a beautiful piece of work, delicately finished, with a perfectly smooth surface on the glass and a solid, highly polished circular frame. The frame was made of a metal Cal couldn’t identify. At first glance he’d thought it was gold, but now he looked at it more closely and found he wasn’t so sure. The smooth curve of metal had a silvery gleam to it that caught the light, and didn’t look like the rich, ruddy sheen of pure gold.

“Do you know what kind of metal this is?” Cal asked, handing the eyeglass to Max.

Max held the eyeglass near the candlelight and peered closely at it, turning it this way and that to see how the light reflected from the frame. “I think it’s made of yal ekrem,” he said after a moment. “Have you heard of that?”

“Yal ekrem?” Cal said, slowly pronouncing the strange new words. “No, I’ve never heard that name before. What is it?”

“People call it silvergold here in Roon sometimes, but yal ekrem is the name for it in the language of the Dernish people. Dern is where this metal comes from. It’s a naturally occurring alloy of silver and gold - mostly gold, but with enough silver to give it this brighter shine when the light hits it. Makes the metal a bit lighter overall as well, and good for this kind of fine work.”

“Dern,” Cal said. “That’s a long way away.”

“South of Yallish, where the catkin people come from, and south-east of Roon,” Max agreed. “It’s a long way to travel from Roon, because ships have to leave through the north passage out of Jutlyn harbor and then go all the way around the Roon archipelago, but the catkin people of Yallish have a swift trade route between their land and Dern.”

Max handed the eyeglass back. “What’s her name again?” he asked.

“Who?” Cal said.

“The woman who made this. She’s catkin, isn’t she?”

“Yeah, that’s right. Her name’s Ausha, that’s what Laria said.”

“She must have contacts with traders back home to be able to get this stuff. Yal ekrem is pretty common in Yallish, but the catkin love it and so even though it’s common, they generally buy all the stock they can get from Dern and don’t trade it outside of their country. That makes it valuable here in Roon, because most people can’t get it.”

“That’s interesting,” Cal said thoughtfully, moving back to the enchanting table and weighing the eyeglass thoughtfully in his hand.

“What’s interesting?” Max asked.

“Just that Laria said she only paid 350 crowns for this. I mean, I know that 350 crowns is quite a lot of money, but it seems a very good price for something like this - particularly since the frame is made from this metal, this yal ekrem. I think Laria said that the glass-maker owed her a favor. It must have been quite a favor, to get a piece like this eyeglass at that kind of price.”

He placed the beautiful eyeglass down in the hollow on the left, and the Fateweaver Phoenix core on the right. Then he pushed up his sleeves and took a deep breath. Max stepped forward and stood still and silent at his side as Cal began the first part of the spell.