Red Twister was the top globe from the House of Granafyr, one of the oldest and most respected sphere training houses in Greenwyn. It was a fair guess to think that their sphere was a shoo-in for the win, but Alex knew that Steerwild, the sphere from House Marker that held the yellow position, was going to come first.

Why this might be was beyond him. Alex was a scryer; he could see into the future if he really tried, but it was a lot of work, and he had to pick what he looked for. He had no doubt he could have peered into the inner workings of House Granafyr’s training regime and understand why their prime sphere wasn’t doing so well as it had, but that would avail him nothing. Scrying was hard, hard work, and you had to pick your battles.

So, he acted surprised and nodded in commiseration as his friends lost their bets, and then speculated that maybe they should wait a few races out and see how things developed before betting any more. After he’d made a show of getting the ‘feel’ for the day himself, he placed his own first bet, and the others decided to go with his call on who to bet on and who to leave. When he won, they continued to go with his choices. They were more inclined to follow his advice than usual today. It made him reevaluate his pattern for the betting that day.

If they all won every time they went with his suggestion, he might start a pattern that he didn’t want to start, and so he took a couple of small losses to make them doubt him, then a larger one, by which time the others decided Alex’s lucky streak was over and began to make their own decisions.

The day progressed more smoothly then, but the revaluation and reorganisation of his plan early in the day had been exhausting. It would be so much easier, he thought, if he could have just come to the sphere races alone, but there was no chance of that now. At the end of the day, when the others were talking of going out drinking, or at least for one drink and a bite to eat, Alex shook his head. He wandered off into the city streets, not thinking, allowing his mind to rest and letting the carefully constructed map of the day fade from his mind.

Cleansing himself of the memory maps he created for these days was almost as important as the creation of them. If he didn’t carefully eradicate them, step by step, from his mind, they hung about, cluttering his other thoughts and forcing him to think of sphere racing when he was trying to think of other things. Worst of all, they went deeper into his long-term memory, and then they did that, he couldn’t evict them. He could still remember a sequence of bets he’d placed the first day he’d ever done a memory map for sphere racing. It was annoying, because every time he went out to the track, he had to carefully not think of this other memory, carefully not confuse it with the memories from today.

So, he walked, moving through the light misty rain that softened the lines of the city and soaked his cloak while never seeming to truly rain at all. The temperature was unexpectedly warm after yesterday’s bitter weather, and Alex took his time, wandering from the track - on the outskirts of a quiet residential district on the other side of the river - to the area known as Crosshome, where the bridges over the river carried traffic between the busy heart of the old city and the more modern residential areas.

He felt the weight of his leather purse in his hand. He was carrying it in his pocket, his fingers wrapped around the leather. After yesterday’s incident with the cutpurse, he meant to be careful.

He had complete sympathy with the wretched people who were obliged to do such things for a living, but for all that he didn’t want to lose his takings to one of them. He had worked too hard for this money, and it wasn’t as much as he’d have liked.

The river flowed wide and slow under the bridges as he passed over the smaller of the three, smelling that peculiar mixture of freshwater and saltwater that was unique to this place, just a few miles inland from where the river joined the sea.

Carts rumbled steady past in the centre of the bridge, and folk on foot moved around Alex in both directions as he crossed and then headed into the city, putting a bit more purpose into his stride now. He set a course for the Crafter’s district, the area in the old city around Workshop Street and the linen maker’s quarter. Here, those who wanted to buy ingredients and materials for their crafting exploits could be found, as could be the workshops and outlets of most of the professional crafters in town. You could get just about anything in the area around Workshop Street, and it was a well-known attraction for visitors to the city.

But Alex wasn’t a visitor. He was a resident, and he had something he wanted to do.

He found Good Yarns, the knitwear and woollens shop he’d been looking for, and headed in. He arrived later in the afternoon than he’d meant to. Evening was closing in over the city, and the shop was quiet. There were a few customers in the big, well-lit space, but two of them left together as Alex entered, and the third finished his purchases and hurried off as Alex walked in and began to look around.

The shelves were built right up to the ceiling, and most were packed with brightly coloured balls of wound yarn. As he looked around, he was amazed by the sheer number of colours available. He looked up, seeing stacked balls of yarn packing the shelves right up to the ceiling.

Nearer the counter, there were smaller shelves with needles of all different kinds; long, short, thick, thin, curved, straight, wooden, and metallic. On the floor around the counter and stacked along the bottoms of the shelves, were many huge baskets filled with unspun wood, dyed and undyed, and also some full of hats, scarves, and gloves in many colours.

“Help you?” a woman’s voice said.

Alex jumped slightly. He’d been gazing in fascination at the acres of colour on the shelves, taking it all in.

“How do you get up to the top shelves?” he asked. It hadn’t been the question he’d meant to ask at all, but she’d startled him, and he’d just said aloud what had been in his mind at the moment.

Very out of character, really, he reflected, and wondered at that.

She quirked a small smile at him. She was about the same age as Alex, maybe a little younger, but that was where their similarities ended. She was blonde where he was dark, tall and slim where he was short and lean, and she looked like she was well-fed and often outdoors, where Alex was suddenly painfully aware that he looked like a young man who didn’t eat enough and spent most of his time sleeping, scrying in a darkened room, or betting at the racetrack.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

She didn’t seem overly put off by his appearance. She met his eyes briefly, then looked shy and glanced away. Her eyes were very blue.

“We use a ladder,” she said, then added abruptly, “the wool at the top is kind of just for show. No one actually buys those ones, and we have to go up and change the stock as very frequently, because if we leave them up there they just sag and gather dust, and with dust come moths and with moths, well, you can imagine the kind of havoc moths would wreak in a yarn shop so we move the wool that’s up there regularly… with a ladder.”

She broke off, suddenly realising she was both babbling, and beginning to repeat herself. She smiled shyly at him again. He smiled back. Though she had been babbling, it had been done in a low, rapid, pleasant voice. He liked the way she talked, and he liked the fact that she had immediately shared something real about her life, and about the shop. This wasn’t just small talk. From her words, he felt he already knew a little about her. Like a vision in his scrying bowl, he saw a glimpse into her life, this regular task of moving the wool and checking for moths.

“I can imagine the havoc moths could wreak in a wool shop!” he agreed. “How do you prevent it?”

“Camphor bundles on the higher shelves, very frequent cleaning, oh, and a charm or two around the doors and windows.” She gestured toward the door, and Alex noticed for the first time a small arrangement of crystals hanging from a string by the door. It twinkled as if in the candlelight, but the angle was wrong. It wasn’t the candlelight - the crystal twinkled with its own inner light. The light of a spell.

“Did you want something?” she asked when he had been silent for a moment.

“Yarn,” he said. “Yarn and some needles. I want to learn to knit.”

She looked at him quizzically for a moment. “You don’t look the type.”

It was so forthright and direct that he had to laugh. “I don’t?” He looked down at himself. Tattered cloak, worn leather gloves, muddy boots and dark trousers and tunic, all probably with some quite visible stains. He remembered his own face in the small mirror in the bathroom at the racetrack - pale skin, wide dark eyes, a distracted, almost haunted look in his eyes. “Perhaps I don’t,” he admitted. “But all the same, I’d like to learn.”

“You have a book to learn from?” she asked.

He nodded. “Nine-Needle Gorian’s book. I got it from the library.”

She looked impressed. “Why do you want to learn to knit?”

“Leana!” a man’s voice said sharply, and they both looked up to see a man approaching them, his arms full of a pile of washed but undyed sheep’s wool. “What does it matter why the customer wishes to learn how to knit? It’s not our business, there’s no guild prohibition against learning this skill. I apologise, sir, my sister doesn’t know when to speak and when to keep silent.”

It was such a rude, patronising statement, and the young man’s attitude was in such stark contrast to the woman’s frank, friendly curiosity that for a moment Alex found the transition too jarring to deal with and just looked at the newcomer without comprehension.

Then he got a hold of himself and felt the slow ember of his anger glowing inside him. He drew himself up and looked down at the young man with as haughty an expression as he could muster as he said, “I beg your pardon, but I was enjoying my conversation with this young woman. I do not find her questions inappropriate, only your interruptions. I am new to this craft, and I appreciate the opportunity to discuss my reasons for wishing to learn.”

“Oh,” the young man said, obviously surprised. “Oh, right, then. Very well.” He glanced down at the pile of wool in his arms, then at Leana, then at Alex. He suppressed a small smile, winked at his sister, and turned away. “Sorry to bother you!” he called cheerfully over his shoulder as he made his way off and vanished through a door at the back of the shop.

Alex raised his eyebrows at Leana, but she rolled her eyes and gestured in the direction where her brother had gone. “No manners,” she confided quietly, and Alex nodded. “Where were we?” she asked.

“You asked me why I want to learn to knit,” he said.

“Well, and why do you?”

He almost told her.

He almost said that he’d scried a vision of his own path, asking the magic to show him what he should do with his life if he wanted to be able to make a living with his illegal scrying magic in a way that didn’t involve cheating at the betting track.

Almost.

“I don’t really know,” he said instead. “I just have a powerful sense that it’s the right thing for me to do.”

“The hand of fate,” she said, fluttering her hands dramatically. “The hand of fate moves the young scholar to his destiny… he must learn to knit!”

He chuckled. “I suppose it does sound rather ridiculous,” he said. “But that’s as good an answer as I can give just at present, I’m afraid. Will it do?”

She looked at him consideringly. “For now,” she said, and the implication was as clear in her words as it was in the way she met his eyes steadily as she said them. She wanted to see him again. She knew he was holding something back, and she was interested. She heard his words and accepted them, but she wanted to know more about him.

She wanted to see him again.

Alex opened his mouth and shut it again, then he said, “Good,” rather lamely, and smiled at her. “I have a few things I’d like to buy,” he said. “I’ve read the start of Gorian’s book, and he recommends chunky wool, and thin needles of light wood. I was thinking about that wool over there?”

Over the next twenty minutes, he learned more about needles and grades of yarn than he had from several hours of Gorian’s book. He spent all the money he’d budgeted for his starting supplies and was pleased to find that it bought him more than he had expected. He loved the bright colours and the smell of the wool, and the needles themselves seemed to hum with potential as he held them.

When he was done, he had four balls of yarn, two sets of needles, and a cloth bag with a drawstring to keep everything in.

“Don’t let your bag get wet in the rain,” she cautioned him, looking outside as she showed him to the door. “Will you take a carriage home?”

He looked at her, considered saying yes, then pushed the impulse to lie firmly aside. “I don’t have very much money for that kind of thing,” he admitted. “I’ll walk. I’ll put my hood up and keep my wool and needles safe under my cloak. Like this,” he added, tucking the bag under his cloak and holding it tight.

There was no trace of judgement in her eyes as she nodded. “Very well, then. Good luck. I hope I see you again. If you need anything else, you know where to come.”

He heard the door lock behind him as he left, and glancing back, he saw her pulling the blinds down over the windows.

He was three streets away and walking fast when he realised he hadn’t told her his name.