Page 9 of Homeward for a Spell

She reaches for one of the lineup of ales and takes a bracing sip. Enough of this talk. Time to finish the task in front of them and get out there on the road. “Anyhow,” she forcefully changes the subject, “with Bramble and Nura signed on, all we need now is our spellcaster.”

Remy’s sharp-eyed gaze lingers for a moment longer before he chuckles and turns away. “All we need is a spellcaster,” he echoes, letting the conversation go, thank the gods. “And I’m quite sure one will walk in at any moment.”

By the next morning—the final day of auditions, after which they’re meant to have a full party signed on—Sage has seriously begun to doubt. They’ve seen a handful of applicants claiming to be casters, but none who Sage would want to bring along on a walk in the woods, let alone a perilous adventure. By noon, she’s become desperate enough that she’d be tempted to give Babbock a second chance, if he had a scrap of magic in his oversized bones.

Not really, but almost.

That’s when a young woman crosses the tavern with quick, clipped steps to approach their table. She clutches a scroll in both hands, as though it’s a rope from which she dangles above a quicksand pit. She nods, and the ash-blond bun piled atop her head bobs forward. “Hello. My name is Theodora Durand. But most call me Tea, if you’d please.” She seems to be around Sage’s age, though her features are somewhat obscured behind an enormous pair of glasses, the lenses thick as saucers. They magnify a pair of astonishingly dark-blue eyes. The rest of her is hidden beneath a very well-made if unfashionable overcoat, shaggy and shapeless, with further scrolls poking out from the pockets. She sets the scroll she carries on the tabletop and smooths it out to face them. “If you’ll just read my essay of application here, I think you’ll find it—”

“What say you give us the summary,” Remy suggests.

“All right…All right.” Cut off mid-speech, Tea takes a moment to compose herself. “I’m Theodora Dur—Oh, I’ve said that bit.” Her round face flushes, and she shoves her hands into her coat pockets, as though scrolls might bring her comfort. “I’m currently a higher student at Trouferry, in—Well, I suppose you must know Trouferry?”

Remy snorts, but even Sage knows of Locronan’s premier college for the brilliant and the rich—the crown jewel of the kingdom’s academia, as Auximia is for Harrow—though she doesn’t put much stock in school, never having finished as a lower student in Olde Post. Remy was right about that. “We’ve heard of it,” she humors Tea.

“My mentor—Professor Gorn, so incredible, you’ve heard of them, I assume?” Tea continues.

“No,” Remy replies this time, the word like a stone sinking through water.

“I see. Well, Professor Gorn has informed me that I need to complete fieldwork before graduation if I’m to place at the top of my focus.”

“Which is…” Remy prompts.

“Arcana.”

Now Sage sits up a bit straighter. A higher student in Arcana can mean only one thing: Tea is a wizard.

Or at least, she’s studying to be one.

“And you heard of our party auditions all the way in Locronan?” Sage asks, salting her own excitement with a healthy pinch of suspicion. When Remy meets her eye approvingly, she almost regrets it.

“What? Oh no. I saw your poster at the docks. I was traveling home for a social obligation which, frankly, I was dreading anyhow, so I managed to slip away. I love my mothers, you see, but they regard my pursuit of my studies as a bit…eccentric. I suppose I’m something of a family aberration. Still, they’ll let me beg off for an opportunity to accelerate my schooling, which happens to have fallen into my lap. So your timing is quite fortuitous.”

“And…you understand the risks of the journey you’re applying for?” Sage wishes she didn’t feel compelled to ask, close to the deadline as they are.

Tea lifts her chin, bun shifting again. “I have read every entry in the Adventurer’s Compendium in Trouferry’s library. I assure you, I am well informed of the perils ahead, and prepared to meet them.”

“You can cast, then?” Remy asks.

“Oh.” Tea blinks her magnified eyes. “Oh yes.” Her hand flutters out of her pocket to adjust her glasses. Closing her eyes, she mumbles words beneath her breath, seemingly rehearsing, then speaks them aloud in an academy-trained timbre. It’s not a language Sage understands, nor one that resembles any she’s heard in Harrow, but the tongue of something that exists in the planes beyond theirs, selected by Tea to suit the moment and her needs. The air takes on the slightest shimmer, as though Tea is surrounded by heat haze. Then a gust of warm wind sweeps through the tavern, originating from the wizard. It sends their papers scuttling across the table, which slides backward to thud against Sage’s and Remy’s chests before the gust moves on. It sends cups tumbling in its path and rattles the crooked window shutters until it reaches the tavern door, whisking out into the street.

“Will that suffice for proof?” Tea asks above the disgruntled mutterings of the customers with ale now pooling in their laps.

Sage exchanges a look with Remy, who tips his head: her call.

She highly doubts that an Adventurer’s Compendium, whatever that is, has sufficiently prepared the wizard to leave her tower in Locronan’s version of the Ivory Court. But the woman can cast, there’s no denying. And with the day and their odds of another spellcaster turning up quickly dwindling, Sage isn’t in the position to be fussy. “Welcome to the adventure, Tea Durand.”

With their party assembled, Sage signals to the barkeep to settle their bill while Remy excuses himself to visit the privy. She stretches her arms above her head, arches her spine, and tips back in her chair, mind already turning toward the many preparations she has ahead of her. They leave Kingfisher in three days, which is hardly sufficient time to study and copy every map of the Northlands she can get her hands on in the university library, or to debrief her new party members and ensure they’re as well supplied and prepared for the journey as possible.

“You’re on the party-planning committee?” an incredulous voice asks. An incredulous, melodic, familiar voice.

Sage lets the front legs of her chair slam down against the flagstone floor as she bolts upright. “You’re applying?” she asks right back.

Araphi Clauneck, current heir to the Clauneck empire, stands in front of Sage’s table with a posture that betrays her privileged upbringing, her elegant chin tilted up so that she looks down her aquiline nose at Sage. Her clothing too speaks loudly of wealth. She wears a green silk dress and an embroidered vest laced across her ample chest, its low neckline leaving little to Sage’s imagination. A cunningly carved little token of a lemon hangs from a leather cord to rest snuggly between her…well. Her long black hair is half-twisted into a gorgeous set of braids, while the rest flows down like dark water.

And there’s a lute strapped to her back.

Sage sweeps her gaze up to Araphi’s face, determined to ignore her cleavage, and finds the woman watching her with one delicate, raised eyebrow. Self-conscious against her will, Sage straightens in her chair and rubs the back of her neck, where a fresh shave has left nothing but velvet at the nape. At least she’s more presentable than she was upon slumping into Kingfisher.