"Show me" had to wait, because Lady Amara came in.
She stood at the front of the room with her hands folded and her warm, exact smile, and spent the whole morning on the trade roads to Bellonia, and Ambrose didn't read once. Not a page. He sat with his closed book under his elbow and wrote numbers in the margin of his notes, and every so often he looked at the stoneware jug under my desk the way a cat looks at a closed door.
I'd never seen him not read before. It was like watching a river stop.
At the midday break he was waiting for me before I'd stood up.
"Not here," he said.
"No," I agreed. Casting outside the battle yard: a hundred lines. I'd only just finished mine.
"Infirmary."
"I can cast in the infirmary. You can't."
Ambrose considered this. "...Permission."
He tore a strip off the bottom of his notes and wrote on it, and turned it so I could read.
15 − 10 = 5
"Fifteen," he said, tapping the first number. "The match. I counted." He tapped the second. "Ten. Infirmary." The third. "Five. This."
"Everyone counted," I said.
"Yes."
I looked at the strip of paper. Fifteen was the number I'd let the battle yard see. Ten was the number I let the infirmary see. Twenty-one was the number in my chest, and only my candles knew it.
By the infirmary hour, the day would have filled it again. Ten for the infirmary. Five for this. Six left over.
His sum was wrong by six. I didn't correct it.
Liesel, at my shoulder, looked at the paper, and then at me, and said nothing at all. Six splashes spare, and nobody else knew about them. That was fine. Naomi would have said that was exactly right.
"Five," I said. "Agreed."
We went to find the headmistress. Ambrose's two escorts fell in behind him, broad and patient, carrying his books, and Wren and Liesel fell in behind me, so that six of us crossed the garden together.
Wren went around the middle of the lawn, the long way.
Ambrose went straight across it. Halfway, he stopped, and looked down at the grass, which was green and thick and soft under his boots, greener than anywhere else on the grounds.
"...Hm," he said.
"What?"
"Wet."
"It's dew."
Ambrose looked up at the sun, which was directly overhead.
"Noon," he said, and walked on.
Ninety-four stairs. Ambrose's escorts and Wren waited at the bottom. Liesel came up behind me, as escorts do, and Ambrose climbed the whole way without once looking winded, which I found unreasonable in someone who never seemed to do anything but read.
The headmistress was at her desk, with a candle burning beside her in the full light of noon. She looked at Ambrose. She looked at me. She looked at the stoneware jug in my arms.
"Lord Fabian," she said. "Lord Ambrose. I don't usually see young lords up here unless one of them has set something on fire."
"Nothing's on fire, Headmistress."
"Yet." She folded her hands. "Go on."
So I told her. Ambrose stood beside me and contributed, at intervals, single words: "Water." "Still." "Five." I explained the cup and the glow and the light going straight through, and the cup with no bottom, and why I wanted to try it in the infirmary with Lord Ambrose's water magic, and why it couldn't be done in the battle yard, where half the battle class would be watching and the other half would be writing to their mothers by supper.
The headmistress listened without moving. Her pale eyes went once to the window, the one that looks down over the grounds and the garden, and came back.
"Why?" she said, when I'd finished.
"Because whatever I have runs out by noon in a tide, Headmistress."
"Whatever you have," she repeated, very dry. She knew exactly what I had. She didn't look at Ambrose when she said it, which was kind of her.
She turned to him. "Lord Ambrose. You lift ink blots in my classrooms."
Ambrose went still. "...Small."
"I know. A whole splash at a time." She studied him. "It's an expensive habit, and you've hidden it very well for a young man who does it in front of a tutor every day. How long can you hold water still, if you try?"
Ambrose thought about it honestly. "Unknown."
"Then you'll find out." She drew a sheet of paper toward her, dipped her pen, and wrote, in handwriting so small and sharp it looked like stitching. "Permission. Lord Ambrose may cast in the infirmary, and only in the infirmary. After Lord Fabian's ten. With the infirmary mistress present and the door shut. You'll write down everything: every trial, every failure, how long, what water. I want to read them."
She blotted the page, folded it, and held it out. Ambrose took it as though it were made of glass.
"And Lord Ambrose," she added. "If you faint, faint on a cot. Not on her floor. She's particular about her floor."
"Yes, Headmistress."
That was two words. I'd never heard him use two words for a yes before.
We were nearly at the door when she said, "Lord Fabian."
I turned.
She wasn't looking at me. She was looking at the candle beside her, the one she lights in broad daylight, and her face had gone very still, the way it does when she's reading something only she can see.
"Nobody has bottled a healing," she said.
"No, Headmistress."
The candle flame stood perfectly straight.
"That anyone wrote down," said the headmistress. "Go. You'll be late for the battle class."
The infirmary mistress read the headmistress's note twice, folded it into her apron pocket, and pointed at a table by the window.
"There," she said. "Not on my cots."
I did my ten first. A sprain, two blisters, a cut from a practice blade, a girl from the battle class with a bruised hip who couldn't remember how she'd got it. Ten, darkest first, never eleven. The mistress shut the door behind the last of them and drew her own chair up to the table, and folded her big arms, and settled in like someone at a play.
Ambrose had brought a notebook, new, with nothing in it yet. On the first page, in very small letters, he'd written Day One.
He'd also brought two shallow bowls, a cup, and a second jug, of plain cistern water from the residence, which he set beside Hana's well water without explanation.
"What's that for?" said Liesel.
"Control."
"Control of what?"
Ambrose looked at her as though this explained itself. When it didn't, he added, with visible effort: "Different water. Same test. Compare."
That was six words. He was clearly having the most exciting day of his life.
"How long it glows," I said. "That's what we're measuring. We need someone to count heartbeats."
"I'll do it." Liesel put two fingers to the inside of her own wrist. "Go."
I poured Hana's water into the cup, put my hand over it, and cast 「Heal」 at it. White. The circle opened over the rim, and the light sank down into the water, and the cup glowed like milk with a candle behind it.
"One, two," said Liesel, "thr—"
It went out.
Ambrose wrote it down. Then he looked at Liesel, and at her two fingers on her wrist, and at the cup, and frowned slightly.
"Fast," he said.
"What?"
"Your Highness's pulse. Fast. Unreliable count."
Liesel went red to the collar. "...Stairs."
Ambrose looked around the infirmary, which has no stairs in it at all.
"Ground floor," he said.
The infirmary mistress made a sound behind her hand that might have been a cough.
I looked at Liesel properly. I couldn't help it. Her light was white and steady, with nothing wrong in it anywhere. There was nothing wrong with her at all, except that her pulse was fast, and she was blaming stairs that weren't there.
"Wren," said Ambrose. "Count."
Wren, by the door, hummed one note. Then another, exactly the same length, and another, steady as a clock. Ambrose listened to three of them, nodded once, and wrote Wren at the top of the column.
That was the first trial: one heartbeat, perhaps two. Liesel sat on the end of a cot with her arms folded and didn't count anything else for the rest of the afternoon.
For the second, Ambrose poured fresh well water into the shallow bowl and put one fingertip to the surface. A White circle, no bigger than a coin, opened under his nail. The water stopped.
I don't know how else to put it. Water is always moving a little, even in a bowl on a table. It trembles when you walk past. It catches the light and shivers. This water stopped, all at once, and lay in the bowl as flat and clear as glass.
"Now," said Ambrose.
I cast White into it.
The light went in and stayed. One hum. Two. Three. Four. Then it faded, slowly, the way the last light goes out of a window at dusk.
"Four," said Ambrose. He wrote it down. His fingertip hadn't moved. "...Longer."
Four was not enough. But four was more than one.
For the third, Ambrose did something I'd never seen anyone do. He put his hand flat over the second bowl and lifted, and the water came up with his palm, a sphere of it no bigger than a plum, trembling in the air inside a ring of White light.
The infirmary mistress unfolded her arms.
"In there," said Ambrose, through his teeth.
I cast White into the sphere.
It was beautiful. The light went into the water and stayed, swimming inside it, turning slowly, so that Ambrose was holding a little lantern in the air above the table. Five hums. Six. Seven. Eight.
On the ninth, Ambrose's hand began to shake.
On the tenth, his circle broke. The sphere dropped into the bowl with a slap, and the light went out of it at the exact moment it fell, as if someone had blown out a lamp.
Ambrose sat down rather suddenly on the nearest cot. His escorts, at the door, both took a step forward. He waved them back without looking.
"Holds," he said, a little breathlessly, "while held."
"And not a moment after," I said.
He nodded and wrote it down. His hand was still shaking. The letters were very small and very straight anyway.
The fourth trial was the last of my five. Green, two splashes, into still water. Ambrose put his fingertip to the bowl again, paler now, and the water went flat as glass, and I cast.
The green light filled the bowl. Wren hummed. Six. Seven. Eight.
"Mistress," I said. "Your hand."
She had a small burn across the back of her wrist from the stove; I'd seen it when she brought the tenth girl in. She held it out over the table without a word, as though she'd been waiting to be asked.
I dipped my finger into the glowing water and let one drop fall onto her burn.
The drop went dark the instant it left the bowl. It landed on her skin as plain water, and ran off, and the burn was exactly as red as before.
In the bowl, behind it, the green light went on glowing. Ten. Eleven. Twelve.
Then Ambrose's fingertip slipped, and the water shivered, and the light went out.
Nobody said anything for a while.
The infirmary mistress looked at the back of her wrist, at the burn that was still there. I looked at it too. I had six splashes left in my chest that nobody in that room except Liesel was supposed to know about, and a burn in front of me, and Ambrose's arithmetic on a strip of paper in his pocket that said I had none.
"Save it," said the mistress, as if she'd read my face. "I've had worse off that stove." She got up and salved it herself from a jar on the shelf.
It was the first time in my life I'd left a burn unhealed with six splashes still in my pitcher. I didn't like it at all.
Ambrose wrote.
He wrote for a long time, in letters so small and straight they looked like rows of stitching, and when he'd finished, he turned the notebook around on the table so that I could read it. Liesel came and read it over my shoulder. She'd forgotten to stay on the cot.
Day One.
Water: well (Valcrest house). Control: cistern. Control not tested. Tomorrow.
Count: Wren (steady). First count by H.R.H.: unreliable. Fast.
-
Cup. White. Water moving. Held: 1.
-
Bowl. White. Water stilled (A.P., one splash). Held: 4.
-
Sphere, lifted (A.P., two splashes). White. Held: 9. Lost the moment the hold broke. Holds while held.
-
Bowl. Green. Water stilled (A.P., one splash). Held: 12. One drop removed from the bowl: dark at once. No effect on burn (infirmary mistress). The light did not travel with the water.
Result: no.
Underneath, after a gap, he'd written one more word on a line by itself.
Still.
"You wrote that down?" said Liesel, pointing at the third line.
"Accurate," said Ambrose.
Liesel went red and walked away to look out of the window.
I pointed at the last word. "Still what?"
Ambrose considered it.
"...Still," he said.
"He means it's still not working," said Liesel, from the window, without turning around.
"Both," said Ambrose.
I looked at the numbers again. One. Four. Nine. Twelve. The stiller the water, the longer it kept the light. But not long enough, and not one drop of it would leave the bowl.
"Still water keeps it longer," I said slowly. "But it won't travel."
"Yet," said Ambrose.
"Yet," I agreed.
The infirmary mistress put the salve jar back on the shelf and looked at the two of us, and the bowls, and the notebook, and the puddle on her table where the sphere had fallen.
"Same time tomorrow," she said. "Bring your own bowls. And bring the well water, not the cistern. The cistern tastes of stone."
"That's what Hana said," I said.
"Then Hana knows water," said the mistress, and opened the door.
That night, after supper, after the bond, after I'd poured my last six splashes into nothing, I copied Ambrose's page into my own notes by candlelight. Father kept records. The Saints of Elysia had kept records, once, before most of them were lost. It seemed right to keep my own.
Day One. The water. The counts. Holds while held. Still.
At the bottom, before I'd quite decided to, I wrote one more line.
Count by H.R.H.: fast. Why?
I looked at it for a long time.
Then I crossed it out, very neatly, the way I'd crossed out line fifty-three, and blew out the candle.
Some things I wasn't ready to write down yet.