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dim light of the polished bronze lamps, fixed his.
    He took a deep breath. "I don't know what to think. I could say pleasant things, and I would, to anyone but you. Right now ... I'm ... overwhelmed. I grew up an orphan in a two-room house. It was clean, but my pallet was on the stone floor, and my uncle felt lucky if he could grub a good piece of malachite and sell it for a silver once every few eight-days. I went to work in a mill not much past my tenth year, and I was lucky to have a pearapple to eat once or twice a year. Those noodles tonight-they were wonderful, but they probably used more pearapples than I've eaten in my whole life. I've never had good wine from bottles."
    "Cerryl... I know that. I've known that from the beginning, but I couldn't keep pretending that I wasn't different." She reached out and touched his cheek. "With you ... I don't want to pretend."
    "That means more than you know." He offered a smile.
    "I think I know that." She bent forward and brushed his cheek with her lips. "Good night. I'll see you soon."
    As he walked through the night, through the light gusts of cold wind, through the intermittent snowflakes with the slight headache he'd almost forgotten, his thoughts swirled like the snow. What happened next? Could anything happen? Jeslek, Sterol, and Anya had all cautioned him again consorting with a Black. Yet Leyladin was a healer who was mostly Black, and he was a White mage-perhaps at best a White mage fringing toward gray. He repressed a slight shiver at that. No one liked gray mages, neither the White mages of Fairhaven nor the Black Order mages of Recluce.
    He and Leyladin could hold hands... but how much more? Was she worried about that? Was that why she kept a certain distance?
    He frowned as he kept walking. Her kiss had been warm, but not order-chaos conflict warm.
     
     
    V
     
    Cerryl stretched, standing in the sun of the small guardhouse porch, glad that spring had returned. Even the hills in the distance were showing signs of full greening.
    He sat down on the backed stool provided for him, just high enough to be able to see over the granite rampart. He kept his eyes open but concentrated on focusing the chaos energy of the sun into an ever-tighter line of pure chaos-something like a light lance, but no thicker than his index finger.
    Whst! The barely audible hiss followed as the narrow line of golden fire cut into the granite at the bottom of the rampart, drilling into the hard stone. White dust oozed out onto the walkway.
    Cerryl released the light dagger-or whatever it might be-and sat there quietly, sweating, although the day was not that warm, trying to cool off from his silent effort. The area under the rampart ledge wasn't that visible, and if anyone did look, he'd only assume that the stonecutters had made an error and perhaps filled in with powdered stone that had leached away over time.
    Kinowin had suggested he use his time to improve his skills ... but how? And where? He couldn't very well have said that he'd mostly mastered the light cloak that left him invisible, certainly not in the Tower, where the walls had both eyes and ears. Nor did he wish to make known his light lances, and if he used those on guard duty, everyone in the Halls of the Mages-including Jeslek-would know in days.
    Cerryl had wondered what other skills might be useful... that he could work on quietly. Somehow, focusing chaos into a tighter focus might help. At some time he wanted to try the light dagger against cold iron, but he dared not experiment with that where anyone could see or scree him. Chaos against iron would alert any mage nearby.
    The sound of wagon wheels on the stones of the highway broke into his reverie, and he sat up straight, looking at the afternoon coach from Lydiar. The four passengers all filed out and stood by the guardhouse while Cerryl studied with his senses the boxes and bags roped to the top. Outside of one black case that held a set of iron knives, the bags were all