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going to be a Hand, no matter what Ray you choose; I'd bet on it."
    Miryo couldn't argue that. "The rest… I don't
know
!" She got up and paced as best she could around the tiny platform, feeling the weathered wood rough under her bare feet. "I don't think I'd want Void. I don't want to get stuck in internal troubles. That's politics again, only our politics instead of everybody else's. Earth? Maybe, but I don't have the knack for nature that you do."
    "Which leaves Air."
    Miryo paused, thinking about it. The Air Ray didn't have as clear a purpose as the others; they served whoever needed it. "They travel a lot."
    Eikyo laughed. "I can't tell by your voice whether that's a good thing or a bad one."
    "I don't
know
which one it is."
    "You've complained enough times about never getting to leave Starfall. I'd say you have the traveling bug."
    Miryo wrapped her arms around her body, trying to imagine that life. "But I've never actually
done
it. Not like they do, always on the move. I think I might like it; sounds better than my other options, anyway. But what if I don't?"
    "You
do
have a year after the test before you can officially choose," Eikyo reminded her. "That gives you a chance to find out, before you get locked into anything…" The end of her sentence trailed off into an enormous yawn.
    "Up early again?" Miryo asked.
    "Was I
ever
," Eikyo said feelingly. "Ruka-chai had me help with one of the mares. She dropped a
darling
little colt this morning."
    "So that's where you were," Miryo said, sitting once more. "I was wondering. You didn't come to breakfast."
    "No, Ruka-chai had one of the Cousins bring food out to us. We were covered in muck; believe me, you didn't
want
us at breakfast." Eikyo yawned again, and flapped one hand in apology. "Sorry. I should get back to my room, though."
    "As should I," Miryo said heavily. "I have to finish that essay for Yuri-mai, after all. You'd think that we'd be
done
with essays at this stage, but no."
    They both climbed to their feet, and Eikyo gave Miryo's arm a squeeze. "Don't worry. We'll astound them with our knowledge during the questioning, and then breeze through the final test.
Both
of us. And then you can figure out where you want to be."
    "Thanks, Eikyo." Miryo gave her a quick hug; then they began the steep climb back out of the cup. The wind bit into Miryo as she crested the top; she shivered in her thin clothing. "I'll see you tomorrow," she said to her friend. They split up then; their rooms were not far apart inside, but a crumbling bit of roof in between them made it safer for Eikyo to take a different path.
    Miryo made it back to her side of the building without trouble. She leaned over the edge to make sure Teruku was not looking out her window; her fellow student knew Miryo and nearly everyone else went climbing on the roof, but she disapproved, and let everyone know it. Teruku was at her desk, with her back to the window. Miryo wrapped her hands firmly around a sculpture of a falcon and swung her legs over the roof. Her feet touched onto a knot of vines and, balancing on these, she inched her way over to her own window and climbed through.
    Her half-finished essay for Yuri-mai was on her desk. Miryo gave it a sour look and stretched out on her bed instead.
    Lying there, she could look directly across at her shelves. They held pages and pages of notes, all tied into tidy sheaves; a good portion of her education was there, neatly stacked. Not all of it, of course; her education had begun as soon as she could speak, with simple etiquette. The sixteen forms of address proper for witches of various affiliations. How to bow. Where she could and could not go in Tsurike Hall, her first home.
    Most of the material covered in her first ten years was not there. Those years had been spent on simple things, letters and numbers, the specialized language of magic. And voice lessons, of course; those had begun as soon as she could speak, so that when the time came she could shape her