The wind was rising, and Dalliance was the wind.

  The silk of the mage-kite pulled flat above him, no longer snapping, just thrumming—a constant vibration as the air moved fast enough across the triangular membrane that individual beats blurred into one. Dalliance had no ears. He felt it instead, a steady pressure resonating throughout his being. He was using aeromancy in the service of the Empire.

  The cargo was not the most glamorous thing ever carried: potatoes. Burlap sacks, boxes, and loose tubers rolling on the wagon floor. A mix, Malcolm had said, in case you drop them. That way they’d know which method of packing worked best.

  If it bothered the burly man that he was planning for failure, he gave no sign.

  The moment came.

  Dalliance became the wind, aloft. The cart shuddered on its wheels, then rose—then rolled, the kite yawing as the whole thing pirouetted up onto one wheel.

  The potatoes spilled everywhere as the wagon landed on its side with a loud thump. Malcolm, leaning against the wall some fifty feet away, strolled over.

  “We planned for this,” the provisioner said cheerfully. “Plenty more potatoes where that came from.”

  Dalliance reformed out of the wind. His sudden absence collapsed the sail with a sharp snap.

  “Damn,” he said.

  “Don’t feel bad,” Malcolm replied. “You picked up—oh—eighteen hundred pounds. That’s worth being excited about. And, you know, it’s really actually not that big a waste," he said, hefting a potato crate and tossing it easily back into the cart. "We have to shift an entire ton—you know your numbers, boy, right?"

  "Yes, sir," said Dalliance.

  "A whole ton, two thousand pounds, up a half-mile of stairs. Or fifty pounds at a time up a half-mile of winch, which is backbreaking work all by itself. So, two hundred pounds might go up in an afternoon, four winch loads. Or I send some unlucky pair of haulers up all those stairs with a hundred pounds each."

  "Or," he said, "it sits in the cart and gets rained on. Once it gets rained on, the rot gets to it. Leave it a few days, by the end of the week, and then we feed it to the pigs."

  Dalliance must have been looking at him oddly, because he defended: "Give it a little scrub first, and they're fine, hogs aren't picky."

  He tipped the cart up and set it back on four wheels. Dalliance watched the wood groaning under the manuever, and reminded himself that for all his easy-going attitude, this was a man with a class that revolved around lifting and moving heavy things, and he was dangerous.

  "Anyway, what I’m telling you," he said, "is that, yeah, we might lose some potatoes. I fully expect you to spill at least a couple of cartfuls, and that’s fine. Pigs are gonna eat it anyway. Anything that you move up there is saved. Though I’ve still got the winch going, as you see."

  Dalliance had, in fact, noticed it.

  "But you have to think of the scale. Two hundred pounds a day sounds like a lot of potatoes, but on the top deck, they’ve got what? A dozen, maybe, archmages per magister, and we’ve got a dozen of those. Call it 144 souls . . . round everything to 200 just for ease of conversation," he said.

  "So we got 200 archmages and staff, and they each have apprentices, more than one. And they each have guardsmen. Plus, it’s not impossible that something lands up there, so there’s soldiers on deck. Now, you think about that, that’s 500 easy. Five hundred warm bodies hankering for potatoes, or at least hoping not to starve."

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  The tower top looked tiny with distance. The number was sobering.

  "I do what I can. Obviously, I’m sending something up for everyone today. Two hundred spuds breaks down to about the right number of potatoes, but I know as well as anyone they might want seconds. And I didn’t send them seconds because I’ve got the food down here, and they need it up there. Thus: you. Ready to give it another shot?"

  Dalliance stood up from his brief rest. Standing on his feet all day, to say nothing of everything else he was doing, was just different than the normal sorts of exertion around the farm. He was used to running, hauling, and carrying. It’s not like he hadn’t worked hard on the farm, but no one had ever made him just stand. His feet had started to hurt from the static load. It was different, and worse.

  "I suppose," Dalliance noted, "at least there’s a clean end, and then you know you’re done."

  "That’s the spirit. Finish with the two thousand pounds of potatoes, and then that work's over, and we can go back to doing easier things that don’t involve towers. Of course, I don’t know how entertaining that'll be, compared to this."

  "I’m fine either way," said Dalliance, and found that he was being honest. The idea of waking up and nobody trying to hurt him more than made up for the idea of being a little bit bored doing something that he would’ve done at home as part of his chores anyway.

  Home. He still thought of it that way. It was no wonder Whimsy still thought of it that way.

  "Don’t go getting distracted," said the petty officer. "I saw that long face, and I know we all have our lives and our troubles outside of work. But on the job, we don't. If you need someone to talk to, well, there’s always someone older who's already seen what you’re going through down at the bar after hours. I could give you an introduction, though I suspect your uncle probably already did."

  Dalliance nodded.

  "During hours, though," said the man, "and this goes double for when you’re finally back on active duty, whenever that happens, your troubles stay on your off time, where they hurt you and sometimes trouble people who like you. During duty hours, your troubles aren’t anyone’s business, including your own, because they can kill people. If you think you’ve got troubles now, just wait until you see how you feel after you’ve killed someone with them."

  Dalliance winced.

  "Your troubles not looking so bad anymore, are they?" teased the man.

  Dalliance couldn't blame him for being a little tone-deaf. "Thank you," he said instead.

  "Do you need a minute?" asked the sergeant. "I know mana burn is a thing."

  "I don't," said Dalliance. "I'm good to go."

  And he was the wind.

  Gusts buffeted up and under the canopy, Dalliance moving just himself at first. There was no additional strain, such as he had felt trying to squeeze himself into that closet. Perhaps because he was doing what wind wanted to do: go from A to B.

  The wagon lifted more steadily. This time, Dalliance had a better idea of where the center actually was.

  Looking at the canopy, he had believed he had found the center in the center of the triangle. But actually, two corners of the wagon were tied to one corner of the canopy, with each of the other corners being tied to another. He had to move forward, and it balanced.

  It lifted, spinning slowly like a top. Though he focused on it, Dalliance wasn’t sure what caused the spin, which made it difficult to prevent it from doing whatever it wanted. Little eddies of Dalliance spilled out from under the triangular silks and were restrained. That did slowly take up the mana use, which seemed to help.

  He rose slowly, moving carefully, though he could have moved much faster. He could go faster safely, Dalliance thought.

  He rose, the tower dropping away like the Water Street lift, falling away ten, twenty, forty feet. Dalliance was excited at the applications beyond this. He could fly, but now he could bring things with him that he couldn’t carry. He could lift . . . he could have lifted his shack. Not that he felt any desire to go back and get it. Just knowing the frontiers of his power were beyond his expectations for a second time in three days was a heady thing.

  The tower fell away beneath him. Ten feet. Twenty. Forty.

  The rope snapped.

  A sharp crack, like a whip. He tried to compensate, to descend, but the load slid sideways and fell.

  He was back on the ground in an instant, his arrival spraying dust across the empty parade ground. The wagon hit a heartbeat later—front wheels, then back, bucking like a horse—wood crunching, tongue snapping, rims flexing but holding. Loose potatoes fell with scattered thumps, then silence reigned in the courtyard.

  “Why in all the gods’ names did I leave the wheels on?” Malcolm asked crossly.