Allen led Jane up the staircase and through a series of streets to a part of town that seemed almost entirely dedicated to the making of things. Everywhere Jane looked, blacksmith’s shops and lumberyards were interspersed with carpenters and cart-builders. In the center of it all was a large building that looked like it had once been a warehouse of some kind. A hand-painted sign outside the door left no question about its current purpose.

  Food and Ale, it read. Jane had hardly ever wanted to go into a place more.

  When Allen whisked her through the door, she found herself in a large space filled with rough wooden tables. The dirt floor was covered by fresh straw. A massive bar ran the entire length of the building.

  Almost every stool at the bar was taken, but Allen confidently claimed one of the tables, sitting with Jane on her side of it rather than across from her. Immediately, a middle-aged woman approached, her hair flecked with gray. She was perhaps the most beautiful human Jane had ever seen.

  Somewhere deep inside of Jane, a primitive jealousy began to rear its head. It was tamped down only when the woman looked at Allen’s hand, which was still grasping Jane’s on the table, and smiled.

  “Allen? Who is this?”

  “Jane. And she’s hungry.”

  “Is that true, Jane?” The woman’s eyes widened as Jane’s stomach answered that question again, even louder than before. “I guess it is! Ha! Just sit there for a second, dear. I’m going to feed you until you pop.”

  The grills were working hard. The woman went to them and selected hunks of meat, fried breads, and bowls full of seasoned vegetables before bringing them back on one huge plate. As she ran for silverware and glasses of ale, Allen did his best to explain what was happening.

  “It’s family-style. Most places don’t do this anymore, but this place always has. You’ll get your own knife and fork, and you’ll take what you want from the big plate for the whole table. She wasn’t kidding, either. She’ll keep filling the plate until you burst.” He turned to the woman. “Won’t you?”

  “I will!” The woman slapped down some cutlery and two large mugs of ale, then smiled at Jane again. “It wouldn’t do to leave a new customer hungry. You just tell me when you are done, all right? Until then, I’ll pick the courses. Not a bad choice among them, if I do say so myself.”

  When the woman left, Allen took charge, shoving the platter of food closer to Jane. She had a weak impulse to attack it all slowly and ladylike, driven by years of etiquette training and the company of reserved scholars who hadn’t missed a meal in their entire lives.

  One look at Allen washed the impulse away. He wanted her to eat, after all. There was no problem with a healthy appetite in his book.

  So she ate. Allen was as good as his implied word, and didn’t even blink when she started tearing into the food. Even better, he joined her. They drank ale and stuffed themselves, laughing and talking through full mouths until a few platters of food had been utterly demolished. Then, their stomachs settling in contentment, they finally slowed down.

  “So…” Allen sat back and looked at Jane. “About the dragon.”

  “I wondered when you’d ask about that.”

  “I almost didn’t. You don’t seem to like talking about that part of you, I guess? I almost felt like I shouldn’t bring it up.”

  Jane slowly took another drink of ale, trying to figure out what to do about that. Bella knew most of what she had been back at the academy, at least in broad strokes. Allen didn’t feel less trustworthy than Bella, but some inner voice told her it wasn’t quite time for him to know every single thing yet.

  Even so, she might have told him, if he didn’t solve the problem for her by speaking before she could.

  “I thought about it all day yesterday,” he said. “And I decided it probably doesn’t matter that much. I don’t think you are a traveling murderer or anything. And to me, all magic is sort of the same, right? You told me a bit, as much as I needed to know, and you would tell me more if you needed to tell me more. That’s enough, right?”

  “I don’t know,” Jane admitted. “Doesn’t it make you feel like I don’t trust you?”

  “Naw.” Allen speared a bit of broccoli on his fork and nibbled on it. “Because I don’t think that’s what’s going on. I think you just don’t like to talk about it, or there’s a reason you shouldn’t, or something. The only thing I care about is… like, you had something to do this afternoon, right? Did it have something to do with your magic?”

  “Yes.”

  “If you needed my help, would you have asked for it?”

  It wasn’t that Jane didn’t want to say yes. She felt like she should. And she didn’t doubt that Allen would help her if she asked. At some point, she might actually need him to.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  But would I ask? I don’t know.

  After a few seconds of silence, Allen nodded. “See, that’s what I have a problem with. Right there. If you just promise me you won't keep quiet if you need me, I’m happy. I don’t even have a right to ask for that, but I’d like it, if you could.”

  “What’s this? Allen just said something smart.” The waitress was back, clearing away plates and taking a moment to ruffle Allen’s hair playfully. “I didn’t think you had that in you. Good job, girl. I’ve never heard him string together so many serious words in his life, at least if it wasn’t about a new kind of bolt or something.”

  Allen suddenly found the surface of the table very interesting. Jane quietly cursed the woman for putting a stop to what was apparently a rare Allen-function. Jane couldn’t hate her for it, though, when she seemed to accept both of them so good-naturedly. This felt like a woman who was allied to them somehow, in an approving way Jane could sense even from brief interactions between plates of food.

  They didn’t get back into serious matters for the rest of the meal. The conversation simply resumed in the same fun way it usually did with Allen. Eventually, all the plates were cleared from the table, and Jane had drunk all the ale she felt she reasonably could. It was time to leave.

  “Here’s your coin, Ashley,” Allen said. “Thanks again.”

  Ashley slid the coins back to Allen and shook her head.

  “Don’t be stupid. I know you want to be self-reliant, Allen, but you know very well why I can’t take those.”

  Jane expected a longer argument that would end with Allen successfully paying. He defied that expectation by looking at the coins for a moment, sliding them back towards himself, and pocketing them. Ashley didn’t seem surprised by the outcome at all, and Jane tried not to be, either.

  “Good. That’s that.” Ashley gave Jane one more smile. “Thanks for getting Allen to think about something besides tools and furniture for a while. He needed that kind of kick in the pants. You are welcome here any time.”

  “I’ll be back,” Jane told her. “Definitely.”

  “Good. I’ll wait for you.”

  Outside the restaurant, Jane and Allen strolled in a food-heavy way towards the bridge, where they would have to go their separate ways. As they neared that fork in their road, she decided to clear up the biggest question of the night before she lost the chance.

  “I promise, by the way.”

  “What?”

  “I promise that if I need you, I’ll include you.” Jane tightened her grip on Allen’s hand. “Though I might not tell you much, unless I have to. It’s not about trust.”

  “It’s not?”

  “It’s about who I want to be.”

  Allen stopped and looked down at her, studying her face in the dim light between streetlamps. Then he kissed her on the forehead.

  “I like who you want to be so far. I promise I’ll do my best to pay attention to whoever she is, and not whatever you were. Though I suspect they might be closer to the same person than you think.”

  Their arms interwove as they walked closely together down the street. Too soon for Jane’s taste, they reached the bridge. Without words, she took Allen’s other hand and squeezed it tightly, looking at his face for just a little longer. Then, still silent, they broke apart and headed towards their own homes.

  A cold gust of wind shuffled past. It was just bracing enough to shock Jane into recalling the second most important open question of the evening.

  “That woman,” she called. Allen turned and waited for her to finish. “The waitress. Ashley. She seemed to know you well. To be concerned about you.”

  “Yes, that’s normal for her. Why?”

  Jane decided she wasn’t actually jealous. Whatever Ashley had been, she wasn’t that.

  “I’m just curious. And I can’t be distracted by curiosity right now. I’m too busy.”

  Allen laughed. “I suppose I can see that. I will bring you that dinner hold cabinet by tomorrow afternoon. I hope that helps.”

  He turned and started walking toward the staircase down to his workshop. Jane realized, all of a sudden, that she had already assumed he lived down there, in the little shack at the back of his space in the market. It seemed like the kind of thing a person like Allen might do.

  “She’s my mother,” he suddenly called, turning back one final time. “She knows me well because she’s my mother.”

  —

  Back home again, Jane wanted nothing more than to go to sleep. At this point, she would be very lucky to get enough sleep to make it through the next day at all.

  Even so, she had a job to do. Whatever was happening with that water spirit was serious enough to have caught her aunt’s attention. Jane refused to believe someone like the Lady Cecelia could be wrong about something of that nature.

  Once again, this was a situation that called for a circle of chalk.

  She examined her aunt’s letters for the first time since arriving in Glenfall, paying special attention to a peculiar shape in the printed crest. Intricate though it was, it was a tenth as difficult to draw as the summoning spell for Shelby’s shade had been.

  That still didn’t make it easy. Jane spent the better part of ten minutes making sure every part of it was correct.

  In some ways, communication spells were easy to understand. Her aunt’s circle was a certain shape, modified in certain ways to create a variation that was Jane’s. The difficulties for most who tried to use these spells came from how few shapes could be used. Mere hundreds had been doled out among an entire kingdom.

  Her aunt rated one basic shape and its variants, one of which she had granted to her niece. Otherwise, Jane would have had to call city by city until she found where her aunt was, and then waited for Cecelia to have time to report to the town’s communications building.

  Of course, none of that convenience matters if she’s nowhere near her circle. I can only hope she turned in early tonight.

  Taking a deep breath and drawing herself into a cross-legged sort of comfort on the ground, Jane lowered her hand. She charged the circle, then waited a moment until a telltale click in the magic around her indicated the establishment of a connection between the two circles.

  “Aunt Cecelia,” Jane called. “Are you there? I need to talk to you.”

  “Of course I’m here, Jane,” her aunt’s voice replied. “Where else would I be?”

  Jane smiled. “At the tavern carousing, if the rumors have any truth to them. I’ve heard you called Cecelia of the Empty Bottle as much as I’ve heard you called by your proper titles, you know.”

  Cecelia snorted and then let loose a delighted, not-at-all proper giggle. Jane thought there were probably historians somewhere who would have had their whole view of the world shaken to hear it.

  “I suppose I’ve earned a bit of that. I do enjoy a good tavern. But you are mad if you think I care about that right now, Jane. What about you? Have you established yourself? I simply must hear everything.”

  “I suppose there’s nothing for it.” Jane pretended to sigh. “You are my guardian, after all.”

  “Quite right. Now get to it, girl. Have you been having fun?”