Lark and my emberling met at breakfast like dignitaries who had agreed, in principle, not to be offended.
I set the emberling on the hearthstone and it brightened politely, heat peeling the night chill off the walls. Lark tilted her white star of petals toward the flame and gathered dew at the rims like bracelets. Fire and leaf considered one another. The emberling shed a single flake of ash—greeting, or nerves. Lark made a sound only my mother and I ever seemed to hear: a sippable little chime.
"Be kind," my mother said without looking up from kneading dough. "Lark is older than you think."
The emberling dimmed a shade, as if bowing.
My mother set the dough to rise, wiped her hands on her apron, and opened a little cloth pouch on the table. Inside, iron sand glittered like ground night. "From Daven at the smithy," she said. "Tell him I sent you if you need more, but only if Marshal Osk says you do. Iron asks for respect, and your eighth channel is still a thread."
I touched the pouch, a prickle running up my fingertips as if the sand could smell my seal. "Osk told me to try a little," I said. "He also told me not to lie to him or my spirit."
"Good advice from a man who looks built out of doors." She poured tea, the steam smelling faintly of lemon balm. "You know the rule: first ask, then feed. Spirit first, materials second. If it says no, believe it."
"Spirits don't talk."
"They do," she said, amused. "Not in words. In the way they hold or shiver. If you have to argue with a rune, you already lost."
Lark chimed again like agreement. The emberling leaned toward the teapot. I shaped a little heat thread the length of my thumb and settled it under the spout. The pot sighed. My mother pretended not to be delighted.
The bells sang the second hour—two quick beats—then another two as if to chase us from the table. I tucked the iron pouch into my satchel, the emberling slid into my coat like a coal into ash, and I kissed my mother's cheek.
"Breath," she said, the old blessing. "Bricks. Don't confuse hurry with haste."
"I'll make you proud," I said, and she made the face that meant I already had.
Crownspire's ring-room smelled of chalk and metal when I arrived. Professor Quill had laid out a row of familiar calibrators like he was about to hold a market in numbers. Beside them, a bowl of channel stones—black, gray, white—sat like a test you could touch. Sera waved me to a seat, her pot parked in the lane beside her feet like a dog eager to be helpful.
"Sticks and scales today," she whispered. "Brace yourself for disappointment and metaphor."
Quill clapped once. "Grammarians," he said, cheerful in a way that meant he had slept and we had not, "we measure so we can stop pretending. Bring your familiars close. If you are an object cohort, place the instrument on the table and keep your hands off the gears unless you like menders."
One by one, we slid our familiars onto the calibrators. The device looked like a flat crystal plate with a hairline needle and a scale etched beneath. Not magic, Quill always insisted—just a tricked bit of resonance that found the pitch of a lattice and guessed how taut it was.
"Do not cheer," he warned, "if the needle moves farther than your neighbor's. Pride breeds sloppiness. Do not sulk if it barely flinches. Sulk breeds nothing I need."
Sera went before me. Her pot sat on the plate as if posing for a portrait. The needle trembled, then leaned to the left until it kissed the first notch past zero. Sera's mouth didn't move. Her eyes sparkled once, then returned to business. "One," she said under her breath, and her pot thrummed, as if pleased to frame a number with sound.
"Riven," Quill said.
I set the emberling on the plate. It crouched as if the glass were lake ice. The needle shivered, crept, thought about it, then tapped the second notch. It twitched again and slid a breath into the third, like a child stealing another slice of cake while the cook's back was turned.
Quill leaned with his lens. "Three," he murmured, as if to the instrument. "Low for a second-year summon. High for an elemental that died twice on day one." He set the lens aside. "Now the part we came for. Channel stones. Let's see what we're feeding."
He plucked a black pebble from the bowl, rolled it in his palm to warm it, then pressed it lightly to the emberling's side. The stone stayed dull. He moved it a finger's width; it glowed the faintest red, like a coal deciding. He nodded to himself and took a gray. When he touched it to the emberling's core, it brightened promptly. He tracked along where channels should run—over the emberling's little chest, along something like a spine, down each limb. Seven times it brightened; once it stuttered and stayed dim.
"That," Quill said, tapping the dim patch over the right shoulder, "is your eighth channel sulking. It exists. It resents being made to exist. Elementals can be like that. Eat your sand."
He offered me the bowl. The iron glittered like dangerous salt. I poured some into my palm—a half pinch—and held it near the emberling's core without touching. Heat pulsed up into my skin. I breathed like first-year: four in, hold, six out.
"Ask," Sera whispered, as if my mother had trained her too.
I traced a polite Gather rune above the emberling's core, a little cup to suggest, not seize. The spirit leaned into my hand. The iron lifted from my palm grain by grain into the emberling the way a magnet drinks nails. A line of brighter orange etched up along the right shoulder where the sulking channel lived. It shuddered once, twice, then held.
"More," Quill said, or maybe I said it to myself. I rolled one more pinch. The emberling took it, slower this time, a cat wary of an offered second treat. The dim patch warmed enough that the gray stone, when Quill pressed it there, lit as readily as at the other nodes.
"Enough," Quill said, before either of us could get greedy. "Sand is for persuasion, not proof."
I felt the emberling's channels hum quieter under my palm—like a drum with tightened skins. It was a small song, but I had learned to recognize music that mattered.
Quill propped the chalkboard on its wheel and drew two neat formulas: one simple and familiar, one skill I hadn't seen yet.
"Review first," he said, tapping the left-hand chain. "Heat Thread. Today we add a cousin: Bank." He wrote: Element: Fire. Type: Store. Cost: Mild. Range: Self. Efficiency: High. Strength: Gentle. "Bank creates a pocket in the lattice—think of cupped hands—that gathers excess heat without letting it leak or lash. Useful in kitchens, forges, and hearts."
He turned his chalk and drew a tiny attention mark beside Efficiency. "Most of you will want to cheapen Bank. Don't. You are crafting patience. Patience is not cheap."
We practiced. The first attempt felt like asking my emberling to breathe in and then hold the breath in its ribs without turning purple. The lattice bulged where the pocket formed, then loosened and let heat leak when my focus slipped.
"Barbs," Quill said from behind my shoulder. "Anchor the pocket. Two at first. Three later. Remember where the eighth sulked."
I set two tiny barbs on the pocket's rim, careful to avoid loading the newborn eighth. The emberling's glow steadied. Within its core, a darker ember formed—denser, quieter. When I released my focus, the banked heat stayed. When I called it back, I could pull a thread without forcing the spirit to flare.
"Good," Quill said, for the third time in two days. I could learn to collect that sound. "We confirm on the field. Do not preen in my ring-room."
We spilled into afternoon with our heads knotted and our bodies not far behind. Osk stood in the center of the green with his hands behind his back like a general politely waiting for us to arrive at our own funerals.
"Elementals," he barked as we sorted, "today you cut air."
Neri—the quiet girl with the wind-wisp—looked like a question had lived in her since last night and had just been given its name. The wisp dripped a thread of mist as if nervous and eager were cousins.
"Wind shows up to every fight," Osk said. "Most of you will ignore it until it slaps your teeth. Not today. Fire: write a thin cut. No fat. No flare. You, wind: hold shape. Everyone else: don't drown."
We paired off. Neri and I stood a pace apart, her wisp bobbing like a tethered cloud, my emberling perched on the grass warming blades as if to apologize. I drew a cut rune narrow enough to fit inside a breath: a lean diagonal that liked to slide in, not wedge. Type: Shear. Range: Arm's length. Cost: Low. Efficiency: High. Strength: Precise.
"On your mark," Osk called. "Go."
Neri breathed in; the wisp swelled into a soft wall, not wind so much as possibility. I traced the cut through it like parting silk. The wisp sighed and closed, wounded only in its pride. Again. Again. On the fourth, the cut faltered and wanted to become a bolt. I felt the flare start—impatience—pulled a shaved breath from Bank, and the cut held instead of biting.
Neri's eyes flicked to my hands and back to her wisp. "You're storing it," she said, matter-of-fact, as we circled and cut. "Smart."
"Sera's idea," I said. (It wasn't entirely. But generosity makes friends better than accuracy does.)
Aureline wandered over between sets, salamander pacing like a disciplined shadow. She watched without commentary until Osk shooed her with a chin. On her way past, she said, softly enough that Brann couldn't hear from the lane over, "Vent lines." She sketched a two-stroke gesture in the air—a little V tucked into the side of my cut. "Give heat somewhere to go you choose."
I tried it on the next pass. The cut thread slid cleaner; the wisp closed faster. Neri nodded, surprised into a grin that looked good on her.
Brann didn't come near us. He didn't need to. He gathered speed on the far side of the green, ant leaping a bit too high as if eager to please. Every time the mandibles brightened, a lick of heat bled sideways—a flaw that would cost him later. Osk saw it and let it live like a thorn you leave until the student feels it.
Halfway through the block, an alarm went up from the eastern edge of the green. Not bells—the wrong pitch—but a kettle-shriek turned into a human one. We turned together, a flock pivoting.
A first-year from Object Cohort had decided to be brave. He was pink with determination and had a kettle spirit on a little stand, and he had written—poorly—a Heat Bloom into its body. The formula had taken. Then it had taken offense. Steam roared from the spout and the seam where metal met handle, not in puffs but in a frothing gush. The kettle bucked, stand juddering, a dragonfly trying to leave its skin.
Quill was across the field. Osk was nearer. He didn't sprint. He walked fast and shouted once: "Contain and vent!" The instructors on the sidelines moved, but twenty paces is a long way when boiling water decides it wants out.
The first-year's eyes went huge. He lifted his hands—why, I don't know—maybe to push the steam back with apology.
Sera was already moving. Her pot trundled like a little hero. "Latch!" she snapped, and I didn't think; I raised Bank and pulled a thread. The emberling brightened without flaring; the thread hooked into the pot's lip like a grapnel. Sera slid the pot under the steam and kept it there. The kettle bucked. Steam slammed into the pot's open mouth. Water condensed with a hiss and a smell of pennies and scolded metal.
Neri flanked us and threw up a soft wall to push the steam that missed back toward Sera's pot. I sketched Aureline's vent V into my thread so the heat didn't balloon at the bend. Osk arrived and clapped a Contain over the kettle that no one in our year could have managed: a box with vents like a careful crate. The steam went where he told it to. The kettle shuddered once more and sagged—spirit offended, not broken.
The first-year sat down hard on the grass and began to cry in the hiccuping way of someone who hadn't had enough sleep to handle fright.