Chapter 403: Watch

Lor led her down a side lane she had never used, past a row of shuttered stalls and a wall covered in old posters, and out through a gap in a fence onto a patch of bare, packed earth about the size of a courtyard.

It was the vendors’ dumping ground.

Broken crates leaned against the walls. A cracked barrel rolled slowly in the breeze.

There were bent tin pots, a tangle of old rope, a stack of rotten planks, a chair with three legs, and a heap of splintered cart wheels.

Nothing in the place was worth stealing, and nobody was there.

The air smelled of damp wood and old metal.

Lor walked to the middle, turned around, and looked at her.

"This should work," he said.

Nellie nodded. She was confused why they were here, but she trusted Lor.

His shoulders loosened. His head tilted back slightly. When he spoke again, his voice had dropped, and his eyes had lost focus, and he seemed to be looking at something far behind her.

"Nellie."

She went still at once. Her purse slipped an inch lower in her grip.

"The Light is here," Lor said slowly.

"O-oh." She swallowed, straightened her back, and made a small, awkward bow. "Good afternoon, Light."

"You."

She looked at him, and then, very carefully, she set her purse down on top of a broken crate and straightened her skirt.

Her cheeks were still pink, but her eyes were bright and curious behind her glasses.

"What is it?" she asked. "What will the Light teach me?"

"Watch."

He turned and walked across the packed earth, between the heaps of rotten planks and bent pots, until he reached the far wall of the lot.

Nellie followed at a respectful distance.

There, on a wobbling stack of crates, someone had abandoned a dented iron kettle. It sat alone in the sunlight, stained and black, thirty meters away.

Lor raised his free hand, and the world went quiet. The pressure in the lot shifted, Nellie’s ears popped, and every sound from the market fell away.

Then the air turned cold, and the whole lot began to move toward him.

Mist leapt from the stones. Dew tore free of the weeds.

Silver ribbons of moisture poured down out of the sky and bent into his open hand, whipping her braid and snapping at her skirt, and a bow of clear running water burst into being in his grip, its string a single burning filament that sang one trembling note.

The water was so clear she could see the cracks in the earth through it.

An arrow of hard blue water formed on the string, and he drew it back to his cheek.

The bow groaned, light flared along the shaft, and his eyes on the kettle thirty meters away were cold and steady, nothing like the boy who had laughed over lunch.

He let go.

The shot tore across the lot with a sharp hiss.

The kettle leapt off its crate with a hole punched clean through its belly and slammed into the wall behind it. Water sprayed from the hole in a bright fan.

Goosebumps ran over Nellie from her wrists to her shoulders.

He was already drawing again.

One arrow, then three, then a dozen hung in a ring around his shoulders, blue-white and trembling. The air between them shimmered.

"Watch," the Light said softly. "And remember."

He swept his arm across, and the ring fired, one arrow for every piece of junk in the lot. They struck almost together.

A plank on the far wall snapped in half. A hanging pan rang and spun. A clay jug burst into pieces. A rope on the gatepost fell, cut clean through.

The sounds merged into one bright roll. When it faded, a dozen small rainbows hung in the mist.

Nellie’s hands were pressed against her mouth.

Shivers moved down her arms and legs in waves, and her heart was beating hard enough to shake her.

She had never seen anything so beautiful in her life, and he did not even seem to know that he was magnificent.

"Oh," Nellie breathed, very small. "Oh, that’s— that’s amazing."

She stood in the falling mist with her hands pressed to her chest and her glasses slipping down her nose, her whole face shining.

"Now," the Light said. "You."

Nellie jumped. "M-me? Now?"

"The Light does not teach by words alone. Come."

He dragged an old crate into the middle of the lot and placed a dented iron pot on top of it, ten meters away.

Then he walked back to Nellie and stood behind her. She felt him there before she heard him, and her whole body drew tight.

The mist was still falling. A drop landed on the back of her neck and slid under her collar.

"Feet apart," the Light said. "Shoulder width. Left foot forward."

She obeyed. Her knees were not quite steady.

"No. Further." His hands settled on her hips and turned them a few degrees, firmly and impersonally. "Your weight goes on the back foot. Square the hips to the target."

Nellie barely breathed. His palms were warm through the pleated skirt, and a small breeze slipped under the hem and brushed her bare thighs, reminding her that she wore nothing beneath it.

Heat gathered low in her belly. Her heart was hammering.

She noticed all of it, set it aside, and fixed her eyes on the pot. The Light had come to teach her, and she would not waste a word of it.

The mist made the air cool against her skin.

"Raise your right hand," the Light said. "Open. Point it at the pot."

She raised it. His hand closed over hers from behind, his chest pressing lightly against her back, and he adjusted her fingers one by one. His fingers were warm.

She could feel the faint pulse of mana under his skin.

"Mana is fed by feeling and shaped by will," he said, and his voice was now directly beside her ear.