“You’s crazy, that’s what you is,” Sneaks repeated. “He don’t take our kind. What’s more, you gonna break up this band, and we need you. How you gonna feel knowing little Runt here is crying after you when you leave? You brought us him, trained him up and now you gonna abandon him? All of us? You’s our Lucks, see?”
“I gotta try, Sneaks. They say he’ll train anybody.” Lucks opened his fist and the air around his fingers gathered into a miniature whirlwind.
Sneaks jerked Lucks’ hand down, extinguishing the magic. “Thems that say so don’t think you or me as anybody. Our kind,” he emphasized again, “says he gots a temper and will sooner play with his food before he kills it. We’ll be eating your leftovers soon enough in the streets. ‘He was our Lucks, see, before he gone crazy. Taste good, yeah?’ That’s what we’ll say, all while little Runt is a crying.”
Lucks peered over the stone wall that encircled the citadel and gazed up at the stark white stone stretching skyward. “What else they say?”
Sensing the hesitation, Sneaks pounced. “He knows your head, yeah, know you’s lying. Make you clean up. Disgusting that is.”
“Water don’t scare me.”
“Water and you is all right. But it don’t take to me.”
The sun was almost above the top which meant time was running out. He crouched down again and gripped Sneaks on the shoulder.
“Take care of him, yeah? He’ll sort out right. I gotta off. If’n I don’t make out, I’ll find you.”
Sneaks spit in the dirt. “I’ll not know you after this. You’s gonna be dead or proper and I don’t take to either.”
#
At the opposite end an old man sat in the throne, robbed in white, with long hair and a beard.
“I’s Lucks. Here to be trained up.”
“Demonstrate your magic . . . Lucks.”
He dropped to one knee and extended his arms outward to either side of his body. Air rushed from his hands until the ends of the tapestries brushing the floor shot away from the wall and floated in the air. That was enough for now. Lucks let the cloth drop and stood again. He’d keep some surprises for later.
“You are gifted.” The Scholar stood from his throne and descended to stand in front of Lucks. “If you agree to my rules, you are welcome to train here, Terian.”
Lucks gasped. “Ain’t been called that since I come heres.”
“It is not a matter of what you are called but of what you are.”
“Right, I’s lucky.”
“From now on you will rely on your skill, your training, not your luck. You will be Terian, the master of air and of your other ability, water.”
Lucks gaped.
“Very little gets past me. You will have to accustom yourself to not lying anymore, at least not to me.”
“Is that one of them rules you’s talking about?” Lucks sighed at the Scholar’s nod. “Let’s hear them.”
