Day 21, Summer, 513 AV
Kit sat with her legs crossed in the center of her room in the Tarsin's boarding house in a sleeveless white chemise. She breathed in a steady rhythm, like her father had taught her. Magic twists the mind, he's said. When you use it, yours must be clear, it must be unclouded. She fidgeted where she sat, adjusted herself, pulled down on the edge of the cloth.
Magic, her father had said. Is the knife whose hilt cuts. A thing of last resort. Kit snorted through her nose, shook her head. What a strange man, to teach her something and tell her to never use it? But still she was haunted with his warnings of madness and addiction and worse things. Her hands shook slightly when she held them up in front of her eyes.
But Kit was alone in Ravok, making her way. She needed every advantage she could get her hands on. Even if it was magic. Kit breathed, tried not to focus on her and wonder and fear. Instead she turned her thoughts to the way the floor felt under her. The sound of lapping water. The subtle sensation of swaying that had accompanied her ever since she set foot on Ravok. She tried not to think, just feel, just act.
Kit clapped both her hands together and closed her eyes, and with an effort of will began excrete res from her palms. She felt a sudden, sharp pleasure that made her back arc languorously, her eyes roll back into her head, and just like that Kit lost her focus.
She fell back, bracing herself against the floor, trying to make her breathing a bit slower, her heart a bit calmer. How long had it been since she really sat down to practice Reimancy? A very long time. It had been almost a reluctant habit in Alvadas, and fear of discovery had kept her from practicing. But was she really so out of touch that even the feeling of res excretion could throw her off?
Apparently so.
If only she had practiced before, she could have been like a wizard in a story. When the slavers came she could have routed them in fire and ice, driven them away, kept them from . . . Kit breathed out in a noise that was not quite a sob and ran both hands over her face, shaking her head numbly.
Ticks turned to chimes. Kit clapped her hands together and breathed through her teeth, cleared her head. And this time when she felt the sudden, electric pleasure of casting, her focus did not break.
She arced her hands so her fingers and wrists still touched while allowing her to peer between them to the inside. A little ball of res gathered there, transparent, ethereal and pulsing green, nurtured by twining strands of like-colored res from her hands. She spread them, her fingers tensed as though their stillness was all that kept the res in place. The gestures were not important; they never were. But the focus and intent they represented were.
Breathe in, breathe out. Kit pulled one hand suddenly away, watching the res keenly. It trembled like disturbed water, but held in place. With her free hand, Kit waved under the res in a slow, steady circle. The res began to spin in place, its shape warped by the spinning, flatting out from a sphere to a thin glowing disc, thin and nigh-transparent in the center and thick around the edges. Kit pressed closer with the hand she used to keep the disc in place, but though the res retreated into a smaller disc it refused to become a sphere again while it spun.
Kit could work with it. Now, the hard part. She closed her eyes and tried to feel through the res. Tried to remember what it was like to transmute air and remember those few precious seconds she had control over it. With her will Kit reached up from the disc of res and touched the air above it, tried to make it spin. Still, the air escaped her will, blowing out away from he disc in all directions. When her father had taught her the exercise, he had said to strive for enough control to be sure that no air escaped the rotation, but Kit felt the air against her skin and was grateful for her imperfection in Sivah's heat.
Then the taste of blood rose in her throat like a warning, and Kit spread her hands far. The res transmuted in a sudden, refreshing burst of air for a tick. But her father had told her the warning signs; it was why he had always said to practice in moments like this. Quiet ones, peaceful ones, where she could spot any change in herself before it became a real problem. Still, when it was gone it left only the summer heat and a hole in Kit's heart that itched to cast again.
Instead Kit tried to distract herself with a stretch. She tucked one foot behind her head so that it rested on her neck and held it there, pressing back, her muscles crying out to her in a pleasurable pain that brought a thin smile to her face. The fingers that itched for more magic she tamed by twisting her body into awkward positions and forcing them to seek out her toes there instead.
Her body found a joy there, and thought it was not magic, it would be enough. Had to be enough. But her soul remembered the itch.
