V.

They were several days on the road before they left Ela. They did not sell her, as Lydia had suggested initially. As Aaron pointed out, the mare had never been theirs to begin with. Selling her, then, would be wrong. Instead, he merely left her at the stable of an inn.

“Won’t they just keep her?” Lydia asked.

“Possibly,” Aaron said. “Then again, they may know who she belongs to, or decide to try to return her to her rightful owner. Either way, it would be wrong of us to profit from her more than we already have.”

“If you say so,” Lydia said.

And so they walked. Sometimes they camped, and sometimes they stayed at an inn. On the whole, the journey was both less eventful and less dangerous than Lydia had imagined. She had expected a certain amount of danger that was not present. She would not have said she was disappointed, exactly, but she was more bored than she had expected to be. There was also the fact that Aaron was not the most talkative sort, no doubt because, as he said, he was unused to traveling in company. To Lydia, that meant it was up to her to make conversation, if only as a way to occupy her mind.

And so began the questions.

“Are you a sorcerer?” she asked one day. The question came out of the blue, and nearly startled Aaron with its suddenness.

“Am I a sorcerer?”

“That’s what I asked.”

“What makes you think so?”

“That night at the inn,” Lydia said. “You pulled off my collar so easily…” She trailed off, thinking of the gash on his arm that had healed far, far too quickly. She was unsure how to ask about that. She could not place the reason, or determine the meaning of her fear, but questioning him about it seemed like a bad idea. “And you seem to prefer walking everywhere.”

“What does walking have to do with it?” Aaron asked.

“Everybody knows that sorcerers prefer to walk,” Lydia explained. “It keeps them in touch with the earth, which is where they draw their power from.”

“I see.”

“So? Are you a sorcerer?”

“No,” Aaron said.

“Then how—”

“Are you a barmaid?”

“Not anymore,” Lydia said.

“But you still know how to clean and wait tables?”

“Of course.”

“Yet you aren’t a barmaid,” Aaron mused.

“Are you saying you used to be a sorcerer, but aren’t anymore?”

“Not quite,” Aaron said. “It was something that seemed like it might be useful to learn, so I spent some time studying it. I learned that I have some aptitude controlling fire, but not much else.”

“Is it useful?”

“Occasionally,” he sighed.

“Will you teach me?” Lydia asked.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because the average person has almost no use for it.”

“You learned some sorcery,” Lydia said. Aaron stopped, turned, and faced her, arms folded, smiling slightly with one corner of his mouth. There was something about him in that instant, something in his eyes that spoke of turmoil, strife and suffering—most of it earned. He seemed somehow both very hardened and very humble, almost yielding. He might have been frightening, yet she believed he was fundamentally benevolent.

“And do I strike you as particularly average?” he asked.

“No,” she said.

“If you had a need for sorcery,” he explained, “I would teach you. But if you were that sort of person, Lydia, I think you would have found your feet set on that path a long time ago.”

“I see,” she said.

“Besides, it takes a long time to master even minor tasks with the Hidden Arts,” Aaron explained.

“You seem to have done well for yourself in not very much time,” Lydia observed. “How did you manage so much so soon?”

“Some learn more quickly than others,” Aaron said.

“I see.” But as he turned and resumed walking, she realized that his reply was not necessarily an answer.