Chapter 1

The enchanter was busy in his workshop when Morgen arrived; of course he was, Morgen thought, with fondness.

He wandered round to the side of the crooked wispy-edged cacophony of towers and library rooms and staircases to nowhere, avoided a few colorful puffs of glittery rainbow steam from some improbably-placed chimneys, and propped a shoulder on the wood of the door-frame, watching.

Averet Coral was worth watching. Any day, any time, any chance to do so. Morgen’s heart did its usual flip between happiness and unhappiness, affection and resignation. He did not make a noise, being a goodmagical artifact hunter with lots of stealth-related skills; he did not make a noise because he wanted to gaze at Averet for another second, just for a second, a pulse-beat of secret gold.

Those enchanter’s hands werealways busy. Averet cared for the whole unpretentious grassy farmland kingdom of Lea, and each and every village and hamlet that that rambling magician’s cottage popped up near, and even sometimes, Morgen suspected, villages in other dimensions or other worlds, with wholehearted delight. Averet cured fevers and found stray lambs and had once fixed the mill’s broken wheel by simply sitting down cross-legged with a hand on it for a while and, in his words, talking to it gently but firmly about getting into proper shape again, no more broken jagged bits. Averet in in off hours tinkered with new inventions, with charms and iron-shaping, with creations offered up for sale or as gifts. New enchanted quills that made images float in the air when the tales they’d written were read aloud. Tiny perpetual-motion solar-system models. Delicate hovering lanterns, so light they needed to be tethered to a solid magician-artificer’s worktable.

Could be any one of those, today. Or something entirely new; and Morgen shifted weight, couldn’t not grin at the idea.

Averet hadn’t looked up, working with his back to the door. Invisible spells hovered in place, doing their job of protection against unwanted intruders, Morgen knew; those spells recognized his own presence with the ease of familiarity.

Familiarity, and improbability. Himself and an enchanter. This enchanter.

The usual tiny fangs bit his heart, but he was used to that too. No worse than a salamander’s nip. At his fingers. Which wanted to reach out and explore. To use all his adventurer’s skills to discover the texture of messy raven-feather hair, the sensation of Averet’s smooth skin, the sound Averet might make if Morgen’s mouth tasted his hip, his stomach.

They were friends. Somehow, implausibly—except not implausibly, because Averet immediately befriended everyone and everything he encountered, from the miller to the miller’s son to the miller’s repaired wheel—friendship had happened. And they helped Lea together, himself and Averet; Morgen did believe that: that what they did made at least some sort of difference to the land.

He couldn’t lose that. Not any of it. Couldn’t take that chance. Didn’t dare.

He pushed himself up from leaning on the door. He followed guiding glyphs through the items for sale or trade, through a mysterious tangle of oak and twisted devil-blue glass and copper wire, and toward the workbench.

Averet didn’t turn his direction right away, dark head bent over what looked like a small quicksilver mechanical kitten, the last words of a spellwork drifting low and happy through the air. The kitten, now infused with magic, yawned and stretched metal toes and arched its spine. Averet laughed, and petted its silver back.

So amazing. So amazing, Morgen thought, the way he always thought, every time he hauled his scuffed boots and oversized shoulders and sunburnt nose to that enchanter’s door. Averet Coral was strong and slim and kind and startlingly human, as usual dressed in casual clinging trousers and a loose cream-colored shirt with rolled-up sleeves, baring expanses of tanned forearms: no formal magician’s robes or old-fashioned towering hats interfered with energy and creation.

At the moment he had a smudge of some unidentifiable powder on one elbow, and a half-drunk mug of tea on the workbench beside the kitten, which stuck its mechanical nose curiously into liquid. Averet laughed and rescued the mug, and made a face at what was no doubt ice-cold liquid by now, and looked around in vain for somewhere unoccupied to set it

Morgen loved him. Helplessly, hopelessly, foolishly: head over heels for the most beautiful kind-hearted magician ever to exist in the world. Any world. Any time, any place.

And Averet Coral would never look twice at Morgen Hob. Why would all that magical sweetness give even a single silver cup for a big awkward artifact hunter, one who got red and flustered at public praise for returning said silver cup to the village it’d been stolen from? How could that enthusiastic intellectual grace ever consider too-long shaggy sun-scuffed hair and callused hands, and decide to want to kiss him?

Averet talked to royalty. Averet had tea with King Rupert and Queen Theophania on a more or less monthly basis, checking in about the state of the kingdom. Averet had arrived from the Magicians’ College two and a half years ago with a smile like unfurling clouds and the ability to jump into conversation with anyone, a page-boy or a princess, a farmhand or a riverboat navigator. Averet knew how to dance and how to address a countess, not that Lea was ever overly formal, so that part didn’t matter; and he’d shrugged and leapt merrily onto a first-name basis with everyone he met.