as much conviction as before, and no one met his gaze.
“Maybe intuition and training aren’t enough,” Hana said. “What if we’re missing something? Something special about holding weaves beneath a storm or pulling against Gods’ Breath? Something Captain Vrana doesn’t know because she trained off-cycle?”
Gerrit turned to Filip. “Anything in your reading?” Filip spent his leisure time—when he wasn’t flirting with everyone—poring over arcane manuscripts in languages no sane cadet wasted time learning.
Filip thought for a moment. “Multiple mages imbuing simultaneously is dangerous. We were all concentrating on sousednia to see what was happening. That could have interfered.”
A better theory than they’d had before. “So, next time, only the mage who’s imbuing touches sousednia,” Gerrit said. “The rest of us hold true-life completely. Even the strazhi.” The idea made him uncomfortable, and Gerrit realized that during their conversation, sousednia had insinuated itself back around the edges of his senses.
If Gerrit had considered ignoring the press of sousednia before, he abandoned that hubris now. He’d talk to Captain Vrana in the morning.
The others agreed. As they started for the door, Darina said, “As we were leaving the field, did anyone else hear what Colonel Tesarik told Captain Vrana?”
Gerrit was certain he didn’t want to know. But ignoring intelligence lost battles, and a lost battle could lose a war.
“He said her methods didn’t deliver results.” Shadows made Darina’s expression impossible to read, but her voice was wooden. “He said that next time, we’ll do this his way.”
“What does that mean?” Hana asked.
Darina shook her head. “I’ll see what I can learn.”
“Maybe he’s bluffing.” Gerrit wished he could believe it. He shuddered to imagine what a sadist like Tesarik thought would help them imbue.
AFTER IMBUEMENT PRACTICUM, Gerrit hung back, letting the slate-floored practice room empty while he fiddled with his sparring gear. When the door slammed closed behind the last cadet, Gerrit found Captain Vrana standing at the window, hands clasped behind her back.
He crossed to her side, trying to look casual for the Tayemstvoy corporal watching from the door. Four stories below, cadets marched in formation across the practice yard. ?Is there anything else, sir?? he asked in sousednia. His neighboring reality echoed true-life, leaving him at a cliff’s edge, staring down into the tree-lined valley. In true-life, he asked a mundane question about nuzhda weaves that would merit a complex, technical answer—to satisfy the watching corporal.
Captain Vrana launched into the explanation but turned a sliver of attention to sousednia. She’d debriefed the six of them this morning, making each storm-blessed cadet explain what had gone wrong in their imbuement and discussing how to avoid the same failures in future storms. At their theory of avoiding sousednia unless they were imbuing, she’d looked thoughtful and suggested they try it.
But a Tayemstvoy lieutenant had scribbled notes in the back of the seminar room, and Captain Vrana hadn’t dwelled on Gerrit losing true-life.
?I don’t have magic words of advice, Kladivo,? she said. ?Imbuing requires practice. Practice usually involves failure.?
He ground his teeth, wishing that didn’t sound so reasonable. But failure wasn’t the only reason he was here. ?Sousednia’s different for me now.?
Her sousedni-shape sharpened, her attention shifting fully to him, though she continued to expound upon imbuement theory aloud. ?Different how??
He explained its unrelenting pressure. ?And it’s harder to transition out of. During practice today—?
?I saw.?
Relief flooded him that he didn’t have to describe how he’d floundered, struggling to find true-life after a sousednia-control exercise he thought he’d mastered years ago. He did his best to keep the emotion off his face. ?So what do I do? How do I fix it??
?Sanity is a fragile gift for us.?
Gerrit waved that away. Bozhki in general, and storm-blessed mages especially, tended to crack—if not go completely storm-mad—near the end of their lives. But Gerrit wasn’t nearing flare-out, he was on the edge of gaining his father’s respect—if only he could avoid another mistake. ?If I’d lost control of more storm energy, Filip might not have been able to pull me back. How do I make sure it doesn’t happen again??
Light and shadow snaked across Captain Vrana’s face, bleeding through from her sousednia. ?What do you care about in true-life??
Gerrit frowned, wondering how that could be relevant. ?Serving Bourshkanya.?
Captain Vrana raised an eyebrow and waited.
Gerrit sighed. ?My friends, I guess. Filip. Hana and Branislav; their strazhi.? Captain Vrana kept waiting, and he tried to think of something else. ?I enjoy imbuement training—your classes.?
Shadows rippled across her face like laughter, and Gerrit realized it sounded like boot-licking. He