Brightly Woven

and I’m always in the mood for a little.”
    Exhausted from the journey, I fell asleep in spite of the constant jarring of the wagon. When I woke again, the sun was setting, and North was sitting up front with Owain.
    “I’m glad I almost punched you in the face that night for stealing my ale, lad,” Owain was saying. “Lost an ale but gained a friend. I’m sorry I let you down in delivering the message.”
    “No, it was unfair of me to ask you,” North said. “I knew they’d be difficult. I’m sorry.”
    “Nothing to be sorry about,” Owain said. “Think about how unexciting my life would have been without you. No adventures, no dragons, only catching petty thieves here and there to stay afloat.”
    “Well, we should be there in just a bit,” North said. “I can smell the Lyfe from here.”
    “Have you told her yet?” Owain asked. “Warned her, I mean, about the other wizards?”
    North shook his head but said nothing.
    “You know, lad,” Owain said, snapping the reins, “finding girls as brave as dragons and sweet as flowers ain’t so easy anymore. I thought Vesta was the last of them. Clever, generous—”
    “Stubborn, frustrating,” North finished.
    “Ah, then, a perfect match,” Owain laughed. “She’s the only one I’ve ever seen kick that sorry bottom of yours straight. Promise me you’re not going to let her slip away.”
    North glanced over his shoulder. “I won’t.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

    I don’t know what I was expecting of Provincia, but now that I was standing directly in front of its famous walls and four high towers, I was wholly underwhelmed. Even the tallest spires of the castle were smaller than I had imagined.
    The city, and the castle within it, sat on a small isle near the shore of the great lake, the Lyfe. A stone bridge stretched over the water, providing the single point of entry aside from the shipping gates. I pulled back the flap of the wagon’s cover to see the large wooden ships docked at the famous south gate, but the tents and fires were the first things to catch my attention. There were hundreds, maybe even thousands of tents in every shape and color on the mainland, just out of the lake water’s reach. The surrounding forest seemed to have been recently cleared away to accommodate them. I asked Owain what they were doing there.
    “It’s where they’ve put the lower-ranked wizards and the humans that were conscripted to help fortify the castle,” he said. “The humans will be sent home before the fight begins, whether they like it or not.”
    The freezing rain started the moment our wagon wheels touched the bridge. We joined an endless line of people making their way into the city, their carts and trunks dragging sullenly behind them.
    I leaned between North and Owain, trying to get a better view of what was ahead, as North moved quickly, untying his cloaks and stuffing them inside his bag.
    “What are you doing?” I asked, startled.
    “I have to be a man in this city,” North said as we rolled through the elaborately carved gate. Astraea’s stone face watched us impassively from the top of the arch, sending a tremor through me. North kept his head down, but I didn’t understand why until one of the guards, an impossibly large man, stopped us.
    “Man or wizard?” the guard asked.
    “Man,” Owain said. “Here to volunteer.”
    The guard snorted, then turned to North.
    “Man, of course,” North said. “Harrington Marshall.”
    The guard gave me an appraising look.
    “My wife , Sarah,” North ground out. The guard merely clucked his tongue in annoyance. Another guard came around the back of the wagon, lifting the flap to look inside. Seeing it was empty save for our bags, he signaled to the guard up front.
    “Head in, then.” The guard stepped out of the horses’ way. “Curfew starts in an hour.”
    “What was all that about?” I whispered once we were past.
    “They would have made me sign the Wizard Registry,” North said. “It doesn’t matter that I’m unranked. They want to keep track of all the wizards going in and out of the city, and I don’t want to alert people to my presence just yet.”
    We didn’t have to fight any crowds once inside, though the rain did seem to be coming down harder than before. I caught my first real glimpse of the royal palace through a heavy downpour.
    After the horses were boarded for the night and Owain gave Vesta a very long, tearful promise to return in the morning, North led us to