The Desert Spear

not? Rojer had a boyishly pretty face and a quick wit. His music was beautiful beyond words, and he could bring a laugh from Leesha when she was at her lowest. He’d shown more than once that he was willing to die for her.
    But try as she might, Leesha could not bring herself to see him as a lover. Rojer had barely seen eighteen winters, a full ten years younger than her, and he was her friend. In many ways, Rojer was her only friend. The only person she trusted. He was the little brother she’d never had. She didn’t want to hurt him.
    “Your apprentice Kendall saw me the other day,” Leesha said. “Pretty girl.”
    Rojer nodded. “My best student, too.”
    “She asked if I knew how to brew a love potion,” Leesha said.
    “Ha!” Rojer barked. Then he stopped short and looked at her. “Wait, can you?”
    Leesha laughed. “Of course not. But the girl doesn’t need to know that. I gave her a tincture of sweet tea instead and told her to share it with her would-be love. Watch out if she offers you tea, or you might be in for a night of kissing.”
    Rojer shook his head. “Never stick your apprentice.”
    “Another of Master Arrick’s brilliant maxims?” Leesha quipped.
    Rojer nodded. “And one I’m happy to report he practiced as well as preached. I knew other apprentices in the guild who weren’t so lucky.”
    “This hardly compares,” Leesha said. “Kendall’s nearly as old as you are, and she’s the one buying love potions.”
    Rojer shrugged and put his hood up, pulling the edges of his motley cloak together to strengthen the wardnet. The last of the light had faded, and all around them misty forms were rising from the snow, solidifying into corelings that hissed and cast about, scenting them in the air but unable to find them.
    Erny had set his house away from the village so that he would not have to endure complaints about the smell of his papermaking chemicals, but that distance also put it outside the great ward of forbidding that protected the village proper.
    A wood demon wandered into Rojer’s path, sniffing the air. Rojer froze, not daring to move as it searched. There was a sharp movement under the cloak, and she knew one of the warded throwing knives he kept strapped to his wrists had fallen into the palm of his good hand.
    “Just walk around it, Rojer,” Leesha said, continuing down the path. “It can’t see or hear you.” Rojer tiptoed around the demon, twirling the knife nervously in his fingers. He had grown up juggling blades and could put one into a coreling’s eye at twenty paces.
    “It’s just unnatural,” Rojer said, “walking plain as day through hordes of corelings.”
    “How many times must we do it before you tire of saying that?” Leesha sighed. “The cloaks are safe as houses.” The Cloaks of Unsight were her own invention, based on wards of confusion the Painted Man had taught her. Leesha had modified the wards and embroidered them with gold thread into a fine cloak. Demons ignored her when she wore it, even if she walked right up to them, so long as she moved at a slow, steady pace and kept it wrapped around her.
    She’d made Rojer’s cloak next, embroidering the wards in bright colors to match his Jongleur’s motley, and she was pleased to see that he seldom removed it, even in daylight. The Painted Man never seemed to wear the one she had made for him.
    “Nothing against your wards, but I don’t think I ever will,” Rojer said.
    “I trust your fiddle magic to keep me safe,” Leesha said. “Why don’t you trust mine?”
    “I’m out here in the dark, aren’t I?” Rojer asked, fingering his cloak. “It’s just eerie. I hate to say it, but your mother wasn’t far off the mark when she called you a witch.”
    Leesha glared at him.
    “A Ward Witch, at least,” Rojer clarified.
    “They used to call Herb Gathering witching, too,” Leesha said. “I’m just warding, same as anyone.”
    “You’re not the same as anyone, Leesha,” Rojer said. “A year ago, you couldn’t ward a windowsill, and now the Painted Man himself takes lessons from you.”
    Leesha snorted. “Hardly.”
    “See the light,” Rojer said. “You argue his own wards with him all the time.”
    “Arlen is still thrice the Warder I am,” Leesha said. “It’s just…it’s hard to explain, but after looking at enough wards, the patterns started…speaking to me. I can look at a new ward and just by studying the lines of power, guess its purpose more often than