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took a deep breath and let it out, shakily. “Gar. About yesterday. Your family. I—”
    “Don’t,”
said Gar, one hand swiftly raised. “I can’t afford your sympathy, Asher. Not now. Not yet.” He blinked. “Oh.”
    “If you want to help … then help me stay strong.” “I can do that.”
    A little of the bleakness eased from Gar’s face. “Thank you.” He pushed to his feet. “Now I must make myself presentable. The staff—”
    “I got ‘em waiting downstairs. Will you make the announcement, or d’you want me to—”
    “I’ll do it. Tell them I’ll be with them shortly, would you?” He pulled off his weskit and tossed it over the back of the armchair. “Give me ten minutes.”
    Nodding, Asher slid off the windowsill. Started for the chamber door, hesitated, and turned back. “Gar…”
    Impatient, Gar glanced at him. “What?”
    Still hesitant, he took another step closer. Brittle or not, grieving or not, there were things Gar needed to hear. Things that couldn’t wait. “Nix may be a good pother, but he ain’t got the power to make a man live if his body’s hurt past healing. Or mend a mind that’s broken. I know this is hard, but—”
    Gar paused in the middle of undoing his buttons, his eyes abruptly cold. “No.”
    “You don’t know what I’m goin’ to say yet!”
    “I know exactly what you’re going to say,” Gar replied, and returned to his unbuttoning. ‘The answer is no. I have a Master Magician.”
    “Gar…” He closed the gap between them a little more. “I know Durm’s your family now, but you can’t let that make your choices for you.”
    Gar stripped off his shirt and threw it at the chair.
    Despite Nix’s stinking green ointment, his torso looked like a mad painter’s palette. “I’m not.”
    “You are! You got to look at this the way the people will,” he insisted. “All your life they’ve known you as Gar the Magickless. Gar the Cripple. And it never mattered because there was your da, and your sister, two of the best magicians this kingdom’s ever seen. The. smallest spratling in Restharven knew the kingdom was safe, because of them.”
    “The kingdom is still safe!” retorted Gar, stung. “I am Gar the Magickless no longer!”
    “I know, but it’s only been weeks!
Weeks,
Gar, after all those years. Folks have barely got used to the idea that you’re a magician, and now you want ‘em to see you as king? As
WeatherWorker!
You may be as powerful as Fane ever was, but you’re not trained. Not the way you should be. You said it yourself, Durm still had so much to teach you!”
    “And he shall teach me,” said Gar, eyes bright with temper. “As soon as he recovers.”
    “You don’t know he will!”
    “And you don’t know he won’t!” snapped Gar. “Unless we are now to number physicking amongst your many talents!”
    Asher shoved his hands in his pockets, sorry he’d ever opened his mouth. But he had, and it was too late now to take back what he’d said. “I ain’t the one holdin’ out little hope, Gar. That’s Nix. His words, not mine. You can’t pretend otherwise just because—”
    “I’m not pretending anything!” said Gar, and turned his back. “And neither am I continuing this conversation. The subject is closed.”
    Asher reached out, grabbed Gar by the arm and spun him around. “No, it ain’t. Like it or not, you have to face facts. You need a Master Magician. You can’t leap into WeatherWorking on your own, without some other trained magician to guide you. It’s too difficult. Too dangerous! You can’t—”
    Gar raised a warning finger. “Say ‘can’t’ to me one more time and I promise you’ll be sorry!”
    “Sorrier than if you charge pig-headed into Weather-Working and bring the Wall crashing down around our ears?” he said, ignoring the raised finger, and the dangerous light in Gar’s eyes, and everything save the need to make the fool see sense. “I don’t think so.”
    “I have no intention of