“Nothing,” said Mizuki. “We’ve just been talking in circles.” She took a
sip of her wine. “
Verity almost said no, but she changed her mind at the last minute and instead set her lute case down to take a seat.
“Bread?” asked Hannah. “I can, of course, unless you’d like to make a show of convincin’ me.”
“Oh, I would
“I’m late to bed most nights,” said Mizuki. “Especially after some good wine. It’s just about chilly enough to make a fire, I think. I’d thought we were done with cold spring nights. I’ll have to complain to Isra when she shows up.”
“I’ll go get some wood,” said Alfric. “Is there a woodpile in the back?”
“Um,” said Mizuki. “I kind of just grab logs from the forest. In the winter there’s a fully powered heating element.”
“Then I’ll go find some logs in the woods, I guess,” said Alfric. He rubbed his hands together and took off without another word.
“Always quick to pitch in,” said Hannah, shaking her head slightly. “I don’t think I could be moved for anything right now.”
“Too much food for everyone,” said Mizuki. “And then wine on top of
that. But I suppose lighting the fire
“You have a firestarter though, don’t you?” asked Hannah. “I could have sworn I’d seen one around.”
“Hush,” said Mizuki. “I don’t get many chances to use my mystical powers for good.”
“Or for evil, right?” asked Verity.
Mizuki bit her lip. “Oh, just a tiny bit of evil, now and then. You know, they say that evil is the spice of life.”
“I don’t think that’s what they say,” Hannah said with a smile.
“What are we talking about?” asked Alfric, who had come back in with armfuls of wood.
“What’s the spice of life?” asked Hannah.
Alfric set the logs beside the fireplace, then stood up with a thoughtful expression. “Verity?” he asked.
There was a chorus of groans from around the room, and Mizuki threw a pillow at Alfric, which he caught with expected deftness, as though he’d been trained for it.
“Sorry I wasn’t able to get proper logs,” said Alfric. “I did my best.” Verity looked, and saw that it was an awkward collection of wood, none of it properly split or chopped. This was something she hadn’t really thought about before, but for a wood fireplace, the kind that was only really for nostalgia or entertainment unless you were quite poor, you needed a fair amount of preparation. The fireplace was fairly wide, but not everything Alfric had brought in would fit.
“Are you going to apologize for that pun?” asked Mizuki.
“I stand by it,” said Alfric. He began stacking logs into the fireplace, or at least the ones that would fit. “Are you going to help me light this fire?”
“Sure,” said Mizuki, getting up from her chair and going over to the
fireplace. “This is actually a bit more tricky than it seems though.
Most things don’t
“Or I could just use a firestarter, if this is going to be a whole production,” said Alfric.
“No, it’s fine, I just need to concentrate,” said Mizuki.
“How much of that bottle has she had?” asked Verity.
“Not too much,” said Hannah as Mizuki crouched down by the fireplace. “We’ve been pacin’ ourselves. Not the sort of state where I’d be doing delicate work, but it might be different for sorcs.”
“It is,” said Mizuki, who was holding out a hand toward the logs. “We actually get slightly better after a glass of wine. There’s a lot of instinct involved. Wine lubricates the mind.”
“I wonder whether that’s actually true,” said Verity.
Flame came out of Mizuki’s hand in a gout and lit up the logs, sticking to them for a moment before the fire became more natural. Mizuki stepped back and smiled at the fire, then took another sip from her wine
holding her arms wide. She just barely kept from splashing wine from her glass.
“Not to undercut your impressive and important display of power,” said Alfric. “But I definitely could have done that too.”
“Firestarters are cheating,” said Mizuki.
“They’re not,” said Alfric. “But even if they were, I have flint and steel and could do it that way.”
“You carry flint and steel with you?” asked Hannah.
