"Corren, this is Aurelle," Rooke said. "Don't let the size fool you. She's a gifted analyst, best the castle's raised in a decade, and the Duke thinks she has whatever skills this mission needs. She's never been past the drawbridge before, though, so I need you minding that."
"I'm not babysitting anyone," Corren said, more bluntly than he'd intended, the exhaustion of the last three days sharpening his tongue past its usual courtesy.
"I don't need a babysitter." Aurelle's voice came out clipped and precise, each word set down like a piece on a board rather than spoken in any ordinary sense. "I'm considerably more capable than you're currently assuming, and I'd prefer you correct that assumption before it costs either of us anything."
"Duly noted," Corren said, and found, despite himself, that he almost respected the flatness of the retort more than he'd expected to.
They reached the port district by midmorning, salt and industrial smoke thick enough in the air to coat the back of Corren's throat, and found three of the castle's own soldiers unloading a massive block of ice from a cart, a man's shape frozen inside it in the exact posture of someone caught mid-flight. The lead soldier greeted Rooke with a crisp salute and a note of skepticism about needing an escort at all on home soil, and Rooke's answer, that the Duke preferred caution to regret, had barely left his mouth before six bandits stepped out of the warehouse's shadowed loading bays with the loose, confident menace of men who'd planned this exact ambush well in advance.
"Someone's been watching us," Rooke muttered, already drawing his blade. "Aurelle, get behind the ice. Corren, with me."
"No." Corren's voice came out level, almost bored, and he felt Aurelle's sharp glance land on him even as he said it. "Protect Aurelle and the prisoner. I'll handle this myself."
The lead soldier objected on reflex, six against one being poor arithmetic by any standard, but Corren was already moving, already closing the distance in a blur that left the bandits scrambling to adjust for a speed none of them had accounted for in whatever plan had put them here. He took the leftmost man down first, blade finding its mark with an economy Doss's Patience Form had quietly built into his body over a full month of aching practice, then pivoted off the follow-through to put a second man on the ground before the first had even finished falling, using the momentum of his own dodge as the only weapon that swing needed.
The chant that followed brought fire raining from the empty air onto two more bandits closing from the left, their screams tangling together into something the warehouse's stone walls threw back at itself in a distorted echo, sparks catching briefly in a stray pile of packing straw before dying out against the damp stone. The last pair broke and ran for the loading doors together, and Corren let a lightning chant catch them both mid-stride, electricity arcing white-blue between them and dropping them boneless a few strides short of the exit, the drain of two chants in close succession pressing into his chest heavier than either alone would have, an honest toll for an honest working, his own breath coming ragged for a few seconds longer than he wanted anyone in the warehouse to notice.
Silence fell across the warehouse, broken only by the crackle of dying flame and the low, appreciative whistle Rooke offered from behind the ice block, half mockery and half something closer to real awe. Aurelle stepped forward slowly, her earlier fear folding itself away into something more clinical as she surveyed the fallen bandits with an analyst's eye rather than a survivor's relief.
"Your restraint," she said finally, "means we can still question them for information rather than simply burying them. I'll allow that this was, on balance, an efficient outcome."
"I don't know if it's just me," Corren said to Rooke, unable to help himself, "but that sounded almost like a compliment."
"High praise, from her," Rooke said, grinning. "Might be the nicest thing she's said to anyone all month."
"I did not say it was nice," Aurelle said, already turning away toward the ice block, and something in the precision of the correction told Corren more about her than an hour of ordinary conversation would have.
He noticed it properly for the first time on the walk back to the castle: a low, murmured phrase Aurelle spoke under her breath at every blind corner and every doorway before she'd let herself commit to crossing it, too quiet for him to catch the words but rhythmic enough that it had the unmistakable shape of a chant rather than a habit. When he asked her about it, she only said, with the same brisk finality she seemed to apply to every question she considered beneath discussing, that she had her gifts and he had his, and left it there. Corren let the matter drop out loud, but not in his own head, filing the cadence of it away the way he filed every unidentified piece of grammar, patient, certain that a language always eventually told you where it came from if you listened to it long enough.
A servant found him three nights later in the corridor outside the castle's laundry, a stooped older woman he'd exchanged perhaps a dozen words with in as many days, and pressed a folded scrap of parchment into his palm with hands too steady for someone doing anything as mundane as delivering laundry. A small phoenix, cut from thin silver, hung from a cord at her throat, half-hidden beneath her collar, catching the torchlight for just long enough that Corren was certain he was meant to see it.
"You'll want to know," she said, voice pitched for no ear but his, "whether your friend's gift last month settled well with him. My employer sends his regards, and asks after your progress with great interest."