"If you lucky maybe he say, all on boat, Haighlei kill Haighlei, is problem for Haighlei not you. I not think you so lucky. But maybe."

And they stand awkwardly in silence for a little while.

"Well," Judeth says finally, "not like I can do anything about it now. Young man, you think about this. We're not done here." And she walks away. 

Amberdrake, also, stands silently for a moment, but he looks thoughtful. 

"If you are not busy," he says finally, "I would actually like to speak with both of you. At my office. Separately, but I think it best that Lionstar have assistance for the walk – Sakshemar, would it be all right with you to wait and practice your exercises while I talk with him?" 

He nods. "Yes, all right."

Lionstar is a little nervous – he's not sure what Amberdrake wants from him or whether he's at all prepared to fend off questions – but at least he's feeling moderately clearheaded today, and if there are hard questions he can always feign tiredness or claim he has a headache. 

He glances at Sakshemar for reassurance, and then carefully gets out of bed, leaning on his friend's arm for balance when he stumbles. 

Sakshemar is very steady and good to lean on.

They reach Amberdrake's cottage. It has a garden out back, with a pleasant little square of crushed shells swept smooth in the middle. Amberdrake points Sakshemar toward it. "Might you practice here for a time while I speak with your friend?" He takes Lionstar's arm. "We will not be long." 

Lionstar casts a helpless backward glance at his friend – he doesn't especially want to be stuck alone with Amberdrake and whatever it is the man wants – but then squares his shoulders and smiles determinedly at Sakshemar. 

He gives Lionstar a reassuring smile and nods to Amberdrake.

About twenty minutes later, Amberdrake returns, with Lionstar following. He looks a bit tired and shaken, but he attempts a smile as he makes his way to a nearby bench – unaided, though with Amberdrake hovering nearby.

"I will leave you two here for a time to talk." Smiling warmly, Amberdrake crosses over to a curtain and pulls it open, revealing a pool of gently steaming water under a canvas covering. "Lionstar, you might soak here afterward. Sakshemar, please come to me when you are done, I have some new exercises to show you." 

Sakshemar gravitates immediately to Lionstar's bench to hug him.

Lionstar just leans silently into his friend's side for a long moment. 

"Everything is fine," he says finally, keeping his voice to a near-whisper. "He apologized for not noticing sooner that my home situation was...troubled. Which might have been awkward, since I barely retain any memories of it, but I nodded and smiled and said I understood, and he was satisfied. He said that I seemed different." A crooked smile. "I told him that having a good friend changes many things. He...seemed to think that was quite wise, and was pleased. Then he asked how I was feeling, and I said much better except that reading is difficult, and that my memories from before the injury are still poor. He examined my head with his Gift and said that I am healing as well as can be expected, and that some memories may never come back fully. Hopefully that will cover for any future lapses." 

Then he's silent for a moment, his expression slowly darkening. 

"...I worry about my Gift," he whispers, barely audible. "I have tried to use it a little, several times, and...it hurts very badly, and does not work. I am not sure what to do. Amberdrake does not know that I am a mage, since he is not a mage himself to see it, and Lionstar had revealed it to no one before running away."  

"Could tell," he murmurs back, thoughtfully. "I think safe. Maybe he can help."

Lionstar nods slowly, staring into the distance. "I will think on it," he says finally. "Perhaps." He smiles weakly. "In any case, I am all right now. You can go have your lesson." 

He hugs him again, and nods to the pool. "You need help before I go?"

"No, I can manage." Lionstar pauses. "...Perhaps you could be nearby and watch, in case I am wrong." 

He gets up, carefully, and makes his way over – he grabs at the pole supporting the awning for balance, but manages to sit down without incident. "Good now." 

Amberdrake is waiting for Sakshemar inside. 

"Good to see you," he says in Haighlei. "First, how is practice? Anything you notice?" 

"It's... easier to think," he says. "Or, I don't know, not exactly, but it feels that way. I have better control of my Gift and my feelings, too. And I know you said to try some things that aren't dancing but all of them are worse, except sometimes I can make it work walking or running or running." Those are two different words for running, but if there's a difference in their meanings no one has explained it to Amberdrake. The first is more common. "Hard to find anywhere to run," second word, "around here though."

"I see." Amberdrake looks at him for a time. "Glad it help with control – something I expect, but happy it works in truth. What thing would you need, make 'run' work?" He uses the second word. Is different from 'run' how?" First word. 

"Oh—running₂ is a specific kind of running₁, the kind for long hunts on open ground where what matters is that you can do it for half a day at a time and not how fast you are in the first few minutes. There's not much open ground in these parts, definitely not half a day's run of it. I tried climbing, since there's all sorts of places for that, but I think I'd need to be better at climbing to make that work properly. Maybe the answer is just to get better at climbing."

Amberdrake makes a 'hmm' noise, and stares thoughtfully past Sakshemar's shoulder. "CIimbing, perhaps," he says finally. "Know a person can teach, maybe. And, can run₂ on the road up, perhaps?" He gestures vaguely in the upward direction. 

Then he looks thoughtful again. "Other question," he says finally, "before I teach new exercises. Lionstar. He...seem different with you, now than before?" He's frowning. "Different from what I remember him, most definitely. I am unsure if is from head wound or from you." 

"...He's changed since I first met him, some," he says. "Hard to know for sure how much, because when I first met him I didn't know him as well as I do now. The head wound is definitely also part of it. But again, hard to know how much of that is that hitting his head changed him and how much is that life is very different when you can't do anything."

Another listening noise, another longish silence. Amberdrake is obviously thinking hard about something, a frown-line flickering and disappearing between his brows, but what is on his mind is opaque to Sakshemar. 

Finally, Amberdrake shakes himself a little. "To move on. I wish to try something new." 

He looks Sakshemar in the eye for a moment, levelly, waiting for his acknowledgement – and then his body language transforms in a fraction of a second and he leaps up from his chair, snarling, two daggers suddenly winking into his hands from nowhere. 

He's too startled to think, and so reacts on reflex; and his reflex is to meet violence with violence, tackling Amberdrake to the floor and going for his wrists to either pin them down or take away his weapons—

—and then he catches up with himself and he's furious with Amberdrake for betraying him like that—

—and then he catches up with himself again and he's even more furious, because the extent to which he had any trust in Amberdrake to begin with is fairly limited and therefore so is Amberdrake's ability to meaningfully betray him, but this was so obviously a test and that's somehow even worse—the deception, the presumption of trying something like this with what must be an expectation of forgiveness, the erosion of his ability to treat White Gryphon like a safe place to let down his guard—there's more layers underneath that, too, but in the first instant of realization all he has time for is the feeling of being lied to and presumed on and having that fragile tentative sense of safety torn away. He snarls.

Several things happen in quick succession. 

First, a crystal amulet at Amberdrake's throat, previously half-hidden by the neck of his robe, starts to glow, and a faintly visible shimmering barrier snaps into place over his body, resembling one of Lionstar's mage-barriers except it hugs closely to his skin. It tingles slightly but doesn't actually interfere with Sakshemar's grip on the man's wrists.

Second, the daggers wink back out of existence, and Amberdrake opens empty hands. 

Third, he drops his mental shields. Entirely. He isn't projecting, but the surface glimpse of emotion is calm, and apologetic. 

"You are welcome to punch me," he says, still level, all sign of aggression gone from his face. "I much deserve it, I know. The shield-amulet stop a blade, but not that."