"I think you'll like learning magic from Urtho. My impression is that he loves it, and he loves his students."

"Mmmhmm." Ma'ar doesn't know how to parse that claim or what predictions it makes, so he doesn't say anything else. He's slowly falling asleep anyway. 

Her heart is pounding way too much to be tired but she can hold him while he falls asleep.

It's been an incredibly eventful day and this doesn't take him long. 

Once he's sleeping she paces. 

Urtho's coming to get them. This is safer and saner than trying to ride south for weeks. She should probably basically plan on telling Urtho the truth. The only downside she can think of is that she might be really wrong about his character or he might have changed a lot in thirty years, but - you don't have to be a saint to not want to destroy the world accidentally. 

She could tell Urtho almost everything but just say she doesn't know which student he fought with. So as not to prejudice Ma'ar's relationship with Urtho, which is probably important for Ma'ar growing up to be Leareth. Urtho will presumably suspect, though, if she says anything at all of what little she knows of the war. 

She should've asked Leareth more about his history but there was so much of it, and it felt like none of her business. She knows so little. She doesn't know what the Cataclysm actually was, or what specifically caused it. She knows Urtho had superweapons in his Tower but he might not have them, yet. And she doesn't know anything about Urtho personally, or about what Tantara is like for women -

- doesn't matter. As long as she and Ma'ar are both alive, they can figure this out. And she's pretty confident Urtho's not a secret serial murderer. 

Ma'ar's dreams are a tangle of strange things and places, big houses with endless stairs, servants in bizarre clothes who pour infinite soap into baths for him, bowls inside bowls inside bowls with too many spoons. Magic turning his clothes into birds that fly away. Magic turning the sky red. 

Magic tearing the earth apart under him, and he falls into a bottomless crack of glowing angry fire...

He snaps awake in the darkness, holds still and extends his fledging Thoughtsensing as well as his mage-senses. He can't read Carissa but he can feel her, and also all the magic jewelry she wears is like a beacon-fire. Each time he reassures himself that she's still there and very scary and dangerous and it's convenient for her if he's alive, and then he goes back to sleep. 

- He jolts awake again to grey light, scrambles up, runs to the window and pulls apart the blinds. He's not sure how long until dawn but he really doesn't want them to miss their Gate. "Carissa!" he hisses. 

- god, stupid pregnancy or whatever it is, it used to be nearly impossible for her to oversleep - 

" - thank you. Let's go - do you have your dagger -"

"Yes, I do. Are you just going to sneak out and leave your ring - what if they see us...?" 

"We are going to walk out the front door like we are entirely entitled to do that, they don't have any way of guessing we're leaving the country. I might prevail on Urtho for money to come settle up this afternoon, depending how we get along with him and how far the Gate is. If not they'll keep the ring and the matron can retire fabulously wealthy, I think she has enough sense to get a good price for it."

Ma'ar nods, it would be stupid for her to lie to him about that. He takes her hand. 

And they walk out of the inn and over towards the College of Chirurgeons. 

It's very early and most of the city is asleep, except for some night sentries or guards at the wrought-iron gates to the campus itself, who stop Carissa and demand to know her business and if she's a student or visitor. 

"I'm awaiting a Gate at the main entrance." Also casting Charm Person.

That's surprising, they've heard of Gates of course, but even the King doesn't have enough trained Adept mages to afford many of them. She looks rich, though, dressed all fancy-like. Foreign. Maybe she really can afford to have herself Gated around. 

"Ah," one of them says knowingly, as though this happens all the time. "That'll be five coppers, ma'am. Fee for the weatherworking." He's lying through his teeth about this, neither the city nor the college have any Gate-related protocols, but his second cousin is a mage and complained to no end about the weatherwork from the one time the King wanted a Gate for a diplomatic trip to one of the border holdings. 

"I think you could use some rain, really." But she counts out the change from the apothecary.

The guards accept this. One of them is ogling her breasts.

Ma'ar hangs onto her hand. "I don't like them," he whispers, once they're far enough along the path to be out of earshot. 

"Because they lied? The staring was my fault, I Charmed them. The lying was his own fault, though."

"Not just that. The other one was thinking you looked - tasty?" He's very confused about whether this is a metaphor or literal and if it's a metaphor what it even means. "And wondering if anyone'd see if he - tried to grab you... He decided I'd probably make too much of a fuss and also - that women who've had babies are, I don't even know what, he was thinking of it sort of like - spoiled food or something, but that doesn't make sense -" Ma'ar is looking very disturbed. 

Possibly there were downsides to the plan of telling the thirteen year old to mindread everybody. "They were thinking about sex. In cities being a woman dressed like this and Charming people and expecting them not to think that is like ...being rich and having horses and no weapons and expecting there not to be any bandits. Both in the sense that in places with the rule of law there won't be, and everyone has a choice about whether to be a bandit, and also in the sense that there totally absolutely will be bandits, here in Predain, until we fix it."

Ma'ar is still dubious that you could get the 'rule of law' that good, but maybe it's easier with the kind of magic they have in the other world and also gods like theirs, and it's not really the point. 

"I had a plan for if they tried," he hisses. "I was going to lightning bolt zap them. I can do it a lot harder than I did with the cows, it just makes me tired faster, and I'm faster than them. And then if they chased us anyway I would've thrown fireballs at their faces, but I was scared we might get in trouble for murdering people who work for the King, if they caught us before we could get to the Gate, so that it'd be better to just scare them. I wonder if that's the main entrance."

He's pointing at a wide, majestic set of stone steps leading up to three sets of tall carved doors, with elaborate words carved into the stone lintel, marking this as the hall of the College of Chirurgeons. 

"It looks promising." She squeezes his hand. "It's better not to murder people even when we won't get in trouble for it, because then they'll be dead, and it's better if people are not dead. But I'm proud of you for having a plan to defend us if you needed to."

"I don't think a fireball I can do would kill an adult anyway but I - haven't tested it - so I wasn't sure."

It feels nice, that she's proud of him. He's not sure what exactly that caches out to, but Father said it to him once when he first did magic, and also the first time he captured a cow from the other clan, and Mother said it when he broke up a fight between some other children. Mother always hated fights.

He blinks away tears and thinks about something else. The doors are interesting to look at. They must've been so much work to make, though. He wonders how they were made, they're wood but trees aren't that big, so they must be lots of pieces glued together somehow, but the seams are cleverly hidden by paint...

The sun peeks above the horizon, sending pale rays slanting across the grass. Dewdrops sparkle.

A few minutes after sunrise proper - Anrod is significantly north of Ka'venusho, and in summer the days are longer - the leftmost doorway begins to glow. Ma'ar's eyes go wide. 

She tugs him over towards it. "Gates are tiring to hold, especially if it's a long way, and I don't know how long this is. We'll want to go through right away."

Breathing a little fast, he runs up the stairs with her.