"Oh, the basic spells aren't - just detecting magic, operating portals, making and breaking bonds. Offensive spells and attuning battlemage regalia are a bit on from that, just one of several ways you can take it from there. It just gives me a bit more fundamental understanding of how these things fit together, that's all."

"Yes ma'am, those sound fine, thank you."

"Okay, so..."

Allegra rummages in her bag, pulls out a lightstone - a chunk of crystal, about fist sized, and sets it on the table. The glow isn't very strong against the daylight, but it's clearly glowing softly.

"The first thing we've got to do is find your native metaphor - the magical technique that resonates with you, that you'll likely find easiest to pick up.

The basic metaphors that seem to cross nations are runes, dramaturgical scenes, astrological signs and music. I'm afraid I am unutterably terrible at music, so if that's your favourite then we'll need to find someone else to work on that with you.

If you're not sure - well, we have a table full of books here. I'll pick out one on each and you can have a browse and see which makes most sense to you.

There's no guarantee that any of them will work - you might be stuck with a native metaphor that references the Force, or something, as that was the magic system you were brought up knowing about.

Uh. If that even applies here. Sorry."

"Would poetry make sense as a metaphor, ma'am?"

"Oh! Yes, I think the Erigo Hakima in the Brass Coast use that, or songs at least? A lot of people work incantations through something that rhymes or at least scans, it's just easier to keep track of that way.

You'll probably want at least one of the basic magical concept sets to weave in, unless you already have a set of allegorical symbolic concepts with the right sort of range. I mean, I say that, but all of the concept sets are different - runes and music have some more or less direct realm correspondences, but astrological signs are philosophical concepts - like the Mountain, that things are difficult, or the Fountain, that things are born and live.

So... anything along those lines, although if you're picking something nonstandard you'll have to explain it to me so I can show you how to use it magically."

"I know thousands of poems, ma'am, I can probably find the right sorts of metaphors for anything the magic needs, if that's how it works. If you'd like to give me a list I can check."

"Okay. So astronomancy is my metaphor, although I've been learning a bit of the Navarr magic of patterns as well. One of these books probably has a nice summary list..."

She pulls a book on Astronomancy from the pile and flicks through to an index:

The Chain
Things hold together
Bonds, oaths

The Chalice
Things heal; things apart come together
healing, mending, connections

The Claw
Things bleed
Battle, destruction, violence

The Door
Things move and change
transport, travel, personal transformation

The Drowned Man
Things end
Curses, misfortune, ending

The Fountain
Things live
Growth, fertility, foundations

The Great Wyrm
Things change and transform
magic, grand transformation

The Key
Things are revealed
scrying, opening, skills

The Lock
Things can be hidden
wards, defence, concealment

The Mountain
Things are not easy
obstacles, effort, trials

The Oak
Things endure
strength, endurance, fortitude

The Phoenix
Things learn
knowledge

The Spider
Things are watched by a hidden eye
hidden forces, eternals, sovereigns

The Stallion
Things procreate
fertility, growth, wealth

The Stork
Things matter
decisions, responsibility, leadership

The Web
Things are connected
relationships, synchronicity, sympathy

The Three Sisters
Things are connected by blood
consequences, ties of blood, sorrow

The Wanderer
Things are not what you think or Things go awry
destiny, fate, chance

"I have poems for most of those, yes ma'am; the exceptions are the phoenix, the spider, the stork, and the three sisters - for the phoenix and the stork I have other metaphors with those meanings, and the spider and the three sisters I don't have good matches for."

"Hmm. The Spider is definitely one I use a _lot_ for magical identification, and I'd generally use magical detection as the foundation; but the Key and the Web ought to do okay.

Let's pick something stronger than a lightstone to work on, though."

She takes off a bracelet she is wearing, solid bronze with traces of some kind of silvery metal inlaid in a complex pattern, and drops it over the lightstone so that it encircles it on the table.

"This is a magical item that is bonded to me. Your first exercise is to pick a poem that you _think_ might be able to identify it, and study it closely while reciting - a poem that resonates with the Key, maybe also the Web, and is directed towards... I'd normally say 'uncovering hidden things' but that's because I'm still stuck on the Spider, it sounds like a more useful target for you would be 'spontaneous revelation of information'.

I recommend getting up close to it, you can touch it if you like, just don't move it from around the lightstone. Unless you are a natural talent I wouldn't expect anything to work first time, but practicing this exercise for a bit is the fastest way I can think of to tap into any natural talent you might have.

If it doesn't seem to be doing anything by the next time we get interrupted, I'll break it down into smaller concepts to assign you more specific practice."

"Yes ma'am."

She leans forward, resting her forearms on the table for stability, and begins reciting a poem comparing a web search to traveling along the strands of a spiderweb, with a stanza that refers to an account password as a key.

Allegra leaves her to it for a couple of minutes, although she is clearly itching to ask or correct something. She picks up a book - something about court proceedings of a certain date - and flicks through it to stop herself interfering.

She pauses for a moment at the end of the poem to see if Allegra would like to say anything, but if she doesn't, she'll keep going, repeating the original poem once and then branching out to others with themes of animals' webs, the internet, keys, and passwords.

After a while the runner comes back, without Davyd.

"He's interruptible this evening if you really have to, but he was looking forwards to a nice quiet evening and would rather do tomorrow if it's not urgent."

"Thank you, I don't think it's at all urgent," replies Allegra. Then she turns back to DZ. "Anything? I'm not sure the concepts are quite on target, we can work on that a bit if you'd like."

"Not yet, ma'am, no. What should I change?"

"I didn't quite follow all of it, but I think I might have misled you towards thinking of uncovering secrets deliberately kept, rather than just - looking at things a different way?

You're invoking the opening quality of the Key - but there's nothing here to open as such - it'd be a great part of a ritual script for the one that breaks open a night pouch, or something, but you need to invoke the revelation and scrying resonances instead - the information is there, it's available, it just has to be, hmm, decoded maybe?"

"-would you like me to explain the technology that those poems have as a theme, ma'am?"

"I'm not sure it'll help with the magic, but yes, it sounds fascinating..."

The internet: It's a bit like an absolutely gigantic, chaotic library. Without a centralized organizational system, finding things is a matter of using a tool to search for entries matching a description. Many parts of the collection are public, but others are only available to authorized individuals - though becoming authorized is often as simple as asking to be - and that authorization is shown by giving a password, which can be considered a type of key. Most information on the internet is hidden, in a sense, but it's in more the sense that a container in a warehouse that's accidentally lost its label might be considered hidden than in the sense that a buried treasure is hidden.

"Sounds a bit like our travelling libraries, but much, much faster? Most Stridings carry some books, gradually they circulate around the entire Empire, people send out requests for specific things with a Striding who will look for them on route and bring them back when they come back that way.

Most information isn't secret though - I mean, the Highborn and the League sometimes try to make it so, for different reasons, but they do it either by burning any written record, or writing it in a cipher, or there was that time they wrote the name of the responsible priest on each book of heretical material, getting hold of those was always fun...

Anyway. Detecting magic is more like working out what kind of... metaphorical lens to use, to focus in on the right details?"

Allegra actually smiles for a moment when talking about the labelled heresy, although she smooths the emotion away as soon as she realises it's got near to the surface. None of the other people here are doing the same kind of emotionless act - they are mostly quite animated and open - it's just her.

Allegra's emotional state is definitely not DZ's business, but perhaps she'll mention it to Deskyl when she wakes.

"The internet is very much like that, yes ma'am. Do you think poems about astronomy might work?"

"Sounds like a good approach, especially as it directly resonates with the constellations. Oh, except, the moon seems to be a distinct red-herring - it's magically inert for some reason, we think it might be a white granite mine if there was any way to get up there."

"Yes ma'am." She'll try again, then, and throw in some astronavigation poems for good measure.

They try a few different broadly similar approaches; there _might_ be something there, some anomalous sense that there is some extra property of the bracelet, but it might just be that looking at something closely for a while will make noise seem like data.

The sun starts going down; Allegra yawns.

"Are you going to be alright out here by yourself? Nothing should get this close to the Steading without someone noticing, but I can send someone with a late sleep schedule to sit with you if you'd rather. I'll leave the light stone but I'll need the bracelet back."

Fortunately for DZ, droids aren't subject to imagining things; she mentions the vague sense to Allegra and notes what she was doing when it started.

"We'll be fine, ma'am, thank you; Master Deskyl will wake if anything dangerous approaches her. Is there someone in particular I should talk to if she needs something overnight?"

"If you like, I can show you Davyd's house on the way back to mine, but to be honest from here your best bet is to just shout, you're not close enough to the Steading to annoy anyone - "anyone listening" or more urgently "help" will get you whoever is nearby, "physick" will get you a chirurgron and someone heading off to wake up Davyd.

If that doesn't work, but I can't imagine people won't be hanging around at most hours, knock on any door, if someone's faced their door out of the Steading rather than in then they don't mind - though I don't think anyone here will mind for more than a few seconds once they realise they get to help the exciting strangers.

Or if you really don't want to wake anyone, head down towards the road and someone who's decided to take sentry duty will ask if you're okay."