Fortunately for someone who has uprooted their entire life and only has what they could take with them to support them and their daughter, healing - even healing trained to different standards than the local sort - is in high demand, and between the large population and the sheer wealth of Tantara in general and Urtho's tower supporting two people on one income is achievable without putting in absurd hours. She's there in the mornings, to wake her daughter, eat with her, and see her off to classes before heading into work, and most days she gets off her shifts not long after Amy's classes let out, and when she doesn't she almost always has some new story to regale her with, or else sufficient additional funds to add new works to their rapidly growing home library , which Amy spends even more time in than she does the one in the tower proper. She also hadn't realized how much she missed the intellectual stimulation of her own apprenticeship, or the camaraderie of hanging out with those who get it when she starts talking about healing rather than getting lost or zoning out from boredom. And as for the school itself, it really is as good as everyone had claimed, and once Amy is sorted out of the beginner classes and starts learning alongside her peers she can't help but start to enjoy her time. Beyond a simple focus on medicine, Amy devours history, literature, natural philosophy, mathematics and logic, ethics, and geography as fast as her teachers can relay it. And although she is one of the brightest within Urtho's tower, it is an institution that delights in learning, and she finds her own circle of friends and acquaintances among her peers.

A year into her time there, Amy is tested, and it's discovered that in addition to her active healer's gift, she also has an unawakened mage gift potential. Nothing changes immediately, but from then on magical theory and the philosophy of spell design find their way into Amy's reading lists and research projects.

Amy is 12 when her gift awakens. It wasn't a sure thing, but both being at Urtho's tower and having another active gift are strong correlates, and besides that there are vanishingly few as devoted to their work as Amy is. When the number of new things should could learn about healing started to be limited by the free time of whatever handful of specialists the subdiscipline in question had to offer, she finds herself with lots of free time, especially when considering the other limitations imposed by her low budget. Some of this she pours into her language studies, learning Ceeji and Predaini and Haighleian and a smattering of further trade tongues, but much of the rest, aided by her own understanding of her channels, goes into practicing until finally she manages to make it work. It's not the most powerful mage gift, falling solidly below the adept level, but she knows all the theory and her control is good and she puts in the work to what is an exceptional degree for a 12 year old. It still takes her a while, longer than it would some of her more magically gifted peers, but finally, eventually she makes her way into Urtho's class for the first day of the new semester-

-and it's like a whole new world opens up for her. Urtho isn't as brilliant as they say he is, he's more so, and beyond that he even thinks like her in a way she hadn't even known to miss, his mind blazing from one thought to the next and with every word he speaks, his deep and abiding loves for magic and teaching shine through. Here is the most powerful man in Tantara - most likely, in the world - and this is what he has chosen to make of himself. He could be wealthy beyond measure, the most famous conqueror in history, an emperor that stands bestride the continent and be worshiped by no small number of them as a god, and he chooses to be here, teaching bright children his craft. Not since her mother first showed her her healing work at the age of three has Amy ever felt such a strong urge to be like someone, some day, but she's here now and she knows the shape of her future. Amy Vondua wants to study hard, learn everything that is known about magic, and then go and make her own tower and bring this precious gift to an entire new nation of people that would otherwise never get a chance to experience it for themselves. She knows the work ahead of her is difficult, almost unimaginably so, but faced with the enormity of the task, Amy soars.