He takes the train home. 

And Sadai spends the next day thinking about his mates and reading and thinking about his mates and sitting on classes clandestinely and thinking about his mates and meditating on lifeforce conversion and thinking about his mates and moving lifeforce around in his head and thinking about his mates and thinking some more about his mates and more meditating and thinking about his mates and combining what he knows of lifeforce and sorcery and thinking about his mates and building a ritual—

He calls Aitim. "I have a list of herbs, candles, and ink colours, do you think you could get me them?"

"Certainly."

He recites the list. It is not too extensive but rather varied. "Do you think you could get me those before the trip to Orvara? It's okay if you can't, not urgent, I just wanted to try some things to see if I'm on the right track on the season-making ritual."

He tells his secretary to arrange for him to have them all by the end of the day. "Not a problem."

"Thank you."

"Of course. Should I go ahead and buy up polar regions?"

"Yeah, I can make them habitable much more quickly and easily than I can season them."

"I'll get started on it." And he calls his grandfather and calls Makel and calls diplomats in the countries with a claim on the poles and confirms Kan is okay with no kids for a few more years and applies for a fairly terrifying mortgage and starts negotiating.

And he's by at the end of the day to collect the requested materials.

He has them all by then. His secretary thinks he's very strange but she'll be discreet about it.

If only she knew.

By the by does Aitim have a place where Sadai could draw on things and light candles and burn up herbs and stuff like that? He was going to find some abandoned garage or some such but this might be neater.

"You're welcome to drop by my house, I'll tell the staff to expect you."

"Okay. Thank you."

To Aitim's house!

Where purple housekeeper has been told to expect him and welcomes him in.

He is unfailingly polite and obviously miserable about existence itself and wonders where he can set up.

There's an exercise room that's well-ventilated and has been all cleared.

He thanks the housekeeper and draws on the floor and burns things and lights candles and says things in a deep voice in other languages. Sometimes the light flickers, sometimes the temperature wavers. At one point it starts snowing.

Housekeeper has been told to leave him alone, and does. Eventually Aitim gets home.

If he checks on Sadai he'll find him sitting on the floor in the middle of a circle drawn in four different colours with symbols written in and around in in another two. There are candles scattered here and there, the floor is wet, and the room smells of burnt plants.

He's in fact very curious about magic, and checks in periodically, quietly.

If Sadai is following an algorithm to pick what to do next it's not obvious. He clearly seems to have some understanding of what's going on—he erases and rewrites circles on the floor and sometimes makes without them altogether, and chooses to burn different herbs or just spread them around in apparently arbitrary orders, but the things he does invariably do have some effect, even if it's something as mild as "causing a light breeze."

That's great, because he's spent several personal fortunes on this and would be in a bad spot if it turned out Sadai were bad at his magic.

He does not need to sleep, and although he doesn't have enough materials to keep experimenting at this rate all night he stops before he has consumed all of it. After that he meditates.

Aitim sleeps.