The Brother nodded, " But then, later thinking about it, I realized it couldn't

have been that, because it was mid morning, and I was looking *down* the street at
him, I mean looking from my end, which is due East, so the Sun was behind me, not
him"

Framea blinked. Yes, he thought, it was just you imagining things, Or just possibly
a really powerful Ignis in Favellum; except why would anybody enchant himself to
glow bright blue in broad daylight

<note: planting the 'key' components>

* your only chance is to provoke him into attacking you*

Framea stopped at the crack in the wall where the freshwater spring trickled
through. He'd seen women standing there filling their jugs and bowls painfully
slowly. It was the only clean water in the village. He knelt down and cupped his
hands, then drank. It tasted on Iron and something nasty he couldn't quite place.

It was such a poor village, how could Thrasea the miller afford such a good hunting
bow. He shook his head. Urban thinking. He'd probably built it himself. carved the
stock, traded flour with the smith for the steel bow. He could almost picture him
in his mind - patiently, an hour each evening in in the barn, by the light of a
bulrush taper soaked in mutton fat. People in the villages often used sharp flints
for planing wood, because steel tools were luxuries. Or you might borrow a plane
from the wheelwright, if he owed you a favour -

Motive. What motive would an untrained need? He tried to imagine what it must be,
to carry the gift inside you, and not know what it was. You'd probably think you
were mad because you knew the things you were able to do were impossible. (but
you'd seen them happen, but they were impossible, but you'd seen them). You
wouldn't dare tell anyone else. But there were times when you got angry (you'd have
a shorter temper than most people, because you'd be under stress all the time) and
you'd found you'd done something without realising. Something bad, inevitably. Your
victim would tell people, in whispers; they wouldn't quite believe it, but they
wouldn't quite disbelieve it either; You'd get a reputation; people would be
nervous around you; Not much chance of a job if you needed one, not much chance of
help from your neighbors if something went wrong; It would be a miracle if an
Untrained reached adulthood without being a complete mess.

He filled another handful and drank. The taste was stronger, if anything. Iron, and
... (_ what is the point of this mystery about the second ingredient? significant?
how?)

Provoke a fight, the Prencentor had said. Well, indeed. Easy, Peasy (<-- american
slang jars?)

(But an Untrained would know wouldn't he? He'd feel the presence of another gift,
he'd be drawn here (-- important world building info, but then why can't Framea
sense the Untrained?). Would he dare come back to the village, where he'd be
instantly recognized? It would all depend on exactly what he could do. Besides
Lorica of course. But untrained were always an unknown quantity. There were cases
on record of untrained who could do 7th degree translocations, but not a simple
light or heat form.There was no way of knowing. Damn)
He spent the rest of the day slouching around the village, trying to be conspicous,
something he'd spent his life avoiding (_ ha ha what great character building). the
idea was that news spreads like wildfire, in small, remote, rural communities, and
he wanted everybody for miles around to know that there was a man from the Studium
in the village, asking questions about the massacre. But the village chose that day
to be empty, practically deserted (_ another minor obstacle in Framea's path); if
anybody saw him, he didn't see them. It did cross his mind that the village was
deserted, precisely because he was there. As darkness closed in, he began to feel
rather desperate; he really didn't want to stay here any longer than absolutely
necessary. He went back to the spring mouth, climbed up on a cart that someone had
left there for some reason and looked all around. Nobody in sight - Then he took a
deep breath and shouted - " I AM FRAMEA OF THE STUDIUM. SURRENDER OR FIGHT ME TO
THE DEATH" Then he got down, feeling more ridiculous than he'd ever felt in his
whole life.

He hadn't said anything about that night, but she was there waiting for him when he
got back to the inn; standing alone, in the corner of the room. The five or six men
sitting drinking acted as if she was invisible. Strictly speaking, it wasn't
necessary. Once was usually reckoned to be sufficient to form the connection. She
looked up at him; presumably this was just about the money.

He nodded, and she left the room; as she did so, the men stopped talking, and there
was a dead silence for a while, as though they were at a religious service, or
remembering the war dead on victory day. He'd thought about sitting down for a
while and drinking a mug of disgusting beer, but he'd decided against it. A man
could catch his death from cold, from a silence like that.

The subtleties of the hayloft, he thought, as he crossed the yard. The ground was
still wet from yesterday's rain, and his foot slipped on the bottom rung of the
ladder. She was waiting for him, lying on her back, fully clothed. She looked as
if she were waiting for the attentions of a surgeon, not a lover. Never again, he
promised himself.

This time he cast a number of specifici Letitias, as well as a general one. It was
easier now, that he knew what a woman's reproductive organs actually looked like
(he'd seen the drawings in a book of course, but you couldn't get a real idea from
a drawing. Besides the illustrations in Coelius's anatomy looked more like a
sketchmap of a battlefield than anything to do with the human body. The results
were quite embarassingly effective, and he was worried the people in the inn might
hear, and assume the poor woman was being murdered.

She fell asleep quite easily afterwards. He lay on his back with his eyes closed,
wishing he was back in his warm chambers in the Studium, where he could wash up and
be alone. She snored. He realized he didn't know her name; though, to be fair there
was no compelling evidence to suggest she even had one (!!).

Also, he wanted to wake her up and apologize. But of course, she was better off not
knowing.