I wrung myself out. In a featureless white void with no gravity, no interactions, no sound, no inertia.. it's a good place to vent your emotions. Or to practice patience. But eventually you get tired of shouting at nothing. I groaned, finally. I lost track of time. I used the spell, and a portal opened. I could not open my eyes, but I could feel it. The sensation of place is very obvious when you're not in a place at all. I grabbed the edges and pulled myself through.

  Not the barracks. I was in my bedroom.

  "Oh fuck," I blurted. My voice scratched.

  "Huh?" Nathan said, sitting up. He was still dressed.

  I snapped the portal shut. "I'm sorry," I said, stepping closer. "I was way out of line earlier."

  He stared at me. "I don't want to distract from that because it sounds like a very earnest apology but I think maybe you're saying it for another reason, like distracting me."

  I started to deny it. I was caught with a guilty conscience and my instinct was to double down. I squelched that, and took a deep breath. "I've got access to a couple of essence affinities that I don't think anyone else has. Um, maybe in the whole world." I let out a breath. "And one of them just let me teleport here from the guard barracks."

  "Tele-port," he said, sounding out the antiquated prefix and suffix of the dead languages used as roots of terminology for natural philosophy and arcana.

  "To move from one place to another without crossing any of the space between," I said. "Sometimes even doing so instantly."

  He shook his head. "That would be impossible."

  I grinned mischievously. "Wanna try? You should really cover your eyes."

  The portal opened next to me, and he raised an eyebrow with something close to suspicion. "What's that?"

  "It's like a doorway to a room that doesn't exist," I gloated. "Except that the doorway doesn't also exist." Fuck it, even if it's a cat-flap version of the infinite realm of the gods, it's still cool to show new stuff to your brother.

  "You're just making that up to mess with me," he said.

  "Come find out. But really, do cover your eyes."

  I could only open one door at a time, for now. I'd figure out the rest later. We both stepped through, and then I opened an exit and we stepped out into the the attic, where old furniture gets stored until it is needed again. I emerged, and let my forearm down from my face, blinking stars out of my vision.

  "Holy cats that was bright," Nathan exclaimed, staggering. He held his eyes shut, trying to recover his vision. But he paused. I shut the portal, and waited. He sniffed. "I know this smell," he said. He pressed down with his foot, so the floorboards would creak a bit. "Natalie, are we in the attic?"

  I froze, staring. My heart jumped up into my throat again. This could not be coincidence. I reached out, and laid my hand on the rail. I had set us down just a foot away from our old crib-built-for-two. "Yeah," I said."Nathan, I'll get us to a certain point. And then I'll do what needs to be done. As soon as i don't have to wait, I'm going to take the initiative, like you said. When my duty sends me to go forth and help, I won't hesitate. But until then, I need to stay and wait. All right?"

  He blinked, and looked around the darkness of this place. "All right, Natalie. Thank you. If there are great tasks that need doing, and great power is yours to hold... I just don't want you to stay your hand because of me."

  That's exactly what was happening. But right now, he was blinded, distracted, and disoriented. "I promise, Nathan," I lied. And for once, he did not know.

  For damn sure, I'm going to keep looking for that goddess. I've found the doorway back, and I'm not going to back off until I've had words with her!

  And I'm not nearly ready for Nathan to find out that he is an Essence I have an affinity for. I just can't even ask myself what that would even mean.

  I brought the mail up with me. Mother had already sorted out everything she would need to respond to for us, leaving just our personal correspondences. As usual Nathan had the lion's share, he was much more sociable than I was, and also he did not resent the process of writing by hand the way that I did. I've got a typewriter now but everyone swears that printed type is too impersonal for a letter. Father has his own typewriter now, and he uses it for his accounting and ledgers, and he loves it. But the letters in my hands, like the ones i will send back, are all applied to paper with a pen dipped into an inkwell.

  "Mail call," I said, and gestured with the bundled envelopes. He took them from my hands, I went back to shut the door.

  "That windmill has been outside our window for a while," he pointed out.

  I flopped onto my bed, and buried my face in the pillow. "Don't I know it," I sighed. "I'm at a standstill. I can't master fire, or levin energy." For a while I'd thought I was completely at a standstill, there was no listing for "electricity" at all in my status screen. But when I expanded out the full list with the partial affinities, I was able to find a listing for levin energy, which is an archaic word for electricity and lightning. My fire was gradually working up. It was in the mid-thirties, after months. Levin was still at less than ten-percent affinity. "At this rate, I'll be graduated from the Academy before I've got a full grasp of levin essence."

  "Disappointed?" he asked, as he slit open an envelope with a small silver knife.

  "Very," I agreed. "I wanted to be the first levin sorceress. Turn into lightning. Hurling thunderbolts like the gods of old."

  "You should practice your strike zones more before trying to capture the power of the gods of old," he advised. "Lightning would do little help with your accuracy."

  I invented baseball. He's better at it than I am. He teases me about it. Am I salty? Of course. Am I surprised? No. He's on the rogue route, he picks up skills fast and gets boosts. I'm a mage, we get spells. Sure it's not the same. And when we discuss it, we both confess a little envy of the other. He admires my big overt powers, I crave how effortlessly good he is at everything.

  With a gesture, I animate the pile of letters he has pushed to my side of the desk. They pulled themselves along like inchworms, then leap over to the chair, and from there to the bedspread beside me. The envelopes began carefully undoing themselves. and I rolled onto my back. "Magister Nukhail thinks I'm a once-in-a-generation talent for sorcery. I can only really focus on the things that I'm missing. That seems like a major character flaw. Nathan, am I malcontented? Incapable of being happy with excellence?"

  "Of course not," he said without looking up. He had gotten a letter from Filita, of course. No less than once a week. They would talk about everything. He only got deliveries from Curigi every two or three months, to his disappointment. It's not that she was blowing him off- it's just that her native language is Lecight, She spoke the language of Hearstwhile well enough, but she did not read or write it nearly so well, and it took her a long time to write these out; I think her embarrassment kept her from trying diligently. Also, her attraction to him faded faster than his attraction to her. I won't say that to him, but he's probably going to find out in a few years anyway. No need for me to be the bad guy. "You're not a malcontent because you're actually a very happy person. Of all our acquaintances, you're often the only one who seems to appreciate the comforts of our station with any sincerity. You have a well-developed capacity to be happy, just not with yourself."

  Nothing can make you feel as seen as having a perceptive twin brother. And, yeah, I'm the only person in our social circle (other than the house staff and the servants who are not going to enter a frank and earnest conversation on this subject) who has ever not been rich. I lived a whole life and was not rich even a little bit for even a single day.

  "Fine. Not malcontented. But certainly it has to be some sort of character flaw if I'm more obsessed with the affinities I'm slow to develop than I am for the sixteen I've already mastered."

  He paused, and put down the letter from Filita, and picked up the envelope it had arrived in. He crumpled it into a ball, and tossed it at me. "Hey," I protested. I rolled over, pulled the pillow over my head.

  Nathan walked over, and sat next to me, and lifted the pillow off of my face. "There's several things that you're ignoring. The first, is that you're not flawed you're just motivated. Everyone wants to be better than they are. That's healthy, you dummy. Also, if you spent as much time thinking about what you've got, as about what you should do, then you'd not just be resting on your laurels, you'd be gloating about your accomplishments and treating that pride as a reason to ignore your duties. And that would be worse. Also, you're a world-class talent. That's pressure all by itself. Everyone else is comparing to you, when they make goals. You're comparing yourself to a hypothetical unknown. If you were lacking accomplishment, and also obsessing over small failings, then this would be something I would try to advise against. That would mean you've got a disconnect between your standards and your perceptions. If you were mediocre and obsessed with perfection, I'd definitely tell you to put your feet up, enjoy where you are, and stop putting pressure onto yourself from within, because it's not coming from without."

  "Huh."

  "And you're forgetting some obvious considerations," he added.

  "Whazzat?"

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  "Fire and thunderbolts are amazing and I'd be ashamed to call you my sister if you did not want to be throwing flames and lightning! You would be the barley-gruel of sisters if fire and lightning did not thrill you!" He pressed the pillow back down over my face. I sent the opened envelopes to slap at his arms and legs until he let go of me. He sat back, bringing the pillow with him, and watched the letters I had received lining themselves up in order. "Though, considering what you do with just paper and linen is also impressive in its own way. If powers like those are this much fun, then it's going to be incredible when you get fire securely in your toolbox."

  "Thanks for saying so," I said. In Harigold Glitter, there was really no utility for paper as an affinity. Linen and cotton opened up some slightly more positive dialogue options at a couple points. There were several ways to get stone, and once you had one the others were redundant. Brass and iron were not offered, you skip straight to steel. Even attempting to learn silver or gold would guarantee a bad ending. Not from having them, but from the encounters you need to navigate just to get to them. I had those affinities, but hopefully I was not locked to a bad ending because of them. The big ones to get were steel, silk, stone, earth, wood, fire, water and air. But the background lore, in various books and environmental-storytelling cues. mentioned that there were literally hundreds of different essence affinities. And right now, it seemed like I was mostly filling up on those.

  They're great for actually living day-to-day, but the gamer in me still hungered for the big guns. And the biggest guns would be lightning, levin essence, when I was the only sorcerer around that could use it. Which is why that spark-gap windmill has been outside our window this whole time.

  Damn shame that my progress there is at a complete standstill.

  He got off my bed, and I rolled over. I can animate paper but there's no substitute for reading. I had a letter from Taeril, who was getting ready for her first semester at the Academy. She was my window into the wider world of social politics of the kingdom. She was an enthusiastic social butterfly, and when I expressed an interest in all the gossip she could supply, she and I got much closer as friends. She is a lady of Meadowtam, her father a baron who owes allegiance up through the chain all the way to my father. But her father's holdings are much nearer the border to Bounyare. And that means that she's a lot nearer to any of the larger cities and hubs of cosmopolitan affairs. Meadowtam is not backwards per se, but it just isolated enough to ensure that there was a limited selection of estates and locations that we could conveniently visit for in-person social events.

  And if Nathan is right, and my eventual future is to be wedded off to some key player to shore up a coalition, then it behooves me to go ahead and get all the hot goss as early as I can. So that's why Taeril has been sending me bundles of every juicy rumor and scandal she hears about through her network of contacts. I love calling it that, even though it's nothing nearly so formal as that. She's got a bunch of different friends that all like chatting as much as she does, and instead of being all overlapped, they have very different social circles themselves. And they each have other friends whose ring of conversation extends further yet. And so, in a very organic and natural sort of way, there's a whole spider-web of informants that are all filtering the news of the noblesse all the way to little old me.

  "Oh, what fresh hell is this?" I grumbled, turning the page.

  "What fresh- that's an amazing turn of phrase," Nathan said, shaking his head. He turned in his seat to face me. "I'll bite, little sister, what's going on?"

  "You're only my big brother by the smallest margin," I reminded him. "We weigh exactly the same if I've had a big breakfast. Anyway, Taeril is telling me about the trade minister in Yithro, who's decided to invest the royal mineral escrow into tin mining, without telling the lords so they could work with him. And now the local tin market is booming with money, new mines are opening up, work is moving fast." I tapped on the pages with one finger, like it offended me.

  "All of Yithro's tin mining is alongside the river," Nathan pointed out. "So they're dumping mercury and sulfur tailings into the river. And that's all upstream from Point Dropmost, in Wallingwater. Fishing, and drinking water for the town." He frowned, eyebrows creasing. "That's a pretty serious inter-jurisdictional breach that is going to impact thousands of people's lives and livelihoods. I thought Taeril wrote to you about gossip-column fluff."

  I had to give him a strained look of my own. "You do know that it's all one and the same, right? We're not just out here arguing about who showed up with the wrong dress to the wrong opera opening. Most scandals and strife among nobles and genteels comes from policy decisions. And also, a lot of policy decisions get concluded based on people's personal feelings about their neighbors. There's support growing right now to relegate the trade minister back to the capitol and fine his sponsor house for the cost of repairing that waterway."

  He put his elbow on the desk, and stroked his chin thoughtfully. "Okay. And so I see how there's more downhill consequences of this. Those works will be expensive, so if the sponsor house-"

  "Grattan."

  "- if Grattan has to eat that cost and invest that much work into land that they don't even own, to benefit other people on other land that they don't own, that's going to have a big cascade effect on their other businesses."

  "Which, over the last year, has more and more been road improvements and pack-trail construction through the Wailwind Mountains," i pointed out. "One of the main competitors to Snairlin's trade in perishables."

  Nathan tapped his finger along the edge of the desk as if marking the points of a progression. "Minister appropriates funds. Miners expand mines. River is spoiled. Scandal hits. Grattan is hit by major fines. Road caravans through Wailwind are defunded. Snairlin's grip of food transports through the kingdom gets a little stronger. They can establish a grain monopoly in more districts. Father's coalition loses funding and authority."

  "Gossip," I replied drily.

  He shook his head in disbelief. "And Taeril sent you seven pages of things like that?"

  "Well, no, one page was all about what the Countess of Senis wore to the opera."

  "I really can't tell when you're messing with me," he sighed, and turned back to his own desk. He paused, and looked up. "If Grattan cannot be compelled to pay for the damages, that would likely mean escalated tensions on the border of Yithro and Wallingwater. They've been having trouble on that border already, border disputes, trespassing, poaching. If the fishers there have to find other work it's going to put more pressure on the whole region."

  "Yes," I agreed.

  He tapped his desk again. "Personal arguments escalate. Someone goes to their lord or sheriff to mediate. Now guards and soldiers are involved. Disputes becomes skirmishes."

  "Likely."

  "If the minister had worked with the local lieges, then they would have discussed with their counterparts. Worked out oversight, mediation, or started opening up new water sources," Nathan thought out loud. "And normally any move like that would be run past the genteels. So why not this time?"

  "The answer is in someone's gossip," I sighed. "I just need to figure out who."