Tavi felt his eyebrows go up. It was a piece of body language she only used when she was in earnest. He turned to face her, listening.

"You are pushing yourself too hard, chala" Kitai said. She touched his cheek with one slender hand. "The Legion's war. Your work for Gaius. These practice sessions. You miss too many meals. You miss too many hours of sleep."

Tavi leaned into the warmth of her touch for a moment, and his eyes closed. His body ached, and his eyes burned most of the time, lately. Savagely painful headaches often followed hard on the heels of his practice sessions, and they made it difficult to eat or sleep for a time afterward. Not that he had much choice but to sacrifice time he might otherwise use to eat or sleep. Command of the First Aleran was responsibility enough to consume the full attention of anyone, and his duties as a Cursor required him to gather information from every available source and report it back to his superiors in addition to his duties as the Legion's captain. Only the inexplicable resilience that he suspected came as a result of his bond to Kitai had left him with enough time and energy to teach himself all that he could of what meager furycraft he'd been able to grasp. Even so, the pace was wearing on him, he knew.

Kitai was probably right.

"Maybe," Tavi admitted. "But there's not a lot of choice right now. It takes years of practice to develop crafting skills, and I'm about fifteen years late getting started."

"I still think you should tell someone. It might go faster if you had a teacher."

Tavi shook his head. "No."

Kitai let out an exasperated sound. "Why not?"

"Because what I can do now isn't much," Tavi said. "Not in the greater scheme of things. I'd rather what little I do have come as a surprise if I'm ever forced to use it."