WHAM! Arhu fell over again. “Courtesy,” Urruah said, “is an important commodity among wizards, especially wizards working together as a team. Not to mention mere ordinary people working as teams or in-pride, as you’ll find if you survive that long. Which seems unlikely at the moment. My language isn’t at question here, and even if it were, I don’t use it on my fellow team members, or to them, even by implication.”

“But I only said—” Arhu suddenly fell silent again at the sight of that upraised paw.

Dumb drills, Rhiow thought, and breathed out, resigned. This is not a drill, life is not a drill, when will he get the message? Lives … She sighed again. Sometimes I think the One made a mistake telling our people that we’re going to get nine of them. Some of us get complacent…

“Let’s be clear about this,” Urruah said. “Our job is to keep the worldgates down here functioning. Human wizards can’t do this kind of work, or not nearly as well as we can, anyway, since we can see hyperstrings, and ehhif can’t without really working at it. That being the case, the Powers That Be asked us very politely if we would do this job, and we said yes. You said yes, too, when They offered you wizardry and you took it, and you said “yes” again when we took you in-pride and you agreed to stay with us. That means you’re stuck with the job. So you may as well learn how to do it right, and part of that involves working smoothly with your teammates. Another part of it is practicing managing these gates until you can do it quickly, in crisis situations, without having to stop to think and worry and “figure out” what you’re doing. And this is what we are teaching you to do, and will continue teaching you to do, until you can exhibit at least a modicum of effectiveness, which may be several lives on, not that it matters to me. You got that?”

“Uh huh.”