“Like what?”

I started rattling them off. “It would be a chance for a kind of learning I’ve never had before. The best teachers —”

William cut me off. “Those are Lan’s reasons,” he said. “There are other ways to look at the matter. What do you want to do?”

I just stared at him for a long minute. That was what Miss Ochiba, who used to teach us magic at the day school, had said over and over — there are always other ways to look at things. I thought I’d learned that lesson through and through, but it hadn’t occurred to me to try looking at this proposal of Lan’s from any other direction until right that minute.

“Other ways,” I said slowly. Lan saw going East for school as a great chance to learn spells and theory from the best Avrupan teachers in the country. Papa would see it the same way, especially if I found a sponsor so it wouldn’t cost the family so much, and he’d be especially pleased to have another child go for schooling past upper school. Mama would see it as a chance for me to get some Eastern polish on my manners, and a good way of keeping me far, far away from the settlement territory on the west bank of the Mammoth River.

And I … I didn’t know yet how I saw it, but I knew for certain fact that I wasn’t going to find out by arguing Lan’s reasons over and over in my head. I had some more thinking to do, of a different kind. I looked at William and nodded. “Thank you, Mr. Graham,” I said. “I needed reminding.”

William looked at me for a minute, then just nodded back. One of the good things about William was that he always knew when to stop pushing on a point. “You’re welcome, Miss Rothmer,” he said. “Anytime.”

We spent the rest of William’s visit talking about his plans for the next year. I told him I’d write if he would, which I figured meant maybe three times all year. William wasn’t much for letter writing.