The night the group makes camp on the platform at the top of the eroded hill, while Gustav has the first watch. Alexis pulls his hat off, sets it beside him, and sits down.
“Those blessings you’ve been losing every morning, Gus. It turns out that was me. Or a new skill out of the Inner Watch, which probably amounts to the same thing.” Alexis turns the Collegium ring once around his finger.
“The trouble with the Inner Watch is that most of it has been lost a very long while, and as far as I can find, nobody left a guide.” He gives a small shrug. “So I learn what a working does by doing it.”
“Before you ‘prayed’ at the grove that morning, I’d already invoked the old working and pointed it at keeping us protected for the day. I held the protective side of… your… our god in my head, and the road ahead of us. In hindsight, the warren of Raiden took my intention and your power, put the two together, and stretched our passing from a quarter of a day to half of one. I’m still not certain how it settled on you to pay for it.”
“That first working ran four days. Your grove may have had a hand in that.”
“Before I tap into that part of the weave I wanted to let you know. It was new to me then. It’s turned out well worth having, but maybe you disagree.” He looks over at Gustav. “I’m sorry for being a part of your crisis of faith.”
Alexis waits to see if Gustav has anything to say.
Gus raises his right eyebrow at Alexis and starts breathing slowly. Gus looks like he is trying to calm himself down.
“Hmm, that is… not… good…
Mmmm, I don’t mean taking my power, although in the future now that you know it is coming from me, it would be good for us to coordinate it next time so we still have spells we need ready.
But I do worry about you casting some protection spell without knowing what it will do. Usually when you don’t know something, you usually don’t experiment, you try to learn everything about it. I worry about unknown side effects. I suggest we try to figure out your spell and also figure out how to pull from our own blessings if possible.”
Alexis nods slowly, taking the criticism in.
“You’re right that we should coordinate going forward.”
“Now that I know more of how the working works, we can plan around it.”
He removes his hat, turns it in his hands.
“I didn’t experiment blindly. I put in a substantial amount of my own power and pointed it at a clear intention. I had no reason to expect it would draw from anyone else. Your loss was a surprise to me.” He puts his hat back on. “The Inner Watch requires doing, Gus. There’s no master to ask. What I can tell you is that I won’t invoke it again without telling you beforehand, now that I know you are, seemingly, a component of the working.”
“As for unknown side effects, you’re not wrong. But I’d argue the last four days were a pretty favorable result.” A small, dry smile. “Now that the initial experiment has been conducted, I’m happy to work with you to understand it further. You know Raiden’s side of this better than I do.”