For His Hands

Spring had reached the window before Rishi left Candlekeep.

The Coast still sent cold through the cracks when evening came, and the stones held winter in their deeper bones.

But morning light had changed. It touched the sill with less severity. The air beyond the glass smelled faintly of wet earth instead of only salt and frost.

Their cups sat beside each other on the table. One of Maeril’s quills had migrated into his stack of papers.

He was folding Elisa’s latest letter when someone knocked.

Rishi opened the door.

Novice Lethan stood outside with a message slip in one hand and his familiar air of weary patience.

“Seeker Rishi. Seeker Maeril requests your presence.”

Rishi took the slip.

There were only three lines.

Master Olan’s atelier.

Now.

As you are.

Lethan looked at the slip again.

“That is what she wrote.”

“Did she say why?”

“No. She smiled in a manner that made Master Olan check three separate ward anchors.”

Rishi took a step.

Lethan moved aside.

“I have learned not to ask what that means.”

“Wisely,” Rishi said.

“I shall record that someone noticed.”

He led Rishi across the Court and through the Emerald Door.

In the deeper passages, he stopped before a closed workroom. Old abjuration signs marked the frame in a quiet blue-white line.

“I am not invited beyond this point.”

Rishi looked at the door.

“Are you relieved?”

“Yes,” Lethan said. “Which worries me.”

Then he knocked once, opened the door, and left before the room could become his problem.

Inside, the air smelled of cut wood, hot metal, powdered stone, and magic held under strict instruction.

Master Olan stood near the far wall, hands folded into his sleeves and mouth set thin with controlled disapproval.

Maeril stood inside a brass circle in the center of the floor.

She looked terrible—not wounded or ill, but spent.

Her hair had escaped whatever arrangement had once claimed it. There was a thin scratch across one thumb, a burn-mark on the cuff of her sleeve, and a smudge of something silver at her jaw.

Her eyes were too bright. She held her shoulders straight by effort.

Beside her, on two padded rests within the circle, lay a staff.

Rishi stopped.

For a moment he did not understand what he was seeing.

The wood was pale, but not dead-pale. It had the color of a living branch grown in sunlight and taught restraint.

The grain ran unbroken from foot to crown, flowing around subtle carved channels and narrow inlaid lines of warding script. It was not ornate.

A staff.

The staff looked as if it had been waiting for his hand before it allowed itself to be finished.

Maeril watched him see it.

Then, because silence had become too honest, she said, “Well. That is either awe or you are about to be tactfully confused.”

Rishi looked at her.

“What is this?”

Her mouth twitched.

“An excellent question, delayed by only three months.”

Olan made a soft sound into his sleeve.

Maeril pointed at him without looking. “You are here for supervision, not commentary.”

Olan said, “I am here because this is not apprentice improvisation.”

Maeril brightened.

“Thank you.”

Rishi stepped closer to the circle but did not cross it.

The staff caught the green-glass light and held it in the carved channels.

Maeril swallowed before she spoke.

“I kept it quiet because if it failed, I wanted to be the only idiot bleeding on the floor.”

Rishi looked at the scratch on her thumb.

Then the burn on her sleeve.

Then the silver at her jaw.

“It failed?”

“No.” Her chin lifted. “It was rude for a while. That is different.”

Olan said, “It did not fail.”

Maeril’s expression softened before she could stop it.

“No,” she said. “It did not.”

She held one hand above the staff without touching the wood.

“Living branch,” she said. Pride lifted her chin before humor came to cover it. “Properly offered, not cut. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to persuade druids that a wizard wants wood for non-criminal reasons?”

Rishi’s gaze moved over the grain.

“Very difficult?”

“Offensively difficult. I was polite for almost an hour.”

“That must have been costly.”

“I am still recovering.”

Her hand remained above the carved channels. The joke thinned. Beneath it, the real thing waited.

Rishi looked at Maeril.

She caught his expression.

“Do not make that face.”

“What face?”

“The one where you become grateful in public.”

Olan cleared his throat.

“The final binding remains incomplete.”

Maeril’s fingers flexed.

“Yes. That.”

On a side table rested a shallow bowl of pale shavings that glimmered faintly even in steady light.

Beside it lay a coil of dark thread braided with a strand of Maeril’s hair, a small knife, a vial of red-gold resin, and three folded cloths marked with abjuration signs. The materials were arranged with such care that even Rishi, who did not know their arcane functions, understood their cost.

Maeril saw him looking.

“Do not breathe too hard near the bowl,” she said. “If you sneeze, we become poor in three currencies.”

Rishi looked at the pale shavings.

“We are already poor.”

“Yes. But with dignity. I am trying to preserve the dignity.”

Olan said, “The shavings were lawfully acquired.”

“I still feel robbed by the concept of holiness having a market value.”

Maeril followed his gaze to the pale gleam.

“Unicorn,” she said, unable to keep the pride out of her voice. Then, softer, “A little.”

Rishi understood not to ask more.

The staff waited between them.

“What do you need from me?” he asked.

Maeril exhaled.

“Your hands.”

He held them out.

She stared at them for half a heartbeat too long.

Then shook herself.

“No. Not like that. Well, yes, eventually like that, but first—” She looked toward the old wraps around his wrists and palms, worn soft by years of forms, travel, care, and work. “Those.”

Rishi looked down.

“My wraps?”

“Yes. Your wraps.”

“They are worn.”

“That is the point.”

He began unwinding them.

The cloth came away slowly. It held the faint shape of his hands, darkened at the folds, frayed near one edge where he had repaired it badly.

When he set the first wrap in Maeril’s hands, she received it with more reverence than she gave most relics.

Olan stepped closer to the circle.

“The grip must be bound by the bearer. Otherwise the staff knows the maker’s fear better than the bearer’s hand.”

Maeril gave him a look.

“I was going to say that less ominously.”

Rishi took the second wrap from his wrist.

Maeril laid both beside the staff.

Then she looked at him.

“Will you?”

He crossed into the brass circle.

The warding lines hummed once beneath his feet, testing him, then settled.

The staff was lighter than he expected when he lifted it.

Not fragile.

Alive.

He remembered her at the edge of the practice court, watching the breath before he moved. Her thumb against the calluses in his palm.

She had been studying him.

He let the realization settle without speaking.

Maeril kept her eyes on the staff, as if looking at him would make the gift harder to finish.

Rishi set the first wrap against the grip.

He wound the cloth around the pale wood.

Firm.

Then softer.

Then firm again.

Maeril followed every pass.

Olan watched the ward-lines.

Rishi watched his own hands become part of something Maeril had made.

When the first wrap ended, he tucked it beneath itself and pressed it flat.

The second wrap crossed the first, not hiding the grain, not smothering the carved channels, but giving his hands a place to return.

When he finished, the old cloth made the pale wood look less like a relic and more like something meant for the road.

Maeril swallowed.

“Good,” she said.

Olan’s eyes narrowed at the grip.

“Very good.”

Maeril shot him a triumphant look that lasted only a breath before her fear returned.

“The binding,” she said.

She took the knife.

Rishi held out his hand.

She stared at him.

“I have not asked yet.”

“You will.”

“I might ask for Olan’s blood.”

“You will not.”

“Olan’s blood is very scholarly.”

Olan said, “My blood is remaining where it is.”

Maeril huffed once, and the sound steadied her.

She nicked her own thumb first, quick and shallow, though Rishi saw the small flinch she tried to hide. A bright bead formed.

She touched it to the red-gold resin, then to the braid, then to the carved channel near the crown.

The ward took the color like a wick accepting flame.

Then she took Rishi’s hand.

Her thumb rested against his palm.

For one heartbeat, neither of them moved.

Then he nodded.

She made the cut.

Small. Clean.

The blood welled.

She guided his hand above the staff, and one drop fell into the binding at the grip.

The brass circle answered.

Light rose through the lines under their feet. The green-glass lamps dimmed as if the room had chosen a different source.

The unicorn shavings lifted from their bowl in a pale spiral, fine as dust. The braid darkened, then rose from the table and vanished into the carved channel. The resin moved along the script in a red-gold thread, finding every place Maeril’s hand had prepared for it.

Maeril released his hand. Rishi closed it around the wrapped grip.

Maeril spoke softly, her voice dropping below the hum of the wards.

The words were arcane, but Rishi heard the refusal inside them.

Then she raised her voice.

“No,” Maeril said.

“Not there.”

“Not him.”

“Not while I can answer.”

The staff warmed under Rishi’s hands.

A ward unfolded from it, then folded back in, as if learning the distance between Maeril’s breath and his body.

Rishi felt the magic pass over his skin without gripping. It did not command. It recognized.

Maeril’s face had gone very pale.

Olan lifted one hand, ready.

She shook her head once.

Not yet.

She returned to the arcane words for the final phrase.

The light snapped inward.

Every sound stopped.

Then the staff settled in Rishi’s grip with a soft pulse of force.

The brass circle went dark.

Olan examined the staff without touching it. Then he examined Maeril with severe approval.

“It held,” he said.

Maeril closed her eyes.

“Say it with more awe.”

“It held exceptionally.”

“Better.”

Then he stepped back, neither leaving nor intruding, and gave Maeril and Rishi room.

Rishi looked at the staff in his hands.

The grip fit.

Not with the dead precision of something made to measurement. It fit like something that knew he would change and had left space for that.

The wraps held where his palms wanted them. The balance answered small motions before he finished making them.

Maeril watched him feel it.

Her voice, when it came, was rougher.

“Hopefully, if you’re about to get torn open by some mad beast, I’ll be able to protect you.”

He looked up.

She had tried to make it a joke.

It was not one.

“Even if you are not beside me,” he said.

Her mouth tightened.

“Especially then.”

The word stayed between them.

Especially.

She reached for the staff, then stopped before touching it. Her fingers curled into her palm instead.

“My magic knows me. My wards know my fear and my reflexes. That is useful, but it is also selfish. So I made this learn another shape.”

Rishi’s expression grew solemn.

“No,” she said quickly. “Not like ownership. Do not make a tragic face. I am not enchanting you into a cupboard.”

“I was not.”

“You were thinking something solemn. Well, stop. I did the consent part properly. Olan made me write it down three times.”

Olan said, “Four.”

“I improved it once.”

“You added insults to the margin.”

“They were clarifying.”

Rishi waited.

Maeril’s humor thinned again, but it did not vanish. It held her upright.

“This lets my warding remember the shape of you. Enough to find you in chaos. Enough to answer through the staff when I cannot reach with my own hands.”

For a moment, the workroom fell away.

He saw the last months at once.

Not as absence.

As labor.

Maeril late to supper. Maeril’s silence around “wards.” The shaving in her sleeve. Her thumb along his palm. The way she had watched the moment before he moved.

Fear had been there the whole time.

Not fear that made her retreat.

Fear that had become work, and then a way to stand nearer to him than distance allowed.

Rishi started to bow.

His body knew gratitude before thought found speech.

Then he stopped.

A bow was too far away.

He set the staff carefully in the crook of one arm, stepped forward, and held her instead.

Maeril went still for only a heartbeat. Then she pressed her forehead to his shoulder and gripped the back of his robe.

“Do not be noble about this,” she muttered.

“I am not.”

“You almost bowed.”

“Almost.”

“Terrible instinct.”

“I corrected it.”

“Barely.”

He held her.

Olan found something on the far wall worthy of attention.

Rishi felt Maeril’s breath against him, unsteady once, then steadier. Her body was warm and exhausted. Her hand still gripped the back of his robe hard.

“I know what it costs,” he said quietly.

She pulled back enough to look at him.

“No,” she said.

The word had teeth.

“You don’t. That’s why I made it. I was already afraid of losing you. Then you found a book that made danger educational. After that, the staff stopped being an idea.”

He could know the danger he entered. He could not know what losing him would do to her. Love did not grant that knowledge; it only let him see what she had built from the fear.

He lifted one hand to her face, thumb brushing the silver smudge near her jaw.

“I accept,” he said.

Her eyes narrowed.

“All of it?”

“Yes. All of it.”

“That includes the part where you do not throw yourself into death and trust the staff to make it poetic.”

“Including that part.”

“And the part where if my warding saves you, you do not apologize to me afterward.”

He hesitated.

Maeril pointed at him.

“See? This is why I had concerns.”

“I will try.”

“Not good enough.”

He breathed in.

Then nodded.

“Agreed.”

She studied him.

“Better.”

He looked down at the staff again, familiar where his wraps met the grip and strange where her magic slept beneath the grain.

Maeril stood close enough that her shoulder touched his arm. The warding circle lay quiet around them, and the livingwood held.

Rishi turned the staff once.

It answered.

Not like a weapon.

Like a promise learning the shape of his hands.

Maeril watched the motion and tried to look satisfied instead of terrified.

She failed.

He saw, but did not say so.

Instead, he lowered the staff to his side and touched his forehead briefly to hers.

When he drew back, Maeril’s mouth had found its crooked line again.

“Well,” she said, voice thin but bright. “If you hate it, I can always throw you into the sea.”

Rishi looked at the staff.

Then at her.

“You would miss me.”

Her laugh broke once before becoming real.