In which Master Lute gives a friend more help than he knew he was capable of.

It’s amazing, the details one notices when one starts paying attention. As for instance: this story is also in the wrong place; I had never realised before, but it goes between “Where the Goddess Sends” and “A Spell for the Lost”. (I’m beginning to think that when this big re-read is over, I’m going to have to do another smaller one, just the Moonhawk and Lute stories, to get them straight in my head.)

Moonhawk and Lute have been travelling together for just a few days, and Moonhawk has just mastered her first piece of Craft Magic. She’s already started snarking about how he’s a terrible teacher, and he about how she’s a disrespectful apprentice. And he’s already started offering her new perspectives on the relationship between the Temple and the towns.

The anecdote about Rowan learning to read also says something about the way society works on Sintia. (Incidentally, this is the first story, in the order we’ve been reading them, to explicitly name the setting as Sintia.)

More characters named after plants (though this time with some orthographic variations), including merlot (a grape varietal used in winemaking), vervain, rowan, and juniper. (This Rowan is the second we’ve encountered recently; the Witch of Dyan Circle who was hunting Lute down in “Moon’s Honor” also bore that name.)

Speaking of plants, the association of rosemary with memory is a piece of folklore of long standing. (“There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance. Pray you, love, remember.”)

These stories do really well at the atmospheric spell-casting scenes.

I like the way Lute’s attempt to help Veverain turned out. It’s got some interesting implications (and I bet this is another story Priscilla’s teachers didn’t tell properly if they told it at all).

I like the story about how Tween the cat came to be named.

In fact, I like this story period. It’s my favourite of the Moonhawk and Lute set.