Freder knew very little of their trek back to the House, he was so spent that he slept for most of the two days, rocking gently back and forth in the back of the wagon. At times he would shudder and awaken with a cry of panic, remembering some horrible event from his incarceration in the Stone, but there was a comforting hand and the sure presence of another’s familiar aura to ease him back into sleep.
When he finally awoke properly they were in sight of the House, standing proud and bizarre against the skyline, and he was ravenous.
“Cat…sorry, master.” He corrected himself as his eyes focussed on the round face that hovered over him.
She beamed back at him and stroked his head.
“You can call me Cat Freder, you have earned that and much, much more. Here, I think you want this.” She answered him and then handed him a fresh baked still warm bannock.
Sitting up he tore it apart and wolfed it down with long drafts of water.
“Ahhh.” He sighed as he lay back, it had only been bread but it had been like a feast to his famished body.
“What happened, uh, you know, after..?” He asked Catherine.
“After you passed out you mean.” She surmised.
“Ohh brother am I going to take some ribbing for that.” He grumbled.
“No you won’t.” Catherine told him lightly. “No-one will ever think you weak, not when they hear the full story.” She nodded as his lips formed Valentina’s name. “Tina has told us everything that occurred in the courtroom and after. You have a talent young man, not just the one we know, but for play acting too it would seem.”
“Ah, that.” He murmured, then grinned. “It got everybody’s attention.”
“And your faking of the prosecutor as one of us, a master stroke. Learned in my room I think.” She concluded with a twinkle in her eye.
“Yes, I tapped a water main for energy but didn’t direct it anywhere, the aumeter just flipped out.” He laughed, but then became serious. “I was pretty much out of ideas about then, if Tina hadn’t come through for me it could have fallen through. She has told you what she did ?”
“Her report was most thorough Freder, though she credits you with breaking her out of her cold funk. How did you know that you could channel for her ?”
“I didn’t, I told her to take my hand just as a sort of support thing.” He admitted.
“Well the results speak for themselves, indeed your adventure has had quite a few unforeseen benefits.” Catherine told him cryptically. “Rest Freder, everything will be revealed in good order.” She ordered him gently but undeniably as he opened his mouth to start asking questions.
Despite his excitement and his burning desire to see Valentina again, his body still demanded that he lie back and let events take their course.

Back in his dormitory he was a hero to his friends and they demanded that he tell them the story in all its detail. In fact as soon as it was known that he was telling it many of the seniors crowded in to hear it as well. At its end, he didn’t mention the bit about passing out, questions started to fly in from every corner of the crowded dorm, for in flagrant defiance of the rules all the girls had come to listen.
“That will be enough.” A very recognisable voice announced, master Elena.
She cast a very critical eye around the dorm and some of the seniors who had been taking the opportunity to mix with the girls looked very bashful. “I think it might have been a better idea to have used the common room.” Elena told them sternly. “This is most unseemly.”
Then as they started to wilt under her baleful gaze something very odd happened, a little whirlwind stirred from nowhere and master Elena held out her clenched left hand where it came to hold station. Then she opened her hand and the contents flew up through the little maelstrom to the ceiling and floated gently down.
“Any person not authorised to be in this dorm when the last petal falls will be in serious trouble.” She told them with a slight smile.
They all looked at each other, she was letting them off the hook ?
“Go.” She urged them and there was a very swift emptying of the room so that as the last petal fell onto the wooden floor boards only the five juniors were left.
“Thank you master.” Freder said to her with a broad smile.
“Don’t thank me yet young man.” She said with a smile. “Someone will have to clear this up. Not you Freder. The Master Supreme awaits you.”
He looked round at his friends, he didn’t know if this was a good or bad thing.
“Go on Fred.” Lewis told him. “We’ll make short work of this.”
As Freder left the room he could hear the happy chatter as the four boys were sweeping up the petals and discussing his adventure.

Elena placed a hand round his shoulders as they walked through the corridors.
“You’ve come a long way since you were first entrusted to my care Freder.” She told him.
He looked up at her face, normally so severe, today it had softened.
“Oh you’ve tried my patience too.” She said with a slight downturn of her lips. “But you are still just a boy and that’s what boys do.” She said with a shrug. “Today you are idolised by your peers, lionised by your mentors. Be careful Freder, be very careful.”
“Why ?” He asked her innocently.
“The Brotherhood is not a place for personal aggrandisement, what we do, we do for the good of all. Do not let this adventure of yours go to your head Freder, you still have much to learn.”
It did feel pretty amazing at the moment, everyone wanted to talk to him and for a boy who had been shunned not so very long before it was a heady sensation.
“But I didn’t do it all by myself.” He said in reply. “Tina got us out.”
“Good, good.” Elena nodded and hugged him slightly. “Always tell the whole of it Freder.”
They finished their journey in silence. The door that faced them was highly ornate and the lock panel daunting in it’s intricacy but today he was not to be challenged by the lock, more by who was on the other side of that sturdy oak door.
“Place your hand on the plate Freder, the Master Supreme will then know you are here.”
He did as he was bidden and felt the others presence stir in response. The door opened and he was once more confronted by the fiery presence of Miranda Bluesky.
“Thank you Elena, come in Freder.”
Freder felt Elena’s hand slip away from his shoulder and looked round as she stepped back, briefly smiled at him and then walked away.
Stepping into the Master Supremes room was like entering Catherine’s but not because of clutter, it was austerely furnished with few ornaments, but what ornaments.
A huge mirror in a richly carved frame golden frame covered much of one wall so that the room seemed twice as large. A desk with neat piles of paper upon it dominated much of the centre of the room, it’s carved wood gold clad legs that ended in claws of silver gave it a predatory look. Atop it a lamp of intertwined brightly polished bronze serpents spiralled up from the dark wood, their gaping mouths both holding bright swirling balls of blue-white that shone down on the desk top. High above their heads a heavy iron chandelier was draped in a perpetually falling shower of crystal drops, their gently swaying forms casting a myriad little sparkles upon everything in the room. Beyond the desk there was a doorway from which a flickering red glow emanated, it was towards this that Miranda walked, drawing Freder behind her as though he was on a string. It was not so much a room as a glorified fireplace that they entered, where a small cheerful fire snapped and crackled in an open grate between two built in seats. Miranda sat down in the lefthand nook and Freder turned towards the right.
“No, here Freder. Sit beside me.” She requested him with a gentle wave of her hand.
He was very much in awe of Miranda, and he couldn’t refuse the request even though he would have far rather faced her across the fire. He settled on the furthest part of the seat and looked at her warily, their first encounter was still painfully fresh in his mind.

“Do you know why I have a fire here ?” She asked him with a slight gesture towards it.
“No Master Supreme.” He answered her nervously.
“You may drop the formality here Freder, this conversation is private, for no one else’s ears.”
He nodded his understanding, he must not speak of this outside, but he was not sure he could ever utter her name to her face, she was just too powerful a presence for such familiarity.
“The fire is to remind the Master Supreme of the time before the Brotherhood of the Good Arm existed Freder. It burns here night and day, a symbol of a darker time when to be left handed was seen as a curse.
That darkness ended when our founder established the Brotherhood, nearly five centuries ago, as our records tell us. His was a dark aura, the first in our history, you are only the fouth ever to be recorded. It is a mystery yet to be understood, the dark aura, but we are fortunate indeed that you come to us at this time.” She told him quietly, her eyes for once wholly upon his face, not looking through him at the place beyond.
“Tell me everything that occurred from the moment I lost sight of you as you left our camp to the moment I saw you return. Leave nothing out Freder, it is important that I hear everything, good or ill.” She commanded him, not sternly but with total compulsion. She reached out with her left hand and took his. “The truth Freder. Begin.”
At the moment of contact Freder knew that he could not lie or dissemble, Miranda would know it instantly. He licked his lips nervously and began his narrative. At only a few points in his long description of everything that he had seen and experienced did Miranda interrupt to seek clarification or to make some small sound of satisfaction. When Freder related the events in the courthouse, his cheeky interruption of the solemn proceedings, a slight smile warmed her face. His description of Valentina’s self doubt made her bow her head but it was raised again with a tear slowly rolling down her pale cheek as he revealed how her daughter had rallied when they had joined hands and then led their escape. His small voice filled the tiny alcove room with their elation and their fear as they had made good their escape from Crossblinging and Stannous and Mikal had warded off the airship. Then came the hardest part of the tale for Freder.
“It was a long walk supporting the two masters, the hills have few vatenloeker and I became more and more tired. At the end I think it was only Valentina’s steady presence that kept me going. When master Catherine said ‘Down’, I couldn’t see any longer, a hazy blankness was dragging me down. I let it all go. That was the last I remember before waking in the wagon on the way here, but I think I sort of drifted in and out because I can remember someone’s aura always being there. I think it was Tina’s.”

Miranda looked at him solemnly and then released his hand to gently stroke his head.
“It was Valentina. She remained at your side for most of the two days journey, she would not be separated from you. At the end Cat persuaded her to get some sleep in the other wagon.”
“What’s going to happen to Tina ?” He asked her.
“That is not yet decided Freder, but you have been a powerful advocate for my daughter. I have much to thank you for. Your unlooked for intervention when all seemed lost at the camp, the rescue of my daughter, your belief in her ability. I think that it is for that belief more than anything else that I thank you for Freder. She ran away because she did not believe she could live up to my example, her talent seemed so small to her in comparison with my own.” She paused to shake her head. “No one had been able to get through to her, not even Cat; but you did Freder.”
She leant forward and holding his head in her slender hands kissed him on the lips.
“Thank you Freder, you have given me my daughter back.”
Freder was massively embarrassed by this emotional outpouring from this hitherto aloof and frightening woman and was very glad that this was something that was between the two of them and was not going to be all over the House by evens end. He couldn’t find anything to say, he blushed strongly. Then he felt Miranda’s aura stir in summons and looked round as a second presence entered the alcove a few moments later.
“Tina !” He yelled joyfully and surged up off the seat to hug her as strongly as she did him. It only occurred to him after a few moments of happy warmth that he was hugging the Master Supremes daughter, in that august presence, reluctantly he disengaged and turned around to face Miranda Bluesky, his face as ruddy as the fire once more. But there was no disapproval on her thin face, she radiated happiness.
“My decision is made. Come, the masters are assembled.” She announced and Valentina paled, this, she did not relish.

Freder badly wanted to ask her what sort of punishment might be imposed so that he could make some sort of intervention on her behalf but Miranda swept them along the corridors in such a way that forbade any conversation. At the magnificent doors to the masters chamber she brought them up beside her, Freder upon her right, Valentina upon her left.
“Walk with me.” She said simply and gestured the doors to open.
Every seat was filled and every spare inch on the steps to the rear tiers was filled with masters, not one was missing from this meeting, and the room was filled with light from their glowing luminations. The atmosphere was heavy with excitement, aura’s flashed and scintillated in Freder’s mindseye, they all expected something, something tremendous. Miranda strode into the centre of the arena and halted before the brazier that flamed brightly.
“In the beginning man saw only by the light of the fire.” She intoned.
“Then came the man with the good arm and the strong sight and he lit our way forward.” Came the massed response.
“My brothers, my sisters, we are gathered for an occasion of great import to our Brotherhood. Today for only the fourth time in our long history I present to you a dark aura as candidate for the position of master amongst us. Freder Adams, I declare you master elect.”
There was a concerted roar of approval from the massed ranks of masters. Then came something that they did not expect. Miranda took one step backwards, took Freder’s left hand and Valentina’s right, put them together and swept her gaze around the chamber silently demanding that they all sight the pair. There were gasps of astonishment and many pointing fingers as they saw the two auras merge into a single entity.
“Moreover, in recognition of her pivotal role in securing not only her own release but also two of our own from the Hand, using her good arm to deliver all to freedom. Valentina Oldbridge, I declare you master elect.”
For a split second there was absolute silence but then came shrill whistling and happy shouts and stamping from the very furthest reaches of the chamber where the junior novices had sneaked into the proceedings. It was quickly followed by more and more of the masters as they appreciated the due reward.
After long minutes Miranda raised her hands for quiet and slowly the hubbub subsided.
“As is our tradition I invite the new masters elect to choose the names by which they will be known amongst the Brotherhood.”
Freder knew what was expected of him, he could see Stannous leaning forward eagerly, silently urging him to take the name Stormrider.
“You need not declare your chosen name yet if you choose.” Miranda told the pair.
“I take the name…” Freder began and paused to look over at Valentina who looked terrified by the prospect of choosing a name for herself. Absolute silence held sway.
“Stormbrother.” He announced confidently to them all and squeezed Valentina’s hand.
“I take the name Stormsister.” She said her voice shaking but clear.
The applause they received showed that the majority heartily approved of the choices but Stannous brow was darkened, this did not sit well with his scheming, nonetheless he clapped his large hands with the rest.