"You," said Earnest, "have a crush."

  As usual, they were following Miss Thicket Wimple's wagon, but from a different starting point, everything felt different. New. Exciting. Charity and Effluvia were chattering and giggling up near the back of the cart, Miss Thicket Wimple offering the occasional comment to what would seem general approval.

  Dalliance and Earnest held back, Dalliance unsure exactly why he felt so displaced.

  It wasn't nervousness, not quite, but it was a restless energy. He discovered himself walking in circles, the wagon train not going quickly enough, and scrubbing his fingers through his hair as if that was ever going to help the haircut his mother had foisted upon him. She'd always liked the look of a man with a little ponytail, she'd said, and had gathered his hair to the back and whacked it off.

  And hadn't pulled it straight back when she had done so.

  She'd told him it would grow out, and they could try again.

  Da had laughed and suggested shaving it all off. Start fresh.

  Funny.

  "I do not," he said, aggravated.

  Earnest had been among the first to get to his feet when Charity had not yet awoken. He had been absolutely delighted to discover that his friend was not only awake but also, in his words, "mooning" after the still-sleeping form of Charity Troubles instead of getting up.

  “She could do worse than a Rather,” he’d suggested to start off the teasing. Damn his eyes, he’d been loud, too. Catching Effie’s expression—very cat-with-the-canary—Dalliance knew he’d been overheard.

  By her friends.

  He thought he might die of shame on the spot. And now, walking behind the wagon, Effluvia and Charity were chattering and giggling with the schoolmarm, as if nothing had happened at all.

  “I think she’s the best,” his mouth said in a squeaky, thankfully hushed monotone. Earnest’s ridiculous Skill had its limits. Two could play that game.

  He engaged [Prediction], seeing the world fill with the washed-out foreshadows of his fellow students. Earnest would try to dodge. He would fail.

  Dalliance kicked his foot out from under him at the perfect moment to break his stride, sending him faceplanting off the path, over the retaining wall, and into the cow pasture beneath. He couldn’t see him in the bushes, but his friend was probably fine.

  “HEY!” yelled Miss Thicket Wimple, even as Earnest began belly laughing from wherever he’d landed below. “I SAW THAT!”

  He’d never found himself wishing the prediction would wear off sooner, but he did now. The continuing trek back to the schoolhouse, if shorter from the castle, wasn’t MUCH shorter. His friends and their ghosts walked around him, mostly not varying very far. Earnest had the most breadth of possible action—anything from hopping up on the back of the wagon to trying to kiss Effie, which sight raised Dalliance’s eyebrows, but which he couldn’t leverage in any possible way whatsoever.

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  More’s the pity.

  What got to him was what he didn’t see.

  Charity was going to walk behind the wagon, with Effie, in almost every possible future. Except for the one where Effie ran behind the bushes at the bend. He wondered vaguely if she needed an outhouse, then focused on not thinking about it.

  Something was different today.

  When he’d first begun to use his skill he’d seen a cloud of possibilities, much like now—but now, when he focused on any particular outcome, it was . . . clearer. He could follow the thread further.

  Ghostly scenes played out what might have been five minutes into the future. It was just as chaotic—but he could do more.

  Earnest wanted to talk to him in nearly every future.

  And there wasn’t a clear way to select which one he was seeing.

  After a while of walking, he decided that the only thing he could change about the future was what he was going to do, and he’d see what varied. But it didn’t work.

  I’m going to talk to him about kissing Effie, Dalliance decided. Or tried to. But it would be mean, and might creep his friend out, and besides someone might overhear and Effie might be mad at him.

  Nothing changed.

  He wasn’t going to, and that was that.

  People don’t embarrass people for doing things they haven’t done. Nice people don’t.

  He’d been seven when Topaz told him the most important rule of how to tell what nice people did.

  “Before you do something, ask: if everybody did this, would the world be better?” she’d told him.

  And in fact the world would be worse if he told people about Effie, much less if everybody did that sort of thing.

  Being the good guy was hard sometimes.

  It was strange, though. He learned so much about his friend, in so little time.

  Why he’d chosen [Dreamer].

  What he liked about Sir Vigilance.

  That he’d noticed Dalliance staring at the man who was probably his father, and wondered about it, but wouldn’t believe they were related because the hair color was wrong.

  Which was dumb.

  Knot walked up to him in real life. “Bit odd, isn’t it?” he offered. “How the other side lives, and all.”

  “They’re just people,” Dalliance said before he checked what Sterling would say. The boy, on his grey dappled mare, glanced over but didn’t comment. “Seemed kind of cozy.”

  “Good food,” said Earnest with gusto. The boy had eaten an entire jar of pickles the previous evening.

  The group split from the cart and streamed in a messy group of chattering pre-teens into the one-room schoolhouse, Earnest’s cheerful chattering ringing in the morning air.