He stared at the lump of gold alloy in frustration. There was something wrong with the fourth shaping spell, he was sure of it. It was being changed by its interaction with a spell for movement or –
A light knock at the door interrupted his concentration.
"Who is it?" He inquired angrily.
"Ellimere."
Ellimere? She rarely came to his workshop, though the anger between them had cooled since Orannis's binding.
He sighed. "Come in."
She entered, wearing much the same outfit as she had worn when she last visited him in his workshop, before Orannis. She sat beside him on the bench, facing away from the worktable.
"How are you?" She asked deliberately, her words too careful.
That was strange; it was not like his sister to be awkward.
"I'm fine." He answered warily, and then for reasons he wasn't quite sure of, he told her about his troubles with the hand for their aunt.
"I'm just frustrated." He finished, gesturing angrily towards the offending metal.
"Have you thought of trying - " She began.
He sighed loudly. Of course she would think she knew better, even in this.
"Sorry, sorry." She said, holding up her hands in apology. "I know. This is your thing."
That made him feel somewhat better. It was his thing, just as being Abhorsen-in-Waiting had not been. And yet, he still doubted it sometimes. He doubted it now. He looked over at Ellimere and wondered if she could understand.
"What if this isn't it either?" He asked quietly.
She frowned and cocked her head slightly, looking exactly as Mother did when she was confused; which was not often.
He continued, "I've been working on this for weeks, but I feel like I've gotten nowhere."
"Oh for Shiner's sake Sam! You're trying to make a working hand. That you find that monumentally complicated task difficult does not mean you aren't a Wallmaker! Even the sendings at the House knew what you are." She exclaimed.
Sam was somewhat taken aback by her fervor and her confidence in him. Yet despite that and her convincing words, he was still somewhat troubled.
"I know, I know. I just…" He ran a hand through his hair in frustration, trying to bring himself to say it. "I just thought it would be easy, now that I know what I am."
Ellimere looked at him with surprising tenderness.
"Sam, did you really think knowing what you were born to do made doing it any easier?" She asked gently.
It was Sam's turn to frown. "Well it must make it somewhat easier."
"In some ways, it actually makes it harder. You showed that just now," she commented. "You get more frustrated, worried and stressed when you do something wrong or when it takes a while to learn or do something because you think you should be perfect. Because you were born to it."
Sam studied her face. He had never considered that his perfect sister could be stressed or worried. He had been too wrapped up in his own troubling path to notice that her path wasn't an easy one either.
He realized that he must have contributed to that stress when Mother and Father were in Ancelstierre and he was supposed to be acting as the Abhorsen-in-Waiting. He felt a jolt of shame at how he'd spoken to Ellimere then. "I'm sorry I was so hard on you." He acquiesced.
"Don't mention it. You were stressed. You had to be someone you weren't." Ellimere replied genially.
He nodded, and they sat in silence for a moment.
Then Ellimere straightened and Sam sensed that she meant to say something she found difficult.
"I'm sorry too. I messed up. I let you down." She said, looking away from him.
He frowned. She was annoying as hell, but she rarely made mistakes. And she thought she'd let him down somehow?
She glanced over quickly, and noted his confusion.
She took a deep breath before explaining. "I saw how much the responsibility and the Book scared you. That book made you sick for Shiners' sake! Yet I chose not to see it. I pretended that you really were studying, and that it was just really hard and I had to give you time to sort it out."
He realized he wasn't angry with her, as he would surely have been had she told him before he left to find Nick and all of the rest had happened.
He shook his head. "That wasn't your fault. Everyone thought I had to do it. I thought I had to do it. If I was the Abhorsen-in-Waiting and I hadn't done it, the Kingdom would be in deep trouble."
"Still," Ellimere continued, "you're my little brother. I should have asked you what was really wrong."
He was about to say it was fine, but curiosity changed his reply. "Why didn't you?"
She hesitated, and then she answered in an even tone, "I was scared."
"You? You were scared?" He said incredulously.
She looked away. "I know I had no right to be, but the winter was so hard and I was scared that if you couldn't learn what you had to learn…" she didn't finish that thought, and Sam tried not to dwell on the specific consequences of what might've happened if Lirael had never figured out that she was the Abhorsen-in-Waiting.
"You had every right to be scared." He said quietly.
Ellimere smiled and nudged his shoulder with hers, as they had when they were children.
He grinned back. "Does this mean you won't boss me around anymore?"
She put on her stern prefect-field-hockey-captain face "Absolutely not."
He laughed.
"Good. I don't know what I would do with myself without you telling me what to do."
She was serious again. "You'd do fine, Sam. You'd really do fine."
"I'm glad you're my sister," he told her.
She laughed. "Well, I guess I'm glad to be your sister."
"You guess?" He asked in a tone of mock offense.
"Well, you are still a stubborn, annoying brat sometimes."
He nudged her, slightly hard than she'd nudged him.
"Yeah, well you're still an bossy tyrant."
She fixed him with a slightly bored expression, like she was tasked with explaining something to a particularly stupid five-year-old.
"I was born to it." She said flatly, in a tone that perfectly mimicked Jall Oren's.
Sam burst into laughter, and after a moment Ellimere joined him. They laughed until they couldn't breathe, and it was some time before they could regain their composure.
Then Sam turned to face his sister.
"Ellimere?"
"Yes?" She asked, wiping tears of laughter from her eyes.
"You're going to be an amazing queen."
She froze and stared at him, and then smiled, almost shyly. "Thank you Sam."
They still bickered and occasionally hated each other, but in the months and years that followed, it was not unusual to see the siblings seated or walking together, running towards each other's studies; always discussing one thing or another, always on to the next project.