"You don't have to, obviously. Maybe they can check without actually doing it, that would be best, but I don't really know anything about magic."

"We can ask, I guess."

"Yeah. Do you want to go now?"

"Okay."

She goes to the wing of the palace where the princes and princess live and knocks on the princess's door.

A twelve-year-old princess opens the door. "Hello?"

"Hi. How much have you heard about the, um, elemental stuff?"

"Some. Erymeia's right wound up no one told her sooner, why?"

"This is Amber, the elemental that prompted her finding out. We want to know if you can check whether you can tap him like a spirit without actually doing it."

"...Huh. I can try," she says, looking at Amber for confirmation.

"What if you do it by accident?"

"It's not really the kind of thing you can do by accident."

"Okay..."

"...So the way magic works is, for magicians anyway, you define an effect you want and a power source you want to fuel it with, and you can't do that if there isn't any of that power around, and then casting the spell is a whole different thing."

"Huh. Okay. You can check if you could do that with me."

She looks at him for a minute, and then shakes her head. "Nope. Nothing there I can work with."

"Oh. Okay."

"Well, that makes things simpler," the servant girl says.

"Yes."

"I'm glad I could help," the princess says.

"Thank you!" says Amber.

"Are you just sort of wandering around learning random stuff?"

"Yes."

"What things have you learned?"

"Crochet and chain mail and I read some books and stained some glass."