Holy is magical conquest, for God gives power to the mages, and through them His Might is known. The mage’s responsibility is to bring to heel the wild of the world and make it civil through the cleansing Light of Feryn, the Father. As he tames the wild energy given into his hands by God, so too must he tame his inferiors, though they resist him.
—The Tirasid, Magely Conduct, Verse 10 (59 of Tiran)
e Taking
ciona’s mind raced as she walked among the stacks trying to think:S What do I need? What might I need that I can’t pull from my memory or get anywhere else? She tumbled through all the terrible eventualities of the coming plan and made her decision: Highmage Jurowyn’s Maps of the Greater Kwen, Archmage Sintrell’s System of Coordinate and Spellweb Organization, and Highmage Gorbel’s Maps of Modern Tiran.
She slipped the last book into her shoulder bag and turned to find a white robe blocking her way between the shelves.
“Renthorn!” She started back. “God, is this some kind of joke? Do you spend all day lurking behind shelves?”
“Only when I’m on the hunt for something. Same as you.”
Even in the dim light, she could see immediately that Renthorn was unwell. He looked like he’d gotten about as much sleep as she had over the past few days—and had possibly been supplementing his teas with alcohol.
“How’s your mapping coming, then?” Sciona couldn’t help a malicious smile. “Not as well as you’d hoped?”
“Well, I daresay not as well as yours, Miss Freynan.” Renthorn took in her bedraggled hair and bloodshot eyes. “You found out about the Otherrealm, didn’t you?”
Sciona was mute for a moment before she said tightly, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes, you do. You opened a clear mapping visual, didn’t you? Clear enough that you immediately knew the truth. You saw it.”
“How do you know that?” Even Bringham hadn’t known until she told him.
Renthorn shrugged. “I make it a point to keep an eye on my fellow mages, how they’re doing, what they’re reading. No one reads that much Stravos except the idiots trying to replicate his methods. I put it together when you started screaming like a skinned rat.”
“Oh.”
“I’m just curious how you did it when so many before you have failed.”
“Just a bit of creative composition.”
Renthorn chuckled, but there was something strained about the sound.
“No, but seriously, Freynan. Mages have tried to adapt Stravos for a hundred years. You expect me to believe you did it in three months, and there was no special trick to it?”
“Two days,” Sciona couldn’t help saying.
“Excuse me?”
“I took two days to adapt Stravos’s mapping method, and there was no special trick.” As she said the last part, though, she realized that it wasn’t entirely true. Thomil was the special trick. His insubordinate prodding had led her to focus on Stravos’s maternal Kwen lineage. Without Thomil, she never would have looked up all those accounts of Kwen witches and known what sort of spellwork she was trying to tease out of Stravos’s writings.
“It seems I misjudged you, Freynan.”
“Misjudged me?”
“I concede that my theories about you were flawed. I thought you’d gotten where you are with your feminine wiles alone, but you’re quite the formidable mage, aren’t you? Just like the rest of us.”
“I am not like the rest of you!” Sciona protested before thinking. She was supposed to be playing along.
“True enough.” Renthorn somehow managed an insufferable smugness even through his exhaustion. “I didn’t scream and cry quite so much when I learned the truth of the Otherrealm. I suppose that’s just the kind of headache that comes of letting a woman into these halls.”
“If you’re only here to comment further on my sex, I couldn’t be less interested.”
“On the contrary”—he blocked her way between the stacks as she made
for the exit—“I’m here to help you.”
“Really?”
“I know uncovering the truth must have shaken you. And so close to the meeting of the High Magistry, there’s no way you’ll be in any condition to present your findings by Feryn’s Eve. I have an offer.”
“Let me guess,” Sciona said flatly. “You want us to present together.”
“My plan for the expansion is polished and ready for application. If you explain to me how you did this—how you generated your mapping visual— I can help you use this new spell to its full potential.”
“All right now, Renthorn.” She laughed. “Let’s not pretend you’re trying to do me any favors. You want access to my spellwork because you know you’ll never come up with anything half as good yourself.”
Utter spite flashed across Renthorn’s face, but for once, he held the bile behind his teeth and spoke politely. “I think you’ll agree that we would be better off combining our expertise. You can’t do what I can with spellwebs.”
“I don’t think you know me well enough to say what I can and can’t do.”
“Well, then, Sciona Freynan”—he took a step closer—“let’s get to know
each other better.”
“Excuse me?”
“Be realistic. The presentation is three days away, and you’re not ready.
I mean, the best of mages aren’t ready for their first presentation before the Council, but after all that experimentation with the mapping spells themselves, you won’t have had time to revise your web to a high standard.
And I know your assistant didn’t do it for you.” Renthorn was right, Feryn
damn him. “The spellweb I’ve put together is unparalleled. You’ve seen my work from before I was a highmage. You know it is.”
“Only if you’ve learned to tighten up your connective composition.”
“See?” Renthorn was standing very close now. “We do know each other.
And you understand that our partnership is inevitable. Once the archmages see my spellweb, they’ll order us to combine our work anyway. Eventually, you will be working for me.”
Not wanting to back up into the bookcase, Sciona held her ground and glared up at the taller mage. “If it’s so inevitable, I’m sure you can wait a week.”
She made to move past Renthorn, but he caught her by the shoulders, shoving her back into the shelves. Her heart jumped into her throat as a row of encyclopedias dug into her back. In an instant, she was back in the schoolyard with a bully pinning her against the fence. Only this was so much worse. More intimate. More threatening. She could smell the lightly perfumed oil Renthorn had used to slick back his hair.
“Let go of me.”
“What do we have here?” He pulled back the flap of her bag, despite her attempts to swat his hands away.
“Jurowyn, Sintrell, and…Gorbel? Interesting reading choices, Freynan.
Favorites of one Highmage Sabernyn, if I’m not mistaken.”
“I said let go!” Twisting away at last, Sciona tugged her bag shut and
shouldered past him.
“Wait!”
His hand fastened around her wrist with frantic—surprising—strength, stopping her.
“What?” she snarled, hating the undercurrent of fear in her voice.
“Don’t go!” For a moment, Renthorn registered as a human—a boy as lost and desperate as Sciona had been, grabbing at Thomil’s sleeve the day she found out. “This isn’t just about the barrier expansion.”
“Then what is it about?” Sciona demanded, wishing to God that he would just let go.
“It’s just that…you saw the siphoning itself.” Something in Renthorn’s voice had gone fragile, longing. “You witnessed magic as appetite, watched it feed in the wild.” Pupils dilated against brilliant green. “What was it
like?” he whispered.
“Excuse me?”
“I didn’t find out firsthand the way you did. For me, it was a dark suspicion that grew for years until my father confirmed it—and then made it immediately clear that he would disown me if I ever spoke of it again.
I’m sure Archmage Bringham told you something similar.”
“He wasn’t quite so callous,” Sciona said and experienced an unwelcome pang of pity for this archmage’s son, who had probably never had the chance to come to his own conclusions about a thing once in his regimented, predetermined life. Most archmages were not as kind or permissive as Bringham.
“Yes, I suppose Bringham’s not really the callous type. I just never understood why we couldn’t talk about it like real men—real mages,”
Renthorn amended, meeting Sciona’s eyes. His grip had tightened on her wrist, pulling slightly as though on a lifeline. “Where is the honesty in that?
Where is God’s holy truth?”
“I’ve been asking myself the same question,” Sciona admitted, not sure whether to be relieved or horrified that she had found a colleague so eager to discuss the truth of the Otherrealm. “I think…for many mages, the denial must be a necessary shield against the guilt.”
“Not for me.” Renthorn pulled at her arm—harder this time—and his face lurched close, green eyes hungry in the low lamplight. “I don’t need a shield for my soul or my eyes, Freynan. I want to see what you saw. I need to look the truth of magic in the face.”
“That’s…commendable, Highmage,” she said, vaguely hoping agreement would get him to let go. “It seems I misjudged you as well. At the very least, I misjudged your level of integrity. Even so, I don’t think you want to see what I saw.”
“But I must. I must see and understand why the archmages want this thing hidden so badly.”
“I don’t think their reasons are a mystery, Renthorn. Like I said, they need to avoid the guilt somehow.”
“But guilt over what, do you think? The taking? Or the enjoying?”
“Pardon?” Enjoying?
“You don’t think some of them get a thrill from it? A dark satisfaction they wouldn’t want God or anyone else to discover?”
Unbidden, Sciona recalled the sense of power she had felt at mapping to the distant ocean. There was an abstract thrill that always accompanied magic, bending reality to one’s will. For her, the excitement had turned to horror the moment the abstract turned to skin, blood, and stripped bones.
But what if it hadn’t? Horror could be close to excitement…Fear could be close to excitement. What if Sciona’s hunger for power had carried her straight through the hideous nature of the discovery and on to a higher thrill?
She didn’t want to understand what Renthorn was talking about, but she did.
“I suppose I can see the appeal.” At least for someone with a stronger stomach and weaker principles than hers. “Commanding that kind of
carnage at such a distance…”
“See! You do understand!”
Renthorn pressed closer with terrible desperation, his breath quickening.
“Step back, Renthorn.”
He didn’t. “You’ve felt the thrill too. This is why you have to show me, Freynan! I have to know the power you’ve known. I have to taste it!”
“This excites you,” she whispered in realization. “Not just the power itself…The act of taking human life.”
“We’re a species of predators, Freynan. What could be more exciting than the raw truth of that? This is conquest. This is power. It’s what made our forefathers the superior race. It’s how they raised a city from a
wasteland of savages!”
“You need to take a breath.”
“I need you.”
Sciona yelped as Renthorn took her face in long, clammy hands—and moved to kiss her.
“No!” She wrenched her head to the side and pushed against his chest with all her strength, a forearm at his throat. The effort kept his mouth from hers, but it didn’t free her. She was still trapped between his arms, the shelves digging painfully into her back.
“Help!” she gasped. “Someone, help!”
“Oh, I wouldn’t do that.” Renthorn’s mouth was up against her hair, breath hot on her scalp. “If they come running, who are they going to believe? The best sourcer in the Magistry? Or the new political hire who took all of three months to fall apart?”
“Where’s the raw honesty in that?” Sciona demanded.
“Here,” he breathed.
And Sciona shouted as pain shot through her ear. “Did you just bite me, you f—”
“Come back to my laboratory,” he said against her cheek. “If this is too public for you. We’ll talk mapping behind closed doors.”
“No!” She jerked in another fruitless attempt to throw him off. “I’m not going anywhere with you! And you’re not having one line of my spellwork!”
A chuckle bubbled from somewhere deep in Renthorn’s chest. “That’s not how this works, though, is it? The true mage is a conqueror, Freynan, and conquerors don’t ask. We take.”
Grabbing her hard by the hair, he pulled her head back and kissed her on the mouth.
Sciona had never been kissed before. She knew it was a thing girls were supposed to want, to fantasize about. She never had, particularly, but part of her still raged that she was losing this moment of her life to a deranged Cleon Renthorn. She had removed the cylinders from her belt when she went to see Thomil, but there were still spares in the bottom of her bag—if she could just get to them. As her right hand dug into the bag, the sheer bulk of Sintrell blocked her way to the defensive conduits—and Renthorn’s mouth was still on hers.
“No!” She tried to twist away, but the other mage had crushed his body into hers so that there was no leverage to push him off. “I don’t want—”
“Yes, you do. You’re a mage like the rest of us. Yes, you do!”
At last, Sciona got hold of a cylinder, bruising her hand in the effort.
She couldn’t see the paint markings and didn’t care. Whether she startled Renthorn or permanently burned his eyes from his skull, she just wanted him off. He struck the conduit aside at the last moment, and it discharged with a bang against the nearby bookshelf, exploding several old tomes.
Something maniacal lit Renthorn’s face as charred paper fluttered to the floor. Realizing his head had nearly been blown off his shoulders seemed to delight him.
“Still using toy conduits to defend yourself, Freynan?” He laughed—as though Sciona had had the time in the last three months to devise a multi- purpose highmage’s conduit. “You must really want this.”
The ensuing struggle was depressingly one-sided. Renthorn might be half-drunk from lack of sleep, but so was Sciona, and he was so much bigger than she was. A hand gripped Sciona’s thigh through her dress as Renthorn spun them both around. The world tilted, and Sciona’s back slammed into the surface of a reading table, her head crashing painfully into the base of a lamp, and Renthorn was on her. His hand had seized the clasp of her robe, ready to tear it open, when an ice-cold voice hissed, “Highmage!”
Renthorn turned toward the voice—and caught Thomil’s fist full in the face.
The two men were close in size, but Renthorn might as well have been hit by a train. He flew several feet back before sprawling on the library floor, out cold. It would have been comical had Sciona’s heart not been hammering pure panic through her veins.
“Thomil!” she gasped, lurching upright on the desk. “Y-you…you’re not even supposed to be here!”
“You’re welcome, Highmage.” Thomil shook out his hand. “Are you all right?”
“Y-yeah. Sure. B-but…” Sciona’s heart was beating too hard, knocking all her words askew. “You—you…why?”
“After you left, I realized I couldn’t just sit around waiting for things to go wrong,” Thomil said, rather breathless himself. “I was on my way to your lab to see how your meeting had gone. This wasn’t what I thought I’d find when I— Gods, Highmage, I’m so sorry.” He had lifted his hands like he wanted to put them on her shoulders. But he stayed a careful few steps away—as though afraid she would startle like an animal if he came too close. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be stupid.” Sciona tipped off the table onto her feet—and into his arms.
“Oh,” Thomil said in surprise as she fell into his chest and squeezed him to her. “Um—”
Her voice came out in a half sob. “I’m so glad you’re here!”
It was insane to find comfort in clinging to Thomil. Sciona was more aware of that now than ever. If there was one person in this building who had just cause to hate her—one person who did not owe her shelter—it was Thomil. But everyone Sciona had come into this job admiring and trusting had turned out to be a monster. There was no other place to shelter.
“Is he dead?” she asked, not wanting to turn and look at Renthorn.
“Gods, no. I didn’t hit him that hard.”
“Mmm. Shame.”
Thomil let out a quiet, rather frayed chuckle that vibrated on the same frequency as the unstoppable shaking in Sciona’s limbs.
“Thomil?”
“Sciona?”
“We’re surrounded by devils.”
“That’s what I tried to tell you.”
“I know.” Eyes squeezed shut, she ground her forehead into his chest so hard it had to hurt him. “I should have listened. I just…I had to find out for myself.”
“I know you did.” Thomil’s hand was on her back, rubbing a gentle circle. “I know. It’s all right.”
And Sciona couldn’t believe that he was offering her comfort. After everything. She was about to clutch him tighter in gratitude when footsteps came pelting through the stacks, disturbing the quiet of the library. The two sprang apart like repelling magnets.
By the time a group of other highmages rushed into view, Sciona and Thomil were a socially acceptable several feet apart—although that didn’t make the scene any less strange.
“What the hell is going on here?” Highmage Tanrel demanded.
Sciona opened her mouth but couldn’t come up with anything to say.
How was she supposed to explain this?
“What happened to Highmage Renthorn?” Evnan asked as Jerrin
Mordra ran to check his pulse.
“He’s alive. Evnan, go get help!”
“Yes, Highmage.” Mordra’s assistant nodded and ran from the library.
“Miss Freynan,” Tanrel said seriously. “What happened?”
“I…” Sciona’s gaze flicked to Thomil, then lit on Tanrel’s hand, which had gone to his pocket watch.
Her colleagues carried more than exploding cylinders for self-defense.
They had all worked in the High Magistry long enough to build or commission devastatingly powerful multi-purpose conduits—essentially mage’s staffs in miniature. Halaros also had a hand in his robes, closed on what Sciona could only assume was his wand handle.
Her eyes darted back to Thomil as she fully registered how much danger he was in. If the highmages thought Thomil had laid a hand on one of their colleagues, they were within their rights to kill him on the spot, no questions asked.
“Did this Kwen assault you, Miss Freynan?” Tanrel said as all attention in the library shifted terrifyingly to Thomil.
“No!” she said too shrilly. “No!”
“Nillea,” Halaros addressed one of his assistants. “Run and fetch the security guards.”
“Wait!” Sciona protested, but the assistant had already hurried to do as Halaros said.
Mordra, Halaros, and Tanrel closed on Thomil—suddenly so eager to defend Sciona now that she was a damsel and there was a dirty Kwen to save her from.
“Is that how Renthorn got hurt?” Mordra demanded. “He was trying to defend you?”
Sciona very nearly let out a scream of laughter, but Thomil’s life hung on her next words. He had just saved her—after everything she had put him through. If she couldn’t return the favor, what was the point of her? What
kind of power did she really wield?
“Freynan?” Tanrel prompted.
“I…” Think, Sciona. For Thomil. Think!
“Enough,” Halaros said impatiently. “She’s clearly in shock.”
“You!” Sciona turned on Thomil, at last glimpsing their way out of this.
“You’re fired!”
“But…” Thomil looked as nonplussed as the surrounding mages.
“Ma’am—I—”
“You will not speak again!” She rounded on Thomil, deliberately putting her body between him and Halaros, who was probably the most dangerous of her three colleagues. “You useless, miserable imbecile! I want you out of this building immediately!”
“Miss Freynan, we can handle this,” Tanrel said. “If he’s put hands on you, he should be—”
“Excuse me! I don’t tell you how to deal with your servants, do I?”
Sciona hated using the word “servant” instead of “assistant,” but she needed to sell this. Thomil had drawn the attention of the other mages. She needed it diverted, needed him invisible if she was to move forward with any of the plans half-formed in her mind.
“As for you.” She turned back to Thomil. “How many times have I told you to be careful with my test conduits?”
“Test conduits?” Tanrel said as Nillea returned with two security guards.
“Yes, Highmage,” she said impatiently. “I’ve been running tests on some multi-purpose conduits for my own self-defense, but they’re not done.
This idiot was supposed to bring the prototypes to me.” She rolled her eyes.
“Serves me right for employing a Kwen who can’t read the words ‘this way up.’ ”
Sciona met Thomil’s eyes, and he seemed to understand.
“Ma’am, please.” He played along well. A little too well; Sciona didn’t want to think about the reasons a strong, intelligent man had learned to make himself appear so dumb and small. “I didn’t think there was anything explosive—”
“Guards, remove this Kwen,” she said, “before he can get himself into more trouble. I never want to see him in this building again.”
“Highmage Freynan…” Mordra said tentatively, “I think Highmage Renthorn is the only one who can hire or fire the staff on this floor.”
“Well, Highmage Renthorn was the one knocked out in the blast, so I have a sneaking suspicion he’ll agree with me. Gentlemen,” she addressed the two security guards, “if you would take this Kwen away.”
The guards rushed forward all too eagerly and roughly hauled Thomil from the library. Sciona ached to go after him, to make sure he was all right, but for the moment, she was trapped here with her fellow mages.
“Miss Freynan.” Tanrel put a hand on her lower back. The touch made her want to come out of her skin, and it was all she could do not to jerk away. “That must have been taxing for you.”
“Luckily, I’m on my way out to take a few days off.” She put a hand on Tanrel’s and pushed it from her waist. He put it back.
“I’ll walk you to your train.”
“No, thank you.”
“I insist.”
“It’s really not necessary, Highmage.”
“Nonsense. I’ll accompany you to—”
“No, you will not!” Sciona shoved him back, realizing at that moment how close she was to tears, how little control she had over her own body.
“And if you press the matter, I can arrange for another conduit malfunction!”
“I’m sorry?” Mordra said in alarm. “Did you just say another—?”
“Easy, Tenth,” Tanrel said. “She doesn’t know what she’s saying. She’s —”
“You want to know something, Tanrel?” Sciona cut him off, all her rage boiling to the surface against her better judgment. “I think you do this friendly, spineless peacemaker thing to cover the fact that you’re a worthless mage. And you think if you just get everyone to like you, they won’t notice. They notice.”
“Um—I—excuse me!” Tanrel stammered. “What are you—”
“Do I need to spell it out? You are never going to make a meaningful contribution to our field. Your publications are a transparent rehash of Archmage Thelanra’s rehash of Archmage Nestram’s actual advances in mapping from decades ago. Archmage Thelanra had little to add, and it fucking shows that you wasted your graduate years studying under him because you have even less. The worst part is that when you do hit on a point that’s almost worthwhile, you wrap it in pages of anecdotes and meditations. Which is a terrible defense mechanism, by the way. Because your anecdotes are insipid and your prose is trash. I’m not even a humanities mage and I could have told you that before you sent the thing for publication.”
“Miss Freynan, that is quite enough!” Halaros stepped forward.
“Highmage Tanrel is your senior colleague. Have some respect.”
“And you!” Sciona turned to square with Halaros—because she couldn’t stop herself, because the condescension, on top of everything else, was too much. “When I recommend your book, I tell people to skip chapters four through eight. I mean, a new system for prioritizing coordinates in a spellweb? Really? You realize you’re not the next Archmage Sintrell, right?
You’re his shadow.”
She hadn’t had the physical strength to make Renthorn pay for shaming her. She had just let it happen. But someone was going to bleed, Feryn damn it, and nothing bled like a mage’s ego.
“The really embarrassing thing is that everyone who’s read your work knows that your ‘new system’ is a waste of ink—these pricks included, I’m sure.” She gestured wildly between Tanrel and the unconscious Renthorn.
“They’re too polite to tell you, but look around. You see anyone applying that convoluted garbage to their mapping the way they apply Sintrell? No.
Because it has no practical use. It’s masturbatory, and if you’d had any real friends review your work, they’d have told you to cut it. But you don’t have friends. You have sycophants like this moron!” She stabbed a finger at Tanrel.
Halaros seemed to be in rictus, his eyes bugged out, his jaw locked open in total indignation.
“Um…” Jerrin Mordra started to interject, and Sciona whirled on him.
“You have something to say to me, Tenth?”
“I…no?”
“Smart,” she snapped and swept past her three confused colleagues out of the library.
The outburst had done nothing to unravel the sick feeling in her gut.
Halfway down the stairs, her hands were in useless, shaking fists, and her throat squeezed with the threat of tears. She had meant to take a day to lay out plans before putting them into motion. That was no longer an option. If she gave herself a moment of quiet now, she would go back to the feeling of Renthorn’s hands on her, the awful, spoiled tea taste of his mouth, and that thrill in his eyes that, for a moment, had been far too like her own. She reached the bottom of the stairs just in time to throw up in the trash receptacle on the landing.
For once, the vomit was welcome. Stomach acid was better than the taste of Renthorn on her tongue. She didn’t bother washing out her mouth when the heaving had subsided. Renthorn fancied himself a great predator.
She wanted to remember him this way—as putrid, half-digested food.
She had departed the fourth floor in the direction of the Magistry’s front doors to avoid suspicion. But when she had finished being sick, she drew a hand across her mouth and doubled back toward her real destination. The head janitor’s office was more of a closet than a room, crammed under a set of stairs.
When Sciona knocked, a voice answered with a heavy Kwen accent, “Come in!”
The old man started, gray eyes going wide to see a white-robed mage open the door.
“H-Highmage,” he stuttered, getting to his feet. “What—”
“Please, have a seat, Mr. Dermek,” she said gently—or as gently as she could with the raspy little that remained of her voice. “I just wanted to ask who cleaned the offices on the fourth floor yesterday.”
“Oh, that would be me,” Mr. Dermek said, and it hurt something in Sciona. Because there was no lift to the fourth floor and this man was too old to be climbing stairs. “And…you know my name?”
“Thomil mentioned you a few times. All good things,” she added. “I came to see you about a broken spellograph that was in my office. A Harlan Eleven. You don’t happen to remember what you did with it?”
“When there’s broken equipment, I always take it to the tech offices to see if it can be repaired.” As he spoke, Sciona noted that his accent was quite distinct from Thomil’s and Carra’s, some of the vowels a little rounder, some of the consonants a little sharper, and she wondered what tribe he came from. Endrasta? Siernes? Probably some tribe she had never heard of, considering she knew just the two besides the near-extinct Caldonnae. Were there any of his people left beyond the barrier? “They said fixing your machine would be more trouble than melting it down, so I took it to the scrap metal bins.”
The Kwen trailed off as he gave Sciona another once-over. “Forgive me for asking, but are you all right, Highmage?” There was something too concerned—too knowing—in the way he asked.
She looked away from the soft gray of those eyes. “Yes.”
“Are you quite sure? You look as though—”
“How often does the scrap metal bin get emptied?” she asked.
“A truck comes from the steel mill to pick it up at the end of each week,
ma’am.”
“So, it’s still here?”
“In the back warehouse, yes, Highmage. I’ll show you if you like.”
“Yes, please.”
Dermek led Sciona down a back corridor to the warehouse, where she immediately began plucking through the scrap metal for the pieces of her broken spellograph. Many mages didn’t know all the mundane bits and screws of a spellograph, but Sciona easily picked them out among the other screws, bolts, and wires in the bin. She had her cousin to thank for that.
Alba, with her long, strong fingers and affinity for following instructions, had worked in a spellograph repair shop for five years after graduating junior academy and had been kind enough to share her training materials with her nosy younger cousin. There was the type wheel, the knob, the shift lever—oops, not that shift lever, this one. There was one link screw, two link screws…how many more did she need?
“Um—” Dermek cleared his throat in discomfort. “Ma’am, if I may, you shouldn’t…”
It was almost certainly against policy to let anyone pick through scrapped Magistry machinery, but Sciona was a highmage. Dermek faced a terrible choice between telling a highmage what to do and violating University policy—both of which could get him fired on the spot.
“Shouldn’t what?” Sciona asked sweetly, though her sweet voice had rarely ever worked on anyone—even when it wasn’t ragged from weeping, shouting, and vomiting. It was undoubtedly the white robes that made Dermek rethink his words.
“You shouldn’t go digging in there without gloves,” he said after a pause and pulled a pair from a shelf to hand to Sciona. “You’ll cut your hands.”
“Oh, thank you.” She smiled as she pulled on the oversized gloves.
“And could I have a box, too, please?” she asked, realizing that the larger pieces of the machine would never fit into her shoulder bag with the books she had taken from the library.
“Of course, Highmage.” The Kwen still looked apprehensive as he took an appropriately sized crate from a nearby shelving unit and set it beside her.
“Mr. Dermek,” she said to distract him as she continued her search through the scrap metal she wasn’t supposed to touch. “If you don’t mind
me asking, what tribe are you?”
Dermek looked taken aback. “What?”
“My friend Thomil told me there are many tribes out in the Kwen, all of them different. I’m curious about yours.”
“The Mersyn.” He said it quietly. Like a prayer.
“I haven’t heard of them.”
“You wouldn’t have—even if you are the type of Tiranishwoman to know one Kwen tribe from another. They lived far beyond the Venholt Mountains.” But not far enough to be out of range of magic. For all Sciona knew, no habitable place in the world was.
“Lived?” Sciona said softly. “They’re not there anymore?”
“I doubt it. My mother strapped me to her back and crossed the range to Tiran near on eighty years ago. My father wanted to stay with his ailing parents, said he’d join us after the next thaw.”
“Did you ever see him again?” Sciona asked.
Dermek shook his head. “Some Endrastae who came through the barrier a few years later told my mother the rest of our tribe had fallen to Blight.
She didn’t believe them at first. But I think, after more Kwen came through the barrier, then more, then more, saying the Mersynae hadn’t been seen in five years, then ten, then fifteen, she just…It wore at her, and she…Well, it’s not important, Highmage. Sorry for rambling on.”
“No, I’m sorry.” Sciona’s hands had stilled on the scrap metal. “I didn’t mean to bring up something so painful.” But what had she been expecting?
The head janitor shrugged. “My father and everyone I knew would be dead now anyway. It’s in the past.”
“Right.” Sciona clutched a handful of spellograph screws hard. “But things are about to change. The future has to be different. It will be
different.”
“You think so, Highmage?”
“Tell me, Dermek…If somehow, some of your people lived, and there was a chance you could protect them from Blight—but it was a small chance and very risky—would you take it?”
“Gods, of course, ma’am!” the janitor said. “I’m old. My chances at life are all gone. If there was a prayer that I could protect anyone from Blight, I’d take it, risks be damned—if you’ll excuse my language.”
“You’re certain?”
“Certain as Blight, Highmage.”
“Perfect.” Sciona dropped the last few screws into her box. “Then I’m going to need your keys.”
