The Kwen were cursed and living in darkness when Lord Prophet Leon freed the basin from their control. In his mercy, Leon offered unto their surviving leaders a way out of the darkness. Instead, they turned away and sealed their curse in perpetuity when they refused the True God. Now, when the wretched descendants of these tribes enter Tiran, they do so as half souls, tainted by the folly of their forebears. It is our duty as Tiranish to make these wretches whole through reeducation and offer unto them every opportunity to redeem their souls through labor. Though, in his savagery, the Kwen shows little gratitude, to civilize him is the moral obligation of all Tiranish as the Chosen of God.
—The Tirasid, Conduct, Verse 43 (56 of Tiran)
Suited to Serve
he light of sunrise was a crowbar, jamming through a gap in theT curtains into Sciona’s eyes, prizing her skull open. Morning bird chatter hit just as harshly, feeling like a hail of bullets. Through the hangover, she found memory fragments of Thomil from the previous night and, among them, a realization that made her smile, despite the splintering headache: she had made a friend. Has that ever happened before? she wondered as she rolled from her cot and groped for the light conduit.
Maybe not since primary school. Maybe not since her mother died.
No one had come to her defense in the schoolyard when the other children had tired of her pedantic lip and decided to push the overachieving orphan into the mud. No one had risked the stink of associating with the underclass Leonite when all that uppity overachieving got her transferred to Danworth. No one had invited her when her classmates went for drinks after Danworth graduation, or University graduation after that. She had always picked herself up, dusted off her skirts, and gone back to work on her own.
The irony drew a groggy chuckle from Sciona as she filled her kettle and set it to boil. Moving up in society was generally supposed to come with the friendship of those higher in society. Sciona seemed to have gone all the way to the top just to make friends with a janitor.
“Thomil!” She beamed when he cracked open the laboratory door an hour later. “Come on in! We’ve got a lot to go over.”
“I see that, ma’am.” Thomil’s gaze swept the office in faint concern.
Sciona had already been through three cups of tea, and notepapers alive with scribbles and diagrams covered the desks. “How long have you been
up?”
“A while.”
The furrow between Thomil’s brows deepened. “It’s so early.”
“Well, my colleagues are starting out at an advantage with their multiple assistants. Thought I’d make up for that by starting early. I wasn’t expecting you until later.” The other highmages and their assistants wouldn’t start filtering in for another two hours.
“Habit, ma’am. Janitorial staff are always here before regular work hours. I can come back later if—”
“No, no, this is perfect!” Sciona clapped her hands together. “Extra time for me to catch you up!” When Thomil still eyed her with skepticism, she
lowered her hands. “What?”
“You’re not hungover?”
“Well, are you?”
“I have a Kwen constitution, ma’am. And last night, you were rather…”
He trailed off, probably unable to find a respectful way to finish the sentence. Sciona’s face heated faintly as flashes of the previous night came back to her—the waterfall of babbling and giggles, the way she had grabbed at Thomil, leaned into his body… “Well…” She squared her shoulders, hoping the blush wasn’t too noticeable. “There’s a tea for that.” She indicated the three empty cups on her desk. “Would you like some?”
“No, thank you, Highmage Freynan.” Thomil slung a ragged leather bag from his shoulder and hung it on one of the hooks by the door. “I’m ready to work.”
“Great, then you can sit here.” Sciona pulled an extra chair up to the desk she was using. “Or—actually, before you get settled, I raided a storage
closet and got you that.” She pointed to a brown-and-white assistant’s jacket hanging from a hook beside Thomil’s bag.
Thomil looked at the assistant’s coat, raised a hand, then paused as if unsure he should even touch it.
“Is this…Am I allowed to wear an assistant’s coat, ma’am?”
“I looked through University policy.” Sciona thumped the bulky manual beside her teacups. “There’s no rule explicitly stating that a laboratory assistant must be University educated or ethnically Tiranish.” She had even seen the odd Kwen assistant in other laboratories—usually a trusted member of the mage’s household staff he had wanted to bring to work as an extra pair of hands.
“Apparently, I’m not allowed to offer an unqualified assistant the same rate as a University graduate or student, but it should be more than you made as a janitor. And the jacket is actually required if you’re going to be assisting with lab work, so go on. It’s yours.”
After another moment of hesitation, Thomil took the coat from the hook and slipped it on over his work clothes. They’d have to talk about changing the rest of his ensemble later. For now, he took a seat next to Sciona—and the previous day hadn’t been a fluke; he still smelled of herbs.
“Highmage Freynan?” he said after a moment, and Sciona realized she had been staring at the line of his shoulders in that coat. She shook herself.
“Sorry.” Turning to the spellograph, Sciona refocused. “We discussed the nature of mapping yesterday. What I’m going to show you now is something called a Kaedor mapping spell. There are subtle differences between the main mapping methods—Leonic, Kaedor, and Erafin—but for now, let’s cover what a mapping spell is. All known mapping spells show the user a rough representation of the Otherrealm in gray and white—dark gray reflecting the dead zones, where there is no energy, white reflecting energy sources.”
“That’s the thing that happens up here,” Thomil said, pointing to the copper hoop mounted on the Harlan 11 spellograph, “when the space inside this wire thing lights up with a moving picture?”
“That wire thing is a mapping coil,” Sciona said, “and yes.”
“So, does the coil help generate the picture?”
“No. It just helps mages who don’t know what they’re doing find their numbers. That’s what the little marks along the wire are for. Sort of like a sight on a rifle. A good sniper doesn’t need one.”
“He doesn’t?”
“I actually have no idea,” Sciona confessed. “Never fired a rifle, but you get the metaphor.”
“I’ve never fired a rifle either, but yes, I think so.”
“Before we activate any mapping spell, we have to select our coordinates, which will determine which part of the Otherrealm the spellograph displays in the coil. Since this is just a demonstration, why don’t you choose for me? Pick any two numbers between one and three thousand.”
“One and three thousand?” Thomil said. “It’s a big garden of bounty, then?”
“Quite big. When I’m mapping to source a spell, I’ll include up to five decimal points for precision, but whole numbers will do fine for now. Pick any two you’d like.”
“All right, ma’am. Three hundred by six hundred?”
“Ah, okay, but we might not find that much energy there. It’s a known dead zone.”
“You know that off the top of your head, Highmage?” Thomil said in surprise.
“Of course. After years of manual siphoning, your mental map is pretty well formed—at least mine is.” There were mages who had to consult a coordinates index for projected energy yield every time they manually siphoned, but they wouldn’t be found anywhere near this department. “So, different numbers, please?”
“Um…one thousand five hundred by one thousand five hundred?”
“Oh.” Sciona winced. “I should have mentioned: the center of the grid is
no good either.”
“The center, ma’am?”
“Yes. Well, the center and approximately fifty-two numbers out in any direction. That whole circle is off-limits.”
“Why?”
“The outer rim of the circle is set aside as one of several Reserve siphoning zones we discussed yesterday. This means it’s siphoned continuously to stock the Reserve. Manually siphoning those coordinates can compromise the Reserve and, by extension, Tiran’s essential systems, so we don’t do that. Then, in the inside of the circle, you have the Forbidden Coordinates, which are off-limits for any siphoning ever. That rule is written into the Leonid—so not just in Faene the First’s supplemental religious guidelines but in the Founding Texts by Leon himself.”
“The preachers are always saying your god gifted Tiran all the fruits of his garden,” Thomil said. “Isn’t it odd, then, for some of the ‘all’ to be withheld?”
“The unbreakable rules of magic are unbreakable for a reason.”
“You know the reason, then?” Thomil asked.
“God’s reasons aren’t really up for questioning. But that said, when it comes to the Forbidden Coordinates, I think Tiran learned everything it needed to know—arguably more than anyone wanted to know—from Highmage Sabernyn.”
“The traitor mage?” Thomil said, and when Sciona looked at him in surprise, he shrugged. “The Kwen like a melodramatic tragedy as much as anyone. Sabernyn is the one who murdered his rivals using dark magic, right?”
“That’s the one. And ‘dark magic,’ in Sabernyn’s case, meant siphoning energy from the Forbidden Coordinates.”
“How did people know it was dark magic and not—I don’t know— regular magic used violently?” Thomil asked.
“To defy Leon’s edicts is dark magic.” Sciona had to remind herself not to be impatient with her assistant’s ignorance. It wasn’t his fault he hadn’t been educated properly. “That’s how it’s defined—as in the darkness outside the light of Leon’s teachings—and for good reason. God makes the zone within the Forbidden Coordinates look especially enticing and rich
with energy, but the consequences of using that energy are…Let’s just say that the magic Sabernyn practiced was singularly gruesome in Tiranish history. I won’t sicken you with the details, but— Is something funny?” she asked when Thomil smothered a laugh.
“No, ma’am.” Thomil blinked, seeming to remember himself, and schooled his features. “Apologies.”
“What is it?” Sciona demanded, wishing she wasn’t quite so good at squashing Thomil’s smiles whenever they came up, wishing she could hit the keys to seize on them before they faded like light into the Otherrealm.
“Nothing, ma’am. Just that you must think me a bit delicate if you assume I can’t handle a little gruesome history.”
“I don’t—it’s not that.” Sciona sighed. “If you must know, I don’t like to talk about it. Not because my sensibilities are delicate,” she rushed to add, realizing how girlish the confession had sounded. “It’s just…I’ve devoted my entire life to magical research. I wouldn’t have done that if I didn’t believe that magic was a uniquely powerful force for good and progress.
The idea that a great mage used this knowledge for something as petty as murdering his colleagues…It disgusts me.” And damn it, now Sciona had gone and displayed more emotion than was comfortable or indeed appropriate. “Anyway.” She shook her head. “It’s all resolved now and has
been for decades.”
“Resolved?”
“When the other mages uncovered Sabernyn’s activities, he was tried before God and sentenced to death.” The High Magistry had executed him by sleeping death in Leon’s Hall, on the same spot where Sciona had tested for the rank of highmage.
“I thought death sentences didn’t exist for native Tiranish citizens. At least—not highmages.”
“They don’t, usually,” Sciona said. “Most offenders can be safely held in prison for a life sentence, but a mage who abandons God and gives himself over to dark magic is too dangerous to keep alive. Sabernyn was the first and only highmage ever sentenced to death,” she added. “There has to be a consensus vote among the High Magistry—not just the Council but all
hundred practicing highmages—to deliver a death sentence. So, it’s not something you see every day, or even every century.”
Thomil nodded. “Well, I wouldn’t want to give them a reason, ma’am, so how about three hundred fifty by two thousand?”
“Perfect.” Sciona punched the coordinates into the keys, but before she could activate the spell, there was a knock at the door.
Thomil pushed from the desk as though it had burned him and stood back. Sciona looked at him in confusion before recognizing that it probably would be a strange picture to walk in on: mage and Kwen, bent over the same spellograph, deep in conversation like equals. Certainly, it wouldn’t do Sciona’s reputation any favors.
“Come in,” she said in her strongest voice and braced for the derision of whoever entered. Relief flooded her when the door opened and it was not
one of her peers, but her mentor.
“Archmage Bringham!”
“Highmage Freynan,” he said, and something in Sciona glowed. She wondered if the sound of that title on his lips would ever cease to light her up. “I see that you’ve settled in well.” He smiled fondly at the cot, the empty teacups, and the notes across every surface. “And I see you received my office-warming gift.”
“Oh, yes!” Sciona said. “Sorry, Archmage. I started to write a thank-
you, but—”
“No need. You’re busy.”
Bringham’s gift had been an elaborate clock, which now sat ticking away on the shelf nearest Sciona’s desk—not just a beautiful piece of machinery to celebrate her entry into the High Magistry but a reminder of why she was there. Since he knew how she hated gifts that lacked distinct functionality, this was a countdown clock, its artistically exposed gears turning a ticker at the base that tracked the days until Feryn’s Eve.
76 DAYS read the ticker.
Eleven weeks to prepare sourcing for the biggest energy expenditure in Tiran’s history.
“How was your first day? Or, I should say”—Bringham’s twinkling eyes flicked to the clock—“how was day one of seventy-seven?”
“It was fine,” Sciona lied, but she had never been particularly good at hiding things from her mentor.
The sympathy was already on his face. “I’m so sorry.”
“About what?”
“Don’t play dumb with me, Freynan. It doesn’t suit you. Mages talk. I know your welcome here hasn’t been warm.” If he tilted his head a little toward Thomil, Sciona was too busy scrambling to the sink to clean a
teacup to be sure.
“Can I get you some tea, sir?”
“No, Highmage Freynan,” he said with a sigh, “you may not.”
She paused, blinking at him in confusion.
“Highmages don’t fetch tea. That’s what your assistant is for.”
“Oh…” Wordlessly—soundlessly—Thomil materialized at her side and slipped the teacup from her hands. “Redleaf. Half a spoon of sugar,” she murmured under her breath, hoping Thomil would be able to read the fancy lettering on the tin. He nodded and moved to the cupboard with the silent fluidity of a shadow.
“Listen, Freynan,” Bringham said when he and Sciona were seated at one of the less messy lab tables, “your fellow mages are going to spend the rest of your career trying to get in your way. You’re far too good to let them.
They’ll come around.”
“Will they?” Sciona asked with a grimace. “They seem quite upset to be sharing their hallowed floor with a woman.”
“I just want you to understand that what’s going on here happens in every department of the High Magistry—this elbowing for dominance. It isn’t about your sex.”
“It feels like it’s about my sex, Archmage,” Sciona confessed. She’d certainly never heard a male mage accused of sleeping his way to his position. “They seem fine with Jerrin Mordra.”
“Jerrin Mordra doesn’t threaten them,” Bringham said. “He doesn’t have the talent or, if I may be crude, the stones to get in their way. You,
Sciona Freynan, are a threat to their comfortable mediocrity. Yes, all these archmages and highmages got their start as innovators, but the more entrenched in the institution a mage becomes, the more terrified he becomes of real change, and you, my dear, are change incarnate—young, fresh, and unwilling to slow down for anyone. Renthorn the Third especially needs to mitigate your power to defend his turf as the up-and-coming mapping specialist within the High Magistry. To make matters worse, he’s actually one of the smart ones. He’ll get away with all of it if you let him. Don’t.”
“I won’t,” Sciona said vehemently. “I’m not. And you needn’t worry
either way, Archmage.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean Highmage Renthorn the Third apprenticed under you just like I did. However the next eleven weeks go, one of your recommended mages will get their name on those barrier expansion spells. Why should it matter which one?”
“Well, the long answer is that Cleon Renthorn isn’t really my recommended highmage. Of course he had my recommendation—I’ll always stand by talent when I’m asked—but he didn’t need it. Nor will I be remembered as the archmage who made his career, should he go down in history. That distinction would go to his father, and rightly so. If I have a legacy to defend here, Freynan, it’s you.”
“And the short answer?”
Bringham’s eyes took on a conspiratorial twinkle. “I play favorites.
Speaking as someone who worked with Cleon for a good while before his promotion to the High Magistry, I know how ruthless—and, frankly, obnoxious—he can be in pursuit of his goals. On that note, I see you took the, um…assistant he gave you.” Bringham sighed with the briefest glance at Thomil as the Kwen set a cup of tea before him. “I apologize for that, by the way. I can insist that they give you a real—”
“No!” The last thing Sciona wanted was for her co-mages to think that she had gone crying to her mentor for special treatment. Even more pathetically, she didn’t want to lose the only friend she’d made at this new job. “I mean—it’s fine, Archmage.”
Bringham took an appraising sniff of the tea, looking skeptical.
“If I had a problem with it, I’d have come to you, but I don’t. I know they meant to throw me off, but we’re actually ahead of schedule, aren’t we, Thomil?”
To the Kwen’s credit, he didn’t betray any confusion at the lie, seeming to understand Sciona’s need to present confidence in front of her superior.
“Yes, Highmage Freynan,” he said without inflection.
Bringham studied Thomil for a moment in thought before his gaze shifted back to Sciona. “I see what’s happening.”
“What is happening, sir?” she asked.
“Other mages tend to get in your way, slow you down. Perhaps you’re smart to work with someone better suited to taking instruction than offering input. Mm,” he added after a brief sip of his tea. “And the young man does make a good cup of redleaf.” He flashed his Bringham-warm smile for the first time at Thomil. “Perhaps he’s perfect for you.”
And Sciona wasn’t sure when Thomil had moved again without her noticing, but suddenly he was setting a schoolbook on the table between them: A Beginner’s Guide to Leonic Sourcing.
“Oh—right,” Sciona said, impressed that the Kwen had remembered her offhand comment about the book when he asked about shelving it. “A girl in my neighborhood asked if I could sign this.” She placed a hand on the elementary spellbook and slid it across the table toward Bringham. “I told her I’d do her one better and get an archmage’s signature.”
“Oh.” Bringham looked genuinely flattered. “Do you know the little lady’s name?”
“Um…” God, it was hard to remember names when they weren’t attached to noteworthy research.
“Not to worry,” Bringham laughed as he picked up the pen Thomil set beside him; he knew Sciona too well. “I’ll make it out to a great future mage.” Opening the secondhand book to the title page, he signed in his uniquely smooth and tidy hand. “And just to make sure she can resell it at a great value to help pay her way through university…” He pushed the spellbook back across to Sciona. “You sign too.”
“I don’t know if—”
“I mean it. By the time that little girl is ready to apply for higher study, your signature will be the most valuable of any living mage. I have no doubt.”
Bringham stayed only as long as it took him to finish his tea, updating Sciona on the comings and goings in his research facilities, discussing his search for a new head of sourcing, and lamenting the decline in productivity since her departure. “But listen to me, yammering on when you have work to do,” he said finally. “I just wanted to check that you weren’t letting the other highmages get to you.”
“I’m not, sir,” Sciona said as he rose from the table. “Thank you.”
“And you…” The archmage turned to Thomil, who straightened nervously. “You’re going to do everything this one says, yes?”
“Of course, sir.”
“Then I don’t think we have anything to worry about.” Bringham beamed as Thomil crossed to open the laboratory door for him. “I’ll see you at the next Council meeting, Highmage Freynan, if not before then. You know you can come to me for help of any kind whenever you need it.”
Sciona nodded, and Bringham gave her a last warm smile before taking his leave, Thomil closing the door behind him.
“You can come back to the desk, you know,” Sciona said when the Kwen didn’t move or speak. “And you don’t have to jump up every time someone comes through the door,” she added. “You heard Archmage Bringham. We’re not going to worry about what anyone thinks.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Thomil rejoined her at the desk but continued looking toward the door with an unreadable tension in his brow—like he was thinking hard on the conversation he had just heard.
“I didn’t…” Sciona said after a moment. “I didn’t get this job through favoritism.”
The Kwen gave her an odd look, and Sciona turned on him. “What?”
“Sorry, ma’am. It’s only…you just said you weren’t going to worry about what anyone thought. I was assuming that meant the janitor too.”
“I—wasn’t—”
“I know you’re not here because of favoritism, Highmage.”
That gave her pause. “How could you possibly know that?”
“Because I’ve cleaned offices on this floor for over a year and seen how much these other mages care about their work. I’ve never seen anyone care like you.”
“Oh…” Sciona had the feeling that her cheeks had gone a little pink again. “Thank you. In Bringham’s labs, at least, I felt like everyone worked pretty hard.” Maybe that was because she had always been too focused on her own work to register how anyone else felt. Or maybe it was just that Bringham aggressively selected for talent and enthusiasm.
What remained of the laugh faded from Thomil’s features, and his gaze shifted to the door again. “So, your archmage mentor…he specializes in textile production?” Not a difficult deduction to make, based on the updates Archmage Bringham had shared, but a bit of an understatement.
“He doesn’t just specialize in textile production—not the way I specialize in sourcing,” Sciona said. “He is the textile industry in Tiran. The dress I’m wearing, my robes, your work clothes, all these papers…every fiber of them started with the experiments in Bringham’s labs and came out of one of his factories.”
“I see.” Something in Thomil’s inscrutable expression had changed
subtly, darkening.
“What is it?”
“Nothing, Highmage,” he said, and when Sciona continued to look at him expectantly, he sighed. “A woman I courted a while ago…She worked in one of your archmage’s factories.”
“Oh…” Sciona faltered, immediately regretting her decision to press the matter.
The information itself shouldn’t have been a shock. Archmage Bringham was one of the leading employers of women in Tiran—a distinction of which he was quite proud—and since his textile factories were mostly in the Kwen Quarter, this meant that he employed a lot of Kwen women. Thousands of them. And Thomil was a decent-looking man —not that Sciona would give her aunt a conniption by ever describing a
Kwen that way; it was just an objective observation. Of course he had courted women of his own station: working women. Sciona just hadn’t really conceptualized Thomil as an entity beyond this laboratory—in part because Sciona herself barely existed outside this laboratory, in part because a civilized Tiranishwoman didn’t contemplate what Kwen got up to with one another, the mechanisms by which they proliferated so rapidly… The thought made her uneasy—then downright mortified when she remembered the mess she had made of herself in front of Thomil the previous night, her fingers curling into the front of his shirt— “It didn’t work out, ma’am,” Thomil said flatly before Sciona could disintegrate from embarrassment. “That’s all.”
“Right.” Sciona jolted back to herself and looked awkwardly at her boots, not sure what else to do with her eyes. “I’m sorry.”
“Anyway, ma’am, we were talking about coordinates?”
“Yes,” she said, grateful for the change of topic, “that we were.”
Sciona spent the rest of the day showing Thomil the different mapping methods, how to choose the right one for a given action spell, and how to balance mapping a large area with bringing energy sources into sharper focus. The sun had nearly set when she found him looking at her a little too intently, the suggestion of a smile on his lips.
“What?” she said, suddenly self-conscious.
“You said last night that you’d have made a terrible teaching mage.”
“And?”
“I don’t think that’s true.”
“Well, I…” Sciona realized she had rarely gone this deep into explaining her work to someone else. “I think it’s that I never really cared whether another person was following what I did. But if you can’t keep up, I can’t move forward with my work for Tiran. There’s more at stake here
than in any classroom.”
“Of course, ma’am.”
But that wasn’t the only thing.
“You’re different,” Sciona said after a moment. “Talking to you is different.” She wouldn’t have been so forward with her thoughts, but she
was trying to parse them as she spoke. “You listen.” And it was only as Sciona said the words aloud that she realized this was something she had never had before: a man who listened for what she was actually saying, not just for what he wanted to hear. “I mean you really listen.”
“You’re my boss,” Thomil said, “and you’re teaching me something important. What else would I be doing?”
“I guess I’m just surprised that you’re able to keep up, given all my weird quirks and tangents.”
“I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a Kwen in this city who can’t bend to Tiranish quirks,” Thomil said.
Sciona felt her brow furrow. “What do you mean?”
“Kwen who can’t work a job—whatever the job—don’t get to live.”
“My!” Sciona laughed. “It’s true what they say about you people being melodramatic.”
Thomil broke eye contact, and Sciona felt oddly as though she had lost hold of something—bright energy eluding her fingers on the keys.
“Sorry, ma’am. Forget I said anything. I’ll just listen.”
