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“I will tell her you said hello.”

Sloan nodded. “It’s kind of you to stand in line for her.”

Her aunt gestured to the bracelet hanging on Ren’s wrist. It was a memorable piece. A little loop of dragon-forged iron. Smoke black except for the rivulets of flickering fire that boiled in the metal’s depths. Ren’s father had bought it for her mother as a wedding gift. It was for the woman, he’d said, who bent to the will of no one. And a nod to the fire she brought out in him.

Sloan kept prattling on. “… my boys. Too busy to stand in for me. Both of them landed jobs in Peckering’s workshop. Making ends meet. You know how it all goes, dear. Or you did. Before you went off to live in the clouds and do your… studies.”

There it was. The neighborhood’s favorite slice of gossip. Ren knew the others always wondered how she’d gotten into a private school like Balmerick. What trick did the Monroes have up their sleeves? They always praised the achievement to her face, but she knew exactly what they said behind her and her mother’s backs. Reaching for the stars, isn’t she? Bound to come back empty-handed.

The line moved. Ren used it as an excuse to drop the conversation. She kept her eyes forward and waited patiently until it was her turn. A pair of doors were propped open. The building to which they belonged was hunched and industrious, singular in its purpose. A government official sat at a table. His hair was slicked back, eyes narrowed in meticulous calculation. He offered the barest of nods when Ren stepped forward.

“Vessel?”

“I have two that need to be refilled, sir. One is mine. One belongs to my mother.”

She slid off her mother’s bracelet and set it on the table. Next she reached for the wand hanging from the loop on her belt. Her own was shaped like a horseshoe. Both ends curved to sharpened points, but the central section offered a crude handle for her grip. She preferred this style to the aim-and-point wands. She’d found it far easier to control the range of her spells.

The government accountant briefly appraised both items.

“Listed under Agnes Monroe and Ren Monroe.”

He ran a finger down the list of names. She saw him pause and knew the question he’d ask before his lips even moved. “And what about Roland Monroe?”

The name shivered down her spine the way it always did when a stranger spoke it so casually. Ren saw a brief vision of his body, bent in all the wrong ways. Every time she came to collect her monthly allotment, they would say his name before tracing the line across to see the explanation for his absence. Ren spoke the word before the man could. The smallest of victories.

“Deceased.”

He tapped the notation in front of him and nodded. They never showed sympathy. Never whispered a condolence. It was just a status that determined how the rest of the transaction should go. This particular arbiter didn’t even bother to make eye contact.

“Very well. I’ve got you listed for an allowance of one hundred ockleys per vessel. The law requires I inform you that another magical stipend will be avail—”

Ren cleared her throat. “I’ve got coin to add more. If that’s okay?”

“How much?”

“Just twenty mids. I earned a few tips this week.”

He hunched back over his list to make another notation. Ren had learned never to add too much. A big down payment could earn unwanted attention. Sometimes the government would investigate. Cut off your welfare entirely. She couldn’t afford for that to happen.

“Twenty mids convert to about two hundred more ockleys.”

If you want to be precise, it’s 201.32. But Ren only nodded at the approximation. An ockley was the exact amount of magic it took to use a single-step spell. Named for Reverend Ockley, who Ren knew had come up with the original and very incorrect equation. His math had been honed by far cleverer wizards, but he was the one in the history books. Sometimes, being first was all that mattered. Ren looked up and realized the accountant was staring at her. He repeated himself.

“Which item do you want them added to?”

“The bracelet,” she answered. “My mother could use the extra spells.”

A well-worn lie. It fit like an old shoe at this point. Her mother hadn’t used any of their magical allowance in years. The man didn’t ask any questions, though. He simply turned and handed the two vessels to a hired runner. The young girl slipped inside the warehouse through an interior door. Ren caught a glimpse of the factory-like rows. Discolored gases churned in the enclosed space. It was still strange to think the city’s entire magical supply came from underground. Ren knew the histories. She’d memorized all the dates for her exams back in undergrad. She could recite the year that her people—the Delveans—first landed on this continent. She knew the name of the woman who’d cast the first recorded spell in their people’s history, and the group of wizards who’d invented the conversion process that refined raw magic into a form that could be dispensed to the masses. Like every other primary school student, she’d memorized the names of the four ships that had sailed up the eastern seaboard to land in what would one day become Kathor.

She’d also read through all the modern theories and conspiracies about magic refineries. One author claimed there was infinite magic underneath their city and that the five wealthiest houses had created a scarcity model to keep the rest of the population underfoot. Another claimed that the city’s supply was nearly depleted, and when it ran out, society would completely collapse. After spending time with the scions and heirs at Balmerick, Ren suspected the former was far more likely to be true.

As the interior door shut with a thump, Ren watched the girl vanish with the two most valuable items she possessed. She wondered how the accountant—who’d barely even looked at her—might react if he knew all the spellwork written into the veins of each of those vessels. All the time she’d spent hammering perfection into her stances and her enunciations.

All he sees is another welfare wizard.

“You can step to the side. She’ll return shortly.”

Ren complied. She felt an itch at the back of her neck. A whisper of an echo of a curse. This was where she always stood as she waited for her items. She knew that the alley over her right shoulder ran straight and narrow, down to the place where her life had changed forever. Every time she stood here, she tried to resist looking. And every time she failed. As Aunt Sloan stepped up to speak with the accountant, Ren looked down that arrow of an alleyway.