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“Witches, beasts, and all manner of wicked beings massed in their thousands in the basin that was to be Tiran, and great was our fear. But Lord Leon went before his mages and spake thusly: Do not fear the forces of darkness, for God who promised us this land is with us, and His Will is Light. When you go against the tribes of the enemy, hold your staff before you as a torch and watch the unclean fall to the Light of Truth.”

A UNT W INNY

WOULDN ’ T let her niece go at the door. Every time Sciona tried to start down the stairs, those work-worn hands would drag her back to smooth her skirts, straighten the white robe on her shoulders, make sure her hair twists in front were just so.

“Auntie,” Sciona laughed. “I’m not a little girl anymore.”

“You’re still my little girl.”

“You keep fussing with my hair. You know I chopped it off specifically so that no fussing would be required.” Well, that and the fact that it made her fit in better with the university’s mostly male research mages, but that wasn’t the kind of thing Aunt Winny wanted to hear.

“I just want you to look nice for your first day in case you meet a man.”

“They’re all men, Auntie, and I don’t plan to spend that much time socializing with them.”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” Aunt Winny batted Sciona on the shoulder. “You’re too old to be dragging your feet with these things!” Never mind that she had been saying this since Sciona was about seventeen. “I want little grandnieces and nephews. All that talent you have. You must pass it on.”

That was the thing Aunt Winny never understood: Sciona hadn’t cultivated her talent so her husband could take the credit for it and his sons could reap the benefits she hadn’t enjoyed.

“You know, on a highmage’s pay, I will have enough to buy my own apartment and get out of your hair, husband or none.”

“You talk!” Aunt Winny smacked Sciona’s shoulder again.

“My precious niece live all alone, a spinster? I won’t have it!

” She was only half joking. Bringham had paid Sciona enough to move out several times over by now; she just knew that the thought of her living on her own would drive her aunt up the wall with worry.

Winny didn’t think Sciona would take care of herself—which Sciona had to concede was a fair point, considering how often she forgot to eat or wash her hair.

“Your excuse has always been that you can’t find a man as smart as you. Now’s your chance.”

In the name of getting out the damn door, Sciona relented and lied, “For you, Auntie, I’ll see what I can do.”

“That’s my girl!”

Unfortunately, even beyond the door of the apartment, Aunt Winny wasn’t finished slowing Sciona down.

“Miss Freynan, look at you!” the elderly neighbors exclaimed from their balcony as she reached the bottom of the apartment steps. “Making history! Congratulations!”

Alba’s boss at Finn’s Clock and Radio Repair waved enthusiastically from behind the counter as Sciona passed the shop window.

“Your auntie must be so proud!” beamed a Kwen woman pushing a cart of flowers and sweets.

Sciona had never cultivated relationships with any of these people; on a good day, she barely remembered their names.

Aunt Winny was the one who went out of her way to attend every wedding and naming ceremony, to hand-deliver holiday gifts all down the block, to lend an ear wherever there was a neighbor in distress.

These people loved Aunt Winny, so they were happy for Sciona—and every Blighted one of them had to stop and tell her so.

“Sciona!” The baker’s son jogged after her. “I told you, I knew you could do it! Congratulations!”

“Oh. Thank you”—Alba had reminded Sciona of his name just last week, damn it—“Ansel.”

“My parents made you these.” The young man shoved a covered basket of pastries into her arms. “Be sure to save some of the lemon ones for your aunt.”

“Thank you,” Sciona muttered again awkwardly, then fully recalled last week’s train ride and said, “Didn’t you already give us scones?”

Ansel lit up. “Oh, you did get to them! You looked so busy. I wondered if I was just being a bother.”

“No!” Sciona said, even as she tried to shuffle on away from the bakery. “No bother. They were good.”

“Well, these are muffins. Better than the scones, in my humble opinion. Fluffier. But nutritious,” he added hastily. “Good study food—or so my mum tells me,” he laughed. “I was never one for the books myself. Not like you, Highmage.”

“Right. Well, I—”

“You have to get to your train. I’ll let you go.”

The moment Sciona was free of the baker’s son, a little girl accosted her.

“Miss Freynan!” she called as though Sciona was supposed to recognize her. Was she the cobbler’s daughter? Did the cobbler have a daughter? Or was Sciona thinking of the butcher who had owned the shop the next door before he died of fever? What had his name been? Idin?

“Will you sign my spellbooks?”

“What—sign them?” Sciona laughed, caught off guard.

“Yes, please?” The little girl looked up at her, all bright green eyes and goofy loose teeth.

When she slung her bag to the ground and began unloading its contents, Sciona picked up one of the books and cheated by cracking the front cover.

‘This book is the property of:’ was printed on the front endpaper with ‘Nora Idin’ in careful juvenile cursive on the line beneath.

Not the cobbler’s daughter, then. This child had no father.

The hard steel engine at Sciona’s core softened slightly.

“Tell you what, Nora: if you let me borrow one of these, I’ll get an actual archmage to sign it.”

Big green eyes got impossibly bigger. “Really?”

“Really. Let’s see what you have here…” Sciona leaned in to survey the stack in the girl’s arms. “ Danworth’s Pocket Guide to Magical Terminology?

Great. Nice easy starting place, if a little condescending.

A Beginner’s Guide to Leonic Sourcing , and— ugh!

” Sciona grimaced down at Kelwitt’s Foundational Mapping .

“Alright, what you want to do with this one is throw it away and get a real book on mapping. One by Halaros or—no, I guess Halaros is a touch dense for a kid, and his coordinates system is mmm”— Sciona pursed her lips on what she realized would be an inappropriate word to use around a child and settled on an arguably more devastating: “mediocre . Get yourself a nice Paeden. Then give Kelwitt to your mother for kindling.”

“But it’s on the school syllabus.”

“Be that as it may, if you really want to learn magic, you’ll have to supplement aggressively.” Sciona scrawled what later occurred to her was a probably illegible collection of titles on a notepaper and tore it free for the girl. “Here’s a list.”

By the time Sciona had shaken off the last well-wisher, she was almost late for the train and didn’t get a seat.

Holding the handrail in the crook of her left elbow, she braced the pastry basket on her hip, arranged her notebook on top of the cloth cover, and spent the ride scribbling notes for the day.

When the train pulled to a stop at the university, she was still hunched over the basket, squeezing items into the margins as she thought of one more thing… and one more… and one more.

The stares in the train car and out on the platform were more furtive this time, accompanied by whispers behind hands.

Over the past two weeks, news had spread through Tiran that a woman had been admitted to the High Magistry.

Sciona suspected that everyone and their mother had an opinion on the matter, but trying to wrap her head around that much attention sent her into a dizzying mental malfunction.

So, instead of meeting any of the stares, she fixed her eyes mechanically ahead and hurried on to the refuge of the Main Magistry building.

The gazes of the Founding Mages felt heavier now than they ever had. Don’t let us down , they seemed to say as she passed beneath them. You’ve got your one-in-a-million chance, little girl. Don’t squander it .

With classes back in session, the Main Magistry building adjoining Leon’s Hall swirled with purple, green, and brown robes.

A few research and teaching mages stopped to congratulate Sciona, but there were fewer well-wishers here than in Aunt Winny’s domain; most just gawked rather rudely as she made her way up the stairs to the second floor, where the teaching mages had their offices, to the third floor, where the mid-level research mages worked, up to the fourth floor, where only highmages and their staff were allowed.

A security gate barred the final stairway—a beautiful work of classic conduit design—and Sciona’s breath fluttered as the lock flared with Reserve energy.

The robust physical locking mechanism anchored a pre-written scanning spell like the one Sciona had used to scan the chemical composition of the sludge she had siphoned during her exam, only this spell disregarded flesh, blood, and fabric in search of very specific input: steel in the distinct and complex shape of a highmage’s crest. As the scanning spell registered the material and shape of the clasp on Sciona’s robes, the conduit’s action spell came to life, releasing the lock and opening the gates for her.

Not all highmages worked on the fourth floor of the Main Magistry building.

Most of the university’s elite alchemists and conduit designers had offices in the science building with its vast storerooms of raw material.

But the large and sparse laboratories on the upper floors of the Main Magistry worked best for sourcing and action spell experimentation.

So, this was where Sciona had been assigned, along with the High Magistry’s few other mapping specialists.

The fourth-floor lobby was a grand hall unto itself. Spacious, lavish—and utterly quiet. The polished crescent of a secretary’s desk stood empty, and Sciona paused before it, unsure which way to go.