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“Tell you what”—Sciona stood—“let’s go to a bar, and I’ll…

” She almost suggested that she buy the drinks, then realized that would probably insult him.

Women didn’t buy men drinks, no matter their difference in means.

She might have paid for a male colleague’s drink out of spite—to emasculate him—but that wasn’t her intention here.

“I’ll buy me a drink, and you buy you a drink, and we’ll drink to each other’s promotions side-by-side. How does that sound?”

Light flickered back into that stoic face. “Are you serious?”

“You need to stop asking me that. I’m not much of a joker.”

“Understood, ma’am. I just thought you might not want to be seen out with a Kwen.”

“Well, you’re the only person in this place who hasn’t spat in my face today. Why would I want to drink with anyone else?”

The bar nearest the Magistry building was the nicest, but two things occurred to Sciona as she packed her bag: first, that a janitor probably couldn’t afford the drinks they served—she had certainly never seen a Kwen there—and second, that it was certainly where the rest of the highmages would go.

“Is the Dancing Wolf alright?” she asked. It was a Kwen-owned bar where the poor undergraduates drank on their days off.

“Yes, ma’am… if it’s not beneath you?”

“Beneath me?” Sciona laughed. “I wasn’t born to a line of highmages, Tommy. I get my drinks where everyone else does.”

Before they left the laboratory, Sciona’s hands curled into the white robe she had worked for twenty years to earn.

After a moment of consideration, she shed the garment and hung it by the door.

Maybe she shouldn’t have. Other highmages wore their white wherever they went, enjoying the attention and deference people afforded them.

But thus far, people didn’t react to Sciona’s robes with the same deference.

Mostly, they gawked like she was a circus attraction.

And after a frustrating day at work, that was the last thing she wanted.

The Dancing Wolf saved on bills by using old glass lanterns instead of tapping the Reserve for electric lighting.

The effect was a soft smoky smell and a sense of closeness, despite the long bar and spacious wood floor.

On a stool in the corner, a girl with waist-length copper braids played an exotic Kwen instrument—a long-necked harp that sat on her knee as she drew a bow across the strings in a melody as longing as it was lively.

Sciona had always liked that about Kwen music: the irrepressible sense of wanting.

Heresy, to be sure, but it touched the cords of her being in a way no Tiranish hymnal ever had.

Among those half-rapturous, half-mournful notes, the firelit bar bustled with a combination of students and neighborhood regulars, Kwen and Tiranish mixed together.

In her plain green dress, Sciona blended in with the student patrons and settled down at the bar without drawing any stares.

She supposed she’d need her picture in several newspaper stories, research books, and framed university portraits before people started to recognize her sans robe.

Tommy sat a respectful arm’s length from her, so no one would mistake them for a couple.

That would draw stares regardless of the colors Sciona wore; well-bred or not, an upstanding woman of the university would never stoop to accept the courtship of a Kwen.

“So,” Tommy said as they waited for the bartender to finish serving the influx of students that had come in before them, “you’re the first female mage I’ve ever seen in those white robes.”

“Well, I would be,” Sciona said. “I’m the first female highmage in history.”

“ Is that so, ma’am?” A strange smile crossed his face with the words.

“You think that’s funny?”

Before Tommy could answer, a voice said, “Thomil!” and Sciona turned to find the Kwen bartender waving in their direction. “Look who’s finally found a second to loosen up! And with a very pretty Tiranish—”

“With my boss,” Tommy cut the man off before he could finish the sentence.

“Boss?” The copper-haired bartender looked from Tommy to Sciona. “Thought you were mopping floors for the mages.”

Tommy answered in words Sciona didn’t understand—Kwen pidgin—and it occurred to her that, though she had spent her whole life alongside the quiet Kwen, she had never really stopped to listen to their language.

It was a rough and rolling sound, fitting the rough people who scraped out lives beyond the barrier.

Surprise lit the bartender’s face, and he looked at Sciona with new appreciation. “In that case,” he switched back to his clunky Tiranish. “You drink for free, Milady.”

“What?” Sciona said, but the man had already moved away to prepare their drinks, taps flaring at his touch to pour beer into fresh glasses. “What did you tell him?”

“The truth,” Tommy said, “that you’re the first female highmage in Tiran. Don’t worry,” he added, registering her anxiety. “He’s not going to make a scene about it.”

The bartender was back in a moment with drinks for Sciona and Tommy.

“Please,” Sciona said. “I can pay for these.”

But the man was shaking his head. “No, no, Meidra . You and all your friends drink for free under this roof.”

“Sorry—what did you just call me?” Sciona asked, but the man had already flitted away again to serve a new wave of customers. “What did he call me?”

“Easy, Highmage,” Tommy said. “It’s a nice word.”

There weren’t any books in the university’s library on Kwen languages, so Sciona supposed she would just have to take Tommy’s word for it.

“He’s just honored to serve free drinks to the new highmage everyone’s been talking about.”

“People have been talking?” Sciona had known that the whole university would talk, of course, but hearing the damn janitor reference it made her ill.

She took a swig and focused on the burn, willing it to melt some of her anxiety.

“Do you…” She shouldn’t ask, but she couldn’t stop herself. “Do you know what they’ve been saying?”

“I’m terrible at keeping up with gossip, ma’am,” Tommy said. “You’d have to ask Raehem.” He nodded to the bartender. “He’s the one who hears everything, but it looks like he’s busy.”

“That’s just as well.”

Sciona didn’t need to know the things people were saying behind her back.

Having heard what her own peers thought of her, she couldn’t imagine the talk in the bars was any more charitable.

Cringing, she took another drink in the hopes that it would wash the image of Renthorn’s greasy sneer from her mind.

“May I ask you a question, ma’am?”

“Sure.”

“It seems that people haven’t been particularly kind to you in your new job. And it also seems that it wasn’t an easy job to get.”

“You have no idea.”

“So, why do it? Why work yourself so hard just for… the way the other mages treated you today?”

Sciona didn’t answer until she had downed that first glass. Then she perhaps answered a bit too much and too truthfully.

“It’s compulsive. Always has been. My cousin thinks it’s about my parents—or rather, my lack thereof.

The fact that I’ve always wanted to do something big, something that would be remembered by thousands of people…

Alba thinks that’s because I didn’t grow up with parents to support me.

Nobody was going to care what I did just because I did it.

I had to make them care.” Sciona frowned at her glass for a moment, her fidgeting index finger tracing a circle through the condensation.

“She’s not giving herself enough credit.

She and my Aunt Winny have cared for me better than most parents do their real children. ”

“But you don’t agree with your cousin?” Tommy asked.

“No. Of course, Alba thinks it’s about love—because that’s how she and Aunt Winny measure the world. They’re sweet like that.”

“But you?”

“I’m not sweet. The world isn’t about love for me.

It’s about power.” The alcohol had blurred the world like a Kaedor mapping spell.

But Sciona automatically sharpened in response to the fog.

A sniper, honing in on the truth. “I think I’ve just had a problem with magic since the first time I tasted it—like some people have a problem with alcohol. ”

Tommy nodded, not a trace of judgment in his expression. “I don’t know about your obsession with magic, ma’am, but growing up without parents is no easy thing.” Something in those words was too dark and too near.

“Your parents?” Sciona asked softly.

“They died when I was young. But I had my older sister.” He took a deep drink. “Like you have your aunt and cousin.”

“It’s good to have someone.”

Tommy gave her a grim smile of agreement before knocking his glass into hers and tossing the rest of it back in an impressive single draught.

“Why magic, do you think?” he asked when Raehem had supplied them both with second—and third—drinks.

“Why is magic your poison of choice? If you want to achieve something on this mortal plain, why not choose some field of work where women don’t meet as much resistance? Teaching? Homemaking? Local politics?”

“There’s no glory in homemaking or teaching—and I’m lousy at all those things, anyway.”

“I’m sure that’s not true, ma’am.” He had to say that to be polite.

“But it is. All those jobs involve people, and I’m terrible with people.

Magic is the one area where I can shut myself in a room with my books and my thoughts and come out more powerful than I went in.

It doesn’t matter how big, or strong, or pretty you are in magic.

It doesn’t matter how much people like you.

With my fingers on the keys of a spellograph, if I can just think hard enough, I’m the most powerful person in the world.

That’s a feeling a woman just isn’t going to get anywhere else. ”

Tommy was nodding. “Fair enough, ma’am.”

Drinking with the Kwen was a frankly devastating experience.

Sciona had always prided herself on being able to put away a respectable number of drinks for her modest stature.

She had been sure she could outdrink any of her male peers if it came to a contest. Tommy was on his…

well, she had long since lost the ability to count with the empty glasses all sliding over one another, and he still wasn’t slurring.

“I can’t let you walk back alone, Highmage,” he said at one point when the bar had mostly emptied.

“It’s fine,” Sciona said.

“It’s not, though, ma’am. People get robbed and worse in these streets this late.”

“This late?” How long had they stayed out?

“You should always have someone with you.”

“Yeah?” Sciona shot back. “Who’s walkin’ home with you?”

“I’m different. I don’t look like such an easy mark.”

“Did’you listen to nnnothing Isaid ’bout magic?” Sciona demanded, though she was starting to forget precisely what she had said to Tommy—about magic or any subject. “How I look doesn’matter. It’s power. ” Sciona reached into her bag and produced a cylinder. “Power matters!”

“What is that, ma’am?” Tommy asked as she held the cylinder out to him. “Lipstick?”

“No,” she said, then let out a belated snort of laughter. “God! How big d’you think my mouth is?”

“Okay, so what is it?”

“Ss’a voice-activated conduit I invented in junior academy—or, well, I thought I invented it.” She scowled. “Turns out Archmage Duris was already using spells like it to revamp the city guards’ firearms, but whatever. I was twelve.”

“Firearms?” Tommy said in alarm.

“Here…” Sciona wasn’t sure when she had pressed the cylinder into Tommy’s hand and wrapped her fingers around his, but his skin was warm on hers, his callouses rough like crisp spellpaper. “I’ll show you how it works.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Highmage.”

“Shushhhh. Look… see… a conduit is a magical object that anchors a pre-written spell.”

“I know what a conduit is. I didn’t realize you could just compose one for yourself and carry it around, unlicensed. Isn’t that dangerous?”

“Only if you’re a lousy composer. No better way to learn about conduits than by handling ’em. And look, it’s all fine. I marked this one in black. That means it just makes a smoke explosion. The dangerous ones are on my belt.”

“The dangerous ones?” Tommy said with an alarmed glance at her hip, where she kept a pair of cylinders capped with red. Applied correctly, those could blow a man’s arm off.

“Trust me,” she said. “I’m not gonna hurt you.”

“I know, ma’am.” In a smooth movement that left Sciona’s fuzzy mind spinning, Tommy somehow slipped her grip and spun around her. “I know,” he said again from her other side as he slid the cylinder back into her bag. “Why don’t you show me all your conduits after I walk you home?”

“If you’re scared of a little smoke, maybe I should walk you home.”

There was an amused smile on Tommy’s face when Sciona managed to bring it into focus. Warm . Perhaps only because he thought she couldn’t see him clearly… or because she was starting to see things that weren’t there. “Maybe, ma’am.”

“Hey…” Sciona felt her own smile fade. “No more ma’am , alright?”

“What?”

“Out of the office, you can just call me Sciona. Or”—she stumbled, suddenly feeling all the heat of the alcohol in her cheeks—“if that’s too familiar for you, Freynan. Lots of people call me Freynan.”

“Agreed.” Tommy nodded. “If, in return, you would stop calling me Tommy.”

Sciona’s brow furrowed. “What else would I call you? It’s your name, isn’t it?”

“Tommy is the Tiranization of my name. My proper Caldonn name is Thomil.”

“Domil?”

“No, ma—No. You sort of touch your tongue to the upper teeth where you make a ‘th’ sound, but you don’t breathe through. It’s just a tap.”

“Th… Th… Thomil,” she tried. It was either close enough or an amusing effort because he smiled.

“That’s it. Thomil Siernes-Caldonn.”

“Two last names?”

“Kwen sons take their mother’s clan name, followed by their father’s.”

“Funny… I also have my mother’s last name.” Sciona took Thomil’s hand—maybe just because she wanted to feel his callouses again. “It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Thomil Siernes-Caldonn.”

“Nice to meet you, Highmage Sciona Freynan.”

Sciona only vaguely remembered Thomil walking her the few blocks back to the Main Magistry and up the darkened stairs to her laboratory.

She was unclear on how she ended up on the cot in her office.

Trying to figure it out in retrospect, she ran up against two stark impossibilities: first, it was impossible that she had had the balance to make the climb on her own two feet.

Second, it was impossible that Thomil had picked her up and managed all those stairs with her in his arms. It was impossible, too, that when her head had fallen against his chest, he had still smelled like sage and freshwater.