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“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 re-education 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.”

T HE

LIGHT

OF sunrise was a crowbar, jamming through a gap in the 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. Before 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 over-achieving 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 dawn.”

“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 mages 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 four 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 if 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 a university student 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 first is something called a Kaedor mapping spell.

There are subtle differences between the main mapping methods—Leon, 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 over Sciona’s spellograph, “when the mages hit a key, and the space inside this wire thing lights up?”

“That wire thing is a mapping coil,” Sciona said, “and yes.”

“So, does the coil help generate the image somehow?”

“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.”

“Alright, ma’am. Three hundred and six hundred?”

“Ah, alright, 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?”

“Of course,” Sciona said. “After years of manual siphoning, your mental map is pretty well formed—at least mine is.” There were mages, Sciona knew, who had to consult a coordinates index for potential potency every time they manually siphoned, but those didn’t typically end up in the High Magistry. “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 sourcing zones. This means it’s siphoned continuously to stock the Reserve towers.

Manually siphoning those coordinates can compromise the Reserve, 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.