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Meanwhile, Sciona’s attention swept disinterestedly over the effects of the explosion until she found the cause.

Only one of the spellographs in the room was smoking from recent overuse.

Lifting her skirts, she picked her way through the ruins to the spellograph, leaned close over the paper on the platen, and softly blew the dust away to reveal the spell itself.

As she uttered a surprised “Huh,” a shadow fell across the page, and she looked up to find Renthorn at her shoulder. The smarmy spellweb specialist was the only person in the chamber who had done exactly as Sciona had, making a beeline through the chaos to the spellograph.

“An energy use cap?” he asked as his eyes met Sciona’s.

“No,” she said and stood back for Renthorn to see. “Just a standard Kaedor mapping spell.”

“How did you mess that up, Halaros?” Renthorn asked the question on Sciona’s tongue.

“Um…” Halaros blinked and squinted blearily. “W-well, I… I don’t quite remember.”

“I think he might have a concussion,” Tanrel said.

“Seriously though,” Sciona pressed, not understanding. “No highmage is that bad at finding his coordinates, even with the Kaedor method!”

As embarrassing as it would be for an experienced mage to cause an explosion with an energy usage cap, it was nearly as embarrassing to misjudge one’s coordinates this badly with a method as common as Kaedor.

However, when Sciona leaned over the spellwork to search out the coordinates in question, her attention caught on something else—the embossed make and model of the spellograph itself:

Maclan Splendor 55.

“Hold on…” She looked back at the lines of the spell itself, then at Renthorn’s weaselly, too-interested face. “Highmage Halaros, where did you get this machine?”

“I dunno…” Halaros shook his head, his speech still uncharacteristically slow. “The supply room?”

“The common supply room?” Sciona’s eyes narrowed. Not by special request? “How many Maclan spellographs are usually in there?”

“What in God’s Bright Haven is wrong with you two!” Tanrel turned on Sciona and Renthorn. “Who cares what spellwork he was doing or what kind of machine he was using? He needs a doctor!”

“Before that, we should evacuate the building, Highmage,” Thomil said to Tanrel. “It may be unstable.”

“Oh, so working in Freynan’s lab for a few weeks has made the Blighter an expert on architecture?” Renthorn said with a snide look at Thomil.

“Let him alone, Renthorn,” Tanrel said in exasperation. “He’s right. No one said the building was going to come down, but we won’t be able to resume work anyway until the space is assessed for risk. Come on, everyone.” He took Halaros’s arm to guide the dazed mage to the exit. “Out, out!”

It was temperate outside—as good a day as any for the evacuation of a massive university building.

The highmages’ assistants shooed the crowds of students and staff away from the front steps where their bosses had gathered, then closed ranks around Halaros so that no one would see the state of his robes and infer that the explosion had been his doing.

The assistant who had been the victim of the flying table was quickly whisked away to see a doctor while another assistant ran to get Halaros a fresh robe.

From a cursory look over the gaggle of brown, green, and purple robes, it seemed like no one from the lower floors of the building had been hurt.

Some had just received a bad scare and a sprinkling of stone dust. The real tragedy, Sciona thought, was that Renthorn’s lab had suffered no damage in the blast.

“You are cleared to return to work whenever you like, Highmage,” the building manager informed Renthorn after an assessment of the fourth floor. “Now, Highmage Tanrel, Highmage Mordra, Freynan, I’m afraid the work on the windows means it will be a few days before your labs are of use again.”

“Fine by me.” Tanrel shrugged. “Young Mordra and I have been checking our work against Renthorn’s anyway. This is as good an excuse as any to move to his lab on a more permanent basis. We might as well roll our work on the barrier expansion into his sooner rather than later, right Tenth?”

Jerrin Mordra, whose work was only being ‘considered’ for the expansion as a formality, of course, nodded in agreement.

“Highmage Halaros, I’m afraid it will be at least a week—possibly up to three before your lab is in working condition,” the building manager told Halaros, who was seated on the steps with a pair of nurses fussing over him.

“I’ve already put in a request to find all of you temporary office space in a different building, should you require it. ”

“No need,” Renthorn said. “There’s plenty of space in my laboratory for Halaros to join us as well for as long as he likes. Highmage Halaros, what do you say?”

“Hmm?” Halaros looked up and said wearily, “Sure, why not?”

A moment later, four sets of green eyes turned to Sciona, who folded her arms and frowned.

“Freynan?”

“What?” she said stubbornly, though she knew perfectly well what they were expecting.

“You’re always welcome to join the winning team as well,” Renthorn said.

“That’s very kind of you, Highmage,” she lied, “but no, thank you.”

“Let’s be reasonable—” Tanrel said.

“Is there something unreasonable about my wanting to do my own work correctly?” she snapped before she could stop herself.

“Um…” The building manager looked uncomfortably between Sciona and the four men. “In that case, there should be spare laboratory space you can use in Faene’s Hall, Miss Freynan.”

“Mm,” Sciona grunted, her lips pushed into a pout. “I’m going for a walk.”

“A walk?” Tanrel said as she turned from her colleagues

“Highmage Halaros broke my energy gauge and testing dishes,” she said coolly. “I need to replace them.”

“So, send the Kwen,” Tanrel said. “A highmage doesn’t run errands, and a lady shouldn’t go walking alone.”

“So, I won’t,” she said shortly. “Thomil, come.”

She headed down the steps without a look back at the other highmages, feeling Thomil fall silently into step at her shoulder.

The staff and students who had vacated the Main Magistry building parted for her white robe, though her status didn’t keep them from staring with their usual abandon.

Apparently, a month was not enough for them to get used to the sight of a woman in highmage’s garb.

“You can always send me for whatever you need, ma’am,” Thomil said once they were out of earshot of the crowd on the steps.

“I don’t care about the energy gauge,” she said. “I wasn’t using it, and testing dishes are never hard to come by.”

“Oh.” Thomil didn’t ask the obvious ‘then, where are we going?’ instead quietly keeping pace a respectful step behind her as she circled the block.

Once they had passed out of sight of the Main Magistry, Sciona turned onto a path that took them deeper into the campus rather than outward to the shops beyond.

Class was in session, so the other pedestrians were sparse between the great lichen-touched columns of the Old Campus.

Barely anyone was about to gawk at the female highmage in her white robes or her Kwen assistant in his lab coat…

barely anyone to overhear a delicate conversation between the two.

“This is bad news,” she said at length. She had been self-conscious about over-sharing with Thomil after that night of embarrassment at the Dancing Wolf. But she felt like she had to give this train of thought voice so it didn’t sit inside her, twisting into something dark and demoralizing.

“What is bad news?” Thomil asked.

“Renthorn was always planning to absorb Tanrel and Mordra the Tenth into his team—basically just use them as two more over-qualified assistants in his plan for the barrier expansion. Now, not only is he getting them onboard early, but he also gets Halaros.”

“But Halaros still has his own work to focus on, doesn’t he?” Thomil said, clearly not seeing the bigger picture. “He mentioned special assignments from Archmage Gamwen?”

“It’s the potential effect of Halaros and Tanrel sharing a workspace that concerns me.”

“Have you seen them work together, ma’am?”

“No, but I’ve read their research. Tanrel is a strong theoretician, but like Mordra the Tenth, he lacks the tactile experience to put much of his theory into practice—although, that’s an unfair comparison,” Sciona amended.

“Tanrel is still far out of the Tenth’s league in talent and common sense.

Then you have Halaros, who specializes in manual mapping spell composition like Tanrel but came up through hands-on industrial sourcing like Renthorn and I did.

In general, I’m not intimidated by Tanrel’s mapping spells, but with Halaros in the room to hold his hand—even if Halaros does have a concussion, and it’s just for a few weeks, I worry… ”

Sciona frowned, not quite willing to say Tanrel was capable of mapping composition on par with hers.

It was the balance that worried her—a mapping spell nearly as good as hers paired with a spellweb superior to hers.

“Together, Renthorn and a Halaros-supported Tanrel could formulate a formidable sourcing plan for the barrier expansion.”

“Would that be so bad?” Thomil said, and Sciona looked at him in total incredulity.

“Excuse me?”

“I mean—this barrier expansion is important to Tiran’s overall well-being. You’ve made that clear many times. Why would you want them to do poorly? For that matter, why not pool your skill with theirs if the end goal is to help your people?”

“I’m sorry,” Sciona said, floored that he would even ask that. “Have you met me?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Something in his tone got under her skin, like he thought she was doing something wrong. Not that the opinion of a Kwen should matter, but—

“I’m not any more selfish than my colleagues,” she added. “I’m just playing a more difficult game than they are.”

“A more difficult game?”