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“Sorry—just—don’t say that, ma’am. I’m sure you’ll figure something out. Don’t go to work for Highmage Renthorn, whatever you do.”

“If I recall, you were the one asking what would be so bad about my collaborating with him for the good of Tiran,” she pointed out.

“Because I was curious about your reasoning, ma’am,” Thomil protested. “Not because I thought you’d actually consider it.”

“At this point, we might not have a choice,” Sciona said in miserable honesty. “If the mapping spells themselves don’t get any clearer than what I’ve already presented to the Council, then Renthorn’s excellent spell webs are the Magistry’s only hope of powering the barrier expansion.”

“No,” Thomil said again, just as fiercely. “You don’t need him.”

Sciona set her tea down and considered Thomil.

He was never this assertive with her. For the most part, this was what she liked about him—that he was the antithesis of a Tiranish man; he never tried to talk over Sciona just to be talking.

When he did speak, it was because he had something to say—always offered with total deference.

Today, not only was he asking bolder questions than usual.

He was telling Sciona outright what she should and shouldn’t do.

She should have been annoyed, infuriated, but oddly, she wasn’t. She wanted more of this new Thomil with the lightning in his eyes and the steel edge in his voice.

Leaning forward, she asked, “What’s your quarrel with Renthorn the Third?” She had always interpreted Renthorn putting Thomil in her employ as a slight against her—which it certainly was—but maybe the joke had been intended to hurt ‘Tommy’ as well? She just couldn’t imagine why.

“I’m a Kwen janitor.” Thomil put on an amused expression that didn’t quite mask his agitation. “How could I have a quarrel with a member of the High Magistry?”

“If not a proper quarrel, then what is your issue with him?” Sciona pressed. “What do you know about him?”

“Other than what you’ve already told me, nothing, ma’am. That is—nothing that would interest you.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“May I just say that I don’t like him, Highmage? Is that allowed?”

“Disliking Renthorn?” She smiled. “In this lab, yes, that’s certainly allowed.”

Thomil didn’t return the smile. “I’m sorry I’ve put you in this position, Highmage Freynan. I’m sure you’d be further along with a university-educated assistant. I’ll try to learn faster—”

“No,” Sciona cut him off. “Hey. None of that. I mean it. You’ve been as much help as anyone could be.

In all honesty, you’re picking up your basics well, and you handle theory better than most students at the university.

Your comprehension of sourcing spellwebs is frankly dumbfounding.

Feryn only knows how you do it when you’ve never had a proper education. ”

“It’s the hunting and trapping, ma’am.”

“Hunting and trapping?”

“That helps me understand the theory behind spellwebs,” he clarified. “When you hunt in the Kwen, you must mentally map and calculate many of what you would call variables—more than in any of this magic.” He gestured to the mess of books spread across the lab.

“More than in magic?” The assertion was so ridiculous that Sciona laughed aloud, but Thomil seemed serious.

“Yes, ma’am. You must have dozens—sometimes hundreds—of miles of terrain committed to memory, then account for seasonal changes to wind, tree cover, animal migration…

You must know where your prey is likely to run before and after it’s hit, how far you can afford to pursue in your condition, where you can shelter if the weather turns, where you will stand your ground if other predators intercept you.

Eventualities on eventualities. I think this is why I understand spellwebs at a level that surprises you. ”

“Hmm…” Sciona had always thought of hunting as something primitive, brutish. But in practice, it would be as complex as tracking energy sources through the Otherrealm, just with the added stress of physical exertion.

She set her tea on the saucer to look at Thomil through the curls of steam. He had brought up hunting a few times before in relation to mapping, but this was the first time it was clear that he spoke from firsthand experience. And if his experience was firsthand, that could only mean one thing.

“You grew up on the other side of the barrier.”

“I did, ma’am.”

Again, the odd dissonance of the idea that Thomil had lived a foreign life outside this lab.

It occurred to Sciona that she had barely asked Thomil any questions about himself after those few brushes with impropriety when they first met.

Partly, she had been trying to steer clear of any awkwardness between them.

But also, when there was serious magic to do, the mundanities of one Kwen’s existence just never seemed terribly important.

Maybe that had been an error in judgment on her part.

“Your Tiranish is so fluent,” she said. “You must have crossed into the city a long time ago.”

“Ten years ago, ma’am.”

“Wow.” Like most Tiranish citizens, Sciona had never been to the city’s edge. Only barrier guards were allowed there. “What was it like? The crossing?”

Thomil’s expression changed subtly, closing up. He didn’t answer.

Unsure what to do with his abrupt silence, Sciona shook her head. “Sorry, I’m derailing us again—as if we have time for that.” She stood. “I should get to the library.”

“You need more books , ma’am?” Thomil said, eyeing the veritable city of stacked and open tomes throughout the laboratory.

“Since I’m changing course, yes.”

“Changing course? You mean—”

“Congratulations, Kwen. You’ve convinced me to rethink Faene’s rule on Leon’s unalterable lines. If I can’t clear that clouded glass, there’s nothing left to do but break through it.”

In the library, Sciona selected carefully and still ended up with the maximum number of books she could carry.

Altering old magic was easier said than done.

The Founding Mages had composed in an antiquated style that could be difficult for the modern mage to parse.

Sciona would have to read and re-read every mapping and mapping-adjacent spell that survived from the Age of Founders to make absolutely sure she understood the compositions before she touched a single letter.

When she returned from the library, the stack of books tucked under her chin testing her arms, she found Thomil bent over Highmage Norwith’s Analysis of Leonic Principles , his gray eyes bright and intense, his index finger tracing a line across the page.

“You looked engrossed,” Sciona said as she slipped into the room and nudged the door shut with her hip. Though she couldn’t imagine what Thomil could get out of a text as dense and old as Norwith’s. “Something on your mind?”

“Yes, ma’am, if we’ve time for another detour?”

Sciona did not have time but, for whatever reason, found herself saying, “Sure,” curious to know what a tenuously literate Kwen could possibly get out of Norwith’s writings. She set her load on the desk, where it teetered precariously for a moment before stabilizing. “Let’s detour.”

“I’ve been thinking for a while now… I know these runes you use in your magic.”

“Well, you’ve been studying the simplified runes for—”

“From before I studied with you or learned a word of Tiranish.” Something in Thomil’s voice seemed to catch, but he pushed past it smoothly. “From beyond the barrier.”

“What?” Was that even possible? It had been over a century since the last Tiranish mage had ventured out of the city. “How would the runes of Tiranish magic make their way into the Kwen?”

“I’m not sure the runes did make their way into the Kwen,” Thomil said. “I think they might have originated there.”

“What?” Sciona almost laughed. The claim was so ridiculous. How could magical runes possibly originate in the Kwen when the natives weren’t even literate?

“Not in my tribe; Caldonnish is spoken only, never written. But the Venholt Endrastae use these symbols in their oldest naming and divination rituals… At least they did.”

“‘Did,’ past tense?”

“Before Blight took all their centers of cultural knowledge,” Thomil clarified.

“Last I heard from the Kwen, there are only little pockets of Endrastae left in their original homeland. If…” He shook his head, his voice low and strangely fragile.

“If their script is still in use, I doubt it will survive another generation.”

“And this writing system uses some of the same symbols as runic magic?” Sciona said, unable to imagine how that could be the case.

“Most of the same symbols, I think. I didn’t recognize them on spellograph keys or in print because of the style—all boxy and angular.

But like this”— Thomil indicated the Leonic spells Highmage Norwith had transcribed by hand a generation before the spellograph and printing press had come along—“I know these characters.” There was a wistful quality to Thomil’s expression as though, looking down on the page, he saw the face of an old friend.

“Well, there are finite ways to compose letters from lines and dots,” Sciona said. “The similarities are probably coincidental.”

“I don’t think so,” Thomil said. “My brother-in-law was half Endrasta and practiced some of their divination. In ritual, he wrote his name like this.” Picking up one of Sciona’s pens, Thomil scratched five characters onto the corner of some scratch paper in his painfully clumsy handwriting.

“Addas?” Sciona read out. “One who pursues?”

“We pronounce it Arras . It means Hunter . Specifically, a long-distance big-game hunter. We have other words for fishers and trappers.”

“Oh. Well…” Sciona’s first impulse was to say that this Arras’s people had probably gotten the letters from the Tiranish alphabet when a new and fascinating thought dawned on her. “Wait… that… actually makes sense.”

“What makes sense?”

“Your brother-in-law’s people. What did you say they were called?”

“The Endrastae, ma’am. Venholt Endrastae.”