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“All present watched in wonder as Stravos stood upon his crooked leg and raised the barrier from spellwork the like of which even Lord Prophet Leon had scarcely seen—one layer to guard from winter, one layer to guard from bitterest Blight. And within this golden cradle, made by God’s Will and maintained by His mages, we set our nation of the Chosen. ”

S CIONA

PRESSED

HER forehead to the seat in front of her and failed to breathe slowly.

“Come on, honey,” Alba said. “Sit up and have a scone.”

“Can’t.” Sciona squeezed her eyes shut, trying to quell the awful squirming in her gut as the train hummed onward. “Not yet.”

“You’re not going to throw up,” Alba sighed.

“No,” Sciona said through clenched teeth. “I still might.”

“You barely touched your breakfast.”

“I perform better on an empty stomach.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Alba said before crunching into one of the scones herself.

“Maybe not to you.” Hunger had a way of focusing Sciona on days like this—when she needed to be at the top of her game.

Satisfaction was the enemy. Comfort was the enemy.

She’d picked at her egg scramble this morning to placate Aunt Winny, but ultimately, she needed this aching hollow in the pit of her stomach.

“Look, I understand you being anxious—”

“You really don’t,” Sciona said to the back of the train seat. “No one does. Literally. No woman of our generation has attempted this exam.”

“So dramatic!” Alba laughed, and Sciona didn’t need to look to know her cousin was rolling her eyes. “It must be hard to be you! How terrible to be so singularly talented!”

Not talented, Sciona thought. Insatiable. Insane.

“And look, being a woman should make this easier for you, shouldn’t it?”

“Easier how , Alba? Enlighten me.”

“I mean, no female’s ever passed the exam before, so if you fail, there’s no shame in it.”

No shame. Of course, Alba would think that. To have shame, one had to have pride, and Alba had never had Sciona’s unreasonable excess of that.

“It’s not shame I’m worried about,” Sciona said, although there would be plenty of that after how hard she had worked. “You know why the Council only considers a woman for testing once every decade, right?”

“I…” Alba started but then trailed off with a puzzled look that made it plain she had never stopped to think about it.

“Testing women is considered a waste of resources based on the fact that a woman’s never passed. They only trot out a female hopeful every once in a while to prove the truism. If I fail, I’ll be that proof. I’ll have ruined magic for the next decade of female research mages.”

“I think you’re overthinking this.”

“I think you’re under thinking it. Tests like this are political, and performative, and just—fraught, you understand?” Not that political nuance was Sciona’s strong suit; some functions of the Magistry were just glaringly obvious. “This exam will have consequences for people who aren’t me.”

“Okay, but come on,” Alba said. “Since when do you really care about people who aren’t you?”

“I care,” Sciona protested, immediately aware that her tone was too defensive to convince.

“Yeah? Where’d these scones come from?”

“Sorry—what?”

“Who made this basket of scones?”

“Aunt Winny?” Sciona assumed.

“Do you remember her baking last night or this morning?”

“Why

would I remember that? I was a little busy preparing for the most important test of my life.”

“The scones were a gift from Ansel… the baker’s son,” Alba added when Sciona just looked at her blankly, “who’s waved to you every morning since his family set up shop on our street.

He dropped them off last night before you left the table.

” When still nothing registered on Sciona’s face, Alba continued, “We were listening to election predictions on the radio when he came in. You looked right at him. You really don’t remember? ”

“I didn’t realize the exam was starting,” Sciona said sourly. “Am I going to be tested on the color of his cap too? Some insipid comment he made about the weather?”

“You could stand to be nicer to Ansel.” Alba frowned in that judgmental way that Sciona never quite understood but always hurt. “You remember that he lost his brother last year?”

“Of course, I remember.” The sight of that much blood on the cobbles was difficult to forget. “But what does that have to do with me?”

“I’m just saying, you barely pay attention to the people right in front of you.

I’m sure your passing the exam would be good for other women and all that, but I don’t think you can say you’re doing it for them.

I mean, can you even name a practicing female research mage—or any practicing research mage—you actually care about? ”

Sciona tilted her head, opened her mouth—

“Your mentor doesn’t count.”

Sciona closed her mouth. Maybe Alba had a point. Was Sciona really upset that women might not be allowed into the High Magistry or the idea that she might not be allowed in? After twenty years of reading every night instead of sleeping, scribbling formulas instead of touching her meals—

“Oh, Sciona, you have to sit up!” Alba slapped at her arm. “Sit up and look! It’s so pretty!”

The train was racing across the highest bridge above the city just as the sky blushed with the promise of sun over the eastern hills. Even after a thousand train rides along these tracks, there was nothing quite like watching the greatest civilization on Earth waking with the dawn.

Tiran’s holy forty-sector energy grid ran all night but only lit up in the early morning, spells flashing like lightning across the skyline as alchemists siphoned ore for the day’s steel production.

Electric lights blinked on in the windows of the work districts first, then in the mansions beyond, creating a sea of sparks that trailed off into the blue-black expanse of the farmlands to the east. Below the train tracks, cars bearing morning milk and fruit deliveries for the wealthy trundled along the roads like a procession of bright-shelled beetles.

With Archmage Duris’s new rubber compounds for their wheels and smooth alchemical cement replacing the cobblestones of most major streets, vehicles moved faster now than ever, but the “magic-drawn carriages” still seemed slow and small from the train.

Sciona liked the city best from up here, all its technical marvels on display without the mess of its human inhabitants, no one to bother her with their chatter or attempts at eye contact—well, no one except the excitable woman in the seat next to her.

“Praise Feryn, what a view!” Alba hung on Sciona’s arm as the train climbed. The clock and radio repair shop where Alba worked was only two blocks from their apartment; she didn’t get much occasion to see the wider city of Tiran. “I can’t believe this is your commute!”

“Possibly for the last time.” Sciona had promised Aunt Winny that if the exam didn’t work out, she would get a real job teaching magic to children at one of the local schools.

No more university, no more research, no chance at a real legacy, just hordes of snot-nosed schoolboys like the ones who had made her childhood hell.

“Don’t say that, Sciona! You’re going to do amazing.”

“Nobody does amazing on the High Magistry exam,” Sciona said, determined not to torment herself with hope. “They just pass, or they don’t.”

By the time the train slowed at the University of Magics and Industry, the sun had crested the hills to sparkle off the dome that protected Tiran from Blight and insulated it through the dark winter.

A few people eyed Sciona’s dark plum robes in surprise as she picked her way down the train aisle and stepped onto the platform.

It wasn’t that women never reached Sciona’s level of study; it just wasn’t common.

And of the few women who did make it to a graduate degree in magic, most donned green robes and went into teaching.

Why pursue research, after all, when its highest levels were inaccessible to you?

Better for a lady mage to employ her talents training the next generation of great male innovators—unless she was a perpetually unsatisfied monster like Sciona, always after what wasn’t hers.

While Alba marveled at the bustle and majesty of the university train station, Sciona’s appreciation landed where it always did—on the sheer magical power of the train itself.

She never tired of watching the masterfully designed pressure conduits glow along each of the doors, pushing them closed.

As those conduits dimmed, the engine at the front of the train blazed, siphoning energy from the Reserve to turn those great wheels on the tracks.

Sciona felt the train shudder with the massive energy intake—like a thrill down a spine—before it continued east with its remaining passengers.

Decades ago, she had tugged on Aunt Winny’s worn, lacy sleeve and asked what made the trains move.

What had the power to animate a machine the size of a dragon?

“The mages make the trains move, dear,” Aunt Winny had said and, when she saw that the answer hadn’t satisfied her niece, added, “clever men who study very, very hard.”

Sciona remembered the shock as she registered that mages were just men who had been boys once. She remembered thinking that she was cleverer than any boy in her primary school. She studied harder than any of them. So, why not her?

Why not her?

Her stride picked up, making her cousin jog to keep pace. Alba had the longer legs, but she kept pausing, clearly intrigued by the commotion around them—which, in fairness, was more intense than usual.

The highmage examination was always timed to coincide with the election of city chairs, the idea being that new mages and politicians entered the hallowed halls of the theocracy at the same time—the will of God and the people moving as one.

Sciona just wished the public election end of the process didn’t have to be so loud when she had magic to concentrate on.