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Carra snarled something Sciona didn’t understand. For a heartbeat, Sciona was sure the wild girl was going to lunge for the attack again. But she just turned in a swish of red locks and left. The apartment door slammed shut behind her, extending one of the cracks in the wall.

“Is she…?” Sciona trailed off, unable to decide whether to ask, ‘is she going to be alright?’ or ‘is she going to come back with a bigger knife?’

“Please don’t worry about her,” Thomil said.

“She’s more Caldonn than I ever was, fiercer, more stubborn.

It can be hard to change her mind about anything.

If you could just… not mention that”—he gestured after Carra—“to any authorities, knowing it would get her put in a work camp for the rest of her life.”

“God, of course not!”

“I won’t let her attack you again, Highmage, I swear,” Thomil said, and Sciona was disturbed to recognize a note of fear in his words.

He didn’t trust her not to use this information against him.

It stung, but after the things she had said to him back in that Magistry stairwell, why should she expect his trust?

For her part, Sciona didn’t have full confidence that Thomil could control his feral niece, but she had bigger concerns than a homicidal teenager. “Assuming you can keep her from stabbing me in the next week, I think I can approach the High Magistry about this problem.”

“Really?” Thomil looked thoroughly unimpressed. “That’s your plan of action? Go running to the men responsible for this evil magic system?”

“Yes, but hear me out,” Sciona said. “The High Magistry will be interested in the clarity of my new mapping methods. That isn’t a question.

And, once they put my spellwork into broader use, all mages will be able to see which potential energy sources are human and which aren’t.

We can find sources that don’t hurt anyone.

And this is to say nothing of alchemy! There will be so much less waste when alchemists can see the physical material they’re siphoning. Things will get better in the Kwen.”

Thomil’s cold wall of skepticism hadn’t budged an inch. “Your optimism is cute, Highmage Freynan, but I think you haven’t slept in a few days, and you’ve grossly oversimplified the problem.”

“How have I oversimplified?”

“Well, for one thing, Kwen don’t just die from Blight hitting our bodies.

During my lifetime, about a quarter of the casualties in my tribe were from direct Blight.

The rest died of starvation because resources on the plains are finite, and when all the deer and plants are also dying of Blight, the humans end up starving.

But, setting all that aside, I think the more pressing question is why would your precious highmages care about any of that?

Why would they give up a good source of energy—human or otherwise? ”

“Because it’s obviously horrific to siphon human beings!”

“So is forcing five-year-old children into labor, but they don’t have a problem with that—so long as those children have enough copper in their hair to set them apart from civilized Tiranish children.”

“Alright—but—highmages are inventors and philosophers. They don’t control labor in the city.”

“Respectfully, ma’am, that’s a load of caribou shit.”

“Excuse me?”

“The highmages are this city,” Thomil said in exasperation. “If they want something so, then it is so.”

Sciona couldn’t deny that. Between the Magistry’s influence in the government, the clergy, and the press, there was little of the city they didn’t control.

It hurt to think, but it was true that if they cared at all about improving the lot of the Kwen in Tiran, they probably could have done so many times over.

Sciona was ashamed that the thought had never crossed her mind.

When she—or any mage—thought of improving Tiran, it was only for their fellow Tiranish.

The Tiranish men thought about their fellow Tiranish men.

Sciona very occasionally thought about her fellow Tiranish woman.

But the Kwen? The Kwen were the very last of afterthoughts, if they came up at all.

“I know Carra lacks tact,” Thomil continued, “but I think she’s right about one thing: you figured this out within a few months of starting your research in the High Magistry. Yes, you’re a prodigy, but you can’t have been the only mage in history to uncover this.”

“Oh, I wasn’t,” Sciona said. “That’s one of the things I put together when I was thinking back through my research. The traitor mage knew.”

“Sabernyn?”

“Yes. Remember how he mysteriously murdered all those people in their homes? The reports from the murder scenes describe total carnage with no discernible bodies. Just blood, and hair, and bone.”

“So, he killed using the Forbidden Coordinates?” Thomil grimaced. “Which we now know to mean that he siphoned directly from his rivals’ homes?”

“That’s my theory. I mean, it seems like he wasn’t perfect at it. He definitely didn’t have the mapping abilities I do.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Because if he’d had access to anything like the Freynan Mirror—the ability to see his prey in color—he wouldn’t have flubbed his assassination so many times. He missed his mark and killed a lot of family members and servants—even some unrelated neighbors—before getting to his actual targets.”

“I see,” Thomil said. “He’d pieced together that the Forbidden Coordinates corresponded to locations in Tiran, but he was still using fuzzy traditional mapping methods to find his targets.”

“Exactly,” Sciona said, “mapping methods by which one human body would be indistinguishable from another. But my point isn’t that I’m a better mapper than Sabernyn”—although that was gratifyingly indisputable.

“My point is that he was put to death for what he did. The High Magistry at the time called it an ‘abomination against God,’ so it’s not as if they condone the use of that magic against people. ”

“Well, not against their own people.”

“Alright, maybe the Tiranish do treat the murder of their own more seriously than the deaths of Kwen, but—”

“That’s not a ‘maybe,’ ma’am,” Thomil said impatiently.

“The sentence for killing a Tiranish citizen is life in prison. For killing a Kwen, it’s usually six months—or a cushy retirement, if you’re important enough.

That’s what they gave your Highmage Tython when he dropped a bridge on my friends, is it not? ”

“Fine, fine,” Sciona conceded in frustration.

“I’m not going to argue with you on that”—even though Highmage Tython’s blunder had clearly been an accident rather than intentional murder.

“All I’m saying is that I doubt a whole Magistry of men could go about for generations disregarding mass slaughter.

And thanks to Leon’s spellwork and Faene’s rules, they don’t need to.

The nature of the Otherrealm is pretty well-concealed. ”

“Is it, though, ma’am? I had my suspicions before your breakthrough, and I’m a half-literate Kwen.”

“You’re more than half-literate and you know it,” Sciona protested. “You’re exceptional.”

“No, I’m not!” Thomil said with an anger Sciona didn’t understand.

“I’m not smarter than other Kwen, or stronger, or more virtuous.

I’ve just been luckier than most. This is what I don’t think you understand.

Tiranish just like you kill Kwen just like me all the time—if not by siphoning, then by our treatment at the barrier, in the factories and construction sites—”

“Alright, but this… what you and I have seen is a far cry from unsafe work conditions. The whole point—the whole mission statement—of Tiranish magic is to make life better. Adherents to that magic system wouldn’t do these things if they knew there was such a high human cost.”

“But I’m not human, am I?” Thomil’s voice went bitter. “Carra isn’t human. We’re an unclean, parasitic race, fit only to serve.”

“Come on! Who would say something like that?”

“Your founding texts!” Thomil returned. And, after a moment of searching her memory, Sciona realized he was right. Damn it. She had always skimmed those parts like she did everything not pertaining directly to magic. “And I wonder what we’re good for if we’re not serving?”

“I think the writers of those texts—the Founding Mages—have tricked us all. Thanks to the restrictions they’ve placed on mapping spell compositions, even the archmages don’t know the truth.”

“Well, the barrier guards certainly do.”

“The barrier guards know what the carnage of Blight looks like,” Sciona said, “and yes, some of them are cruel enough to throw people to their deaths. It doesn’t mean they—or the mages—know where that carnage comes from.

They can’t know…” Sciona supposed it was arrogant to think she had discovered something that had eluded all but a few mages in the last few centuries.

But ego was what had kept her alive for these last few days, and the alternative was unacceptable. “I’ll prove it.”

Thomil raised an eyebrow. “Will you?”

“This will be a good thing,” she said. “Once the archmages know what I’ve discovered, they can use my Freynan Mirrors to avoid killing humans in the future.” Sure, it might not solve the other problems Thomil had raised about the crops and game, but it was a start.

This would be her legacy, she decided. Sciona Freynan, not just the first female highmage, but a mapping revolutionary who saved tens of thousands of lives through her work.

She wouldn’t just pave the way for women into the High Magistry.

She would be the vanguard for a new era in which magic truly was the force for good the public imagined.

She would make Tiran into the inherent good the Founders had promised but not delivered.

“Things are about to get better for everyone.” She stood. “I’m headed to the university.”

“What? Now?”

“Yes.” Having made up her mind and stated her purpose to Thomil, Sciona couldn’t wait another moment. “Thank you for the tea—and for listening.”