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“Yes, Highmage,” she said impatiently. “I’ve been running tests on some multi-purpose conduits for my own self-defense, but they’re not done. This idiot was supposed to bring the prototypes to me.” She rolled her eyes. “Serves me right for employing a Kwen who can’t read the words ‘this way up.’”

Sciona met Thomil’s eyes, and he seemed to understand.

“Ma’am, please.” He played along beautifully. “I didn’t think there was anything explosive—”

“Guards, remove this Kwen,” she said, “before he can get himself into more trouble. I never want to see him in this building again.”

“Highmage Freynan…” Mordra said tentatively, “I think Highmage Renthorn is the only one who can hire or fire the staff on this floor.”

“Well, Highmage Renthorn was the one knocked out in the blast, so I have a sneaking suspicion he’ll agree with me. Gentlemen,” she addressed the two security guards, “if you would take this Kwen away.”

The guards rushed forward all too eagerly and roughly hauled Thomil from the library. Sciona ached to go after him, to make sure he was alright, but for the moment, she was trapped here with her colleagues.

“Miss Freynan,” Tanrel put a hand on her lower back, and it was all she could do not to jerk away. “That must have been taxing for you.”

“Luckily, I’m on my way out to take a few days off.” She put a hand on Tanrel’s and pushed it from her waist. He put it back.

“I’ll walk you to your train.”

“No, thank you.”

“I insist.”

“It’s really not necessary, Highmage.”

“Nonsense. I’ll accompany you to—”

“No, you will not!” Sciona shoved him back, realizing at that moment how close she was to tears, how little control she had over her own body. “And, if you press the matter, I can arrange for another conduit malfunction!”

“I’m sorry?” Mordra said in alarm. “Did you just say another—?”

“Easy, Tenth,” Tanrel said. “She doesn’t know what she’s saying. She’s—”

“You want to know something, Tanrel?” Sciona cut him off, all her rage seething to the surface out of her control.

“I think you do this friendly, spineless, peacemaker thing to cover the fact that you’re a worthless mage.

And you think if you just get everyone to like you, they won’t notice.

” She narrowed her eyes in a vindictive smile. “They notice.”

“Um—I—excuse me!” Tanrel stammered. “What are you—”

“Do I need to spell it out? You are never going to make a meaningful contribution to our field. Your publications are a transparent rehash of Archmage Thelanra’s rehash of Archmage Nestram’s actual advances in mapping.

Archmage Thelanra had little to add, and it fucking shows that you wasted your graduate years studying under him because you have even less.

The worst part is that when you do hit on a point that’s almost worthwhile, you wrap it in pages of anecdotes and meditations.

Which is a terrible defense mechanism, by the way. Because your anecdotes are insipid.”

“Miss Freynan, that is quite enough!” Halaros stepped forward. “Highmage Tanrel is your senior colleague. Have some respect.”

“And you!” Sciona turned to square with Halaros—because she couldn’t stop herself, because the condescension, on top of everything else, was too much.

“When I recommend your books, I tell people to skip chapters four through eight. I mean, a new system for prioritizing coordinates in a spellweb? Really? You realize you’re not the next Archmage Sintrell, right? You’re his shadow.”

She hadn’t had the physical strength to make Renthorn pay. She had just let it happen. But someone was going to bleed, Feryn damn it, and nothing bled like a mage’s ego.

“The really embarrassing thing is that everyone who’s read your work knows that your ‘new system’ is a waste of ink.

They’re too polite to tell you. But look around.

You see anyone applying that convoluted garbage to their mapping the way they apply Sintrell?

No. Because it has no practical use. It’s masturbatory, and if you’d had any real friends review your work, they’d have told you to cut it.

But you don’t have friends. You have sycophants like this moron! ” She stabbed a finger at Tanrel.

Halaros seemed to be in rictus, his eyes bugged out, his jaw locked open in total indignation.

“Um…” Jerrin Mordra started to interject, and Sciona whirled on him.

“You have something to say to me, Tenth?”

“Uh… no?”

“Smart,” she snapped and swept past her three confused colleagues out of the library.

The outburst had done nothing to unravel the sick feeling in her gut.

Halfway down the stairs, her hands were in useless, shaking fists, and her throat squeezed with the threat of tears.

She had meant to take a day to lay out plans before putting them into motion.

That was no longer an option. If she gave herself a moment of quiet now, she would go back to the feeling of Renthorn’s hands on her, the awful, spoiled tea taste of his mouth, and that thrill in his eyes that, for a moment, had been far too like her own.

She reached the bottom of the stairs just in time to throw up in the trash receptacle on the landing.

For once, the vomit was welcome. Stomach acid was better than the taste of Renthorn on her tongue. She didn’t bother washing out her mouth when the heaving had subsided. Renthorn fancied himself a great predator. She wanted to remember him this way—as putrid, half-digested food.

She had departed the fourth floor in the direction of the Magistry’s front doors to avoid suspicion.

But when she had finished being sick, she drew a hand across her mouth and doubled back toward her real destination.

The head janitor’s office was more of a closet than a room, crammed under a set of stairs.

When Sciona knocked, a voice answered with a heavy Kwen accent, “Come in!”

The old man started, gray eyes going wide to see a white-robed mage open the door.

“H-Highmage,” he stuttered, getting to his feet. “What—”

“Please, have a seat, Mr. Dermek,” she said gently—or as gently as she could with the raspy little that remained of her voice. “I just wanted to ask who cleaned the offices on the fourth floor yesterday.”

“Oh, that would be me.” Mr. Dermek said, and it hurt something in Sciona. Because there was no lift to the fourth floor and this man was too old to be climbing up and down stairs. “You know my name?”

“Thomil mentioned you a few times. All good things,” she added. “I came to see you about a broken spellograph that was in my office. You don’t happen to remember what you did with it?”

“When there’s broken equipment, I always take it to the tech offices to see if it can be repaired.

” As he spoke, Sciona noted that his accent was quite distinct from Thomil’s and Carra’s, some of the vowels a little rounder, some of the consonants a little sharper, and she wondered what tribe he came from.

Endrasta? Siernes? Probably some tribe she had never heard of, considering she just knew the two besides the near-extinct Caldonnae.

Were there any of his people left beyond the barrier?

“They said fixing your machine would be more trouble than melting it down, so I took it to the scrap metal bins.”

The wizened Kwen trailed off as he gave Sciona another once-over. “Forgive me for asking, but are you alright, Highmage?” There was something too concerned—too knowing—in the way he asked.

She looked away from the soft gray of those eyes. “Yes.”

“Are you quite sure? You look as though—”

“How often does the scrap metal bin get emptied?” she asked.

“A truck comes from the steel mill to pick it up at the end of each week, ma’am.”

“So, it’s still here?”

“In the back warehouse, yes, Highmage. I’ll show you if you like.”

“Yes, please.”

Dermek led Sciona down a back corridor to the warehouse, where she immediately began plucking through the scrap metal for the pieces of her broken spellograph.

Many mages didn’t know all the mundane bits and screws of a spellograph, but Sciona easily picked them out among the other screws, bolts, and wires in the bin.

She had her cousin to thank for that. Alba, with her long, strong fingers and affinity for following instructions, had worked in a spellograph repair shop for five years after graduating junior academy and had been kind enough to share her training materials with her nosy younger cousin.

There was the typewheel, the knob, the shift lever—oops, not that shift lever, this one.

There was one link screw, two link screws… how many more did she need?

“Um—” Dermek cleared his throat in discomfort. “Ma’am, if I may, you shouldn’t…”

It was almost certainly against policy to let anyone pick through scrapped Magistry machinery, but Sciona was a Highmage. Dermek faced a terrible choice between telling a highmage what to do and violating policy—both of which could get him fired on the spot.

“Shouldn’t what?” Sciona asked sweetly, though her sweet voice had rarely ever worked on anyone—even when it wasn’t ragged from weeping, shouting, and vomiting. It was undoubtedly the white robes that made Dermek rethink his words.

“You shouldn’t go digging in there without gloves,” he said after a pause and pulled a pair from a shelf to hand to Sciona. “You’ll cut your hands.”

“Oh, thank you.” She smiled and pulled the oversized gloves on. “And could I have a box, too, please?” she added, realizing that the larger pieces of the machine would never fit into her shoulder bag.

“Of course, Highmage.” The Kwen still looked apprehensive as he took an appropriately sized box from a nearby shelving unit and set it beside her.

“Mr. Dermek,” she said to distract him as she continued her search through the scrap metal. “If you don’t mind me asking, what tribe are you?”

Dermek looked taken aback. “What?”

“My friend, Thomil, said there are lots of tribes out in the Kwen, all of them different. I’m curious about yours.”

“The Mersyn.” He said it quietly. Like a prayer.

“I haven’t heard of them.”

“You wouldn’t have—even if you are the type of Tiranishwoman to know one Kwen tribe from another. They lived far beyond the Venholt Mountains.” But not far enough to be out of range of magic. For all Sciona knew, no habitable place in the world was.

“Lived?” Sciona said softly. “They’re not there anymore?”

“I doubt it. My mother strapped me to her back and crossed the range to Tiran near-on eighty years ago. My father wanted to stay with his ailing parents, said he’d join us after the next thaw.”

“Did you ever see him again?” Sciona asked.

Dermek shook his head. “Some Endrastae who came through the barrier a few years later told my mother the rest of our tribe hadn’t made it.

She didn’t believe them at first. But I think, after more Kwen came through the barrier, then more, then more, saying the Mersynae hadn’t been seen in five years, then ten, then fifteen, she just…

It wore at her, and she… Well, it’s not important, Highmage. Sorry for rambling on.”

“No, I’m sorry.” Sciona’s hands had stilled on the scrap metal. “I didn’t mean to bring up something so painful.” But what had she been expecting?

The head janitor shrugged. “My father and everyone I knew would be dead now anyway. It’s in the past.”

“Right.” Sciona clutched a handful of spellograph screws hard. “But things are about to change. The future has to be different. It will be different.”

“You think so, Highmage?”

“Tell me, Dermek… If somehow, some of your people lived, and there was a chance you could protect them from Blight—but it was a small chance and very risky—would you take it?”

“Gods, of course, ma’am!” the janitor said. “I’m old. My chances at life are all gone. If there was a prayer that I could protect anyone from Blight, I’d take it, risks be damned—if you’ll excuse my language.”

“You’re certain?”

“Certain as Blight, Highmage.”

“Perfect.” Sciona dropped the last few screws into her box. “Then, I’m going to need your keys.”