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“The other tower?”

“What?”

“From outside, it looks like there are two siphoning towers,” Carra said, “this western one and an eastern one.”

“Right.” The twin siphoning towers bracketed the dome of Leon’s Hall, giving the Main Magistry building its distinctive silhouette.

“Both towers siphon the Reserve. But this one siphons for public utilities—electricity, running water, trains, all that—and the one on the other side siphons energy for private use. That’s if some rich businessman pays out of pocket for magical services or a mage gets a grant to use Reserve energy for a research project.

Although most research mages will just employ a good sourcer, like…

well, like me.” Sciona looked at the toes of her oversized boots so she wouldn’t have to endure the shame of Carra’s gaze.

“So, are we hitting both towers?” Carra asked flatly.

“It’s not worth it to cover the other tower.” Sciona had only considered it briefly before coming to this conclusion. “Private energy use is contained to specific spaces, most of them—well—private. Public energy use is everywhere.”

“Okay, so where are you going?”

Sciona took a deep breath. “I’m going to rob the Archmage Supreme’s office.”

It wasn’t hard to deduce the location of Orynhel’s secret office—right at the steepled top of the tower above the Siphoning Hall—the Mount, the pinnacle, a penis thing.

Sciona’s copy of Dermek’s keys came in handy once again when she reached the ancient locked door, which was a relic from before the invention of locking and scanning conduits.

She kept her head down to hide her green eyes as she cracked the door open and slipped into the office, but after a heart-pounding moment of nerves, it became clear that she was alone.

The silence was absolute—no shuffle of papers or click of spellograph keys; even the hum that should have radiated from the Siphoning Hall below was conspicuously absent, neutralized by some spell—and Sciona tentatively lifted her head to look around.

The circular chamber wasn’t larger than any other archmage’s office, but it was ostentatious to the point of parody.

Every chair, cabinet, and desk was gilded and intricately carved with the curling flourishes characteristic of early Tiranish script and artwork.

Enormous effort had clearly gone into preserving the original moldings on the walls, though they were past their prime.

There was a staleness to the splendor that matched the eerie stillness of the air.

Magic held this chamber in dignified stasis above the whole of Tiran.

As the wheels of innovation turned, power stayed the same.

It took Sciona a moment and a few deep breaths to gather the courage to disturb that stillness.

But once she took one step forward, she didn’t slow down.

After a few minutes spent rifling through antique cabinets behind the desk, she found a file containing several variants of the barrier expansion spell that various experts had sent Archmage Orynhel for review.

There wasn’t time to copy them all. After speed-reading several of the action spells, Sciona picked the two she liked best—not that the fiddly details really mattered—and set about manually copying them on Archmage Orynhel’s spellograph.

With her fingers racing in anxiety, she had no doubt that she made errors.

But that was alright. She would look the spells over carefully later, and between the two variants, she would be able to compose something serviceable.

Serviceable was all she needed.

When she had typed up her two copies, she slipped the stolen spells into the single bucket she had brought with her, arranged some rags to hide the papers, then set about restoring everything to its place on Orynhel’s desk.

She was trying to remember where his set of ink pens had been before she moved them when a key scraped at the ancient lock.

She froze.

There was no place to hide. The lock clicked open as she dropped to the floor beside the desk. She was on her knees with a rag in her hand when a trio of white cloaks swept into the office.

Sciona recognized Archmage Gamwen first by his voice—deep and touched with an accent characteristic of the Leonite working district of his birth. “I’m just asking to be absolutely sure.”

“When I decide to task the highmages with sourcing, you must trust that I know what I’m doing.” The ancient, wavering voice was Orynhel, the Archmage Supreme himself.

“It’s not the highmages I doubt,” Gamwen said. “It’s the limits of our mapping zone.”

“Careful how you speak about this, Gamwen,” said the third man—Archmage Justice Capernai.

His voice was nearly a stranger’s; he had spoken so seldom during the exam, where the subject at hand had been magical application rather than law.

“That mapping zone is God’s Bounty and His promise to us.

Is ‘doubt’ a word you want to use in connection with that? ”

“Not publicly, no,” Gamwen said. “But we all know what it truly—” He cut himself off and sighed. “Archmage Supreme, I’m just imploring you to consider my research into the expanded siphoning zone.”

Sciona’s eyes widened in horror and fascination, even as she kept them trained on the floor before her.

The expanded siphoning zone was a theory she had read about, but she never would have imagined that an archmage would be researching it seriously.

The theory was that God’s Garden did not end at the known boundary—and, consequently, that entering numbers higher than two thousand or going into the negative numbers for coordinates could unlock new sources of energy in the Otherrealm.

Knowing what the Otherrealm really was, it meant Blighting more of the foreign world for magical energy—places beyond the Kwen, beyond even the black-haired women at the edge of the ocean.

“Gamwen,” Orynhel said calmly. “This is something we can consider further after our plans for the expansion are in place.”

“If we consider it further,” Archmage Justice Capernai said. “I don’t mind telling you, Gamwen, that I am not personally willing to clear such an undertaking until we understand all the risks.”

“I’ve explained the risks, Archmage Justice,” Gamwen said impatiently, “which are not as great as you imagine. The introduction of negative numbers won’t automatically mean the critical failure of Tiran’s machines any more than changing dates at the turn of the first century made the clocks all—” Gamwen started as he nearly tripped on Sciona, which was the first he seemed to notice she was there.

She ducked her head as she felt his eyes turned on her.

Only then did she realize that she had been holding the cleaning rag unmoving in her white-knuckled hands—on a carpet .

Who used a rag on a carpet? God, he was about to ask what on Earth she was doing, and she would have to answer him, and he would clock her accent, and—

“Boy, out,” was all the archmage said.

“Yes, sir.” The moment the words were out of Sciona’s mouth, she knew they were wrong. Too breathy. Too high.

She snatched her bucket up by the handle and fled the office like a rabbit bolting for cover.

After the door had clunked closed behind her, she waited with her back to the wall outside the office—unable to breathe, her eyes wide open, her heart hammering against the bucket clutched to her chest like a spellograph pumping terrible energy through a siphoning barrel.

Like the machines below, she couldn’t seem to stop shaking.

Any second now. Any second, Archmage Gamwen was going to throw the door open and say, ‘You! What are you doing here?’

But one terrified breath passed, then another, and the door stayed closed, the hallway utterly silent thanks to the sound-proofing spell around Orynhel’s office.

Had she been on her own, Sciona might have stayed frozen there, with the copied keys clutched in her hand and the bucket pressed to her chest. It was the thought of Carra that shocked her body back into motion.

Sciona getting caught on her own was one thing, but if her getting caught prompted a search of the tower for an accomplice, if Carra was caught…

Sciona wouldn’t entertain the thought. She simply wouldn’t let it happen.

Pushing from the wall, she ran back to the siphoning hall, tripping over the oversized boots and nearly falling on her face several times as the bucket of spellpapers banged into her knees.

“Carra!” Relief flooded Sciona when she reached the Siphoning Hall and found the little figure in Thomil’s clothes arranging buckets on the cart. “Leave the rest.”

“Huh?” Carra looked up.

“Leave the rest of the spellographs,” Sciona gasped, barely able to speak between labored breaths as she staggered to the cart and grasped the handle for support. “Whatever you got done is fine.”

“What do you mean?”

“However many papers you laid—it doesn’t matter.” The plan was less important than making sure Carra got out of here safe. “We have to go.”

“Well, I’m done, so…”

“Done!” Sciona exclaimed. “You lay papers that fast?”

“Nope. I’m that fast up and down the ladders.”

Sciona could have hugged her. “You’re amazing! Absolutely wonderful. Now, let’s get out of here.”

“Did someone see you?” Carra asked, taking the bucket from Sciona and placing it among the others on the cart.

“Yes. Well—I’m not sure if they saw saw me, but I don’t want to take any chances.”

Nodding, Carra took hold of the cart and pushed it toward the exit.

Sciona was dizzy with fear as they left the Siphoning Hall.

“Slow down,” Carra kept reminding her as they returned the cart to its closet on the first floor, took the bucket of barrier expansion spells, then made their way to the front doors. “Walking isn’t suspicious. Scurrying is suspicious.”