Page 58

“Am I scurrying?” Sciona asked and found that her breath was still coming far too fast, even though it had been several minutes since her sprint away from Orynhel’s office.

“Yes. Here.” Carra handed Sciona the bucket of spells, which was just heavy enough that Sciona had to slow to keep it from knocking into her throbbing knees. “That’s better.”

Sciona didn’t breathe as they crossed the vast lobby to the front doors—right where anyone could see them.

Someone must notice something off; someone was about to shout ‘Halt! What’s in the bucket?

’ But again, astoundingly, not a soul in the building noticed them beneath their janitor’s caps.

Not even the security guards chatting about their Feryn’s Feast plans on the front steps.

It wasn’t until Sciona and Carra were a block from the Main Magistry that Sciona rediscovered the ability to breathe normally. And it wasn’t until they had walked a few blocks more from the well-lit walkways of the campus into the darker residential area beyond that Sciona could finally speak.

“Thank you for doing this with me, Carra.”

“I didn’t do it for you.”

“I know that. I’m just glad I didn’t have to go alone. Whatever your reason for coming along, I’m thankful.”

“Well…” Carra removed her cap and unpinned her hair to let it unfurl like flames around her shoulders. “I didn’t get to grow up with my mom. If I had, I’d like to think this is the kind of thing we’d have done together.”

Sciona let out another snort of laughter—something Carra seemed uniquely good at eliciting from her. “That’s your idea of a nice day out with your mother? Plotting the destruction of a government?”

“Why? You have a more fun idea?”

“I guess I always imagined that I’d go to the bakery with my mother if I could see her for a day. Maybe dress shopping? Something a mom might find fun.” Although Sciona herself had never been terribly excited by dresses or baked goods.

“Well, I think insurgency is fun. So, thanks for tonight. It was—Gods, are you crying again?” Carra said in horror. “Why?”

“I don’t know,” Sciona laughed as she wiped her eyes on the sleeve of Thomil’s jumpsuit. “I think that’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

“You’re so weird.”

Sciona scrubbed her hands over her face and sniffed. “I know.”

Snow was falling beyond the barrier, casting a deep mist over Tiran that made the lights from the streetlamps fuzz.

Thomil had agreed to stick to the shadows between those lights well outside the campus and act inconspicuous.

But as the hours stretched beyond bearing, he started pacing.

The hunter’s patience, which had once kept him still for hours in wait for prey, seemed to have deserted him completely.

Waiting to see if he would have a kill to bring back to Maeva was not the same as waiting to see if Carra and Sciona would come back out of the heart of evil. And he could not be still.

It was only when two figures turned the corner that Thomil froze in place.

Then he recognized the red of Carra’s hair, and he was falling forward, running.

Caught in the surge of pure relief, he wrapped Carra in a hug.

And not just Carra. It took a moment—soft brown hair against his cheek, a breath of ink stains and Tiranish tea—before Thomil realized that he had one arm wrapped around Sciona.

The little mage had stiffened in surprise but hadn’t pushed him away.

“Sorry.” Thomil released his boss as Carra looked up at him in incredulity and deep, scathing judgment. “I didn’t mean to. I was just…”

“Stupid?” Carra offered.

“Worried.”

“It’s alright.” Sciona looked flustered but not displeased.

Pale cheeks touched with pink in the streetlights, she smoothed her fidgety hands over the front of the janitor’s uniform where her skirts should have been.

Realizing belatedly that there were no skirts, she awkwardly hesitated and then shoved her hands into the pockets of the jumpsuit like that had been her intention from the start.

“How did it go?” Thomil asked.

“Fine, obviously,” Carra said. “You really think we’d have left without getting the job done?”

“And no one saw you?”

“They saw but they didn’t notice,” Sciona confirmed, “just like you predicted.”

“Thank Mearras!” Thomil hadn’t realized the toll the wait had taken until he heard its release shaking his voice. And he was touching Sciona again, a hand on her slight shoulder, squeezing to assure himself that she was real. For now, at least, she was here.

Again, Sciona didn’t pull away. She just looked down at the hand, then up at Thomil with an oddly shy, utterly captivating smile.

“Okay.” Carra broke the moment. “I’m going to walk ahead if you two are being weird.”

“Carra—”

“Bye,” she cut her uncle off and sped into the dark toward the train station.

“Sorry about that.” Thomil withdrew his hand from Sciona’s shoulder and clutched it into a fist before clearing his throat. “After you, Highmage.”

He nodded for Sciona to go ahead, expecting her to hurry to catch up with Carra, to break the awkward tension he had created. She didn’t. Instead, she strode ahead without urgency, setting their pace at a casual stroll as Thomil fell into step beside her.

Instead of getting on the train at the university stop where someone might recognize Thomil or Sciona, the three had agreed that they would walk to the next train stop to catch a train back to the widow’s house.

There, they would do a last round of strategizing before Sciona left them for the last time.

The fog had thickened, and Thomil let himself breathe in the knowledge that the work was over.

Not the trouble but all the work that would set it in motion.

For this moment, he, his niece, and Sciona were safe.

The mist seemed to blot out the rest of the world, leaving only the swaying flame of Carra’s hair ahead.

“You should be very proud of yourself,” Sciona said, and Thomil turned to her, uncomprehending.

“About what?”

Sciona nodded to Carra. “You’ve raised an exceptional girl.”

“Oh…” No one

had ever told Thomil that. It was always, ‘You let your daughter speak like that?’ From other Kwen, the tone was as fearful as it was judgmental. From the rare city guard who terrifyingly chose to comment on Carra’s conduct, it was an implicit warning. ‘She’s going to get herself in trouble.’

“Whatever parts of Carra have impressed you, I doubt I can take credit for them,” Thomil said. “My sister and her husband were exceptional.”

“But a fire can’t burn on nothing,” Sciona said.

“You’ve fed her energy. That’s not easy.

I know—” She stopped herself and rephrased: “I mean, I don’t know how it is for Kwen, but I figure it’s not easy to raise a daughter anywhere in this city without suffocating her.

So many parents will try to kill everything brilliant about a girl in the name of giving her a good life, a safe life, a chance at happiness.

Whatever you’ve done… you haven’t done that to Carra.

It’s—” Sciona swallowed, and Thomil was shocked to realize that she was on the verge of tears—and not tears of distress, but the kind she cried when she beheld wondrous spellwork.

Whatever she saw in his little, broken family, it had moved her. “It’s beautiful.”

“I’ve done her a disservice.”

Sciona turned piercing green eyes on Thomil in confusion. “Why would you say that?”

“Because it’s true! I’ve done a terrible thing!

” And suddenly, Thomil was spilling the unvoiced torments of a decade.

“I learned to crush the hunter, the man, everything that was Caldonn in me because I knew that was the only way for a Kwen to stay alive in this place. But, when it came down to it, I couldn’t find it in me to have Carra do the same. ”

“That’s a good thing,” Sciona said.

“No, it’s not,” Thomil insisted. “It’s a dangerous, dangerous thing for a Kwen to be as wild and outspoken as she is.

I knew that from the beginning. I just…” He swallowed.

“I missed my family and our language too much. I couldn’t bring myself to force Tiranish over that last vestige of my people, even to spare my niece a life of anger and hardship. ”

These were things Thomil had never been able to articulate to anyone else, not even to Brodlynn or Kaedelli.

After all, if he had been a little better at explaining himself, maybe they wouldn’t have left him.

Maybe they could have understood. It helped that with Sciona, their relationship had begun by discussing theory, then arguing about it.

With her, he knew how to give his worst thoughts voice.

“Everyone knows assimilated Kwen suffer less Tiranish hostility. They have hope, even if it’s illusory, that they can succeed on this side of the barrier.

I could have let Carra have that. Instead, I was selfish.

I didn’t teach her the restraint to keep herself safe the way I have. Because I couldn’t bear it.”

“But it sounds like there’s a good reason you couldn’t bear it,” Sciona said softly.

“My gods and my ancestors won’t care for my reasons if my failings get her killed.”

Sciona made a thoughtful sound and turned her eyes forward, seeming to chew on Thomil’s words.

“What?” he said, surprised at his own impatience—at how much he needed her response.

It was silly. She was Tiranish. She knew nothing of Caldonn customs, nor Kwen girlhood in this city, nor the tensions between the two…

Yet she was the only person who had told him he was doing right by Carra.

From a woman of such power, that had to mean something. Gods, he wanted it to mean something.

“The deities of your tribe don’t just care about life and death, though,” Sciona said after an interminable silence. “At least, that was how you framed it to me. When your gods weigh the evil a man has done, they also factor in non-lethal damage. Suffering.”

“What’s your point?”