“I didn’t think I needed to state the obvious.”
“Excuse me?”
“You know, Tanrel thinks the Council let you in for political reasons, that they wanted to build support among Nerys’s pet radicals by trotting out a woman in white robes. Halaros thinks Archmage Bringham is just a dramatic showman who wanted credit for making history. I think his wants aren’t half so complicated.” Renthorn’s eyes flicked significantly over Sciona’s skirt and bodice. “Though I do feel he could have done a little better than you.”
For a moment, Sciona’s vision blanked. Red-hot rage had started in her chest and nearly boiled over into a scream, but she froze it, made herself ice-cold.
“Well.” Her voice had gone flat. “That leaves us with Faene’s first rule of magic, then.”
“What?”
Sciona might not cling to Faene the First’s edicts, but Tirasian-raised mages like Renthorn did. “Nothing is so until it’s tested thrice over. Seems like you gentlemen have had fun making your theories about me, but they’re just theories until we put them to the test.”
“Put them to the test?” Renthorn sneered. “Should I promise you a bigger office if you take off your dress and—”
“You assume I don’t have the skill to be here. That’s the basis of all your theories, right? Well, you and I are both putting forth sourcing plans for the barrier expansion. We’ll see whose work the archmages end up using and who turns out to be the pointless political hire.”
Renthorn’s sneer deepened. “Alright, sweetheart, no need to get defensive.”
“I wasn’t,” Sciona said, fairly sure her tone had been calm. After all, you’d be the reigning expert on getting what you want in the absence of merit, she wanted to say but bit back the bile, knowing that she would end up snarling—and knowing it wasn’t true. Renthorn did know what he was doing—in argument and in magic—and if she let him make her angry, he’d have won.
Renthorn seemed to claim her sullen silence as a victory anyway and pushed his chair back. “It was just a joke, Freynan. You’re not going to survive here if you’re too sensitive to take a joke.” He slipped around the table to stand before Sciona—perhaps a step too close. “And you’re certainly not going to survive playing against me.”
Before Sciona could respond, he turned and strode from the library, leaving her glowering at his white-robed back. She would do more than take his stupid joke; she would grip it tight and fashion it into greatness he couldn’t imagine.
She swept back into her office like a storm front, dour and crackling with energy.
“Tommy!” she snapped.
The Kwen looked up from where he was nearly done shelving her books. “Ma’am?”
“Leave the rest of the boxes. We have work to do.”
“God has set me forth the above to be known as the Forbidden Coordinates. Mages, have caution, for to gaze on the fruits of these coordinates within the coil is to walk a dark path and to siphon therefrom is certain and eternal damnation. So says Feryn, All-Knowing.”
- The Leonid, Magical Laws, Verse 40 （5 of Tiran）
TOMMY PAUSED, PLAINLY confused by Sciona’s abrupt change in demeanor. “I thought you were just setting up today.”
“Yes, well, I don’t have a lot of equipment to unpack,” Sciona said. “What I do have is a lot of ground to cover if I’m going to show up those—” She clenched her teeth, realizing she couldn’t finish the thought in ladylike language.
“Your esteemed colleagues?” Tommy offered.
“See, you’re being a helpful assistant already.” But if Tommy was going to be genuinely useful, she needed him up to speed, so she dragged an extra chair over to one of the desks. “Sit.”
Tommy obeyed, and Sciona hauled a spellograph into a position where he could see the keys as she typed.
“So, here’s, um…” Sciona stopped short of saying, ‘here’s the first thing you need to know’ because Feryn, what was the first thing Tommy needed to know? They would have to cover the basics, obviously, but this wasn’t a grade-school magic class. There was no time to dally copying pages of out-of-context spell fragments and painstakingly reviewing all the parts of a spellograph. Perhaps it was best to go backwards, start big and work from there.
“To begin, why don’t I tell you about what I’m here to do? You know how the Mage Council is planning to expand the barrier around Tiran?”
“I heard on the radio, ma’am.”
“And you understand why this task is urgent?”
Tommy gave a noncommittal shrug that said neither ‘yes’ nor’ no,’ so Sciona went ahead and explained.
“Obviously, overpopulation has plagued Tiran since before you or I were born.” And within Sciona’s lifetime, apartment complexes had grown taller, living conditions more strained. “I mean, consider how the Kwen Quarter has overflowed in just the last few years with your peoples’ tendency to multiply like…” A notoriously alarmist radio personality had used the word’ rats.’ Aunt Winny always said ‘bunnies.’ Sciona realized that even the latter didn’t sound particularly kind with Tommy’s gray eyes on her.
“So, um…” Sciona withdrew from the social dimensions of the project and back into her comfort zone of magical mechanics. “The barrier has two functions: warming and anti-Blight shielding. I don’t know much about the action spells that comprise those two functions—I mean, no one does, given that they date back to the Founding. What I do know is that they take up an incredible amount of energy. Think about it like”—how to explain to the layman?—“I don’t know… a hundred trains’-worth of energy. And magical energy doesn’t just come from nowhere. It has to be sourced from the Otherrealm, so in order to expand Tiran’s barrier, the High Magistry will need to pull an unprecedented amount of energy from the Otherrealm all at once—that will be the hard part—and then sustain that higher-energy barrier indefinitely. Maybe forever. Now, it’s not like the Otherrealm doesn’t contain sufficient energy to power the expansion and the subsequent increased energy demands. We just—oh, wait. I should ask, do you know what the Otherrealm is?”
“Only what the preachers say on the radio and in the square, ma’am.”
“Leonite or Tirasian preachers?”
“Um…” Tommy thought for a moment. “Forgive me, ma’am. I’ve never been totally clear on the difference.”
“Right!” Sciona laughed but, when Tommy didn’t smile, realized he wasn’t joking. He really was that ignorant of basic religious doctrine. “Oh. Well, Leonites subscribe to the texts Leon himself wrote during his life—the actual Founding Texts. Tirasians lump in everything an increasingly senile Faene the First wrote about Leon’s intentions.”
“So, I take it you’re a Leonite, ma’am?”
“I know it’s unusual for a mage,” she said, “but don’t judge me. I was raised on the wrong side of the tracks.”