“Alright.” Tommy hesitated. “Then, do you need anything else before I leave you, Highmage Freynan?”
“No, I—” She stopped mid-sentence and looked at Tommy with a smile. “You called me Highmage.”
“That’s what you are, isn’t it?”
“Yes. It’s just…” Besides Bringham, Tommy was the only person who had used her title here at the university. “Thank you,” she said, “for all your help today. You have a good night, alright?”
“Yes, Highmage, and you too.” The Kwen went to the door but paused as though conflicted—then turned back.
“Is there something else, Tommy?” She asked.
“Yes, ma’am…” The Kwen’s steadily cold stare had broken for the first time, cast down in awkwardness. He examined his knuckles for a moment before pressing them into the doorframe. “Could I buy you a drink?”
The question struck her dumb where she sat, and for a moment, all she could do was stare at the Kwen with her mouth partway open. “I-I…”
“Apologies.” Darkness colored Tommy’s storm cloud gaze. “I’ve insulted you.”
“What—no!” Sciona said out of politeness, but he had, a little bit. A highmage didn’t need the pity of a servant.
“I understand,” Tommy said. “It’s beneath you. I just thought… it seems to me like someone should buy you a drink.”
In spite of herself, Sciona felt a smile turn her lips. Tommy was right. Someone should buy her a drink, damn it. It just shouldn’t be the janitor.
“It’s not your job to make me feel welcome here.” Or your place, she hadn’t said, but that was how Tommy seemed to take it.
“Understood, Highmage. Forget I said—”
“Tell you what”—Sciona stood—“let’s go to a bar, and I’ll…” She almost suggested that she buy the drinks, then realized that would probably insult him. Women didn’t buy men drinks, no matter their difference in means. She might have paid for a male colleague’s drink out of spite—to emasculate him—but that wasn’t her intention here. “I’ll buy me a drink, and you buy you a drink, and we’ll drink to each other’s promotions side-by-side. How does that sound?”
Light flickered back into that stoic face. “Are you serious?”
“You need to stop asking me that. I’m not much of a joker.”
“Understood, ma’am. I just thought you might not want to be seen out with a Kwen.”
“Well, you’re the only person in this place who hasn’t spat in my face today. Why would I want to drink with anyone else?”
The bar nearest the Magistry building was the nicest, but two things occurred to Sciona as she packed her bag: first, that a janitor probably couldn’t afford the drinks they served—she had certainly never seen a Kwen there—and second, that it was certainly where the rest of the highmages would go.
“Is the Dancing Wolf alright?” she asked. It was a Kwen-owned bar where the poor undergraduates drank on their days off.
“Yes, ma’am… if it’s not beneath you?”
“Beneath me?” Sciona laughed. “I wasn’t born to a line of highmages, Tommy. I get my drinks where everyone else does.”
Before they left the laboratory, Sciona’s hands curled into the white robe she had worked for twenty years to earn. After a moment of consideration, she shed the garment and hung it by the door. Maybe she shouldn’t have. Other highmages wore their white wherever they went, enjoying the attention and deference people afforded them. But thus far, people didn’t react to Sciona’s robes with the same deference. Mostly, they gawked like she was a circus attraction. And after a frustrating day at work, that was the last thing she wanted.
The Dancing Wolf saved on bills by using old glass lanterns instead of tapping the Reserve for electric lighting. The effect was a soft smoky smell and a sense of closeness, despite the long bar and spacious wood floor. On a stool in the corner, a girl with waist-length copper braids played an exotic Kwen instrument—a long-necked harp that sat on her knee as she drew a bow across the strings in a melody as longing as it was lively. Sciona had always liked that about Kwen music: the irrepressible sense of wanting. Heresy, to be sure, but it touched the cords of her being in a way no Tiranish hymnal ever had.
Among those half-rapturous, half-mournful notes, the firelit bar bustled with a combination of students and neighborhood regulars, Kwen and Tiranish mixed together. In her plain green dress, Sciona blended in with the student patrons and settled down at the bar without drawing any stares. She supposed she’d need her picture in several newspaper stories, research books, and framed university portraits before people started to recognize her sans robe. Tommy sat a respectful arm’s length from her, so no one would mistake them for a couple. That would draw stares regardless of the colors Sciona wore; well-bred or not, an upstanding woman of the university would never stoop to accept the courtship of a Kwen.
“So,” Tommy said as they waited for the bartender to finish serving the influx of students that had come in before them, “you’re the first female mage I’ve ever seen in those white robes.”
“Well, I would be,” Sciona said. “I’m the first female highmage in history.”
“Is that so, ma’am?” A strange smile crossed his face with the words.
“You think that’s funny?”
Before Tommy could answer, a voice said, “Thomil!” and Sciona turned to find the Kwen bartender waving in their direction. “Look who’s finally found a second to loosen up! And with a very pretty Tiranish—”
“With my boss,” Tommy cut the man off before he could finish the sentence.
“Boss?” The copper-haired bartender looked from Tommy to Sciona. “Thought you were mopping floors for the mages.”
Tommy answered in words Sciona didn’t understand—Kwen pidgin—and it occurred to her that, though she had spent her whole life alongside the quiet Kwen, she had never really stopped to listen to their language. It was a rough and rolling sound, fitting the rough people who scraped out lives beyond the barrier.
Surprise lit the bartender’s face, and he looked at Sciona with new appreciation. “In that case,” he switched back to his clunky Tiranish. “You drink for free, Milady.”
“What?” Sciona said, but the man had already moved away to prepare their drinks, taps flaring at his touch to pour beer into fresh glasses. “What did you tell him?”
“The truth,” Tommy said, “that you’re the first female highmage in Tiran. Don’t worry,” he added, registering her anxiety. “He’s not going to make a scene about it.”
The bartender was back in a moment with drinks for Sciona and Tommy.
“Please,” Sciona said. “I can pay for these.”
But the man was shaking his head. “No, no, Meidra. You and all your friends drink for free under this roof.”
“Sorry—what did you just call me?” Sciona asked, but the man had already flitted away again to serve a new wave of customers. “What did he call me?”