“The dangerous ones?” Tommy said with an alarmed glance at her hip, where she kept a pair of cylinders capped with red. Applied correctly, those could blow a man’s arm off.
“Trust me,” she said. “I’m not gonna hurt you.”
“I know, ma’am.” In a smooth movement that left Sciona’s fuzzy mind spinning, Tommy somehow slipped her grip and spun around her. “I know,” he said again from her other side as he slid the cylinder back into her bag. “Why don’t you show me all your conduits after I walk you home?”
“If you’re scared of a little smoke, maybe I should walk you home.”
There was an amused smile on Tommy’s face when Sciona managed to bring it into focus. Warm. Perhaps only because he thought she couldn’t see him clearly… or because she was starting to see things that weren’t there. “Maybe, ma’am.”
“Hey…” Sciona felt her own smile fade. “No more ma’am, alright?”
“What?”
“Out of the office, you can just call me Sciona. Or”—she stumbled, suddenly feeling all the heat of the alcohol in her cheeks—“if that’s too familiar for you, Freynan. Lots of people call me Freynan.”
“Agreed.” Tommy nodded. “If, in return, you would stop calling me Tommy.”
Sciona’s brow furrowed. “What else would I call you? It’s your name, isn’t it?”
“Tommy is the Tiranization of my name. My proper Caldonn name is Thomil.”
“Domil?”
“No, ma—No. You sort of touch your tongue to the upper teeth where you make a ‘th’ sound, but you don’t breathe through. It’s just a tap.”
“Th… Th… Thomil,” she tried. It was either close enough or an amusing effort because he smiled.
“That’s it. Thomil Siernes-Caldonn.”
“Two last names?”
“Kwen sons take their mother’s clan name, followed by their father’s.”
“Funny… I also have my mother’s last name.” Sciona took Thomil’s hand—maybe just because she wanted to feel his callouses again. “It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Thomil Siernes-Caldonn.”
“Nice to meet you, Highmage Sciona Freynan.”
Sciona only vaguely remembered Thomil walking her the few blocks back to the Main Magistry and up the darkened stairs to her laboratory. She was unclear on how she ended up on the cot in her office. Trying to figure it out in retrospect, she ran up against two stark impossibilities: first, it was impossible that she had had the balance to make the climb on her own two feet. Second, it was impossible that Thomil had picked her up and managed all those stairs with her in his arms. It was impossible, too, that when her head had fallen against his chest, he had still smelled like sage and freshwater.
“The Kwen were cursed and living in darkness when Lord Prophet Leon freed the basin from their control. In his mercy, Leon offered unto their surviving leaders a way out of the darkness. Instead, they turned away and sealed their curse in perpetuity when they refused the True God. Now, when the wretched descendants of these tribes enter Tiran, they do so as half-souls, tainted by the folly of their forebears. It is our duty as Tiranish to make these wretches whole through re-education and offer unto them every opportunity to redeem their souls through labor. Though, in his savagery, the Kwen shows little gratitude, to civilize him is the moral obligation of all Tiranish as the Chosen of God.”
—The Tirasid, Conduct, Verse 43 （56 of Tiran）
THE LIGHT OF sunrise was a crowbar, jamming through a gap in the curtains into Sciona’s eyes, prizing her skull open. Morning bird chatter hit just as harshly, feeling like a hail of bullets. Through the hangover, she found memory fragments of Thomil from the previous night and, among them, a realization that made her smile, despite the splintering headache: she had made a friend. Has that ever happened before? she wondered as she rolled from her cot and groped for the light conduit. Maybe not since primary school. Before her mother died.
No one had come to her defense in the schoolyard when the other children had tired of her pedantic lip and decided to push the overachieving orphan into the mud. No one had risked the stink of associating with the underclass Leonite when all that uppity overachieving got her transferred to Danworth. No one had invited her when her classmates went for drinks after Danworth graduation or university graduation after that. She had always picked herself up, dusted off her skirts, and gone back to work on her own.
The irony drew a groggy chuckle from Sciona as she filled her kettle and set it to boil. Moving up in society was generally supposed to come with the friendship of those higher in society. Sciona seemed to have gone all the way to the top just to make friends with a janitor.
“Thomil!” she beamed when he cracked open the laboratory door an hour later. “Come on in! We’ve got a lot to go over.”
“I see that, ma’am.” Thomil’s gaze swept the office in faint concern. Sciona had already been through three cups of tea, and notepapers alive with scribbles and diagrams covered the desks. “How long have you been up?”
“A while.”
The furrow between Thomil’s brows deepened. “It’s dawn.”
“Well, my colleagues are starting out at an advantage with their multiple assistants. Thought I’d make up for that by starting early. I wasn’t expecting you until later.” The other mages and their assistants wouldn’t start filtering in for another two hours.
“Habit, ma’am. Janitorial staff are always here before regular work hours. I can come back later if—”
“No, no, this is perfect!” Sciona clapped her hands together. “Extra time for me to catch you up!” When Thomil still eyed her with skepticism, she lowered her hands. “What?”
“You’re not hungover?”
“Well, are you?”
“I have a Kwen constitution, ma’am. And last night, you were rather…” He trailed off, probably unable to find a respectful way to finish the sentence. Sciona’s face heated faintly as flashes of the previous night came back to her—the waterfall of babbling and giggles, the way she had grabbed at Thomil, leaned into his body…
“Well…” She squared her shoulders, hoping the blush wasn’t too noticeable. “There’s a tea for that.” She indicated the four empty cups on her desk. “Would you like some?”
“No, thank you, Highmage Freynan.” Thomil slung a ragged leather bag from his shoulder and hung it on one of the hooks by the door. “I’m ready to work.”
“Great, then you can sit here.” Sciona pulled an extra chair up to the desk she was using. “Or—actually, before you get settled, I raided a storage closet and got you that.” She pointed to a brown and white assistant’s jacket hanging from a hook beside Thomil’s bag.
Thomil looked at the assistant’s coat, raised a hand, then paused as if unsure if he should even touch it.
“Is this… Am I allowed to wear an assistant’s coat, ma’am?”
“I looked through university policy.” Sciona thumped the bulky manual beside her teacups. “There’s no rule explicitly stating that a laboratory assistant must be a university student or ethnically Tiranish.” She had even seen the odd Kwen assistant in other laboratories—usually a trusted member of the mage’s household staff he had wanted to bring to work as an extra pair of hands.