When Sciona came out into the hall, she fully expected Jerrin Mordra’s lab to be the one in crisis. Instead, she found the other newbie highmage at the door of his office with his assistant, Evnan, both of them clean and unhurt.
“That wasn’t you?” she said.
“I thought it was you,” Mordra said.
“Me?” Sciona spat in total indignation, and the two of them turned their eyes down the hall leading to their colleagues’ laboratories, which was gray with smoke and stone dust.
“Feryn, have mercy!” Mordra gasped and ran toward the debris after Thomil, who had already vanished into the dust cloud.
“Miss Freynan, you should wait here where it’s safe,” Evnan said before rushing to join the other two men.
Grumbling in annoyance, Sciona followed—not because she gave a damn what happened to Renthorn, Tanrel, or Halaros after the way they had slighted her but because she resented being left behind like she was a delicate flower who had never seen an industrial accident before.
The placard outside the destroyed chamber had been blown away, along with the door and a bit of the wall, but Sciona knew it to be Halaros’s lab. She was the last into the laboratory, just behind Renthorn, Tanrel, and their teams of assistants.
Halaros was leaning back against the only bookcase in the lab that hadn’t collapsed, coughing, his eyes unfocused behind his cracked spectacles, his white robes blackened where flames had met the fire-resistant fabric. As the obscuring dust settled into a film on the room, Sciona took in the chaos—men and furniture thrown against the walls, dishes shattered, ruined books smoking. Thomil and Evnan lifted a table off one of Halaros’s assistants. Coated in dust, the man looked like a corpse, but as Mordra helped him to his feet, it was obvious that he was very much alive, just shaken.
“Halaros, can you hear me?” Tanrel had rushed to put a hand on Halaros’s shoulder and straighten his robes—as though that would help him look any more presentable with his spectacles cracked and his eyebrows singed off. “Are you alright?”
Meanwhile, Sciona’s attention swept disinterestedly over the effects of the explosion until she found the cause. Only one of the spellographs in the room was smoking from recent overuse. Lifting her skirts, she picked her way through the ruins to the spellograph, leaned close over the paper on the platen, and softly blew the dust away to reveal the spell itself.
As she uttered a surprised “Huh,” a shadow fell across the page, and she looked up to find Renthorn at her shoulder. The smarmy spellweb specialist was the only person in the chamber who had done exactly as Sciona had, making a beeline through the chaos to the spellograph.
“An energy use cap?” he asked as his eyes met Sciona’s.
“No,” she said and stood back for Renthorn to see. “Just a standard Kaedor mapping spell.”
“How did you mess that up, Halaros?” Renthorn asked the question on Sciona’s tongue.
“Um…” Halaros blinked and squinted blearily. “W-well, I… I don’t quite remember.”
“I think he might have a concussion,” Tanrel said.
“Seriously though,” Sciona pressed, not understanding. “No highmage is that bad at finding his coordinates, even with the Kaedor method!”
As embarrassing as it would be for an experienced mage to cause an explosion with an energy usage cap, it was nearly as embarrassing to misjudge one’s coordinates this badly with a method as common as Kaedor. However, when Sciona leaned over the spellwork to search out the coordinates in question, her attention caught on something else—the embossed make and model of the spellograph itself:
Maclan Splendor 55.
“Hold on…” She looked back at the lines of the spell itself, then at Renthorn’s weaselly, too-interested face. “Highmage Halaros, where did you get this machine?”
“I dunno…” Halaros shook his head, his speech still uncharacteristically slow. “The supply room?”
“The common supply room?” Sciona’s eyes narrowed. Not by special request? “How many Maclan spellographs are usually in there?”
“What in God’s Bright Haven is wrong with you two!” Tanrel turned on Sciona and Renthorn. “Who cares what spellwork he was doing or what kind of machine he was using? He needs a doctor!”
“Before that, we should evacuate the building, Highmage,” Thomil said to Tanrel. “It may be unstable.”
“Oh, so working in Freynan’s lab for a few weeks has made the Blighter an expert on architecture?” Renthorn said with a snide look at Thomil.
“Let him alone, Renthorn,” Tanrel said in exasperation. “He’s right. No one said the building was going to come down, but we won’t be able to resume work anyway until the space is assessed for risk. Come on, everyone.” He took Halaros’s arm to guide the dazed mage to the exit. “Out, out!”
It was temperate outside—as good a day as any for the evacuation of a massive university building. The highmages’ assistants shooed the crowds of students and staff away from the front steps where their bosses had gathered, then closed ranks around Halaros so that no one would see the state of his robes and infer that the explosion had been his doing. The assistant who had been the victim of the flying table was quickly whisked away to see a doctor while another assistant ran to get Halaros a fresh robe.
From a cursory look over the gaggle of brown, green, and purple robes, it seemed like no one from the lower floors of the building had been hurt. Some had just received a bad scare and a sprinkling of stone dust. The real tragedy, Sciona thought, was that Renthorn’s lab had suffered no damage in the blast.
“You are cleared to return to work whenever you like, Highmage,” the building manager informed Renthorn after an assessment of the fourth floor. “Now, Highmage Tanrel, Highmage Mordra, Freynan, I’m afraid the work on the windows means it will be a few days before your labs are of use again.”
“Fine by me.” Tanrel shrugged. “Young Mordra and I have been checking our work against Renthorn’s anyway. This is as good an excuse as any to move to his lab on a more permanent basis. We might as well roll our work on the barrier expansion into his sooner rather than later, right Tenth?”
Jerrin Mordra, whose work was only being ‘considered’ for the expansion as a formality, of course, nodded in agreement.
“Highmage Halaros, I’m afraid it will be at least a week—possibly up to three before your lab is in working condition,” the building manager told Halaros, who was seated on the steps with a pair of nurses fussing over him. “I’ve already put in a request to find all of you temporary office space in a different building, should you require it.”
“No need,” Renthorn said. “There’s plenty of space in my laboratory for Halaros to join us as well for as long as he likes. Highmage Halaros, what do you say?”
“Hmm?” Halaros looked up and said wearily, “Sure, why not?”
A moment later, four sets of green eyes turned to Sciona, who folded her arms and frowned.
“Freynan?”
“What?” she said stubbornly, though she knew perfectly well what they were expecting.