Surprisingly, Thomil didn’t respond with an air of disapproval. He just asked, “And you think that’s what Renthorn is aiming to do? Steal your glory?”
“Beyond a doubt,” Sciona said. “In fact, as I get to know him better, I’m wondering if he won’t finesse some way to take credit for all his peers’ accomplishments—or at least harness all their energy for his own purposes.”
“As you get to know him better?” Thomil asked, looking troubled. He wasn’t so bold as to ask: what has he done?
“I can’t prove anything, but…” Sciona chewed the inside of her cheek for a moment, thinking back to Halaros’s Splendor 55 spellograph and the spell sitting on the paper rest. “But I think I may have been wrong to laugh at Halaros back there. I mean, not totally.” She glanced back over her shoulder. “The spell was composed fine. The odds of siphoning inaccurately enough to create an explosion would be next to nothing, especially for Halaros. I mean, the man has worked in the High Magistry for almost a decade without any mishaps of note in his laboratory.”
“So, what do you think happened?” Thomil asked, and only a moment later, remembered himself and added, “If you feel like sharing, ma’am.”
“There’s only one way a properly-written spell can malfunction like that,” Sciona said. “If the machinery through which the spell operates is either broken or cursed.”
“Cursed, ma’am?”
“That’s when a mechanism—in this case, a spellograph—has malicious spellwork concealed inside it and set to activate upon a particular key combination or other trigger. You can engrave a curse into the metal itself or type it on a paper, which you then conceal inside the machine—and set to combust on activation if you want to cover your tracks. Of course, all curses are forbidden by Leon, but they’re easy enough for the unscrupulous actor.”
“That doesn’t sound easy,” Thomil said.
“Right,” Sciona said, remembering who she was talking to. “When I say it’s ‘easy,’ I do mean for a highmage of a certain skill level.”
“Ma’am, are you implying that another highmage…？” Thomil stopped himself, clearly realizing what serious trouble he could be in for voicing the thought if he was wrong.
Sciona shared his caution and worded her response carefully. “I’m not saying anything outright about what any highmage did or didn’t do. I’m just noting a few facts. Fact number one:”—she held up a thumb—“the spellograph that caused the explosion is a very specific model I’ve only ever seen used in Archmage Bringham’s testing labs.” The Splendor 55’s big mapping coil, among other quirks, made it fantastic for experimental mapping for industrial siphoning spells but little else.
“Fact number two:”—her index finger went up—“because of the unusual key size, that model of spellograph would only be appealing to a person who’s used one for years.
“Fact number three:”—her middle finger—“except Halaros and myself, there’s only one other highmage in the building with reason to be familiar with that model of spellograph—possibly to the point of knowing how to disassemble and reassemble it.”
“Highmage Renthorn,” Thomil realized.
“Not naming anyone in particular,” Sciona reiterated, but Thomil obviously followed.
“And if it’s a model favored by Archmage Bringham’s proteges,” he said slowly, “Then Highmage Ren—someone—would have known that Highmage Halaros was likely to select that spellograph over the others in the supply room.” A pause as the gears turned in Thomil’s head. “Highmage Halaros or you.”
“The trade of a spellweb specialist is to think many steps into the future,” Sciona said instead of directly affirming the question in his eyes.
Thomil murmured a Kwen oath. “It wouldn’t matter which of you picked up the spellograph,” he went on as more of the pieces came together. “Highmage Tanrel’s laboratory is between yours and Highmage Halaros’s. So, no matter where the explosion originated, it would do enough damage to justify Highmage Renthorn offering Highmage Tanrel—who he really wanted—and at least one other mage a place in his lab.”
“You see what I’m up against, then?” Sciona couldn’t help asking. “You see why I’m not going to go work for that man?”
“So, if we’re not taking Highmage Renthorn up on his offer of laboratory space…” Thomil looked around and seemed to realize that they were headed out of the Old Campus toward the larger, more utilitarian research buildings of the New Campus. “Are we not moving into Faene’s Hall?”
“We are not,” Sciona said a little too sharply.
Thomil opened his mouth, seemingly to ask for an explanation, then closed it again. Sciona should have appreciated his unwillingness to pry—did appreciate it—but she had a problem leaving a ‘why’ hanging in the air. It felt like an itch.
“The city chairs use Faene’s Hall for meetings with the archmages,” she said before properly considering where this line of questions and answers would lead.
Thomil clearly didn’t follow. How could he? “Do you have a problem with the city chairs, ma’am?”
“No. Not on principle.”
And Thomil seemed to read the throttled pain in Sciona’s voice—or perhaps just noted the tension in her posture. Somehow, he saw the open wound and walked on with her in silence instead of pressing.
Sciona did not have any proper memories of her father. She had only a faint outline, a man in a pressed suit, a door closing behind him. She had been only four when her mother died, and that man sent her from his house to live with Aunt Winny. She remembered learning the word ‘bastard’ from a schoolbook passage on Stravos and bluntly asking Aunt Winny if that was what she was—since it seemed like the only explanation for that man in the fine suit to close that door on her.
“Bite your tongue, Sciona!” Aunt Winny had exclaimed. “Your father is an upstanding man who loved your sweet mother dearly! They only ever had eyes for each other.”
“Then why…” Sciona had never quite found the voice to ask: why didn’t he want me?
“You look so much like her,” Aunt Winny said. “He just couldn’t bear it.”
Like most of Aunt Winny’s explanations, it assumed the best of all parties, and it did not satisfy.
Perramis was a prominent enough figure for Sciona to know, even at six years old, that he had married another woman and now had two sons. At six, she was old enough to know that a man didn’t deny his child his surname without malice. By the time she was twelve, Sciona hoped that she had been born a bastard. Because if that wasn’t the reason, the only other explanation was that she was a girl. It wasn’t until she approached university age and her potential became clear that she began to change her mind.
As an adult, Sciona hoped Perramis had cast her out on the basis of her sex—because she was going to surpass every city chair and highmage’s son in God’s Bright Haven. And because Perramis had denied her his name, she could deny him her glory. This would be her vengeance—for herself and the mother she remembered only as a weak and loving smile.