“This from a savage!” Sciona threw back because she was out of things to throw. “From a land of cannibals!”
“My people are not cannibals,” Thomil returned through bared teeth, not helping his case. “And there were no cannibals at all in the Kwen before Blight—before you—destroyed all our sources of food! How can you not see how this all fits together? I thought you were committed to truth—genuinely committed to it. I didn’t realize you were as blind and stupid as the rest of Tiran.”
That was when Sciona slapped him.
She had never slapped anyone before. It hurt. Stinging her palm and sending a lance of pain through every bone in her hand. The shock momentarily immobilized her, and she was unprepared for the retaliation.
In a terrifying breath, Thomil surged forward, and she was certain he was going to hit her back. She stumbled over her own boots, her hand flying to the cylinder at her belt. Thomil’s eyes tracked the hand, malevolent in their coldness.
“You’re that committed to your god of greed?” he said. “Go on, then. Serve him. Destroy me.”
“Thomil!” Sciona gasped as he drove her back against the wall, and she knew she couldn’t do it. She didn’t have the stomach to physically detonate the conduit against his chest. Not this close. “I didn’t—”
“During the crossing, I watched my entire tribe turn to blood on the snow.” Thomil wasn’t looking at her anymore, even as he glared her in the face. He was looking past her at a memory she couldn’t see, something that made his gray eyes silver with tears. “I wonder what they died for.” His voice had dropped to a whisper. “So you could warm your tea? Or power a cute little cylinder to keep yourself safe walking the streets among all those dirty cannibal Kwen?”
Tears spilled down Sciona’s cheeks as her hand clenched impotently on her cylinder. Out of defenses, she doubled down on her last and strongest ally. Because no one could refute God. Least of all a Blighted heathen.
“Your people died because they deserved it.” Yes, that was why. That was why, Sciona assured herself, even as the tears wouldn’t stop. This was all God’s Will. Thomil just couldn’t see it because he wasn’t worthy. “You brought this on yourselves.”
Some last autumn in Thomil’s expression froze over.
“Then, what are you waiting for?” His rough hand wrapped around hers and yanked it to his body so that her knuckles ground into the hard plane of his chest and detonating the cylinder would blow a hole in his heart. “Be a real Tiranish mage. Kill me. Now that I’m no longer of use to you.”
Sciona couldn’t move. She couldn’t think. The only real thing in the world was the beating of Thomil’s heart against her knuckles. Hard and frenetic, despite all the ice in his eyes.
“You’re the worst kind of murderer, I think,” he said, and she felt the terrible words vibrate against her knuckles. “The kind who won’t even acknowledge her crime. You’ve never worshipped a god of truth.” As roughly as he had pulled her hand to his chest, he shoved it away. Disgusted. “You worship a delusion.”
Without his hand on hers—rage binding them together—Sciona was suddenly adrift in the dark, frantic. When Thomil turned to leave, inexplicable panic took over.
“Wait!” She clutched at his sleeve, realizing that she couldn’t bear for him to walk away.
She didn’t care if he struck her. She didn’t care if he put those hunter’s hands around her neck and throttled the life from her body. For once, the last thing she wanted was to be alone with her knowledge. But Thomil was stronger than she was. He tore from her grasp.
And she was alone on the landing. In total collapse.
Sciona had imagined this moment since she was old enough to know what a mage was. Standing in the light of truth, having discovered something no mage had before. How had this dream of so many years turned so suddenly into a nightmare? God, it was just a nightmare, wasn’t it? One of her many anxiety dreams? It had to be. She had fallen asleep in the library while combing her fiftieth source on Stravos, and this was her mind playing a terrible joke on her. That was all. That was all.
Sciona shut her eyes tight and forced them open again, pinched a fold of her skin until it turned white, put a fist to her mouth, and sank her teeth into a knuckle. She didn’t wake. She just bled onto the white sleeve of her blouse, trapped in the confines of this utterly unacceptable reality. The world spun. But there was no way to alleviate this feeling of all-drowning panic. No way except the one.
Thomil had to be wrong.
About God, about Blight, about her.
And she had to prove it.
Snatching up her skirts, she sprinted back to her office, heedless of the blood dribbling from her hand.
“Why all the screaming, Freynan?” Renthorn mocked as she raced past him. “Had a falling out with your Blighted assistant? I bet—”
Sciona closed the door in his face and locked it.
“Wow! Touchy, touchy!” she barely heard him say on the other side. “Someone’s time of the month, is it?”
Dragging her spare spellograph off its shelf, Sciona heaved it onto a desktop and wrote up an action spell for fire. Her hands were shaking, dripping blood on the keys, but that didn’t slow her spellwork. It had never been so important in all her life that she finish a spell and see it activated. She mapped to a familiar spot, a well-known sourcing pool at the far edge of the common coordinates, where sourcers like Sciona often siphoned for energy and alchemists often siphoned for salt. If Thomil’s insane assertions were correct, this location would be far off in the Kwen, perhaps even beyond it.
The mapping spell flared to life, and Sciona gasped.
People told stories of the ocean bounding the Southern Kwen—of blue saltwater vaster than any land—but those stories were older than Tiran itself. Some even claimed that they were myths. Since the Blight’s first ravages, no cartographer had ever made it that far outside Tiran and back. Not even Jurowyn. But here it was! Ocean. Impossibly blue, frothing white where it kissed the land, then withdrew, then kissed again.
Human figures moved like ants along the shoreline, leaving footprints that lasted only until the next wave washed the sand to a gleaming mirror behind them. Eagerly, Sciona punched additional numbers into the spellograph to bring her closer. The milling humans seemed to have gathered to look for something in the wave-polished sand. Shells, Sciona realized, leaning forward. Each person had a basket over one arm containing iridescent black shells. Perhaps as some kind of currency? Or crafting material? Or perhaps for the flesh of the strange creatures that lived inside—like the poor sometimes ate the snails from Tiran’s channels.
These people were dressed unlike any humans Sciona had ever seen. At first, she thought they had black cloth wrapped around their heads, but when she pulled in closer, she realized that it was hair. Their hair was black. Not Tiranish brown nor Kwen copper, but dark as ink.
Sciona mapped in closer still on a young woman who had paused in the shallows, kneeling to scrape through the sand. Her bare arms were a warm bronze the color of Thomil’s hair. When the shell-gatherer glanced skyward at a passing bird, her eyes seemed to lack an iris… or perhaps the iris was just the same inkwell black as her pupils.