“Archmage, I don’t think—”
“Take the rest of the day off, Highmage Freynan.” Bringham put a calming hand on her knee. “And tomorrow too. I know that’s not easy for you, but you’ve just been through a terrible trauma. You need to rest and clear your head before the presentation. Make amends with your assistant, spend some time with your aunt, maybe sleep in a couple days. As hard as you’ve been driving yourself, you’ve earned a break. Now, I am”—he glanced at the lecture room clock and winced—“very late for my next meeting. I can call someone to make sure you get home safely if you’re still feeling unsteady.”
Sciona was far—irretrievably far—from steady. She was miles out to sea beyond the edge of the known world, where no rope could reel her back and no one would hear her scream.
“No thank you, sir. I’m fine.”
The other mages didn’t bother whispering their snide comments as she returned to the fourth floor to collect her things.
“Typical of a girl to have a meltdown after three months of real work.”
“And people wonder why the High Magistry doesn’t admit women!”
“Hey, Freynan,” Renthorn needled as she left the office with her bag, “do you think if I throw a tantrum, they’ll give me a paid vacation too?”
It had never been easier to ignore taunting. All the meaning had bled out of the world with that black-haired girl in the ocean shallows.
“What’s the matter?” Renthorn called after her as she picked up her pace and found herself running. “Freynan, what did you see?”
Sciona had spent her entire life as a beam of energy, made of the burning, at times bitter, need to reach the next level of magic. She had never been without that need before. In its absence, she was hollow. She was nothing. And the world was black.
She had barely been able to think about the magical energy behind the teacup in her hands. The train was too much to contemplate, and it was her only way home. She buried her head in her arms for the whole ride, shutting off sight, blocking out sound, and trying not to feel the sheer power driving the machine forward.
“Sciona!” Aunt Winny exclaimed when she opened the door. “You’re back so soon!” The smile on her face wilted when she took in Sciona’s eyes. “Oh, sweet girl, what happened?”
Sciona shook her head. “Aunt Winny… am I a good person?”
“Oh, darling, of course you are!”
“You…” Sciona’s lip trembled. “You don’t know that. How could you know that?”
“You’re my little girl. How could I not?”
Sciona dropped her bags. Then, not caring how childish it was, not caring what the other mages might think of her, she ran into her aunt’s arms.
Sciona sobbed without respite. First holding Aunt Winny, then Alba, then her pillow long into the night. She hadn’t meant to cry so long—had never cried so long in her life—but there had never been so much to grieve.
When she had wept all she could for the girl at the ocean, she had to mourn her dream of twenty years. She had to mourn the cost of every spell she had ever written in her life. So many that if she shed one paltry tear for each, she would shrivel with the loss and die long before she finished, and it still wouldn’t be enough. Thomil had said that how a person felt about their actions didn’t matter; only the actions themselves mattered. And adding up the damage of all Sciona’s action spells was too much. Far too much. Even if she held to her conviction that God weighed a soul’s intentions, how could any volume of guilt or sorrow possibly cancel the things she had done? She was one soul adrift in an ocean of blood. All the tears in the world wouldn’t wash that from her hands or fill her a channel to Heaven.
So, when she physically couldn’t cry any more, Sciona stepped onto the sill of her window, the breeze cool on her swollen eyes, and looked down. It was a four-story drop to the pavement below. And beyond it, the city of Tiran was so beautiful, so alive, even in the night. Music crackled from a radio on a nearby balcony as human figures danced against the glow of an interior light. A nearby steel mill ran through the night, fires warm in the dark. In the distance, the train hummed. All those lights and wonders of technology, bought with blood.
Sciona looked down and pictured herself breaking on the cobbles below, her organs spattering the curb, her brains leaking from her cracked skull. One fewer mage in Tiran to suck the life from the rest of the world. It would be like dropping a pebble in an attempt to dam a river. Meaningless. Worse than meaningless because the High Magistry would promptly replace Sciona with a different mage, one who wouldn’t be able to map as efficiently as she did, who would siphon more to accomplish less.
“So, what does that mean?” she demanded of the night. “I have to stay here?” In this utterly unacceptable reality where all the good I’ve ever done—all the good I’ve ever known—is an evil?
She turned skyward to the starlit glitter of the barrier, from which God and all the Founding Mages were said to look down on Tiran.
“What kind of deal is that? What have you done here?” She leaned forward, fingers straining on the window frame as her face cracked into a snarl. “How could you do this?”
Because they had known. God damn them, the Founding Mages must have known exactly what they were doing. There was no way they could have pioneered this form of magic without understanding where the energy came from. And generations of well-meaning mages had followed in their footsteps, believing their doctrine, obliviously paving their way to Hell with pride. If nothing else, in Hell, Sciona could find the Founding Mages, seize them by their ancient beards, and ask them why.
Sciona tilted forward toward damnation, where Leon, Stravos, and all her heroes would surely be waiting for her.
“No!” Hands jerked back on Sciona’s nightdress so hard that her grip tore from the window frame, and she toppled backwards into Alba’s arms. “Sciona, don’t!”
Sciona made an undignified noise as she went to the floor with her cousin wrapped around her. “Hey!” She squirmed, but Alba had always been the far stronger of the two. “Let go!”
“No!” Alba crushed her tighter in shaking arms. “No! Sciona, no! I won’t let you!”
“You don’t understand.”
“I know, sweetheart. I know I don’t understand what goes on in your head, and I never will, but you have to stay with me! My darling, stay here with me!”
“You don’t know…” Sciona shook with emotion. Stay here? “You don’t know what you’re asking me to do.”
If Alba knew half Sciona’s pain, she would have let her jump. She wouldn’t keep her trapped here in this utterly unacceptable world. But Alba’s arms only tightened, and there was no escape. Only Sciona’s screams as the sea of blood closed over her head and consumed her.
THOMIL HAD IMAGINED jumping before. Just imagined. The act itself would be too selfish to contemplate. But on nights like this, he would imagine—Freedom.
With his back to the steel cylinder, he let his legs hang over the ledge, indifferent to the fifteen-foot drop to the roof below and the many-story drop below that. Since the water tower atop his building had stopped working, the broad lip around the base of the drum made a good place to sit. In these night hours before the factory beside the apartment complex woke, the tower provided a welcome respite, quiet in a city that could never shut the hell up.