Sciona liked the city best from up here, all its technical marvels on display without the mess of its human inhabitants, no one to bother her with their chatter or attempts at eye contact—well, no one except the excitable woman in the seat next to her.
“Praise Feryn, what a view!” Alba hung on Sciona’s arm as the train climbed. The clock and radio repair shop where Alba worked was only two blocks from their apartment; she didn’t get much occasion to see the wider city of Tiran. “I can’t believe this is your commute!”
“Possibly for the last time.” Sciona had promised Aunt Winny that if the exam didn’t work out, she would get a real job teaching magic to children at one of the local schools. No more university, no more research, no chance at a real legacy, just hordes of snot-nosed schoolboys like the ones who had made her childhood hell.
“Don’t say that, Sciona! You’re going to do amazing.”
“Nobody does amazing on the High Magistry exam,” Sciona said, determined not to torment herself with hope. “They just pass, or they don’t.”
By the time the train slowed at the University of Magics and Industry, the sun had crested the hills to sparkle off the dome that protected Tiran from Blight and insulated it through the dark winter.
A few people eyed Sciona’s dark plum robes in surprise as she picked her way down the train aisle and stepped onto the platform. It wasn’t that women never reached Sciona’s level of study; it just wasn’t common. And of the few women who did make it to a graduate degree in magic, most donned green robes and went into teaching. Why pursue research, after all, when its highest levels were inaccessible to you? Better for a lady mage to employ her talents training the next generation of great male innovators—unless she was a perpetually unsatisfied monster like Sciona, always after what wasn’t hers.
While Alba marveled at the bustle and majesty of the university train station, Sciona’s appreciation landed where it always did—on the sheer magical power of the train itself. She never tired of watching the masterfully designed pressure conduits glow along each of the doors, pushing them closed. As those conduits dimmed, the engine at the front of the train blazed, siphoning energy from the Reserve to turn those great wheels on the tracks.
Sciona felt the train shudder with the massive energy intake—like a thrill down a spine—before it continued east with its remaining passengers. Decades ago, she had tugged on Aunt Winny’s worn, lacy sleeve and asked what made the trains move. What had the power to animate a machine the size of a dragon?
“The mages make the trains move, dear,” Aunt Winny had said and, when she saw that the answer hadn’t satisfied her niece, added, “clever men who study very, very hard.”
Sciona remembered the shock as she registered that mages were just men who had been boys once. She remembered thinking that she was cleverer than any boy in her primary school. She studied harder than any of them. So, why not her?
Why not her?
Her stride picked up, making her cousin jog to keep pace. Alba had the longer legs, but she kept pausing, clearly intrigued by the commotion around them—which, in fairness, was more intense than usual.
The highmage examination was always timed to coincide with the election of city chairs, the idea being that new mages and politicians entered the hallowed halls of the theocracy at the same time—the will of God and the people moving as one. Sciona just wished the public election end of the process didn’t have to be so loud when she had magic to concentrate on.
The platform teemed with activists flinging pamphlets around and shouting about their chosen city chair candidates.
“Ladies! Ladies! Vote Nerys for Women’s Rights!”
“Widmont, I say! A chair for the people!”
“Tiran stands on its traditions!” a mustachioed man with an ‘Elect Perramis’ button on his waistcoat shoved a pamphlet at Alba, but Sciona got there first.
“She’s not interested.” She swatted the paper from the man’s hand to flutter to the pavement, and her purple robe was undoubtedly the only thing that made him back off. “Thank you.” Taking her cousin’s arm, she deliberately trod on the Perramis pamphlet, sure to leave her square-heel boot impression on that face with its upsettingly familiar sharp brow and large eyes.
Beyond the train platform, the crowd thinned as mages, staff, and students all went their separate ways, but Alba’s mouth still hung open as she looked around at the great stone buildings of the university.
“You’ve been on campus before, haven’t you?” Sciona vaguely remembered Alba accompanying her to a few interviews during the application process many years ago.
“Yeah, it’s just…” Alba trailed off as Leon’s Hall came into view, its great intricate dome standing proud between the siphoning towers. “Wow…”
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Sciona smiled, as proud as Aunt Winny showing a guest into her lovingly furnished sitting room. Maybe it was silly, but the university really was home to Sciona in a way no hearth or kitchen ever would be.
While the larger additions to the Main Magistry building had come later, the great stone entrance had stood unchanged for three hundred years. Tiran’s five Founding Mages loomed between the columns—Leon, Stravos, Kaedor, Vernyn, and Faene the First—each three stories of benevolent stone. The art of sculpture had advanced in the intervening centuries, but there was something inimitably mighty about these works from the dawn of Tiran, their rough-hewn features and wise eyes inlaid with peridot to give them life.
Founding Mage Leon’s words glinted in polished alchemic gold above the doors:
To Tiran, the Bounty of the Otherrealm. To my Mages, all its Power.
May you ever be good Stewards to this Bright Haven in a world of darkness.
Carved below that was Faene the First’s motto and mission statement of the university:
Truth over delusion. Growth over comfort. God over all.
Sciona had to gather her skirts into a great bundle to climb the steps to the double doors. She never would have worn such a fine bit of frippery to the university, but Aunt Winny had balked when her niece had come downstairs in the usual study blouse and pinafore. To go before the archmages, Aunt Winny insisted, Sciona must look a proper lady. How else would she get them to take her seriously? Sciona could have pointed out that her spellwork was supposed to do that. But she had been too dazed with nerves to object as her aunt manhandled her into the layers of petticoats and printed velvet.
The security conduits in the foyer registered the bronze clasp of Sciona’s robe, and a second set of doors opened to allow the women through. This front chamber of the Main Magistry was accessible to all staff, students, and guests. Some classes were even held in the two modern additions between Leon’s Hall and the siphoning towers. The crowd was sparser during the winter break, but an assortment of mages flurried about preparing for the coming term, robes flapping dramatically behind them—mahogany for undergraduates, fern green for instructors and administrative staff, purple for junior researchers, white for the archmages who commanded them all.
The High Magistry exam always took place in Leon’s Hall beneath the dome where Tiran’s first Council had assembled. To get to the restricted historical chamber, Sciona and Alba had to pass a green-robed secretary. The elderly woman eyed Sciona’s robe for a moment before lighting up.