She walked through the city as though the sights and sounds around her constituted a dream that would pass when she opened her eyes. It was the only way she could keep moving. And if she didn’t keep moving, the nightmare would never end.
Trethellyn Hall seemed so much colder than it had, rising from the stately university skyline to dwarf the structures around it. Sciona had always held the size of Bringham’s building in awe and esteem, a reflection of her great mentor. Now, its stature set a deep shudder that made the hair stand on her arms. Sciona’s department—often Sciona all on her own—had been the one sourcing the energy for all those stories, hundreds if not thousands, of spells per day.
Despite the urgency driving her on, she didn’t take the magic-powered lift up to Bringham’s office. The train ran whether she boarded it or not, but the lift sat idle unless someone called for it, using up precious magical energy—precious life—and, selfishly, Sciona didn’t want to watch out the metalwork doors as the lift rose past floors upon floors of alchemists, conduit designers, and other mages testing new spells for Bringham’s factories. She did not want to see the scale of industrial magic to which she had been party for seven years.
Unfortunately, she knew the building so well—she had taken the lift up so many times—that, even on the stairs, she knew exactly where she was based on the sounds and smells filtering into the stairwell. There was the clank and whir of the mechanical looms on the first floor where Kwen workers tested new machinery for efficiency, the piercing chemical scent from the dye testing floor, followed by the distinctive whoosh of alchemists siphoning material for new dyes. Fleeing each new sound and scent, Sciona took the stairs two at a time and reached the upper floors sweating.
She stopped in the doorway of Bringham’s main laboratory to catch her breath and wished the pain was limited to the stitch in her side, which would fade in a few minutes. Until this point, she had been able to maintain her calm, but visiting her old workplace always brought old emotions to the surface and, this time, with the nostalgia, came agony. The top floor swarmed with movement as it had for all the years Sciona had worked here. Lab workers scurried from one station to the next with boxes of testing fibers. Spell writers and analysts in purple robes typed and scribbled furiously in their cubicles. Meanwhile, mages on the floor tested a myriad of spells for weaving, sewing, lifting, heating, cooling, folding fabric. That symphony of firing action spells had been Sciona’s joy for many years. This laboratory was where she had first tasted real power, where she had become a monster.
Drawing in a deep breath, she let the stitch sink into her side, wounding, absorbed the pain, and moved forward. A few workers and students looked up in surprise as she passed, but many had their heads down, too focused on their work to register the undersized highmage sweeping through their ranks. Sciona had been one of those oblivious ones, consumed by magic, rarely considering the people around her or the effects her work might have on them.
At the back of the vast laboratory, she climbed the final stairs to Bringham’s office door and knocked. A lab worker in an assistant’s coat opened the door.
“Highmage!” he said in surprise.
“I need to talk to Archmage Bringham. Now.”
“Oh—” The young man looked over his shoulder into the office, where Bringham was sitting with several purple-robed apprentices, clearly in the middle of a meeting. “I’m not sure if this is a good time.”
“It’s fine, Tornis.” Bringham stood, then addressed his group of research mages. “We’ll resume this discussion later. If you’d give us the room.”
Some of Bringham’s underlings cast looks of confusion and concern at Sciona, but all left the chamber without question.
“Highmage Freynan,” Bringham said when they had gone. “I’ve been expecting you.”
“You have?”
“Ever since our last conversation. Come in.”
Sciona had always thought of Bringham’s office as vast. She now realized that it wasn’t much bigger than her own lab. The sense of size came from how little it actually contained. There was a desk, an extra chair, the bookshelves bearing Bringham’s private library—all finely crafted but fundamentally utilitarian. On one wall hung a portrait of Bringham’s father, looking stern, and on the opposite wall, a portrait of Archmage Orynhel looking sterner still. The requisite five lights, representing the five Founding Mages, burned above the desk, but there was no extraneous decoration. Where other mages filled their offices with family portraits, works of art, and potted plants, Bringham kept his bare. Sciona had always liked that. It seemed a good, quiet space for the great mind to do its work. But at the moment, she longed for a little more to distract her. In the past few days, she found that bare walls invited visions of the girl at the ocean, bleeding out into the water.
“God, you look exhausted, Freynan. Sit.”
Obediently, Sciona sank into the chair before Bringham’s desk.
“I’d send for tea, but you look like you might burst if you don’t speak. So”—he sat opposite her—“what did you want to talk about?”
The words came up like vomit—burning, acrid, and uncontrolled—everything she had told Thomil, but even less measured, more frantic, surely unintelligible to anyone but an archmage who had known her for years. She watched his face as she spoke, watched his thumb rub uncomfortably at the pen in his hands, but couldn’t guess at his thoughts.
“So,” she finished, “I know beyond any doubt that I wasn’t looking at an illusion. I was seeing a land beyond Tiran and witnessing what really happens when we siphon for our spells. I’m happy to do more research to confirm my findings, but this is where I stand now.” She left off, feeling spent, empty, and shaky—as if she really had just thrown up at Bringham’s feet again.
He seemed to take a millennium to respond.
When he did, his tone was resigned. “Oh, dear… I should have known you were too smart…”
“What?” Sciona whispered, ragged from anticipation.
“To buy the curse explanation. We tell many of the highmages when they’re starting out, that they’ve run afoul of a Sabernyn curse. I should have known you’d only buy it until you’d calmed down enough to have a good think.”
“I didn’t buy it at all,” Sciona said—because even now, for some Godforsaken reason, it mattered that Bringham think her clever. “The moment you said it, it didn’t add up. Archmage…” Her voice broke. “Why did you lie to me?”
“You’re right to be angry with me,” Bringham said. “I treated you like any new highmage, but you’re not. You’re Sciona Freynan. I shouldn’t have insulted your intelligence with a cover story.”
“Cover story? So—Y-you mean…？” Sciona didn’t want to think about what he meant, but it was why she had come here. So, despite the urge to turn and run from the office, to hear no more, she gripped the sides of her seat hard and held still to hear his response.
“Research what you will, Miss Freynan.” Bringham’s voice was gentle but firm. “Discover what you will. Feryn knows I can’t stop you. But this particular subject is not something we talk about in the High Magistry.”