“But Tiran itself is the cause…” Sciona started before realizing that this battle was lost in every way that mattered. Bringham knew. Anything she might say, he already knew, and he had already decided it wasn’t important.
Her kindly mentor was gone. He had been gone before she met him.
“I’m so sorry, Highmage Freynan,” Bringham said, and God, he really sounded it. How dare he? “Most highmages get to grow into this truth gradually and absorb it as they are ready. Feryn, I think I was twice your age when I had it all pieced together.” He let out a wry laugh. “Such is the curse of the sharp mind.”
“So…” she said quietly. “You know what the Otherrealm really is. Obviously, the other Archmages of the Council know… Who else?”
“Anyone who’s served in the High Magistry for more than five years or so, as well as any city official who’s worked closely with the Council for that long.”
Sciona ran the numbers in her head. That was most of them. Most of the High Magistry and most of Tiran’s government. A whole entrenched system of mass murderers here in the heart of civilization.
They’re either evil, or they’re stupid, Carra had said, and now Sciona knew which. She should have known from the beginning. She just hadn’t wanted to believe it. And still, a last hope in her refused to die. There was one more thing she had to try.
“My research could help stop this,” she said, hating how fragile her voice was, how defeated she already sounded.
“Stop what?”
“The taking of human life. I’ve created a mapping spell that allows me to view the Otherrealm—the Kwen—in total clarity. It’s like looking through a window, color, detail, and all.”
“Color?” Bringham lit up as though they weren’t still discussing the mass slaughter of innocents. “Impossible!”
Sciona tried to smile and felt like her facial muscles might tear. “Sir, you know that word is not in my vocabulary.”
“But—how…？ No, never mind.” He returned her approximation of a smile with a disturbingly genuine one. “I suppose I’ll see at the demonstration in a week like everyone else.”
“I just thought that if we could see the energy sources we siphon more clearly, we could select them more carefully.”
“Absolutely!”
“We could avoid murder.”
“Not murder.” Bringham held up a finger as if Sciona had said something incorrect, gotten a term wrong in class. “It is not murder to use what God has gifted us.”
“But now, God has also given us a way to use it without hurting anyone,” Sciona protested. “Isn’t that the greater gift? The opportunity to move forward in clear conscience?”
“Sciona,” Archmage Bringham said, and she knew from his weary, apologetic tone that she was being rejected. “Your compassion does you credit as a woman, but it is not realistic. Even if we were to direct magic away from humans, Tiran must still feed on life in the form of plants and animals. The savage people of the Kwen are still living on borrowed time on land that cannot sustain them.”
It was the same argument Thomil had made—that direct siphoning was only half the reason the people beyond the barrier were struggling. Only Bringham phrased it as though the decline of the Kwen was a fated inevitability, not the result of human action.
“This is the price the Kwen pay for their heresy.”
“Three hundred years ago,” Sciona said. “Three hundred years ago, a dozen Kwen leaders refused to convert to a new religion and move in with their conquerors. Those people are all dead now. Everyone who could have had any hand in that decision is dead. But the decision to Blight the Kwen—to siphon—is a choice we make every day. How holy is it to steal life from people who’ve never had a chance to convert? Who’ve never knowingly slighted our god? Who’ve never even laid eyes on Tiran?”
“Evil begets evil,” Bringham said. “Their ancestors worshipped false gods and passed that darkness on to them. If they truly want redemption, they can earn it. They can cross into Tiran, convert to the light, and work for their immortal souls.”
“They don’t make it across, though,” Sciona said. “The vast majority of them die in the Reserve siphoning zone around the barrier.”
“And thank goodness for that,” Bringham said with a laugh. “Can you imagine this city without the use of the Reserve—or worse, overrun with Kwen in such numbers?”
Worse? The implication was nauseating: that the most important function of the Reserve was not to provide energy to the city but to keep the vermin out.
“Blight has always been God’s way of striking down the unworthy.”
“But God doesn’t bring about Blight,” Sciona protested, unable to cede this point. “We do. Humans, with our fallible, selfish human motives. Like you and me—and Sabernyn, for Feryn’s sake! If God really intended Blight as a punishment for those who rejected him, then why…” Her voice caught on the memory of the girl in the ocean. There had been no black-haired warriors in the Horde of Thousands. Tiran was siphoning people too far away to ever have heard of Leon or the god he may or may not have fabricated to justify his greed. “There is no moral basis for Blight. There can’t—”
“Sciona.” Bringham cut her off, his voice infuriatingly gentle. “You’re thinking about this too logically.”
“Too logically?” she repeated. “Too logically? I thought the female crime I was supposed to avoid was thinking about magic emotionally. Too logically, Archmage?”
“God is beyond mere mortal logic. It is not for even the greatest minds to question His will. Remember this. It makes it easier.”
“But—I—”
“I know,” he said softly. “You’ve learned to question everything, turn over the rocks no one else pauses to notice. It is your greatest strength as a mage, but every mortal has his or her limits defined by God. And this is where our role as mages is not to question but to accept. Not because it’s logical but because all beings have their limits, and you will destroy yourself if you don’t. I can’t afford that. The women of Tiran can’t afford that. Tiran itself can’t afford that. If we are to keep developing our civilization as we must, this is where we mages lay down our tools of science and kneel before God, All-knowing.”
But Sciona couldn’t do that. Not when science was supposed to be the godliest of arts. Not when this creeping doubt kept pointing out that all Tiran’s knowledge of God came from Leon, who, it seemed, had been a prolific murderer, plagiarist, and liar. There was too much dissonance from God all the way down.
“Then I…” I’m a heretic.
The thought had been building since the throes of her panic in Aunt Winny’s apartment. Now it manifested in the form of a void where her soul used to be. It left her empty. Terrified. Yet oddly exhilarated.
“Many think that women are too soft for what we do here, too weak for the burden of this knowledge. But I know you, Sciona Freynan. Your first devotion is to magic and advancement. Your head will clear, you will remember who you are, and you will move beyond this.”