“Well, this is nostalgic!” Alba sat before the mess of steel components and rolled out her kit of screwdrivers, pliers, and tiny wrenches. “I’ve been in the clock and radio repair business for so long; it’s been ages since I worked on a spellograph. This should be fun!”
“I’m glad,” Sciona said, rolling up her sleeves and crossing to the sink. She had done her best not to use magical energy since finding out about the Otherrealm, but there was no way around running the tap with Alba sitting right there. Shutting her eyes against the guilt, Sciona turned on the water just long enough to fill the sink basin. So, the dishes might be a little grubby. It was better than turning the tap on again to rinse each plate separately.
“God, these pieces are in beautiful condition!” Alba marveled. “They should hire me at the university if their techs are too dumb to reassemble this hardware.”
“Yeah.” Sciona submerged the first plate in the warm water. “I think they’re more interested in efficiency than conserving… anything.” Raw material or human lives. How many Kwen had died because someone had wanted to save an hour—or a few minutes, or a few seconds—of work? Sciona needed to stop thinking about that. Not because it didn’t matter but because picturing it paralyzed her, and she couldn’t afford paralysis.
“Are you okay, Sciona?” Alba asked, glancing up at her cousin’s face. “Aunt Winny said you haven’t been eating much since the…” The Magistry had called it a ‘hysterical breakdown’ on Sciona’s record. A wonderful way to begin one’s career. “What’s wrong?”
“Well, if you get that spellograph fixed and everything else goes to plan, you’ll know by the end of the week.”
“I will?”
“It’s not something I can really explain.” And who would believe her—who could bear to believe her—if she did? After speaking to Bringham, Sciona had decided that there was only one way forward. “You have to see for yourself.”
When the dishes were done, Sciona pulled her highmage’s robe on over her dress.
“Where are you going?” Alba asked.
“I need to get copies of some keys made.”
“You’re wearing your robes out to get keys made?” Alba said in surprise. Sciona usually avoided wearing her robe unless it was for work. The stares were too much.
“They’re laboratory keys.” Sciona didn’t mention that they were the keys to every laboratory in the Magistry. “I just want to look official.” Like the head janitor at the Magistry, the local key maker couldn’t very well question a mage in white robes.
Sciona got back from the key maker’s hours later to a very sleepy Alba and a finished spellograph.
“It works, then?” Sciona said, running her fingers over the paper rest, barely marked where Alba had hammered it back into the correct shape. “I could use it tonight?”
“Use it?” Alba yawned. “You said you were getting it fixed for a colleague.”
“Sure, but I have to test it first.”
“Sciona.” Aunt Winny clicked her tongue from where she sat in the corner, mending one of Alba’s work blouses. “You’re supposed to be resting for the next week, not tinkering with magic machines.”
“And anyway,” Alba added, “I thought it was against the law to use a Magistry spellograph outside the designated areas. Won’t it trip some kind of magical alarm and get you in trouble?”
“Only if I activate a spell.” The restriction was the Magistry’s way of protecting the uneducated populace from accidentally activating magic that might hurt them. Of course, it also meant that no individual could practice truly powerful magic outside Magistry facilities. “I won’t be mapping or siphoning. I just want to test that the typing function still works.”
“Right.” Alba rolled up her toolkit. “Well, I’m off to bed, then. If the ‘graph malfunctions, don’t wake me. I’ll fix it in the morning.”
Sciona touched her cousin’s arm before she left the kitchen. “Alba…”
“Hmm?”
“I’m glad I’m here.” It was a thought Sciona had never voiced aloud. But it was something she probably should have told her aunt and cousin every day since she was tiny.
Alba blinked. Aunt Winny’s needle had stilled.
“What do you mean?”
“I’m glad I ended up here,” Sciona repeated, “with the two of you instead of with my father.”
Until the words were out of her mouth, Sciona didn’t quite understand what had changed in her. There had always been part of her that wondered what her life could have been if Perramis had wanted her. What would it have been like—what might she have made of herself—with access to the resources of a man like Perramis?
In the space of a day, Archmage Bringham and Cleon Renthorn had killed that vague longing she had carried for all these years. Even a kind father like Bringham reached a point where he sat her down and tried to rein her in. Even a brilliant male heir like Cleon Renthorn twisted and chaffed beneath the weight of his father’s legacy.
Sciona appreciated now that Alba and Aunt Winny had given her something no respectable Tiranish father ever could have: freedom. And because they were simple, working women, because they didn’t embody the greatness Sciona was chasing, she never gave them credit for it.
Without knowing when they had started, Sciona found herself blinking back tears. “I don’t think I could have asked for a father in all of Tiran to replace you two. I wanted to say that.”
Aunt Winny, who had never accepted a compliment in Sciona’s memory, shifted in her skirts like a bird fluffing its feathers. Plainly pleased but unwilling to acknowledge it. “Ridiculous girl. Off to bed with you—and take your silly machine with you.”
“Yes, Auntie.” Sciona smiled and reached for the spellograph.
But before she got there, Alba caught her up in a hug—so tight, Sciona’s eyes bugged out a little, and she couldn’t breathe. Just when Sciona was wondering if one of her ribs would crack under the pressure, Alba let her go and placed a kiss on her temple.
“Night, sweetheart. And be good to yourself. Make sure you get some sleep.”
“I will,” Sciona lied, and Alba crossed the room to give Aunt Winny a kiss on the cheek.
When the truth came out, Sciona knew that these two would both prove braver than Bringham and better than Renthorn. They wouldn’t try to silence Sciona for her discoveries. They would understand.
With a smile, Sciona hauled the spellograph from the kitchen table, her arms straightening out under its weight. The fact that Thomil had thrown the thing across the room with one hand still made no sense to her. When she had nudged the machine into position atop her writing desk, she pulled a box of matches from a drawer. She hadn’t switched the magical bulb on in her room since finding out about the Otherrealm. Striking a match, she lit the crowd of candles on her desk, cracked the fogged window so the smoke wouldn’t go straight to her brain, and sat before the spellograph.
The machine didn’t really need testing; Alba wasn’t sloppy; she’d have checked basic functions like whether or not the keys worked. But handwriting would be too slow and messy for the volume of work before Sciona. She had a runic typewriter in her closet, but it had a sticking key, and no typewriter handled like a solid Magistry-grade spellograph.