She paced the length of the cell for hours—maybe a day, maybe longer—waiting for the commotion to die down, but it didn’t. It only rose and fell in waves, which seemed to get louder with each swell. Disparate shouts eventually came together in a foreign rhythm that made the hair stand on her arms. Kwen throat singing. Chanting. Then gunfire.
“What’s happening?” Sciona called to the guards at the end of the corridor, but they didn’t answer.
No one spoke to her until, finally, the cell door scraped open. A familiar shape solidified in the dim light—straight hair pulled back into a braid and a work pinafore hanging on wide, square shoulders.
“Alba!” Sciona’s voice broke in relief as she started toward her cousin. “What’s happening out there?”
“What’s happening?” Alba repeated, and Sciona pulled up short. She had never heard Alba’s voice sound so cold. “Why don’t you tell me?”
“What do you mean?”
“They’re saying on the radio that you did this.” Alba’s voice was still quiet, shaking. “That was your spell that everyone saw… Is it true?”
“Yes.”
A pause. In that moment, Sciona would have siphoned if it just brought her enough light to make out Alba’s expression.
“Sciona… What have you done?”
“I don’t know,” Sciona confessed. “What’s happening out there?”
“What’s happening?” Alba’s voice rose from the icy whisper, but it didn’t warm. It only hardened. “Tiran is on fire, Sciona.”
“On fire? What—But are you alright? What about Aunt Winny? Where is she?”
“She doesn’t want to see you.”
“But I…” But I’m hers, a tiny, broken part of Sciona thought. I’m her girl.
“Sciona, I saw men’s bodies coming apart! And women and little children! Everyone saw it!”
“I know,” Sciona rushed to explain. “I know, but don’t you understand? This is what I’ve been working toward, a spell to let people know what I know and see it for themselves. This is the cost of Tiranish magic.”
“That’s not the kind of thing people need to have put in front of their faces! Are you insane?”
“Alba, I’m sorry you had to see it,” Sciona said impatiently. “I’m so sorry, but this is exactly the kind of thing people need put in their faces.”
“Did you know my shop got wrecked?”
Sciona blinked in shock, thrown. “What?”
“The repair shop. It’s gutted. I don’t have a job anymore! The Widow Idin from down the block. Her house is being looted! She and her girls are huddling in our kitchen, terrified, waiting to see if they’ll survive the night!”
“Wait—why?”
“Because the Kwen are rioting, you idiot! Looting! Tearing down anything they can!”
God, the Kwen… Sciona hadn’t stopped to think about how they would react. Even when Thomil had tried to make her think about it, her mind had slid past the thought. Of course, the Kwen would be more stricken than anyone, more furious.
“Do you understand what you’ve done?” Alba demanded. “People are dying!”
“People have been dying the whole time,” Sciona said quietly.
“Then they’ve been dying for a good reason!”
“What? No, Alba, you don’t mean that. You don’t mean that.”
“Don’t tell me what I mean!”
“Look, I was upset about this at first, too,” Sciona said as patiently as she could. “I tried to deny it, just like you are now, but think about it. You’re a good person, a kind person, Alba. You can’t really enjoy what you have, knowing that it was bought with the lives of others.”
“I’ve earned everything I have!”
“It’s… Alba, it’s not a matter of what you’ve earned or not. Just because you’ve worked hard for something doesn’t cancel out what the mages have done to achieve the technology. It doesn’t entitle you to another person’s flesh and blood.”
“Oh really?” Alba’s voice pitched up, sounding as hysterical as Sciona probably had in the throes of her breakdown. “Really? That is rich, coming from you!”
“Alba, I—”
“Since when do you care about other people?” Alba demanded. “Since when have you ever cared about the work Mama and I put in for you? Now other people matter? Now that they’re a way for you to get attention for your magic?”
“That’s not why I did this!” Sciona protested. “I did this to help people.”
“How is this helping anyone? The Kwen have all gone mad, turned into animals! And what about your people, Sciona? What about the people who loved you when no one else would, who sacrificed everything so you could have your unmarried, intellectual life exactly the way you wanted? How could you do this to us?” Tears were running down Alba’s face, catching glimmers of the faint light from the hall. “You don’t even care, do you? That you’re attacking everything we’ve built! Everything we are!”
“It’s not an attack to tell the truth,” Sciona protested. “Tiran is built on truth. Our religion is built on truth. What’s more important than upholding that?”
“Your family is more important than that!” Alba was almost screaming. “Tiran is more important than that!”
“Tiran was founded on ideals of knowledge, enlightenment, and integrity,” Sciona said, frustrated that Alba couldn’t seem to understand this very basic line of logic. “If we can’t live by those ideals, then who are we as a nation? What is this place?”
“It’s our home! For Feryn’s sake!” Alba was undone, pacing, tearing at her hair. “It’s not some—some theoretical thing for you to sit around and ponder in your tower and prod at for your experiments! It’s people, Sciona! It’s the people that gave you love! Who are you to turn around and spit on that?”
“I’m the one who saw Truth and didn’t look away.”
Alba stopped pacing. Her eyes narrowed in a terrible expression Sciona had never seen there before. “And there it is,” she breathed. “That’s what this is really about, no matter how much you try to deny it. All this… It’s about you being the smartest, the best, the chosen one. All this agony for your Goddamn ego.”
Sciona could have shrugged the words off from anyone else. Not Alba. Not Alba, who had always told her she was a good person when no one else believed it. Not Alba, who had pulled her from that window ledge and held her tight until she found the will to live.
Alba’s voice dropped to a lethal whisper. “I always knew you were selfish, Sciona. I was always fine with that. Because what was the harm? But this… the Founding Mages gave you this city, Mama gave you a home, the archmages gave you opportunities no other woman has ever enjoyed in the history of our nation. And this is what you do with all of it?”
“You don’t understand. I—”
“I can’t believe I ever called you my family.”