Sciona’s heart broke. “Alba…”
“Shut up, Sciona! Shut up! I never want to speak to you again!”
“You—” Sciona choked on emotion, tears burning her eyes. “You don’t mean that.” She was staggering forward, reaching for her cousin like a child seeking its mother’s arms. “You don’t mean that. Please—”
Pain cracked across Sciona’s face, knocking her sideways. She blinked, unable to accept in her heart that Alba had slapped her, unable to deny the needle sting in her cheek.
“When the Kwen burn Tiran to the ground, it will be your fault. Congratulations on making your mark.”
Before Sciona could find any words to respond, Alba left, slamming the cell door behind her.
And Sciona had not known she could feel more off balance than she had the day she opened the first Freynan Mirror. But before Sciona had been old enough to practice magic, her aunt had loved her. Alba had loved her.
She didn’t realize she had started stepping back, falling, until she hit the wall. She was crying, but there was an emptiness to these tears. Somewhere in the past two weeks, crying had become like a reflex, her body impotently trying to prove she was still human when everything that made a human was gone. She had already lost her dream, her career, and her reason for living. Why not her family too? As she sobbed for the loss of Alba and Aunt Winny, an even darker thought threaded its way through the tears. That slap across her face had all but confirmed her worst fear: Thomil was right. Sciona had miscalculated. Because if Alba—kind, giving, infinitely patient Alba—met the truth with violent denial, what chance did the rest of Tiran have?
Slumping back against the wall, Sciona slid down until she was curled up with her knees clutched to her chest. She had thought—had hoped—better of her city, and she was the fool again. Thomil had been right again. Archmage Orynhel had been right. The people of Tiran were not ready.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured to her knees but knew that her guilt did no one any good. Not Alba and Aunt Winny. Not Thomil and Carra. And here Sciona was in a cell without a spellograph or note paper or any of her instruments of power to turn the tide.
When the tears dried up, the solitude slowly set in and began to drive Sciona mad. Her twitching hands had never gone this long without a pen or spellograph—certainly never during times of stress—and she picked at her nails until they bled. The prison cot was hilariously softer than the one Sciona used in her laboratory—if a little mustier—but sleep was impossible. She gave it her best effort, lying back and closing her eyes, but each time calm seemed to be falling, the sounds of fresh violence would rise from the streets below, and her bloodshot eyes would fly open again.
“It’s your fault,” Alba’s voice whispered through the pounding of her heart in her ears. “When the Kwen burn Tiran to the ground, it will be your fault.”
A scream built in Sciona’s throat over hours. She was squirming with it, about to let it out, just to release some of the tension in her body—when the door opened.
“Highmage Freynan,” said a guard with deep circles under his eyes, “you’re being relocated.”
“What? Why?” she asked as he put a hand on her back and pushed her ahead of him down the narrow hallway between cells.
“For your own safety… and because the prisons are at capacity.”
“At capacity?”
“From the Kwen being arrested en masse.”
“What? But—if all the prisons are at capacity, then where am I going?”
“You’re being placed under house arrest.”
“But my aunt said she didn’t want to see me…” A childish hope flickered to life in Sciona’s chest. Maybe Aunt Winny had changed her mind; Sciona would get a chance to explain herself, to make Winny and Alba understand what she had been trying to do—
The door at the end of the hall opened, and she stopped, her back bumping against the guard behind her.
“Archmage Bringham!”
“Come.” Bringham took Sciona’s arm to guide her onward, and that was when she noticed the instrument clutched in his other hand. In the dark of the jail corridor, it looked like an oversized walking stick, but Sciona knew better.
“My God. Archmage, is that—？”
“Stay close,” Bringham said as the two of them descended the stairs to the front gates. “I’ll keep you safe.”
The jail itself was protected by a magical barrier that only allowed guards and approved visitors to enter and exit. Beyond the selective shielding spell, the city roiled with bodies.
Sciona had never known there were so many Kwen in Tiran—enough to make great copper-headed waves in the streets. Most of the time, these people were invisible servants, cleaning chimneys and sweeping streets, working in the mines out of sight, tending to gardens behind fine houses. They had risen from those mines and kitchens in their thousands—and it was terrifying.
“We’re not going out there?” Sciona’s feet slowed.
“What’s the matter?” Bringham asked. “Surely, you’re not afraid of a few of your precious, innocent, put-upon Kwen?”
Sciona had no answer. She had opened herself up to the barb. And Bringham had a point, as Alba had had a point. How had Sciona not seen this coming? The Kwen were human. They felt anger. They could be vengeful.
“Is this how I’m being executed?” Sciona asked as Bringham’s hand tightened on her arm, forcing her toward the gates and the bounds of the shielding spell. “Is that why you’re here? To throw me to the Kwen?”
“Don’t joke about that,” Bringham said, and in the weak light of the lamps, he looked genuinely hurt.
It would be a poetic end to Sciona’s life, one that would seem to invalidate everything she had tried to prove to Tiran. If the Kwen were themselves brutal, undiscerning murderers, what did it matter if they died for Tiran’s ends? Whatever happened to her, Sciona doubted the legitimacy of the Kwen’s grievances would matter to the Tiranish now that they had risen in violence.
“I’m here to make sure you’re safe until morning,” Bringham said, “so that you can have a proper trial before the High Magistry.” They had reached the shielding spell beyond which Kwen marched and chanted their anger.
“Are you sure you don’t want an escort, Archmage?” the warden asked at the gates. He looked as pale and haggard as any of his guards. “My men would gladly protect you.”
“No, thank you, Warden,” Bringham said calmly. “Lord Prophet Leon named his mages the keepers of Tiran, so we will keep it.”
“But Archmage Bringham,” Sciona started, “how—？”
“Like I said, stay close to me.”
And they crossed the shielding spell together.
Gray eyes had already fixed on them in rage while they stood within the safety of the gates. The moment they stepped through, that rage turned to violence.
“Mages!” someone shouted. As Sciona had predicted, in their white robes, she and Bringham stood out like energy wells in a mapping coil.
“Murderers!”
“Kill the mages!”
In response, Bringham raised his staff like Leon before the Horde of Thousands and struck the end against the cobbles. That first stroke was sound only, splitting the darkness like a peal of thunder. A warning shot: come no closer.