“Can you blame me for trying?”
“Of course I blame you! Even taking the cost of siphoning itself out of the equation, you bought your success—and by extension, mine—at the cost of women’s lives, their health, their ability to have children! How could you do that?”
What Thomil had told Sciona about the women in Bringham’s factories had hardly been a surprise, knowing where Tiranish magic itself came from. It just stripped back another layer of the illusion, making it clear that there was nothing innocent or unknowing about those who practiced the magic—even the gentlest among them, even removed from the source of his magic. Because Bringham might not look on the Kwen as his sourcers siphoned it, but he had seen his own factories, and there was no writing in the Leonid or the Tirasid mandating the sterilization of women in poverty.
Yet here Bringham was trying to play the caring father figure to Sciona’s face like she was a complete fool.
“How dare you make me a part of this!” Sciona hissed. “And how delusional do you have to be to convince yourself that the answer to women being unequal in our society is to make murderers of them as well? Your solution to being a monster was to drag a woman into the abyss with you!”
“Freynan,” Bringham said wearily, “have I dragged you anywhere you weren’t determined to go by your own power?”
The answer was ‘no,’ of course but, “That’s not the point,” Sciona growled, venom seeping into her voice. “I may have done all my work of my own free will, but you took your own actions—of your own will—to get me into the High Magistry, hoping it would balance all the harm you’ve done the women in your factories. If I was to be your penance for that, is it working, Archmage?” she sneered—because if she was to suffer, she wanted him to suffer as well. “Do you feel absolved?”
Bringham didn’t answer. “Your trial is tomorrow,” he said instead, without affect. “You should get some rest.”
“Rest?” Sciona let out a mirthless laugh. “If that was possible, what would it accomplish?”
“You need to be able to defend yourself before the High Magistry tomorrow morning. You’ll never work as a mage again, but I don’t want you to die.”
“Is that even a possibility?” Here, Sciona suspected that Bringham had wrapped himself in one of his comforting delusions. There was no way the High Magistry would spare her after what she had done.
“Of course, it’s a possibility,” he insisted, “if you repent, throw yourself on the mercy of the Council, and agree to publicly recant all the claims you’ve made about the Otherrealm. No one wants to execute a young woman.”
“You want me to throw away honesty in exchange for my life?”
“You must. Please. For me.”
Sciona was shaking her head.
“They are going to kill you, Sciona.” And with her, his absolution. Hence the fear in his eyes.
A malicious smile split Sciona’s face. “Then I’ll die.”
“No.” He was begging now, which only served to turn Sciona’s cruel smile into a grin. “Don’t do this to me, Sciona. I need—” Pride seemed to stop him from saying: I need you to live. I need you to do something to salvage my legacy. “It doesn’t have to be this way.”
“Of course it does,” Sciona said. “You’re asking me to go back on my own work to save my life.”
“Have you not already gone back on your work?” Bringham asked. “On the idea of magic altogether?”
“I haven’t gone back on truth,” she returned. “I stand by the potential my spells have to better society, and this is where we are at an impasse, Archmage. I might be your absolution, but my work is mine. I’ll gladly die standing by it.”
Bringham let out a slow breath and lowered his head. “If this is really your choice, then you should write a last letter to your family.”
A last letter. The word ‘last’ hit Sciona with a discomforting reality: they were fast approaching the end of her story. Her career would be one of the shortest of any highmage, so short that she had not even fulfilled her dream of publishing research under her name. This was her final chance to put something into the world—even if it was something as simple as a few words to her auntie. And she had to wonder if this had been Bringham’s intent in his seeming gentleness: to make her stare down oblivion and lose her nerve.
“Tell me what you’d like to say.” Crossing the room, Bringham plucked a pen from his desk and dipped the end in an inkwell. “I’ll write it down for you.”
“Give me the pen, and I’ll write it myself.”
“I’m not going to give you a pen.”
Sciona paused in confusion. What did Bringham think she was going to do? Stab him in the neck? His reasoning dawned on her, and she laughed. “You think just because I cracked a few old texts, I can do magic without a spellograph? Like Stravos? Or a Kwen witch?”
Bringham’s frowning silence said ‘yes’ or at the very least ‘maybe.’ In the old days, many mages had been able to cast spells without the use of spellographs or conduits, but that had been with decades of practice and more materials than a simple ink pen.
“I don’t know what you’re capable of,” he said.
“God,” she marveled with a smile. “You’re really afraid of me.”
Bringham eyed her in unease. “Does that excite you?”
“A little,” she admitted. Just because Bringham seemed committed to playing the innocent, well-intentioned mage didn’t mean she was going to.
So, do you have anything to say to Miss Alba? To your aunt?”
“I suppose I do.”
Sciona’s hands still ached from the tome’s-worth of scrawling and typing she had done in the past week. But through all of it, she hadn’t spared a word for Alba or Aunt Winny. The thought had never crossed her mind.
It was a callous oversight, she realized now, and a damning illustration of all Alba’s accusations. Sciona had stood before the Council and berated them for ignoring the suffering the Kwen had undergone to build this city. And the whole time, Sciona had largely ignored the sacrifices her own family had made to get her where she was. She swallowed, feeling the sting of Alba’s hand on her cheek anew.
Alba and Aunt Winny deserved better. No matter how wrong they were about the plight of the Kwen, they deserved better from the girl they had raised with so much love. The Kwen might owe them nothing, but Sciona owed them her best effort at an apology.
“Dear Aunt Winny,
The week after I lost my mother to sickness and my father to indifference should be among the worst of my memories. But when I revisit it, it’s not a dark memory. I owe that to you—the way you looked at me like you wanted me there more than anything in the world, the way you wrapped me up without a moment’s hesitation, even knowing an extra child was going to be a financial burden you could barely afford.
“You’re my little girl now.” You kept saying that—“You’re my girl”—even as years passed, and I wasn’t little anymore, and I continued to take, and take, and take without ever giving back.