Electra, at least, is alive the next morning. More alive than I feel after my lack of sleep, anyway – I gave up on it altogether after five and read by conjured light instead. I’m tired enough that my spellcasting is noticeably worse and I struggle to think of an incantation for the flight-spell that was yesterday’s main exercise.

I was surprised when I first saw that spell: doesn’t the General Animation Spell accomplish the same thing? It does, according to the notes Felicity gave me. But because of how general the spell is, it doesn’t have the power to rival more specialist spells such as this one. At least, I think that’s why, but the notes are lacking in detail and a little unclear besides.

I resolve to ask Edward when I next see him, since Electra is unlikely to want to divert from this practical session for theoretical work I should already understand. Now what incantation should I use? Something about flight. Being lighter than air, moving freely upwards…

“Rise,” I whisper to myself. Simple but effective, as I’ve found the best incantations are.

Then there’s practical work for Electra’s own class. She’s teaching a simple divination spell that will reveal whether an object is enchanted. In order to counter magical effects, her notes read, you first need to know what those effects are. And since only sensitives can detect magic directly, and they’re even rarer than magicians – though I know the King is always sensitive, something about the coronation ritual induces it – that means learning these divination spells.

This particular spell reacts with an object’s enchantment, if it has one, to cause it to glow a pale blue for a few seconds. The problem is that it has no effect on an object without an enchantment, so it’s difficult to tell whether the lack of result is because the object is mundane or because I haven’t cast the spell right.

Fortunately that can be remedied by only practicing on objects which are enchanted until I can cast correctly each time. The block of wood Electra gives me is enchanted, as is my quill. My copy of A History of the Kings of Rasin isn’t enchanted, but the history of the Border Wars I’m reading is. That puzzles me for a moment until I remember that it’s a library book, and the library books have enchantments that allow them to survive in hyperspace.

I quickly test the jug of water on my bedside table (not enchanted) before the thought of hyperspace can remind me of my last encounter with it.

“Now try this,” says Electra, tossing me another wooden block.

Startled, I fumble the catch and it falls to the ground, landing with a soft thud. I pick it up and cast the divination spell. No result. “Not enchanted,” I say.

“Are you sure?”

With most teachers, that’s an immediate sign that I’ve done something wrong. With Electra it could be that, or it could be that there’s a trick I was never supposed to catch, or it could be that I’m perfectly right and she’s just trying to unsettle me. “I… think so? I’m reasonably sure I cast it correctly, but – “

Electra summons the block to her hand with a lazy gesture, and then presses it between her palms. It turns a bright red. “Still sure?” she asks.

I narrow my eyes. The obvious explanation is that she’s casting a spell on the block, but… “Less than I was,” I say, “but how do I know it’s not just you casting a spell? Or you didn’t enchant it just now, after I tested it?”

She tosses the block back to me without speaking.

Slightly more prepared than last time, I catch it and try the divination spell again. Still not enchanted. I press it between my palms as Electra did, and it turns the same shade of red. “So it is enchanted,” I say. “But then how – “

“You still don’t have definite proof. There are spells that can change the colour of an object from a distance; how do you know I wasn’t casting one of those?”

“I don’t,” I admit.

“How would you prove I’m not?”

After a second thought I reply “If you cast something else, something with clearly visible effects, then you can’t be casting a spell on the block at the same time.”

“Let’s test that, then,” she says, and begins to move her hands in an intricate pattern, as if she’s painting a tapestry in the air. Indeed, the air where her hands have been takes a new colour: she’s creating an ornate white-and-gold spiral from nothing. An illusion.

It takes me a second to remember what I’m supposed to be doing: the block still turns a bright red when I press it between my palms.

“That was enough to convince most of your classmates,” Electra says. “Edward insisted on specifying what I cast so he could be sure I wasn’t using a prepared enchantment to give the illusion that I was casting an illusion. And even then, he claimed I could be secretly multi-School and a master of simultaneous casting.”

I laugh. That’s so typical of him I can almost hear his voice suggesting that now. “Are you?”

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“No. Though, of course, I would say that if I was.”

It’s a bit of a problem, I realise, to be trying to solve a mystery under the guidance of a teacher who freely admits she could be lying to you. “What’s really going on, though?”

“There is an enchantment that is used to fool the particular divination spell you used, which combines easily with most other enchantments. I simply added that to the block. Ask the obvious question, would you? I can’t rely on there always being someone who will when I’m only teaching a class of one.”

“What’s the point of divination spells, then, if they’re so easily countered?” I think that’s what she expects me to ask, anyway.

“Firstly,” says Electra, “most enchanted objects will not be hidden. For instance, there is no use in hiding that your quill or book are enchanted, so divination is still useful for investigating many commonplace enchanted objects. And secondly, note that the enchantment I used counters that particular divination spell. There are many other divination spells with similar effects. Can you suggest a few ways to indirectly detect the presence of an enchantment?”

“If an object has more magic than the background ambience, that means it’s likely enchanted,” I say. “Or you could just… try to find the trigger, if there is one – “

“That brute force method of investigating enchantments is very much not recommended,” Electra interrupts. “It is time-consuming and inefficient, and also cannot be performed without activating the enchantment.”

“Okay, not that one. I suppose…” I think for a few seconds. “Oh! How it’s sourcing magic – that should be detectable – a lot of enchantments draw in ambient magic to keep themselves functioning. There’s probably a way of detecting changes in the ambience.”

“Indeed there is. That is sufficient at your level. So you see the problem with countering divination?”

“You’d have to counter each possible spell separately, which would mean combining many enchantments, and… that gets really hard once you have more than three or four, even if they are the type that combine nicely.”

“Yes, but not perhaps to the extent it is prohibitive for a sufficiently talented magician. The real problem is how you know that you have countered all possible divination spells that could otherwise detect your enchantment.”

Oh. Of course – if there’s one thing I’ve learnt, it’s that there are a thousand obscure spells for any purpose hidden in old books or kept as secrets by one of the old Siaril families, and even if you somehow found and countered all of them a new one could be invented.

“That is why such a piecemeal approach is in practice useless. Instead you must find a general enchantment which counters the unique element of all divination spells.”

“And presumably the fact you didn’t do that means that’s hard somehow?”

“Indeed. That is not the sort of enchantment which combines easily with others; there are only three known combinations in existence. Hence why there is still use in divination spells.”

An interesting lesson; it always surprises me that Electra can be a good teacher when she wants to be, in her own twisted way. But it’s soon over and I’m alone again. I pass a little time checking every object in the room for enchantments, finding nothing unexpected.

Then it’s back to theoretical lessons. I struggle to focus without a teacher, but I have to: in two weeks I’ll be going back to whatever passes for normal at the Academy and I can’t be behind when that happens. This work matters.

It gets harder and harder to keep telling myself that.

But eventually lunchtime comes, and with it, Edward. He has no news – he says that the moment he walks in, before I even have a chance to ask – so instead I give him my news.

“Sorry,” he says. “My dad sometimes forgets that normal people sleep at night.”

I laugh. Mostly because I don’t want to tell him what I think of his father now. He wants desperately to believe Lord Blackthorn is a good person. How could I shatter that belief?

Neither of us want to ask the question I asked last night. What will he do?

“Electra said you thought she was secretly multi-School,” I say.

“When you’re investigating mysterious magic you shouldn’t rule anything out unless it’s literally impossible. Besides, it’s not too difficult to hide a second School when you don’t have newspaper headlines announcing it to the entire country.”

Yeah, he’s still bitter about that. I can’t blame him.

“Sorry.”

“Stop apologising for things that aren't your fault.”

“Sorr – “ I stop myself just in time. “Not sorry. Anyway, I was wondering about what we covered in Spells recently…”

As I expected, Edward is only too happy to discuss why there is a specialist flight-spell in addition to the General Animation Spell, and we pass the rest of our lunch break talking about technical details of spell classification. That is, Edward talks about technical details of spell classification while I try to pretend I understand what he’s talking about.

But too soon, lunchtime is over and he’s gone.

Two weeks, I tell myself, two weeks and then all of this will go away. I laugh bitterly to myself.

A few days pass. I settle into a routine of sorts. I wake at six and thirty, wash and dress myself. Electra brings me porridge at seven and watches me eat, and then takes me through the practical exercises from the previous day’s lessons. I can’t do any practical work for Alchemy or Astronomy, since neither a fully equipped laboratory nor the night sky can be brought into my room. But I keep up with everything else.

Electra gives me the next day’s work and leaves at eight and thirty. I work for four hours – or I try to; it gets harder and harder to focus, and I often find myself just lying on the bed staring into space. I can’t keep doing that or I’ll fall behind.

Twelve and thirty is lunchtime; Edward visits, tells me he has no news from his father, and keeps me up to date on what I’m missing. The Cavendish trial is progressing slowly but inevitably towards its verdict. High Princess Alexandra is pregnant with her first child, and the birth is expected to be in early spring. Campaigning for the winter elections is beginning in earnest.

Sometimes I have other visitors: Elsie comes twice in that week to talk about history and complain about teachers (though not Electra, at least in her hearing) and Elizabeth comes once. She brings a pack of cards, and we play for a while. Much to my surprise, Electra accepts her invitation to join and proceeds to mercilessly thrash us both; I’m glad we weren’t playing for money.

The afternoons are much the same as the mornings, except that I find it even harder to make myself work. Once or twice, I don’t even get through everything before dinner arrives at six after noon.

Edward comes again and eats with me. He can tell I’m struggling, but he doesn’t mention it. We just talk about magic, politics and whatever else comes to mind.

After dinner I read for a couple of hours and then go to bed at about nine after noon.

And that’s it.

Until at ten and fifteen on Sunday morning there’s a tapping at my window.