The Wolf mage awaited her on the library’s ground level, seated at the center of the lift and clouded in smoke with no discernible source. One of his crows perched upon the back of his wheeled chair, the other on his shoulder.

“Thank you for coming, my lady,” said Gray, smiling gently—though still he looked rather sallow and hollow-cheeked. The lantern light caught and glittered across the glossy surface of his mask as he moved. “Now that a new course is set, it has come down to me to guide you as best I may along your path as a mage. If you would join me?”

“Of course,” said Beatrice, hurrying forward to stand at his side. D’artanien, two steps behind her, clicked the little gate closed.

“Down, please,” said Gray, quite to her bemusement. The lift began smoothly to drop downward, through a shaft and into a large chamber carved from the rock below. Beatrice stepped off first, gaping around her. The space, which was rounded and dome-ceilinged, was rather like a cavern. The slitted openings set at intervals along the upper walls served as ventilation, she supposed, when the lift was in place overhead.

But for now light and fresh air poured down from above, illuminating the coiling plumes of incense that issued from the many braziers set into the stone. Also heavy in the air was Gray’s own scent of sea salt and heather, complimented by all the sandalwood smoke rather than hidden by it.

Everywhere Beatrice looked were cluttered surfaces—shelves of books and bric-a-brac and bottles, altars covered in candlewax, desks and tables strewn with parchment, quills, inkpots and goblets. One of the crows swooped off across the room, settling itself upon a perch near Gray’s cushion-strewn bed.

The crow which still sat upon the mage’s shoulder quirked its head, regarding her.

“I think,” said Gray. “Before all else, it is time I offered you my apology, my lady.”

“Your apology? Sir, you don’t—”

“I do. Darcy is your wife, after all. And I failed her. I failed all of us.”

Beatrice gnawed her lip, not knowing at first what to say. There had been moments where’d she’d held that against him, it was true. But she remembered Jemison’s words well, and they’d left their mark.

“I hold no enmity for you, my lord. Only gratitude for your efforts and sympathy for your situation. If it weren’t for me, the procedure never would have been necessary in the first place,” the words turned bitter on her lips, catching in her throat at the end.

“None of this is your fault, my lady. You did not choose to be forced into exile. You did not choose to unleash a power you knew nothing about.”

“I…thank you, Lord Gray.” Beatrice dragged in a deep and only somewhat shaky breath. “My lord, before anything else, there is something of which I must tell you.”

And she recounted then all of the strange things Victoria had told her and her experience of the night before, withdrawing the little slip of fabric and parchment from a pocket of her skirts and holding it out for his crow to examine. Gray frowned, the furrowing of his brow just visible over the top of his mask.

“May I?” He inquired, gesturing to the key about her neck. She nodded, reaching back to untie it from her neck and placing it in his palm.

“There is a power in this,” he said, and what she could see of his expression was uneasy.

“Yes,” replied Beatrice. “I thought so, too. But it feels…it feels good to have it near, though the prospect of it frightens me. Who, do you think, is this A? The letter and brocade smell nothing like Arron, I feel certain it can’t be him—and I can’t see why he would leave me such a package in any case. And what think you of Victoria’s Papa Demitri—and what she’s said of her mother? I can’t help but feel it’s all…connected, somehow. Jemison believes Victoria is just imagining things, but I have not yet shown him the message…and this morning, she started wailing at the mere thought that she might have lied. It’s hard to suppose she’d ever just make things up and speak of them as truth, but then…I hardly know her yet.”

Gray listened to her outpouring in patient yet increasingly troubled silence.

“I’m afraid I’ve but few answers for you, my lady, though we will speak more of mirrors and Demitris shortly. I must admit that Victoria’s tales have given me pause for some time, though until very recently I’d had no reason to suppose Jemison might have been wrong. I shall do what I can to investigate further. To that end—I should like to keep this key for now, if you’ll allow it. A more thorough examination may reveal something of use.”

“Yes, of course,” said Beatrice, though somehow it pained her to part with it. “Thank you, my lord.” At the troubled look on her face, Gray smiled gently.

“Most likely this is merely some further attempt at manipulation on the duchess’s part, Lady Beatrice. Let us, for the time, move your mind from the matter. Let us speak instead of crows.”

“Crows?”

“Indeed. Remarkable creatures. Highly intelligent, yes…but extraordinary in other ways, too. Did you know that crows carry ancestral memories?”

Stolen novel; please report.

Beatrice blinked, looking to the specimen before her as it picked at something between its feathers.

“Truly?”

“Truly. They remember things their forebears witnessed and experienced, and with remarkable clarity. Every crow is a window into the past, for those few of us who are able to look. This was widespread knowledge, once…but it’s been suppressed, for reasons I’m certain you can imagine.”

“That’s…that’s incredible,” replied Beatrice, voice hushed in awe.

“It is, and quite lucky for us. For you see, of course, the only surviving books on the subject of Fox magecraft are quite inaccessible. Not even Darcy may read the volumes in possession of the Knight’s League without special dispensation. But through the crows, we may look into a time when Foxes roamed this world freely. When new mages were schooled in the open.”

Beatrice felt her eyes go wide. “You can tell me of their lessons?”

Gray smiled. “I think it better if I show you.”

The Wolf mage lead her to a chair at which she might sit across from him, extending his elegant hands in invitation. Memory sharing. A common enough ability among Wolf mages, but another of which she’d had no experience.

Beatrice sat, and—tentatively—placed her hands in his. Energy sparked where their skin made contact, flaring and then pulling taught like a cord of power. Binding them.

The crow cawed.

“If you would close your eyes, please,” murmured Gray, and Beatrice complied. At once, images blossomed up to fill the darkness. Not quite as though she were actually seeing them, but more tangible than if she were merely imagining them.

She was looking down into a courtyard from the branch of a great, mossy tree. The leaves were full and green, and the air was warm. Below, a circle of ten young people stood dressed all in white tunics belted over gray robes. Their attention was focused upon an eleventh person, several years their senior and dressed similarly—but with a many-colored cord tied about his waist. Leaning against one of the cobblestone walls was another fellow, of middle age and wearing a gray tunic over black robes.

She shifted impatiently on her spindly feet.

The elder was lecturing his students on the importance of self-control. This had been a focus of theirs’ for some time it would seem, and they had all recently passed a trial of some kind.

“You have proved yourselves capable in the suppression and redirection of your Iithra,” concluded the elder, as Beatrice guessed at the meaning of the unknown word. “And now, in preparation for the Second Trial, the dreadful time has come for you each to summon your first deliberate gateway.“ at this he eyed one of the acolytes, a young man about Beatrice’s age with flame-orange hair, who flushed.

“Your aim is to summon a functioning portal which opens into the center of the great hall. Who shall make the first attempt?”

The tallest of the young women came forward, dark eyes glinting and the hint of a smile on her face.

The teacher bowed his head and stepped to the side of her as she squared her feet, facing away from the gaggle of students a few paces behind her.

“Breathe deeply and gather up your Iithra,” said the teacher, raising his voice for the benefit of the others. The girl’s chest rose and fell, and her eyes slipped out of focus. “Your only thought shall be your location. Your only feeling shall be your desire to reach it safely.”

At this the acolyte drew in another long breath and gave a curt nod.

“Now, choose the point of manifestation. Focusing your attention upon it, bring together power, thought, and desire as one great light within you, and direct it upon that point with all the strength of your mind.”

Focusing so intensely on her chosen spot that she went quite nearly cross-eyed, the young woman inhaled once more. Then, exhaling, she brought her hands up and together, palms outward. A heartbeat later, the air of the manifestion point fractured. Rainbow colors flared and pulsed and whirled together, resolving finally into a brilliantly blue portal that hovered about a handspan above the ground.

No sooner had it fully resolved, a torrent of water poured forth—dashing the young woman to the ground under its force and rapidly turning the dirt to mud as the other acolytes exclaimed and scrabbled away. The portal’s conjurer managed to roll from her spot just in time to avoid being struck by a very large shark.

“Close it quickly, Erra, quickly now!” Shouted the elder. His voice—though raised to be heard over the rushing of water—betrayed nothing but amused exasperation. “Focus and withdraw. Focus and withdraw.”

Struggling to her feet and jumping back from the thrashing shark, the acolyte’s eyes went cross once more. Several salmon, an octopus and an old boot sloshed through the portal to pile and flop through the mud, and then it wavered and was gone. At his post along the wall, the man in black and gray whistled, and a number of gray-robed figures poured from a nearby archway to gather up the fish and drag away the shark.

“We shall have seafood for supper tonight, I suspect,” observed the elder dryly. “Now, who next?”

The following acolyte, a nervous, shrinking sort of boy, managed to conjure a portal into what could well be their great hall, but within heartbeats it had turned gray and flickered out.

“A worthy first effort,” commented the professor, moving on. The third acolyte was successful, stepping through their portal and back before closing it again—a look of absolute terror on their face the whole way through.

“Well done, well done!” Declared the elder, clapping politely as the other students whooped and cheered.

Then came the fiery haired boy.

He had a crooked sort of smile, one of his particularly long canines showing through. But though the look on his face was smug and his eyes shone with excitement, the crow’s keen eyes could see that he trembled faintly in his boots.

Again, the elder repeated his instructions. But the young man seemed barely to be listening, bringing up his hands when he should still be gathering his power, unleashing it when he should be directing it. The air broke and resolved at his command, but it was not to the great hall that the portal lead, or anywhere else that could be seen. He had summoned a mirror, some one-and-a-half times his height, and the look on his face as he gazed upon his own image was one of wide-eyed bafflement. Almost as if in a daze, he took a stumbling step closer to it.

“No!”

There was shock in their teacher’s shout, this time, and fear. The students stared too, an air of curiosity, bemusement and concern rising with their whispers. “Do not ever step into an unknown portal,” said the elder. Then, just under his breath— “what is this?” Turning his gaze to the man along the wall, he jerked his head in the portal’s direction.

The man, for his part, glanced up at the crow whose mind Beatrice inhabited. She felt his request as a strange sort of pull, rather than any kind of words. The bird experienced a surge of pleasure, anticipating tasty reward as she swooped from the branch.

Tucking her wings to her side, she dove straight for the mirrored portal. A tingling, pleasurable coolness swept over her body as she pierced it.

It was the scent of mint that hit her first, which even to the crow’s poor approximation of the sense was strong. Then her attention shifted to the view…and what she saw took her breath away.