Grey sat across the table from the other apprentice. There was one plate of meat and a bowl of soup in the middle of the table. One spoon and one fork. The knife, however, floated in the air above the food. Every few seconds the tip of the blade wavered toward the other apprentice. Now toward Grey. Neither had eaten today and the food on the table would only go to one of them. It was often like this.  

Her master stood in the doorway, watching his apprentices. 

The knife turned toward Grey and began to slide through the air

“You showed so much promise when you were young, Grey,” her master said. The knife stopped moving toward her and trembled. Her master left his spot at the door and came behind her. “The things you could do back then!” He said, “I had such hopes for you, but you have proved intractable.”

Her pulled her hair back across one shoulder and bent to her ear. “It does happen sometimes that an apprentice will break. A strong young one is assigned to me and despite all my best efforts and tender ministrations she can’t cope with the strain.”

The knife began its silent slide toward her again. Grey leaned back and felt her master’s hand press into her back. “If you don’t want to be cut again, then win. He’s just little boy. He is nothing next to you. You will be great some day, Grey. I’ve always seen it.” He slid his hand onto the back of her neck and gripped, bending her head to the side. The blade slid closer. “Don’t disappoint me.”

Grey tried to reach out with the invisible hands of her power and grip the knife, turn it, send it back toward the other boy, but it was slippery. It was all she could do to strain against the weight of the will of the boy across the table.

Her master took a handful of her hair and pulled her back against his body. The knife was completely in the grip of the other apprentice. Her master said, “Look at that vein, Thomas,” he touched Grey’s neck, “You have my permission to cut it if you would like. She is under your control.”

The boy was not smiling anymore. 

“Are you crying, Grey?” Her master said and looked at the boy, “Well?”

The knife darted toward Grey and cut a thin line on her cheek. Blood flowed out over the other scars there and ran down Grey’s chin. Her master released her and went to the food at the center of the table. “Thomas, now you’re disappointing me too. If you had killed her, there would have been more food for you, less competition, more of my attention. This was a missed opportunity for you, my boy.” As he spoke he picked up the piece of meat and put it in his own mouth. He tipped the bowl of soup over and spilled it onto the table. It pooled and steamed on the table and dripped onto the floor. “You may leave.”

“Thank you, father.” Thomas stood up and hurried out of the room.

“Grey, gather yourself,” he said, tossing a cloth. Half of it was soggy with soup, but she held it to the cut on her cheek. “How many times must you lose this game? You are his better, and yet, you continue to lose.”

“I’m sorry, father.”

“Grey, you know how I feel about that word,” he said, “Only the dead are sorry.”

“Yes, father.”

Her master sighed. “You have one more chance, Grey. The knife was poisoned. Already the poison has begun its work.” He took a vial from his cloak and set it on the table. “This is the antidote. If you have not taken this before sunset tomorrow, you will die. This particular poison is quite a painful death, I might add.”

Grey considered trying to take it from him. It was possible that is what he wanted. There had been tests like that before.

“Wizard Matlock has an apprentice called… oh, what is his name? The tall one. Blonde. Stupid looking boy.”

“Ben,” Grey said.

“Ah yes,” he said, “Now I remember. I saw you with him. You and the other apprentices seemed quite happy. Well, young Benjamin, has slighted me, I’m afraid.”

“What did he do?” she said, adding, “Father.”

“Slighted me, Grey” he said, “And I cannot tolerate disrespect. And for that matter, neither can I tolerate my apprentice’s dalliances with the apprentices of my rivals. It sets a poor example. So, if Ben is not dead or gone from Primus by sunset tomorrow, you have a nasty little death waiting for you, my darling. But, if he is gone by then one way or another, you get the antidote. And, of course, I get to retain my apprentice. Understand?”

“Yes, father.”

“Good. Get yourself cleaned up. You’ve got a busy night ahead.” He took the antidote and left the room.

…

“How is life with the famed and terrible Wizard Palomar?” Ben asked when Grey sat down. They were in one of the pubs that proliferated in Primus. This was their favorite. It was low-ceilinged and dark and apprentices came to talk about their masters and play Lines. It was the first place she looked. He had been there with two other apprentices playing the game. She sat with them and Ben dealt her cards. 

“You shouldn’t talk about him,” Grey said.

“Right,” Ben said. She didn’t know the names of the other apprentices, but knew they were two of Matlock’s newer pupils. One held out his hand to Grey and introduced himself. She ignored him.

“It is nothing personal, Max,” Ben said, “Grey likes people to know she is not a nice person.” 

Grey smiled despite herself. She liked Ben. Which, no doubt was one of the reasons Palomar had decided to make her kill him. Her smile faded.

“How is life with the famed and not so terrible Wizard Matlock?” Grey said.

“Not bad actually,” Max, one of the younger apprentices, answered, “When my parents sent me to him I thought it would be all, you know… like the stories, but it’s kind of nice. I’m learning a lot. We get these clothes.” Max smoothed the collar on his shirt and touched the spot where Matlock’s crest was woven.

“Hey! You dealt me blank cards,” Max said.

“No, I didn’t,” Ben said, “That would be Grey messing with your head. If you make an attempt, I’m sure you’ll be able to see your cards again.”

Max furrowed his brow for a minute. The third of Matlock’s apprentices was laughing, but then he said, “Hey! mine are blank too.”

“Pool your focus against her, Paul,” Ben said.

Paul swatted Grey on the arm and said, “Quit it. We were playing a game and you just sat down.”

“Looks like you aren’t playing anymore,” Grey said. “And if you touch me again you will lose your mouth.” She looked at Ben, “It’s just the two of us.”

Ben looked at his cards and pushed three of his coins into the center of the table. “Luckily, I know how you play.”

“I doubt it,” Grey said, picking up her own cards.

“I see he still has you playing the knife game for your supper. Looks like you lost.”

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“I did,” Grey said and countered Ben’s bet. She played a the six of cups, then it changed to a knight of wands, then a queen of bees and stayed. Ben moved two cards in his hand. “Since you ask, life is not so well with Wizard Palomar just now.”

“Do tell,” Ben said, “Or is he listening? You know, I heard he makes you call him Father.” Ben played an ace of blacks, which became a queen of bees. It flickered back and forth between the ace and queen several times, then Grey laughed as it settled on the queen.

“This is why we didn’t invite you to the game,” Ben said, “I must admit, I am slightly impressed by the fact that you’re messing with these two and still beating me.” He nodded to Matlock’s apprentices.

“You are losing because you don’t know what game we’re playing.”

“So, Grey, what happened with your master?”

“The knife was poisoned.” Ben played another card and Grey let him win it. “It is a fatal poison, apparently, but he offered me the antidote on the condition I perform one task for him.”

“And what task was that, Grey,”

“That I kill you.” Ben set his cards down. The other apprentices were looking back and forth between Ben and Grey. Grey smiled, “Or make you leave Primus by tomorrow. One or the other.”

“And so like a good little girl you came straight here.”

“Of course I did. He said I had until sunset tomorrow.”

“Come back with me to Matlock,” Ben said, “He can help you. He isn’t like Palomar.”

“I doubt he could help me. I doubt I’d make it there.”

“He’s really messed you up,” Ben said. “Don’t do it, Grey.”

“You’re right, but it doesn’t matter. I’m going to do what he asked.”

“Don’t.”

“I already did.”

“What?”

“Look at your leg, Ben.”

Ben stood up. A thin ribbon of blood was running down his leg and soaking through his clothing. “You cut me?”

“With the very same knife.” Grey set her master’s poisoned knife in the table.

“I didn’t feel it,” Ben said. 

Grey nodded.

“Here are our options,” Grey said, “You stay in Primus and we both die. You decide to fight me right now, I kill you and these two. Then I get the antidote and live. Or you leave Primus right now, and I get the antidote, drink half, and bring the other half to you. We both live.”

Ben opened his mouth and closed it. He sat back down at table. “Matlock won’t let this happen, Grey. He could ruin you for killing an apprentice.” Ben said.

“That may be the point.”

“He’ll kill Palomar,” Ben said.

“No, I don’t think so.” Grey shook her head and stood up, “Send me your location by starlight.”

“I can’t believe you did this, Grey.”

“Do we live in the same Primus, Ben?” Grey said, “Oh, I wouldn’t wait long before you leave. He said I had until sunset tomorrow, but he’s lied before.”

….

Grey went to her master and collected the antidote saying only, “It’s done, father.” 

“Killed or fled, Grey?” Palomar asked with his eyes on a book in front of him. 

“He’s gone.”

“And if he returns?”

“I will do as you tell me,” Grey said.

“Your softness will get someone killed someday, Grey.” Palomar said and waived his hand. It was a gesture of dismissal and at the same time she felt a small weight fall into her pocket.  As soon as she was outside his rooms she removed the slender vial that contained the antidote from her pocket and drank half of it. 

Ben sent her his location by starlight as she’d told him to. The spot he chose was outside the city, but only just. All around Primus the forest was cut back for miles except for a grove outside the city walls. That was the spot he’d chosen. The guards at the west gate stopped her, but let her go when they saw the knife and veil crest on her collar. She discovered early in her apprenticeship that her master’s name was good for opening doors people didn’t want a girl to go through. 

Grey was not afraid to be outside the city walls, at least, not this far outside. She had learned enough to defend herself against many things, but she knew enough not to go wandering far in Faerie. But this close to Primus, she walked without casting any spells on herself and her mind wandered to what she would say to Ben. She formed the shape of an apology in her mind and rejected it over and over. She would just give him the antidote and leave and let life in Primus be its own explanation. She imagined his anger and didn’t want to hear it. She started to feel angry herself, but she wasn’t sure at what. Or at whom. There was a little anger for her master in the feeling, but there was no use of nursing her anger there. She might as well be angry at death itself or power itself. Death and power simply were what they were - a part of the world. If you could escape the one and master the other, you survived. That was Primus.

When she arrived at the hill she could see the figure standing at the top was not Ben. She came out of the trees and waited at the bottom of the hill, thinking. It could only be one of two people. If it was her master, then a trap she had not understood had sprung and she was caught in it. Or it was Matlock, Ben’s master, in which case… she was unsure of what would happen. She walked up the hill.

It wasn’t Palomar. Grey let out a slow breath she hadn’t known she was holding. She would not have been able to fight anyway. It was just like it had been with the other apprentice during the knife game. When Palomar was around, her power increasingly evaded her. She needed to think about this later. If it continued, she doubted she would live long in Palomar’s service.

“Where is Ben?” Grey said.

“Safe,” Matlock answered.The wizard was younger than Palomar and was stockier where Palomar slender in the way a snake is slender. 

“Do you know what this place is, Grey?” Matlock asked. 

“A monument,” she said.

“Palomar is a strong wizard, but he is weak in history,” Matlock said, “It has been left as a kind of monument, but it is more than that. It is a place of power. The wizard whom history calls Lord Ix lived here once. It is unclear if Ix chose this place because of its concentration of magical energy or if he did something to it to make it so. Ix had arts lost to us, perhaps hidden from us by his intention.”

“I have the antidote.” She held out the vial to him but he ignored it. 

“There were battles here before the wizards became what we are now. When Primus was young and the creatures of Faerie came against us. Their army was disorganized but powerful. Primus was also strong, but its power was untested. The first school for wizards was new and though the duke’s dragon guard wore dragon scale armor, there were actual dragons arrayed against them on that day. There were seven cities then, not two. Septimus, Sextus, and Quintus fell in that battle, burned by dragon fire. The horde turned on Primus itself and just as it was about to fall, Ix appeared on this very hilltop. It burned with runes that looked as though they had been written in fire. The runes spread across the walls of Primus like the rising of the sun and the land around the city exploded. The horde was buried and Ix himself battled the dragons with his sword and his spells. He destroyed an unstoppable force by himself. Because he was here.”

“He also had his sword that could turn into other things,” Grey said.

“Yes, Ix did have his sword, but his best weapons that day were knowledge, this hill, and timing.”

“Give the antidote to Ben.” She held the vial out to him again.

“I have already given Ben the antidote. You should take the rest for yourself. The poison Palomar gave you is a terrible one and half a vial is not enough to stop it. As I am sure he knows.” Matlock said. She unstoppered the vial and drank the rest of the antidote. The other wizard nodded.  “Don’t miss my point about the hill, Grey.You can do almost anything here. The magic is especially strong if you want to protect something. Tonight it let me quickly make the kind of spells that will hide us from your master. We can speak privately and you can tell him whatever you wish of our conversation.”

“I will tell him the truth.”

“All of the truth?” Matlock said.

“He has a way of finding things out.”

“I suppose he does.”

“What will happen to Ben?”

“I have sent him away.”

“Away?”

“Yes, Grey. What your master did to you was very cruel and I can’t let him put you in that position again. Ben has a new master now in Secondus. Someone I trust,” Matlock said. “When Ben told me his story I asked myself why Palomar would want my apprentice dead. Do you know, Grey?”

Grey did know. “Because I liked him.”

“I do think that is part of it. However, if Ben’s estimation of you is correct, this plan to take half the antidote is an unsurprising gambit, although a noble one. Palomar is an excellent judge of character, and he doesn’t tolerate disobedience. Yet you are still alive. Which leads me to conclude that in doing what you did, you were doing what he wanted you to do.”

“Why?”

Matlock smiled a smile that took away some of the softness she had sensed in him when she walked up the hill. “I must admit that he knows me too. He knows I would never allow my apprentice to be killed. We must presume, then, that it is this very conversation that he wanted to happen. He wanted you and I to meet because I am his enemy and he wants to use you against me.”

“How?” Grey said. 

“I don’t know yet, though I should have expected it. It presents a kind of symmetry. I detest his ways of using his apprentices, so he uses one against me.”

“Can you?”

“Protect you? Yes and no,” Matlock said. “Unless I miss my guess your master wants me to take you into my service, to take you away from him and provide him with a direct challenge. And for that reason I can’t. But I may be able to help you in another way.”

“What do you mean?”

“You mentioned the sword of Ix. Do you really think it was his decisive power?”

“In the stories Ix always appears and kills things with it.”

“Do you want it?”

“Want it?”

Matlock took a small, black bar out of his cloak and held it out to her. It was slightly longer than an apprentice’s wand and was the width of one of her fingers. “If you want it, it is yours.”

Grey stared at it for a moment, then laughed. “If I bring a weapon back to the castle and then you can listen to our conversations, or open our doors, something else. Or perhaps if I am stupid enough to believe that it is really the sword of Ix and try to use it on him and he kills me and your enemy is down one apprentice.”

“I swear by the stars that I have put no enchantment on this blade except one that will hide it from your master.”

“That isn’t a blade,” she said. 

“As you so eloquently put it, it turns into other things,” Matlock said, “Trust me, Grey.”

“Trust?” she said, “Do we live in the same Primus?” She asked him the same question she had asked Ben. She could see where Ben got his weakness and she felt angry at him for it.

“We make Primus into what we want it to be,” Matlock said, “As your master has.”

“Then why don’t you kill him?” she shouted. Her voice was loud in the silent grove.

Matlock sighed, “Come into my service, Grey. I can’t leave you to his devices.”

“Why don’t you kill him? I have seen him kill his own apprentices,” Grey felt an uncomfortable tightness in her throat and she wondered if a spell was on her to prevent her from talking about the things Palomar had done, but the tightness burst out of her mouth when she said. “I have killed some of them too.” 

“Oh, Grey.” Matlock moved toward her and she darted backward. “Come into my service. You don’t have to return to him. You never have to see him again. You can be safe tonight. Right now.”

Whatever feeling had closed her throat was suddenly gone, dispelled with her shout. She stepped toward Matlock and stared up into his face, “The only way to survive is to survive,” she said, “I will become a wizard and I will make myself safe.” She walked the down the hill away from him. 

He was shouting something after her, but couldn’t make it out. When she had said that she would make herself safe she had felt something moving under her feet. It felt like a deep gravity, or a wave coming from a long distance, or a a sleeping dragon coming to the surface of the earth. 

She looked over her shoulder as she entered the line of trees. The other wizard was gone. She took it as confirmation of something, though she wasn’t sure what. She walked silently to her horse, head bowed and distracted by the thoughts moving quickly inside her mind. She untied the horse and walked it through the trees. She hardly noticed it when her hand moved into the pocket of her robe and wrapped itself around an unexpected weight. She pulled it out and saw the thin black wand that Matlock had offered her. 

She let it roll off the tips of her fingers and fall into the grass. She rode back to her master.