A half dozen options rushed through my head at once. I could kill her and flee, but I’d have to tap into my bloodline to do it, and if I did that, then anyone in my family in Summerbone would smell it, and they’d start hunting me down.

Not to mention, that felt extreme. If she started threatening me, I’d do it, but so far, it seemed like she was on the run too, hiding from someone unrelated to me. If I could ferret out her secret, we’d be on even footing.

I could run, but then everything I’d just gotten would be lost. My best chance to flee this side of the continent, and to learn enough magic to hide and protect myself, would be gone.

I would keep that option in mind, but for now? I’d see if I couldn’t convince her to keep her silence.

“Keep your voice down,” I said. “Okay, yes, I don’t have a weak demon bloodline. I was born under that name. But I prefer Emrys of White Sands.”

“What about Anders?”

“I’ll accept Anders. I told that name to Jackson because he was too… touchy.”

Her eyes narrowed, and I saw her processing the implications. My own mind was working, and I threw out an educated guess.

“You have a bounty on you in Shen-Long,” I said. “Now you’re on the run.”

When I smelled fear spiking, I knew I was on the right track.

“How about you tell me,” I said. “You know my secret, so this will give us both leverage.”

“I am the child of a demonic serpent and a human. I carry a powerful, pure bloodline. My mother kept it secret and claimed I was just the child of a serpentine beastfolk. I thought, given how suppressed you kept your bloodline, and that it was listed as a risk, that you were a demon blood too. We could travel together, and be safer, since Auntie Lei was killed…”

“That’s why you attacked me? They followed you and killed your guardian?”

“My mother… made enemies,” she said. “Yes.”

“Why here? If you’re going to the Citadel of Ether, then why not go–”

“She sent me to go to the Citadel, because she has an ally there who can shelter me, but I did my testing here because it’s known to have the lowest bar for the entrance exams, given it’s so far from any reputable academies, and they were keeping an eye on the testing centers near the Citadel.”

I paused.

It was? That was news to me.

“I see,” I said. “Well… What now?”

“I… I suppose my offer is still open,” Yushin said. “I could show you the spell to hide a bloodline. You seem very good at it, but the spell can help. You teach me the method you use to do it, and we will both be safer. If I betray you, you can equally betray me.”

I considered it for a long moment, turning over the ways this could go horribly wrong in my head. There were a lot, but the ways it could go wrong if I said no were even higher. This would let me keep an eye on her, at least.

“Deal,” I said. “Do you know the false face spell?”

“I do,” she said, nodding. “Do you keep a spellbook?”

“I haven’t been able to afford to summon my grim–”

“No, not that. A book of spells.”

“Oh, no, I’ve never been able to afford spell guides. I just keep it memorized.”

She sighed, then flicked her hand in an odd motion and pressed a wrapped scroll into my hand.

“This is the spell guide for enshroud. It lasts for eight hours, and requires a small amount of diamond dust to be sacrificed, only about fifteen standard gold coins worth. It will hide you from most divinations, ether signature tracking, and the ability to sense other bloodlines, so long as you keep your own bloodline suppressed.”

My eyes went wide as saucers. On one hand, it explained why I hadn’t picked her out as having a bloodline until she’d told me – I was normally good at sniffing out people with non-mortal heritage.

On the other hand, that was a lot of money!

“A hundred and fifty silvers a day? I only have a thousand silver, that won’t last the whole voyage. I also don’t have any diamond dust at all.”

She gave me a puzzled look, then sighed.

“You’re sure you’re the missing member of the Dreki family? The ones so rich they run their own nation?”

“I’m pretty bloody well certain, yeah,” I said, and she rolled her eyes, then produced a bag barely large enough to fit two grapes in it from nowhere, and handed it to me.

“There. That’s five hundred silver worth of powdered diamond.”

My mouth fell open, and she shut it with one finger, then removed a pouch from her waist.

She extracted a tiny pinch of glimmering dust, and I felt ether churn around her. She spoke several long words of power, chanting for half a minute, then there was a small flash of red light as it was consumed.

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Yushin pressed her finger to my forehead, and I felt power settle inside of me. It layered over… something… then kept moving. A light mesh of magic settled around my ether pool, but the spell kept going deeper, until the same diaphanous spellwork lay over the space where I kept my bloodline suppressed.

I shivered at the feeling. It felt… weird. It would be easy to puncture, that much was for certain. If I pushed ether out of my pool for spellcasting, or drew on my bloodline ability, it would break, but… There were three layers. I could break one, but leave the other two intact. My family didn’t have my ether signature – if they did, they’d have found me a long time ago, bloodline suppression or no – so I should be safe to cast spells. .

“You will teach me every spell you know, and we are even.”

“You have a deal,” I said, nodding.

“Oh, what language is that?” Jackson asked, strolling in from where he’d gone ahead. “I felt ether and heard words of power. Got worried for a second.”

“Ognu,” I lied, picking a language that was from the same continent as Shen-Long, but was quite different. I was much less fluent in Ongu, but I knew a few phrases.

Yushin shot me a grateful look, and I winked.

“Ohhh, seducing her in her native tongue? Let’s get a move on, lovebirds. We won’t make it to the city by nightfall otherwise.”

“Yes,” Yushin agreed, her voice flat. Jackson didn’t seem to notice, and instead rambled on about whatever topic caught his interest.

“So, I know Anders here doesn’t have one, but have you summoned a grimoire, Yushin? What affinity do you have?”

“I have not,” Yushin said. “There’s a rumor that if you perform the ritual in a place where Etherius is very close, and when many other grimoires are present, the affinity spell within your grimoire will be stronger, and it is more likely to contain useful spells.”

“Really really really? I’ve never heard of that. The church did my summoning for me, though we channeled Effervence’s divinities, rather than rely on components.”

“I’ve heard of it,” I jumped in. I kind of had – an old witch-woman who I’d learned lifeberries from had told me something similar.

“Though,” I said after a moment. “I was told it was best to summon it where Etherius is close, and on a day or night around the time of a full moon. Not the other grimoires bit.”

“Huh. Well, I’m sure my god was able to help pick my grimoire out for me. If you could get any affinity, what would you want?” Jackson asked. “I got fire, which is pretty amazing for my style of magic.”

I paused. I did know a little about affinity magic – it was the old stuff, which worked more like magical beast bloodline, or the innate magic from the beings of Etherius. But beyond that, I didn’t know much about magic.

“I want something that spellcraft struggles to do,” Yushin said definitively. “Perhaps a core spell of stealth.”

“Alright, I’ll bite,” I said. “What are you talking about?”

“Affinity magic is older magic,” Jackson said. “Left over from the… Sundered age? But it’s a unique spell that’s usually super flexible. Like, I heard of one guy with a book affinity, who learned a bunch of runic spells, then used his affinity to make a ton at once, and took down a wing of dragons with it.”

“Elemental or material manipulation are the most common type by far, though every core affinity spell is unique to the individual,” Yushin explained. “Fire manipulation is common, but very strong.”

“How can something be common and unique?” I asked skeptically.

“Easy,” Jackson said. “Each spell is designed differently, and only works for the person who calls its grimoire. Fire manipulation is a big term, but there's a lot of stuff in there. Each one has different limits. Like, I doubt most lemon affinities could make their juice into flesh melting acid, but maybe some can. The rest can just do a bunch of cool lemon magic, with only one spell. There’s also occupation affinities, which are rarer, but do pop up, like… I dunno, chef affinities. They let you do a lot of other things, but all localized around the kitchen or cooking.”

“Huh, so when you said you wanted to learn fire magic… Your affinity lets you skip it?”

“Mostly, sure,” he said. “But my grimoire allows me to combine my fire manipulation with fire spellcraft to boost it.”

“Most spellbooks contain these sorts of spells,” Yushin commented. “Also unique affinity spells, but that only modify the core spell, rather than act on their own.”

“And a couple of spellcraft spells, then a ton of blank pages for you to fill in however you want,” Jackson said. “Mine had the third circle spell firestride, and the fourth circle firewall.”

“So when you said a stealth affinity, I assume that’s one of the strange ones that’s not an element or a substance,” I said, nodding to Yushin.

“Indeed. But a flexible spell to hide me sounds perfect, especially if it can enhance other spells of the sort.”

I nodded sagely, then thought about what I would want.

Something stupid like lemons was right out. I needed something I could defend myself with, when or if my family came knocking.

Yushin said elemental and material were the most common, but common didn’t mean useless or weak. Water or wind would be perfect for me, and even earth could provide power – catapults did launch stones, after all, and I could armor myself in it.

Fire would be amazing, so long as my particular one was flexible enough to work with strange, innately magical fires, like phoenix fire. If it was purely mundane, I was less interested.

More esoteric ones like stealth or enchanting had their place, and I wouldn’t be unhappy with them.

But my mind was drawn back to water. I could do so much with water, and if I could infuse it with my spellcraft, I could become a true force to be reckoned with.

“Water, or maybe wind,” I said.

“What about storms?” Jackson asked.

“That would give me less defense and utility, but I’d be content with it,” I said.

We chatted for a while longer about affinities, as well as what kinds of spellcraft we wanted to learn at school.

Jackson, to the surprise of exactly nobody, was most interested in fire magic and the obliteration school, but he also had some interest in restoration magic.

That surprised me for the whole of two seconds… then he started preaching about the healing qualities of the sun and fire, and how it was the greatest ally of the mortal races.

I tuned out the ramble, then Jackson asked Yushin and I what types of magic we were most interested in.

“If I had to pick a school, I would select illusion and transmutation,” Yushin said. “But I’m not so much interested in a specific school of magic as I am in certain effects. Wind magic, notably. While many wind controlling spells are transmutation, many are obliteration, several are abjuration, and so on and so forth. I do not think Magyk was correct in making schools.”

“Sure, but the classic counter argument exists for a reason,” I said. “If you sort only by effects, other types of magic fail to fit in nicely. A spell to summon a fire elemental is fire… Unless the same spell is used to summon a water elemental. Or air.”

“Summoning would be its own effect,” Yushin said, “Obviously.”

“So the summon stone spell wouldn’t be a stone spell?” I asked.

Yushin made a ‘hmm’ noise.

“Maybe spells can’t be categorized?” Jackson suggested.

“That’s the whole thing with old wyld magic, when anyone could do anything, though, and all magic was like affinity magic,” I pointed out, and he nodded.

“I don’t think there is a perfect system,” Yushin said. “Maybe Magyk simply did the best she could?”

“No, there’s got to be some sort of objective underlying principle, since she is all magic and all spellcraft,” I said, though even I wasn’t convinced by my own argument.

The three of us bickered back and forth about the nature of magic, not because any of us could solve it, but because it was fun. When we finally arrived in Summerbone, I made an excuse to Jackson about having some really annoying family members that lived there, and Yushin and I cast the false face spell to disguise our appearance.

He didn’t seem convinced, but he didn’t press the issue either, and I thanked his god for that.