The apprentice’s cloak was so blue it outshone the sky, a Magician’s robe in miniature. Rana’s skin prickled at its touch, even as it shielded her from the sun and the nipping of the salted winds. It draped sullenly across her shoulders, as if it knew she didn’t want it there.
Work, Cardainne had said with ominous certainty. She hadn’t realised that would include…this.
A miniature net gleamed before her, wispy fibres wrapped around swirls of killing mist. She tried to ignore the way the gases roiled in their silver cage, like a desert fox thrashing in the jaws of a trap.
“See here,” Cardainne said. “It is rendered in lines.” He conjured up more filament with a twist of his fingers. “Not like a shield, you understand? That would not be the correct texture. You must draw from the central reserves. Now Karim, you demonstrate.”
Her cousin dipped his head in the shallowest of bows, expression hidden behind a painted owl-face. He rolled his shoulders and spooled strings of silver from his hands. They arced through the air before weaving themselves into a loose lattice. Between the gaps of the lattice, spell-light sprung up of its own accord. How did it manage to do that? Rana racked her head for connections and found only runic principles, completely useless here. Karim’s scrap of net looked well-made, she could tell. As good as Cardainne’s even.
“Now you try conjuring one,” Cardainne told her. “Refer to the fourteenth chapter in Suud’s Principles.”
She’d been too busy with work to have read that far. It wasn’t as if she wanted to be a Magician, even with the coaxing suggestion of safety he had offered her—but she felt her face heat self-consciously, even so. Perhaps this was an exercise in embarrassing her? Well, it wouldn’t work. If failing this task rid her of the cloak’s weight, then she would hardly miss it.
She cast her magic, because outright refusal might be interpreted…poorly. A ragged streak of grey burst from the tips of her fingers and curled pathetically through the air. She didn’t know how to weave spells; Aliyah would do far better in her stead, having actually known how to sew—
She flicked the thought away, back to the recesses of her panicked musings. Aliyah was gone. She had new problems now.
“Not very good,” Cardainne said. “Try again.”
She did. The effect was much the same as before.
“Again,” Cardainne said.
It took three more tries before he said, “Apprenticeling.”
The word was uttered very neutrally. An alarm chimed in her head; time listening to the court conversations of others had attuned her to this particular tone of neutral. She stilled her efforts under his gaze—and no doubt Karim’s too, if the unimpressed hunch of his shoulders was anything to go by.
“It is good to apply yourself to your full capacity,” Cardainne said. “I think, maybe, you need some help.”
He made a cutting motion with his hand and his own net thinned—all of it, until the cage was barely visible. The Killing Field mist within pulsed as it drifted closer, flickering like a thundercloud. She took a step back and Cardainne’s magic flared blue, leashing her legs to where she stood on the salt.
“We the Magicians do not flee in the face of adversity,” he said. “Isn’t that right, Karim?”
Karim made an awkward, almost pained sound of acknowledgment.
Rana eyed the approaching mist, straining reflexively to move, to run away. Any sane person would; did that mean Magicians weren’t sane, or did it mean they weren’t people? Her thoughts scattered as her breath drew tight. The dark air inched closer and still, he wasn’t letting her run.
She cast the tendrils of net, pouring more effort into it this time. Grey turned to silver and frayed ends thickened; it looked better, but it wasn’t a proper net. Her magic strained against the front of the barely-meshed killing mist before fizzling out: quashed and burnt, spent and useless.
Cardainne looked her over with empty owl’s eyes and kept her trapped atop the accursed salt as the mist came slowly, inexorably closer.
He was likely going to let it reach her, she realised. Even if it was a ruse—and was it a ruse, really?—she couldn’t afford to test it. There would be no use in trying to enlist help from Karim, either. That was another thing with Magicians: there was a very clear hierarchy.
She cast another net, as strong as she could. The lattice faltered, imperfectly mapped. She cast another, and another, and another, more frantic with each attempt. Leaning back did no good; the weight of Cardainne’s magic at her back stopped her from toppling away. She would have dragged herself across the salt by her fingernails if it would get her away from this—this accursed test.
“Magician Cardainne,” she blurted out, panicked and pleading.
“That would be Master Cardainne to you,” he scoffed, voice more offended than smug, and then the cloud reached her.
Her eyes started burning first, until she squeezed them tighter shut. Her skin blistered next, and she recited runes in her head to keep from screaming.
A throbbing pulse echoed in her ears. Was this really happening? She cast dispelling spells at her legs, which did nothing to counteract the leadenness—was Cardainne trying to kill her? Why here, and why now? Why not back at the castle wall? Had he changed his mind on having an apprenticeling? Perhaps she was the example, a warning for his real apprentice. She didn’t know any proper combat spells, let alone anything that could hope to hurt a Magician. The pain washed over her skin in an unending wave, until—
The cloud drifted away just as her lungs threatened to suck in a desperate breath. Relief flooded in as involuntary tears dripped out. Salted water tried and failed to flush away the creeping, lingering mist-wrought irritants coating her eyes. Her nose streamed, and her face and hands stung all over where they’d touched the edges of the mist. Her insides felt fine, for now—she’d gulped in a last lungful of breath and held it well enough. A wretched little wheeze slipped from her mouth.
“You see?” Cardainne said. “That was insufficient. If you were out doing full duties, you would be quite dead. Now try again.”
The cloud swept forward once more, faster this time. She cried out, fumbling her cast. Droplets of mist sank down her throat and lungs before she clamped her mouth shut. The pain blazed lightning-bright; her skin burned. When Cardainne withdrew the mist, she tried to gasp for air and couldn’t without hacking and coughing, first. Blood tinged the back of her throat. She glimpsed the skin on the backs of her hands—reddened and cracked and bubbling, textured all wrong—and choked back a cry of horror.
“I can’t do it,” she rasped. “I can’t. Mag—Master Cardainne, I…I will only become, in-incapacitated, if—”
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“Relax,” he said. “You aren’t going to die. The worst thing that may happen will be a little scarring. Isn’t that right, Karim?”
Karim nodded mutely, hunching his shoulders further.
Cardainne continued without so much as glancing at him. “A dozen more cycles of this, and I'll take you to a Healer. Yes?”
“A dozen,” she repeated dully. Her throat was raw-edged and dry. She couldn’t move. Suddenly, she was deeply and uncomfortably aware of the fact that she was alone with a Magician and his loyal-by-necessity apprentice, all the way out on the salt. If he’d changed his mind about killing her, he had the perfect excuse—it would be easy. Karim might not help, but he wouldn’t need to—he need only not intervene as his master murdered her under pretense of a test. He might even be relieved when she was gone.
Cardainne nodded. “Only a dozen. But you must apply yourself. You have a good brain in that head, yes? So think carefully when you try. If you do not try as you should, then I will add another cycle.”
Only? Only? And another? Her thoughts fractaled.
“Again,” he said, and the pain began anew.
+++
When it was over, Magician Cardainne brought her to a different Cardainne—a Healer one who’d scowled as soon as she’d laid eyes upon them. Pale-haired, fair-skinned, a legacy-bred half-sister so cold and pristine that she might as well have been carved from ivory. She’d muttered under her breath as she’d placed her hands onto Rana’s shoulders and pushed a blissful wave of healing magic through.
“Ilya,” the Healer was saying now. “This little emergency of yours is not second-rank work. Do not disrespect my time like this further.”
Rana listened with half an ear, still slumped on the Healer’s divan. Her eyelids threatened to flutter shut; her mind drifted, floating. The potion the Healer had given her was helping a lot more than she’d thought it would. Her lungs still felt a little tender—corrosive burns weren’t her specialty, the Healer had argued when Magician Cardainne had first dragged her in—but it didn’t matter so much when her brain felt as though it had been wrapped in layer after layer of silken-soft blankets.
“Valeryia,” Cardainne replied. “Do recall your oaths in service to the kingdom.”
“This is not in service to the kingdom,” the Healer hissed. “This is you lording your Magicianhood around. You think your bastardry gives you special privilege, heh? Well I’ll have you know that father—”
“That father would not approve of your choice of friends?” he said. “Yes, yes, do continue.”
The Healer fell quiet for several moments.
“Leave me be,” she said slowly. Then came the clinking of bottles, a rustle of bandages being unrolled. “I must prepare for my official duties.”
“Sedenia again?” Cardainne asked knowingly. “Are you in close correspondence with her, too?”
“Magician Kurhah is an esteemed patron of mine,” the Healer replied coldly.
“I am sure she supplies you with plenty of work.”
“And you do not?” She heard a harsher sound, the clank of a cauldron set down a touch too hard.
Rana wondered if Karim had ever been hurt badly, just as the door slammed open. A different Magician strode in. She had her mask off, and she didn’t so much as glance at Rana as she swept past. Two apprentices plodded in her wake, both of them bleeding from the eyes and nose. Their skin—or at least, what she could see of it—was blistered all over. Worse than hers had been; the girl’s eyelids were so swollen that she couldn’t possibly see from out behind them. Rana shifted her position on the divan to better watch them, trying to focus through the potion-haze.
“Cardainne,” the Magician barked, reaching for one of her apprentices.
She grabbed a fistful of his cloak and yanked. He stumbled, almost falling as he coughed. A blot of blood splashed over the flagstones. The Magician let go and backhanded him—very casually, and very hard—across the face. The slap echoed with a crunch of cartilage. He cried out and coughed again, scrambling to catch the blood in the sleeves of his robe.
Rana suppressed her flinch.
“Hello, Sedenia,” Cardainne said pleasantly.
Magician Kurhah made a displeased, clicking sound with her tongue. “I was not talking to you.”
“Killing Field contact?” Healer Cardainne asked, already placing her hand to the apprentice’s forehead.
Kurhah grabbed her other apprentice by her shoulder, gripping furrows into the fabric of her cloak. The apprentice swayed on her feet, letting out a rasping whimper that made Rana’s stomach clench tight.
“Yes,” Kurhah said, sounding both deeply bored and venomously impatient. “What else?”
“Perhaps you employed them as your food-tasters,” Cardainne murmured.
Kurhah snorted. “Very funny, Ilya. What are you doing here? This is my appointment.”
“I was paying my sister a visit.”
“That so? Quite unlike you to make social calls.”
Kurhah’s eyes roved across the room, finally settling on Rana. A chill ran down her spine; she averted her gaze and tried to look as small and unimportant and potion-hazed as she could.
“Ilya, it is most impolite of you to infringe upon my arrangements.”
Cardainne gave a mock little bow, one hand clasped behind his back. “Many apologies, both to you and to Valeryia. I won’t infringe any longer.”
He strode past the divan and motioned meaningfully to Rana as he went. She scrambled to her feet and hurried to follow, feeling Kurhah’s eyes boring into her back as she departed.
“That looked unpleasant,” Cardainne remarked, once they were out into the corridor.
Rana kept silent, only startling when Cardainne clapped a hand onto her shoulder, drawing the both of them to a stop.
The corridor was empty, she categorised through the potion-haze. Empty. No…what was the word? Witnesses. No witnesses. Shafts of noon sunlight spilled in through columnar windows, striping the way forward, demarcations of light and dark like the bars of a dungeon-cell. She tensed, thoughts lurching. His hand was like a leaden weight. Surely he wouldn’t kill her now, not after he’d gone to the trouble of…teaching her, and paying for a Healer. But Kurhah had grabbed her apprentice like this before she’d hit him hard enough to break his nose. Was Cardainne going to—
“You would be wise to stay away from Kurhah,” he said mildly. “Among several others. There are those who relish in pushing their apprentices too hard, and too far.” He paused, gaze sharp and searching. “Perhaps you are distressed at the moment. Lower scribes do not encounter much in the way of physical hurt, correct? So it is very understandable.”
Rana ducked her head, unsure of what to say. “I’m…alright.” There. That sounded unoffensive enough.
Cardainne shook his head. “Karim was much the same,” he said. “It is an adjustment. You may resent my methods now, but the learning is necessary. If you think my spellwork harsh, then you have never truly feared the storms. You have never stood alone before a coming wall of Killing Field, with nothing but your wits and your skill and your duty to save you—I have many stories, and the others do too. Should you take on Magician work in the future, then you must be prepared—suffer a little now, so that you not die screaming in the future.”
I never asked for Magician work, she thought, and bit her tongue. She felt a muscle twitch in her cheek and hastened to school her expression into one of neutrality. The potion-haze must be getting to her, because he raised an eyebrow at what he saw.
“You are upset,” he continued, “because you would not have chosen to be apprenticeling if you had known this.”
“I am not ungrateful for the opportunity.” The words felt like sand in her mouth. It was a pathetic attempt at deescalation, and he probably knew it.
“But you are quite upset,” he said. “Perhaps you wished to live the rest of your life as a scribe, in smallness and obscurity?” He shook his head. “Miss Khan, you seem like a sensible girl. These are trying times. The faery onslaught…might set a precedent.”
She startled despite herself. A memory surfaced: blood boiling in her veins, metal chains, blue chalk scuffing beneath her feet and people dying, all around her. She breathed in slowly, felt the way her lungs responded almost good as new—much better now, after the Healer had set her wounds. If this was the price to pay to never feel the claws of that blood-rite again…she shuddered. Maybe he had a point. Not a very good one, but something she could cling to, to get her through the rest of the day.
He patted her on the shoulder. “You must know, I have been through the same thing. I am considerate; I do not hurt anyone more than I must. People like Kurhah, on the other hand...”
“Thank you for the advice,” she said through gritted teeth. “Master Cardainne.”
Cardainne removed his hand from her shoulder. “You’re quite welcome.”
He started walking again. She followed along past the windows, stepping through bands of light and shadow, light and shadow. She kept a careful distance. Sunlight coated his form in patches, sliding its bright touch over the burning blue of his cloak. They passed a cluster of maidservants, hurrying along with mops and buckets—all ducked their heads and shuffled off to the side, as if buffeted by an invisible wake.
Maids looked and saw a Magician. Rana’s stride almost faltered. They were only ordinary folk, after all. They talked among themselves. Perhaps they even knew how unsafe they really were. The cloak on her shoulders was a buoyant weight. It made it easy to keep from lingering. One step after another, she passed them by and left them behind.