The Magicians had taken over the sparring yard.
Rana waited by the benches, twisting a miniature spell net in her hands. Karim tapped a foot anxiously next to her, arms crossed and shoulders hunched. She had a good idea of what was troubling him and zero desire to broach the topic. A fresh commotion sprouted on the sparring square, flung gestures and grumbles over who had won the round.
Rana took apart her spell net, then wove it again from scratch. She’d been practicing every spare chance she got, after that disastrous lesson on the salt. Magician Cardainne had taken them out once more since, and she’d fared better. His Healer sister had still needed to fix up her face and hands, but it was nothing like the first time.
Improvement was improvement, she told herself, but she felt a phantom crackle in her lungs as she sighed. Perhaps it was her imagination, but it seemed like the breaths she took now were a sliver less full than they used to be.
“The Healer wouldn’t have let you leave with lung damage,” Karim had said when she brought it up, but she knew for a fact that he’d never failed at weaving a spell net five times in a row.
Cardainne was on next. He’d donned sparring gear instead of his usual robes, similar to the stuff worn by guards. His opponent was another Magician with her hair wrapped beneath a dark blue scarf. They both hefted practice swords: carved from wood and finely-shaped, but heavy enough to hurt. Karim had muttered this little detail on the way here, and she’d worried they would have to participate. The official apprentices had sparring classes after all, ones she was reluctant to attend for a multitude of reasons. So far, she was in luck. This event seemed more like a social activity for the fully-fledged than anything that could be construed as a lesson.
Cardainne bowed to his opponent. She bowed back, with enough of a flourish to be deemed just shy of mocking. They readied themselves on opposite sides of the square. Cardainne raised his sword into a guard position. His opponent—somewhat arrogantly, Rana thought—angled her sword loosely at her side.
“Begin!” shouted the overseer.
Cardainne charged, surprisingly fast. His opponent dove out of the way, dodging both his feint and his actual swing. She brought her own sword up in a swift thrust, which he parried at the last second. Then the two locked themselves into a darting, back-and-forth dance of blades which Rana had trouble following. She could only conclude that it would be far more stressful to watch if there were actual sharp objects involved. The gathered Magicians gave out wordless whoops and shouts, with no one seeming to root for any actual side.
That was Magicians for you, Rana thought as she picked at her net. Always hedging their bets. Personally, she was hoping this was an opportunity for Cardainne to sustain a small injury. Only a small one, mind. Just enough to distract him from asking her about her progress on his assigned readings.
“Our master’s not doing so well today,” Karim remarked quietly.
It was a good thing she had plenty of practice keeping a blank face in front of gossips, she reflected. “Really? That’s unfortunate.”
She glanced back up at the fight: a blur of movement, more ducking and slashing, dust kicked up all over the sparring square. Cardainne twisted like a snake, bringing the point of his sword against his opponent’s chest. In the very same moment, she swept her blade up and smacked it into his stomach.
Cardainne let out a surprised grunt. His opponent barked out a laugh.
“A draw,” the overseer declared, and the gathered crowd erupted into whistles and cheers. Rana put down her spell-net to offer a few half-hearted claps for the show of the thing.
There followed a round of good-natured handshakes and claps on the back. Cardainne handed his mock-blade off to a colleague and walked towards them. With sweat and dust marring his brow, he almost looked like a normal person. His opponent was tailing him, Rana noted, and not even in a way that suggested she was about to club him over the back of the head. To her further surprise, Cardainne stepped aside and waved her closer.
“Mahin, my apprentices. I’m sure you’ve seen Karim about before, but the other one is new.” His gaze landed on her. “Miss Khan, this is Magician Barzegar, an esteemed colleague of mine.”
Magician Barzegar favoured them both with a warm smile. “Pleased to meet you. I see you’re hard at work on your spell net forms! Always a pleasure to see apprentices showing dedication.” She turned to Cardainne. “So, what does your itinerary look like? Zubaida offered to look after my lot for the afternoon. You might be able to coax someone else into minding yours, if you’re quick.”
Cardainne grimaced. “Not today. I must take them out to the skyship graves while the air is clear—Karim needs practice, with the examinations soon. And it can’t hurt to get an apprenticeling started on trying proper spellwork a little earlier.”
“How uncharacterically responsible of you,” Barzegar drawled, her eyes twinkling with amusement. “I’ll join your little expedition, if you’ve got a spare smoke on your person…?”
“I see you have nothing better to do than to leech off my kindheartedness,” Cardainne said.
“On the contrary. I consider it an administrative duty to keep you from dying of boredom on such a lovely day.”
“For selfish purposes, to be sure. Who else would fend off Faizan’s wrath for you if I met my end?” he sniped back, gathering his belongings. Straightening up, he looked in Rana’s direction with all of the humour gone from his tone. “You two, go have lunch and meet me in my office in half of the hour.”
“Yes, Master Cardainne,” Karim said, bowing.
Rana copied him and hurried off before Cardainne remembered about the readings.
+++
Their so-called expedition had grown by another four by the time lunch was over.
“Weathermancer Mehr will be joining us,” Cardainne said a touch sourly. “As well as Magician Shahriyar and his apprentice Tsimur, who I have been told is a third cousin of mine.” His tone brooked not the slightest hint of familial favour. “We will all be taking the same zephyr boat.”
“The dead ship flats are a good place for practice,” Barzegar remarked as they made their way down to the zephyr yards. It took Rana a moment to realise Barzegar was addressing her. “I take it you haven’t been there before?”
“That’s correct, Magician Barzegar,” Rana said carefully.
“Well, don’t try to explore the insides. They’re decommissioned for a reason; there’s a good chance you’ll fall right through the floor like the last apprentice who tried.”
“Of course,” Rana said. She paused, feeling a spike of morbid curiousity. “What happened to the apprentice in question?”
Barzegar laughed. “I’m supposed to say ‘alas, he suffered painful injuries and died of them’ to scare you from doing the same. In truth, he only suffered painful injuries and the scolding of his life. We got him to a Healer in time.”
A Weathermancer and her apprentice awaited them by their zephyr-boat. They both looked to be vaguely highborn sorts, dressed in shapeless robes and decorated with the green tassels of their trade.
“Where is Shahriyar?” Magician Barzegar said irritably, glancing around the yard. A few workers and salt-kiters hurried through, but no Magicians that Rana could see. “Always late, that man.”
“We should leave without him one of these days,” Cardainne suggested, swinging up into their boat. “Perhaps it will teach him a lesson.”
“Ah, but we’d never hear the end of it,” Barzegar muttered, striding towards the boat. “What are you all standing around for? Get in.”
Rana hastened to follow Karim aboard the boat.
“Watch out,” a voice piped up, and she stopped just short of tripping over a coil of rope on the deck. “That’s the emergency anchor line.”
She glanced up self-consciously. It was the Weathermancer apprentice who’d spoken, and Rana was surprised at the hint of lower-kingdom accent in her words.
“Thank you,” she said, stepping carefully over the ropes. It was her first time on a proper zephyr-boat. “I assume you know more about this than me; where should I sit?”
“Just on the side-benches, but near the back. Your masters will want to sit close to the prow, I expect,” the apprentice said, jerking her head at where Cardainne, Barzegar, and Mehr stood speaking amongst themselves. “I don’t know if they’ll fight over who gets to steer. Probably not? You Magicians are different.”
Rana was suddenly struck with a twisting need to disassociate herself from you Magicians. “I’m not a…” she started. “That is, I’m not really—”
Karim elbowed her in the side. She stifled a shriek; he’d glided up without her noticing. “This is my cousin,” he said with a dip of his head. “Rana Khan.”
“Oh! I thought I hadn’t seen you around before, but I’m not so good with faces.” The apprentice smiled ruefully. “Nice to meet you. I’m Yasmeen; Yasmeen Scionsong.”
Rana inhaled, chest seizing tight. It wasn’t residual damage from the mist, she told herself as the world swayed a little.
She’d been aware of a few Scionsongs scattered throughout the Libraries, but they were distant, older, lacking…similarities. It was just a little discomposure, she told herself as the air returned to her lungs. Distress from the unexpectedness of it all—though really, she should have foreseen this.
There was a fair number of unclaimed progeny about, with the way bloodlines and claimants worked. Even if Scionsongs were rare in the upper echelons compared to Shahriyars and Cardainnes, even if that meant many lowborn Scionsongs would have been…drained…on that awful night, she should have expected to have to speak to one sooner or later.
Karim, the gods bless him, elbowed her again. She gave Yasmeen a practiced smile and was saved from having to answer by Magician Shahriyar’s arrival.
“There you are,” Cardainne said pleasantly. “What kept you?”
“The usual rubbish,” Magician Shahriyar said, hoisting himself elegantly aboard. His apprentice scrabbled after him, half-tripping over the same pile of rope Rana had narrowly avoided. “I heard you two were prancing in the sword yard earlier. Put on quite the show?”
Cardainne cast an almost inscrutable glance at Shahriyar. “Some of us like to keep with the traditions.”
Shahriyar chuckled. “You’re both high up in the line of succession for that damn thing, aren’t you? Most of us don’t have to bother. Now, who’s sailing this blasted craft? The Weathermancer?”
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Weathermancer Mehr bristled visibly but kept wisely silent.
“I will,” Barzegar said. “Sit down, before you fall over.”
The boat lifted smoothly off the sand, sweeping eastwards. The air was brisk and clear, but salt-white mists cloaked the southern horizon. Their route consisted largely of dunes, with little more than the occasional clump of desert grass to catch the eye. At length, shapes began to emerge from the shallowing dunes. At least thirty large skyships listed in the sands, their shells riddled with dry rot and spell-damage. Some of them looked much newer, scorched with more than spellfire. Rana’s mind conjured up dark claws ripping into sailcloth, winged bodies swarming over decks, blood-magic arcing like arrows.
“I suppose we’re all off to target practice now,” Shahriyar said lazily, vaulting over the side as the boat came to a stop. He let out a huff as he landed heavily, then called up at them. “When will you be back, Weathermancer?”
“Before sunset,” Weathermancer Mehr said, taking the wheel from Barzegar. She lowered the zephyr until its prow nudged against the sand. “There’ll be two boatfuls of kiters and guards coming this way before then, if you wish to return early.”
All of the Magicians disembarked. Rana followed and snuck a parting glance at Yasmeen as the Weathermancers sailed off, heading further south. It was a foolish impulse; Scionsongs were as likely to look different from one another as the same, connected by name more often than blood. If she’d been hoping for a true echo of Aliyah, she didn’t see it in Yasmeen. She wasn’t sure whether that felt like a blessing or a curse.
Shahriyar and his apprentice wandered off, heading for the side of the ruins covered by shade. Cardainne led them in the opposite direction. They threaded through a scattered field of debris until they faced the side of a once-magnificent ship with holes blown out of its side.
“Go through your exercises,” Cardainne instructed Karim. He turned his attention toward Rana, and she steeled herself against the usual shudder of dread that came with it. “You, on the other hand—is it too much to hope that you know a combat spell?”
“Where did you poach her from?” Barzegar asked, before she could speak. “The Library? She’ll know something.”
“Only the Lower Library,” Cardainne said with a shrug. “So I doubt it. Well? Am I correct?”
Rana gathered her thoughts, thinking each sentence through before speaking them. It was a habit she was accustomed to using around court gossips and people who were probably spying for others in some capacity or other, and it was serving her well now. “I know two runic arrays that would fall into combat magic. They’re offshoots of warding, however.”
Not too far off, she heard the sizzle of spellfire and splintering wood as Karim warmed up his casting.
“You make them with a runequill?” Barzegar asked. “Funny toys, those.”
“Kindly stop interrupting my lesson,” Cardainne said, tone mild with warning. He turned back to Rana. “We the Magicians do not like to rely on runequills. They have their uses, but not in a fight. The nets I have taught you are for protecting yourself from mists, but a Magician cannot only be able to defend against her environment. It should be clear to you now that other forms of threat arise against the kingdom, and a Magician must know how to fight against things which know ways to fight back.
“Now, try to copy this. You must learn to harm unliving objects before learning the spellforms against living flesh. Not only is the initial casting easier, but it will accustom you to the correct instincts.” Glowing blue flames sprouted from his upraised hand. “I expect you know the base form of spell-light, and that is as good as any of a place to start. Take that and force it to become a fire. Use the concepts of heat and cleansing. Naturally, a fire will be inclined to consume wood as fuel. With practice, you will make it burn through brick, mortar, bone.”
To her relief, she knew not only the base form of spell-light, but a few stronger variants as well—too many nights spent burning through candle wicks not to. Casting her fiercest light, she tried twisting it into what she knew fire to be: bright heat and crackling air, eager to chew through wood and paper.
It took a lot of magic to learn the shapes of new spells, even with a clear demonstration like Cardainne’s. This spell was poised to be a violent one, quite far from her usual orbits. She was verging on dizzy by the time the light in her hand began to visibly change. Cardainne watched on with his usual bored, vaguely impatient air; Barzegar stared for a bit, then wandered off to supervise Karim. Rana coughed, pushing the spell further. Sweat stung her eyes and blood bubbled up at the back of her throat.
Slowly—painfully slowly—her light became fire.
There was a wrongful quality to the transformation; she took an unsteady step backward, threads of magic pulsing feverishly beneath her skin. The spell sputtered blue in her hand, waiting like a captive comet. Her heart gave a sick pulse. It felt like knowledge she shouldn’t have been allowed to learn.
But Cardainne walked closer, peering at her creation. Was that a hint of a smile on his face? “You are a much quicker study at this than the nets. But don’t just hold it. Try aiming and throwing.” He pointed at a ragged section of the ship’s siding.
Rana glanced over to where Karim was hurling spell-bolts and shifted her stance to copy his form. The spell wasn’t as heavy as she’d expected; the real weight of the spell lay in the growing pressure behind her ribs and a headache sparking to life. She swing her arm. The spellfire burst eagerly from her hand and flew as straight as a falling falcon. The siding folded open with a crash, her magic flaying a new path through the ship’s guts. Rana dropped her arm, panting.
“Good work,” Cardainne said. “Now, again.”
+++
The shadows had well and truly shifted by the time Cardainne called for them to stop. Karim wasn’t doing much better than her by now, bracing hands on knees to catch his breath. They walked to stand—and in Karim’s case, sit—under the new shadows. Magician Shahriyar was already there, lounging with his nose in a book. His apprentice was out of sight, but the faint cracks of spell-drills rang out from somewhere in the middle-distance.
“Aren’t you going to call Tsimur back?” Barzegar asked.
“Our boat should be passing in half an hour.” Shahriyar licked his finger and turned a page idly. “He can keep practicing until then.”
“We are not helping you carry him back if he suffers a heat collapse again,” Cardainne said, retrieving a cigarette from the depths of his robe.
Shahriyar sighed, marking his place with a scrap of parchment. “Fine. I’ll fetch him.”
Barzegar turned to Cardainne expectantly as Shahriyar strode off. Cardainne produced another cigarette and lit both with a spark of conjured flame. Rana sat down a little distance up from Karim and tried to take deep, even breaths. She wiped her mouth over the back of her hand, expecting more blood. Nothing but pinkish drool this time, but her chest still felt as if it had a dozen inkpots weighing it down. She massaged her sternum with the heel of her hand, wincing as it did little to relieve the pressure.
Valeryia Cardainne had said she’d healed her properly, Rana thought, but she wasn’t compelled to be truthful. There was no court scrutiny of her claims. Perhaps she would feel it was her right to spite her bastard half-brother by hampering his apprenticeling…
“Are you alright?” Barzegar asked.
Rana stiffened, glancing up.
Barzegar regarded her calmly, exhaling a plume of blueish smoke. “Didn’t burn out, did you?”
“No,” Rana said. Not quite.
“Injured?”
“I’m…not sure.”
Barzegar looked over her shoulder at Cardainne and called to him. “Ilya, what wars have you been putting your apprenticeling through?”
Cardainne strolled closer. “Not awfully much. She’s holding her nets on the salt now, and Valeryia does not need to be involved.”
“Hmm. Just flux-susceptible, then?”
“I don’t think so,” he said, frowning. “Karim is not, and they are related by blood…”
Barzegar tutted. “I would say she has it, if Valeryia found nothing else. Look at that posture! You, of all people, should know better. Have you felt troubled by your breathing for a while now, Apprenticeling Khan?”
“Yes,” Rana admitted, and hesitated, searching Cardainne’s expression for any hint of warning. Finding none, she elaborated. “Since close to the beginning of my studies.”
Barzegar nodded. “That would be it, then. You should have mentioned it earlier. Ilya, another if you would?”
Sighing, he passed her another cigarette. Barzegar lit it with a small white fire dancing on a fingertip and passed it to Rana, who took it with a mixture of alarm and confusion.
“Breathe it in,” Barzegar said, returning to her own smoke. “It will help.”
“Isn’t this…?” She hesitated. “I’ve heard it’s not particularly good for the lungs.”
Cardainne made an impatient gesture with his free hand. “Yes, yes. It is bad in other ways. But we have Healers for that.”
“Have some,” Barzegar urged. “Or give it to me if you’re going to waste it. There are potions which do the same thing, but they don’t work nearly as well. They taste so bad, too.”
Rana eyed the plume of blue smoke distrustfully; it was moreso Barzegar’s claims of healthfulness that worried her more than the item itself. Many of her older colleagues smoked—when off-duty and far away from the scrolls, that was—but they didn’t walk around proclaiming how refreshing of an activity it was. Still, she thought, as her lungs caught on the exhale, it wasn’t like it could make her feel much worse than she felt already…
She inhaled. Her lungs still ached, but the sensation seemed to dull. Was it her imagination? She blinked a little dizzily. She inhaled again, coughing a little. Her breathing seemed to come easier once it subsided.
“What’s this made of?”
Barzegar was looking at her closely. “The dried roots of a grey and golden plant which grows far out in the mists. Do harvest some if you ever see it. Its burnt fumes soak up excess.”
“Excess…?” Rana asked. She returned to the smoke. The pain in her lungs faded with every breath. She’d never felt so filled with light. “Of what?”
“Magic, of course.” Barzegar frowned, as if puzzled she were unaware of something so obvious. “Your shields keep out poison, but not ambient Field magic. If you’re susceptible, the wild particles…it burrows into your lungs and bloodstream. Accumulates over time. Quite uncomfortable after a while. I’m still surprised you didn’t notice her difficulty with it, Ilya.”
Cardainne shrugged. “They usually complain before it gets so bad. My mistake.”
Barzegar patted her on the shoulder and Rana jumped, almost dropping the cigarette.
“There now,” Barzegar said, smiling. “That was very stoical of you, but please mention if there are other problems. We the Magicians take care of our own.”
+++
The days passed in a patchwork of Lower Library duties and Magician study. Rana whittled down Cardainne’s list of books in between shift changes, while eating her meals, and during any spare moment she could steal. Juggling her scribe livelihood and apprenticeling work wasn’t easy and only rarely entertaining. One night, she found herself slipping into a drowse and using her copy of Ninth Era Divinatory Writings as a pillow, only roused when Templeton scampered off her shoulder and began chewing on the pages.
But in some ways, life was easier. Her apprenticeling cloak gave her free passage into the Higher Library, saw her greeted politely by other Magicians on her way to Cardainne’s office, and served as a remarkable barrier against sudden rains out on the salt flats. It was, she thought, not as terrible a position as she’d thought it had been. She was learning steadily and if she was especially tired at the end of a scribery shift, she still had her comfortable quarters and the fluffy affection of her pets to return to. She still had the luxury of many friends and acquaintances, most of them too polite to question her about rumours of Magicianhood.
“I was called upon to assist the kingdom,” she said gravely to the few that hinted around their questions, and if anything this furthered her small but growing reputation. Even Farzaneh looked at her with a hint of marvel when they met to talk.
Omar was the only one who spoke his words plainly. “Did you ask your cousin for a place?” he asked as they were stocking the shelves together.
It was with complete honesty that she replied, “No. I didn’t ask for anything.”
When she finished Cardainne’s reading list, he immediately handed her another. She fought back a groan, but traversed the Higher Library with growing confidence. She grew to know the Librarian’s faces and the Higher Scribe’s names. On one occasion, she even glimpsed the Seventhborn Achernar reading poetry on the third floor lounge, surrounded by guards and a Magician escort. The Seventhborn had a very ugly triangular pendant around her neck, she noted, probably a courter’s token made of crystal or something expensive. Poor, foolish Karim and his doomed infatuation, she thought, not for the first time.
It was on another Library visit that she had the misfortune to run into Magician Kurhah. She rounded a stack in search of Advanced Thaumatic Principles and came to face to face with the woman.
“Ilya’s new apprenticeling, is it?” Kurhah said before she had a chance to make her apologies and back away. “What are you, some kind of court pet?”
Kurhah reached forward and tipped her chin back up with sharp fingers, gaze cold and searching.
Rana flinched, twisting her face away. Thankfully, Kurhah let go.
“Not the first time I’ve seen the likes of you,” Kurhah continued conversationally. “Playing favourites with Barzegar too, I heard? I don’t know what lies his lot are feeding you, but don’t get any ideas above your station.”
Kurhah swept off, trailing blue. Rana swiped angrily at her chin, striding off in search of Cardainne’s godsdamned book.
+++
“It’s high time you had one of these,” Cardainne said one day, apropos of nothing.
She glanced up from the last chapter of Advanced Thaumatic Principles and saw him holding out a wooden box.
As she opened it, she was half expecting it to contain another accursed book. Instead, she found herself staring into the painted eyes of a pale bird’s mask.
“The material is enchanted specifically for you,” he said. “Try it on.”
She lifted the mask out of the box and brought it to her face. The material felt cool and smooth; come to think of it, she’d never asked what the masks were made of. The likes of Kurhah wouldn’t be able to dig their fingers into her chin through it, anyhow. As the edges touched her face, she felt them shifting subtly to better fit the curve of her cheeks and jaw. The cord which held it on could be adjusted with a metal clasp. It was light and comfortable. It probably made her look like a real Magician. A ‘thaumaturge’ feared by all.
She’d known they were bespelled, but her vision wasn’t impeded by the margins of eyeholes as she would’ve expected.
“There’s a field-of-view enchantment on this?” she said, surprised.
“Of course,” Cardainne said. “We the Magicians cannot make ourselves see as far around as an owl, but the eyes of the kingdom shall never obstruct its view for the sake of armour or simple decoration. It is a very practical item, is it not?”
“Yes,” she said. “Thank you, Master Cardainne.”
It was a good mask, she thought, and felt oddly reluctant to take it back off. It was so well-crafted, in fact, that she hardly felt like she was wearing one at all.