“What was that?” Gem asked, eying Lavastro. She might as well have tried to read the face of a painting.

“An inconvenience.” Answered the Taik. “And not one you ought to concern yourself with.”

“You always told me concerning oneself with things not immediately relevant is the expression of a sharp mind.”

“I did always tell you that.” She conceded. “Word for word, in fact. Which now has me worried that you weren’t listening when I also told you to consider your lessons and build on them, rather than learning to repeat them as you would in a classroom.”

Gem flushed, turning away from the woman and finding a sudden, impotent anger seizing her.

“People are normally impressed when I show them how good my memory is.” She muttered, not meeting Lavastro’s eye.

“And people are always impressed when I show them mine. What does that tell you, Gemini?”

Gem took her time answering, realising that it was a question Lavastro would be patient with. It wasn’t till they turned the corner that she found an answer.

“That I should remember my limits and be humble, as there’s always someone better than me?”

It was a safe answer; showing open-mindedness and, most importantly, humility. One to impress priests and teachers anywhere in Unix. Even Arcane.

Too late did Gem remember just how different the Taikan Empire of Dewlz was to either of its sisters.

“No,” Lavastro answered. “It’s to keep in mind what you’re good at, and not show it off to one of the admittedly few people alive who can best you at it.”

A girlish grin split her face as she spoke, infecting Gem. Lavastro didn’t often smile, certainly never in public, but that only made the occasions that she did more special.

Gem felt she was sharing something precious; something exclusive, even. That the Taik’s smile was the most beautiful expression to shape the most beautiful face she’d ever seen only intensified it.

“Why in the world did you want me to meet him?” She asked, avoiding her friend’s gaze for fear of its disconcerting insight.

“Why do you think?” Lavastro responded.

“Can you not just tell me?”

Gem felt herself sag at the test, energy seeping from her like heat into frigid air. In her excitement to escape Gilasev’s suffocating protection, she’d forgotten the most important thing about Lavastro.

There was nothing her friend liked more than stretching Gem’s mind to its limits. She steeled herself and thought.

“Because you, the great Lavastro Kaiosyni, were finally wrong about something and thought he’d be worth introducing me to.”

Gem’s calculated petulance failed to even raise an eyebrow.

“If you thought to irritate me into giving something away, you’ve learned less than I’d dared to worry.”

She ignored the retort, dropping her gaze to the smooth, scintillating face of polished marble ahead. Gem’s thoughts became measured by the space between each footfall, their rhythm giving tempo to her mind, steadiness bringing calm to what was turbulent.

“Oh.” She breathed, answer leaping to her like a loyal hound. It was so simple Gem almost laughed at herself for failing to grasp it.

“You’re trying to play to my ego..” She grinned, staring up at Lavastro and finding herself basking in the woman’s attention rather than retreating from it. “You wanted to bring me face to face with someone famous for being clever, knowing that, bastard he was, he’d insult me. Get on my nerves and leave me irritated at being slower. Am I right?”

“You are… not wrong.” Answered the Taik. Gem saw, for once, emotion leaked out from her. Like water slipping between fingers. “That was one of my reasons.”

Gem felt her smile waver at that.

“You had more than one?”

Lavastro’s eye glinted, that girlish delight back again as she spoke. Tempered by the same severity she injected into all their lessons.

“Of course you had more than one.” She muttered, finding her sense of triumph evaporating.

“Don’t detract from your own accomplishment, Gemini.” Chastised Lavastro; gently, kindly. “You used your head well.”

The conversation, Gem saw, was turning the way she’d known it inevitably would.

“So what was your other motivation?” She asked.

“That knowledge is for me alone, if you would like to share it then you’ll have to use your mind again. Though I can’t imagine it’s easy for you, what with the cobwebs tangling it.”

“I could just master Manamis,” Gem countered, finding herself irked beyond tolerance by Lavastro’s monomania.

The woman eyed her as though the words had been drool wetting her shirt.

“Do you really need me to explain why digging around in a person’s thoughts with magic would make a poor substitute for learning to think?”

If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

Gem did not. She fell silent, and Lavastro seemed content to leave her in it as they walked.

Their pace was quick, and the tension-thick conversation had left Gem unnoticing as their footsteps sheared away distance.

Before long they were in the easternmost wing of the Crux, and only minutes later Lavastro turned down a corridor and quickened her gait. Gem suppressed a curse as she struggled to match it, then stumbled to a stop when the Taik halted beside a door.

She paused before it, glancing at Gem wearily.

“I should warn you, the girl you’re about to meet is somewhat… eccentric.”

“Eccentric?”

Gem feigned curiosity to hide her elation. She’d met many individuals described as such, and in her experience their eccentricity was invariably an obsession with the legendary Gemini. Coupled with a fascination regarding her mythical abilities.

“Thank you for letting me know,” She said. Solemn, serious. Mustering every scrap of her practiced acting abilities.

By the look in Lavastro’s eye, she wasn’t fooled for an instant.

She turned the doorknob, flinging it open and stepping inside. Gem followed behind her, the soundless greycoat further still behind.

The sight of a short, thin girl with Haven-black skin, tustled brown hair and a nervous smile did little to give climax for Gem’s walk.

“Hello.” The brunette said, waving a single hand weakly and smiling with such wavering fragility that Gem thought her mouth might shatter like raw iron.

“Good morning,” she answered.

Despite herself Gem glanced to Lavastro, studying her friend for any hint as to what was going on. As always she found none. Just that ever-present curtain of stoicism held over emotion like lacquer.

“Gemini, this is Deka Helus.” The Taik said, gesturing to the tiny girl and plastering a warm smile across her face. Were it not for the fact that Gem had seen just how easily she could take the expression on or off, she’d never have doubted its authenticity.

“Deka, this is, as you probably already know, Gemini Menza.”

She looked between the two of them, still smiling. Still hiding the whirring cogs and grinding gears in her head.

“Well, I’ll leave the two of you to get to know one another. Gemini, don’t forget to attend the second stage’s orientation.”

“I won’t.” Gem snapped, a hair sharper than she’d intended and half a dozen more than she’d have gotten away with. The narrowing of Lavastro’s eyes froze the breath in her throat.

“There are things I must attend to,” the woman said, acidically, “Goodbye.”

Almost as soon as Lavastro closed the door behind her, Deka Helus’s voice was ringing out once more.

“It’s nice to meet you,” She began. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

Gem would have been more surprised if she hadn’t.

“All good, I hope?” She asked, plastering her uncertain smile on and walking forwards as she spoke. Drawing nearer made it clear just how small the girl truly was. Like a child of nine, not a woman of fifteen. A luminar, Gem was certain.

“All… fascinating.”

The answer wasn’t one Gem had expected, and Helus followed it up almost more quickly than confusion could twist her brow.

“Sorry.” She quickly added, a nervous smile splitting her lips. “I just meant to say… well, it’s true isn’t it? That you’re… different.”

Gem recognised the awe displayed before her, fighting back the grin it brought on as she spoke.

“It is.” She nodded. “Though I don’t like to talk about it.”

Helus quickly mirrored her gesture.

“Of course, I imagine it must be tiring for you to be asked about it all the time. Just pretend I didn’t say anything.”

“What brings you to Udrebam?” Gem asked, covering her disappointment with the question. Something tensed in Helus before the girl answered, but her hurried reply hid it well.

Like clockwork the girl spoke. She told Gem of her position in the Alliance, how she’d been taken under the Zoric Faction’s custody nearly two years prior. She told Gem of her tutelage, her studies of magic, her knack, as she put it, for understanding the fickle and changeable forces of the arcane.

When her tale turned to the sudden and surprising insistence from her handlers that she enter the Sieve, Gem found it difficult to continue listening.

So she’s another magical prodigy taken in by the Alliance. What in the world made Lavastro think I’d care to meet this girl?

“That sounds like a drastic change,” She said, waiting an appropriate few moments after the girl finished speaking. “How are you adjusting to it?”

A shrug, all hesitation and uncertainty before a wavering answer.

“I’m not sure. It’s drastic, as you said, but it’s not been so bad in Udrebam. The Faction’s always kept me comfortable.”

“Silk sheets do make sleep a little bit easier,” Gem noted. Her remark drew an entirely disproportionate laugh from Helus, and it took her a second to realise the reaction stemmed from nerves rather than sycophancy.

“Sorry.” The girl mumbled.

They spoke for some time longer, Helus asking Gem about her own experience with the Factions all while Gem tried and failed to find a way of exiting the conversation.

“I’ve had no contact with them, so I really can’t give much input.”

Helus blinked.

“I assumed you’d be more familiar with the Alliance than I am, what with your… talents.”

Gem could understand the mistake. Few in the world knew just how tenuous her family’s relationship with the Alliance was, fewer still how much that tension had thickened in the wake of the Faction War. Even Gilasev, renegade among the Menzas, had been careful to keep Gem from being caught up in their politics.

But she wasn’t about to tell Helus that. Not when the topic had just moved so perfectly towards more interesting matters.

“Lots of people are interested in what I can do,” She said instead. “Gilasev is quite selective about who gets to talk to me, at least when it comes to those with the most influence.”

“Speaking of your, uh, abilities… well, I don’t want to sound rude, but could you…” She trailed off, yet it was clear what she was asking.

Gem’s smile came easily.

“Of course, ask away.”

Helus’s face lit up, her mouth working as a blur to weave one question after another. Gem grinned as she answered them.

Days of torturous mental practice at the hand of Lavastro left genuine praise for what really mattered like honey against starved lips.

Somewhere deep at the back of her mind, her friend’s words rang out once more. A warning she’d heard a hundred times over, cautioning her against overreliance on the supernatural at the expense of all else.

Gem ignored it.

Lavastro was right about a thousand things, a million even, but for all her merits, there was one thing the woman simply failed to grasp.

There was nothing in the world Gem could practice or learn that wouldn’t be eclipsed by her ability to wield both magic and nihil.