James didn’t quite dare ask the next of his dangerous questions, so he kept his silence and settled down to study. Theola seemed content to work alone, but it was far too risky to openly research the Mages when she was sitting right next to him so he settled for an old tome on spell variations useful in combat. It wasn’t as productive as he’d hoped; he already knew half the variations it listed and disagreed with the author’s opinions on the usefulness of most of the others.

He was restless. He didn’t want to sit here and study; he wanted to be out there fighting for his cause. It was getting harder and harder to remind himself that the best thing he could to for that cause was to win Theola’s trust, to learn the truth about her, and then –

“And then what?”

Theola looked up from where she was taking notes. “I don’t know. What do you mean?”

He’d said that aloud. Stars, if she knew the answer to that question – “I was thinking,” he said quickly, “about the future.”

She said nothing, silently inviting him to go on.

“How long will the war go on?” James asked. “And what will come after?”

“Stars know,” said Theola.

“And you know the stars.”

“I cannot see the future. Things would be very different if I could.”

James would have given a lot to know why and how. He didn’t have time to think about it, though: he needed to invent Jacob’s melancholy thoughts about the future. “It just seems so… pointless,” he said, finding inspiration mid-sentence. “The war. How great a difference does it make to ordinary people, who sits on the throne? And how many of them will die for it?”

“I didn’t take you for a pacifist,” Theola said. “You really are full of surprises.”

“I’m not a pacifist. There are times when violence and war are what is necessary. It’s just that… I’m beginning to doubt whether this is one of them.”

“Have faith, Jacob. In me, and in the stars.”

“I’ll try,” James lied.

And that was another day gone. Maybe his questions had made an impact on her; maybe they hadn’t. If she was a true Mage then he didn’t have a chance of persuading her to listen to him over the stars themselves, and if she wasn’t then she had no authority to call for peace and he would have to prove that.

He doubted there was much more he could do with these subtle methods in the time he had left. He would have to find a more direct way. Unable to sleep, he paged through his Mages research once more. Perhaps there was a detail he’d missed, some crucial piece that would show him the way. If there was, he couldn’t find it.

Well, that was no good, and sleep was no good; he had to do something. He needed a good fight, or failing that at least exercise against challenging training enchantments. That, at least, was a problem he could fix: he knew where the training room was, and as far as he knew the fact it was eleven and ten after noon wouldn’t stop him visiting it.

So that was what he did. It was eerie, walking through the ancient corridors alone at night, seeing only by an orb of conjured light. He felt on edge, more alive than he had all day.

The training room wasn’t closed, but it also wasn’t unoccupied. The enchanted lights were switched on, revealing a single woman firing chain after chain of spells towards a wooden dummy. He recognised her: lean and wiry, tense and agile. The woman on the midnight-till-six shift who’d been at breakfast on his first day here. What was her name? Ellie, Elara… something like that.

James stepped inside and let the door swing shut. She didn’t look up or break focus for an instant, even though she definitely would have noticed the sound. That meant she was deep in a state of magical flow. Or possibly she just didn’t want to talk to him.

He didn’t particularly want to talk to her, either, so he examined the various training devices. Most of them seemed the usual sort – there was another set of the squares he’d defeated by brute force before he’d met Theola, which he grimaced at – but there were a couple of dummies similar to the one El-what’s-her-name was fighting, which had no obvious purpose.

James shrugged and stepped into the nearest set of containment wards. He’d figure it out as he went along. He took a breath and adjusted his stance, and was about to begin casting when the woman acknowledged his presence.

“New guy,” she said simply, stepping towards him.

“I have a name,” James replied, turning reluctantly to face her.

She shrugged. “Heard about what you did to the six-till-midnight shift.”

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“…and?” James asked when it was clear she wasn’t going to continue of her own choice.

“It’s nice to finally have some competition around here.”

That sounded very much like a challenge. James was tempted. “Oh? What makes you think you’re good enough to compete with me?”

“Cocky, too. I like cocky. Makes it more satisfying when I win.”

James had to resist the urge to start attacking there and then. “Terms, then?”

She rolled her eyes. “Oh, I don’t want to fight you. Based on our track records that would likely end with one of us dead, and I don’t particularly want Theola to be annoyed at me.”

“Please,” James said, “you do not have what it takes to kill me.”

“I just scored yellow five,” she replied, ignoring her bait. “Reckon you can beat that?”

“Of course,” James bluffed. “That’s trivially easy.”

“Go on, then. Do it.”

James hesitated a second too long.

“Have you even used these before?” she asked. “They record the spells cast at them. Type, power, speed. And they give you a score based on the strength of your casting. See those spots on its chest? They light up and give you a number and a colour.”

“Is yellow five the lowest, then?” James asked.

“Stars, no. It’s not the highest, either, I’ll admit. But these are calibrated with the Mage in mind. No mere mortal could make orange, let alone red.”

James did not appreciate being referred to as a mere mortal, but he had to admit he was never going to reach Theola-level scores. He could definitely beat what’s-her-name, though. Without another word, he turned back to the dummy and began to cast.

His first attempt was a simple chain of shield-breakers, meant more as a test than anything else. The spots on the dummy’s chest did indeed light up when they were hit by spells: one by one, blue lights flickered on. Then they vanished, and a single purple light appeared in their place. He kept casting, waiting for the second purple light to appear, but nothing happened.

When he stopped casting, the lights flicked back to five blue, and then gradually winked out.

“That’s the best you can do?”

James laughed. Type, power, speed. That chain hadn’t come even close to his limits on any of those. It was interesting how the score had stopped increasing, as if the dummy was saying “yes, I know you can cast basic shield-breakers, you don’t get anything more for that”. It was a masterwork of enchantment; James was no specialist enchanter, but he still found himself longing to dissect and examine one of these dummies.

“Honestly,” said what’s-her-name. “There I was thinking you were actually – “

He began another chain. More variety, this one: attacks of pure magical force, with a few shield-breakers and the occasional targeted disruptor mixed in. It wasn’t one of the chains he’d trained himself in, since those were designed to deal with someone who actually fought back, but the repetitive pattern was simple enough he could pick it up on the spot.

The lights flickered faster this time: they were purple by the time he’d cast his third spell, and kept going up. Green one. Green two. This was easy, almost too easy. He found himself sinking into the flow of his movements and spellwork, no longer having to devote conscious thought to casting or indeed anything else.

Stars, this was what he lived for.

He didn’t think again until he saw that first light flicker orange. That broke his concentration, and he gestured in the wrong way. The orange light vanished, replaced with five yellows, and then one of those too winked out.

Orange one would do for now, he supposed. “See?” he said. “Trivially easy.”

She didn’t look impressed, even grudgingly. Instead she was regarding him with naked suspicion. “Where did you train?” she asked.

James swore internally. “What… do you mean?” he asked, trying to buy time to think. His mind was still half-lost in the glorious flow of magic. He’d been too good, or maybe she was just annoyed he was better than her. He'd been good enough that there was no doubt he’d had professional-level combat magic teaching.

Which contradicted Jacob Winter’s established background.

For all his talent, James reflected grimly, he was really an idiot.

And just after slipping into magical flow, as well. He’d drawn deep, but it was difficult to know exactly how deep. If this came to a fight, he might well have to draw deeper than was safe, lose a part of himself or even his life to the flow.

“Who taught you to fight like that?” the woman clarified unnecessarily. Eleanor. That was her name. It wasn’t really relevant at this point.

James shrugged. “My cousin, a little. The rest I’ve picked up on my own. I guess I’m just a natural.”

“Do you even understand how magic works?”

James did, of course, but he might as well give her the satisfaction of explaining it to him. It gave him more time to think of a way out of this.

“It works by belief. Talent arises because you believe you have talent. That’s the only way a true natural, as you put it, can arise.”

She couldn’t be allowed to tell anyone that she suspected Jacob Winter wasn’t what he seemed. That meant he either had to persuade her that she was wrong, persuade her not to turn him in, or kill her.

“How many men,” Eleanor continued, “really believe they are incredible fighters? And I don’t mean the kind who go round saying that to impress the girls, or the kind who believe it until they face reality. What you did to the others… I don’t think anyone could have done that if they hadn’t seen combat first-hand, if they didn’t truly believe they could take out three of a Mage’s bodyguards simultaneously.”

Killing her was risky, because she was close to his match in a fight if those dummies were anything to go by, and because he’d already used more power than was advisable. Wait… she was talking as if she’d suspected beforehand. Had she challenged him partly to make him weaken himself this way?

“So. Who taught you, or where did you learn? And why must it be kept a secret?”

An idea came to him, the one thing that might work. “Some things,” he said, “can’t be revealed to just anyone.”

“I am not,” Eleanor replied, “just anyone.”

“Some things are secrets of the highest order. Secrets that I could only entrust to one person.”

“Theola,” said Eleanor.

“Theola,” James agreed.

“So naturally, when I ask her about this, she will be able to confirm that she knows about your secret and it is nothing that could harm our cause.”

“Naturally,” James lied.

“I should get ready for my shift,” said Eleanor. “Best of luck with the rest of your training.”

James let his mind sink back into the calm a magician needed to cast as she walked away. It wouldn’t be hard, now she wasn’t on guard: a simple cutting-spell would do the trick. Then he’d be left with a body he didn’t have time to hide and a complete lack of alibi.

He hesitated a fraction too long, and she stepped through the door and let it swing shut behind her.

Sticking with the other plan, then. That meant getting to Theola and persuading her to cover for him, without revealing exactly why, in however long he had before Eleanor’s shift began.

What could possibly go wrong?