Perhaps the day before word arrived from the capital, Lucius sat in the corner of a vacated bar surrounded by paper, ink, obsidian, and a chisel. A look at my pupil’s track record might lead one to believe he excelled at most everything he ever tried but that is merely a combination of good teaching mixed with his pursuit of things he generally excelled at. Of course, the mindset to learn is something that can’t truly be taught and he had more than I could have hoped in that department. However, magic was not something he ever quite grasped.

Magic and stigmata have the same route, but humans tend to not understand the complexity of the gifts the gods have given them. His own ability, were I to transcribe it completely in a font that could be read by the unaided eye, would take more room than this history text thus far; but the effect is simple. Simple in the same way that a flower blooming is a simple thing. Were you to examine every pore and chemical within the specimen, you would hardly think it simple.

I had taught him the basics, and by the basics I mean a method through which the essence of a thing can be transcribed. It is a tedious but intriguing trick which requires a well-used quill. It must be a thoroughly abused feather, such that the slick of ink has blotted out the memory of flight and repurposed it. Then, with a bit of blood and a touch, it will leap into the air and transcribe the essence of the thing that touched it; in this case a shard of obsidian.

There is a slight bit more to the invocation, but words cannot teach how to activate one’s will. What’s more, the quill will write in the common vernacular, or the poet’s verse. Not the true syntax. One must then take the words and reverse engineer what the meaning must be. It of course helps the fledgling mage when the item is young and has but one purpose. Obsidian makes for a wonderful teaching sample. Fresh made from the fires of the firmament, it knows only what it is.

It is sharp.

By the time Aisha tracked him down to ask why her favorite quill had been stolen, she had the far more pressing question of why he had covered the table in blood and wine.

“The wine is to replace the blood,” he mumbled, slumped against the wall in his chair, eyes still scanning over transcriptions.

His redheaded lover sat down across from him, eyes locked on his. She didn’t see the magic, but the bruising beneath his brows. “Do you know how hard it was to find you?”

He shrugged and checked one goblet after the next for more wine. “I made it hard on purpose, you know.”

“You told the guards anyone who squealed on you would have their tongue cut off.”

He gave a wistful look to the door of the bar. “I suppose I did. I guess I’ll have to cut somebody’s tongue off, won’t I?”

Aisha held up a hand. “No. I figured it out on my own. This is the only quiet bar in the city. It was fairly obvious.”

He clicked his tongue and sunk lower in his seat. “What do you want, Aisha?”

“You, Lu.”

“Lu?”

Her lips imitated a cat’s. “Am I not allowed to use a pet name?”

He shook his head. “You’re trying to cheer me up.”

“Shouldn’t I?”

“You don’t need to. I’m not sad.”

She arched an eyebrow. “You’re not sad. You’re just…?”

He picked up the largest piece of obsidian he had, a glassy shaft of roguish intent. Etched upon the surface were runes upon runes that glowed in the firelight. “Do you remember the bishop? Jean?”

“The living angel, yes.”

“Ever wonder how they determined that?”

Aisha frowned and put her elbow on the table. “Because she can work magic, right? Like the angels.”

“But, what’s the difference between magic and stigmata? One is defined and the other isn’t. Angels… like Golden… can do anything they can imagine. It’s just that their concept of imagination is a bit different. Same reason they don’t dream. What if you needed to kill one, however?”

Aisha frowned. “I don’t think that has stopped you before…”

“Yes, exhausting their magic by forcing regeneration will put them into a stupor akin to death. But Umbra? The demon of the isles? Still not dead. It’s been in the furnace for how many weeks? And you can still hear the screams in the smoke. It may eventually work, but it’s not fast. It’s not decisive.” He stabbed the obsidian blade into the table, wedging the tip between the grains of the wood without a single chip forming.

“Are you going to say what the answer is?”

He scratched his chin and shrugged. “Sorry, I must have made it seem too important. It’s really not that complicated. If you want to kill an angel you need a magic blade. One that can cut through illusions and barriers and strike the heart of the matter.” He flicked his finger against the obsidian. It rang out like a tuning fork for an instant before the end snapped off and it toppled over. He swore and snatched up another goblet of wine.

Aisha picked it up and waved it at him. “Hate to break it to you, Lu, but you’re not the living angel. You’re just immortal and for some reason are acting like that isn’t good enough.”

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“It’s not,” he said, squeezing the tin cup until it crumpled in his grasp. “There are things I can’t change, no matter how much I’d like to.”

“What? Like bringing someone back from the dead?”

“Close. But, I do know some invocations. I might be able to make someone wish they were dead.”

At last, Aisha picked up some of the pages, not that her quill had produced but that Lucius had. She gave them a double take and held them up to the light. After a moment of scanning them over, she set them back down and folded her hands together.

“Seen that before?”

“Once,” she said. “In a temple in Tavina, there was a leather bond codex they kept chained to the wall in the basement. I referenced it once working on an old translation. Just a snippet of a song no one know how to pronounce; the script was too old. This is the language the angels use, isn’t it?”

“El-dea, yeah. Though, they use it because it’s the language of magic, not because the gods made it.”

“So, what does it mean? What did you write?”

“Nothing,” he said, brushing some of the chunks of obsidian aside, knocking them to the ground like gaming dice. “I haven’t gotten it to work. Until I find the mistake, it means nothing at all.”

“Couldn’t you ask Golden for help then?”

He laughed. “You came here to drag me back, didn’t you? I’ll come. I was just thinking that perhaps I should make an excursion to Rackvidd, meet with this Shipping Investments Guild who have been buying up all the property here. To do that, I’ll need more coin and some fresh clothes. You’ll come with me, won’t you?”

Aisha sighed. “When you ask people to come with you, there seems to be an equal chance of it being a horrific nightmare of danger as it is to be the latest restaurant.”

He grimaced. “Unfortunately, I don’t know which this will be. Going north seems as likely to cut my time here short as not. It brings me closer to my summons, to being told I’ve done too good a job. But, there are certain luxuries to be had and you never know; I might not get another chance to spend all this gold I’ve saved up.”

“Weren’t we just discussing how you’re unkillable? I think you’ll have plenty of chances. You, sir, have a long, long road ahead of you and it had better be with me, you know that?”

He paused a moment longer than he should have. The words flowed slow from his tongue. “Yeah. I hope you realized that was what you’d be in for when you met me.”

“When I met you, you were a kid on an adventure, not a nobleman with aspirations above every conceivable station.”

He laughed and leaned across the table, almost bringing their heads together. “I suppose that is how we met, isn’t it? Giordanan heat, bad beer, that awful pepper-leaf. I forgot how much I missed gambling. There’s no good games here. The locals just don’t have the culture. Their excuses for gambling dens are nothing but holes to soak one’s gut with liquor and scream. Not at all like the fine games of strategy Giordana has.”

“You could always play with me, you know.”

“But what would we bet?”

“Oh, I’m sure we could think of something. Favors, secrets, something.”

“Or, we make a team of it. There are four player games that you need a partner for. The best come from Aillesterra.”

“Tile Lords?”

“The northerners call it that, not the southerners, but yeah. We’d have to get a set imported I think, that might take a while and it assumes we don’t go to full war with them in the mean time.”

“Well you can’t do that,” Aisha said. “You won’t have an address soon enough. Maybe we can find some in the Rackvidd markets? Seems a little unlikely given the piracy.”

“State-sanctioned piracy.”

“Doesn’t that count as war?”

“Not quite. But yeah, a shipping address. That’s a problem, isn’t it? Maybe it will take until I get another plot of land shuffled around to me.”

“If you can’t find something in the markets, couldn’t you use your family’s address?”

Lucius’ brow furrowed as he drew back. “The Solharts? I suppose that is a privilege of nobility, isn’t it?”

“Who else would I mean?” She smiled to let him know that she knew and she knew he knew. “So you’ve been drinking plenty. Surely that’s loosened your tongue. You’ll talk about just anything it seems so are you going to talk about what happened?”

“No,” he said, and at once pulled into himself like a turtle to shell.

“Lu, talk to me.”

“Is that why you started calling me Lu?”

“Had to try something. Come on, tell me what happened.”

He shook his head. “Nothing I shouldn’t have seen coming. You might have been surprised, but I had no right to be. I’ve known Amurabi for years and I should have known that he would opt for the safe option. The fact that he didn’t kill her outright should be seen as a polite gesture.”

She took his hand in hers and squeezed. “What happened?”

After a moment, he pressed her hand with his thumb. “You know how you took an oath to be my ally? Do you remember the exact words?”

“Not particularly.”

“Golden is stronger now than he was then. Right now, I think, if you really tried to be creative, you could spill the secret and we’d be in a lot of trouble. Same with Sammy. Kajsa couldn’t even conceive of the idea of betraying me now because she no longer knows who I used to be.”

After a moment of collecting herself, she asked, “That can’t be right.”

“The way the oath was made, she can no longer remember anything about me before I was Lu. I’m a stranger to her now. Well, not a stranger, I’m her employer that puts her up at his manor. She… she still is who she is. He didn’t rip that out of her and kill her. Didn’t form her anew. She just can’t remember and may never again.” He picked up the obsidian once more, rubbing his thumb across the etchings.

“That’s horrible.”

He stabbed it back into the wood and rose. “It’s for the best, objectively speaking. Or would you rather I bedded her? Made her love me?”

Aisha pouted. “That’s not fair. Beside, you have already threatened me with that in the past. Talking about all the other wives you’ll have to take.”

Lucius laughed and swept his arms around the empty bar. “Yeah, I’m going to have to get on that. Many wives, many children. It will have to be a proper mess of heirs to divy up the world between. Set up a hundred different succession crises to spawn eternal war and bickering when I’m gone.”

“Don’t be crazy.”

He dropped his arms and turned back to her. “Wouldn’t one line of kings scare you more?”

“Or queens, maybe. And you never know. Our children might actually like each other unlike every other royal family in history,” she said, rising. He didn’t correct her that mostly they would be his, not theirs. With her hand on her belly and his around her shoulders, the two of them emerged to the starlit streets of Aliston.

Word from the king arrived as they were preparing to board a ship for Rackvidd, ripping their travel plans to shreds.