The next morning, Mirian went down to the Courier’s office to look for Song Jei’s address. “I’m writing her a thank you card for teaching,” she explained to the attendant. Most addresses in Torrviol were a matter of public record, so this wasn’t an unusual request. The government needed to know it for tax collection purposes, while merchants, bankers, and traders often needed to know an address to follow up on a contract (or, in some cases, hire debt collectors or inform the magistrate if a contract had gone sour). Her explanation was more to make sure she didn’t get caught up as a suspect in an investigation. She doubted the guards were looking very hard for Song Jei, but Captain Mandez would have no problem pinning her disappearance on a convenient scapegoat.

Professor Jei lived in a small apartment south of the belltower, and just east of the Academy crafting stations. This was a good location to scout, because people were allowed up the belltower to view the city. It wasn’t a great view of the city—the Kiroscent Dome blocked most of the northern view—but it was across the street and three buildings down from Song Jei’s place. Mirian summited the tower while munching on a pastry from the market, which felt like the least suspicious thing she could do.

Mirian could just see through the window of the apartment. She was sure it was Professor Jei’s, because she could see a traditional Zhighuan red silk banner hanging by the window, decorated in the gold logograms of their language. A sinuous serpent-like creature overlooked the markings.

The banner also had a diagonal tear through it.

Only a bit of reflected sunlight illuminated the inside of the apartment, but she thought she could just make out a piece of broken furniture.

To confirm her suspicions, Mirian went down an alley, and cast her minor disguise spell. Looking at herself in a pocket mirror, the spell was obviously flawed, with the face she’d created looking a bit uncanny, but she’d brought a cap to supplement her disguise so she put that on. If she’d learned anything in Professor Marva’s class, it was that illusion magic could be enhanced by physical accompaniments. As far as she could tell, Marva had never used an illusion for their clothes, only for their voice, face, and hair.

Mirian had an envelope in her hand. If anyone asked, her plan was to pretend to be a runner trying to deliver a message. She went past the shop one the ground floor of the building and up the stairs. Sure enough, there was Professor Jei’s door with the correct address on the third floor. The door had two cracks through it where it had clearly been broken, then mended afterward with a spell. And sure enough, there was a warded totem in front of the door, with a notice reading ‘Area under the protection of the Torrviol guard.’ Messing with that would send an alarm to the guard station, and a very loud alarm. Some drunk students had tried getting into a warded room in the dormitories two years back, and had woken up everyone in the building. The faint glow of the ward confirmed what Mirian had suspected. Professor Jei had listened to her, it just hadn’t been enough. Instead of ambushing her in the tunnels, they’d apparently just kicked in her door and probably abducted or murdered her. Maybe both. After all, with Captain Mandez in charge of the guard and working with the spies, it would be easy to break into any residence in Torrviol. No investigation was ever going to turn up what really happened.

That worried Mirian. Professor Torres had said Jei’s home was warded, and if Torres had helped with the wards, the spies had smashed through some serious protection. All Mirian had seen were a few wands, but that implied a powerful arcanist must be working with them. Secrecy would have to continue to be her protection.

Mirian spent the rest of the day with Selesia. They walked through the Mage’s Grove, visited the arena, then just walked around Torrviol. The day was cold but sunny. The markets were bustling with people. Farmers from the surround hawked their produce, while merchants displayed the latest goods to come up from Cairnmouth. It was nice to chat with Selesia about her home city in far away Akana Praediar while enjoying simply existing in this peaceful moment. It was strange, too—it really was peaceful. In just over a week, riots would begin in Palendurio, leylines would erupt along the scrublands, and then the world would end. It seemed impossible for there to be such… normality.

Selesia saw the melancholy pass over her. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Nothing to worry about,” Mirian said. If she told her, it would just cause pain, panic—maybe an existential crisis or two. And then it would all be erased anyways. She smiled, and hoped it didn’t look too fake.

***

The first week of the second quarter passed quickly enough. Mirian enjoyed her time with her friends as best she could. On the weekend, she went down into the underground to expand her map twice more. The end result was practically illegible because of the ways the passages criss-crossed beneath each other. There was no hope in memorizing the whole thing, so Mirian did her best to get a general sense of it, and then memorize the most useful routes. She was sure other buildings connected to the underground, but hadn’t encountered any staircases leading up. But Professor Jei must have used them. There was something she was missing.

When she emerged from Griffin Hall that third time, she spotted Valen waiting for her on the bench. “Hey Mirian. Nice disguise spell.”

Mirian groaned. “What do you want?”

“Can a girl not just—?”

“You’re obviously following me. What. Do. You. Want?”

Valen squinted at her like she was a moron. “Is it not obvious?”

“It’s not obvious. Gods I wish you’d leave me alone. What can I say to you that would make you leave me alone?”

Valen drew back as if hurt. “And what have I done to you?” she said.

Mirian raised an eyebrow. “Did you want me to start listing things? Second year, group project, you called me a ‘scarecrow but with less brains,’ and a ‘fool without a court,’ which is why I stopped commenting on anything at all for that project. Twice during class, you spilled my own ink on me with a force spell, once when I was doing a presentation, which you know I hate. Yes, I know it was you. Third year, you—”

“I don’t really need the list,” Valen said. “You’re such a killjoy. Why did you have to be so….” She didn’t finish that thought. Instead, she said, “I want to know what you’ve been doing in Griffin Hall. Or I’ll… report you.” Valen waggled her eyebrows.

Mirian sighed and sat down next to Valen on the bench. She was pretty sure the girl was bluffing, but she also didn’t want to risk the Torrviol guard throwing her in jail again. “I’m looking for Professor Jei,” she said. “I think the guards helped abduct her. Or kill her.”

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That made Valen jerk back in surprise. “That doesn’t explain why you’re smuggling a picture frame under that cloak of yours.”

Mirian briefly showed her the cartography device, then hid it back under her cloak. “Let me just put it this way, because you won’t believe the real story: there’s a lot you don’t understand.”

“Try me,” Valen said, and there was an intensity to her gaze that Mirian found surprising.

“I’ll tell you on the 1st of Duala,” she said. “Until then? Please stop stalking me.”

Mirian departed for the dormitories, leaving Valen behind. For the first time, though, she started considering if she could use Valen’s obsession with her to her advantage somehow. She’d picked up that Valen was following her mostly from context, not from actually catching her. Which was impressive, because when Mirian went to Griffin Hall, she was on the lookout, and she was also constantly keeping watch for more traces of the Akanan spies. Valen was annoying, but she was also pretty stealthy. She also had a keen eye. She’d seen that Akanan spy back in the first loop, and clearly had figured out Mirian was acting odd.

Maybe she could help Mirian track the Akanan spies. It was something to consider.

***

Mirian continued her classes, and worked on creating a more combat-focused spellrod for her Artifice class. This time, several of the spells were not covered in her combat certification, but it didn’t matter because no one in Torrviol would live long enough to check her project.

Soon after, Nicolus departed on his midnight train ride. The next day, Mirian started reading newspapers again. She needed to figure out more about the riots in Palendurio, though since all news needed to move along the trains, she probably wouldn’t hear about it for a few days.

When it came time for her study session in Bainrose with Xipuatl, Mirian was ready. Mirian had arranged to go last in the rotation, so she quickly ran through the third textbook with him. Then, she said, “Hey, you’ve talked a lot about how the arcane theorems we use are incomplete. What’s an example of that?”

Xipuatl frowned. “That depends. How, hmm.” He paused, looking for the right words. “How zealous are you about the Luminate Order?”

“I go once a week. I’m faithful to the Gods.”

“And what about church doctrine?”

Now she got what he was saying. “I’m not going to sic the church on you for blasphemy. I’m faithful to the Gods,” she emphasized.

Xipuatl was still hesitating, though she could also tell he really did want to talk about it. It was his passion, after all. “It’s not that I don’t trust you, it’s that… well, yeah I guess it’s that. No offense. You’re a great study partner, but that’s different than trust.”

Mirian thought about that, and thought about all the politics Nicolus and Xipuatl had discussed. “What if I give you leverage over me?”

He raised an eyebrow. “And how exactly would you do that?”

“Here,” she said, digging out the map of the underground from her bag. She’d removed it from the device frame so she could study it, but now she was sick of studying it anyways. “It’s a map of Torrviol’s underground. I’ve been sneaking into Griffin Hall so I could get down there. Definitely something a student shouldn’t be up to, right? Definitely suspicious and weird, yeah? The kind of thing that might start an investigation.”

“When,” Xipuatl said, “did you find the time to do this? You must have had a cartographic device, which they don’t even sell here. Hm. I never suspected you’d surprise me. You don’t strike me as… nefarious.”

“I’m nefarious as the five hells,” Mirian said. “Okay, maybe not that bad. So tell me—what are the theoretical arcane frameworks missing?”

Xipuatl spent a moment looking up and down the map. Then he rolled it up and said, “Soul magic.”

Ohhhhh. That’s why he doesn’t want to say anything. “Necromancy?”

He gave a dramatic sigh. “No, I really don’t mean necromancy, but I can’t explain it without someone immediately jumping there. Tlaxhuaco nagual—that our word for magic user—constantly use the soul energy of myrvite plants in a great deal of their magic. It’s not parasitic, like necromantic siphoning. And it’s not like curses, which are designed to damage the soul.”

“You said they had druids in Tlaxhuaco.”

“Nagual are similar to the druids, but different. The druids of yore seem to have used magic to control myrvites, and taken advantage of their natural spells. It might have been soul magic, maybe. Most of the surviving texts about that were written by non-experts either observing druids or hearing about them second or third-hand, so I can’t say exactly what they were doing. Pity they’re all gone. You can thank the Luminate Order for that.”

Mirian bit her tongue. The Luminate Order did have something of a dark history, but they’d moved beyond that, right? Still, she could see why Xipuatl would be cautious. All forms of soul magic were, by law, considered necromancy. She could also see why Xipuatl would immediately hate an organization that considered his nation’s traditional magic inherently blasphemous. If had been the first cycle, Mirian might have ended the conversation there. No one much wanted to be accused of heresy for discussing necromancy with a bit too much interest. But now, Mirian could take risks. The worst punishment they could dish out would last about six more days at most.

“So why is soul magic important here?” Mirian finally asked.

“Incomplete energy equations, for one. Has Professor Endresen talked about that yet? I took her class last quarter.”

“Huh. She has. Is that where you think the energy in a spell with a mental component goes?”

“Of course it is! Your mind is part of you as much as your soul is. The spell has to interface with your soul. It explains the inefficiency, too—you have to overcome your own spell resistance. Not as extreme as overcoming someone else’s because you’re subconsciously attuned to it, but it explains the missing energy.”

“That implies a transformation from arcane energy to celestial energy, which has never been documented. Because it’s impossible,” Mirian said. She was getting extremely skeptical of Xipuatl’s claims. He really did have a totally different conception of the theoretical frameworks of magic.

“Celestial energy… I don’t know where that term came from. Why do the Luminates distinguish between necromantic, soul, and celestial energies? Soul energy has phase-changes just like arcane energy does, but it doesn’t just have three, and it certainly doesn’t have them where the church says they do.”

Mirian tried to wrap her head around what he was saying. If Xipuatl was correct, then the Luminate Order was lying. And why would they lie about something that big? “You’re saying this is all measurable. But the best research wizards can’t measure—”

“Because you’re missing half the glyphs. The runic symbols—”

“—the holy language of the church? Wait, does Tlaxhuaco know them? Does Tlaxhuaco use them?”

“I’ve said too much,” Xipuatl said. “You understand why I can’t talk to anyone about this? You’ve spent your whole life hearing I’m full of shit, and there’s nothing I can say that changes a lifetime of indoctrination. That’s why I need overwhelming evidence.” He shrugged. “You’ve taken it better than most, though. At least your brain was still working for most of the conversation. Some people just go straight to trying to punch me.”

He was right, Mirian absolutely didn’t believe him. The blessings of the Gods were indeed a form of energy, since they acted on the world, but they couldn’t be measured, and they certainly had nothing to do with necromancy. But the logic of mental components of spells interfacing with the soul sure made a lot of sense. But then by church definition, any spell with a mental component was necromancy.

She needed some time to wrap her head around it all. And how would she test anything he’d just said?

“Thank you,” she said, as Xipuatl turned to leave. “I just… I need time to think. It’s… it’s a lot,” she said.

“Yeah, don’t mention it,” he said. “Literally. Or I’ll sic the wrath of the Yanez family on you.”

“Don’t worry. I can keep a secret,” she said. As the door to the study room closed, she muttered to herself, “We’re all dead in a few days anyways.”

She kept thinking as she brought the textbooks back to the return cart. She’d always been interested in the divine blessings of the Gods. Less so the Luminate Order and its rituals and studies of the prophets—that felt too much like history to her—but the healing magic had always fascinated her. Could she learn it? Join the Luminate Order for a cycle? For so long, she had been constrained by what seemed to be her fate, which was to spend all her energy studying artifice so she could support her family. Now, the thread of fate was cut. She could be anything, if only for a month.