“—just give me something useful. We’re at war; I can’t afford to waste time. I need to fight.”

The ink paints itself on the page:

There is no power without power.

“What?” she mutters.

In times of war, people look for leadership. In times of war—

*

The Society Biologica met in yet another stately building. Part of the university, Doryn told her, a centuries-old institution that predated the birth of the Republic itself.

Clutching the silvertree seedling to her chest, Valerie peered up at the great iron gate before her. The sun warmed her back, the clear blue sky presiding over redbrick walls covered in ivy and honeysuckle. It wasn’t anything like as tall or imposing as the cathedral, but it had the same air of ancient grandeur.

A small outhouse lay snug inside the archway connecting the gate through to the inner courtyard. The porter manning the lodge wouldn’t let them enter until Doryn spoke to him. The man frowned at her but let them through.

“What was that?” she asked.

“The Society is for members only,” Doryn told her. “You’re being admitted as a special guest.”

“Why?”

But he didn’t answer.

They passed into the inner courtyard, where a gravel path surrounded a square patch of lawn, and the university buildings enclosed them on all sides flanked by beds of flowers and shrubs. She breathed in the scent of rosemary. Young men in black robes hurried by, all of them carrying books and deep in conversation. One of them glanced at her curiously, and she tightened her hold on the silvertree seedling, feeling self-conscious.

They made their way around to the back building, passing another small group, and Valerie realised suddenly that the square reminded her of somewhere quite different: her convent, St. Maia. These young men were students, and this was a place of learning. There was an air not only of peace, but of exclusivity, a serene bubble in which to learn the secrets of the world. Like the convent, only a chosen few ever walked these halls, except that in Maskamere those chosen few were the acolytes blessed by the silvertree, and here… Sons of the nobility, perhaps? She didn’t know.

She did know that in any other circumstance, she would have been denied access. And she felt a familiar frustration mixed with elation at that fact: elation that her relationship with Lord Avon had allowed her such a privilege, and frustration that she needed him to gain access in the first place.

“This way, my lady.”

Doryn steered her on. The path continued beyond the back building and into a garden of sorts, a secluded area with a fountain in the centre of a small lawn and well-trimmed hedges forming bird-shaped sculptures around the perimeter.

Here they entered a greenhouse full of flowering plants. It was much larger than the greenhouse at the Maskamery embassy, a glass structure with high wooden beams and rows of desks facing a set of blackboards at one end. A classroom? Did the students come here to learn about these plants?

And poring over a heavy book before one of those blackboards…

“Anwen!” she gasped.

He wasn’t alone. Avon leaned over his shoulder, both of them seemingly engrossed in whatever page they had opened. The old scholar frowned at some passage or other, spectacles slipping to the end of his nose. He pushed them up, then his gaze landed on Valerie, and he beamed.

“Lady Valerie!” She put the seedling down on one of the desks as Anwen hurried forward to vigorously shake her hand. “How marvellous to see you, my dear. And what is this—a silvertree?”

“For your demonstration,” said Avon, moving forward to join them.

She looked at him, a flicker of understanding passing between them.

Anwen was already peering at the seedling. “Yes, yes, wonderful…”

Avon’s gaze fell on Doryn, waiting patiently behind them. “How was it?”

“No trouble, my lord.”

“Very good. Wait for us outside. I don’t expect there to be trouble, but it doesn’t hurt to keep watch.”

Doryn bowed and retreated.

“So, this demonstration…” she said.

She was beginning to guess what was going on here. And when Avon and Anwen explained their plan for the evening—Avon with a slight smile, Anwen with much enthusiastic gesticulating and the occasional scrawl on the chalkboard—the same thrill rushed through her that she had felt swiping the silvertree from under Titus’s nose.

“Will you do it?” Avon asked.

After she’d faced the Patriarch and the Senate? Easy.

She grinned. “Absolutely.”

*

The meeting took place inside a lecture hall. A sea of men in waistcoats and tall hats jabbered away at each other, each clutching a thin paper booklet, while waiters moved around the crowd serving drinks on silver trays. The place smelled of whisky and sweat.

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Wrinkling her nose, Valerie navigated the hall on Avon’s arm. Faces turned to meet hers, eyebrows raising in shock, annoyance, even alarm. Avon strode through the crowd, acting as though he didn’t notice.

“Witch,” she heard whispered again and again.

An empty stage dominated one end of the hall, half-hidden by a velvet curtain. The show had not yet begun, but Valerie knew that Anwen had gone backstage to prepare, taking the precious silvertree seedling with him.

A valet handed Avon one of the paper booklets; she craned around his shoulder to see what it was.

On the Biomagical Properties of the Silvertree as Pertaining to its Mutualistic Relationship with Human Women, read the title.

What a typically stuffy Drakonian way to describe it, she thought. But before she could say anything, Avon tucked the booklet into his pocket and addressed one of the gentlemen nearby.

“Master Titus. I’m so pleased you could make it.”

She ought to have recognised the curly hair. Titus turned around, drink in hand, and scowled at the sight of them.

“Delighted,” he muttered.

He looked anything but delighted.

“I believe you know Lady Valerie?”

The corner of his eye twitched. Titus was gripping his glass so hard, she thought he might accidentally break it. She would have enjoyed his fuming if only it was directed at Avon and not her too.

“I do,” said Titus stiffly. “A pleasure, my lady.”

“I wanted to thank you,” she said, “for taking in Priska. I left her my well wishes. I hope she passed them on.”

Titus’s face softened a fraction. “She did. Thank you.”

That might be the closest she got to exchanging a coded message. She doubted that Avon would let her speak with Titus alone. Nor would it be prudent to do so in a room full of onlookers.

She glanced up at Avon, wondering if he had understood her meaning too, but in that moment the lecture hall plunged into darkness. She froze, startled. The crowd murmured. Then her eyes adjusted. The lamps around the main floor had been snuffed out or dimmed, leaving the spotlight only on the stage. Naturally, bodies shifted to face the stage, and a hush descended.

Titus slipped away. She drew a little closer to Avon, holding tight to his arm.

A man stepped up to the stage and clapped his hands. “Gentlemen! Good evening! Welcome, one and all, to the Society Biologica’s midyear meeting.”

“Jonathan Lynwood,” Avon murmured in her ear. “Son-in-law to the Duke of Glost and very well-connected. We shall need his support.”

Jonathan Lynwood stood tall and jolly on the stage, his curly hair the same shade of brown as his waistcoat, his soft features akin to a sculpture in beeswax: seeming malleable, even spongy.

“Gentlemen,” said Lynwood, “my thanks to all of you for joining us. We have a most fascinating paper for your perusal this evening, written by a fine scholar who has lived for over thirty years in the country of his study. I speak of course of the realm of Maskamere, a place that has generated many a debate in these halls. For those gentlemen who have yet to cast their eyes over our southern province, allow me to share a few facts to whet your appetite.”

He cleared his throat before continuing:

“The soil in Maskamere is by some measures at least ten times more fertile than the soil in Drakon. Connoisseurs will tell you that there is no finer wine, no finer bread and no finer oranges than that produced in Maskamere. You can even drink the water straight from the rivers without fear of disease, or so they say. I wouldn’t try it myself.” He smiled, prompting a few chuckles from the audience. “But it has long been said that a potion or tincture from Maskamere can cure any ill. Travellers from across the Empire and beyond visit Maskamere to bathe in its springs and be healed. A magical place indeed. But enough from me. May I introduce my good friend and esteemed scholar, Master Anwen Fairburn!”

Lynwood bowed, stepping aside to a faint smattering of applause. Anwen leapt into his place, a twinkle in his eye, bushy eyebrows aloft and coat tail trailing behind him like a sage old fox. The curtains drew open to reveal the full stage, empty except for a marble plinth standing behind him.

“Magic!” said Anwen. “What do you think when you hear that word, gentlemen? Magic. Magic as a stand-in for natural laws we do not understand, like the aether or a man’s soul. Magic as a byword for the evils of witchcraft, dark sorcery that curses or bewitches us. Magic representing the strange and uncanny in fairy tales, stories to scare our children. Some of you do not believe that magic exists, despite all the evidence to the contrary. Those savages in Maskamere with their superstitions are no different to the Enyrn belief in the Great Serpent or the Lovinians’ fondness for ghouls and revenants. No matter.”

He paused, and Valerie looked around at the men in the room. All rapt, all silent. Anwen certainly had their attention, even if some looked dubious.

“We are all natural philosophers, aren’t we?” Anwen asked. “We hold firm to our guiding principle, that nature can be observed and understood. There is nothing in the universe we should not investigate, that we may discover the laws governing it and in so doing add to the body of Divine knowledge that benefits all mankind. When I first travelled to Maskamere over thirty years ago, I discovered an entire branch of knowledge yet to be investigated by a scientific mind. And I applied this guiding principle, to observe and to understand. Let me show you what I have learned.”

He moved a pace to his right, revealing the empty plinth. The hall was utterly quiet.

“Magic,” Anwen went on, “is a natural phenomenon. That is, specifically a biological phenomenon. And this is its source.”

He gestured off-stage, and a young assistant stepped forward carrying the silvertree seedling in its pot. Murmurs flew around the audience. The seedling did not glow; its pointed silvery leaves barely caught the light. To the untrained eye, it appeared an ordinary plant.

“The silvertree!” The assistant placed the seedling on the plinth, Anwen introducing it with a flourish. “I brought this specimen from Maskamere myself. Yes, erm, at Lord Avon’s request.”

Maska, she thought. Anwen was a terrible liar. She glanced around the room again, searching for Titus, and found him standing off to the side, arms folded, jaw set.

“And now,” Anwen continued, “after three decades in Maskamere studying these extraordinary plants, I’m delighted to have finally submitted my first paper on the topic to the Society.”

“What took you so long?” someone called, and a soft chuckle rippled through the hall.

“Quite,” said Anwen, not seeming offended. “Perfection is the enemy of the good, they say. And only fools act in ignorance. For a long time I was ignorant. Before Maskamere became a province of the Empire, I advised the Council that sorcery in Maskamere depended on the silvertrees. There is a bond of sorts, a biological interdependence, between the priestesses—witches—and the trees. No one in Maskamere is born a witch.”

He began circling the plinth, gesturing from the seedling to himself.

“The woman interacts with the silvertree in a ritual they call the blessing. It is no Divine miracle, but a biological exchange of information that creates a bond between the woman and the silvertrees. Once that bond is forged, the witch’s will is awakened. And where there are silvertrees, her will may become reality.”

“I and others before me have documented this phenomena, but until now it has not been precisely measured. I recently had the privilege of studying one such subject in depth over a period of several weeks. As she forged a bond with each silvertree, her powers grew in ways that were quite unexpected. I present the results of these experiments in my paper, which I hope you have all read and absorbed.”

He was talking about her, she realised. All the tests she had performed with Anwen as they had sought to understand and improve her magic. He had written it all down, and now he was sharing the results with these men in much the same way he might talk about his beloved beetles.

Valerie didn’t know how to feel about that.

“One might say the silvertrees grant certain powers,” Anwen went on, “but they also have their limitations. As scientists, we expect results to be repeatable. That is where we have failed when it comes to magic—we have called it superstition or witchcraft—because we have been unable to demonstrate any real sorcery in the laboratory. But the reason for that is that certain conditions must be met, conditions that do not exist in Drakon. Until tonight.”

He bowed his head, a note of excitement entering his voice.

“Lady Valerie, please come to the stage.”