Satryn laughed as she draped the necklace and let the long ruby shard rest in her bosom. It brightened and flickered softly as she lightly electrified the filaments in the gold chain, causing the tungsten backing to glow. “Perfect. Let’s remind them what harnessed electricity looks like.”
Jessa braced herself for another wistful recollection of the wonders in Thrycea.
“Limitless energy,” my mother would exclaim. “The city of Thelassus is lit at every hour. The factories and forges run without need for wood or coal. Can you imagine what would be possible here if we could harness that?”
Jessa had visited Thrycea once as a child, and it seemed a dreadful place to live for common folk. The Everstorm kept the city in perpetual darkness save for the storm lights and the constant flashes of lightning. Rain poured constantly as shivering work crews fought a constant battle to maintain the buildings against the onslaught of the elements.
Satryn appraised her daughter, her silver eyes moving from the hem of her dress to the pearl embroidery around her collar and sleeves. Jessa impatiently waited for her mother’s snide remark.
“It favors you,” Satryn offered. “These Genatrovans like their brides to be virgins for some reason, and you certainly look the part…in a prim, forgettable sort of way.”
Jessa forced a smile. “Thank you, Mother…I think.”
“Let’s just get through this,” Satryn said. “The countess has had ample time to find you a suitor. If all goes well, you’re to meet him and let us work out the arrangements. You’ll be married and coronated within the week, and all this foolishness with Duke Rothburn will be over.”
Duke Rothburn controlled the eastern half of Amhaven and waged a merciless guerilla campaign against her supporters, burning homes and fields. It was all-out civil war. “And you’ll return to Thelassus, never to trouble me again,” Jessa said. The prospect of a blindly arranged marriage might have bothered her, but nothing could spoil her excitement about finally being free of Satryn.
Jessa was the rightful queen of Amhaven, but her mother had seized the regency after Jessa’s father had died. Though the law stated the ruler must be male, there were no such limitations on regents. But now Jessa was of an age to marry, and she couldn’t wait.
Satryn grabbed Jessa’s arm and glared at her. “I have given you everything! Do you think my mother, the
empress
, picked out my clothes for me? Do you imagine that she dried my tears when my father passed away? Did she run to protect her darling baby daughter from the cruelty and scheming of my sisters? Do you think she even
once
showed me a single shred of maternal kindness in all the seventeen years I lived in the Sunken Palace? If I
ever
spoke to her in such a way, do you know what she would have done to me?”
Jessa shrugged free of her mother’s grip. “Isn’t that why she exiled you and married you off to my father?”
“You ungrateful little bitch!” Thunder rumbled outside as Satryn struck her across the cheek.
Jessa laughed in surprise as she wiped blood from her lip. “I don’t care if this suitor is fat and ugly. He could be old and want me to engage in degenerate acts that would make the bards blush. There’s no prospect more loathsome and insufferable than the idea of spending the rest of my life under the dark cloud of misery you travel with. When I am queen, you will not strike me again.”
“Good.” Satryn nodded calmly. “That’s exactly the kind of focus you’ll need to pull this off. Now shall we meet your Lord Silverbrook?”
Jessa forced a smile.
A
S OF THIS
writing, the youngest to attempt the Seal of Vitae was thirty-eight-year-old Lester Dumand of Bamor College. A prodigy known for his intricate illuminated manuscripts, he had attained seven seals in a short time, made even more impressive by a late start to his study. What led a man, at so young an age, to attempt then mistranscribe the seal is pure speculation.
Over the next fortnight of observation, Scholar Dumand exhibited a shocking transformation. Piebald and graying at the temples, with a midsection typical of a Scholar who did not engage in strenuous exercise, he began to regrow hair and slim at a startling rate. By the fourth day, he had recaptured both the figure and appearance of his younger days, when his profession had been that of a sellsword. By the eighth day, he was a young man in peak physical condition.
Had the process stopped there, Lester Dumand would have made the discovery of the ages. Who among us doddering old magi would not wish to spend our extra centuries in the prime of our respective youths? But Scholar Dumand’s trajectory continued backward toward infancy. He retained his faculties through his teenage body, but as he reentered childhood, his mind lost the capacity for higher reason.
As he degenerated into infancy, his lungs could not support him, and he perished from asphyxiation on the thirteenth day.
—
ENTRY IN THE UNABRIDGED CODEX HAMARTIA FOR LESTER DUMAND
D
ESPITE ITS NAME,
the Mage’s Flask wasn’t frequented by anyone respectable and certainly not by anyone from the Lyceum. Even prostitutes were a rarity. Sawdust covered the creaking floor and its many probable bloodstains. The crudely hewn stools wobbled no matter which way you turned them.
Maddox pounded a glass of firebrandy. It had been two days. He hadn’t shaved or changed his clothes, which reeked of alcohol and sweat.
The bartender, and possibly owner of the establishment, Cassie, was a plump black woman with a perpetually stoic expression. Despite her size she was surprisingly quick and could clear the counter faster than you’d think possible to beat the shit out of customers who tried to sneak out on their tabs. She polished what was probably the only clean glass in the bar.
The good news for Maddox was that one way or another he was going to make history. When you mistranscribed the Seal of Vitae, you got your own chapter in the accounts of the magi and an entry in the Codex Hamartia. His name would be a cautionary tale for ambitious young Scholars for centuries to come. People may not have remembered the name of the dean of the Academy when Lester Dumand had inverted the third inner curvatures across the median lineation of his seal, but everyone knew Lester’s story.
“Hit me with another one, Cassie,” Maddox called from his usual seat.
She sighed as if she’d been asked to shoulder the weight of the world as she brought a bottle over and filled Maddox’s glass. “Your dad came in here a few nights ago,” she said.
“And?”
“He ran out on his bar tab.” She raised her eyebrows, clearly expecting Maddox to pay.
“It was your mistake for serving him.” Maddox raised his glass. “He’d only come into this shit hole if every other place had thrown him out.”
“In Bamor a son repays his father’s debt,” Cassie said as she poured him another shot. She went back to polishing her glass. She knew better than to push it. Having an actual mage frequent the establishment was handy, and no one could break up a fight or toss someone out like Maddox.
His dreary ruminations returned. The best-case scenario would be if his seal killed him in his sleep. His promising career—and all the hard work he had poured into it—had been irrevocably marred with a single impulsive stroke of his stylus. What could he possibly look forward to…a teaching position in the alchemy department? He would kill himself before that ever happened.
He felt something on the back of his neck, something soft and hot, like breathing.
Maddox turned slowly and nearly leapt out of his seat. A lanky, unshaven man was looming inches from the back of his neck with a shit-eating grin and blazing green eyes. Before the man could even speak, Maddox dragged him up several feet in the air by the collar of his black jerkin. The man’s arms clutched at the fabric, his boots kicking frantically as the power of the seal suspended him midair.
“Riley,” Maddox said, regaining his composure. “Do not fucking do that. Ever.”
Riley was alternating between gasping for breath and laughing his ass off. The guy was certifiably nuts—creepy but without really being scary. Maddox released Riley, and he plopped down to the floor, still gasping and chuckling. “Should’ve seen yer face. Priceless!”
“Not a good time, Riley,” Maddox said, suppressing the desire to cause bodily injury.
Riley’s shoulders sank. “You look bummed. T’fuck happened? I were always able to get a smile from you back in the old days.”
Riley had developed a one-sided kinship with Maddox, a fictional narrative in which they’d been friends rather than passing acquaintances when they were in the Lyceum together. Riley’s unfortunate Amhaven accent had marked him for ridicule early on, and he washed out before he’d even chosen a specialty. Maddox, who generally regarded everyone as inferior, ignored him but never went out of his way to be cruel either. But on a bad day, he sadistically had allowed Riley to cheat off his theurgy exam. The source of Riley’s sudden brilliance was obvious to everyone and had led to Riley’s expulsion. However, in Riley’s mixed-up head, that caper had made them something like blood brothers.
Maddox rolled his eyes. Riley was like a stupid dog—you couldn’t hate him without feeling guilty. And you could pretty much tell him anything, and he wouldn’t judge. “I tried to inscribe the Seal of Sephariel, and I fucked it up. And I bound it anyway. So I’m not really in much of a laughing mood. And you aren’t that funny.”
“Whoa!” Riley’s eyes got huge. “You fuckin’ madman! I knew you was gonna be a big shot one day, but holy fuck! Can I see it?” Riley enthusiastically reinvaded Maddox’s personal space.
“No!” Maddox pushed him back with his seal.
“So they kicking you out of the school then? That’s what happens if you mess up, innit?” Riley asked, with unseemly enthusiasm.
“I don’t fucking know!” Maddox shouted, and slammed his hand on the bar. More calmly he continued, “Turnbull wanted me gone yesterday, but Tertius is the dean. As long as he’s around, I think they’ll find something for me to do. Fuck, there’s a backlog of administrative shit, and they need someone halfway competent to do it, providing I don’t spontaneously turn into some putrifacted corpse.”
“Fuck Turnbull and Tertius!” Riley spat on the floor, which in any other place would have been met with a reprimand from the management. Riley’s hatred of Tertius was understandable; he was the one who had ordered his expulsion, to make him an example for the other students.
“Can I tell you a secret?” Riley whispered.
“If I say no, are you going to tell me anyway?”
Riley sat himself next to Maddox and rolled up his sleeve. He had pale, veiny arms, and some of the veins had turned black, which could have come from impurities common to any number of illicit substances. “I been practicin’ a little meself…Got us a school of sorts even. I made this a few nights ago when I was right fucked on dragonfire.”
Maddox recoiled slightly as Riley revealed a mark on his arm.
It wasn’t even an attempt at one of the thirteen seals. It was drawn inside a triangle. The lines squiggled like worms, some of them falling outside the edges. The intersects were all wrong as well. The geometry was utter nonsense—and it seemed to be moving. “What…the…fuck?”
“You know there’re mages who say there was more than thirteen seals. Before the Long Night.”
“That’s…kind of a seal, Riley.” Maddox winced. “What does it do?”
He shrugged. “Dunno. But it ain’t killed me yet. My point is there’s all kinds of knowledge outside what those old buggers teach in that stupid school. They spend all those years fillin’ your head with rituals and rules so you don’t know what’s actually real anymore. The seals ain’t there to bind the Guides—they’re there to bind
you
.”
“That’s deep, Riley.” Maddox remembered that he had a drink and downed it.
Maddox looked away from Riley’s “seal.” To inscribe something without knowing what it was required a specific type of stupidity. The seals were specific to the Guides themselves, so how that nonsense even had been bound in the first place made no sense. On the other hand, Riley seemed like his normal self, which was by no means a good thing, but not any worse than usual.
“Hey.” Riley perked up suddenly. “You should come hang out wit us. I’ve got meself a study group of sorts. Nontraditional students and the like. We could really use someone like you—you’re the smartest guy I know, in fact.”
“As much as I love an intellectual challenge, I’m going to have to pass on explaining the Principia Magica to a bunch of downriver hedge wizards.” Maddox tapped the rim of his shot glass to get Cassie’s attention.
“Yeah, well…” Riley looked down. “I understand—you probably don’t need nobody to teach you nothin’. You was always smart like that. But if you change your mind or just want to say hello, we’re squatting in a brown two-story at the end of Langley Pier. You can’t miss it. There’s big red writs of condemnation on the door.”
Maddox waited for Cassie to pour his shot; her urgency fell somewhere between slow and geological. “Maybe I will,” he said, immediately regretting it.
“Yes!” Riley beamed as he pumped his fists. “You’ll be my guest of honor, you will. And we’ve got a bedroom set up that’s real nice. Homey like.”