The Unnatural Order

Schooled in Magic XXVII

Christopher G. Nuttall

http://www.chrishanger.net

http://chrishanger.wordpress.com/

http://www.facebook.com/ChristopherGNuttall

Cover by Brad Fraunfelter
www.BFillustration.com

Contents
Cover Blurb
Author’s Note
Prologue I: The Great Sorcerer
Prologue II: The Merchant
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine

Cover Blurb

For generations, the Magicians of Celeste have chafed under at the limitations of the Compact, the treaties between the Magical and Mundane communities of the Allied Lands, and worked towards their abolition, envisaging a world in which magical supremacy would be established, allowing them to explore newer and greater fields of magic while keeping the powerless mundanes firmly under control. Their dreams were not taken seriously, until now.

With the end of the Necromantic Wars and the Allied Lands in disarray, they have finally stepped into the light and taken control of their city, declaring independence from the Allied Lands and creating a nightmare for both mundanes and any magicians who refuse to toe the line. And they don’t intend to stop. It is only a matter of time before they export their new regime to the rest of the continent, crushing anyone who stands in their way.

For Emily, who has traced the enigmatic Hierarchy to Celeste, there is no doubt that the new regime is an ally to a far older and darker threat. Millions of lives are at stake, thousands killed and tens of thousands more forced into slavery. The regime must be stopped, no matter the cost, before it imposes its own order on the entire world. But how can she prevail against an entire city of magicians, and a threat that has been decades in the making?

Author’s Note

Dear reader

There are some points that probably require a mention, but feel free to skip this introduction if you wish.

First, you will notice that this book is self-published rather than produced through Twilight Times Books. The small press is winding down its operations, and I am currently transferring the earlier Schooled in Magic books to self-published as the rights are returned to me. I apologise for any confusion this causes.

Second, while most of the book is written from Emily’s point of view a handful of chapters have Adam (or both) as a viewpoint character. Those chapters have been clearly marked.

Third, Adam and Lilith made their debut appearance in The Cunning Man trilogy (starting with The Cunning Man), which also develops the science of magitech. Jane made her first appearance in The Muckraker’s Tale, a short novella published in Tales of the Nameless World V.2. I don’t think you need to read those books to understand what is going on, but if you haven’t already given them a chance, please check them out.

Thank you for your time, and enjoy the wild ride ahead. And if you enjoyed the book, please leave a review.

Christopher G, Nuttall

Edinburgh, 2025

Prologue I: The Great Sorcerer

Great Sorcerer Resolute, Council Leader and Head of State, stood in front of the window and stared out over the city. His city.

Celeste was beautiful, a strange combination of wizarding towers, dimensionally transcendent homes and fairy-tale structures that could only be built with magic and would collapse under their own weight if the magic went away. There was no other city quite like it, Resolute knew, and there never would be. Most magicians lived alone, or in families that were really clans; Celeste, and Celeste alone, was the only place where hundreds of magicians lived and worked together, sharing their lives as only those touched by the gods could. It was the closest thing to paradise the world had ever seen, and yet …

He chose not to look at the drab buildings on the edge of the city, just inside the walls, where most of the mundanes lived, or to allow his imagination to wander to the layers of lost cities built on top of other cities, only to be buried again under Celeste. The city was old – the site had been settled so long ago that much of its history had been lost – and warped by magic, from the sheer pressure of so many wards and magical structures to the remnants of experiments and magical disasters that had been flushed into the undercity and left to turn the local environment into a danger zone. He’d been down in the tunnels as a young apprentice, hoping to strike it rich; he’d found nothing, beyond an appreciation of the city – and the sheer potential it represented – that his master had never shared. And it had given him a cause.

The old simmering anger burned at the back of his mind as he waited for the council meeting to begin. Celeste was the hub of magical activity, of everything from trading to higher education and apprenticeships, and yet the magical aristocracy and the Allied Lands had tried to cut the city down, to keep it from growing into the wonder it should have become. They had made the rules and enforced them, taking the best of the newborn magicians for themselves and limiting the rest to ensure the newborn mages could never pose a challenge to their entrenched rule. Resolute – he hadn’t been called Resolute, in those days, of course – had been denied a chance to rise to the top, because he refused to let himself be turned into breeding stock and lacked the power to convince the aristocracy to overlook his lowly origins. He had seethed with resentment when he’d been forced to take up the sole apprenticeship he could find, but he’d turned that resentment into power when he’d entered local politics. He wasn’t the only one who saw the Compact as a tool to keep the lower magicians down, keeping them from enjoying their god-given gifts just as much as it kept them from moving up. It had taken him time to build a power base, to become well-known by Celeste’s citizens due to his commonsensical actions as a politician, which led him to make his play to challenge the established order, but now …

His lips twisted, although there was no real humour in the expression. The Necromantic Wars were over. The Allied Lands were in disarray, mundane aristocracy waging war on their rivals or being overthrown by their own people; the magical community was in chaos, trying to recover from the damage inflicted by a single, power-mad sorcerer. There would never be a better chance to overthrow the Compact, to isolate the city of magicians and practice magic as it should be practiced. Who knew how far Celeste could go? The city alone might not be enough for the new order. There was an entire world to be claimed.

And we have to move fast, he told himself. Everything has changed.

His heart clenched. He hadn’t believed the first reports from Heart’s Eye. The idea of mundanes being able to make magic was just absurd, the sort of nonsense one might read in the Lay of Lord Alfred. Resolute knew mundanes. They were, to a man, useless in the face of magic, cowering before magicians in fear or in awe. The idea of a mundane who actually could gather, shape and cast magic was just … but it had happened. They’d built an airship, of all things, a flying castle that had been immune to spells and … and everything had changed. The old council had openly wondered why they should rock the boat, why they should risk everything on a bid for independence when they were already unchallengeable. But now they could be challenged. Their near-omnipotence was at risk.

It was time to act, to take control of their own destiny.

Someone cleared his throat, behind him. Resolute turned to see Boswell, a drab little man in a drab little robe, so low in magic he barely had enough to light a candle. Enough to make him a magician, enough to let him lord it over the powerless mundanes, but hardly enough to let him become a power in his own right. The man had entered Resolute’s service a year ago and rapidly earned his master’s trust, not least because he had no aspirations of his own. He would rise and fall with his master, which gave Boswell a very strong incentive to be as loyal as only a god-touched magician could be.

“My Lord,” Boswell said, with a nod. Magicians didn’t bend the knee to anyone, even lone powers. “The council has assembled and is waiting on your pleasure.”

Resolute’s lips twitched, and he felt a surge of glee as he picked up his staff and walked to the chamber. The councillors wouldn’t wait long – they were prideful magicians, not mundanes – and he knew better than to keep them unduly delayed, but it still felt good to have so many powerful magicians waiting for him. It was power, true power. He wondered, snidely, if it was how the Patriarchs and Matriarchs felt, as they lorded it over their magical families. He’d met Lady Fulvia once, back when she’d visited the city, and … he bit off that thought as he stepped into the chamber, Boswell taking his place at the back wall as his master walked to his seat. The secretary had a perfect memory. He’d be able to recall, later, who had said what – and why.

But this time it won’t be needed, Resolute told himself. We are here to declare our independence, once and for all.

He sat and surveyed the room. It had taken years of politicking to ensure that his faction controlled four of the High Council seats, giving them the majority they needed to take the vote to the Low Council. The outcome was certain, to the point he was sure none of the councillors would take a stand by voting against it. They’d be taking their own lives in their hands if they did. They might be powerful magicians, but there were a lot of magicians on the streets who wanted independence and freedom now. Anyone who stood against their desires would be lucky if they had a chance to regret it.

“We stand at the brink of apotheosis or nemesis,” he said, without preamble. “The White Council is gone. The Allied Lands are in chaos. The magical families are in disarray. And the mundanes are getting ideas.”

He allowed his words to hang in the air. The idea of mundanes with magic was terrifying – and it wasn’t just magic. He’d seen firearms and steam engines, railways and airships … the world was changing, and not for the better. The mundanes no longer knew their place … he cursed Lady Emily under his breath for the changes she’d brought, even as he admired everything she’d done. She had the sort of power and influence he’d wanted, once upon a time, and the love and respect of countless people, magical and mundane alike. And yet, her foolishness was going to reshape the world. They had to take a stand now, while they still could.

“It’s time to act,” he said. He couldn’t help feeling a twinge of nervousness. They were about to step out of the shadows and into the light, to take control of an entire city and challenge the old order to a fight it could neither win nor refuse. “For decades, we have been held back; for decades, we have been treated as lower-class citizens, kept from achieving our full potential and becoming masters in our own house. It’s time to separate ourselves from what remains of the old order, to renounce the Compact and inaugurate a brave new era.”

The air seemed still. No one spoke.

Resolute tapped the table, once. “All those in favour, raise your hands.”

The mood shifted. Four hands – including his – went up at once. Two more followed slowly, with a show of reluctance that might – or might not – be feigned. One hand stayed firmly on the table. Resolute scowled inwardly – Great Sorceress Sabayon had played her cards very close to her chest – and nodded openly. She would come to regret that, he was sure. Her voters were as driven by the idea of independence and freedom as the rest of the magical population. She would lose her post shortly, if he didn’t find a way to remove – or kill – her. There was no longer any time for half-measures. The dice had been thrown and now …

“The motion is carried,” he said. With six votes in favour, the Low Council wouldn’t try to stand in his way. Or even slow him down. “From this moment forth, we are an independent city once again.”

He allowed himself a tight smile. The preparations had been made. The vote was nothing more than a formality, a figleaf of legality covering a de facto seizure of power and imposition of a new order. His men were already fanning out, sealing the gates and removing a handful of magicians who could be relied upon to cause trouble, once they realised what had happened. Once order was in place, any magician who objected – or wanted to leave – would be allowed to go.

The mundanes would object too, of course. But who cared about them? They were beasts of burden, fit only to hew wood and draw water, to do all the hard drudgework while the god-touched magicians aimed for the stars. They would be put firmly in their place, if they tried to cause trouble. What could they do, against men touched by the gods?

What could they do, against magic?

Prologue II: The Merchant

Hannah looked up, sharply, and sucked in her breath as her cousin Jon stumbled into the shop.

It took her a moment to be sure it was Jon. He was normally a very handsome young man, to the point he never had any trouble finding a young woman to take to the dance hall, but now his head had been turned into an ass’s, mounted so precariously on his still-human body that she feared any sudden movement would break his neck. If he hadn’t been wearing the same short-sleeved shirt as she was, his tattoo clearly visible on his bare skin, she wouldn’t have recognised him at all.

“Jon?” Hannah stepped around the corner as the door closed behind him. “What happened?”

Jon opened his ass’s mouth and made a braying sound. Hannah gritted her teeth. The spell had robbed him of the ability to speak, at least in a manner anyone could comprehend. It was hardly the first time she’d seen some poor mundane hexed or cursed for being powerless in a city ruled by magicians, and the hell of it was that it wasn’t the most sadistic or unpleasant transformation she’d seen. There were horrible rumours she knew to be rooted in fact … she bit her lip, hard, as she led Jon to the nearest seat and pushed him to sit down. It didn’t take much for a magician to decide to put a mundane in his place, to inflict humiliation or agony on a whim. Hannah had been hexed herself, more than once. And she had done nothing to deserve it.

“Stay there,” she said. Some magicians were friendlier than others, but she doubted she could find one who would undo the spell. They tended to believe that anything a magician did to a mundane was deserved, no matter how little that was true. “Don’t move.”

She darted to the door and locked it, switching the sign from OPEN to CLOSED. It was risky – she knew too many magicians who would happily take the sign as a challenge and blast the door down – but she dared not be caught doing something, anything, that could break the spell. Her skin crawled as she hurried back to the counter and opened an unlocked drawer, one that was so insignificant she hoped any watching eyes overlooked it. Their patron, who had cast the protective wards around the shop, could use them to spy if he wished. And if he caught them …

Her fingers closed around the runic tiles, pushing them into position as quickly as possible as she hurried back to Jon. The Magitech was simple, compared to some of the stories coming out of Heart’s Eye, but it was so explicitly illegal in Celeste that mere possession would be enough to get her a life sentence and a brand-new career as a spellbound slave. If she hadn’t had a distant cousin who’d obtained it for her … she braced herself as she pressed the tiles against Jon’s neck, all too aware she was crossing a line. But what choice did she have? The spell might wear off on its own or it might not, forcing her to pay through the nose for its removal.

Jon’s head twisted, bending in unnatural directions before snapping back to normal. “Thanks,” he muttered, gasping for breath. “That was …”

Hannah nodded, curtly, as she hurried back to hide the tiles and reopen the shop. There were advantages to living and working in Celeste – the money was good, and no one looked down at her for being a woman – but there were times when she wondered if it wouldn’t be preferable to go back to Kerajaan instead. Sure, she couldn’t own property in her own name – and if her husband turned out to be a boor, she’d have to put up with it – but at least she wouldn’t be turned into a toad if she looked at some magician the wrong way, or merely happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, when an angry sorcerer was looking for targets. She glanced at the rear of the shop, where her father was preparing ingredients, and shuddered inwardly. It was their one chance to make a fortune, but she was beginning to wonder if the price was too high.

Her eyes narrowed, and a shiver ran down her spine as she saw black-clad young men marching down the streets. The magicians had always pushed the mundanes around, but the near-constant harassment had been getting worse over the last few weeks. She had heard rumours of debates in council, suggestions it was time to declare independence … as if Celeste wasn’t already independent. Some merchants had already moved out, a handful abandoning their patrons; others, she’d been warned, had been told they wouldn’t be allowed to leave the city until their contracts expired. She wondered, suddenly, if her father was one of them. She hadn’t been privy to the negotiations before he took possession of the shop.

Jon coughed. “Thanks,” he said, again. “I said no.”

Hannah blinked. “No? To what?”

“A witch wanted me,” Jon said. “I said no. And she hexed me.”

“I’m sorry,” Hannah said. There was nothing else she could say. The magicians made the rules, and everyone else did as they were told, or else. Jon had been astonishingly brave to say no and … Hannah gritted her teeth. It could have been a great deal worse. “Perhaps we should just go.”

She glanced back at the curtain leading to the workroom, feeling a twinge of guilt for even thinking about it. Her father wanted to make enough money to ensure they could rise in the world, and Celeste was the only place they could make a fortune in a hurry. And yet, with every passing day, the city was growing darker and darker. She could leave now, buy passage to somewhere – anywhere – else and not return, but that would mean abandoning her father. And letting the magicians push her around.

A shimmer ran through the air, a frisson of magic that scared her to the bone. Her body twitched, then started to move of its own accord. A dreamlike trance fell over her, the world turning into a nightmare, as her body made its way out of the shop and up the road, Jon walking helplessly beside her. They weren’t alone, either. Dozens – hundreds – of mundanes were coming out of their shops and homes, from the youngest, toddling children to elders who could barely walk, some fully dressed and others dragged out of their showers or beds. The nightmare sharpened … she told herself, firmly, to wake up. She was suddenly, terrifyingly, aware of the force acting on her body, but it was impossible to resist. And yet, it was no dream.

Her eyes lolled from side to side, taking in the drab buildings. Mundanes were supposed to live in the poorest parts of the city, unless their masters chose to allow them to sleep in their homes, and they weren’t allowed to make their homes stand out in any way. They weren’t even allowed gardens and parks! The apartment blocks were dull and lifeless, the communal kitchens renowned for serving tasteless food … the schools and trade shops were the only places that showed any individuality and even that was very limited, more focused on useful skills than independent thinking. A student who learned to think for himself would be lucky if he was merely ordered to leave the city.

She stopped at the top of the road, body hanging listlessly as her head snapped upwards. A magician was floating above, wrapped in an aura of power. A stab of pure envy ran through her, sharpening her mind despite the spell holding her in its thrall. She’d grown up a young girl in a kingdom that regarded young women as property, unless they had magic, and she’d often wished she had magic of her own. It would have opened so many doors for her, given her the chance to go to Whitehall or Mountaintop or even become an apprentice in Celeste. Instead, her fingers were powerless and now …

The magician spoke quietly, but his words were audible right across the ghetto. “There is a new order,” he said, his tone shimmering with magic and authority. “Magic rules. Those of us who have power, who are blessed by the gods, will reign over those who were never blessed …”

Hannah felt her heart sink as he went on and on, detailing the removal of what few rights mundanes had in Celeste and reducing them all to serfs. She had known she was in the bottom half of the city dwellers, but now … she swallowed hard as the deadly speech came to an end, with a final reminder they were now de facto property. Maybe not quite slaves, but she’d met enough escaped serfs to know the only real difference between serfdom and slavery was the spelling.

The spell came to an end. Her body staggered, legs buckling under her own weight. She would have fallen if Jon hadn’t grabbed her arm, holding her up as many of the rest of the crowd fell to the cobblestones. Some were crying, others were blank, faces seemingly robbed of independent thought … Hannah tried to force herself to move, as the sheer horror of the situation washed through her mind. It was too late to run and hide, too late to escape the nightmare that had settled over the city. They were property now …

And that was all they would ever be.

Chapter One

“The Hierarchy does not exist,” Melissa said.

Emily eyed her thoughtfully as they sat in Melissa’s inner sanctum, a surprisingly shabby chamber that was remarkably comfortable. Melissa had recovered the family mansion – and the nexus point – after Void’s defeat, taking advantage of the chaos to reorganise the family and redesign parts of the mansion to suit herself. Emily couldn’t help thinking that her inner chamber resembled their old common room at school, right down to the comfortable armchairs and sofas, but Emily kept that thought to herself. She wasn’t blind to the favour Melissa was showing her by inviting her into her inner chamber. Melissa wanted – needed – to portray herself as a mature and reasonable young woman, a solid pair of hands to guide the Ashworth – and Ashfall – families into a bold new era. It would have undermined her position if she showed everyone her innermost sanctum. It was her space.

Melissa looked good, Emily noted. She was still the willowy redhead who had been a rival, and then a friend and ally, but she also looked more mature and reasonable than many other magical aristocrats. A slight bulge in her stomach suggested she was expecting, although no official announcement had been made. Emily suspected she was trying to keep the old ladies from bossing her around, once they realised she was pregnant, and turning the unborn child into a political pawn before the baby took their first breath. Melissa herself had been such a pawn and she’d hated it. Her husband – Markus – felt pretty much the same way.

“So I keep being told,” Emily said. There weren’t many people she could ask about the Hierarchy. Far too many of her older friends and mentors were dead – she felt a bittersweet pang as she recalled Void’s final words – or reluctant to talk, if they even knew anything. She was starting to wonder if its existence was a truth everyone considered bad manners to say out loud, even though it was true. “What do you know about it?”

“That it doesn’t exist,” Melissa said. She winked, one hand resting on her stomach. “Or that is what I was always told.”

Emily cocked her head. “And what else were you told?”

Melissa leaned back in her chair, organising her thoughts. “You are aware, of course, that there are layers to the magical community that are opaque to outsiders,” she said. “A newborn magician who enters Whitehall will not be aware of the discussion circles, or quarrels, and even when they do make their way into magical society, they will often be unable to get that far into the deeper layers. They simply lack the shared understanding of those born to magic, or the contacts they need to open doors they don’t even know exist. I have access to some of those networks, and Markus has others, but Fulvia had access to far – far – more.”

“I am aware,” Emily said, stiffly. The highest levels of society, mundane or magical, resembled nothing more than a mean girls association, ready to exclude anyone who was the slightest bit different, or weak, or simply a convenient target for malice, someone whose ouster could serve as a rallying cry to unite the group. She’d never liked such associations, not least because she lacked the personal skills or outright sugar-sweet nastiness she’d need to partake. A word in the right pair of ears, a rumour with no discernible source … it wasn’t that hard to turn someone into a target, destroying their life for fun and profit. “And your point is?”

Melissa met her eyes. “The point is, some of those networks pass on whispered warnings. And one of those warnings, when I was a young girl, was about the Hierarchy.”

She paused, studying her hands. “It’s difficult to tell how much truth there is in the rumours,” she added. “Some stories insist the Hierarchy are the rulers of the world, and that everyone bows to them; others insist they rule in secret, and resistance is impossible because no one knows they’re in charge. Still others suggest the Hierarchy is a path to power, to the very darkest of magics; others insist the Hierarchy was destroyed, root and branch, by the Empire and exists now as a cautionary tale. And nothing more.”

“And no one knows anything for sure,” Emily muttered.

“No,” Melissa said.

Emily shivered. She had encountered two dark wizards in quick succession and both, when they died, had taunted her with a warning about the Hierarchy. The second had taunted her after he’d died, his body animated with a spell that should have been impossible. She knew better than to think anything was truly impossible, after so many years in a world shaped by magic, and yet the sight of a dead body issuing a final statement had chilled her to the bone. If the Hierarchy really existed – if – what better time to make a move than now, with the Allied Lands in disarray?

In all things, Virgil’s body had said, in a very different voice, there is a Hierarchy.

Melissa spoke with quiet certainty. “You know as well as I do just how many insane rumours there are out there,” she said. “Some are probably spread to conceal the truth. Others are little more than an attempt to build a reputation, to convince people they’re stronger than they seem or that their victory is assured. There isn’t an up-and-comer, male or female, who doesn’t pretend to be important, to make a show of having contacts or secrets or … or whatever it takes, to keep people guessing about his true power. Hinting at having ties to the Hierarchy could be just another attempt to boost their own reputation.”

“They issued their taunt after they were dead,” Emily pointed out. She could understand a living man trying to con everyone into overestimating his importance, but why bother when he knew he was dead? To spook her, or …? “And they were clearly up to something beyond petty power politics.”

She rubbed her forehead. The first Hierarchist – for want of a better term – she’d met had stolen a collection of books she’d buried under Whitehall, books that detailed how to summon and control demons. The nightmare he’d nearly unleashed had come close to destroying the entire world and yet … she wondered, sometimes, if it had been meant to fail. Some of the books were still missing and others had been copied, suggesting the knowledge was out and spreading. And then the second Hierarchist had been working to trigger a civil war, using it as cover for a slave trade ring … it puzzled her, more than she cared to admit. Virgil hadn’t needed to try to assassinate her, let alone spark off a war, to cover up his own actions. And he hadn’t needed to use Marah, either …

The thought made her heart twist painfully. Marah – her former apprentice – was out there somewhere, doing … who knows what? Emily knew Marah had a fire in her belly and wanted, even needed, to fight for the freedom of the common man … was she waging war on the aristos, using the magic Emily had taught her, or had she already run afoul of her own ambitions? Emily had no idea where the younger girl had gone, or why, but she had the nasty feeling that sooner or later they’d meet again. Then what?

Melissa met her eyes. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Emily looked up. “Talk about what?”

“What’s bothering you,” Melissa said. “Something is.”

“No.” Emily shook her head. Melissa wouldn’t understand. To her, Marah was an apprentice who had betrayed her mistress. She would never be anything else. There were no excuses, as far as the magical community was concerned, for such a betrayal. The idea that Emily might be willing to give Marah some space, and time, was just as absurd. She would never understand why Emily hadn’t already hunted Marah down and thrashed her, before kicking her out in disgrace. “I need to think about the Hierarchy.”

“Assuming it exists at all,” Melissa teased.

“There was something behind both dark wizards,” Emily said. She wasn’t sure how to put her feelings into words. They’d acted alone, but they’d also acted as though they were working with others … she wondered, suddenly, if the civil war had been intended to hide something more significant than a slave ring. “They were operating on too great a scale for them to be working alone, for themselves.”

Melissa started to say something, then looked up as Markus entered the room and sat down next to her. Emily felt a twinge of envy at their happy domesticity, mingled with a grim awareness it would never be hers. She had no family in the Nameless World, no relatives who would help her up … no family name to serve as a sword and a shield. Her heart twisted, again. Alassa was married, Imaiqah might get married someday … was Emily going to be alone? She told herself, sharply, not to worry about it. Being born into a magical family was as much a curse as it was a blessing.

She looked at Markus and smiled. “What do you know about the Hierarchy?”

Markus blinked at the question. “I was … I was told about it by Aurelius, a year or two before you and I met,” he said. “It was a very vague statement.”

Emily leaned forward. “What did he say?”

“It was more what he didn’t say,” Markus said. He paused, clearly organising his thoughts. “I was one of the potential candidates for Head of Spider Hall, and the Administrator gave me an interview a week before the end of term. It was a very strange, very disjointed, conversation. I thought, at the time, that he was trying to confuse me.”

“Or lure you into sin,” Melissa offered, darkly.

Emily nodded. Administrator Aurelius had had one extremely capable agent – Nanette, who had later been recruited by Void – but having Markus in his corner, as the future Patriarch of House Ashfall, would’ve been worth almost any price. He’d gone to a great deal of trouble to lure Emily herself to Mountaintop, the following year … had he been connected, on some level, with the Hierarchy? She wondered, just what Aurelius had said when Void killed him. She hadn’t been there. She hadn’t even known Void had killed Aurelius until much later.

She leaned forward. “What did he say?”

“He told me that the Hierarchy existed to take magic in unthinkable directions,” Markus said, slowly. “And he implied – very much so – that it existed outside the Compact. And the Allied Lands.”

Melissa blinked. “He thought that would tempt you?”

“I guess so.” Markus shrugged, languidly. “He never knew me very well.”

Emily made a face. There had always been a certain willingness amongst magicians to push the limits as far as they would go, a practice she could hardly condemn because she was guilty of it too. The prospect of making a new discovery, from something as prosaic as a new potion recipe to a world-changing invention like magitech, had galvanised thousands of magicians, including a number who had accidentally killed themselves. Or worse. Markus wouldn’t be tempted by the prospect of being able to experiment without limits, or worrying about rules intended to prevent disaster, but she could name a dozen students in her old class at Whitehall who would be very tempted indeed. If she hadn’t seen the effects of dark magic up close and personal, she might have been tempted as well.

“Unthinkable directions,” she mused. The first Hierarchist had been experimenting with demons, risking possession – or worse – during his mad rush to the White City. The second had been draining his slaves of magic and life itself, using magitech to gather their combined energies to power his spells. It was surprisingly innovative, for a traditional magician. She knew far too many who regarded magitech as just another form of conjuring. “What are they doing? What is the point?”

She met Markus’s eyes. “Did he mention any names?”

“No.” Markus shook his head. “In hindsight, he could have been testing to see how much I knew.”

“To see if Ashfall was dealing with the Hierarchy,” Melissa said.

Emily looked at her. “Were they? Was Ashworth?”

“If they were, I never knew about it,” Melissa said. “Fulvia is dead. A bunch of her cronies are also dead, or gone … as far as I know, they left the day I took power and never bothered to return. If they were dealing with the Hierarchy … the links were broken the moment they left.”

“Unless they’re still plotting against you,” Markus pointed out. “There are some people on my side of the family I wouldn’t trust to guess my weight, let alone watch my back.”

Emily listened to their banter with half an ear, mentally considering the possibility. The magical families did a great deal of research – House Ashworth had secrets, as did House Ashfall – and it was quite possible that some of that research had come directly from the Hierarchy. If they had a secret agreement, the discoveries could have been slipped into the mainstream without the true inventor ever coming into the light. It was far from impossible … a nasty thought ran through her mind, a horror story in which America and Russia had both traded with a secret and monstrously evil faction, out of greed for advanced technology and fear of being left behind. If the Hierarchy had close connections to the major families, it might explain why it had survived …

And Void killed a great many senior magicians, she thought, numbly. How much knowledge died with them?

“I wish I could tell you more,” Melissa said. “But all I know is rumours and innuendo.”

“You could track down Nanette,” Markus added. “She might know more.”

Emily nodded, although she doubted it would be possible. Nanette was a mistress of disguise, with a remarkable talent for passing unnoticed. She could be right next door, or halfway across the world, and tracking her down would be incredibly difficult. Emily didn’t even have the slightest idea where to begin. Nanette had told her a little about her family, but hardly enough to track them down either. The description had been so vague she could have come from one of a million possible families. She made a mental bet with herself that, if she went to Mountaintop and asked to see Nanette’s permanent record, it would be missing. Nanette was too smart to leave that lying around.

There was a sharp knock on the door. Melissa jumped and sat up, letting go of Markus and brushing her hair back as her husband scooted away. Emily hid her amusement as Melissa waved a hand in the air, unlocking the privacy wards on the inner chamber. The door opened and a preteen girl stepped in, holding a charmed parchment in one hand. Emily’s eyes narrowed. If the adult servants had ordered a child to deliver the message, it almost certainly wasn’t good news.

“A messenger just dropped this off,” the girl said. She shot a worried look at Emily, then returned her gaze to Melissa. “It is charmed and addressed directly to you.”

Melissa took the parchment, muttering a handful of spells to check it was safe to open. “Did you show the messenger to the guesthouse?”

“No, My Lady,” the girl said. “He said he had other messages to deliver.”

Emily felt a premonition of doom at the back of her mind as Melissa opened the parchment and scanned the message. It was rare for magicians to use messengers for anything other than the most important pronouncements, and even rarer for messengers to pass up the chance for a quick rest before galloping back onto the roads and heading back home. And yet, if the message was truly urgent, it would have been carried by a teleporter …

Melissa hissed, then looked at the girl. “You are dismissed.”

The girl hurried away, closing the door behind her. Melissa passed the parchment to Markus, then met Emily’s eyes. “Celeste has just declared independence.”

Emily blinked. Celeste was already independent. “Independence? Independence from whom?”

“Everyone, it seems,” Markus said. There was a hint of dark humour in his tone. “They’ve formally separated themselves from the Allied Lands, renounced the Compact, and demanded recognition as an independent state.”

“It’s more than that,” Melissa added. “They’re offering themselves as a home for discontented magicians, as well as those who want to push the limits as far as they can go.”

Emily took the parchment and read it carefully, forcing herself to parse through the stilted nuances of High Script and work out what it actually said. If anything, Melissa had understated the case. Celeste hadn’t just declared independence; it had also laid claim to the farmlands around the city, defying the neighbouring kingdoms to do something – anything – about it. Worse, it had laid claim to the people who worked the lands. Ice ran down her spine as she considered the implications. Virgil had been sending his slaves to Celeste. And that meant trouble.

She cursed under her breath. The Compact was intended to do more than just keep the magical and mundane communities from clashing, let alone going to war. It was also intended to keep magicians from experimenting with dark magic, spells so dangerous they made necromancy look safe. The rules had been fraying for years – she knew she had played a role in weakening them, if accidentally – but now, if all the safeguards were to be tossed aside …

The system worked very well for the magicians who formed a de facto aristocracy, she mused grimly, but it’s much less kind to the ones who were left in the cold.

“And if they’re breaking the Compact,” Melissa mused, “how far are they prepared to go?”

Markus grimaced. “They timed it well, didn’t they? There’s no one left to stop them.”

Emily shivered. Markus was right.

Chapter Two

“The meeting will take place in an hour,” Melissa said. “Will you attend?”

Emily hesitated. Melissa had worked with commendable speed, calling a conference of the magical community’s movers and shakers, from the matriarchs and patriarchs to the school headmasters and other prominent figures. Emily wasn’t sure she should be attending, if only because she held no formal role, although she suspected Melissa would appreciate at least one friendly face in the crowd. It didn’t help that far too many of the attendees were new in their roles, promoted after their predecessors had been killed in the wars. She wondered, sourly, just how many hated and feared her because Void had acknowledged her as his daughter, even though she’d also been the one to stop him. It was brutally unfair, but very human.

“If they’ll have me,” she said, finally. “I don’t know if they’ll be happy to see me.”

She sighed, inwardly. The reports had continued to flow in, noting a handful of magicians had been allowed to leave Celeste – but no mundanes. She’d visited the city only a few short weeks ago, and even then it had been slipping into darkness in a manner that reminded her of historical accounts of Germany in the early days of the Third Reich. No open state-organised violence against the Jews, not yet, but street harassment and legal restrictions warning everyone who could that it was time to flee before it was too late. It was hard to believe any mundanes would willingly remain in the city, even before the declaration of independence, but – perversely – the city wasn’t the worst place in the world. Compared to growing up a serf, or living in the borderlands, Celeste was paradise. And the chance to make money was one few could resist.

“They’ll need your insights,” Melissa pointed out. “And as the leader of the family, I have the right to invite who I please.”

Emily nodded, then returned to the flow of reports as Melissa hurried away to organise the meeting itself. It was an emergency, allowing normal protocol to be set aside, but there were still hundreds of issues that had to be addressed before someone accidentally gave offense to someone else and the meeting collapsed into acrimony. She’d been told, once, that the plural of magicians was argument and she knew there was some truth in the saying, if only because senior magicians were prickly souls who expected respect, even if they were massively outmatched or simply didn’t deserve it. Void had poured scorn on the formal protocol, pointing out that most senior magicians reached the top through family connections rather than merit … something that was true, she knew, of the magical families. A newborn magician would never reach the top. Her children, on the other hand …

The thought nagged at her as she joined Melissa in the meeting room, a dimensionally transcendent chamber that managed to give the impression of being impossibly large – with so many participants that holding any sort of effective discussions was impossible – and also strikingly small. A surprising number of senior magicians had attended in person – she spotted Lord Ashfall, Markus’s father, on the far side of the chamber – but others were attending through magical projections, something that would be considered an insult if it wasn’t an emergency. She allowed herself a smile as she nodded to Professor Lombardi, then MageMaster Zed. They were both sensible, reasonable men. She hoped they’d be voices of reason in the debate to come.

She took her seat and reined in her senses, trying not to be overwhelmed by the shifting dimensions around her. It was hard, even after several years of being schooled in magic, to comprehend that two contradictory things could be true at once, and her head hurt every time she tried to open her mind. The chatter around her was a dull whisper, the words sharpening every time she picked on a strand of conversation and focused on it. It was difficult to follow several different conversations at once, reminding her of early internet chat rooms without the edge of being able to scroll back and remind herself of what had been said. She had to admire the older men and women who appeared to have no trouble keeping up with the chatter, although she suspected the preliminary discussions were largely pointless. Her lips quirked as she realised one couple was talking about the weather.

Melissa called the meeting to order, her voice projected through the chamber by the wards. “I believe we have all received the message from Celeste,” she said. If she was daunted by addressing so many important magicians, it didn’t show. “They were determined to make sure the message was spread far and wide, including to all the major broadsheets, with orders to publish the formal declaration of independence as a matter of urgency. We know for a fact the message has reached the major kingdoms” – Emily winced; Alassa would have heard the message by now – “as well as much of our community. There is no hope of keeping the crisis under wraps until we can figure out what to do about it.”

Emily nodded, stiffly. Others nodded too.

“Celeste has declared independence,” Melissa continued. “The city has also formally renounced both the Compact, which would be bad enough, but also the strictures on magical research and development. We know the Supremacists have been chafing at the restrictions for decades, insisting they’re intended to limit magical research and appease mundane rulers rather than prevent disasters, and now they have formally renounced them. They may avoid disaster – their objection was always that the restrictions were imposed on them by outsiders, rather than their own people – but I wouldn’t care to bet on it.”

She paused, letting the words hang in the air. “Does anyone have anything to add before we go on?”

“I have a report from an agent in the city,” Lord Ashfall said. His voice was very grim. “There are magitech monsters in the streets, keeping the mundane population under control, and making it difficult for any magicians to organise resistance.”

Emily shivered, recalling the iron golem she’d fought only a few weeks ago. It had been a strange combination of steampunk technology and magic, a near-indestructible monstrosity warded against spells and armoured enough to stand off musket balls and cannon fire. It was strange to think of the Supremacists embracing magitech, after they’d banned it in Celeste, but they were probably more opposed to mundanes using magic than magitech itself. She made a mental note to contact Caleb and warn him and Administrator Irene to strengthen the defences around Heart’s Eye. It was just a matter of time before the supremacists tried to assassinate Adam. 

It’s too late now, she thought. The secret is out and spreading. But they might try to kill him out of spite.

“A couple of students were caught distributing the message to others,” Professor Lombardi added. “They were both from low-ranking families, with neither connections nor vast magical power.”

Emily winced, inwardly. There had always been a certain degree of classism within the magical community, making it difficult to advance if you didn’t have either connections or enough power and talent to convince patrons to overlook your lowly origins. Melissa had always been assured of a glistening career, at least until she’d married Markus and been briefly exiled from her family, but Imaiqah hadn’t been assured of anything, no matter how hard she worked. If she hadn’t become close friends with Emily and Alassa, she might have wound up a magical craftsman – and little more. She recalled Gennady’s fall from grace – and the monster he’d become – and shuddered. No wonder he’d been tempted into necromancy. For all his magic, he’d never had a hope of rising in the world.

I suppose that explains the Supremacist appeal, she mused, sourly. If you feel you’re at the bottom, and you’re being unfairly kept from rising, having someone below you to feel superior to might be all that keeps you from despair.

She cursed under her breath. It was an old story – and almost painfully human.

“I’ve caught a handful of my clients planning to move to Celeste,” an aristocrat she didn’t recognise said. “Naturally, I told them they could go if they liked, but they wouldn’t be allowed to come back.”

Melissa tapped the table, drawing on the wards to quiet the room. “The question now is simple,” she said. “What do we do about it?”

Emily hid her dismay as a number of senior magicians started talking at once. The magical community had never been very good at dealing with offenders, particularly offenders who carried out their atrocities against mundanes rather than their fellow magicians. The Mediators had done what they could to keep the worst dark wizards under control, but everyone else had largely contented themselves with shunning the offenders and little else. And now the Mediators were gone, along with the White Council. The Allied Lands existed in name only. They really had timed it well.

“We need do nothing,” the aristocrat said. “They will inevitably collapse under their own weight.”

“Or unleash something terrible,” Markus’s father countered. “The rules exist for a reason.”

“They will have to impose their own rules,” the aristocrat insisted. “They may consider themselves independent from us, but that will just force them to grapple with the same problems we did and reinvent the same rules out of cold necessity.”

“They have chafed against the rules for years, Lord Lamiae,” Markus’s father pointed out. “They will not be quick to reinvent them.”

Emily frowned. Lamiae? Where had she heard the name before?

“They have already announced they will be setting up their own school,” Professor Lombardi said. “They’ll be taking their children out of ours shortly.”

“It will take years to set up a school to match ours,” Lord Lamiae snapped. “If they want to cripple their education, that is hardly our problem.”

“It might be,” Emily said, without thinking. She felt weirdly exposed as all eyes turned to her. “If they keep their children out of Whitehall, and all the other schools, they won’t be exposed to magicians from all walks of life, or mundanes from other cities and kingdoms. They’ll grow up with no context for what they’re being told, and no reason to question it. And if the Hierarchy really is behind the uprising …”

“The Hierarchy?” Lord Lamiae laughed, humourlessly. “The Hierarchy does not exist!”

Emily flushed. “I encountered two magicians, in quick succession, who both cited the Hierarchy,” she said. Mentioning the name had been a mistake. She’d never been that good at understanding social situations, but even she could tell the tide was shifting against her. “It would be an odd little coincidence if there were no links between them, or something greater hiding in the shadows.”

“And how much of this,” Lord Lamiae asked, “is your fault?”

“That will do,” Professor Lombardi snapped.

“It will not,” Lamiae pushed back. His eyes sparkled with anger. “You opened a University” – he stumbled a little over the unfamiliar word – “at Heart’s Eye, where magitech was invented and airships put into mass production. And now they are using magitech to enforce their rule!”

“You cannot blame her for how someone else uses her innovations,” Melissa said. “We are here to decide what to do about the crisis, not to assign blame.”

“We do not have many options,” Lord Ashfall said. “We do not have an army capable of freeing the city. We did not realise the potential of magitech until it was too late, which means we have no choice but to catch up as quickly as possible. They have hundreds of magicians under their control, as well as both magitech and control of the trade routes. We may have no choice but to acknowledge their independence and let them go.”

Lamiae snorted. “And what happens when they declare war on us?”

“There’s no reason to think they will,” an older woman pointed out.

“They must,” Lamiae insisted. “They see us as stodgy and selfish reactionaries, holding them back. They’re already luring other magicians to their city, building their forces. It won’t be easy to hold their government together, not without either a strict hierarchy” – he put a stress on the word that chilled Emily – “or a common enemy. And that enemy will be us.”

Emily feared he was right. The magical families were a very loose affiliation, an aristocracy that allowed for a certain degree of merit … as long as they shared the right bloodline. It wasn’t a very fair system, but it did have the advantage of being relatively stable and predictable. Celeste wouldn’t have that advantage, as more magicians flowed into the city and started competing for posts and positions. The competition could easily turn violent, if the government didn’t have a monopoly on violence – it couldn’t, when magicians were involved – and the consequences of losing started to look fatal. If that happened … the city would either fall into civil war or direct its energies against outside foes.

“There’s also the issue of the mundane governments surrounding the city,” Melissa said. “They want us to do something.”

“They have no right to interfere in magical affairs,” Lord Ashfall said. “And right now there is nothing we can do.”

“We should do nothing,” another magician said. “It is a basic principle of our society that a magician’s home is his castle. If a magician wishes to do something – anything – within his wards, it is his business and no one else’s. Celeste has every right to separate itself from the rest of the community and negotiate a new set of agreements and understandings, if it wishes to do so. Our control over the city was always tenuous …”

“Non-existent,” Lamiae commented.

“… And now they have merely formalised what we all knew to be true,” the magician continued, ignoring the interruption. “Celeste was never a family mansion, let alone an estate. It belongs to the magicians who live there, not to us. We treated the city as neutral ground, like the schools, and never made any attempt to impose our will on it. Let them have their independence, if they wish. Given time, we will rebuild the trade links or simply redirect them.”

“Unless they do declare war on us,” Lamiae pointed out.

“If,” Melissa said.

Emily gritted her teeth. Celeste declaring independence was one thing, although if the Hierarchy was behind the declaration she had a nasty feeling the matter wouldn’t stop at the city separating itself from the rest of the Allied Lands. She still had no idea what Virgil had really been trying to achieve, beyond chaos … chaos was a ladder, as Littlefinger in A Game of Thrones had pointed out repeatedly, but it was also very effective cover. If they’d been running slaves into the city … what was the point?

She leaned forward. “There’s another problem,” she said, sharply. “If the reports are accurate, the mundane population has been effectively enslaved, held in bondage. We need to do something about that, and quickly.”

Lamiae snorted. “And what do we care about the mundane population?”

A rustle ran around the chamber. Emily winced. Most magicians tended to look down on the mundane population, regarding them as inherently inferior at best and little more than animals at worst, but they rarely said it so bluntly. They might see slavery as distasteful, yet … their distaste wasn’t enough to propel them to do something about it. The mundanes weren’t important, as far as they were concerned. And even the development of magitech hadn’t changed that in any way.

It might have made matters worse, she reflected. If there was one thing a powerful person feared, it was losing that power. She’d lost her magic briefly, and it had almost killed her. Once they realise the true potential of magitech, they’ll crack down on it. Hard.

She gritted her teeth. “We should, because it is the right thing to do,” she said. She felt dirty even making the argument. The concept of noblesse oblige had always struck her as incredibly patronising at best, an opportunity to look good rather than be good at worst. “If our power gives us rights, it also gives us responsibilities.”

“Our responsibilities are to our families, not to mundanes we don’t know,” the old woman said, shortly.

Emily met her eyes. “If we allow them to develop a city-state in which mundanes are treated as slaves, it will not be long before they start treating others as slaves too,” Emily said. Racism and bigotry tended to be character-forming, and not in a good way. It was just a matter of time before the Supremacists started picking on low-power magicians, or the magical aristocracy. “Newborn magicians, then lower-ranking magicians, then … us? And if that isn’t a concern, how will the surrounding kingdoms react to a city full of bigoted magicians?”

She knew even as she spoke the argument was lost. Magicians had always been a little bigoted against the mundane population, and contemptuous of their inability to defend themselves. It was easy to fall into the trap of thinking you were superior when you could turn anyone who disagreed into a toad. There was no reason to think the neighbouring kingdoms were capable of dealing with Celeste, or – for that matter – morally superior. Kerajaan treated women as property, and Rose Red wasn’t much better. And they both treated serfs as de facto slaves.

“This is all your fault,” someone muttered. “If you hadn’t broken the necromancers …”

“We’d be watching the Craggy Mountains for the next offensive,” Professor Lombardi snapped. “Shadye came within seconds of breaking Whitehall and flooding his orcs into Alluvia. If he had, he could not have been stopped. It would have been the end!”

Emily barely heard him. It was clear there would be no agreement, not in a hurry. The combination of ancient traditions, fear, and bigotry would make it impossible to get the magical community moving in the same direction. Even if they did, they’d have to build up their own magitech weapons and that would take time … and if the Hierarchy was involved, it was time they didn’t have. And that meant …

I have to go there, she thought, grimly. And quickly.

Chapter Three

“It’s good to see you again, Emily,” Caleb said, as she stepped into his office at Heart’s Eye. “I just wish it was under better circumstances.”

Emily nodded, hugging him tightly. The remainder of the meeting had been just as useless as she’d feared, the argument going in circles and several magicians accusing others of being in alliance with Celeste, or plotting to recognise the city’s independence in exchange for certain concessions … she had no idea if any of the accusations were true, but it looked as if there would be no consensus, certainly not an agreement to do something about the crisis before it got out of hand. Melissa had noted, afterwards, that House Ashworth would be developing its own magitech as fast as possible, but Celeste had a huge head start. Emily cursed whoever had designed the iron giant under her breath. It showed a degree of inventiveness – and willingness to learn from mundanes – that struck her as surprisingly out of character for the Supremacists.

They probably repackaged the inventions and credited them to magical researchers, she thought, tiredly. Adam had done the majority of the early work, but Lilith had helped with the later development and it was quite possible the Supremacists had simply credited her with doing all the work. Or simply chosen to overlook it. It was astonishing what could be overlooked, if facing it squarely meant calling one’s prejudices into question. Or maybe they didn’t ask too many questions.

Caleb let go of her, then led the way through the maze of corridors to his office. “There hasn’t been much disruption here, not yet,” he said. “I’m confident there won’t be much – most of our magicians are smart enough to understand that mundanes might lack magic, but that doesn’t make them inherently inferior – and in any case, we do focus on merit rather than bloodline and any ambitious magician knows there’s a decent chance of rising in the ranks. It helps that we have been integrating the two communities, to the point they no longer really exist as separate groups. How long that’ll last …”

Emily understood. “Do you think they sent agents up here to spy on you?”

“I’m sure of it,” Caleb said. “We thought Arnold was working for Tarsier, or at least for the Crown Prince who murdered his father, but … there were definite hints they were allies, rather than employer and employee, even before Arnold used dark magics to turn him into a living weapon. If Arnold was working for someone else …”

He scowled. “I find it hard to believe he was a Supremacist. He played the mundane too well – and even after being exposed, he didn’t try to kill Adam or even Lilith.” 

“He might not have believed in their cause,” Emily mused, “but that wouldn’t stop him making use of them.”

She had to admire the man’s skill, even though he’d been a very deadly and dangerous enemy. She’d lost her powers, briefly, and it had felt as if she’d lost her arms. It was rare for a magician to pretend to be a mundane; almost unknown, if only because the advantages of being a known magician were too great to pass up. And then he’d taken advantage of what he’d learnt, putting magitech into use instead of trying to destroy it, or simply pretending it didn’t exist. Caleb had a point. Arnold could not have been a believer in Supremacist ideology. But that didn’t mean he hadn’t been a Hierarchist.

Caleb sat on the sofa and pulled her down beside him. Emily leaned into his arms, feeling comfortable … she was tempted, very much so, to close her eyes and go to sleep in his arms. Or to pull out her notebook and start discussing ideas, to bounce her concepts off him and listen to his concepts in return. It was astonishing how much they’d discovered together, back when they’d been younger and the world had seemed a more innocent place. And it was a promise of a time when they could relax and explore the potential of magic, without needing to worry about how it would be exploited by other magicians …

She tilted her lips up to his and kissed him lightly, trying to demonstrate her feelings instead of putting them into words. It wasn’t the sex – not just the sex, anyway – but the companionship she valued, the meeting of minds as well as bodies. If they had time … she was torn, suddenly, between letting him take her to bed and the awareness time was not on their side. The last set of reports, handed to her before she left Ashworth Mansion, had noted a number of sorcerers had been allowed to leave Celeste, but no mundanes. Somehow, she wasn’t surprised. The Nazis had hated the Jews, but they hadn’t let them flee Germany either.

“We have to do something,” she said, drawing back. “I have to do something.”

Caleb frowned. “Emily, can you take on an entire city of magicians?”

Emily grimaced. She had no idea how powerful or capable the senior magicians of Celeste were, but both Virgil and Arnold had been horrifically deadly enemies. The former had come very close to killing her, the latter had convinced an entire university of experienced magicians he was harmless … and come very close to sparking a war between magical students and their mundane counterparts. And then he had started a war with the neighbouring kingdom. She hoped – prayed – the enemy magicians weren’t their match, although she dared not assume it. They’d taken over an entire city. It beggared belief that they might be incompetent.

“I don’t know,” she admitted, finally. She could take out a necromancer – she’d refined her necromancer-killing weapon to the point she could be sure of killing a necromancer at little risk to herself – but someone saner might pose a more serious challenge. The necromancer-killer wasn’t designed to kill a sane opponent, someone capable of thinking straight and realising how best to counter the attack. “But I have to try.”

She sighed inwardly. The last time she’d visited the city, it had been easy to get in and out … at least if you had magic. This time … she was fairly sure it would be a great deal harder. If she went in disguise … it would take more than a simple glamour to trick a bunch of watchful magicians. They’d be expecting spies and agents of influence to be making their way to the city, if they weren’t already there. Melissa had noted that her agents had gone silent and openly wondered if they’d betrayed her. Emily feared the worst. There were a great many resentments within the lower tiers of the magical community, which could be ruthlessly exploited by someone who intended to overturn the old order and replace it with something new. 

The hell of it is that they have a point, she reflected, grimly. Most radical political movements did have a point, a simple basic grievance that could be fanned into a flame of bitter resentment and demand for change. The current system is unfair, weighted against the low-rankers. But that doesn’t excuse their crimes.

“You can’t go alone,” Caleb said. “I’m coming with you.”

Emily hesitated, torn between delight she wouldn’t be alone and fear for his safety. Caleb was a brilliant young man, a born academic who should be spending his life in the research lab rather than putting it at risk on the streets. She knew he’d spent much of his time helping Administrator Irene run the university – it had been their dream – yet he’d always harboured hopes of returning to pure magical research. If he were killed, it would be a disaster … and if he were captured, it would be a great deal worse. He knew too much, about her innovations and about the university, to be allowed to fall into enemy hands.

And that’s true of me too, Emily thought. It crossed her mind to wonder if the entire city was a trap. It seemed a little excessive, but the Hierarchy’s agents had triggered off wars to cover their tracks. If they capture me …

She grimaced. Void had taught her how to toughen her mental defences, how to make it hard for anyone to break her mind without destroying the knowledge he wanted so badly, but she knew better than to think she couldn’t be broken. Anyone could be worn down, given enough time, and eventually broken. If she fell into enemy hands, it would be the end. 

“Emily?”

“I would be glad to have you by my side,” Emily said. It was true, and yet it wasn’t. She wanted him to be safe. “If we go alone …”

“We need more people,” Caleb said, practically. “And magitech.”

Emily nodded. “They took our ideas and ran with them,” she said, sourly. “They’re not opposed to magitech. They’re just opposed to mundanes using magic.”

“Yeah,” Caleb said. “I …”

He broke off and looked up, a second before there was a sharp knock on the door. Emily tensed – Heart’s Eye was nowhere near as secure as her tower, because of the sheer number of students, staff and casual visitors who came and went on a daily basis – and then stood, brushing down her dress and checking her lips. Perhaps it was a student who wanted to speak to the administrator, some unlucky youngster who found Caleb less intimidating and more approachable than Mistress Irene. He’d told her some stories of the early days, back when she’d been Void’s final apprentice, that had drilled it home just how hard it was for the older academics – and even students – to take him seriously. Her lips twisted as Caleb adjusted his clothing too. Perhaps he should grow a beard. He was a year older than she was, but he still seemed mired in adolescence. 

The door opened. Mediator Sienna stepped into the room.

Emily blinked in surprise, torn between an urge to be welcoming and an urge to flee. Mediator Sienna – Caleb’s mother – was a friend, of sorts, but her feelings about Emily had always been curiously mixed. Emily had dated her son, and broken up with him, and then started dating him again … yet she’d also been there when her oldest son Casper, Caleb’s brother, had died in the caves under Heart’s Eye. Emily suspected it had been at least partly a relief to the older woman when she and Caleb had broken up, even though they had managed to work together to defend Frieda and defeat Fulvia. And now she was here …?

Caleb stood. “Mother?”

“Caleb,” Mediator Sienna said. She had always been a proud and stern woman, and even though her son was now the youngest administrator – co-administrator – in academic history, she still talked to him as if he were a child. “Emily. Melissa said you’d be here.”

Emily nodded, unsure how to react. What was his mother doing here? Emily had thought she was safely back in Beneficence, the last – known – active Mediator. If there were any plans to rebuild the order, after they’d been wiped out in the wars, she didn’t know about them. It was unlikely. The Allied Lands themselves would have to be rebuilt first.

“She also said you intended to do something about Celeste,” Sienna continued. “Is that true?”

“Yes.” Emily kept her face under tight control. It didn’t matter much to her if Sienna approved of her relationship with Caleb, but she knew it mattered to him. Sienna could be the best mother-in-law she could wish for, or the worst. “I intend to …”

“Good,” Sienna said. “I wish to volunteer for the mission.”

Caleb sucked in his breath. “Mother, I …”

“I am a trained Mediator, and it was once my duty to hunt down dark wizards,” Sienna said, bluntly. “Celeste has already stated it will not be enforcing the strictures, ensuring there will be a magical disaster – through incompetence or malice – sooner or later. Even if they avoid a major incident, the competitiveness of most magicians will cause all sorts of problems. It is just a matter of time before the problem expands so widely it cannot be contained, if indeed it has not already passed that point. It is my duty to intervene.”

Emily hesitated, torn. On one hand, Sienna really was a trained and experienced combat sorceress who would be a massive and invaluable asset to the team. Emily knew how much Lady Barb had done, over the years, and Sienna would make a fitting replacement. On the other, Sienna was also Caleb’s mother – which would make for an awkward trip, to say the least – and old enough to regard Emily and Caleb as children, which would make it harder for Sienna to take their orders. Alassa had grumbled about older courtiers who regarded her as a child playing dress-up, and they weren’t her biological parents. If Sienna decided she should be in charge …

She might have a point, Emily’s thoughts reminded her. If Lady Barb had been accompanying them, Emily wouldn’t have hesitated to follow her orders. She’d trusted and respected the older woman, who had died saving her life. Sienna knows what she’s doing.

Sure, she countered. And how many cities teeming with evil wizards has she stormed?

It wasn’t a pleasant thought. Emily had sneaked into necromantic lairs, an experience that she could only compare to crawling into a dragon’s lair, all too aware that the slightest mistake could lead to a fiery death. Necromancers rarely shared their lairs with anyone, not even slaves; she’d wondered, as she slipped through the shadows, if they’d understood the lives they were embracing before they threw away their sanity in a desperate bid for power. There was nothing for them afterwards, not even the sadistic pleasure of grinding everyone’s noses in the dirt.

But would that be true of a city of evil magicians?

They’re not all evil, she reminded herself. But that doesn’t mean they’ll do anything to help the mundanes.

She scowled, inwardly. Her idealism insisted that choosing not to oppose evil was an act of evil itself. Her practicality pointed out that resistance to evil was often suicidal, particularly when the evil was cunningly disguised or the population too desperate to wonder if they were making a bargain with the devil. It was easy to carp and criticise from a safe distance, when one was in no real danger, but a great deal harder to work up the nerve when you could be mobbed, arrested, or simply executed for daring to resist. For all she knew, a great many magicians in Celeste hated the new order, yet didn’t dare say so openly.

Sienna cleared her throat. “Emily?”

Emily flushed, dragging her attention back to the matter at hand. “If you’re willing to accompany us, you will be welcome,” she said, finally. She’d lost herself in her own thoughts. Again. “We need to find a way into the city first.”

Caleb smiled. “Do you know any secret passageways into the city?”

“There may well be a few … hundred … passageways,” Sienna said. “Celeste is a very old city, and they built the newer city on top of the old, but I don’t know where they are. If legend speaks true, the tunnels below the city are deadly dangerous, contaminated by raw magic and alchemical spills and often reshaped by the remnants of labyrinth spells. There may be no easy way into the city from underground, certainly not without a guide.”

“No,” Emily agreed. “Do you know any guides?”

“I’ll ask around, but I doubt it,” Sienna admitted. “The profession is very hazardous, Emily, and most of the skilled guides will already be in the city.”

A thought crossed Emily’s mind. “Irene used to live in the city,” she said. “Would she know someone?”

“I don’t know,” Caleb said. “I can ask.”

“Please do,” Emily said. She forced herself to think. “If we can’t get into the city through the passageways, we’ll need to find another way in.”

“They are trying to recruit more magicians,” Sienna said. “The odds are good they’ll have no trouble finding a few hundred – or more – willing to join up.”

Her lips thinned. “I’d be surprised if the families aren’t already trying to send ambassadors to see what can be worked out,” she added. “It wouldn’t be the first time they compromised with evil.”

Emily wanted to believe they wouldn’t do anything of the sort, but the evidence of history told against it. “They do need time to prepare …”

Sienna shook her head. “The magical community has always maintained a certain reluctance to tolerate any authority with the power to push the families around,” she said. “They may be shocked and horrified at what is happening, but they’ll be reluctant to do anything about it – as a group – unless it threatens them, and by the time it does, it will be too late. They barely tolerated the Mediators and only then, I suspect, because we already existed and had sworn to the White Council in lieu of the Imperial Family. They may talk a good game, but they won’t lift a finger to actually do something. They’ll be too afraid to let such a precedent stand.”

“Cowards,” Caleb muttered.

“If the community bands together and imposes its will on one group of magicians,” Sienna countered, “what’s to stop them doing it again? And again?”

They need a government, Emily thought. But if the government is too weak it will fall apart, and if it is too strong it will become a threat in its own right.

She met Emily’s eyes. “If we go in, we’ll be alone,” she said. “Can you do it?”

“I don’t know,” Emily admitted. She needed time to think and plan, but she had no idea how much time they had before all hell broke loose. There was more at stake than just the city – and more players than just the Supremacists. “But I think we have to try.”

Chapter Four

Emily didn’t feel any better the following day, as she made her way down to the nexus point chamber underneath the university. The reports – from Celeste, from the schools – hadn’t gotten any better, suggesting that Supremacist ideology was finally coming out into the open. Alassa had written, telling her the Allied Lands were panicking … Emily wondered, sourly, just how many of the monarchs and princes who had refused to reinstate the White Council and the mediators were kicking themselves, now that an entire city of magicians had gone rogue. There was no power left that had both the will and the ability to challenge the city openly, to force them to abide by the Compact – or even to let the mundane citizens go. The city might win its goal of complete independence by default.

She took a long breath as she entered the chamber itself, the nexus point pulsing around her, and walked down to the meeting room hastily set up underneath. The nexus point existed in all times at once, making it impossible – she had been told – for a demon to spy on them, assuming the Supremacists had access to demons. It wasn’t impossible. Her search for the missing books had taken her through Celeste, and she was all too aware that some had never been received and others had been copied before being left behind. A smart magician would know better than to deal with demons, but … she cursed under her breath. They might not understand the dangers, not when so much knowledge relating to demons had been destroyed over the years. The books promised wonders. They rarely talked about terrors. And just like the necromancers, dealing with demons seemed a shortcut to absolute power.

Until the demon finds a way to stab you in the back, she mused. The moment you show a hint of weakness, they’ll tear you to shreds.

Caleb looked up, from his seat at the table. “I know it isn’t very fancy, but will it do?”

Emily grinned. Alassa would have been horrified at the sheer blandness of the chamber, from the wooden table and chairs to the bare stone walls and magical lantern hanging from the ceiling. She had said, more than once, that half of being king – or queen – was putting on a show of power, and that meant covering yourself in fancy robes and laying out tables groaning with fancy food even if your personal tastes ran more to the bland and practical. Melissa might well have agreed, Emily reflected, although she had a degree of personal power and security that most monarchs lacked. She didn’t have to expend too many resources on keeping courtiers happy.

“It’ll help keep us humble,” she said. Caleb had put a steaming kettle on the sideboard, and a small collection of mugs, but otherwise there were no luxuries at all. “We already think too highly of ourselves.”

“Speak for yourself,” Caleb said. “You know, there was a duke who wanted to create a whole new dorm for students, down in Heart’s Ease, and stick his name on it? The plans were just absurd. It would have been a palace for the handful of lucky students, and a complete waste of resources for everyone else. He was very offended when we said no.”

Emily had to laugh. The aristocracy had done their best to ignore the university at first, then belatedly started trying to invest when they’d realised Heart’s Eye wasn’t going to crash and burn in the first year. They’d made all sorts of offers, trying to buy influence that had been flatly refused. Heart’s Eye was neutral and would remain so, and it would not give up its commitment to egalitarianism. The students all had the same dorms, sons of aristos and magicians sharing space with newborn magicians and commoners; the staff had private chambers, but none significantly larger than the others. They’d done everything in their power to cut ceremony down to the bare minimum, and to limit the advantages wealth and power could offer their students. It wasn’t perfect – Emily was painfully aware that total equality was an unattainable goal – but it ensured students from many walks of life were forced to get along, to see each other as people rather than caricatures. If nothing else, it would help them develop empathy for others.

She winked. “What did you tell him?”

“That he could donate to the fund if he liked, but there would be no record of where the money came from, and he would have no say in where it was spent,” Caleb said. “For some strange reason, he refused to donate.”

Emily nodded, unsurprised. Making grand philanthropic gestures was just as much a part of being an aristocrat as putting on a show of wealth and power. It wasn’t enough to be good and generous, one had to look good and generous, making big displays of being open-handed and offering largess to all and sundry. It built up public respect and admiration – no one wanted to displace a particularly generous aristocrat, for fear his successor would be less open-handed – but it also let the donor build up a great deal of influence, influence that was rarely obvious to outsiders. The moment the university became dependent on donors would be the moment the university sacrificed its independence on the altar of greed. It had happened on Earth, and she had no intention of letting it happen here.

Which might be a losing battle, she reflected. A number of kings had already announced their intention to fund universities of their own, although so far none had gotten off the ground. But we can at least try to prolong our independence as long as possible.

“I think …”

She broke off as Administrator Irene stepped into the chamber, followed by the Gorgon and Sienna. Caleb’s mother looked like a bear with a toothache, her face grim … Emily suspected it wasn’t good news. The Gorgon sent her a friendly smile, then stepped aside as the two older women headed to their seats. Emily half-expected them to complain about the hard wooden chairs, but Sienna was a combat sorceress and Irene was hardly the type to complain about a brief period of discomfort. Perhaps she thought the hard wooden chairs would ensure the meeting didn’t drag on too long. There was certainly no shortage of work for her in the university above.

Caleb cleared his throat. “Tea?”

Emily watched him pour the mint tea into mugs, then hand them around before sitting down beside her. It was something a servant would have done, nearly anywhere else, but she was reluctant to let anyone she didn’t have to into the nexus chamber. It might be the most secure place in the university, now that she and Caleb had spent several weeks reinforcing the defences after Arnold had torn them down and nearly destroyed the university. She took a sniff of her drink – the smell of mint was almost overpowering – and then settled back in her chair, waiting for someone to speak. It took her longer than it should, she acknowledged ruefully, to realise that she was supposed to open the meeting. She had never been comfortable doing anything of the sort.

Lady Barb would have taken control right from the start, she thought, as she tapped the table for attention. And Void would just have started issuing orders.

“We don’t have much time, so let’s get cracking,” she said, feeling weirdly out of place even though she’d called the meeting. She felt like a fraud, pretending to be something she wasn’t. “What’s the latest news from Celeste?”

If Sienna was offended by Emily’s manner, or amused, she didn’t show it. “The reports from within the city have not changed, much,” she said. “A handful of additional magicians have left the city, many more have started to make their way there. Some insist they’re just looking, to see what life is like in a magic-ruled city; others are quite open about their intention of moving into the city permanently. So far, there have been no open contacts between the city and the rest of the magical community, but that doesn’t rule out secret negotiations. The longer we delay, the greater the chance the city will get away with renouncing the Compact.”

“There’s also a number of students who have been caught trying to leave their schools and make their way to the city,” Irene added, quietly. “Four from Whitehall and at least twelve from Mountaintop. None from Laughter, as far as we know, but that might change. Mountaintop also suspended a tutor for promoting Supremacist views to his students. The MageMaster may find it impossible to make that stick, when the board of governors meets to discuss the issue. It isn’t illegal to have such views, nor to promote them.”

Emily felt sick. A tutor – particularly a respected one – could do a great deal of damage if he imparted such views to his students. She’d done what she could to make it difficult, if not impossible, for anyone to do the same at Heart’s Eye – at least not without being challenged – but she was uneasily aware there were plenty of loopholes someone could use to get their views across without doing anything illegal. Hell, Supremacist views were not illegal and probably never would be. Most magicians held at least some of their views.

She looked at Irene. “You used to live in Celeste,” she said. “Did you not have any idea this was coming?”

Irene looked back at her, evenly. “The city has always had a powerful Supremacist movement,” she said. “In a way, it has always been ruled by the Supremacists. Mundane citizens didn’t have many rights last year, and in a sense the new declaration has merely formalised a reality everyone knew already existed. I didn’t think it would happen because it always struck me as pointless, but now …”

She shook her head. “I knew there was a great deal of anger over how the Compact was forced on the rest of the community, and that a number of citizens felt mistreated by the magical families, but I wasn’t expecting it to come into the light so blatantly. I believed that most citizens understood the reasoning behind the Compact, and chose to uphold it even though they didn’t like it. In that, I was wrong.”

The Gorgon leaned forward. “The majority of the population might not support the new order.”

“Celeste isn’t a kingdom, or an estate,” Irene reminded the Gorgon. “There’s always been a high degree of democracy, at least amongst magicians. No one has ever had the power to make themselves the undisputed boss of the city, let alone the freedom to do as they wish. Open votes and backroom dealing to build consensus have always been a part of the city, ensuring that whatever policies are finally enshrined in law and implemented have a broad base of support. If the council got this far, it is a given they enjoy a vast amount of support.”

Caleb sucked in his breath. “How can they be so foolish?”

His mother shot him a sharp look. “You grew up in a city-state,” she pointed out. “You know how easily long-standing resentments can be turned into a political firestorm – and Celeste has been nursing a grudge for over a hundred years.”

“And now there’s no one capable of keeping them from doing as they please,” Irene said. “If they have enough support within the city, they can do whatever they like.”

Emily nodded, curtly. “Who are we dealing with?”

Irene held up a hand, casting a spell. An image shimmered into life above her palm, a middle-aged man who looked like a merchant. The kind who would be friendly and gregarious, Emily noted coldly, but put his thumb on the scales when he thought you weren’t looking. And probably take advantage of his shopgirls too. Imaiqah had told her some horror stories, over the years, and she had enjoyed the protection of being the owner’s daughter and, later, a magician. A girl who went to work for such a man would be lucky if she was allowed to keep her chastity.

“Great Sorcerer Resolute,” Irene said. Her lips twisted into a humourless smile. “Great Sorcerer is the formal title for anyone elected to the city council, so don’t take it too literally. From what I recall, Resolute was an apothecary’s son who went to Whitehall twenty years ago and didn’t make much of an impression. I barely recall him, and the records show an average student who did well enough, but didn’t manage to make it into the upper years. He moved to Celeste shortly afterwards and became involved in local politics. That was when he changed his name.”

“Resolute,” Emily repeated. “Why did he become a Supremacist?”

“I don’t know,” Irene said. “Like many other magicians of his calibre, he may well feel that he’d been unfairly denied the opportunities – or power – he deserved. It isn’t uncommon amongst that sort, and they do tend to look down on mundanes to avoid having to put in the hard work to better themselves. Or he may genuinely believe that magicians are god-touched, and therefore have a divine right to rule the mundanes. Or he may be taking advantage of very well-known grievances without actually sharing them himself.”

She paused. “I don’t know how many of his peers also voted to declare independence. The council always presents a united front, at least to outsiders, and the decision may not have been unanimous. That said, at least four of them voted in favour. And probably more.”

Emily shivered. “We really are going to have to fight an entire city, aren’t we?”

“It looks that way,” Caleb said.

Emily felt cold. She knew she was powerful and capable – she’d been taught by the best, then pitted against a series of equally capable and deadly foes – and yet the idea of taking on an entire city was daunting. There were three of them – she made a mental note to see how many others she could round up – and that was nowhere near enough to challenge hundreds of magicians, particularly magicians backed up by magitech. The lone iron giant she’d battled had nearly killed her, and facing two or three would be fatal. They weren’t dragons. There was nothing rare or unique about them. Given time, the enemy could put together a force capable of taking on the rest of the world.

“The first priority is to stop the Hierarchy,” she said. Interestingly, Irene made no move to suggest the Hierarchy didn’t exist. “They were up to something in Valadon, triggering a civil war to cover their tracks, and that something included running slaves to Celeste. If we can stop them, it will buy us some time to deal with the new government.”

“If,” Sienna said. “They renounced the Compact. It won’t be easy to convince them to return to the fold.”

Emily grimaced. The Compact wasn’t a single treaty, but a cluster of agreements woven together into a single whole. Some strictures were entirely reasonable, entirely understandable; others, she knew, were deeply resented, not least because the Compact had been forced on the entire community. Perhaps it was possible to put together a successor, a reasonable set of compromises that everyone would accept … she gritted her teeth. Earth’s history suggested otherwise. There was always someone willing to claim that any talk of compromise was tantamount to surrender, or that making concessions would lead – rapidly and inevitably – to more concessions.

“We can at least undermine the new government,” she said, finally. “How do we get into the city?”

“There’s no way to teleport inside,” Sienna said. She shot a look at Irene. “Do you know any secret passageways?”

“None.” Irene looked irked by the question. “I imagine there are passageways, but I don’t know where to find them, or how to gain access.”

“Then we will have to pose as visitors,” Sienna said. “We go there, pretending to be magicians considering a move. That should get us into the city, at least, and give us a chance to scope out the environment without drawing too much attention. We decide our next move from there.”

Caleb scowled. “Mother, do you think they’ll really just let us in?”

“They’re trying to recruit as many magicians as possible,” Sienna said. “I don’t think they’ll let us walk right into the council chambers, at least not without asking some pretty hard questions, but they should certainly let us enter the city.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time,” Emily said. She hadn’t entered the city under her own name before, and … she considered, briefly, pretending she was genuinely interested in their ideology before dismissing the whole idea as insane. They would have to be insane to believe her, but … they’d certainly play along long enough to get her into a vulnerable position, then put a knife in her back. “What sort of checks on newcomers are they doing?”

“Not many, as far as we can tell,” Sienna said. “If you don’t mind waiting a day or two, we should have more information. I know a handful of agents who were dispatched to see if they could enter and then leave again, and I can debrief them when – if – they return.”

Emily grimaced. How much time did they have? She didn’t know, but her instincts were telling her she needed to hurry.

“We can wait two days,” she said, finally. They needed some time to devise newer and better magitech of their own. The hell of it, she reflected tiredly, was that the Supremacists were disturbingly innovative. “That’ll give us time to come up with a decent cover story, if nothing else.”

Caleb nudged her. “And if they find out who you are …?”

“I’ll take the risk,” Emily said. There was no other way to deal with the growing nightmare before it became unstoppable. “There’s no choice.”

Chapter Five

“We want to come,” Adam said.

Emily stared at him, surprised. Adam was brilliant, and he would have gone far if he’d had magic … no, he’d gone far even without magic. He’d invented magitech itself, putting vast power in the hands of mundanes … the Supremacists had to hate his guts, even as they took ruthless advantage of the whole new magical field he and his fiancée, Lilith, had brought into being. The idea of risking his life by taking him into the city was absurd, given that he simply didn’t have the power to defend himself. He was helpless without his tools and tricks and even with them, he would never match a born magician. His spellcasting was too clumsy to give him an edge. Even calling it spellcasting was a stretch.

She glanced at Lilith, who seemed a little more torn. Lilith did have magic, and remarkable talent. They made a very effective team, from what she’d been told; they’d fought together to stop Arnold, eventually defeating him and saving the first airship from utter disaster. And yet, she had to know the risks of walking into the enemy stronghold. Celeste had banned magic-mundane relationships, at least ones that might lead to marriage. Lilith had to be on their shit list as well, and not just for being in a relationship with Adam. Her lips quirked. Sienna would be on that list too. Her husband had no magic either.

“You should understand the risks,” she said, quietly. “If they catch you, if they figure out who you are, they’ll do worse than kill you.”

Adam looked stubborn. Emily tried to keep the dismay off her face. Adam had spent the last eighteen months of his life at Heart’s Eye. He knew what magicians could do. He knew he could be stripped of his toys and brainwashed, turned into a toad for the rest of his life, or simply be blown to atoms if the bad guys caught him. There was almost certainly a bounty on his head.

“They won’t know who I am,” he said. “Adam is a very common name.”

Emily conceded the point with a nod. It was unlikely Adam would stand out, as long as he pretended to be a servant rather than a magician or freeman. And yet …

She met his eyes. “Why?”

Adam hesitated, struggling to put his thoughts into words. “I invented magitech,” he said, finally. “Not just the spell tiles, and everything else that has spread across the world, but the magiwriter and a great many other things too. And now they’re using it to hold an entire city in bondage. It’s my fault. I never thought any magician would use it …”

“The traditionalists wouldn’t,” Emily said. She knew potioneers who refused to use ingredients chopped and prepared by mundanes, even though there was no difference between those ingredients and ones they prepared themselves. The vast majority of magicians shunned wands and staffs, even when they were experienced enough to avoid the risk of dependency, and they regarded magitech as something equally dangerous. “But you are not to blame for how they use your inventions.”

“If I hadn’t invented them, the uprising wouldn’t have happened,” Adam pointed out.

“You’d be dead,” Lilith said, flatly. “Or you would have spent the rest of your life trying to brew potions without magic.”

Adam shook his head. “Let us come,” he said. “We can help.”

Emily hesitated. She understood his feelings, better than she cared to admit. Her innovations had changed the world, and not always in a good way. She didn’t feel particularly guilty about ideas she’d copied from her homeworld – she hadn’t invented the modern-day alphabet or numeric system, let alone gunpowder, cannons, the printing press or dozens of other ideas – but she did worry, sometimes, about the impact of magical batteries, or teleport gems, or any of the other innovations she’d genuinely invented. The battery had won the Necromantic Wars – right now, it was easy for any reasonably capable magician to use a battery and valve combination to destroy a necromancer – but it was also easy to misuse. Hell, Adam’s innovations – combined with hers – could do a great deal of damage, if they fell into the wrong hands. The magiwriter alone could change the world. Literally.

She looked at Lilith. “And how do you feel about it?”

Lilith looked back at her, a faint hint of something in her eyes. Emily found it impossible to believe Lilith was a Supremacist – she was dating a mundane, publicly – and yet there was that flicker of something. Resentment? Jealousy? Emily had never quite gotten used to the idea that people would be jealous of her, but she could understand it. She had everything a young magician might want – power, influence, reputation – and the irony was that she’d never wanted it. She wondered if she should discuss the matter with Caleb. Or the Gorgon. She’d always been more socially aware than Emily herself …

“I think they have to be stopped,” Lilith said, quietly.

She went on before Emily could say a word. “My father brought me here, and apprenticed me to his old friend, against my will. I was furious. I had wanted an apprenticeship with a powerful magician, like your father, and instead … he wasn’t a great master. I … when Adam arrived, and claimed to be an apprentice himself, I was … I was mad. It was a joke, a sick joke. My apprenticeship had already been ruined, and now I was supposed to be a peer to a mundane? Everyone was laughing at me!”

Adam reached out and squeezed her hand. Emily was touched.

“I took it out on him a lot, at first,” Lilith admitted. “I was horrible. My master didn’t even punish me, which made me worse. And then Adam invented the first magitech and … and I realised, dully, that I’d been wrong. That … he might not have magic, but he was still innovative and clever and … and decent. We worked together a lot and … I really had been wrong. Combining ideas from both magic and mundane worlds changed everything and … I was wrong.”

“It takes a great deal of bravery to admit you were wrong,” Emily said.

“Yeah,” Lilith said. “Adam forgave me. But I’ve never forgiven myself for my own stupidity.”

She hesitated. “The people in that city? They’re just like me, just like I was before … before I realised the error of my ways. Except … they’re in a place where such attitudes are openly encouraged, instead of being called out, and none of their victims are ever going to be able to turn the tables. I could have done much worse than I did, in my bitterness. I certainly wanted to, back then. I could have …”

“You grew up,” Emily said. She could understand Lilith’s resentments, if she’d thought her apprenticeship a joke. Her feelings were understandable, if not excusable. The fact her master had apparently been a weak man, unwilling or unable to teach her the error of her ways, hadn’t really helped. “It speaks well of you.”

“The people in that city will not,” Lilith said. “And they have to be stopped.”

Emily nodded, shortly. The aristocracy – magical and mundane – worked hard to dehumanise the people they considered their lessers, to justify keeping them in bondage. She’d met far too many noblemen who honestly believed the commoners existed to serve them, who were so convinced of their own superiority that it never occurred to them the commoners had feelings of their own or existed as something more than puppets or animals. It wouldn’t do to allow them to develop any sort of empathy, anything that might convince the aristos that treating commoners like slaves was wrong. It would fatally undermine their own society.

And Dixie worked overtime to convince its people that slavery was natural and right, she thought, grimly. They wouldn’t have worked so hard if they hadn’t been so desperate to maintain their own positions, and to prove to themselves they were doing the right thing.

“I take your point,” she said. She looked from Lilith to Adam and back again. “There is a risk. If they figure out who you are, they will kill you. Both of you. Or worse. I cannot guarantee your safety, and I cannot promise that we can rescue you if you get captured. If you want to back out now, I won’t hold it against you.”

She let the words hang in the air. Adam was brilliant … and if he fell into enemy hands, they’d force him to work for them. There were other magitech researchers now, building on his innovations as so many had built on hers, but he was still the leading light in the field. She wanted to believe they’d just kill him, yet the Hierarchy had proven itself more than willing to take his ideas and run with them. Lilith … Lilith would be used as breeding stock. Or killed out of hand.

“I’m coming,” Adam said, firmly. Beside him, Lilith nodded. “We understand the risks.”

Emily made a mental note to have a private chat with Lilith later, then looked around the giant workroom. It looked a tinkerer’s paradise, a chamber belonging to a man who could not decide if he was a carpenter, a blacksmith, a chemist, or some strange combination of them all. Adam and Lilith had hammered out a great many ideas, then passed them on to apprentices in the new field of magic … Emily wondered, grimly, if one of those apprentices had been working for a shadowy master. Arnold had been completely unsuspected, until he revealed himself, and there could easily have been a second spy who remained undiscovered until it was too late.

“I started drawing up plans for iron giants of our own,” Adam said, holding up a notebook. “I think they copied the human bone structure, then used an infusion of magic to actually make it move. There may also be a small steam generator within the bones – replacing the heart – used to carry magic around the body like blood.”

He paused. “It depends on just how far they’ve advanced their own understanding,” he added, after a moment. “They may have moved ahead of us. I was more interested in finding ways to cast spells without magic; they appear to have approached the problem from a different angle, finding ways to craft mundane devices with magic.”

“Or duplicate the human body,” Lilith said.

“The iron giant I fought was largely immune to magic,” Emily said. Adam was a good draftsman, she noted; his diagram was simple, easy to understand. She’d seen a great deal worse. “How do you factor that into the spell structure?”

“I think they used a miniature version of the antimagic runes we use to protect airships,” Adam said. “I don’t know how they’ve managed to make the field so small. Right now, from what I can see, they should be cancelling out their own spells. It would be like trying to drive an engine with the brakes on.”

“Worse,” Lilith said.

Emily frowned, studying the paper. The early airships had been surrounded by a bubble that dispelled magic spells before they could reach the gas bag, making it impossible for a lone sorcerer to blow them out of the air. The catch had been that the bubble interfered with the magitech that drove the airship, a problem they’d solved by a combination of keeping the bubble as far from the hull as possible and using simple steam engines to drive the airship itself. It had been a neat solution, but on paper it couldn’t be slimmed down past a certain point. And yet, the iron giant had been real. She’d fought it.

“Did they power everything by steam, or a combustion engine?” Emily stared down at the diagram, trying to visualise how it would work in real life. She had seen some pretty advanced robots back home, but the iron giant had been an order of magnitude more dangerous and powerful than anything she’d thought possible. Yet. “Or was I misunderstanding what I was seeing?”

“They might have channelled the spells you cast into their own power supply,” Lilith mused, slowly. “If they have a magiwriter of their own …”

Emily hoped she was wrong. A very skilled magician could catch a spell hurled at him and take it apart, but Void had cautioned her never to try. It was the magical counterpart of a martial arts move that looked fantastic yet would lead to broken legs – or worse – if you tried them in real life. Sergeant Miles had demonstrated a remarkable flying kick once, only to be tackled by Sergeant Harkin and knocked to the ground in a manner that would have been instantly fatal if Harkin had wanted to kill him. Very few magicians would take the risk, but if they used a magiwriter to do it … it might just work. They certainly wouldn’t be so completely distracted that even a low-power magician could get the drop on them.

“Either way, we need a countermeasure,” she said. “If we face an iron giant, we will have a serious problem.”

Adam led her to a nearby table. “I messed around with runic tiles,” he said. “This design twists spells, ripping them apart and draining the magic. It doesn’t work very well on a living magician” – he shot Lilith an apologetic glance – “but it does work on enchanted devices and artefacts. It might also be possible to draw out runes on the ground and lure the iron giant over them, draining the magic charge as long as the rune lasts.”

“Not long,” Lilith said. “How are those things even controlled?”

Emily had no idea. Some spells were so complex they literally had minds of their own – the mimics certainly appeared to be thinking beings – while others were nothing more than dangerously advanced computer programs. She’d played games with computer opponents that appeared to be intelligent, although they couldn’t have held a conversation or acted outside their programming. Was a chess program truly intelligent, capable of thinking a dozen or more steps ahead, or was it just constantly recalculating potential moves with each successive turn? She didn’t know. There were dozens of possible options; she knew she couldn’t keep them all straight, certainly not all at once.

But then, most possible moves at any given point would be pointless at best, disastrous at worst, she mused. A computer program could calculate the best possible moves and adapt effortlessly if the opponent played the worst instead.

“I don’t know,” she told them.

“We also have charged wands, and tiles designed to counter spells or hide from them,” Adam continued. “It’s hard to gather enough magic without a windmill, but we can use blood to store magic from a magician and then channel it into the wands … a magiwriter can speed the process up, although we still lose a great deal of raw power. It gets channelled into the spellware because …”

Lilith nudged him. “I think you’ll find she already knows it.”

Emily had to smile. “It’s always helpful to go through it again,” she said, feeling a twinge of sympathy for Adam. He reminded her of Caleb, when they’d first met. “And some people don’t know what they don’t know.”

Adam looked down, then steadied himself. “I’ve been trying to figure out a way to break their protective wards,” he added. “The simple wards are easy to skirt, or counter, but the more advanced ones are tricky. Breaking them outright is very noticeable, and there’s no guarantee we can knock out the person attached to the wards, if indeed there is anyone. I have a rough set of concepts we might be able to use, but … the slightest change in the ward structure will defeat our efforts, at least until we can parse out the new structure.”

“I see,” Emily said. “How did you figure it out the first time?”

“I did the probing, then detailed what I saw,” Lilith told her. “Frankly, I’m not convinced the tactic can be used in the real world. We had a charms master lay out the wards for us – randomising the design as much as possible – and the results were very mixed. The second time, he even twisted the spells to disguise the structure as much as possible, to the point our efforts were completely useless. If we can get a good read on the wards, it works; if not, it’s worse than useless.”

“We should be able to get it to work,” Adam said, stubbornly.

Emily frowned. “Why not stay here and get it to work?”

“There are others working on the problem too,” Adam said. “Magitech has already outgrown me.” 

Not yet, Emily thought.

She nodded, then let them show her a handful of other devices. Some would work, she thought, and others needed more development before she took them into the field. Adam was innovative, but he was running up against hard limits … mostly, she suspected, the need to find a reliable magical power source that could also be contained and controlled. The idea of drawing on the background magic field was brilliant, yet it was nothing more than a trickle when they needed a flood. No matter what he did, the limits were unbreakable. For now.

“Like I said, going to Celeste will be incredibly dangerous,” she said, when the time came to leave. “If you really want to come, I’ll be glad to have you. If not …”

She nodded, her feelings oddly mixed. It would be easy to order them to stay behind, although she wasn’t sure if she could enforce it. Heart’s Eye wasn’t like Whitehall. A student could leave at any moment, if he wished, and the staff had no right to prevent it. If Adam and Lilith wanted to put their lives at risk … she understood their arguments, she knew they had a point, but it still worried her.

And she couldn’t help feeling, as she headed back to her room, that she was making a mistake.

Chapter Six

“I have a question,” Sienna said, later that day. “What are your intentions with Caleb?”

The question caught Emily by surprise. Sienna had brought her the latest set of reports, and discussed possible cover stories, and then switched subjects so quickly it was hard to focus. She knew it had been deliberate – Void had often done the same thing, forcing her to think on her feet – but it wasn’t something she wanted to discuss, certainly not with his mother. It had been tricky enough before their first break-up.

A dozen answers ran through her mind. None were particularly helpful, from insisting they were just friends – they were more than that – to telling her it was none of her business. The first answer was absurd, and the second was simply wrong in a society where the parents were expected to have at least some input into whom their child married. She wondered, suddenly, if Sienna objected to the match, or if she expected Caleb to find a wife and settle down while he was young enough to have children. The magical community certainly expected it of talented magicians. There were spells to prolong fertility, to allow men to sire children and women to bear them late in life, but older parents found it hard to keep up with their children. And Caleb was technically the family’s heir, now that his older brother was dead.

She hesitated. “We’re together,” she said, trying to ignore the sense of the old world’s ideals and values clashing with the new. She couldn’t imagine having such an awkward conversation back home, certainly not in such a manner. “And I don’t know where we’re going.”

Sienna fixed her with a sharp look. “Caleb is very close to you,” she said, bluntly. “He’s joining us on this mission because of you. If you aren’t interested in a permanent relationship, now is the time to tell him, before he becomes too attached to you. I’ve seen it happen before, with much less at stake, and it isn’t pretty.”

Emily felt a hot flash of anger, and opened her mouth to demand to know what possible business it was of hers, before catching herself. It was Sienna’s business … she wished, suddenly, that her mother had shown even a fraction of the concern Sienna had shown for her son. And the rest of her children. She calmed herself with an effort, unsure of what to say. She didn’t want to give him up, and she didn’t want to tie herself down either, not permanently. But …

She met the older woman’s eyes. “Right now, we have a crisis to deal with,” she said. The latest set of reports suggested darkness was falling over the city. Alassa had written, warning her that the surrounding kingdoms were panicking. It would end very badly if they decided they needed to do something, although they had a multitude of other problems to tackle first. “I’ll worry about my personal life afterwards.”

Sienna saw through the deflection instantly. “I understand your feelings,” she said. “I had trouble with my family, when I married Pollack. They didn’t understand what I was doing and gave no credence to my thinking, or feelings, at all. But I also understand that you need to make up your mind and act on it.”

Emily cocked her head. “And what does House Waterfall have to say about the current crisis?”

“So far, they are maintaining a dignified silence,” Sienna said. “That will change, once they know the outcome of our mission.”

“They want to make sure they’re on the winning side,” Emily muttered. On one hand, the magical families had plenty of reason to detest the new regime in Celeste and work against it; on the other, if the regime proved it had staying power, they would be forced to deal with it as an equal partner or gear up for war on a terrifying scale. No one enjoyed dickering with rogue states, she reflected ruefully, but as long as it was impossible to isolate or liberate them their existence was a fact of life. “Do they know you’re here?”

“I imagine they care nothing for my opinion,” Sienna said. She leaned forward. “And I do want to know what your intentions are.”

Emily looked back at her, meeting her eyes. “Right now, I have none,” she said. “We’re partners and … we do work together well, and …”

She closed her eyes for a long moment. It was funny how she’d never envisaged a long life with anyone. Void had commented, once, that the more powerful she became the more isolated she would become from the rest of the world, an admittance – she suspected – of something that had happened to him. He’d had no equal, no one who could listen to his plans and carry out a sanity check. Emily had been the closest he’d had to family, and she’d joined him too late to have any real influence on his thinking. How easy would it be, she asked herself, to lose track of what was really important? Marah had charged that Emily cared nothing for individuals, and chose to allow injustice to persist in the belief that challenging it would make matters worse, and she’d had a point. Was there anyone who could carry out a sanity check on her?

Caleb is powerful in his own right, she told herself. Alassa and Jade managed to navigate being Ruling Queen and Prince Consort, but other couples had run aground on the husband’s sense of inferiority to his wife. And his ties to the greater family are purely nominal.

She composed herself with an effort. “I will discuss the matter with him afterwards,” she said, firmly. “Until then, we have a mission to plan.”

Sienna nodded, stiffly. “Don’t toy with his heart,” she said. “Whatever you decide, do it quickly.”

She stood and left the room, closing the door behind her. Emily ran her hand through her hair, trying to think. It wasn’t easy. She didn’t want to go forward and she didn’t want to go back; she didn’t want marriage and children just yet, but she didn’t want to write the whole idea off either. Part of her envied Alassa for having such a wonderful family, with a husband and a child; part of her feared being tied down, trapped in a loveless relationship like her mother or held in place by her family, something she’d seen in both worlds. Caleb was not abusive, and she had no reason to think that would ever change – he was certainly nothing like her stepfather – and yet, part of her worried. 

The thought tormented her as she finished reading the reports and letters, then took a walk through the university to see how it was developing. She’d always intended to spend more time at Heart’s Eye, after the war had ended, but there had been crisis after crisis, and the university had flourished without her, the staff she’d appointed shaping its development in ways she hadn’t anticipated. She had never intended to have sole charge of the university – she wanted to build an institution that would last centuries, enduring long after her death – and yet she couldn’t help feeling as if she’d been left behind. She told herself not to be silly, as she attended a lecture on magitech and then visited a workshop to watch the apprentices turn theory into reality. There would be an opportunity, when she had time to breathe, for her to catch up.

She felt a stab of pain as she returned to the suite. Lady Barb was dead … she had been the one person who might’ve been able to advise her, as both an older woman and a mentor. Alassa was her age, as were Imaiqah and Melissa … Emily shook her head. All three of them would have their own agendas, if she asked for advice, and they’d be unable to look past their own worldview. Who else could she ask? There wasn’t anyone, as far as she could tell. Frieda was younger, Marah younger still … Irene? Emily wasn’t sure she wanted to ask Irene for advice on matters of the heart. She liked and respected the older woman, but they’d never been that close.

Perhaps it was a mistake to move into Caleb’s suite, she thought. She had her own set of rooms in the university, although she’d rarely used them. She hadn’t spent enough time in the suite to start thinking of it as hers. But what else could I do?

Caleb grinned at her as she entered. “How was the lecture?”

Emily flushed. “Very informative,” she said, deadpan. It had been interesting, although she’d known most of it already. “Do we have solid proof sharing ideas and information actually works?”

“It depends on what you mean by proof.” Caleb scowled, clearly remembering arguments with pig-headed aristocrats – magical or mundane – who would dismiss any argument, no matter how logical or supported by evidence, that contradicted their worldview. The mundane aristocracy believed they were inherently superior by right of birth and bloodline, while the magical families thought their control over secret magics gave them the edge. Both sides hated and feared the idea of sharing knowledge, of judging ideas by their merits rather than who proposed them. “The proof is there, as solid as anyone reasonable could wish. But …”

He shrugged, expressively. Emily understood. The magical families wanted to keep their secrets close, hampering any outsiders who wanted to catch up and suppress them. The mundanes weren’t any better, regarding any shift in the balance of power as inherently destabilising, even threatening. Emily supposed they had a point – it was astonishing how many aristocrats had discovered, the hard way, that they were feared and hated instead of loved and respected – but she found it hard to have any sympathy for them. She had no idea how many discoveries had been made, then lost, then rediscovered … or how many more would have been made if magicians and sorcerers hadn’t spent half their time spying on each other rather than sharing information openly.

Her lips twisted in irritation. Celeste’s new regime made the same argument. And she could hardly disagree.

“Given time, we will surpass them,” she said, finally. “If they want to be left behind, that’s their problem.”

She scowled, darkly, her earlier thoughts returning to haunt her. “But Celeste makes the same argument.”

“Partly,” Caleb said. “It has a point to argue that magical knowledge should be shared – hell, they probably got the idea from us. But at the same time, it is enslaving large parts of the population and denying them any kind of voice, let alone the right to advance. We are not the same.”

He met her eyes. “If we’d refused to accept Adam as a prospective student, or to listen to his ideas, where would we be now?”

Emily felt a rush of affection. Caleb knew better than to think magicless mundanes were inferior – his father was a mundane, which hadn’t kept him from developing one hell of a record as a Knight of the Allied Lands, then a Knight-Commander – and he’d taken that attitude into the university, ensuring his students had the chance to reach their full potential. She’d met too many people who embraced her ideas because they were hers, or rejected them without thinking for the same reason, but Caleb had developed them on his own. His brother Casper hadn’t been so perceptive. Nor had Cat.

And Cat is building a kingdom of his own, Emily reflected. She understood the impulse, but she didn’t share it. Caleb has more interesting ideas.

“In trouble,” Emily said. Would the university have survived Arnold, without Adam? Or the war that followed? “That’s another point we need to make, when the time comes.”

Caleb nodded. “Are you ready to leave tomorrow?”

“I think so,” Emily said. It was hard to be sure. They had some reports from visitors who went in and out of the city, but none had been allowed to see the innermost sections. Emily wasn’t too surprised – she doubted any new government would be comfortable allowing guests to wander through the offices without an escort, if at all – yet it meant they’d be going in blind. There was no way to be sure what they’d see, when they entered the city itself, and they’d have to make up their plans to get into the heart of the new regime when they got there. “You?”

“I’m ready,” Caleb said. He sounded nervous. “I’ll be there.”

Emily swallowed, feeling unsure of herself. “You don’t have to come,” she said. “And Adam really doesn’t have to come.”

“I tried to tell him so,” Caleb said. “He was adamant.”

“He’s also very vulnerable,” Emily said. Adam had a whole bag of tricks, true, but he wasn’t invincible. If he were stripped of his toys, he’d be completely at the mercy of whoever captured him. Lilith would protect him as best she could, but she was only one magician. “He should know better.”

“I’m sure he does,” Caleb said. “But he also feels responsible.”

Emily shook her head, although she understood his feelings. “What about you?”

“You need help,” Caleb said. “And you also need someone who understands how magic, magitech and actual technology interact. Lilith is the only other person who comes close, at least at the moment, and she …”

Emily’s eyes narrowed. “I had the feeling she doesn’t like me,” she said. “Why …?”

Caleb laughed. “Oh, dear.”

“Oh dear?”

“Well …” Caleb’s face twisted, as if he were trying not to smile. “You are Adam’s hero. Heroine. He was massively impressed with you, or at least your reputation, well before he ever met you. The fact you actually went out of your way to meet him, after he made a name for himself, just made you even more of a heroine to him. I don’t think he fancies you, not in a romantic sense, but you are his idol and he wants to be just like you. And Lilith, I suspect, isn’t too pleased about it.”

Emily felt herself redden. “I’m not that famous …”

“Emily, without you, this place wouldn’t exist,” Caleb pointed out. “The necromancers would still be on the far side of the mountains, plotting the invasion of the Allied Lands. King Randor would have been overthrown and his daughter turned into a puppet; Melissa and Markus would never have met, let alone married, and their families would still be at daggers drawn. You have changed the entire world, for better or worse, and …”

He shrugged. “Adam doesn’t know you as a person. He knows you as a hero.”

“I’m sure I’ll be a great disappointment,” Emily said, dryly. She’d never been comfortable with her reputation, even the stories that weren’t exaggerated to the point of uselessness or simply made up. She hadn’t snapped her fingers and turned Shadye to ash, she hadn’t rebuilt Whitehall by sheer force of will and she certainly hadn’t beaten Void in an effortless duel. “I’m still human.”

“It’ll take him time to get over his hero worship,” Caleb teased. “Just give him time.”

Emily sighed. “As long as Lilith doesn’t get too jealous,” she said. “It’s just …”

She shook her head. “Once this is over, do you want to go away for a short break?”

Caleb nodded. “Somewhere quiet,” he said. “Although you do seem to attract adventure.”

Emily had to smile. The concept of travelling holidays was known, but there was no large-scale tourism industry. It was only the aristocracy that could afford to travel more than a few miles from their home, although that would change as the road and rail networks got bigger and cheaper. Or airships were slowly replaced by aircraft … so far, no one had designed and built a working biplane, let alone a jet aircraft, but it was only a matter of time. The world would change, for better or worse. Again.

“I don’t know where I can go that won’t involve some kind of adventure,” she said, wryly. Alassa had country estates that were nicely isolated, and she would probably be quite happy to let Emily borrow one, but knowing her life, there’d be a rogue wizard or a brewing rebellion or something – anything – else that would ruin her holiday. “Where is there?”

Caleb made a show of considering it. “We could run into the desert and stay out of contact for a week or two?”

Emily had to laugh. “And we’d probably run straight into an undiscovered tribe hiding from a dead necromancer.”

“Or a patch of quicksand,” Caleb agreed. “Or something.”

They shared a wry smile. “We could always go to Dragon’s Den,” Caleb said. His smile widened as she snorted in disbelief. “No one would expect to find us there.”

“True,” Emily said. If there was anywhere that was likely to be free of adventure, it was Dragon’s Den. “But it isn’t somewhere new either.”

She shook her head. They would have to have a talk about the future soon, to decide just where their relationship was going. She didn’t really want to have the talk, but Sienna was right to be concerned. They came from different worlds – literally – and they had different ideas about how relationships worked, something that would bite her if she didn’t confront the possibility before it was too late. She met his eyes and felt another rush of affection, mingled with genuine respect and love. Caleb might not be the most handsome man she’d ever seen, but he was smart and understanding and that meant more to her than good looks and charm. Besides, she’d met too many men who were nothing more than good looks and charm, and even they were preferable to men who used their features to conceal their true nature. Some of the most unpleasant had been strikingly handsome …

Caleb smiled and reached for her. Emily grinned and let him enfold her in his arms.

Chapter Seven

“I hope you all memorised the cover story,” Sienna said. “I don’t know how closely they will interrogate us, if at all, but if they have any reason to suspect we’re not who we claim to be they’ll refuse to allow us into the city. Or worse.”

Emily shivered. In her experience, the more elaborate the cover story the more likely someone would poke a hole in it. Void had been a consummate master of disguise – and Nanette had been even better – but Emily had never been good at keeping a story straight, particularly when someone was intent on tearing it to shreds. Sienna had kept the story as simple as possible – she was a potioneer who ran an apothecary, Caleb was her son, Emily and Lilith were her apprentices and Adam was their manservant – yet Emily feared it would fall apart if someone started to poke around. It wouldn’t be hard to send someone to Heart’s Eye to ask a few pointed questions. The war had destroyed a number of homes and businesses, and it was quite possible that Sienna had soured on the idea of being anywhere near the university after that, but …

It’s a shame we couldn’t pick a different hometown, she thought. But using anywhere else would be even more risky.

She looked from face to face, ice congealing in her heart as she realised they were about to depart. It was hardly the first time she’d walked into danger, but … she met Lilith’s eyes and realised the younger woman was also nervous, standing a little too close to Adam. That would have to be avoided, once they got into the city. The new regime would see Adam as being overfamiliar, at best, which would lead to trouble. She sighed inwardly, tempted to suggest – or insist – that Adam remain behind. She knew it would be pointless, but …

“I know the story,” Lilith said. She sounded as if she wanted to get moving, before she thought better of the whole idea. “I have studied potions.”

“But you have never worked in an apothecary,” Caleb pointed out. “Can you answer questions about the job?”

“Just grumble about preparing ingredients for grumpy customers,” Adam advised. “And your mistress never letting you do anything without supervision.”

Emily hid her amusement as Sienna nodded in agreement. Adam had worked in an apothecary, which made him more qualified to maintain the cover story – and fill as many holes in the story as possible – than any of the others. She was mildly surprised that Sienna had chosen to claim to be an apothecary herself, although she had to admit it suggested she wasn’t as powerful as a full-fledged combat sorceress. There was a certain safety in being underestimated, Lady Barb had told her, and if potential enemies thought you couldn’t possibly pose a threat, they’d be quite happy to turn their backs on you. The cover story would also imply Sienna wasn’t a very good apothecary. The established apothecaries would hesitate to move cities on a whim, no matter how many incentives they were offered. Why would they, when business was booming?

“Complain about me as much as you like,” Sienna said, dryly. “But be careful you don’t do it in earshot.”

Her eyes moved to Adam. “Are you ready?”

Adam nodded, shortly. He was dressed in a plain brown outfit, the kind of garb that would be worn by a shopboy who had little hope of rising in the ranks. Sienna intended to hint Adam was a slave in all but name, providing another reason to flee Heart’s Eye before the city council realised what was happening and stomped on it. In contrast, the others wore fancy, colourful outfits carefully tailored to suggest their wearers were not as rich or powerful as they seemed. Emily hoped – prayed – they’d be believable. But if they were caught before even entering the city…

“It’s time,” Sienna said. Her eyes flickered over Emily – and Caleb, standing next to Emily. “Let’s go.”

There were no brass bands outside, Emily noted wryly, as they made their way out of the main building and through the remnants of the trenches that had been thrown up, only a few short months ago, to protect the university from attack. Irene might be watching from her office, somewhere high in the fairy-tale cluster of impossible towers, but otherwise it felt almost as if they were sneaking away, unseen and unremarked. She told herself it was better to depart silently, without any attention, than risk spies noting their departure and wondering where they were going, yet … she shook her head, glancing at Adam as he walked beside Lilith. Did he finally realise that he was walking into the lion’s den, that the Supremacists would be worse than anything he’d faced in Heart’s Eye, or even that the Hierarchy might be waiting for them …? She wondered, numbly, if he wanted to back out, if he was only continuing because he couldn’t withdraw without saving face. She had known too many young men who got into trouble because they thought it would be better to risk death than be seen as a coward. Her lips twisted in dark amusement. There were few advantages to being born a woman, but the freedom to back down from a challenge was definitely one of them.

Lilith took Adam’s hand. Emily winced, inwardly.

“Don’t hold hands,” she said, quietly. It cost her to say the words. She’d always enjoyed holding hands with Caleb, even if it did mean displaying their relationship for all to see. “You cannot afford to raise eyebrows. Not now.”

Adam flushed bright red. Lilith shot Emily an irked look. Emily didn’t bother to reply.

Sienna motioned for them to gather ‘round, producing a teleport gem from her robes. Emily braced herself, hoping to hell the gem had been properly programmed. She’d invented them – with a great deal of help from Void – and she was almost painfully aware the slightest mistake could send them slamming into the ground, or worse. The safeguards were supposed to prevent the user from teleporting into danger, but they weren’t capable of avoiding anything that wasn’t blatantly obvious or directly lethal. A user could easily materialise fifty metres above the surface, on the grounds that it wouldn’t be immediately deadly …

“Here we go,” Sienna said. “Now …”

Emily closed her eyes a second before the teleport spell activated. The world heaved around her – she heard Adam swear out loud, his voice drowned out by a thunderous roar that seemed to appear in her brain without passing through her ears – and stabilised, her eyes opening to reveal a border fortress sitting beside a road that ran towards the distant city. The air was clean, yet there was a faint hint of something that nagged at her mind, a looming presence that reminded her of a necromancer’s lair. It faded as she tried to lock onto it, to determine what it actually was. A moment later, it was gone so completely she wasn’t sure it had ever been there.

“Wow,” Adam breathed. “Look at that!”

Emily followed his gaze. An airship hung over the fortress, tethered to a tower someone had thrown up in a tearing hurry. The craft bristled with guns – the compartment hanging under the gasbag was clearly designed to drop bombs as well as carry troops – and the handful of visible flyers seemed to know what they were doing. The airship was new … the fortress, she noted grimly, was old and decayed, largely abandoned until recently. She shivered as she saw the uniformed soldiers manning the battlements, digging trenches or riding around on horses. They looked uneasy, as if they expected to face a threat they couldn’t possibly stop. They might be right. A modern army might be able to shoot down a platoon of sorcerers before they posed a threat, but the primitive muskets and cannons in plain view wouldn’t be able to do more than fire a handful of shots – for the honour of the flag – before it was too late.

Bows and arrows against the lightning, she thought, numbly. If the rogue magicians came out of the city, it was going to turn into a remake of The War of the Worlds. Or worse. No wonder they look so nervous.

“Let me talk to the commanding officer,” Sienna said, quietly. “The rest of you, stay by the road and wait.”

Emily nodded, not trusting herself to speak as her eyes wandered over the growing blockade. A handful of soldiers looked back at them, the fear in their eyes clearly visible. Emily found it disconcerting. Local soldiers had a poor reputation for dealing with women – soldiering itself was hardly an honourable occupation as far as the locals were concerned, with soldiers being regarded as one step above mercenaries and child molesters – but this bunch seemed terrified of saying or doing the wrong thing. Perhaps they had reason. They’d have seen a lot of refugees – magical refugees – leaving the city, none willing to put up with any nonsense from the soldiers or the monarch behind them. Emily wondered, numbly, if the kingdom was in any state to do something about the city. It was in the midst of a prolonged political crisis.

Adam leaned forward, pitching his voice low. “We could take the airship and drop bombs on the enemy,” he said. “Take out the head of the snake.”

“I doubt it,” Emily said. The airship might be immune to spells aimed directly at the gasbag – assuming it was as carefully designed as Voidsdaughter – but there was nothing stopping the enemy from levitating a rock into the air and hurling it at the airship. She’d used a similar tactic herself, when the gaping flaw in most defensive wards had become obvious, and she refused to believe the enemy would overlook such an obvious countermeasure. “They could find a dozen ways to attack indirectly, if the airship was immune to direct attack.”

Or even set up a battery of cannon of their own, her thoughts added, darkly. Most magicians shunned mundane devices, but the Hierarchy had embraced magitech, and there was no reason they couldn’t do the same with magicless technology. The gasbag is fragile. One hit will be enough to send the airship up in flames or cause it to crash.

“Heads up,” Caleb muttered. “We have company … oh, crap!”

Emily looked up, half-expecting to see a snooty aristocrat or a powerful and unhinged sorcerer making their way towards them. Instead, she saw a young girl, with a pleasant face, brown hair and slightly plump body … it was never easy to guess at someone’s age, particularly where magic was involved, but Emily doubted the girl was any older than nineteen. She wore a simple set of magician robes, buckled loosely around her waist, with a belt that included a notebook and a pair of pens where Emily would have expected a sword. And her eyes …

“Lord Caleb,” the girl said. Her accent was pure Dragon’s Den. “And …”

Her eyes lingered on Emily’s face. “Lady Emily, is it not?”

“Jane.” Caleb’s voice was tart. “What are you doing here?”

Emily’s eyes narrowed. Jane wasn’t an uncommon name – unlike Emily – but she’d only heard of one Jane who fitted the girl in front of her. Frieda had written, telling her about the muckraker who had exposed a cheating scandal in Whitehall and made it impossible to cover up by stripping naked and streaking across the arena. Emily had been impressed by her daring and yet … what was she doing here? She should be in school. Instead, she’d blown their cover before they’d even tested it against the enemy.

“I’m here for a story,” Jane said. “My father thinks the world needs to know what’s going on.”

“Your father has sent you into danger,” Caleb snapped. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“I’m the only one who can walk into the city and file stories,” Jane snapped back. “My father wouldn’t be allowed through the gate.”

Emily cleared her throat. “And why not?”

“My father has no magic,” Jane told her. “And the World News needs accurate reporting from inside Celeste.”

“It’s a rag,” Lilith said, curtly. “Your father is just another muckraker.”

Jane’s eyes narrowed. “My father risks his life for the truth.”

“He’s risking your life this time,” Caleb corrected. “If they dislike your reporting, they will kill you.”

Emily suspected he was right. The whole field of newspaper – broadsheet – reporting was new, with hundreds of newspapers starting constantly and often folding before they managed to publish a second issue. There weren’t many that had managed to establish a stable business model, with enough readers willing to pay good money for copies to keep the broadsheet on a steady footing. The few that had made it had survived through solid reporting, sensationalism or both. She had no idea if the World News was a decent newspaper or not, although the fact they’d sent a reporter instead of simply making stuff up was a good sign …

Her lips thinned. The concept of reporters being immune to harm, of not becoming the story themselves, was also new, insofar as it existed at all. She’d heard stories of reporters being kicked out, harassed, or simply murdered for poking their noses where they didn’t belong … and she had a nasty feeling Caleb was right. The moment Jane published something the new regime didn’t like, she’d be kicked out of the city … if she were lucky. She was a magician and she could easily be turned into breeding stock instead, or worse.

And she saw through my disguise instantly, Emily thought. Jane had recognised Caleb first, which meant …what? She didn’t think their time at school had overlapped. She could be very useful, or she could be very dangerous.

Her mind raced. She was tempted to suggest – very strongly – to Jane that she go back to Whitehall, staying well away from Celeste. She suspected Jane would politely ignore her, which meant … she might go in alone, get captured and interrogated, and reveal Emily’s infiltration as well as her own. Several other ideas darted through her mind, from dragging Jane back to Whitehall herself and asking Lombardi to take care of her to other, more violent measures, but none were wholly reliable. She asked herself what Void would do and shivered. Void would turn Jane into something inanimate and hide her away until his mission was completed, then let her go. She couldn’t do that …

“I know the risks,” Jane said to Caleb. “I have taken risks in the past.”

“Not like this,” Emily said, quietly. She had no idea how much of Frieda’s letter had been true and how much consisted of stories that had grown in the telling, but the worst Jane could expect at Whitehall was expulsion. Here … she could be murdered. Or enslaved. “You can come with us, if you promise to behave and obey orders.”

“And don’t file any stories until we’re safely outside the city,” Caleb put in. “Or anything else that might draw attention to us.”

“Like our names,” Lilith said. Jane had no reason to know her, Emily thought, but there was no point in taking chances. “Or anything.”

Emily smiled, although it wasn’t amusing. She had the idea Jane might attract attention that would otherwise be aimed at them, a diversion that might give her some room to work without being noticed. If Jane hadn’t worked out who they were … Emily cursed under her breath, suddenly unsure of how good their cover stories were. There weren’t many accurate portraits of her in existence – most managed to get nearly everything, from skin and hair colour to clothing and bust size, completely wrong – but if the enemy had one person who actually knew her, or any of them, on the gates, their cover would be completely blown before they got into the city. It would be an utter disaster …

Jane nodded. “It would be my pleasure,” she said. Her smile was smug enough to make Emily want to change her mind on the spot. She reminded herself, sharply, that she hadn’t been the most considerate of people when she’d been eighteen. “How do you want me to explain it …?”

Sienna returned, looking grim. Her eyes widened the moment she saw Jane. “What are you …?”

Caleb explained, quickly. Sienna’s face darkened, her lips twisting as she visibly bit down on a sharp response. Emily felt the air prickle around her as Sienna’s magic sparked, a grim reminder she was both powerful and very well trained. Jane paled but stood her ground. Emily was morbidly impressed. A trained combat sorcerer wouldn’t lose her cool easily. If she did, it would end very badly for the target of her rage.

“Right,” Sienna said, in a tone that made Emily want to quail. “You can come with us, as long as you do as you’re told. And if you do anything to make me regret it, I’ll kill you on the spot. Do I make myself clear?”

Jane nodded, eyes downcast. Emily breathed a sigh of relief, then listened carefully as Sienna added to the cover story. Jane had met them on the way and requested permission to join the party, citing strength in numbers. Sienna had agreed, reluctantly. It was as close to the truth as possible, although … Emily sighed inwardly, torn between the urge to put Jane as far from her as possible and the grim awareness that doing anything of the sort would mean crossing a line. She hoped – prayed – she wouldn’t come to regret it. She had the feeling Jane was already having second thoughts.

“Then let’s be off,” Sienna said. Her voice was cold, with an undertone of urgency. “We’re committed now. And time is no longer on our side.”

Chapter Eight

It was not the first time Emily had visited Celeste, and the city didn’t seem to have changed all that much in the last few months, but she couldn’t help thinking – as they walked down the road – that it felt very different.

Celeste was beautiful, all white domes and towers and castles that looked like something out of a fairy tale. The giant citadel in the heart of the city was an astonishing structure, so elegant and pretty that she was certain it had to have been built with magic or materials she’d thought unknown to her new world. She wasn’t sure it could have been put together even with materials from Earth. The visible supports seemed too weak to hold the dome in place without the entire structure crumpling under its own weight. The entire city looked as if the designers had had an unlimited supply of both magic and wealth, disregarding the laws of physics while letting their imaginations run free. It truly was the prettiest city she’d ever seen.

And yet, she thought she could feel a darkness crawling over the white city, a shadow slowly overcoming the light.

The tiny group didn’t speak as they made their way down the paved road, legacy of the long-gone empire. Celeste was surrounded by farms and villages, technically both part of the city-state and the surrounding kingdoms – the locals often having to pay taxes to both, a problem she’d encountered before – but there were fewer people in the fields than she would have expected. They’d made full use of modern – or what passed for modern – farming equipment, including a steam tractor she suspected had come out of Heart’s Eye or Cockatrice, yet surely there should be more people? It boded ill for the future. The farmers around Celeste had had a better deal than most, with few bandits or revolutionaries daring to harass the magical city … had that changed? Or was she overthinking it? It was quite possible the farmers had decamped a long time ago.

And they would have to have been desperate, if they left before the gates slammed closed, Emily thought. A farmer whose wealth was tied up in his land would become a pauper, if he walked away from the fields. It wouldn’t be easy to get a lone man, let alone a family, to somewhere they’d be welcomed. Just what sort of nightmare was brewing here, while I was defeating the necromancers and chasing the stolen books?

Her mood darkened as they neared the city, noting newer magics woven into the wards. The city had already made it impossible to teleport inside the walls – their wards were designed to kill anyone who tried, scattering their atoms across the entire world – but now it was also impossible to scry into the city, let alone get across the wards without being noticed. The city felt like a brooding dragon, keeping one eye open for intruders as it squatted on a pile of gold. She shivered as she noted a handful of tiny ships on the rivers, making their way in and out of the city. The last time she’d passed, there’d been many more. That, too, boded ill.

“Keep walking,” Sienna muttered. “Don’t let them think you’re intimidated.”

Emily nodded, glancing at Adam. He looked pale, as if it had finally dawned on him they were walking into the belly of the beast. Emily had read a story, once, about a young Jewish woman who had ventured into Nazi Berlin, her life constantly hanging by a thread. Adam would be in deep shit if they ever discovered who he was, no matter how consummately he played the role of handyman, manservant and scapegoat. She wondered, again, if she should order him to return to Heart’s Eye. It might be too much for him.

“We’re not alone,” Jane said, pitching her voice so low Emily could barely hear her. “If we’re in a crowd …”

Emily nodded, stiffly. There was an entire convoy of people making their way towards the city, although the cluster of wagons was so poorly put together she suspected it wasn’t organised at all, not in any real sense. It wasn’t uncommon for travellers to travel in groups if they were heading to the same destination, even if they’d be strangers – or social unequals – under other circumstances. In the days of the empire, she’d been told, a naked virgin could walk from one end of the continent to the other, a bag of gold under her arm, and remain unmolested. She doubted that was true – there was no one living who’d been alive during those days – but she understood the importance of banding together for mutual protection. The roads had gotten a great deal less safe over the last few years.

“A handful of low-level magicians,” Jane muttered. Emily wondered, suddenly, if any would recognise her. If they – or their children – had been at Whitehall over the last few years, they might well have seen her … they would have, when she’d been appointed Head Girl and forced to give the opening speech to the new students. “Do you think they believe what they’ve been told, or …?”

Emily shrugged. On paper, a magician could find work anywhere. There was always room for a person with magical skills, particularly masters of the rarest arts. It was astonishing what a community would overlook, if it made the difference between having a magician who could actually bring value to the community and not having one. In practice, it wasn’t always so easy. A magician had the choice between being a big fish in a tiny pond – a village magician would always be amongst its most prominent citizens – or being a tiny fish in a huge pond, unable to advance past a certain point unless they had vast power or traded their bloodline for position. She hadn’t realised how much it was resented, not until now. The Supremacists were pushing at an open door. 

Her eyes narrowed as they passed a handful of wagons heaving under the weight of an entire family on the move. The father had piled his vehicle high with alchemical supplies – Emily wondered, suddenly, if he’d thought to pack clothes too – and hung everything he could from the sides, from cauldrons to cooking implements. They’d have to be cleansed, she reflected, once they reached their new home, if indeed there was one waiting for them. Both Cockatrice and Heart’s Eye had seen a massive influx of immigrants, once it had become clear there was opportunity for all, and housing was constantly in short supply, a problem made worse by apartment blocks being thrown up by rogue builders that often collapsed under their own weight. She wondered, numbly, just how much room there was in Celeste. It didn’t look as if the city was building newer apartments outside the walls.

They might think they can use magic to make the city bigger on the inside, she mused. But can they do it without a nexus point?

She kept her face under tight control as the gates loomed into view, a small crowd of visitors and immigrants teeming outside. A handful of guards in black and purple outfits – her eyes narrowed; black was reserved for sorcerers, while purple was only worn by high-ranking aristocrats – patrolled the gathering, carrying staffs with glowing crystals on their tips. Low-power magicians or … or what? She could sense magic crackling around them, power pulsing in the air … she’d never seen anything like it. Her eyes narrowed as the gates came closer, the magic twisting to make them look impossibly large, towering over the visitors in a bid to make them look small. She gritted her teeth, tightening her mental shields. She felt like an ant facing an elephant.

A guard strode over to them, manifesting all the pompous power-tripping of his mundane counterparts. “Welcome to Celeste,” he said. “Why are you here?”

Sienna spoke in a voice so snooty that Emily couldn’t help but find it amusing. “My family and I wish to take full advantage of the invitation to immigrate,” she said. The guard took a step backwards, his hand tightening around his staff. Emily could sense a spell inside the crystal tip, one so hazy she couldn’t parse out what it did. “We are alchemists and apothecaries, out of Heart’s Eye.”

The guard said nothing for a long moment, then allowed his eyes to wander over the rest of the group. Emily shivered. It wasn't uncommon for guards to harass female visitors, to take advantage of their power and position, but the guard wasn’t looking at her like that. It was something else, something darker. His face twisted in disgust as his eyes lingered on Adam … Emily braced herself, half-expecting the guard to do something unpleasant. Or dangerous.

“And why,” the guard said, “have you left Heart’s Eye?”

Sienna, somehow, managed to sound even more snooty. “It is impossible for a family of magicians to make a living there now,” she said. “My store was destroyed in the war by a bunch of mundanes, and they had the nerve to complain when I crushed them, then they gave licences for apothecaries to mundanes more likely to blow up their customers than give them what they needed. There’s no way to earn an honest living there now, not when mundanes are promoted over magical merchants and allowed to swan around as if they’ve earned their place.”

She went on, with all the affected outrage of someone who had been forced to engage in fair competition for the first time in her life. Emily couldn’t help feeling cold, even though she knew Sienna meant none of it. She’d heard of protests by magicians in Heart’s Ease who had objected to mundanes selling magical components, and to being told that their magic didn’t automatically make them superior to everyone else; she wondered, numbly, if the invasion hadn’t actually done the growing university town a favour, by chasing out many merchants who were unable to adapt to the new world order or unwilling to compete on even terms. Adam’s face was a mask, his feelings buried behind an air of dull-witted stupidity. Emily grimaced. It was astonishing just how many lower-class people learnt how to mask their true feelings, and how easily many could be convinced to spy on their masters. 

The guard nodded, when Sienna finally came to a halt. “And you?”

His eyes lingered on Jane, who had been standing a little apart from the rest. “I am Jane, Daughter of Gerald,” she said. “I represent the Whitehall Times and the World News.”

The guard seemed unimpressed. Emily couldn’t tell if he didn’t recognise the broadsheet names or simply didn’t care. “Go through the lower gate and then head directly to Counter Eight,” he said. “Welcome to Celeste.”

Emily nodded, not trusting herself to speak as Sienna led the way towards the gate. The protective magics grew stronger, pressing against her mind and warping her perceptions – for a moment, the gate seemed so large as to dwarf a skyscraper – before she stepped through the gate and looked around with interest. The courtyard was teeming with people, nearly all magicians … she shivered, again, as she spotted servants and slaves, the latter with very visible collars around their necks. It might be considered bad taste by the magical community, but no one seemed interested in doing anything about it. The servants looked terrified, staying as close to their masters and mistresses as possible. Emily didn’t blame them. She was nervous too.

Sienna joined the line in front of Counter Eight and waited, tapping her fingers in a visible display of impatience. She wasn’t the only one showing visible displeasure at having to wait, although in her case – Emily hoped – it was faked. Lady Barb had been almost infinitely patient, pointing out that no one became a full-fledged combat sorcerer without being able to keep her emotions under control. The aristocracy was nowhere near so patient – Emily had seen aristos jump queues before, often engaging in a complicated dance to determine just who could jump ahead of whom – and she couldn’t help thinking magicians were just the same way, seething with impatience at the thought of being forced to wait in line. She had a sudden mental impression of people waiting at the airport, chafing helplessly at the prospect of missing their flight … a shock ran through her as she understood, finally, what was meant by the banality of evil. Her previous enemies had been dark wizards and aristocrats, but now she was confronting a faceless system, a cause that would linger even if its strongest proponents were beaten and discredited. King Randor’s cause had died with him. The Supremacists would go on even if they were defeated here.

Ice trickled down her spine as the line advanced slowly, magic heavy in the air as magicians waited their turn. Her eyes wandered the courtyard, spotting a handful of portraits and statues of famous magicians positioned against the walls. One was of a young girl … she wondered, numbly, if it was meant to be her. It wasn’t impossible. The Supremacists had good reason to hate her, but they might want to make use of her legend too …

They finally reached the counter, where a grim-faced young woman asked a handful of questions. Sienna answered, running through their cover story with an impatience designed to discourage any further questions. Emily hoped she wasn’t overdoing it. A guardsman had quite a few ways to make life difficult for cheeky visitors, at least as long as they didn’t have the power, connections, or money to make life difficult in return. Sienna hadn’t come as a combat sorcerer, the kind of person a guard would hesitate to antagonise …

“Step forward,” the guard ordered.

Emily braced herself as she took a step forward, keeping her eyes downcast. Sienna had cautioned her to act as meek and mild as possible, to bear in mind she was playing the apprentice of a mistress who firmly believed that sparing the rod was spoiling the apprentice. It was galling to appear so submissive – Void had never demanded it of her, not once – and yet, the less she looked like the famous Lady Emily the better. She’d done everything she could to change her appearance, using mundane cosmetics rather than magical glamours – it was quite possible something non-magical would be overlooked – but if the guard knew her, and if she was more observant than she seemed …

“Your manservant will remain under your supervision at all times,” the guard said, her eyes studying Adam as if he were a slug under her boot. “If he is caught outside your apartment without your supervision, he will be punished. You will also be held accountable for his actions.”

She went on, as if she’d said the same thing a thousand times before. “You have been assigned an apartment,” she said, pulling an envelope out of a drawer and passing it to Sienna. “You will have the use of that housing gratis for the first month, after which you will be expected to pay rent or face eviction. If you break the city code” – she passed Sienna another set of leaflets – “you will be evicted and expelled from the city.”

Her eyes switched to Jane, her tone becoming sugar-sweet. “Do you wish to remain with them, for the moment, or be assigned a room at the inn?”

“I would prefer to stay with them,” Jane said. “Caleb and I have become close friends.”

Emily gritted her teeth. Caleb wasn’t exactly an uncommon name, but she would be surprised if it wasn’t on a watchlist. And … the idea of Jane flirting with Caleb was just wrong, even if it did make for a decent cover story. She was old enough to marry, yet a combination of low birth, low power, and low reputation – her father was the first muckraker, as far as the general population was concerned – would limit her choices. Caleb – or at least the persona he’d assumed – would be ideal.

“Very well,” the woman said. “The council will wish to speak with you soon, I am sure.”

“It would be my pleasure,” Jane said. The enthusiasm in her tone didn’t sound feigned. “How do I request an interview?”

The guard hesitated. “If you present your credentials at the citadel, I’m sure something can be arranged,” she said. “Until then, I suggest you explore the city and report on the wonders to be found within the walls.”

Jane smiled, broadly. “It will be my pleasure.”

At least until you write something they don’t want you to, Emily added, silently. She doubted the council would let Jane go anywhere she pleased, let alone write whatever she liked. She was surprised the guard hadn’t insisted on Jane heading straight to the citadel or being assigned an apartment somewhere she could be kept under close observation. As long as you draw their attention away from the rest of us …

“I’d like to have a chat with you later,” Jane continued. She shot the guard a winning smile. Emily had to admit it made her look charming. “Can I buy you a drink in a couple of days?”

The guard hesitated, visibly. “My name is Sonja,” she said, in a tone that suggested she was already wondering if she’d made a mistake. “If you leave a message for me at the barracks, I’ll get it eventually.”

She paused, again. “You are cleared to enter the city,” she concluded. She sounded as if she were trying to project an air of boredom. “If you wish to remain past the first month, register as citizens when you pay your rent. Should you leave the city beforehand, you may not be allowed back in unless you are already registered.”

Her lips twisted into a fake smile. “Welcome to Celeste!”

Chapter Nine

Emily hadn’t been sure what to expect, when she stepped out of the courtyard and into the city itself. A repulsive historical nightmare, perhaps, with red and black banners draped everywhere, or armed men patrolling the streets, ready to club down or shoot anyone who looked at them the wrong way. She’d half-expected a city of fear, the population hiding indoors or scurrying from place to place, desperately trying to find food and drink and get back to their families before the hammer came down. It wouldn’t have been the first time she’d visited a city trapped in darkness, the population helpless to resist the shadow oozing into their lives. If it happened again …

The first thing that struck her was just how normal it looked. The streets were buzzing with people, men and women strolling the boulevards as if they didn’t have a care in the world; she sucked in her breath, sharply, as she realised just how clean the city was. There were few cities that spent so much effort cleaning the streets, even after the world had realised the dangers of filthy cities and the advantages that could be incurred by collecting waste and transporting it out of the city, but Celeste stood out as being astonishingly clean. It felt safe too, she noted grimly. There were children, middle-class children, on the streets without any visible adults accompanying them.

Her eyes narrowed, just for a second, as she surveyed the crowds. They were magicians – they had to be. No other group enjoyed so much freedom to dress as they pleased, from the man who looked like a walking eyesore to the young woman who was practically naked; Emily wondered, rather snidely, why she didn’t just bite the bullet and walk around in the nude. Everywhere she looked, there were crazy, colourful outfits; she saw a woman dressed as a peacock, a young man wearing a dandy’s outfit, a shopgirl who looked like a manga heroine and a child dressed as a miniature adult. Something moved, overhead; she looked up, just in time to see a trio of young girls on pitchforks, flying through the air as if they didn’t have a care in the world. Emily’s heart twisted. It would be easy for a bad-tempered magician to swat the girls out of the sky – a single cancellation spell would suffice – but they showed no fear of being sent plummeting to their deaths. She almost envied them their freedom, even though she knew a shadow was falling over the city. It tempted her, in a manner she didn’t want to face.

“This way,” Sienna said.

Emily motioned for Jane to walk beside her as they picked their way through the chattering crowds. She’d wondered if they would be watched, right from the moment they entered the city, but it was impossible to tell if anyone was shadowing them. There were just so many people, milling around in what felt like an impromptu street party. A shiver ran down her spine as they passed a handful of young witches, laughing and joking as they headed towards the shops. Did the teenagers know what was happening? Did they even care? Or were they as blind to the truth as teenagers back home, driven by hormones and inexperience? Who knew?

She kept her eyes open, looking at all of the shops. Most were bursting with life, from simple fruit and vegetable shops – their produce clearly visible in the windows, or in boxes on the pavement outside – to more complex magical shops, spread out rather than being crammed into a single de facto ghetto. Here and there, a shop was boarded up; someone had dabbed letters in Old Script on the wood, the old symbol for a magicless man. Emily mentally translated it as muggle, although muggle was nowhere near as insulting as the direct translation, which somehow managed to be even ruder. A pair of magicians were removing the boards from one shop, their families already waiting outside to move into their new home. Emily didn’t want to know what had happened to the original owners. If they were lucky, they’d fled before it was too late. If not …

A nasty thought ran through her mind. She hadn’t expected they’d be assigned an apartment so quickly. She’d assumed they’d have to find an inn or rent a garret or something – anything – along those lines. Celeste had a lot of accommodation for visiting magicians. And yet, they’d just been given an apartment for a month and told they could keep it past then, as long as they paid rent. It couldn’t be just them either, if she was any judge. The guard had been handing out keys to everyone she’d allowed into the city, which meant … where the hell had the apartment come from? She hadn’t seen any large-scale building program the last time she’d visited, and she was entirely sure the city couldn’t conjure the apartment blocks into existence, even if they did have a nexus point. Void had been the most powerful and knowledgeable magician of his generation and even he had been unable to conjure anything larger than a chair out of raw magic. If the city could, the battle was lost before it could wholly begin. 

And if they are closing shops belonging to mundanes, she thought darkly, what are they doing to their apartments?

She kept her eyes open as they walked through the shopping districts, trying to determine what was really happening. There weren’t many signs of Supremacist ideology, but what few she could see were pervasive. The council didn’t seem to want to cover the city in flags and banners, something that might – or might not – be a good sign. It suggested they were secure, that they had no fear of opposition or resistance. Emily had a nasty feeling they might be right. They wouldn’t have welcomed the newcomers with open arms if they’d been afraid …

Adam swore, just loudly enough for Emily to hear. “What is that?”

Emily followed his gaze. An iron giant sat in the centre of the road, a brooding metal mass that looked like a crude parody of the human form, the metal armour covered with carefully etched runes … it didn’t look that much like the steampunk monster she’d faced a few short weeks ago, but she dared not assume it was any less tough. She reached out with her senses, gingerly, and cursed under her breath as she discovered she couldn’t parse out any of the spells surrounding the machine. Was it a bluff, nothing more than a hunk of metal? Or … or were the spells designed to protect it from magic blocking her probes too?

“Be very careful,” she muttered. “I only took one of those things out by luck.”

The machine made no move as she walked past the device and down the road, passing a number of blacksmith shops and foundries that were apparently run – or at least ruled – by magicians. She saw a handful of men smelting metal … magicians? Or mundanes? The wards were too heavy for her to tell. Most magical craftsmen believed – firmly – that they had to do all the work, that the process was as much about tempering the craftsman as the metal, but Emily knew for a fact it wasn’t true, at least where magitech was concerned. Adam had built all kinds of fantastic little tricks without a drop of magic in his blood. There was no reason the city council couldn’t do the same, forcing mundane craftsmen to do the work while reaping the benefits themselves.

“I’ll be coming back here,” Jane said. “Do you think they’ll give me a tour?”

“We’ll see,” Emily said. Jane could ask all the questions and draw all the ire, while she quietly parsed out the enemy defences in the background. “Right now, we just need to figure out what’s really going on.”

She kept her thoughts to herself as they reached the end of the road and turned into a row of apartment blocks. They looked older – and stronger – than any of the newer buildings she’d seen at Heart’s Eye, although it was hard to be sure how strong they really were. She could feel magic woven into the stone, reinforcing the material … she hoped, prayed, they could stand on their own. If something happened to disrupt the magic …

The air grew quieter, somehow, as they stepped into the lobby and made their way up the stairs. There was something very Roman about the design, open windows cut neatly to allow the sunlight to stream into the stairwell … she frowned, a thought nagging the back of her mind as they reached the fourth floor. There should be light, either magical orbs or lanterns, but there was nothing … it bothered her, and she wasn’t sure why.

“Here,” Sienna said.

She stopped outside a door, a single numeral clearly visible on the wood, and opened it with the key. There were no wards, not even the simple keep-out-if you-value-your-human-form protective charms most magicians threw up as a matter of course. Magicians liked their privacy, and nearly all refused to sleep in a place that wasn’t properly warded to keep out intruders or long-distance spying charms. Here … her eyes narrowed as Sienna stepped into the apartment, then widened as she saw the mess. It looked as if a bomb had gone off inside the chamber, drawers and cupboards torn open and their contents scattered onto the floor. She hurried forward and peered into the bedroom, feeling tears prickling in her eyes as she realised it had once belonged to a young child. The bedding had been left behind, as had a tiny stuffed teddy bear … she swallowed hard, feeling the impact of what the council had done crashing down on her. The apartment had belonged to a mundane couple, and they’d been evicted to make room for the newcomers.

“Shit.” Caleb rarely swore, certainly not anywhere near his mother, but this time … Emily couldn’t blame him. “What happened to them?”

“Check around,” Sienna ordered. “They might still be here.”

Emily stood in the centre of the apartment and closed her eyes, reaching out with her mind. There was almost no magic within the apartment, certainly nothing to suggest the original owners had been turned into animals or objects or simply killed out of hand. It wasn’t reassuring. She would have preferred to know what had happened, even if they were dead … she swallowed hard, feeling torn between guilt for stealing the apartment and a grim awareness they had to play along. It hadn’t been her fault. She hadn’t called up ahead of time and asked the council to evict the former owners, and if she hadn’t come to the city someone else would have been given the apartment instead, someone who would have accepted it as his due. It didn’t help. She still felt guilty.

“Collect everything that is clearly personal and put it aside for storage,” she ordered, curtly. It was impossible to refuse the apartment, and it was impossible to avoid using the bedding, but she could make damn sure she took care of everything else until it was returned to its rightful owners. “And then set up protective charms to make sure we can’t be watched.”

Sienna shot her an unreadable look. Emily couldn’t tell if she approved or not, as they hurried to sort through the mess. The owners had packed in a tearing hurry, grabbing canned foods from the shelves – Emily hadn’t realised canning had spread so far from Cockatrice, where it had been invented – and whatever else they could stuff in a bag or two, before their time ran out and they had to leave their apartment for the last time. Her imagination filled in the details – a child crying, asking why they had to leave; parents ashamed of their helplessness and weakness, wishing they could stand up to the bullies and yet all too aware that resistance was futile – and she cursed the Supremacists under her breath. It would be bad enough if they’d been kicked out of the city, but Emily knew no mundanes had been allowed to leave ever since the declaration of independence. Where were they?

Virgil found a way to tap people as a source of power, she thought, grimly. Are the Supremacists doing the same?

She picked up the teddy bear and blinked away her tears, then added it to the small pile of clearly personal items. The family – a husband, a wife, a child – had been prosperous a few weeks ago, judging from the collection. Their clothes were new, instead of being passed down from wearer to wearer; they’d owned a collection of newly printed books, ranging from a handful of novels to a pair of textbooks on mundane subjects. They’d been young and happy, with a bright future ahead of them, and now … she wasn’t sure she wanted to know. Their life had been shattered beyond all hope of repair.

Jane joined her, her face grim. “This could have been my father’s apartment.”

“Yes.” Emily reminded herself a lot of magicians had mundane relatives. Not all magicians looked down on their relatives. “You can’t put this in your letters, when you write home, but when you leave, you have to tell everyone what really happened to the people here.”

“What did happen?” Jane stared at the pile. “Where are they?”

Emily shook her head. She had no idea.

She looked away, telling herself there was no point in getting angry. Not yet. Jane might tell everyone what was really happening, and then … would there be a surge of anger and horror that would convince everyone to band together to destroy the Supremacists? Or would the world just shrug and let it go? She wouldn’t care to bet against the latter, not when the Supremacists were hardly the worst the Allied Lands had to offer. If half the horror stories she’d heard from Alluvia were true, the Revolutionaries made the Supremacists look downright sane.

“I’ve put basic wards in place,” Sienna said. “They’re not perfect, but they won’t make us stand out either.”

Emily nodded, curtly. She knew better wards, but using them would reveal the team had more magical knowledge than they’d implied. If they came across as a serious threat … or even, she supposed, possible allies … it would make it harder to act. They’d just have to monitor the wards very carefully, and establish a pattern of altering the spellware every day or so. It was a bad habit to fall into a routine, as Sergeant Miles had pointed out, but in this case it would work in their favour. The more they looked like rote magicians, with egos bigger than their skills, the better.

There was a sharp knock at the door. Emily tensed, mentally running through a handful of possible escape routes. There weren’t many options. Diving out of the window would be risky, as would teleporting … it might be possible to teleport out of the city, but it would be incredibly risky. She wouldn’t try it except as a last resort.

Sienna motioned for Lilith to open the door. Emily tried to keep her eyes lowered as a middle-aged woman advanced into the apartment, followed by a man who looked almost disturbingly thin compared to his wife. The woman had magic – Emily could feel it – and yet there was something chunky about her body, as if she wasn’t used to using magic to burn away the calories. She was dressed as a middle-class woman, but Emily had the feeling she was decidedly lower-class. Her outfit was more of a costume than anything she wore regularly.

“I greet you,” she said, her eyes darting around with undisguised curiosity. “I am Olivia, Chairwoman of the Block Association, and I bid you welcome.”

She held out a cake tin. Lilith took it reflexively. Emily half-expected it to explode.

“I greet you,” Sienna said. “We only just moved in …”

“It is so much nicer to have a fellow magician right next door,” Olivia continued, a display of rudeness she would never have shown if she’d known who she was dealing with. “The apartment always stank when Annabelle lived here.”

Emily blinked. “I beg your pardon.”

“Annabelle,” Olivia said, with a blithe disregard for her audience. “Thought we were friends because her husband owned a shop, without even a lick of magic to her name. Probably didn’t even wipe herself after going to the toilet, the silly little dear. I told Henry that he should just turn her into a toad, her and her squalling little brat who …”

Emily felt her self-control start to fray. Olivia wasn’t trying to bait her or trick her into saying something she shouldn’t … she truly believed every word she said. Emily had wondered, once, how countless Germans had collaborated in the ruthless destruction of their Jewish friends and neighbours … she knew now. There were always people who wanted to have an excuse to look down on others, to make them feel better about themselves. Olivia didn’t have enough magic to make something of herself, but as long as she could look down on …

“Thank you, but my apprentices and I have to get organised,” Sienna said. “We’ll have a proper sit down and a chat later, once we know what we’re doing.”

Olivia nodded but kept babbling until Sienna shooed the pair out of the apartment. Emily turned away, feeling sick. It would have been so easy to tear through Olivia’s merger protections, to pick her up and shake her, or to give her a taste of what it felt to be helpless in front of greater magic. But it would have blown their cover. She doubted any of the newcomers really considered mundanes their equals, or they wouldn’t have made their way to Celeste …

Lilith cleared her throat. “What do we do with the cake?”

Emily’s answer was savage. “Throw it out.”

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