“Hey, Max. What are the principal differences between a relative position translocation spell and a fixed position translocation spell?”

“The answer’s in the name, Kayden.”

“Okay, but – ”

“I’m not doing your homework for you, Kayden.”

“But you’ve run out! Don’t you want to take a break from, uh… whatever you’re doing?”

“What I’m doing is taking a break.”

“You’re reading.”

“Believe it or not, some people do read for fun. You might not have heard of the practice, I understand.”

I lobbed a crumpled ball of paper at him. Max had shifted beds since the staff explosion; Kylie and I were closest to the door and Max was one down from Kylie, so he was well within range. The paper, of course, bounced harmlessly off his force field. He didn’t even look up.

“Anyway,” he said, “wouldn’t helping you with your homework also involve reading?”

“Miratova never gave us this much homework. Forget murder plots; this right here is the real indication that the Fiore is evil.” I turned back to my work. It was okay for everyone else; for them, this might be relevant. But everything was a waste of time for me until we got to evocations. When was I going to need to know about the mathematical details of building portals, or what happened if you filled an enchanted bag with three times what it could possibly hold and then the enchantment failed? (Actually, that one might be kind of interesting to watch.) Sure, in theory I might pick up another spell in the future and it might be a translocation spell, but that seemed pretty unlikely. I had to figure out the spell I had, first.

The spell I had that was just sitting there, not doing anything. Hard to blame it, really. I’d spent so long suppressing it, and then I’d freaked out and blamed it for Miratova and Kylie’s casting problems; I wouldn’t be surprised if something in me was still holding it back. Maybe I didn’t need a magic tutor; maybe I just needed a therapist.

The good news was that nobody else seemed to care about my curse any more. Everyone had gotten bored of the novelty of two cursed classmates, so far as I could tell. Or if they were still interested, they weren’t openly staring or gossipping in front of me, which was just as good. Simon might have Dorm Magistae convinced I was running around breaking people’s spells on purpose, but if he’d been spreading that nonsense to anyone else I hadn’t heard it. It made sense that he’d keep it low-key – he probably didn’t want anyone else to know he didn’t have the Guardian Ring any more. There’d be people who didn’t believe I’d broken it, and he was probably worried I’d tell them what really happened.

Anyway, he didn’t have the whole of Dorm Magistae convinced. I might not be sure what was up with Magistus, but I believed he didn’t think I’d try to hurt anyone. He wouldn’t have gone out alone on the cliff with me if he did. Although he still didn’t climb with me. But he saw me climbing. So he thought… what? Probably that Simon had been right the first time; my curse was affecting other spells, so the cliff was unsafe if I was out there. But he knew I didn’t believe Simon, because he’d seen me climbing. So what did he think happened to the Guardian Ring? If he thought I was responsible for Miratova’s accident, but didn’t know it… but I clearly knew about the ring in advance, since he’d watched me punch Simon… and he thought Max was involved somehow?

Ugh! Why was I thinking about this? Why did it matter what Magistus thought? Let him be wrong! The incident was in the hands of the professionals now! Who cares?

Although figuring out what the hell was up between Magistus and Max might be prudent. If Magistus and I were going to, well, you know.

Things might be awkward otherwise.

So. Magistus and Max were both the magical heirs of families of about equal power. Or in the same zone of power. Which was more powerful? The Magistae had the connections, but that might just be more of a charisma thing; they certainly had respect for the Acanthos name, and they’d definitely wanted him in their dorm. So who…?

Ugh, it didn’t matter. Point was, Max and Simon definitely didn’t get along, and Magistus thought Max was weaponising me against Simon somehow? But Simon had started it. He’d made it clear that he didn’t think Kylie and I belonged at Skolala Refujeyo. Max had had nothing to do with it.

“What’s wrong?” Max asked.

Oh. I’d been staring. I cast around desperately for an excuse less awkward than the truth, and hit on a decent idea.

“Can you teach me how to cast my spell?”

“Huh?”

“My spell. Can you teach me to cast it? You know a lot more about magic than I do. I thought you might have some tips.”

Max blushed. “I know some theory, of course, but I’m not a mage, Kayden. I’ve never used magic. Instuktanto Miratova is – ”

“Yes, a genius at everything, a goddess among mortals, I know. But nothing she’s tried has been helpful. I keep trying to figure out how to use this thing and everyone just gives me weird metaphors and wants me to just try until it works, but that doesn’t work if I don’t know how to try. No one will tell me the basics, but you’re obsessed with the basics for everything. Do you know anything that can help?”

“Possibly. I mean, I’d love to try. But don’t expect too much. Next to someone like Alania Miratova, anything I can tell you is going to be disappointing, I’m afraid.”

“A few years ago, I was having a lot of trouble in maths. So my parents hired a tutor, an older kid who was some kind of numbers genius. He’d learned all his maths classes two years in advance and was about to go off and study to be a mathematician. He took me on, to help me with my problems, and you know what? He was useless. I mean, he was great at maths, but he was useless at helping me. He’d explain a basic concept and then jump to an advanced version and I’d have to keep getting him to slow down and re-explain stuff, and those explanations never helped. Because he knew the subject so well, and because it had been so easy for him to learn, he couldn’t understand what I was having so much trouble with. He couldn’t see what parts were tripping me up. So he went off to university, and my dad was like, ‘screw it, I can do this’, and started reading my textbooks. He’d done all this years ago, of course, but he’d forgotten most of it. So he was better at maths than me, but still had to learn as we went – and because he was doing that, he could explain it so much better. He remembered what parts were hard to learn, and understood when I asked for more clarification. That was something that the genius couldn’t do. Instruktanto Miratova says she’s not worried about my progress; she seems to think I’ll pick it up eventually, and she’d know better about that sort of thing than I would. But why wait for eventually when I’ve got somebody who might be able to help me now?”

“Ah. Well. When you put it like that, it certainly makes sense. I’ll do my best to help.” He closed his book and stood up. “What do you know about how magic operates so far?”

“It’s probably safest to assume I know absolutely nothing.”

“Excellent. A clean slate. We tend to think of spells as sort of like living things, like a snail or a fly. They’re packets of energy that obey stimuli to behave in ways that are a bit more complicated than normal, well, physics. Does that make sense?”

“Physics-defying packets of energy, got it.”

“Well, physics-defying might seem accurate on the surface but is inaccurate in its implications. Spells are a part of nature; they don’t defy physics any more than aeroplanes do. However, the standard physics you may have learned about so far doesn’t account for them, for obvious reasons; they’re rare, so they’re both impractical and difficult to study except as a very niche science. But a spell does allow unusual things to take place, and the simplest way to use one is to capture it in a human body and have the human direct that energy. Different spells have different amounts of power, different amounts of raw energy that they can direct to a task, and different levels of specificity and finesse; they might be better or worse at doing a task. Every spell is different, but there are two general rules of thumb: a spell that has more power can give a greater effect, but is more dangerous and causes more strain on the body. And a spell that is more specialised can give a greater effect in its specialisation, but tends to be weaker outside that specialisation. So there’s a trade-off in both circumstances; effectiveness versus safety, and effectiveness versus flexibility. With me so far?”

I nodded. We’d covered this much in general magical theory already. “And there are different strategies like familiarity and externalisation to take the strain off with powerful spells,” I said, hoping to hurry things along, “and we lump spells into the different categories based on their specialisation, because they’re all a little bit specialised. And then every fifty years or so somebody invents a new specialisation system and everyone argues about how to classify them all again.”

“Well, yes. That does tend to happen. Now, the energy of a spell is directed during casting, but can be reduced or dissipated by certain things. One of these things, as you know, is a counterspell, which are quite rare and tend to be specific to the point of uselessness. But several natural elements can dissipate the power of a spell as well, even in the hands of non-mages.”

“Like holly, mistletoe, yew, silver, pure salt or cold-forged iron.”

Max’s eyebrows rose. “That’s an… impressively long list from somebody who knows absolutely nothing about magic.”

“It’s most of the things my parents have been using on me since I was a baby. I’m guessing the silly rituals and backwards rhymes and stuff don’t have an effect.”

“Ah. I’m sorry, I forgot.”

I waved a hand dismissively. “All this is great,” I said, “but what I really need to know is how to cast a spell. What’s it meant to feel like? What’s meant to happen, internally? The two times I’ve cast, I didn’t really think about it; I wasn’t in a position to sit back and memorise what I was feeling. I need to know, so I can do it intentionally.”

“Right. Well. Generally, after a spell finds a host, it takes a few days to properly integrate and grow in power. During this time, the host’s body adapts as well, building shields to hold back the power. So you’re always unconsciously holding the spell back, much like how you’re unconsciously tensing multiple muscles in your body to stand up right now, many of which you don’t know about. The neatest way to cast is to relax that guard, let the power flow, and then direct that power.”

“Yeah, that right there is my problem. I don’t know how to relax my guard. Or what the power’s supposed to feel like.”

“My grandmother describes feeling the power as a kind of subtle tingle. Like the start of a shudder, but without the shudder.”

“That… makes sense. Kylie said it makes her feel like she thinks a seizure would feel like. That’s probably similar. But nobody else seems to know what to say when I ask.”

“Well, they’re probably focusing on other things when they’re casting. An active at-will caster is trying to direct their spell; they’re not going to stop and try to sense any little itches. You don’t remember how it felt; why would they? Perhaps you should specifically seek out people with less will-directed spells, like seers or contract mages. Evocation, creation and change mages probably have a lot of good advice for you, but they’re going to be too busy casting to pay attention to little details.”

“But I’m an evocation mage. Probably.”

“And when you can actually cast, I’m sure their advice will be invaluable. Until then… well, I mean this in the best possible way, Kayden, but you don’t seem to be the sort of person who listens to his own body and mind very much.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“I’m not sure how to make my statement any clearer. You’re constantly taking risks, ignoring or refusing to manage your emotions, and getting yourself injured in ways that halfway mindful people would avoid, then treating those injuries as external obstacles. I’m not trying to insult you,” he added quickly, “it’s just a relevant observation. You’re trying to find out what spellcasting feels like, but do you know what anything feels like? I only mention it because you did ask for my help in this.”

“Congratulations on managing to insult me without trying, but that aside, what do you suppose I do about it?”

Max shrugged. “How should I know? Go swimming. Join a dance club. Live in the moment.”

“You are telling me to live in the moment? You?”

“Yes.”

“When was the last time you lived in the moment?”

“When was the last time I was trying to cast a stubbornly dormant evocation?”

“Good point. I’ll keep it in mind. Thanks.”

I left before I accidentally started a fight.

Live in the moment? What the hell was he talking about? Every time I lived in the moment, something awful happened. I’d lived in the moment and found a lake monster. I’d lived in the moment and punched Simon, which had tipped him off about needing a defense for his murder plot. Mr Bookworm Shut-In with six contingency plans for everything, whose idea of a good time was making lists of different ways to make lists or mathematically studying the hallways of the school, thought I should live in the moment. A guy so firmly planted in the future, so carefully removed from any real action, that even after fighting so damn hard to get here he…

Oh.

Oh.

That’s what Magistus had been trying to warn me about.

Max’s story didn’t make any sense.