Our first attempt at a healing potion was an unmitigated disaster. This was probably largely because it was a complicated potion and, like cooking, potioncraft required a lot of practice to develop a sort of sense for getting it right. But it probably didn’t help that Saina retaliated against a joke about her spell by constantly distracting me with illusory butterflies.

“Done!” I announced, brushing my hand through some butterflies on the glass bottle to disrupt them. “Does this look ‘transparent with a pearly sheen’ to you?”

Saina squinted at the gloopy maroon liquid and wrinkled her nose against the strong smell of rust. “It does not. I might be wrong here but I think, perhaps, there is a slight chance that we may have made a minor mistake.”

“That does seem to be a possibility.” I closed the bottle securely and put it in the waste disposal, careful not to break it. We’d had a whole lecture on safely disposing of waste potions and Instruktanto Costa had been extremely graphic about the results of some of the accidents that people had suffered in the past. I certainly didn’t want to see my own skin turning inside out. “But with practice, I’m sure we will be master potioncrafters. The world will tremble in fear of our skills.”

Somebody cleared their throat behind us. I spun around. Max was loitering in the doorway, looking awkward. “Hi,” he said.

“Max!” I grinned. “What’s up? I barely see you these days.”

“The lab’s been very busy.” He gave Saina a polite nod. “Saina.”

“Max.” She returned it. “How can I help you?”

“I’m looking for a Marcelle Fozzby book. The library doesn’t stock it, but di Fiore suggested you might have a copy?”

“Probably. I don’t see why his estate’s so against digital copies of his work. What do you need?”

“Principles of Linkage and Binding. And I imagine his estate is trying to preserve the mystique of his work.” He wrinkled his nose. “Politicians. Uh, by which I don’t mean – ”

“I have that one. You’re welcome to borrow it, of course.”

“I don’t need the whole book. I just want to reference a few diagrams, if you don’t mind me taking photographs?”

“Of course. So long as you don’t dob me in to his oh-so-possessive estate. Kayden, I – ”

“I can clean this up,” I said. “Go be nerds together. Max, you have to promise not to lecture me about whatever this book is about later.”

“I make no such promises.”

The pair left together. I cleaned up, headed out of the room, and almost ran directly into the Fiore. He’d brought Socks this time, and she gave me a reproachful look as I stepped back to avoid running into the pair of arms cradling her.

“Kayden!” The Fiore smiled. “What a surprise.”

Somehow, I doubted that. A big school, and he’d run right into me? I really had to start turning my location off on the school map.

“Fiore,” I said. ‘You’re still here?’ seemed like a rude thing to say, so instead I said, “How are you?”

“Fine. Everything is fine. Are you enjoying your first semester as an official mage student?”

Hadn’t we done all the pleasantries last time? “It’s all going well. A lot to learn.” Segue into what you want so I can brush you off and leave.

“Your surveyanto is helping you adjust, I hope?”

There it is. “She hasn’t needed to. I don’t see her much; she’s very busy with all of her research projects. You must be busy with yours, too, I imagine.”

“Yes, but it’s important to make time for other things.”

“Like visiting di Fiore? I don’t know where he is. You might want to try the library.”

“Ah, my nephew. How are you two getting along these days?”

“Fine.” That technically wasn’t a lie. We barely ever saw each other, so we were getting along fine.

“You wouldn’t happen to know who his surveyanto is, would you?”

Why are you asking me and not him? “I don’t. Sorry.” The Fiore was obviously trying to steer me to some kind of topic or giving him some kind of information, but I had no idea what it could be. What did he want from me? Was I allowed to ask outright? I didn’t know the political language for –

Hang on, I didn’t play these stupid political games!

“Look,” I said, “if you want something, it’s going to be a lot faster if you just say so outright rather than do this roundabout political thing. I get enough of this from Max and di Fiore and the Magistae and I’m too tired to care about whatever bullshit rich people words are in fashion right now.”

“I’m just making polite conversation, Kayden.”

Obviously a lie. “Well, in that case, it was nice to see you and I hope you have a good day. But I don’t know where di Fiore is or how he’s doing or who his surveyanto is.”

“Did you two have a fight?”

“No. Just busy.” I started walking down the hall.

“Of course.” The Fiore followed me, clearly endeavouring to look like we just happened to be headed in the same direction, like I wouldn’t notice that we were walking in the opposite direction to the one he’d been heading in before. “How about the Sims girl? I assume you’d run into her quite often, given who your surveyanto is. I hope she isn’t still giving you trouble.”

“I haven’t seen Clara for a while,” I said neutrally. I’d seen her exactly once all semester. For all I knew, she was probably still off on whatever mission Alania had sent her on, and if she wasn’t, I didn’t want to know about it. I was pretty sure that the Fiore should’ve backed off by now. He was running out of polite social pretenses and just openly interrogating me in the hall had to be considered uncouth, right? Was there something he was this desperate to know? Or did he just think it didn’t matter what impression he left on a rude apolitical witch with no mage family?

The Fiore had seemed so nice and accommodating last semester. When had he gotten so good at pissing me off for no reason?

“Well, that’s good at least. After all the danger she posed last semester, it’s probably best if Miratova doesn’t keep her too close, yes?”

The comment had the shape and tone of a light taunt, but I couldn’t see how the content was supposed to upset me, or imply anything. Was he just trying to confuse me? Why?

“I guess,” I said cautiously. Maybe if I turned this conversation back on him somehow, he’d leave? “But I’ve outsmarted her once before. Shame about your ring.”

“Ah, we’ll recoup that debt in time. Once Miratova has had her revenge on the girl.”

“Alania’s not taking revenge on her,” I snapped.

“No? She took her on as an apprentice out of the goodness of her heart, you think?”

“Yes. She did.”

“Clara nearly killed her, Kayden. She had grounds for some serious retributive justice. The only reason to press the girl into a vow of service is because she thinks she can get more out of her that way than she’d have been able to get from what her family had left after paying for our ring. In gratitude for your help to us, let me give you some advice – believe in Alania’s good nature all you like, but know that the fact that she is here, and successful, means that she is somebody who has made the sorts of decisions that one has to make to be here, and successful. So make sure that you at least arrange matters so that when she does make such decisions, you aren’t caught in the crossfire.”

I had a brief memory of Alania telling Clara how dangerous the mission she was going on was. Of Clara’s scared face. Was this his game, then? To try to spread suspicion against Alania to… what, piss her off? That didn’t seem right. Didn’t he have better things to do than fuck with the heads of her students?

We’d both stopped walking, I realised. The Fiore was standing quite close, but I didn’t step back. That would probably be construed as weakness.

“It’s sound, right?” he asked.

“What?”

“Your element. Sound.”

How had he known that? My mage mark was under my clothing. It was probably in a register somewhere but… had he looked it up? Why? “Yeah. Why?”

“An often overlooked and dangerous element,” the Fiore noted. “Easily underestimated, because it does not exist.”

“Sound… exists,” I said, trying to keep up with the conversation.

“No more than heat does. Sound is a property of other matter, a description of its motion. Sound is a way for air to be, a way for all kinds of matter to be. It is defined by how it changes other things and, while other things are around, it is quite difficult to contain. It will move through others, jumping through barriers by becoming part of them and moving on to the matter beyond. If strong enough, it can snuff out fire; if tuned correctly, it can break glass or stone. And it’s only insulated against by those who expect to have to deal with it.”

“And you just said it was often overlooked.”

“Exactly. Do contact me if you need anything, Kayden. I haven’t forgotten our debt.”

And then he just left.

What the fuck was that? It had started as an interrogation, but all that stuff about sound… ugh, that was worse than Magistus’ chess metaphors. Why did these people never just say what they meant? I still had no idea what that nonsense about Clara was, and he spoke about her vow of service like he viewed apprenticeships in a much more transactional fashion than Alania…

Wait.

I raced off down the corridor after him. “Fiore!”

He turned, smiling smugly, like he’d expected this. “Yes, Kayden.”

“Do you know Cheryl Castor?”

His smile faltered. Confusion flickered across his face. “I, ah, can’t say that I do. Why?”

“Well, do you know much about Malas?”

“Not particularly. Do you need me to find something out for you?”

I could ask. I could ask him to look into Malas, and Cheryl’s master, and the possibility of poisoning or stressing or, or doing something to someone that could awaken their curse, and he would. He’d look into it to the best of his ability, I was sure, because he believe he owed me and he clearly wanted information from me, too, and I’d have my answers. Everything I needed, to either tell Cheryl and help her push forward seeking justice or, if I turned out to be wrong, drop it and stop wasting my time.

I could. Except that then I’d be giving the Fiore this information about Malas and Cheryl’s master, and I didn’t trust him to, well, not use it. If I was wrong, he could stir up a lot of unnecessary drama they didn’t deserve and deflect to me; if I was right, well, it still had nothing to do with him. Inviting him into the situation wasn’t going to help anything, and after taking such effort to not turn Cheryl’s situation into conspiracy gossip fodder for my peers I could hardly just give it to a grown, experienced legacy mage, could I?

God, I wanted easy answers. I really did. But they weren’t worth the price.

“No,” I said. “Just an idle question, it doesn’t matter. Have a good day.”

I didn’t want him in my drama, and I certainly didn’t want his drama. I tracked down the one person who could probably help.

Di Fiore was in his room. He looked startled when he opened the door to see me; I ignored this and brushed past him into the dorm. “When you talk to your uncle, can you please inform him that I’m not the best source of information on whatever you’re up to?”

He blinked in surprise. “Fiore’s here?”

“You didn’t know? I assumed he was here to see you.”

“He probably is. He’s not one to call ahead.”

“Well, if he wants to know how you’re doing, he can ask you, instead of trying to sneakily interrogate me when I’m working. He’s cornered me in potion labs twice now and it’s getting annoying.”

“He’s going to you for information about me? That’s a new low, even for him. He could go to the Magistae, at least.”

“Or ask you directly.”

“He prefers to speak to me as little as possible,” di Fiore said neutrally.

Huh? Family trouble? “You’re his heir.”

“I’m well aware.”

“Why would he choose you if he doesn’t – ”

“He didn’t.”

Ah. Something painful there that was absolutely none of my business. Okay. “Well, heads up, he wants to know who your surveyanto is.”

“Oh. Why?”

“How should I know? He cornered me to rant about Alania and Clara and some nonsense about my elemental designation and – ”

“Wait. What did he say, exactly? About Alania and Clara.”

I summarised the full conversation as best I could remember, cutting off the bit where I asked about Cheryl and Malas. That wasn’t relevant. Di Fiore, unlike me, seemed to have no trouble following the conversation, and nodded in understanding. “Ah. The old bastard’s getting more paranoid. I mean, that’s a stretch, even for him.”

“What the fuck does it mean?”

“Well, assuming you’ve summarised correctly – ”

“Assuming you understood correctly.”

“ – the most likely explanation is that he thinks that Instruktanto Miratova’s creating a sort of political clique against him, using the students.”

“ … what?”

“It’s actually not that unusual. Everyone who’s anyone sends their children here, children who are going to be the heads of their families for the next generation. Students form alliances, with each other but also with their teachers and supervisors. In the old days, it wasn’t unusual to sort of… loan and borrow apprentices, to create goodwill and smooth diplomacy between mages, and that tradition has sort of carried on into the surveyanti system. The only surprising part is that he thinks Miratova would have the time or patience for that kind of thing. But the evidence is compelling.”

“The evidence? What evidence?”

“The fallout of the whole thing with Clara last semester. Look at what Instruktanto Miratova got out of it. She had to make some concessions to my family to get them to agree to defer Clara’s debt, to start with.”

“That’s a loss, not a gain.”

“Whether owing a debt is advantageous or disadvantageous is circumstantial. Even disadvanageous, she got Clara out of it, who’s a very useful resource provided she doesn’t die before being released and shoulder Alania with her debts, she has the gratitude of the Sims family for sparing them from ruin and their daughter, who may be disowned but I’m sure is still loved, as… well, ‘hostage’ is a strong word, but you know what I mean. And, in the chaos, she’s become the surveyanto for the Acanthos heir, the plucky young witch who solved the whole plot and played an important part in spearheading the current reforms in contact restrictions in Oceana, and Kylie, who has no real political value as yet but even you have to have noticed how powerful her spell is. And all three of you are in my social group, and he probably assumed we’re a lot closer than we actually are.”

“He thinks Alania’s trying to… steal his heir? To piss him off?”

“It’s a logical conclusion. It’s something someone like him would do.”

Not Alania, though. So far as I could tell, she put the science and the teaching first, and treated the politics as a distraction. But still… “Has she tried to get you onboard?”

“Offered to be my surveyanto, you mean? No. I imagine she’s too busy trying to recover the lost data from when Clara blew up her lab to play those kinds of games. But she’s protected by her job here, and her position in the Circle. She doesn’t have to plot like that, like Fiore does.”

Which left the obvious question of how someone who didn’t care about political games had ended up with such a high political position in the first place, but to be perfectly honest I didn’t care. “Right. Well, your uncle – ”

“I’ll talk to him. He shouldn’t bother you any more.”

“Thanks.” With luck, I could be left out of everyone else’s weird conspiracy drama. And be able to focus on the weird conspiracy drama I’d chosen for myself.