It took Saina and me three more tries to get the healing potion right. We took it to Instruktanto Costa to assess (we weren’t stupid enough to test it ourselves), and she congratulated us on having created a mostly passable healing potion.

“It probably wouldn’t heal neatly, but it’ll work,” she said. “If you work hard, you could have a successful career in potions ahead of you.” She looked at me as she said the last part. It was meant as a compliment and I tried to take it as such; it wasn’t Instruktanto Costa’s fault that Saina, like most of the people around me, didn’t have to worry about banal working class things like training to get a real actual job.

My runes were improving, too. I didn’t think I was ever going to be great at them, but I’d memorised enough of the basic runes to be able to get the gist of what complicated sequences were intended to do, and I could draw the simplest ones well enough to be recogniseable and functional, if not particularly great. On the day that we all received the message to bring our razor-sharp inscription pens to runecrafting class, I was ready.

There was an air of barely concealed excitement throughout the room as Instruktanto Animus strode in, looking more serious than he ever had before, but since his normal personality was that of a doberman on caffeine that wasn’t hard. He’d even worn sensible eariings today. Well, they were gaudy purple stones like normal, but they weren’t dangling on chains and threatening to tangle with anything.

“Today,” he announced, “we will be inscribing runes in ichor. Before we begin, a note on safety. The pens you are holding are dangerous. Any messing about with them in this class and you will be asked to leave immediately. Once a pen has pierced your skin, it should never be used on another person, ever – do not share them. This is a basic blood contamination precaution. If I see anybody using them to roughhouse or tease each other, even as a joke, you will be asked to leave. If I see anybody using them in an obviously unsafe manner, you will be asked to leave. You will take them out when you need them, use them, then clean and pack them away. Oh, and I shouldn’t have to say this, but to be clear – do not share the cups of cleaning solution to clean your pens, either. That’s a contamination risk. Clean them separately.

“I will take you through the procedure of using and cleaning your pen. Pay attention. This is a basic runecrafting skill and you should get used to doing it correctly as soon as possible.”

Instruktanto Animus set up his tablet to film his actions, so we could see what he was doing in close-up on ours. He places a small roll of soft, embroidered cloth on his desk and carefully unrolled it to reveal his runic inscription pen. It looked pretty much the same as the one I’d bought from the store – a calligraphy pen, basically, with a sharp tip. He pulled up his sleeve high enough to reveal a mage mark, and pressed the tip directly into the centre. Ichor began to fill the tip.

“There’s no need to press too deep,” he told us. “The ichor comes fairly close to the surface. If you enter cleanly, you’ll barely feel it, but it’s very likely that your first few attempts to draw ichor won’t be clean. You might miss a little, have a little pain, draw a little blood. Don’t be alarmed if this happens.” He drew the pen away from his skin and wiped a thumb over the wound, clearing the excess ichor away. The skin beneath looked whole. “technically, the cut will take a little while to heal, but if you enter cleanly it won’t leak. The shape of the pen is designed to hold it open to fill it, but once you draw it away, the cut will be almost invisible unless you jostle or stretch it. The first few times you to this, this will probably not be the case. A messy cut will leak a bit; be prepared for this. It’s nothing to worry about.

“Don’t overfill your pen,” he continued as he cleaned the back of the pen on some blotting paper. “You risk making a mess of the inscription if you do. It’s better to work with small amounts and refill frequently, than overfill and mar the inscription with a blot. Today, we will be drawing a holding rune.” He started sketching out the rune with quick, sure lines. “You’ll need to refill your pen a couple of times. This is partly why so many mages use preserved ichor these days; it’s less potent, but a lot less bothersome for large inscriptions. We will be making use of preserved ichor in the future, but it’s very important that you know how to do it properly as well.”

He finished the rune and wiped the excess ichor on some blotting paper. “Ichor is nonhazardous,” he said, “but yours is likely to be contaminated with blood until you learn to draw properly. There’s always a risk of some blood contamination, so it’s best to treat any freshly drawn ichor, even that of an expert, as potentially biohazardous. So don’t share blotting paper, and don’t share cleaning bottles.” He lowered the tip of the pen into a small glass jar of transparent liquid. “Don’t just drop your pen in, either. You don’t want to damage the sharp tip. This is an implement that you’re going to be stabbing into your body, so it’s very important to keep the edge clean and sharp. At the end of the lesson, I’ll show you how to dry and sharpen it. For now, you may begin.”

All around the room, people began baring mage marks on their arms and legs. A few unlucky students peered nervously into mirrors and pricked the marks on their faces. Those who would need to undress too much headed for the privacy screens set up down the sides of the room to extract ichor. I had prepared for this, and was wearing a set of robes cut to allow me to access my heart without having to actually bare anything. I just hoped I didn’t cut myself and bleed all over them.

Filling the pen was easy. I got the witch mark dead centre, first try, even without being able to see what I was doing. Unlike everyone else in the room, I’d been very aware of exactly where it was my entire life.

The ichor flowed smoothly, like high quality ink. My lines didn’t come out great; I didn’t have much practice with calligraphy outside of runecrafting classes. But that was just a matter of practice, and there was something hypnotic about sketching out the holding rune with my own magic, my own self, for the first time. I was a good third of the way through the rune when I noticed that, for once, I was working faster than Max.

“Everything okay?” I asked.

“Just fine, thank you.” Max’s voice was a little strained. His hands were trembling, which was probably why there were light scratches littering the mage mark on his arm. But he had no reason to be nervous about drawing the rune, which he’d done hundreds of times, meaning…

“Are you nervous with blood?” I asked.

“I’m fine.”

“It’s okay if you are. Lots of people don’t like blood. I can help if – ”

“Blood’s not a problem,” he said. He took a deep breath, and let it out, and disappeared behind that calm, disaffected mask he wore for parties.

I gave up. The Max who was excellent at parties was completely useless to talk to. But he did, apparently, have steady enough hands to draw a rune.

When we were done, cleaning and sharpening our pens and some of the clumsier students patching themselves up with band-aids, Max said, “I think I’m going to make a fetish.”

“Already?” I asked. “Won’t that be kind of hard? We’re still learning – ”

“Di Fiore made one last week.”

“Oh. Then you can definitely do it.”

“Yeah. It’s a one-person job, but I want someone there in case something goes wrong. Would you mind – ?”

“Of course. How, uh, how likely is it that something will go wrong?”

“Very unlikely. Nothing to worry about at all. But, y’know, it’s magic, so…”

“So some random stupid nonsense that’s supposed to be impossible might just happen, because why not. When and where?”

“Are you free this afternoon?”

“So soon? Don’t you need to… I don’t know, prepare stuff?”

“I have everything I need. I don’t want to – I just want to get it over with.”

I mentally filled in the rest of the sentence. I don’t want to lose my nerve, probably. Not a fantastic attitude for creating a personalised magical artefact, in my opinion, but what did I know?

Max booked out a tiny workshop after lunch. On the single workbench, he laid out a brand new runic inscription pen with a fancy silver handle cushioned by a leather grip, some kind of small metal etching tool, and a long, thick needle. He laid a few pieces of paper in front of him, covered in sketched runic designs.

“Alright,” he said. “Just, just stay over there, and…”

“Be quiet, and call the janitors if you look like you’re dying?”

“Pretty much.”

I was getting way too used to emergencies around here. “Good luck.”

Max just nodded and got to work. He removed the leather grip from the pen’s handle and, under a strong light, started to slowly and carefully etch designs into the silver handle. I couldn’t actually see the runes from my place by the door, but I had the vague notion that I shouldn’t be the one to be here. This seemed like a moment of advancement, like in the old days, before the school and the Pit, Max’s master would be here, encouraging him and assessing his work. Ready to tell him what was wrong with his first attempt and help him improve, or to nod and say yes, he’d done an acceptable job, he was ready to learn more. Octavia Acanthos should be here. Or Alania Miratova, maybe. Not me, someone who had only the vaguest notion of what he was doing, unable to do anything except call for help if something went catastrophically wrong.

An eternity later, Max put down his etching tool and inspected his work. He nodded, apparently satisfied, and cleaned the handle with a cloth. Surely this is where Alania should’ve double-checked his runes, given him advice… why hadn’t he asked her, instead of me? She would surely have said yes. Wasn’t this the kind of thing a surveyanto was for?

Max laid out a clean piece of paper on the bench and placed the silver-handled pen in the centre. Then he took out his old runic inscription pen, gritted his teeth and filled it from his mage mark, flinching as it broke the skin. He stopped regularly to reference his notes, and the runic symbols were big enough that I could see them. I recognised a few; a variation on the holding rune, for one, a bit different to the one I’d learned in class. The familiarity linkage rune that had been so mystifying in Alania’s staff last semester. Runes for connection, containment, channelling. When he was done, he laid the pen aside and picked up the long needle from the workbench, pushing the end into the centre of his mage mark. The long metal thing didn’t come with a syringe; he simply closed his lips over the base to mouth-pipette the ichor. I was frankly amazed at how much ichor was apparently inside a single mage. I’d had my witch mark for years and never would’ve suspected that that much would fit.

Max cleaned the outside of the needle and, one finger over the top to control the flow of ichor, very, very carefully laid it inside the pattern he’d etched into the new pen, stroke by stroke. Nothing in the world was quite like Max focusing on something, and this was no exception. I didn’t dare move or make a sound as he slowly, patiently filled out the tiny lines, like time meant nothing. Eventually, he put the pen back down on the paper, took a deep, shaky breath, and looked up.

“Is it… done?” I asked. I’d expected some kind of visible effect, a flash of light or something.

“Almost,” Max said. He pulled out a lighter and set the paper on fire. Only when the approaching flames threatened to damage the silver did he reach in and snatch the pen out. “Now it’s done.”

Oh. well, that counted as a visible effect, I supposed. “Cool. Um. Congratulations?”

He shrugged as he slipped the leather grip back on the pen, concealing and protecting the runes. “It’s not a big deal.”

I was pretty sure it was supposed to be a big deal, but I didn’t know enough to contradict him. Maybe that was why he’d chosen me instead of Alania. Because I didn’t know anything.

I felt like this mage thing should be my culture by now. I felt like I should understand it.

I didn’t.