Mizuki hadn’t even known what a bursar was, but apparently he was the guy at the school who was in charge of all the money. He was a wizard himself, though not ‘in active practice’ as they said, which meant that he’d put many years of effort into becoming a wizard and then decided to do something else. Within the wizarding world, such people were generally shunned, and all the ‘best’ professors kept current with their wizardry, lest people think that they didn’t have the talent anymore. It was a career that people weren’t supposed to move out of, at least according to the wizards. Teaching was acceptable, but it seemed like sometimes only barely so.

The bursar had a fragile ego, and didn’t like being reminded of the fact that he was a ‘fake wizard’, which possibly explained why he’d taken up the crusade against Mizuki for his own. It had been bad enough when there were nothing more than hostile whispers from people who thought she was a reckless sorc, but it was infinitely worse to have someone who controlled the purse strings of the entire school.

Until the bursar had gotten himself involved, Mizuki hadn’t really thought about who was paying for things. Professor Arturo had wanted her, and pulled some strings to make it happen, which meant that she didn’t really have to do anything as far as money was concerned, especially because her room and board were taken care of.

“You’re on scholarship, basically,” Ingrid explained while they shared a lunch of curry and puffed bread. “I mean, most people are, you’re only at risk of not being on scholarship if you’re being disruptive or under-performing enough that the professors notice. I’ve actually heard there are people who keep their scholarship for years even once it’s clear that they don’t have the talent for it, but I guess that’s pretty rare, and there are things you can do without the talent, I guess.”

Ingrid was a peripheral friend, what Alfric had termed a ‘second tier’ friend, but she had connections to the apparatus of institutions at Rayedhcraft, and had gladly accepted Mizuki’s invitation to lunch.

“So this is about ‘behavior’,” said Mizuki. “Not performance. And what can I do about that?”

“Keep your head down,” said Ingrid. She used the bread to make a tiny sandwich stuffed with curry and ate it in a single bite. “Don’t go to parties, don’t stick out, keep helping Arturo, stuff like that.”

“I mean, if this is just about money, then whatever,” said Mizuki. “Pardon my language, but I’m pretty stinking rich.”

“Are you?” asked Ingrid. She seemed surprised by that, which was a little annoying.

“Dungeoneering has paid off,” said Mizuki with a shrug. “Why, how much does it normally cost to go here?”

Ingrid said the number, and Mizuki coughed on her curry. “That’s insane,” she said. “Why is it so expensive? Where does the money go?”

“It’s a consequence of the scholarship system,” said Ingrid. “The school will basically say that you can go here for free so long as you show some promise, really want to, keep up with your studies, and all that stuff. The money for the scholarships comes from Inter, more or less, though I think it’s a little more complicated than that. But that means that everyone else has to pay a lot, because the school doesn’t think they’re worth the time for whatever reason. Basically, you’re not just paying for salaries, buildings, equipment, upkeep, or whatever else, you’re also paying for the inconvenience of having you as a student. If you don’t have a scholarship, you’re bottom of the barrel, basically.”

“That’s terrible,” said Mizuki. “And it feels like it’s all about who you know, if the whole scholarship thing is going to be about whether the professors like you.”

“Eh,” said Ingrid. “Yes and no. I mean, the whole point of the school, from Inter’s perspective, is to produce heaps upon heaps of wizards. Inter wants basically as many wizards as it can get, which is only a little bit of an exaggeration. A worker who becomes a wizard is almost certainly going to be worth the years of training, even accounting for all the people who train and then can’t become wizards.”

“Wait,” said Mizuki. “Worth in the sense of … ?”

“Um,” said Ingrid. “Well, military, for one, and dungeons, for another.”

“No, I mean,” said Mizuki. “You’re talking about Inter basically wanting to … make money?”

“The national aims of Inter are to improve quality of life,” said Ingrid. “They do that through a whole bunch of mechanisms, but for the most part it’s taking in money through taxes and donations, and spending money on projects that they think will make the whole country better off. And the Rayedhcraft School is one of the things that they spend money on, but the same is true of virtually any other school or educational institution.”

“How do you know all this stuff?” asked Mizuki.

“I used to want to be in government,” said Ingrid. “I’ve got a head for numbers, and the government is always on the lookout for people like that. Magic is more fun though.”

“So you’re saying that the government funds the school because it makes wizards,” said Mizuki. “And those wizards, in the abstract, make the world better.”

“They make the country better, yeah,” said Ingrid. “And, uh, not at all in the abstract, if you went into a policy meeting with abstract notions of what the outcomes might be, you’d get laughed out of the room. But the upshot, for you, is that it’s really not just about who you know, because the school really does want as many graduating wizards of high quality as it can get. The argument the bursar is going to try to use will be that you’re not going to ever become a wizard of high quality.”

Mizuki groaned. “It was just a tiny fireball!”

“For what it’s worth, I really don’t think that line of argument is going to work on many people,” said Ingrid. “Especially because you keep saying ‘fireball’. You should try saying something different.”

“Different … in what way?” asked Mizuki.

“I don’t know,” said Ingrid. She was rooting around in their basket, as though she’d find more bread. They’d run into the classic problem of unequal proportions, in this case too little bread for too much curry. “Maybe try, uh, ‘combustion demonstration’.”

“That sounds suspiciously close to lying,” said Mizuki.

“Well, I don’t know if the bursar is going to actually bring down the ax,” said Ingrid. “I think the bursar just likes to let people know that he could bring down the ax. He’s an awful man.”

“Great,” said Mizuki.

“You had a meeting with him, right?” asked Ingrid. “That … didn’t go well?”

“It wasn’t a meeting, it was a lecture about …” Mizuki paused. “I mostly just sat there and folded my arms, trying not to look like I’d rather be anywhere else. It took all my willpower not to fireball him.”

“Alright, and that,” said Ingrid. “It’s the kind of joke that you’ve got to completely cut out.”

“Aw,” said Mizuki. She pouted slightly as if that would make Ingrid relent.

“For what it’s worth, I find it hilarious,” said Ingrid. “But if the wrong person hears it, and makes a stink about it, then you could wind up suffering for it.”

“Fine, fine,” said Mizuki. “I will become boring and drab. I will not perform the sorceric arts. Even my opinions will be inoffensive.”

“I’m just looking out for you,” said Ingrid. “The fun thing to do would be an escalating series of pranks against the bursar, but the sensible thing is to just wait for it all to blow over.”

“I don’t need a lawyer or anything, right?” asked Mizuki, whose mind had lit up with the phrase ‘escalating series of pranks’. She was trying to ignore that part of her though.

“I don’t know what a lawyer would do,” said Ingrid. She thought about that for a bit. “But no, I wouldn’t think that it would help.”

“I had a lawyer help me a while back,” said Mizuki. “It was nice to have someone handle things for me.”

“A lawyer for … ?” asked Ingrid.

“Er,” said Mizuki. “I assaulted someone in self-defense. Or, not self-defense, but because she was threatening my friends. Had stabbed one of them, actually.”

Ingrid paused for a moment. “I think if anyone learned that you used a fireball on someone, that wouldn’t be good for you, even if it was completely and totally justified.”

“Oh, no, it wasn’t a fireball,” said Mizuki. “I hit her on the head with a spoon.” She was, in fact, holding the Anyspoon in her hand, eating curry with it, and she enlarged it to its maximum size to show Ingrid.

“Wow,” said Ingrid. “I don’t know if that’s better or worse. And you … still use it as a spoon? Carry it around with you everywhere?”

“Yup,” said Mizuki. She shrunk the spoon down and took another bite of curry. “I washed it, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“That was not,” said Ingrid. “But it’s good to know.”

“Do you think I’ll be fine?” asked Mizuki.

“I think I’ve laid out some excellent advice for you to follow,” said Ingrid. “And I think the bursar is like a dog with a bone right now, egged on by some students with nothing better going on in their lives, but it’s likely to all blow over.”

“Alright,” said Mizuki. “Thanks a lot. I owe you one, maybe two.”

Ingrid rubbed her hands together. “Two? Wow, I’ve gotta think about that. Two is quite generous.”

“You’re worth it,” said Mizuki. “And if I do get kicked out of school, you’ll avenge me, yeah?”

“Absolutely,” said Ingrid. “I’ll cut off the bursar’s head and place it on a spike as a warning to all other money men.”

Mizuki was feeling better about the whole thing once they were done, and the next class she had was one of her favorites, Practical Magic, which went into the role of magic in society. It was partly one of the ‘culture’ classes, with the aim of instilling the culture of wizards in the students, something that the wizards apparently took pretty seriously, but it also explained some things about the world that Mizuki had never realized she wondered about.

Head down, Mizuki thought to herself. Make no waves. Be like a panther in the darkness, a silent predator, unseen until it’s too late. Yeah, that’ll do it, not boring, just a patient, quiet monster waiting for its moment to strike.

The lesson of the day was titled, ‘The Quest for the Motive Machine’, which the professor had helpfully put up on the chalkboard. She always titled her lectures like that, as though each was an adventure book, and Mizuki really appreciated that, even if it did come off as being a bit corny. Professor Viridian was a bit corny, but in a cool way, which Mizuki had decided she would aspire to when she was older. The professor also dressed exclusively in green, probably because of her name.

“Two hundred years ago, the wizard Melfus innovated what he called his movable room, a mixed machine designed for the transport of people along a road. In the course of its maiden excursion, it exploded, claiming the lives of twenty-eight people. While the tragedy was undone, the stain on the project could not be removed, and Melfus was made a punchline of the wizarding world.” Professor Viridian always opened up her lectures like this, with a tiny little story.

Mizuki was getting more comfortable with the lingo. Wizards always said ‘innovated’ rather than ‘invented’, because they considered the techniques and instructions for a magical invention to be different from the sort of thing that mechanics and engineers did. Unlike with ectad stuff, wizards couldn’t patent anything, which Mizuki thought was weird, but probably had to do with some historical stuff. The professor probably knew, and maybe had a lecture ready on it, with a title like ‘The Slaying of the Elder Patents’.

A mixed machine was something that combined both wizard stuff and normal materials, sometimes wood, but often metal and occasionally stone. Wizards were all about wells, walls, pipes, and all kinds of other things, crafted using mana to shape and direct other mana, but because those used mana, it meant that there was some constant drain on reserves, especially if it was holding in pressure. The better thing to do was to have certain pieces of the working made of some mundane material which could hold in the mana in the real world, which was complicated but meant that you could do larger workings.

Mizuki was happy that she understood all this stuff, which she wouldn’t have when she started. It gave her a warm feeling of competence, which was how she imagined Alfric felt all the time. There were still stumbling blocks from time to time, but she at least had the confidence that she could get over them.

But it would all be for naught if Mizuki didn’t get the necessary breakthrough to actually manipulate mana.

“There are, across the world, a vast number of different forms of transportation,” Professor Viridian. “All of them come with their trade-offs. Leycraft can take only limited cargo, portals only open at specific times and go to specific places, lizzos are dependable but slow and need to graze, entads are unique and expensive with their own limitations, the warp gets you to a hex center but never take you away, ships work only across open water and with sufficient wind or manual labor … the list is very long. Throughout history, wizards have attempted to use their power to bring their own solutions to the table. Some, like Melfus, have ended in tragedy, a few have seen limited success as prototypes, others have floundered, but none have become the successes that it was hoped they would be. Today, we’ll look at a few of the successes and failures, and discuss why they’ve failed or succeeded, and what the future might hold.”

Mizuki settled in. This didn’t seem like the kind of thing that would be on a test, but the class wasn’t all that big on testable information. None of the ‘culture’ classes were, really, they were mostly there so that wizards could be even more a part of the wizard club. Some of the stuff in this class was maybe useful if you wanted to be a part of industry or a trade, but most of it wasn’t useful in the traditional sense, at least not to Mizuki.

Professor Viridian continued on, and Mizuki doodled, just a bit, while taking what notes she could.

“There are limited scenarios in which a wizardly transportation machine would be useful,” said Viridian. “It would need to be a place away from the leylines, covering long distances, with little in the way of hills, likely supported by ectads and entads. It would need delicate machining, possibly also done with the help of entads. And we can see, in some circumstances, that wizarding solutions do work well enough for people to keep them running.” She went to the chalkboard and slid the introductory one across, revealing a map of the known world, done in white. In red chalk, a few places were marked, either with an X or with a squiggly line. Additionally, there were a few places in the seas and oceans marked with wavy red lines.

“These are all the places where wizardly transportation is in common use,” said Viridian. “Interestingly, perhaps seventy percent of these have appeared within the last two decades, which is in part due to innovations in construction, proof of concept in other regions, and a desire for development of undeveloped regions. Tarbin in particular has been a prime candidate for these constructions, and you can see here that a web of red has spread outward from the heart of Tarbin, with a few notable gaps where other transportation solutions are used. Tarbin offered a few unique advantages for such projects, notably a lack of leylines in the interior, which prohibits the use of both leycraft and cartiers, a lack of native vegetation which makes lizzos difficult to use, and a few other issues.”

Professor Viridian described the design of these mixed contraptions, and that went over Mizuki’s head entirely, but she’d been to enough classes now that she wasn’t too bothered by that. Sometimes a professor threw some concepts and lingo at you that you didn’t understand, that you weren’t meant to understand, mostly just to give you some contact with ideas and terms that you would learn later.

The class flew by. Viridian gave fun lectures, that was her whole thing, and Mizuki only wished that Viridian could have been her teacher for the other, more important classes, the ones that were focused on the practical stuff that Mizuki still felt like she was trailing behind in.

The end of the day was more rock-petting, which Mizuki was starting to absolutely loathe.

Roughly ten percent of the class had made their breakthrough and demonstrated that they had the talent. More than half of those in the class would never have their breakthrough though, maybe even higher, depending on the crop, and Mizuki felt like her chances were being whittled down day by day, even though Alfric had said that wasn’t really how it worked. He’d gotten into an argument with Pinion about it, which had lasted what felt like forever. Alfric had conceded, in the end, and Mizuki didn’t know whether that was to bring an end to it or because he’d actually overlooked something, and she’d chosen to pretend it was just Alfric wanting to shut it down, because that made her feel better.

The ‘intensives’ had been rough. The idea was that the students would use the mana stones for a long stretch of time, enough that their minds would break down through repetition, enabling a dissociative experience where the mind itself was barely involved. Apparently it worked for some people, in a way that normal rock-petting didn’t, and six of Mizuki’s classmates had gotten their breakthrough in the first intensive, with another eight in the next one. It had mostly just annoyed Mizuki, and her hands had been cramping up after the fact, the tendons on her right hand in particular feeling bad enough that she had to go see a healer about them.

They were at an unfortunate place in the class, and the feeling of dread was palpable. There were no new exercises to learn, only old ones, and Mizuki wasn’t the only one worried that she wasn’t going to be a wizard afterall. Worse, once you had the breakthrough, you were allowed to stop doing these public practice sessions, which were geared toward neophytes trying to get past that first hurdle, which meant that there were empty spots. Becks was gone, and it felt like she’d died, leaving Mizuki heartbroken. They still had other classes together, but it just wasn’t the same.

It was easy to let her thoughts drift when doing the rock petting. She knew all the exercises well enough that she could at least follow the motions of them. Letting your mind drift wasn’t really what you were supposed to do, you were supposed to focus on the rock and the feeling in the air around it, on the outpouring of mana that was yours for the taking if only you could influence it, sense it, or whatever.

Still, Mizuki let her thoughts drift. After the last intensive, she wasn’t feeling it so much, and she needed a break from at least the rock petting portion of school.

Mizuki’s thoughts went to Alfric, as naturally and easily as falling into a comfortable chair.

It was going even more swimmingly than she had ever imagined it would. He was smitten with her, and she felt like she’d been crazy for ever having doubted that. That morning, she’d been cooking breakfast in the kitchen when he’d come up behind her, slipped a hand onto the side of her waist, and kissed her on the back of her head. She’d felt his lips through her hair. It had sent a shiver down her spine, and she’d been halfway through her first class of the day when she realized that she was just replaying the moment over and over in her head.

Those perfect moments were accumulating quickly.

They were, in his words, taking it slow. Mizuki thought that was probably wise, but also disagreed with it, because her heart sometimes felt like it was going to burst. The start of any relationship was always the best, at least in her opinion, but she’d never felt this way before. If he’d asked her to marry him, she’d have replied without hesitation that they could probably find a temple that would squeeze them in before dinner. Obviously that wasn’t going to happen, because they were taking it slow.

She was flirting a lot. There was something so different and pure about flirting with your new boyfriend. She wasn’t so much teasing him and hinting at romance, the romance was there, in the room with them, and she was hinting at something more. In a way, she was glad that they were taking it slow, because that meant that there was more time for this sort of thing. Because Alfric had his token boundaries, she had something to press up against, which was nice. She didn’t think that he was doing it for that reason, but it was still nice.

She’d been wearing her silk robe in the mornings, and had been tying it looser and looser, wondering whether he would say anything. She was halfway tempted to have Verity alter it, moving the hemline an inch higher every day. It seemed like the kind of thing that Verity would find funny.

Mizuki was in the middle of what she affectionately thought of as ‘schemes’ when she felt her hand brush up against the aetheric disturbance.

She froze, and she froze quickly enough that her hand wasn’t done moving. She could feel it, like a lump in the air, and see it, the way her fingers were touching a specific ‘current’ of the aether. She held it for as long as she could, but the aether was a living thing, responding to what was around it, and she couldn’t hold it forever.

Mizuki let out a breath she’d been holding. That had been it, and it was immediately apparent that every previous time she thought might have been something wasn’t actually.

She still had Alfric on the brain though, and her immediate thought was to connect the two things. This special moment of actually touching the aether proved that every time before hadn’t been anything at all, just like what she was feeling with Alfric. All previous boyfriends had been proven to be complete imposters.

Once that thought was out of the way, Mizuki was able to focus more on the aether, how it had felt, how she had felt, and she was able to bring more to the analysis than any wizard before her, because she was able to see what had happened. Granted, wizards could wear glasses, but she didn’t think that was quite the same.

Mizuki had been prepared for this moment. You were supposed to sit and think about what had happened, try to recreate it, focus with all your might, and not get too disappointed if it didn’t happen right away again. Sometimes it was as much as a week between the first time and the second, and you were supposed to understand that sometimes the road was long and uncertain, that it took some time to see a lighthouse in the dark.

Mizuki got her second time right away, then her third time right after that.

She giggled to herself, and the other students looked up from their rocks.

“I got it,” she explained. A smile spread wide on her face.

They weren’t happy about it. To them, it must have felt like more proof that they were never going to make it, that they were going to wash out, even though there was still plenty of time left. It was how she felt, whenever someone had that joyous moment of having gotten it.

Professor Hollingsworth came over to see her when he saw the commotion.

“I got it,” said Mizuki.

“Very good, Mizuki,” said Hollingsworth. “Now, we mustn’t be overeager with this sort of thing, as there’s sometimes a long road between the first time and second, and the thing to do is to stay in the moment, try to replicate, make sure that you can do it again, which often takes —”

“Er, sorry professor,” said Mizuki. “I already did, three times total.” She demonstrated with her rock, and Hollingsworth’s eyebrow went up. “Four, now.”

“Very impressive,” said Hollingsworth. He sounded more genuine this time, less like his congratulations were a formality. “I’ll have you continue as you are, but we’ll move you to private instruction starting tomorrow, which will last for a week or two before you go into the advanced class. I want you to repeat the process as many times as you can before the class is finished, and when we move on to the follow-along portion, I want you to try catching the mana in each of the different ways.”

Mizuki took to it like a fish to water. It was like a weight had been lifted off her shoulders and a gloom had lifted over the campus. There was no way that the bursar could cancel her scholarship now that she was a Proper Wizard.

Still, she waited until her twentieth time to tell the party.

she said.

said Alfric.

said Hannah.

said Mizuki.

asked Verity.

said Isra.

To Mizuki’s happy embarrassment, the rest of the party actually did three cheers over the party channel, their voices overlapping.

said Mizuki.

said Verity.

said Mizuki.

said Alfric.

laughed Mizuki.

Really, she wanted to race home and be with her friends, but she had obligations, and she was trying to keep her head down, so she was a boring responsible adult and finished out her class. The wide variety of synchronized exercises felt a lot better, now that she could actually move the mana. With almost every one that she did, she was able to get it in two or three tries, and some of them she got in one. What had been dull and depressing was now fun, and Mizuki couldn’t keep the smile off her face, even though she knew that her success wasn’t doing much for the morale of the people around her.

When class finished, she was the first one out of the practice room, which was a bit foolish, because once she got to the research lab, she’d still have to wait for Professor Arturo.

Instead, she arrived to find that the bursar was there, speaking with Rosalind and Garth, Arturo’s two research assistants. Rosalind, at least, was a friend. The conversation went dead the moment she stepped in the door.

“Ah, Mizuki Yono,” said the bursar. They’d had just the one meeting before, but now it seemed like she was seeing him everywhere. He was a rotund man whose robes did little to hide his belly, and he had thinning hair that he was obviously trying to make up for with a long beard. His eyebrows were the only impressive feature of his face — impressive in the sense that they left an impression. They were large and thick, wiggling like fuzzy caterpillars and quite expressive, though in Mizuki’s experience, used mostly to frown down at small sorcerers. “I was hoping you would show up.”

“What’s the occasion?” asked Mizuki. She was going to keep her head down, that was what Ingrid had told her to do. The cost of wizarding school was eye-watering, though she could, technically, afford it. If she had to pay that much money just to be a wizard, she wasn’t sure that she would.

“The research done here is funded through the school,” said the bursar. His hands were folded behind his back. “Budgetary oversight is my purview. I was only inquiring as to the nature of this research, its value to the community at large, and some of the costs involved.”

“As I’ve said, the costs are pretty much only time and labor,” said Rosalind.

“We’re learning a lot,” said Garth.

“Yes, well,” said the bursar. He looked around the room. “I was hoping to speak with Arturo, but it appears he’s late.”

“We don’t start until later,” said Rosalind.

“Then I’m afraid I’ll miss him,” said the bursar. He sniffed. “Do let him know that I was here.”

“Alright,” said Rosalind. She swallowed.

The bursar made his way out, and before Mizuki could talk with the research assistants, Arturo came in.

“Seems I just missed the bursar, did I?” asked Arturo. “I saw him leaving and stayed behind a corner so I wouldn’t have to say hello.”

“He was sniffing around,” said Rosalind. “Don’t worry, we gave him the right answers.”

“Do you really answer to him?” asked Mizuki.

“No,” said Arturo. He took a breath. “No, I answer to a collective of people, of which he is only one, and I don’t think that this particular matter is going to be one he’s willing to spend all that much time and effort on. He wants to be seen as doing something. This is all for show, which is why he’s not handling it with discretion. The man prefers to be front and center.”

“Sorry,” said Mizuki.

“It’s nothing,” said Arturo with a wave. “If we kicked out every student who had a mishap with some ill-advised magic, we’d have no one left, and you have plenty of character witnesses.”

“I really didn’t think that it would be a big deal,” said Mizuki. “I didn’t actually hurt anyone. I didn’t come close to hurting everyone.”

“The bursar is going to put on the squeeze, then act magnanimous when he unwraps himself from around me,” said Arturo. “All I need from you is to —”

“Keep my head down?” asked Mizuki.

“Yes,” said Arturo. “Though … if you lose your scholarship, I would hope that you’d continue on with us.”

“My house is almost to Plenarch,” said Mizuki. “Yeah, of course I’m staying, so long as you’re still learning things.”

Arturo sighed. “I was hoping that this would go better for you.”

“It’s fine,” said Mizuki. “Honestly, it’s not my friends, it’s people I’ve never heard of who have opinions about me without having even once met me. I’m not going to get bent out of shape about that.” She was going to try not to get bent out of shape, anyway. “Besides, today is a day for celebration, whatever the bursar thinks.”

“Celebration?” asked Arturo.

Rosalind’s eyes went wide. It must have been Mizuki’s smile that let her guess. “You got your breakthrough!”

Rosalind gave her a hug, and Garth did too, though she wasn’t really that close with Garth. Arturo gave her a handshake that felt weirdly formal, but he was smiling, and clearly pretty happy for her. There had still been plenty of time left to start getting worried that she didn’t have the aptitude for wizardry, but it had been a question on their minds.

They didn’t end up getting all that much work done, which felt like a bit of a shame, especially with the bursar breathing down their collective necks. Arturo hadn’t been as all-business as he normally was though, and that was different enough that Mizuki felt like she’d turned a corner at Rayedhcraft, so she didn’t let herself feel any stress about any of that.

When the mixed-mood testing was done, Mizuki zipped home as quickly as she could, saying her goodbyes as quickly as possible. Rosalind gave her another hug, which was nice.

And then Mizuki was home to what she thought of as her second family, which was waiting for her to start on a really ridiculously oversized celebration.