Arcane Affairs

Anchors in a Room of Mirrors

The office set aside for the Capitol Council’s arcane affairs was neither grand nor particularly comfortable, but it was hers. On the fourth floor of the Council Seat, Isemay Misendris surveyed her modest dominion. The walls were lined with shelves buckling under the weight of correspondence: rolled, folded, waxed, ribboned, or sealed in glass for the particularly volatile. Letters from Aresford and Greinard, complaints from Seaport merchants, reports from the Watch, and an unending, metastatic tangle of internal memos, all threatened to collapse onto the threadbare divan she kept for visitors. The only clear surface in the office was the windowsill, which she kept empty for the single pleasure of watching the city seethe beneath her.

She rubbed her eyes, regretting yet another night traded for bureaucracy and council protocol. Once, she’d imagined herself at a desk conjuring leyline resonance matrices or maybe poring over abjuration ciphers in one of the Tower’s deep chambers. Instead, she was here, the official voice of the Wizard’s Tower in the machinery of city governance, a job which, even in the best months, was like standing at the open end of a funnel and catching every drop of public foolishness with her own two hands.

Isemay stretched, feeling the vertebrae in her back pop like tumbling dice. She remembered, dimly, the world before council duty, her first experiments in divination, the sweet rush of being the first to glimpse a new magical proof, the days when she’d competed with Lavan and Kerrowyn for the most elegant spellwork. Kerrowyn was still a legend in the Council’s annals. Her father, years ago, had told her how Kerrowyn Lightfoot once filibustered a budget meeting by translating the entire document into four dialects of ancient Draconic, just to prove that no one else had bothered to read it. The city had never quite recovered.

It could have been Lavan here, but the thought made Isemay wince. Lavan Edor had a heart for magic and a head for books, but a talent for politics? He’d have been thrown to the sharks by the first luncheon. Pembroke might have managed, but the man barely had time for his own students, let alone the relentless stupidity of the Council. It was always going to be her, really, by birth, by training, by the fact that none of the alternatives were remotely suited to the work.

Of course, there had been concerns. When the appointment was first floated, the Council’s old guard balked at the idea of a Countis Nobelesse holding the Tower seat. Too much risk of backchannels, too much risk of consolidated power. Isemay had countered by renouncing her House duties for the term, and then had her cousin installed as acting Matriarch, an arrangement neither side loved, but which left no easy pretext for her removal. Only then did the Council confirm her, though she’d heard it whispered that Kerrowyn had threatened to stay on if they tried to appoint anyone else. Sanibalis had capitulated without further struggle.

She thought of Sanibalis now, the city’s so-called “unifier,” the man who’d managed to keep the city at something short of open war for half a century. He was still Head Councilor, still the most skilled manipulator in the room, but the cracks in his style were showing. He was exhausted, and growing more so by the day. The tempo of violence in the city had picked up; reports of demonic activity were at a decade high, the Watch was in turmoil, the APS running on a skeleton crew, and the nobility was snapping up private security as if the world were ending tomorrow. Maybe it was.

Isemay pressed a hand to her left shoulder, feeling the dull ache of the necrotic scar she’d carried for most of her life. Some days, it was a mere background hum. On others, like today, the pain wormed down her arm and made it hard to grip a pen.

The clock above the door ticked its slow, remorseless rhythm: already a dozen minor crises had wormed their way through the paper stacked on her desk. Most were minor, quibbles about magical boundaries, squabbles about academic appointments, the usual fare.

But some matters had teeth. Two arcanists missing in the last few weeks, both snatched from the Tower itself, each vanishing without a trace. Hughe had been missing for nearly seven days before his body had been discovered outside the Tower’s doors on the 11th. Maya disappeared that night. Hallione had not been able to trace either, which meant whoever was behind this was powerful. Isemay had seen the fear behind the whispers in the library: someone was targeting arcanists.

She could almost taste the anxiety in Pembroke’s last letter. It had arrived that morning, hand-delivered, triple-sealed, and more like a veiled threat than a plea for help. The words haunted the room: “The absence of Maya is a threat not just to the Tower, but to the city’s arcane equilibrium. See to it. Discreetly.”

She looked again at the agenda. Fourth bell: receive delegation from the APS regarding the Maya case. Fifth bell: budget review for the Tower’s next quarter, then a working dinner with the Council’s infrastructure chair. Seventh bell: a summons to the council chamber, where Sanibalis would try to wring a consensus out of a room filled with mutual loathing and barely contained contempt. The day would not end until well after midnight, and even then, she’d probably dream of the backlog awaiting her return.

The APS runners would be here soon. Their missive had been brief but pointed: a request for Isemay to attempt a scrying on the missing Maya. She’d put it off, not from fear of failure, but because the last time she’d tried, she’d bounced off something in the ether that left her with a nosebleed and a headache that was only now receding. It felt less like a privacy ward and more like a living, predatory thing, something new in the magical landscape, and not at all to her liking.

She tried to imagine what the runners would be like. She had heard their names before, during an extremely tense Council Meeting, where Runecoat, Lawmaster and architect of the Capitol’s legal system, had raked both Lowshade and Iliyria over the coals for an inter-departmental incident that ended with an entire cadre of new runners, and Iliyria herself, in Watch holding. In the end, Lowshade came out looking worse, something that satisfied Isemay immensely. Working with Lowshade was probably the most painful part of her job, having to listen to the smug bastard’s thinly veiled condescension while remembering what he had done to Ophelia. Of Iliyria Sylren she held two opinions: politically reckless, operationally immaculate.

The APS had been gutted in the last round of budget cuts and now operated with less than half the personnel as in its heyday. Rumor was that Iliyria was desperate for anyone with the skill and backbone to face the rising tide of arcane crime. It made sense; the Council had left her no other options. But it also meant that anyone coming to see her today would be cut from the same cloth; brilliant, stubborn, and more than a little bit broken.

She tidied the desk, clearing space for the scrying bowl and the crystal. She ran through the preparation in her mind: proper resonance, the right words, a focus on the physical and psychic signature of the missing woman. She’d need to tune herself to the leyline without drawing attention; the last thing she wanted was Hallione’s prying presence at her shoulder.

She closed her eyes, inhaled the faint scent of rain that drifted through the cracked window, and let herself drift for a heartbeat. She imagined Maya, remembered her in the corridors of the Tower, always with an armful of books, always hurrying as if she were being chased. If she was alive, Isemay would find her. If she was not, well, she’d help bring the killer to justice. She owed Maya that much.

A soft chime sounded from the door: the runners, a few minutes early. Isemay opened her eyes, set her features into the appropriate mask of Council poise, and called for them to enter.

The runners filed in, one by one. The first was the elf, Alavara, Isemay recalled, Kerrowyn’s prodigy and newly certified Arcanist. Alavara wore a section of her hair in a severe knot, her face composed of equal parts boredom and suspicion. The others followed: Dingus, blue-skinned, tail flicking, a confident smile plastered on his face; Io, the Dragonborn whose height forced him to stoop beneath the door frame; Corporal Harrison, called Buggy by his team, a human whose eyes darted with perpetual readiness; and Nimueh, the wood elf whose quietm movements made her seem like negative space in the room.

Isemay gestured them to the divan. They sat in a manner that suggested previous experience with fragile furniture, or possibly with the kind of meetings that ended in violence. Alavara alone remained standing, her arms crossed, as if waiting to see whether the invitation was a trick.

“So,” said Isemay, folding her hands. “You’re the ones Iliyria sent.”

Buggy offered a nervous smile. “We prefer ‘Team 7.’”

Io’s tail thumped once, a sound like an involuntary exclamation.

Alavara spoke, her voice brittle as a snapped wand. “We’re here about Maya.”

Isemay nodded. “I expected as much. Sit, please.”

Alavara did not move, but the tension in her shoulders eased a fraction. Isemay turned her gaze to the others, cataloging their oddities, weighing each for threat or promise. She recognized the posture of survivors, the way they occupied space, always leaving a clear path to the door, always measuring the distance to the nearest weapon. In another life, they could have been Tower enforcers, or Council spies. Here, they were just the desperate option that came after all others had failed.

She cleared her throat. “Before we begin, I want to be clear: I will do everything in my power to find Maya. But the last time I attempted to scry her, I encountered… resistance.”

Buggy cocked his head. “What kind?”

“Not a ward. Not even a true privacy partition. It was more like—” she hesitated, searching for a word— “a refusal. The leyline bent, and threw me out. That’s never happened before.”

Dingus raised a brow. “You’re saying someone is actively blocking you?”

“Not someone,” said Isemay. “Something.”

The room held the word in silence, turning it over. Even Nimueh, who had not so much as blinked since entering, seemed to lean into the moment.

Alavara broke it. “Hughe’s murder. Maya’s disappearance. You think they’re connected?”

Isemay did not answer immediately. She weighed her words, mindful of what the Council would want, what Hallione had implied, and what she herself was willing to believe. “I think they’re symptoms of the same disease,” she said at last. “I think whoever killed Hughe wanted Maya, or what she knew, or both.”

Buggy shifted, glancing from face to face. “We’re not the only ones looking, are we?”

“Of course not,” Isemay said. “The Watch, the Tower, even a few of the private houses have thrown resources at the problem. But none of them have succeeded.” She paused. “Which is why I’m trying again. Today.”

She retrieved the crystal from its velvet pouch and set it in the scrying bowl. The light from the window bent around it, forming a miniature prism on the surface. Isemay motioned for Alavara to sit beside her, then addressed the group.

“I want you all close. If this goes badly, I’ll need anchors. If it goes well, maybe you’ll see something I miss. Hands on the desk, eyes on me. If I drift, say my name on the third beat. If I don’t answer, shake me.”

Buggy was the first to take position, perching on the edge of the desk as if ready to spring. Dingus and Io crowded behind, both towering over the proceedings. Nimueh remained in the doorway, but her eyes never left the bowl.

Isemay closed her eyes, slowed her breathing, and let the rhythm of the room fade until only the leyline’s hum remained. She felt for Maya, her signature, her memory, the shape of her presence as it lingered in the world. She called to it, as one might call to a half-remembered tune, hoping that the right resonance would draw it near.

The first attempt was a wall. A blankness so absolute that for a moment Isemay thought she’d miscast the spell. The leyline rebounded, as if snapping shut a door in her face.

She gritted her teeth, refocused. The second attempt, she changed her approach, narrowing the focus, using the memory of Maya’s laughter, the warmth of her voice as a lodestone. This time, there was a flicker, a flash of color, a sense of depth, and then, again, the wall. But it was different, softer around the edges, like a thing straining to remember how to say “no.”

She opened her eyes. Sweat beaded on her forehead.

“Something’s changed,” she said, more to herself than to the team. “It’s adapting.”

“Is it learning?” Alavara asked.

Isemay shook her head. “It’s not that. It’s being taught. Or guided. Not Tower craft—hierarchical, clause-bound. Something was drilling the refusal into place.”

Nimueh’s voice was a blade. “Try again. Harder.”

Isemay nodded. She reached for the crystal, letting the pain in her shoulder anchor her to the body, to the city, to now. This time, she let herself ride the leyline, not as a master, but as a passenger. She surrendered to the current, letting it drag her through the city’s veins, past the Watch headquarters, under the Tower, and finally, into the place where Maya should have been.

She found herself standing in a room of mirrors. Each surface showed Maya, but never the same Maya twice. One version was a child, clutching a broken wand; another, an old woman, stooped under the weight of secrets. The real Maya, the one Isemay knew, was nowhere to be seen. At the center of the room one mirror reflected the image of a figure made of smoke and hunger, its eyes burning green. Around those eyes, a heatless green fire guttered; the air tasted faintly of coins and sulfur. Glyphs rimmed the mirrors in a knotted script made to cut. The words were lost, but the feeling was not: terror, resolve, and something like grief.

The smoke figure turned. Its gaze fell on Isemay, and for the first time in her life, she felt a presence not just notice her, but reach for her. The leyline howled, the city’s magic twisted, and the smoke thing pressed into the glass.

“You don’t belong here,” it whispered. The voice was Maya’s, and also not.

Isemay tried to pull back, but the mirrors caught her, reflecting her own image multiplied and warped. She saw herself as a girl, as a crone, as a thing with a thousand eyes and none. The smoke figure laughed, and the sound was enough to crack the spell.

Two Minutes Missing

She woke to the taste of copper and the weight of her own limbs pinned behind her. For a few frantic seconds, Isemay could not remember where she was, only that the world had upended and her shoulder screamed with the frozen ache of a limb left too long in winter. Then the details returned: the scrying, the room full of runners, the laughter that had not been Maya’s. The floor was hard and cold, and someone had used a pair of Watch-grade manacles to bind her wrists.

She recoiled, the leyline snapping her back into her own flesh, the world a riot of sensation. The runners hovered above her like vultures around a kill.

“Good, you’re back,” Buggy said, crouched close enough that she could see every bit of stubble on his chin. “You were out for a while.”

Isemay blinked, rolled over with a grunt, and stared up at the half-circle of Team 7. Io and Dingus looked wary; Nimueh watched with a predator’s dispassion; Alavara had gone pale.

Buggy produced a small key and released her wrists, the cuffs clattering to the floor. “No offense,” he said, “but you went a bit… feral.”

She sat up, massaging her arms to bring sensation back. “How long?”

“Maybe two minutes,” Dingus said. “Long enough to scare us. Io and I pinned you; Buggy got the cuffs on.”

Isemay scrubbed at her face, feeling the sticky residue of tears and sweat. “What exactly happened?”

Alavara spoke, her voice brittle as the air before a lightning strike. “You started talking in a different voice. Taunting us. Your eyes went black.”

Isemay nodded, remembering now: the mirrors, the laughter, the feeling of something else sliding into her skin. She glanced at her left shoulder, where the necrotic scar pulsed under her sleeve. A reminder that whatever had reached through Maya was not content to stay on the other side.

“I did not see Maya,” she said, at last. “Something blocked me, something sentient and vicious.”

Io’s face darkened. “A fiend?”

Isemay nodded. “That would be my guess, yes. It saw me. It knows we’re looking.”

Dingus grinned, blue lips peeling back from sharp teeth. “Then we’ll just have to move faster.”

Isemay tried to steady her breath, but the pain in her shoulder was a live wire, radiating out to every nerve. She’d never felt so exposed, so completely outmatched. And yet, behind the fear, there was relief: at least now, the enemy had a face. Or the memory of one.

She wiped her brow, the sweat cold and greasy. “Thank you for anchoring me,” she said to the group. “If I’d gone much deeper, I might not have come back.”

Io grunted. “It was impressive, in a way. But scary.”

“Do we get possession pay, or is that still stuck in committee?” Dingus said, aiming for lightness that didn’t quite land.

Alavara’s eyes flicked to the crystal, then to Isemay’s face. “Next time, you should take more precautions.”

“I will,” said Isemay, and she meant it.

Nimueh offered nothing. She stared at Isemay, her silence a kind of accusation.

“What did I say?” she asked.

“You said we were wasting our time. That ‘the woman was already lost, and we would be next.’ Then you laughed, and passed out,” Alavara explained.

Isemay shuddered. She reached for her right forearm, tracing the Friendship Symbol tattoo, three stars in a constellation, a link to Lavan and, once, to Ophelia. The mark tingled, the mental channel still open, humming with alarm. Warmth pressed back from the mark, Lavan’s steadying signature, a quiet knock shaped like her name. Are you hurt? came not as words but as a feeling. She sent him back a reassurance that she was alright, then closed it, sharply, not wanting Lavan to sense her fear or the pain in her shoulder.

“We didn’t call for help,” Dingus said. “Figured it would be bad for your career if anyone else found you like this.”

Isemay smiled, weakly. “Thank you for the discretion.”

Nimueh shook her head. “We’re not here to sabotage you. Just want answers.”

“Then you are better than most,” Isemay said, and she meant it. She felt hollowed out, as if some chunk of her had been scooped away and left somewhere cold.

She took a breath, already calculating her next steps. “I will schedule a meeting of the Masters as soon as possible to discuss what happened today. Hopefully they  will be free, we can meet at Evanton’s maybe.”

Buggy spoke up then, “Should one of us attend? Seeing as we witnessed what happened to you?”

Isemay thought a moment, realized the sense in it, and turned to Alavara, “Alavara, if you would like to attend, then I will have the meeting scheduled to occur at the Tower.”

Alavara nodded, then looked to the rest of her team, “What next?” She asked.

The runners exchanged glances, a private debate passing in a few heartbeats. Then Buggy spoke: “We’re going after Maya. We have a lead, now—sort of. We’ll update you if we get anywhere.”

Isemay nodded. “Be careful. Whatever has her is… ancient. And mean.”

Dingus flashed his teeth. “That’s our specialty.”

They filed out, the way they’d come, leaving Isemay alone with the aftermath.

When the door shut behind them, she leaned her head against the back of the chair and wept for the first time in years, not for herself, but for Maya, and for every arcanist who had ever looked too far and found the dark looking back.

When she was finished, she unlocked the bottom drawer, a clumsy process with her left hand almost numb, and withdrew the small satchel of Glyrenis’ tea. She measured out a pinch, set the kettle on the small flame of a small leyline burner she kept in her office for just this reason, and watched as the leaves bled black into the cup. She hated the taste; it was worse than any medicine she had ever tried. But the pain in her shoulder had grown sharper, a claw digging down to the bone.

She let the tea steep, then gulped it down in three fast swallows, grimacing at the bitterness. Within moments, the handprint of pain on her shoulder began to recede, the nerves deadening to a dull throb. She breathed, slow and careful, until her pulse steadied and the world stopped tilting.

The cup sat in her palm, cold now. She stared into the residue at the bottom, searching for omens. There were none.

When she had finished, she set her face in order, wiped her eyes, and wrote up the encounter for the official record. She omitted the worst parts, the mirrors, the laughter, the way it had felt to become a thousand versions of herself in an instant. Some secrets were better left between the lines.

She straightened and turned to the next crisis in the stack. One problem at a time. If she paused for even a minute, the city would chew her up and spit her out. She would not give it the satisfaction.

She would not sleep tonight. She would not even try.

Written on the Wall

Cuatrova 15 dawned with a sense of unfinished business. The Council Seat rose from the wet haze with its customary impassivity, the domes and porticoes gathering the morning fog in cold handfuls.

Isemay Misendris’ passage through the Council’s echoing halls marked only by the shuffle of sensible shoes on marble and the occasional muted cough as an aide or clerk acknowledged her approach and then returned, head down, to business. The inner sanctum, her home away from home, if one could call it that, was a pale corridor lined with offices for every flavor of city functionary.

Isemay wore her best diplomatic expression: neutral, open, the crease at her brow held at just the right tension to suggest alertness but not panic. The bracelet on her left wrist cast a perpetual minor illusion on her features, gracing her face with the lines of human age that her elven blood had denied her. She wasn’t ashamed of her ancestry, but had found that men in power tended to take young-looking women less seriously. It was exhausting to have to continually overcome their bias, thus, the illusion of age. 

She had slept less than two hours, her mind churned to froth by the words she’d exchanged with Lavan the night before. “You can’t keep doing this,” he had said, hands trembling with the effort to appear casual as he pressed a steaming cup of tea into her hands. “You’re not made of glass, but neither are you unbreakable. Something has to give.”

She remembered the way his jaw flexed, the glimmer of worry in his eyes. How she’d wanted to reassure him, but the words stuck behind her teeth. There was no language in any of the great books or the smallest, cheapest pamphlets for explaining that rest was itself a kind of violence, that every moment spent in bed was an admission that the world did not require vigilance.

Now, walking the final length of the corridor toward her office, she felt none of the fatigue that had plagued her at breakfast. Instead, there was the sharp, tingling pressure of adrenaline, a readiness for crisis that functioned better than any restorative potion. The day’s first hours had passed in a blur of meetings; a meeting of the Master Arcanists at dawn, followed by a Council session where the usual bluster of the heads of houses and committees sounded especially hollow in the wake of so many demon sightings.

She passed Laureline, her secretary, seated at the small desk outside Isemay’s office. Laureline, meticulous as always, had already stacked the morning’s correspondence in color-coded piles and was halfway through an inventory of the ward keys that hung on a brass ring at her side. Laureline looked up as Isemay approached, offered a wan smile, then returned to her counting.

“Any messages?” Isemay asked.

“Only one urgent,” Laureline replied, gesturing to the purple-tasseled scroll tube atop the pile. “It’s from Head Archivist Beroe. She wants confirmation that the joint investigation is still in effect.”

Isemay nodded, absorbing the information, and the implied concern beneath it. She touched the ward key at her belt, re-inked last week; only three living hands could wake the door to her office, and two of them were hers. She reached for the handle to her office, felt the familiar tingle of the anti-intrusion charm brush her palm, and turned the key.

The room beyond was dark, the heavy curtains still drawn. She stepped inside, closing the door behind her, and with a flick of her wrist, activated the mage lamps that lined the walls.

The light stuttered, then stabilized.

That was when she saw it.

There are things that do not fit the pattern of waking life, things that freeze the mind at the instant of their perception. The body, smarter than reason, knows to lock the muscles, to dampen the breath, to make the heart beat so slowly that every moment is a knife edge.

Maya’s body lay nude and splayed across the broad walnut desk. The skin was drained of color, save for the deep, arterial line that ran across the hollow of her throat, a single, precise incision that must have severed all resistance in a single, practiced gesture. The blood had pooled beneath the desk, dark and syrupy, congealing in thick ropes that spilled over the edge and dripped onto the carpet in slow, lazy pulses. Half her torso was crosshatched with cuts so precise they looked copied from a calligrapher’s hand; the rest of the room refused to focus. The faintest shimmer of arcane residue hovered, a proof of magic used and then abandoned.

It was the message on the wall that broke the last of Isemay’s calm, written in old-form infernal she’d only ever seen diagrammed, each character a looped and jagged horror, the meaning of which felt less important than the fact of its existence. It scrawled across the far plaster in blood, arching over the bookshelf and down toward the floor like a blight. There was artistry to it, and that was the worst part; whoever had done this was not rushed, not panicked. They had taken their time.

Isemay understood immediately what the message meant. Not the words, which were inscrutable, but the act itself: this was a warning. Yesterday’s scrying had not gone unnoticed. The message was simple, and final: stop looking.

Isemay screamed. It was not the shriek of a child or the operatic howling one might expect from a lesser person, but a flat, animal noise that started at the base of the spine and crawled out through the jaw. She did not remember falling backward, or the moment when her knees buckled and she caught herself on the arm of the divan.

The sound brought Laureline running. The secretary burst through the door, saw the body, and promptly collapsed, her head striking the wood paneling with a sickening, muted thud. Isemay did not rush to help her. There was too much to process: the way Maya’s hands had been folded over the ribcage as if in mock repose, the expression of horror still frozen on her face, her eyes open but unseeing, the stillness that only the dead could achieve.

The corridor beyond was suddenly alive with footsteps, guards, probably, or worse, Councilors drawn by the prospect of drama. Within moments, a figure in the red-and-grey of Council Security appeared at the threshold. Lieutenant Brigit LaGrave, the head of Council Security, was not given to displays of emotion, but the way her jaw clenched as she took in the scene betrayed a moment of honest, unvarnished anger.

LaGrave had two of her men pick up Laureline and carry her to the nearest breakroom, then turned back to the office, arms folded tight across her chest.

“Out,” LaGrave said to Isemay. There was no room for debate.

Isemay moved on command, stumbling into the corridor and collapsing into Laureline’s still-warm desk chair. Her hands were shaking so badly that she could not even begin to mask the tremor. She dug her nails into her palms and tried to slow her breathing.

LaGrave barked a series of orders to the guards who had gathered outside. Her voice, though never loud, carried the authority of someone who knew that in this building, only the illusion of order kept the whole thing from unraveling.

For the next twenty minutes, Isemay sat in silence, letting the waves of numbness and panic alternate as they pleased. Laureline, revived with smelling salts and a strong cup of black coffee, returned to her post with a face blank as moonstone. The two women did not speak, but Laureline reached out, just once, and placed a hand on Isemay’s wrist, as if to steady her or remind her she wasn’t alone.

A faint commotion drew her attention down the hall. The doors at the end of the corridor swung open, and through them marched Iliyria Sylren, Commander of the APS, her stride unmistakable in its focus and its utter lack of apology. Iliyria was dressed for war: the heavy boots, the midnight-blue coat, the silver hair pulled back so loosely it threatened to break free. Her face was a study in efficiency, every line drawn taut, every motion rehearsed and exact.

She made it to Isemay’s desk in four strides, pausing just long enough to scan the faces of the assembled guards before turning her full attention to the woman in the chair.

“What happened?” Iliyria said. It was less a question than a demand for facts.

Isemay tried to answer, but the words failed her. She settled for shaking her head, then gestured, helplessly, toward the office.

“It’s Maya,” she managed, her voice raw. “It’s bad.”

For a moment Isemay saw the person behind the legend; a flicker of empathy, or perhaps a memory of her own losses, before it was hidden away again.

“I know,” Iliyria said, softly. “Brigit called ahead. I need to speak with her, but first, are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” Isemay lied. “I’m fine, it’s just—” She broke off, unable to finish. “I saw a message. On the wall. I don’t know what it says, but I know who it’s for.”

Iliyria’s mouth twisted in a grimace that was almost a smile. “Then you’re two steps ahead of the Council. They’ll want a full accounting. Are you able to give a statement? And contact Pembroke to let him know.”

Isemay nodded, grateful for the focus. “Yes. I can.”

“Good,” Iliyria said. “Wait here. I’ll deal with the scene.”

Iliyria stepped past her, one hand briefly squeezing Isemay’s shoulder as she passed. The gesture, though barely perceptible, was enough to ground Isemay in the present.

The hallway was already thickening with onlookers; functionaries, bureaucrats and the kind of hangers-on who materialized wherever blood was fresh and the scent of scandal strong. Laureline, whose composure had been hard-won, typed quietly at her desk, logging the event for the official record. She did not meet Isemay’s eyes.

Inside the office, the muffled sounds of voices, LaGrave and Iliyria, filtered through the open door, punctuated by the low hum of a ward being cast, then the sharp crackle of a preservation charm. “Close the vents,” Iliyria murmured. “If they didn’t trigger the door wards, they might have drifted in on air.” Isemay leaned back, closed her eyes, and let the numbness settle in.

She was not afraid, not in the way the city’s children feared the monsters under the bed, or the way the men in her family had always spoken of “duty” as if it were a dragon waiting to devour them. But she knew, in the deep and vital parts of her, that what had happened was not a random act of cruelty. It was a prelude.

Outside, the sun had climbed above the dome, scattering light through the high windows and onto the pale stone of the Council hall. The world continued, indifferent to the horror in office 417.

Isemay pressed her hands together, willed herself to steady, and waited for Iliyria to return.

The Next Will Be One of Yours

Isemay sat behind Laureline’s desk, staring at the array of color-coded files as if the act of memorizing their contents might somehow unwrite the morning’s events. Every surface in Laureline’s domain gleamed, but the effect was less comfort than accusation: nothing out of place, except for the shivering woman in the chair and the silent clock that marked the seconds in self-righteous clicks.

The corridor beyond the desk was deserted, all of the day’s appointments cancelled, the entire Council Seat paralyzed by rumor and fear. The only movement came from the far end, where two Watch guards stood in whispered consultation. Even the walls seemed to lean away from Isemay, as if her presence was an affront to the illusion of safety that had reigned here for a century.

She replayed the last hour on an endless loop: the sight of Maya’s body sprawled across the desk in her own office, the sound of Laureline falling, Lt. LaGrave’s barked order to leave, Iliyria’s arrival.

It was not just the violence of the murder, or the message splashed in arterial red across her wall, that left her numb. It was the absolute indifference of the world outside. She did not weep now. She had only moved through the steps as if in a simulation, obeying the Watch, providing statements, agreeing to a thorough search of her office, even as her mind staggered from detail to detail and refused to take root anywhere for more than a few seconds at a time.

They had closed the door and told her to wait there. Isemay did not know if she was being officially detained, or if she had been left alone because nobody could bear to look her in the eye. She preferred the latter; it fit the day’s logic better. She slid Laureline’s brass ring of ward keys half an inch toward herself and stopped; the motion stood in for a dozen tasks she wasn’t ready to do.

The sound of boots on polished stone broke her trance. Five figures advanced up the corridor; Alavara, her face set in a mask of professional neutrality; Buggy, his Watch uniform creased but meticulously clean; Io, scales shimmering under the hall’s mage lamps; Nimueh, hands shoved in her pockets, eyes darting to every shadow; and trailing behind them, Dingus, perpetually out of step, tail swinging back and forth behind him.

Isemay did not stand as they entered, nor did she acknowledge their presence except by the barest tilt of her head. There was no need for pleasantries.

She nodded in the direction of her office, where the Watch had left the scene untouched pending magical forensics. The five runners filed past her in silence, Io awkwardly squeezing his tail to the side so as not to disturb the stacks of reports. Alavara glanced back once, a flicker of concern in her eyes, but Isemay did not meet the gaze. She folded her hands in her lap and waited for the door to close before allowing herself to exhale.

The office walls were thick, constructed to dampen both magical vibrations and the everyday indignities of Council politics. Isemay could not hear the runners’ voices, but she tracked their investigation by the rise and fall of light under the door, the scuff and scrape of furniture, the soft ping of glass shards as someone moved too quickly. She tried to focus on these details, using them as anchors to hold back the flood of unwanted thought.

Instead, her mind strayed to Maya’s face: the way her mouth had always twitched before delivering a joke, the way she leaned over the balcony after a storm to count the ravens, the way she had once confessed to Isemay, over too many glasses of sherry, that she had always expected to die young but never in so prosaic a way as this.

The voices in the office grew louder, more animated. Isemay felt a pressure at the base of her skull, a tension that was almost pleasant compared to the numbness that had overtaken her. She let herself imagine the runners piecing together the puzzle, finding some overlooked clue, some scrap of meaning that would make the loss bearable, or at least explicable.

A thud, followed by a flurry of motion. The door banged open so hard it rattled the frosted glass in its frame. Iliyria Sylren shot into the corridor at a near run, her hair wild. She did not spare Isemay a glance, nor did she slow as she barreled down the hall toward the Watch detachment.

Buggy and Nimueh stumbled out after her, brows furrowed, followed by Io and Dingus. Alavara emerged last, closing the office door behind her with careful precision. She looked at Isemay with an expression that hovered between pity and fear.

“Do you want to know?” Alavara asked, voice barely above a whisper.

Isemay did not answer. She did not trust herself to speak.

“It was written in infernal,” Alavara said. “The message on the wall. ‘The next will be one of yours.’” She hesitated, as if waiting for the meaning to land. “Iliyria thinks the next target is Selaney. She’s already gone.”

For a second, the world stilled. Isemay felt nothing, not even the familiar spike of self-recrimination that usually followed every failed experiment, every miscalculated risk. She simply stared at Alavara, waiting for her to continue.

“They tried to reach her team, but nobody answered. Iliyria said to tell you.”

Isemay closed her eyes, letting the words settle like sediment. Selaney. Her only apprentice. The first person who had ever chosen to work with her, not out of obligation or pity or transactional necessity, but out of genuine curiosity. The girl had shown up at Isemay’s office every day for six months, pestering her with questions, challenging her theories, insisting that divination magic could be more than a sideshow to the ‘real’ work of the Tower, that it could even be used in combat.

They had laughed together. They had argued. Isemay had taught her the silent methods, the ones nobody put in the manuals. She had been proud, in the quiet, secret way that pride sneaks up on those who have never had much cause for it.

Now, Selaney was gone. And it was her fault. Whatever was butchering wizards had known Selaney was Isemay’s student, had gone after her intentionally. Punishment for the scrying attempt.

Alavara watched her for a moment, then turned to follow the others down the corridor. Isemay sat very still, listening to the sound of her own breathing, the way it stuttered and caught on every intake, the way it threatened to collapse entirely with each new exhale. Her fingers found her cheek, coming away with a wetness she hadn't realized was there.

Behind her, Laureline’s desk was immaculate. Not a single file out of place.

The clock on the wall clicked over to the next hour. When it did, she told herself she would stand; when it did, she measured another minute instead.

Isemay did not move. Not even when Lieutenant LaGrave began barking orders at the Watch, not even when another squad of runners swept past to secure the scene, not even when the sun broke through the east window and washed her face in indifferent gold.

A new shape cut across the gold.

Lavan came at a half-run, robe thrown over one shoulder, hair uncombed, the smell of ink and bergamot clinging to him like a ward hastily set. He took in the corridor in one sweep, the Watch posted at either end, LaGrave’s controlled perimeter, runners moving with purpose around the door to 417, and then he was beside her.

“Isemay.” His voice gentled and cracked on the same syllable. “What happened?” His gaze flicked to the threshold, to the red-and-grey clustering there, back to her face. “Are you hurt—are you okay?”

He didn’t reach for her wrist, didn’t need to. The Friendship Symbol under her sleeve had already told him enough; he’d felt her panic tear down the line like a bell clanged too hard. She hadn’t remembered to keep it blocked.

Isemay did not answer. She stood, chair legs scraping the marble with a small, shocked sound, and crossed the narrow space between them in three steps. She hit his chest harder than she meant to. He folded around her and held on.

His hand found the back of her head and smoothed her hair the way one smooths a page before writing. “I’m here,” he whispered into the crown of it. “I’m here. Breathe with me. In… and out.” The cadence was old classroom rhythm, the same he’d used with first-years before exams.

Around them the corridor kept its choreography. LaGrave’s orders dropped to half-volume, as if granting the square of air around the two of them a provisional silence. Laureline, eyes rimmed and steady, slid a glass of water within reach and then pretended to inventory the stapler. A runner brushed past with a preservation kit and didn’t look.

Isemay’s hands bunched in the fabric at Lavan’s shoulder until her knuckles hurt. The mark at her forearm quieted by increments, its fever cooling under the weight of his arm. She could have said everything, about mirrors and green fire, about the script meant to be ugly, about the body laid out like an audit, and found that language would not carry it. So she said nothing, and let his breath set the metronome.

“In,” he murmured. “Out. I’ve got you.” His thumb made small circles at the nape of her neck, an anchor with no sigil and more power than most.

After a time measurable only by the clock’s small clicks, her grip loosened. She lifted her face just enough for him to see she was unhurt in all the ways that matter to officials and ruined in the one that matters to friends. He didn’t ask if she was okay again. He didn’t let go.

Behind them, the sun moved a finger’s width along the wall. The city kept on pretending at order. For ten breaths, she allowed herself not to.