Liv did her best to ignore the weight of so many gazes, all focused on her, at the middle of the training field. The girl who’d scrubbed chamber pots in the dark at Castle Whitehill would have crumbled under so many eyes. Even now, she didn’t think that she would ever quite be comfortable as the center of attention. It was easier when she was angry, like she’d been at the Hall of Ancestors, or when letting the great council of Lucania have a piece of her mind. As a substitute for fury, she breathed in the way her father had taught her, circulating mana through her body slowly and deliberately.

  In front of her, with the line of professors extending out to either side of him, Archmagus Loredan planted the butt of his staff firmly in the ground and straightened his back. "Guild members and students, whether from Bald Peak or Coral Bay, welcome. It is significant, I think, and worthy of note that we have gathered here today. The recent strife between north and south has torn apart our kingdoms, or families, and our guild. The woman standing in front of me could very well have undergone this test in Whitehill, if she had wished to do so; the fact that she has not gives me hope that the divisions in our guild may yet be healed.”

  The old man scanned the crowd for a moment, letting the conversations die down to near-silence, before he resumed. “The requirements to be recognized as an archmage were set down by Edythe Blackstone, the first to hold the rank, and they are stringent. The testing comes in two parts, and today we are going to proceed in a different order than we have used in the past. For the first trial, Mistress Livara must demonstrate absolute control over the mana within five feet of her body, as tested by no less than three masters. Professors, may I have volunteers?”

  Lia Every stepped forward immediately, just as she had done when it came time to test Jurian. Liv recalled the acting guildmistress’s word quite well: Sev, the word of holding. Every was also imprinted with Aluth and Cei, of course, which meant that she could throw mana constructs, try to force Liv into an enchanted sleep, or simply attempt to pin her body in place.

  As if it had been planned this way, Professor Blackwood accompanied her, moving out from the line of professors at the exact same moment. That meant, Liv observed, that at least one person from each college would be participating. Of course, given that they’d both also tested Jurian, it might be that they simply enjoyed the process - but she suspected Caspian had arranged things ahead of time.

  Liv looked to Reginald Teck. She was curious whether the man would actually have the spine to step forward and face her. While he’d been one of Genevieve Arundell’s supporters, he wasn’t one of those who’d been sent to fight at the pass. That could mean that he wasn’t as useful in combat as some others - though the fact he’d been placed in Jurian’s old position argued against that. Perhaps Genevieve had simply trusted in his loyalty.

  Teck stepped forward.

  Liv tried to remember what word of power the barons of House Teck wielded, or even where they were based. If Sidonie had been here, she would have known. She thought the family might fall under Duke Richard’s jurisdiction, somewhere near Carinthia, but Liv wouldn’t have placed a wager on it.

  “Mistress Livara, are you prepared?” the archmagus called out.

  Liv could almost see the ghost of Jurian, nodding, and she did the same.

  “Begin!”

  All three of the professors moved and spoke at the same time, each launching their spells nearly simultaneously. Blackwood made a swipe with his wand, silent casting a spray of mana blades that shot toward Liv.

  Lia Every raised her hand, shouting the same invocation that Liv had heard her use before: “Sevētis.”

  But what Liv paid the most attention to, out of curiosity, was Reginald Teck. “?’Te Ghverēs,” the man declared, levelling his wand at her chest before swiping it down toward the ground. Liv’s thoughts flitted away like a bird taking flight: it was the same root as Ghveris’s name. The best translation she knew for the word was a great heaviness or weight, as of something enormous.

  Liv exhaled, and frost cracked out across the packed earth of the training yard. Flakes of snow danced before her in the chill air, and she pressed outward with her Authority. Professor Blackwood’s spell was the easiest to destroy, as the mana blades had no physical substance beyond what he lent them with his magic, nor were they directly supported by his Authority. Each blade dissolved into motes of shining blue essence, with the occasional spark of gold, leaving nothing behind but a few scraps of mana that she could have scooped up, if she hadn’t already been full near to bursting.

  It was a beautiful sight, but Liv didn’t have time to appreciate it with both Lia Every and Reginald Teck pressing in upon her with their own Authority. She was surprised at how similar the two feelings were, and the two spells. It was enough to make her wonder if the families were related.

  Guildmistress Every’s Authority was like an enormous, unseen hand reaching out to take hold of Liv. It intended to wrap all the way around her bubble of Authority, take hold, and then squeeze. If it reached her actual body, Liv was certain that she wouldn’t be able to move.

  Professor Teck’s Authority came, instead, from below. It felt to Liv as if the very bones of the world had reached up through the stone and the dirt to grab at her and pull her down. His spell would not so much grab at her, but cause her body to be heavy as stone, as if her arms were ridges of rock and her head was a great boulder. There was no way that she would be able to hold herself up, and she had a feeling that her very bones would snap beneath the burden.

  If both spells hit her, Liv would find her body crumpled up into a ball, slammed into the ground, and flattened, pressed down so tightly that she wouldn’t be able to move, or perhaps even breathe.

  But she’d trained for this, and she’d faced stronger people before. She hadn’t knelt to Ractia’s Authority, so there was no world in which Liv was going to allow someone as pathetic as Reginald Teck to get the better of her.

  Both spells slammed into Liv’s Authority with all the force of wine bottles thrown against a stone wall, immediately shattering. Then, she pressed forward, extending her control toward the three mages. She wanted everyone watching to understand, quite clearly, what she could do. She wanted to make a point. If you will have me, I will be your sword and shield, she’d told Matthew, the barons and the Eld who’d knelt to her after the battle at the pass. Those who’d fought with or against her there understood it, as had the soldiers who’d gone to Varuna. Now, she wanted Lucania to understand, as well. She wanted them to understand what would happen if they sent another army north.

  Liv bore down on Reginald Teck with her Authority. He was no Ractia, nor even on the level of Keri’s aunt. His knees buckled, and he fell to the ground, unable to even raise his head. She hesitated, for a moment, at the idea of doing the same to Lia Every and Professor Blackwood. She had no real quarrel with the Professor of Beasts, and Lia had become not only an ally and supporter, but even something of a friend.

  She crushed them both anyway, so that everyone would know that she could. Not simply a single professor, but three at once. Then, Liv allowed her Authority to recede, leaving Teck, who’d borne the power of it the longest, gasping on the ground.

  “I believe it is clear to everyone gathered here today that the first test has been passed,” Archmagus Loredan declared, his voice filling the shocked silence.

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  Liv strode forward and offered Lia Every her hand. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I had to make a point.”

  “I had a good idea of what I was getting into when I stepped forward,” the acting guild mistress whispered back. “That’s one of the reasons I didn’t let Kazimir do it.”

  “The second test,” Caspian Loredan continued, “cannot, due to the nature of Mistress Livara’s archmage spell, be safely conducted here at these training grounds. Tomorrow, everyone who can support themself on a plane of conjured mana is welcome to accompany us out into the bay, at low tide. There is a shelf of rock a half mile out that has long presented a navigational hazard to ships entering Coral Bay. That will serve our purposes well, I believe.”

  ?

  Liv and her friends left the crowd behind as soon as they could, not least because Kaija was so clearly nervous that every one of them could see it. There were simply too many people, crowded into too tight a space, for half a dozen guards to be able to do much of anything to guarantee Liv’s safety. She’d dispersed them into the area to watch for crossbows, hidden daggers, and all manner of other threats, but it was a losing proposition.

  Leaving immediately meant grouping together on a conjured pane of blue mana, which Liv lifted straight up from the training grounds. They had to skim quite a ways north, just above the breakers, before finding an inlet where Rei could spend the day in the ocean.

  “The water’s so warm!” he screamed with glee, in between jumping waves.

  Liv laughed. “Anyone who grew up here would disagree,” she pointed out. Thora had brought her a set of her old swimming clothes, the kind they’d used during the king tides. At the time, she’d been terrified at the thought of showing her legs, though she’d eventually gotten over it. Now, she deliberately stretched them out, lying on a soft towel she’d placed over the sand. It was only her friends and companions here, after all, and the guards keeping watch. Anyway, she wanted Keri to get a good look.

  “And anyone who grew up at Cold Harbor, or anywhere in the north, would tell them they’re wrong,” Keri told her. “People this far south don’t know just how cold the sea can get. They’ve never seen floes of ice floating in the waves.”

  It was a pleasant way to spend the afternoon, and an evening. Liv sent Thora and two of her guards with enough money to fill three baskets with hot food from the Crab and Gull, which they ate right there on the strand. She had no desire to go back to the camp of culling mages, not after the show she’d already put on; but of course, they did eventually have to return to their tents, if for no other reason than to get Rei to sleep at a reasonable hour.

  “It’s going to be worse tomorrow,” Wren pointed out, later that evening when Liv finally ducked out of the tent where Rei was demanding one last bedtime story from his father. “You think you made an impression today?” She laughed out loud.

  “I did have a reason,” Liv grumbled. “I wasn’t just trying to show off.”

  The guards, in their blue and white jack-of-plate, had all they could handle turning away culling mages who wanted to chat. If that had been all, it wouldn’t have been so bad – but Liv’s display of strength had drawn everything from town merchants to what seemed like the sons and daughters of every baron in the realm. Those students had come down from High Hall, apparently on the theory that she’d once stayed there as well, and therefore enough common ground existed that she should meet with each one in person.

  “How close to finished is the repair work?” Liv asked, turning to Ghveris.

  “The armor plates have been forged and tempered,” he explained. “The sigils have been etched, but the enchanting has not yet been accomplished. They can be attached at any time.”

  Liv thought that over. “Five words is a lot to get in one place,” she admitted. “We can do it, but we’re going to need either Matthew or Triss for Ters. I can handle Cel. The other words, we’re going to need to either pay for, or trade favors. Either way, I think we’re probably going to have to finish that part back in Whitehill. Let’s have Professor Norris get everything in place, so that we can leave sooner, rather than later.”

  “I assumed you would be remaining for the negotiations,” Kazimir Grenfell asked, from his camp chair. He sat next to Vivek Sharma and Lia Every, who was the only one outside of the initial group that Liv had brought with her from Freeport permitted to pass the guards.

  Liv shook her head. “I was, but now I’m worried that I’ll be too much of a distraction. Anyway, whatever is decided is going to have to be approved by a conclave of the guild, and that won’t happen for months, no matter what.”

  “You can’t be thinking of asking me to stay,” Lia Every protested, springing to her feet. “I’m still not even certain I agree this is a good idea.”

  “No, I was thinking that Master Grenfell could remain behind, while we take the students back to Bald Peak,” Liv said. “We can spare one professor for a while, but not two. And I know how you feel – I wouldn’t be that cruel.”

  Kaija came striding up to the fire. “Archmagus Loredan has come to speak with you,” she said, interrupting the conversation. “I assume he makes the list?”

  “Yes, let him through,” Liv answered. Kaija hurried back out of the firelight, toward the rest of the encampment, and a moment later the archmage carefully picked his way across the sand toward them.

  “I thought that we might speak privately,” Caspian Loredan said. “Not in our capacity as regent and queen, but as mages of the guild.”

  Liv nodded, pulled the flap to her pavilion open, and ducked inside. The central area, separated from where she would sleep by flaps of hanging canvas, had been set up once again with carpets, a table and chairs, and oil lamps to provide light. If the night air grew cool enough, there were braziers of charcoal and incense to light, as well, but that was really more for Thora’s comfort than for Liv’s.

  Caspian moved carefully, as if he was afraid that he would turn an ankle on the sand, even with it swept flat and then covered by carpets. Liv helped him into one of the camp chairs, and then took the other for herself.

  “This is a conversation that I’ve had only a total of three times in my life,” the old mage said, after taking a moment to settle in. “Once each with Jurian and Genevieve, and then once with Archmagus Edythe, though that time I was on the other end of things.”

  “I haven’t passed the second test yet,” Liv pointed out. There was half a bottle of red wine on the table, so she pulled the cork back out and splashed some into each of two goblets, one of which she passed to Caspian.

  The archmage laughed. “You wouldn’t have come here if you didn’t have a spell,” he said. “Tomorrow is a formality, as was today. At thirty-eight years old, you’ll be the youngest archmage ever recognized by the guild.”

  Liv took a sip of her wine, rather than respond.

  “I’ve come to give you one thing, and then a bit of advice, if you’ll take it,” Caspian said.

  “I’ll listen, at the very least,” Liv told him honestly. “And then I’ll make my own decision.”

  The old man shrugged. “The advice is this. First, there is very little that I know of that could push your mana capacity to grow further, at this point. Perhaps the depths of Godsgrave, or destroying Ractia. Past that, I suspect you have reached the limit.”

  Liv resisted the urge to bite her lip. According to Elder Aira, her body had been changing for months after the Well of Bones, and destroying the shade of Celris had only pushed the process further along. Her mana-concentrating array of enchantments, surrounding her cot just a few yards away, was the only reason that she wasn’t suffering headaches and even worse symptoms already, after having been gone from Bald Peak for so long. Caspian Loredan might be right, so far as he knew, but Liv had lost much of her trust in the man, and wasn’t going to point out anything that he was missing.

  “On top of that, I would advise you that you should not imprint any further words for the foreseeable future,” Caspian said. “Cold, Lightning, Mana, Time – and I imagine you’ve picked up Dreams, as well, unless I miss my guess.”

  Liv shrugged. “Genevieve made it open to all journeymen. There didn’t seem to be any reason not to learn it.”

  “My strong recommendation would be that you take the next decade to master the words you have,” the old man said. “Most people never imprint five words, even among the Eld. I would honestly say that you don’t need to imprint a single new word, ever again, if you simply take the time to shore up your foundations and learn to use what you have.”

  “I don’t have any immediate plans to imprint new words,” Liv said. Answering seemed harmless enough; and if she did change her mind, it might lead to the archmagus underestimating her in the future.

  “Good.” Caspian Loredan reached into his robes and removed a single sheet of parchment, folded twice and sealed with wax. “And here is the gift I spoke of. A single spell, the same one I gave to Jurian and Genevieve, and the one that I was given the night I became an archmage. I am told that it was developed for the sole purpose of killing gods. It is called Interdiction, and it is said to have been created by Miriam herself.”

  here. I am more available there than I am here.

  Dramatis Personae

  Livara T?r Valtteri Kaen Syv? - Guildmage, former scullery maid at Castle Whitehill, the bastard daughter of Maggie Brodbeck and Valtteri Ka Auris. Mountain Queen, and Lady of Winter. Halfway there. [35 Rings of Mana, not counting mana stored in items.]

  Caspian Loredan, Archmagus - Head of the College of V?dic Grammar, serving on the Council of Regents for Lucania. Your master of ceremonies, today. [26 Rings of Mana]

  Ghveris, the Beast of Iuronnath - Formerly a Great Bat in service to Ractia, now the remains of his body form the heart of an Antrian juggernaut. Mostly repaired. Mostly! [Mana Battery: 10 Rings]

  Inkeris "Keri" ka Ilmari k?n B?lris - A young warrior of the Unconquered House of B?lris, father to Rei. Reader of bedtime stories. [20 Rings of Mana.]

  Kaija - Former Armorer at Kelthelis, captain of Liv's personal guard. Tearing her hair out trying to keep Liv's tent secure. [21 Rings of Mana]

  Kazimir Grenfell - Master Mage, and Liv's former tutor in magic. Has been volun-told. [15 Rings of Mana]

  Lia Every - Acting Guildmistress, former Professor of Guild Law & History. Was worried Grenfell would have a heart attack if he had to go through that. [20 Rings of Mana]

  Rei ka Inkeris k?n B?lris - Son of Keri and Rika. Beach Boy. [4 Rings of Mana]

  Wren Wind Dancer - Daughter of Nighthawk, cousin of Calm Waters. Spent far to many nights soggy on the beach at Coral Bay.