Morlo hadn’t actually been kidding when he said we’d be meeting with the gun-makers. I’d expected us to head off for the city’s centre, but instead he veered right at one turn and took us on a straight course for the University of Arvharest.

  Which, I had to admit, was a great deal more impressive than any other building in the place.

  Founded about half a century prior, the university hadn’t taken long to produce enough tangible results in the fields of technologism that it had perpetuated its own existence through the money those innovations brought in. These days it’s scarcely grown from then, and if anything enjoys less influence due to the general spread of high-quality universities to offer it competition from everywhere else in Anglyn.

  Back then, though, it was at its peak.

  The building was larger than most castles, home to a full thousand students and another fifty or so scholars, and the amount of wealth that had gone into carving it was clear at a glance. Gargoyles hung on its spires and brought up nasty memories in me, while every window boasted a composition of glass and every wall a blemishless work of carefully consistent stone blocks rather than haphazard cobbles and mortars.

  It was, I suppose you could say, the first modern building I’d encountered, and there really are no words for how strange it was to see without precedent. Like something from a novel, though I didn’t read enough fiction to have encountered anything like this. There’s a curiously uncanny feeling to heavily worked stone and metal that strikes you deeply when you’re used to buildings made of natural formations mortared together.

  And so I headed for the university feeling less at ease than I had in the mansion of an aristocrat. I wasn’t alone.

  Whatever Vara had seen alongside Morlo to become so thoroughly unimpressed with the world, I saw the limits of that now as she stared around in awe of the place just as much as me. Maybe moreso. Gruin, even, arched an eyebrow and nodded softly as he looked around.

  “This workmanship,” he grunted, “it’s…almost not shit.”

  It was easily the finest compliment I’d ever heard him pay a thing made by human hands, and I was so stunned by the sight that I said nothing at all until we’d ventured deeper.

  Long corridors provided ample walking space, feeling somehow agorphobic to my tastes as I realised only then how used to cramped interiors I’d grown up being. Morlo appeared contemptuous of it all, while Vara’s initial worry had given way to much the same order of curiosity as me.

  “So can Thaumaturgy not replicate this?” I asked him, sensing a weak point in his armoured composure and finding myself bored and bitter enough to jab a knife in. It sunk deeper than I’d have expected, whipping the Thaumaturge’s eyes around to glare right through me.

  “Keep testing me, see what Thaumaturgy can replicate.”

  The air chilled, my mouth dried, and I stopped talking, stopped blinking—almost stopped breathing.

  Then Morlo burst out laughing.

  “The look on your fucking face!” he sneered, “shut up and pay attention instead of sassing me, you might learn something.”

  I did learn something, several things actually, but I didn’t realise that at the time, and if I had I’d have only kept the fact to myself out of spite. We were finally allowed to wait at some reception area before a meeting was arranged—no less than half an hour later, much to Morlo’s chagrin—with someone important.

  That someone seemed to be a professor, judging by the plaques in his office. The room was a big one and well decorated in the gaudy sort of style that comes from someone with lots of money but little prestige, and who is eager to compensate for their lack of the latter by exerting more of the former.

  One look at the fat, bearded man congealing behind its desk would have let me guess as much. His face was red, with the effort of simply existing I supposed, and he didn’t even attempt to stand as Morlo entered, just nodded his way.

  “Thaumaturge, an honour to receive such an esteemed man of learning.” The sarcasm was distinct enough for even seventeen year-old ears to pick it up.

  Morlo headed for the chair opposite the man, “mind if I take a seat?”

  “I would mind actually,” the fat man said with a grin.

  Morlo’s lip curled, and he stared at the seat as if the scholar had said nothing.

  “Actually, nevermind,” he sneered with disgust, “I think I’ll stand.” By the men’s faces I assumed Morlo had scored some imaginary point, but it wasn’t given time to settle.

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  “What can I help you with?” the scholar asked him, smile now a shade more strained than it had been, face now a hair less friendly. Morlo appeared to have eaten his smugness.

  “Undead, there’s been activity among them to the south that I need to know about. Strange patterns of it.”

  “You want consultation on how those line up historically?” the scholar sounded smug as anything, which was perhaps why Morlo hurried so much to contradict him.

  “Not at all, I want your papers on scholarly activity from the regions I’m about to list off. All of them. From research, to scholarship applications, to debts paid and debts flunked on, everything.”

  I thought I understood what he was getting at, in the wider scope. And I kept quiet so as not to interfere.

  The meeting progressed, fortunately with a bit less masculine bluster than it had begun with, and eventually Morlo got what he was looking for, or at least had it offered. Only one hitch rested before him.

  “I’ll present you with the relevant files for…shall we say, thirty grains?” the scholar grinned.

  “Sounds good to me,” Morlo said without missing a beat. That surprised me, but not nearly as much as seeing him draw out a pouch of golden grains and dropping it down onto the desk. I heard it thump on impact, and if the weight hadn’t confirmed its contents seeing the scholar quickly count them would have. He looked as surprised as I felt, but quickly covered it.

  “V…Very well then, I’ll…get the records.”

  Morlo’s mood seemed to have lifted a great deal with that response alone, and we were soon making our way back through the building.

  “What did you learn?” he asked, eyes flitting between me and Vara. That was the only thing that told me he expected us both to answer.

  “Do you think I’m your student or something?” I scowled.

  Morlo just looked at me, and my non-existent courage crumpled like normal.

  “Why do Thaumaturges and gunsmiths hate each other?” Vara asked abruptly, splitting Morlo’s focus off from me as he answered.

  “Why do you think?” he shot back. Vara didn’t seem annoyed to have her question questioned, just considered it.

  “People are saying that Thaumaturgy is less useful, now, than they used to, they’re going to gunsmiths for war and the other sciences practiced here are doing many of the things your people used to as well. Is that it?”

  I noticed only after a moment how diplomatically she’d phrased that, none of those threats the advancing technologists posed to Thaumaturgical dominance were in her opinion—it was all just things she’d heard others say.

  Morlo smiled in a way that made me think he’d noticed that touch of guile, too.

  “That’s why lesser-minded Thaumaturges take umbrage with them, yes. I just think they’re smug cunts.” Again, Morlo seemed oddly cheerful as he spoke now. I noticed that he tended to swear at strange times, too. Even back then I wondered if it was deliberate, an attempt for him to unbalance people by juxtaposing a sailor’s mouth with a Thaumaturge’s appearance. He certainly dressed like a stereotype.

  It was, I realised, also why he’d put on a show of such stretching insanity when I first met him, too. Morlo was a man who wore whatever mask he thought would get him what he wanted, and right now he seemed to want a whole lot. Or at least had a whole lot to do. It struck me then that I still didn’t know the Thaumaturge’s bloody plans.

  “You want to see if there’s some kind of undead apocalypse coming, don’t you?” Gruin asked, his voice uncharacteristically calm and uncharacteristically low. I’d heard it like that only a few times before, always when he was at his most bloodthirsty. It made me shiver then, too.

  “I wouldn’t say apocalypse yet,” Morlo grunted, growing more serious to match the Grynkori, “but one can never be too careful. Kyvaine!” he barked my name out like a gunshot, and it made me jump. Vara snickered while I recovered.

  “What!?” I snapped.

  “You have an appointment at this university in six hours sharp, and we have to get you properly dressed for it.”

  I was badly stunned enough that I could do little more than babble incoherently as the Thaumaturge marched on. After a brief moment of deliberation, and a longer moment spent cursing my fortune, I followed.

  Morlo took me on quite the stroll across Arvharest, walking faster than I’d have thought possible for a man his age. Despite my youth and greatly enhanced fitness from the past few months, I was soon straining to keep up with him. Straining a lot, in fact, and, I noticed, attracting a few stares as I practically jogged. It must have been some Thaumaturgical trick, but for the life of me I couldn’t work out what. His limbs just appeared to be moving faster.

  Eventually I tired of trailing behind, and hastened myself to reach the man.

  “What’s changed with Vara?” I asked him, “she’s…different.”

  Very different. Vara as she was had been subtle and passive, letting you think your own way into doing what she wanted by only providing the barest nudges. It was a sign of my own growing scepticism—something I didn’t even realise at the time—that I’d unknowingly stumbled onto that truth. Another sign was that I’d seen through her recent efforts and figured out that there was something she wasn’t telling me.

  What that was, though, I still didn’t know. But I knew who would, and had just asked him.

  Uncharacteristically, Morlo took my question seriously.

  “I’ve taught her magic.”

  I missed a step at that, my legs just freezing up in shock. The brief moment I spent not moving was enough for Morlo to put another three yards between us and make me hurry into another burst of speed.

  “What—what do you mean you’ve taught her magic!?”

  “So you know how people who know things can help other people learn them? I did that with her and my magic.” Morlo’s answer was dripping all the usual contempt, which was what told me he was less impressed by my follow-up question than he’d been by my first.

  “What I’m asking is, why did she want you to start teaching her that?” I kept my voice level, knowing that showing anger would just spurr the vindictive old cock on to continue irritating me more. He smiled anyway.

  “Thaumaturgy is the power to alter the very world with a thought, lad, to borrow power from it and redistribute it as you wish. It is the mightiest force a single person can wield in this world. If you command an army, that command can be taken from you. Own property and it can be stolen, claim land and it can be conquered. But nothing can ever deprive you of your Thaumaturgy. A better question, the question you should be asking, is why the fuck would anybody not want me to teach them? A good follow-up question would be…will I teach you?”

  I’d never heard it put like that, to me Thaumaturgy had always caused more problems than it solved, but hearing this…

  “Will you?” I croaked.

  “Oh look,” Morlo grinned, “we’ve arrived.”

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