As Mei returned to Dwayne, Magdala went in the opposite direction and descended into the northeast corner of Latia Arena’s hypogeum, its staging area. This was a risk. She’d only ever been down here once for her initiation into the Academy and never again. As far as she knew, no Academy student had ever returned as rule-breakers preferred the East Campus Woods, and curiosity-seekers favored the abandoned colleges in the north.

  Turns out they were both missing out.

  During her initiation, Magdala hadn’t noticed the stone arcades supporting the Arena or the series of doors opposite them, but as a survivor of Yumma, both looked familiar. To confirm, she touched one of the doors and said, “nQeuom.”

  She was right. These doors were nujayny, and between them and the stone arcades, this had to be a Yaniti complex just like the one at Yumma. It wasn’t as well kept, some of the doors had been replaced, and the bricks blocking off the arches were definitely of Souran make, but it all fit. In history class, Magdala had learned that the Latia Arena, like much of East Campus, had been built on top of an older structure, but she’d assumed that it had been Golden Age, not Post-Asaphic. If this was the top of the complex, was there a way down? What about that well? There hadn’t been any in Yumma so-

  No, that wasn’t why she was here. The only important thing about her realization was that now she knew her way around.

  Leaving the well behind, Magdala followed the curve of the hypogeum corridor, which mirrored the contours of the Arena above it. Whatever the ancients had used it for, in the modern age, this place was storage. She passed crates and barrels, rooms with old notes and scorch marks, and even a disassembled periscopic array, its lenses and mirror left to gather dust.

  Right now one was observing Dwayne, displaying how he held a pencil, his expression as he grappled with a hard question. Did it look the same as the one he had when he was measuring ingredients? Was he muttering to himself like he did when reviewing the steps of his next practical?

  Had he wanted to kiss her?

  Magdala’s face heated. Why that question? She’d wanted to kiss him, there hadn’t been anyone around, and it would have taken less than a moment, but just because his eyes looked like they’d dropped to her lips didn’t mean, well, that. Maybe her lips were chapped. Friends notice things like that, didn’t they?

  To escape further questions, Magdala hurried onwards, the movement doing wonders for her sore muscles. Maybe, after all this, she could ask Mei for a quick training session and get a good distraction from her over-stimulated imagination.

  Finally, she reached the southwest quarter of the hypogeum, where the doors were labeled, which made it easy to find the room containing the practical materials. There were three sets for each examinee: Horn’s four barrels of water, Werner’s pile of metallic and semi-metallic ores, and Dwayne’s collection of metal plates, bottles, and barrels.

  After checking the others for anything alarming, and containing the urge to sabotage Werner, Magdala turned her attention to Dwayne’s materials, which were six steel plates, three small glass bottles filled with a celeste blue powder, and two massive barrels, one of which she bore into to find a reddish-black powder. Using a spoon out of one of her pouches, Magdala took a sample of both powders and poured them onto the floor. Then she resealed the barrel she’d opened a hole in.

  Time to find out what these were. Should she try out her new trick? She was in a restricted area, and if she got caught, Dwayne would suffer. While taking a break from studying - Magdala had been trying to explain nQe magic to Dwayne and nothing was getting through - she’d asked him to explain how he silently casted Ri’a’tha. His explanation hadn’t been much help, it sounded like Dwayne had trouble stopping the spell from casting, but maybe it was less about the sounds she made and instead about the sensation of casting and the specific intent required for the spell. Ri’a’tha was Dwayne’s first spell, the one he knew best. As an nQe mage, what was hers?

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  Pressing the tip of her finger into the darker of the two powders, Magdala remembered the first time she’d cast the target spell, including not long ago when she’d verified the material of the doors down here.

  nQeuom. Alchemical components flooded her mind: chloride, sodium, iron, enxofre.

  Since she’d done this not to get caught, she did not whoop, but she was going to tell Dwayne about it the first chance she got. He’d be a Qe master by then so she had to make it clear he wasn’t leaving her behind.

  Then she frowned. Why enxofric salt?

  Repeating the process with the blue powder revealed it to be cairnite. Why that? And why did the consistency of both powders look so familiar?

  Magdala glanced at the metal plates. She’d assumed they were steel, but considering the strangeness of the powders, she had to make sure. Another silent nQeuom later and it was clear they weren’t pure steel, but steel-clad cast iron. Even after her tutoring, Dwayne wouldn’t know the difference, they hadn’t had time to get into alloys, but what in Markosia was his practical?

  “It’s too bad we’re stuck down here.”

  Magdala tucked herself behind Dwayne’s barrels then peered between them to see two women in gray masks, black surcotes, and muddy white trousers enter the room. Despite the color reversal, only one group ever went bare-armed like that.

  What was Sen Jerome’s doing here? Was her roommate right about a horde of cenobites?

  “I’ll check the plates.” The shorter of the two walked up to one and knocked on it. “Good, they’re switched.”

  “Praise Cueller.” The taller cenobite shook mud off her trousers. “I was not going to climb back down to haul up the spares.”

  “This was still shit duty.” The shorter cenobite looked up. “How do you think the savage is doing up there?”

  The taller cenobite snorted. “Awfully. With the Earth Sage there, he can’t cheat. I bet he’s sweating.”

  Magdala bit down on her protest. Dwayne would never cheat, and he didn’t need to, not after all the magical knowledge she and Fletcher had stuffed into his head.

  “He cheats?”

  The taller cenobite tapped her temple. “Think about it. There’s no way a Wesen savage has the smarts to keep up with real mages. He’s just cunning enough to get things by us.”

  Which was it? Was Dwayne too stupid to pass or so smart he could cheat without anyone catching him?

  More importantly, was Magdala going to have to use her nascent falling and taking hits skills to fight these two? Sure, she could combine the enxofric salt with air pressure and generate a gas hot enough to knock them out, but then Dwayne’s examination would get canceled.

  “Okay, delivery confirmed,” said the shorter cenobite. “Let’s go set the signal.”

  “Got it.”

  When they left, Magdala emerged from her hiding place. Mei was right; Dean Bruce, née Granite, was up to something. And how had those cenobites gotten down here? There’d been none in the audience and there were no other entrances.

  Maybe the mud was a clue. Magdala went over to the splatters on the floor, touched one and tried to cast nQeuom. It failed. Her mind was racing too fast to focus on her casting.

  She tried again, out loud this time. “nQeuom.”

  Water, iron, sand, periclase. Limestone? There was none around Bradford. Not on the surface anyway. The well? Could they have climbed up it somehow?

  She had to go.

  This time taking the direct route, Magdala headed straight for the periscopic array room. What was Dean Bruce’s plan? Clearly, replacing Dwayne’s practical materials was part of it, but cairnite, enxofric salt, and secretly cast iron plates didn’t hint at a clear goal. Well except that, as noted, adding pressure to enxofric salt produced a gas that heated upon contact with air, and while cold cairnite was safe, hot cairnite reacted with iron, and…

  Oh, they were having Dwayne build a bomb, one powerful enough to kill not just him but also the Royal Consort, the Earth Sage, and the head of one of the top merchant families in the Queendom. Magdala had to tell someone, the Royal Guards or the Earth Sage. However, the cenobites had mentioned signals and spares, which hinted at the existence of a backup plan. Furthermore, the only senior mages inclined to believe Magdala were Lady Pol, who didn’t yet have any power, and her mother, who wouldn’t arrive until the practicals by which time it would be too late. To stop this, Magdala would either need proof to convince the examiners or find a way to thwart this heinous plan herself.

  Either way, she would need Mei.