Declan was the first through when the glint array activated, which made him the first to stumble completely off the platform and for the first time, didn’t wind up face down in the mud. It wasn’t that the pain was less, it was that being ground up to atoms and reconstituted had a gradual effect on his brain. It was terrible. Then it was over.

  A heavy mist covered the academy, making visibility near zero and turning a slight chill into one that seeped into his bones. Declan carried only his backpack. The Rune Atlas would arrive with a shipment during the week. He also had a schedule of House Taylor deliveries to the Academy, times he could access the glint as part of an existing group. House Taylor was only halfway across the bowl, but in the mist, Declan was a sucker for blazed beasts.

  It made him wonder about the swarm, which made him want to sprint ahead. Instead he waited until a pair of arcanists volunteered to escort him—with a condition. They wanted to go straight across the scab, the better to actually be attacked.

  Near the bottom of the bowl, a group of arcanists gathered, surrounding the focus dome. All of them looked worn, exhausted, sallow skin and stumbling.

  “What happened to them?” Declan asked.

  “Lockdown’s only been lifted for an hour,” one guard said. “This swarm was weak, waste of time. Fucking flits and acid slugs everywhere. ArCore grabbed barrels and rolled them down the bowl, crushing slugs by the hundreds. Any blazed beast that can’t kill you isn’t worth killing.”

  “Flit?” Declan asked. He had a sinking feeling about the source of the barrels. “What’s a flit?”

  One of the arcanists placed his hands together, flapping like a butterfly. “Paper-thin monsters with Feather Flight runes and a mild hallucinating bite. More like an love-tap. Rip them apart and the rune shard falls out because there’s not enough body to pull it from. I killed one with the front door of House Perth.”

  They climbed the gentle hill of the scab, one of the capstones rising as a black monolith in the mist. Just beyond lay House Ariloch, windows bright in the fog.

  “Did you hear that?” one of his guards asked, as a growl echoed. “That sounded like a Slog Leopard. Lucky bastards.”

  “I can probably run across the road. And if you run…” Declan waved as they sprinted into the mist, heading toward the screaming yowl that echoed across the scab.

  Something had ripped the vines from the front of the house, leaving them in a heap, and caught in the iron fence was a butterfly with jagged wings. Purple scales covered the wings in a constantly shifting pattern, and real eyes twisted in its socket as it pulled helplessly at one of its legs.

  Declan smashed it, wincing as the delicate scales on its wings turned out to be razor sharp. The beast gave a squeak and went limp. The abdomen exploded as a shard of rock dropped out. He caught it in midair and pocketed it. The front door was locked, but not barricaded, and when Declan opened, it was to a group of exhausted, smiling arcanists.

  “Declan!” It became a shout, one that brought someone running.

  “We not only survived, we kicked these monster’s asses!” Chen shouted as he emerged from the right hand corridor. “I, Chen the Great, will be a name that goes down House Ariloch history for the most monster kills in a swarm. Ever.”

  “The most assists, maybe,” Hayden added. “It was still a great idea. I’ll give you half-credit on kills.”

  “What happened?” Declan held up a shard for Feather Fall. “I killed one of these and there’s three more hiding on one of the columns out front. How did you kill so many?”

  “Not those,” Chen answered. “You might be asking yourself, Where did our ArCore friends get so many barrels filled with water? Who gave them permission to take them? Who asked only for a share of shards? Shards not tained with mana. Barrels, they have no mana. Chen the Great arranged this. Chen. That’s me. The Great.”

  “I smashed a flit with a frying pan,” Hayden said. “I’m not a battle arcanist but a shard’s a shard.”

  Declan pounded them on the back. “Thank you. It was worth the trip, and I’ll be making more, unfortunately. Chen, thank you. Just this once, I’m going to say it’s fine to go sleep.”

  Chen yawned. “I’ve been up two days and I itch like there’s no tomorrow. I’m too tired to scratch. There’s this off-market alchemist you gotta meet.”

  Declan had only been up a few hours, so he tackled house inventory first. Two new residents, both earth rune specialists, both on a two week ban from House Sanswa and both really hoping to leave before they had to pay dues. There would be more within hours, driven by the stress of the swarm.

  Two rooms had no arclights, the third floor bathroom showers weren’t draining, and there was another leak in the roof. Again.

  It was good to be home. By noon, he at least had the bathroom draining, had settled five fights over shards, found another flit trapped in a broken window and liberated its shard, and bitched at all five people who hadn’t done the most basic of Jackson’s chore list. It wasn’t like Declan expected professional results, but he did want to see effort. Best Effort, like the Taylors demanded would come when he could reliably get Some Effort.

  It was near lunch when he noticed the golden envelope stuck through the crack in his apartment door, which he hadn’t had time to enter due to one emergency after another. It read That dude was disgusting. Thanks for keeping your part of the bargain. Tegan.

  Declan opened the apartment door to find it still intact, not burned, and curiously clean. A lockbox sat on the bed, and inside it were his remaining runes. Again, it smelled…good. Not like he’d slept in filth but the apartment held a musty, dusty smell that all the clean rags in the world didn’t touch. That smell was gone.

  Then he noticed the doorway. More specifically, what wasn’t in the doorway. A mountain of junk had been removed, and now he could enter, turning on the lights, which flickered before fully lighting. The room was no larger than the other half, but what was exposed had been swept clean. That wasn’t everything, because the walls were lined with shelves, workbenches, a workstation that had Declan excited until it turned out to be wooden, not marble. One wall was nothing but glass vials the length of Declan’s finger, all containing stains of long-dried contents. An office chair remained in the center of the room, wiped down to cracked leather. The lights didn’t all work, but if they did, it would be well lit.

  This had been Tegan’s work. Which was to say, she’d paid someone to do it, but she’d protected his runes and now he didn’t even have a pile of vapor bottles under the bed. He could imagine a rune station in place of the workbenches, and set of bookshelves for a growing family of rune atlases. A place that would be his own.

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  But he’d imagine it at lunch with his fellow house arcanists.

  The others were waiting when he arrived, and only now did Declan feel self-conscious. He’d come home dressed in his court gear and compared to the others looked like a boy playing costumes. “Greetings from the Sun Queen, I bid you sit and eat.”

  Roland sat up and fixed him with a deathly stare. “Declan Thorn, of House Ariloch. You want to know how many question I got about who the hell you were, and why there was someone actually associated with a house that has no nobles?”

  “During my registration, I was asked what house I was a member of. I sure as shit wasn’t going to say Perth,” Declan said.

  “Unafilliated!” Eden said. “You just say ‘Unafiliated” and one of a dozen minor houses will take you in provisionally. For a fee, and work you do for their house. You don’t claim membership to the first Noble house. You’re not. You’ve essentially lied on your registration.”

  “Who’s going to tell the Sun Queen that?” Harris asked. “She said, ‘Welcome, Declan Thorn, of House Ariloch.’ By her words, it’s a fact. I don’t want to be the person contradicting an announcement she made out loud in front of the entire court. How many times has she spoke in the last sixty years? The last century? Sure, you hear her but not with your ears.”

  Declan was certain it wasn’t an accident. She’d spoken to him mentally afterwards, but meant for everyone to hear and know. “I’m not worried about it. I came home to find my house survived a swarm without me, which is good, because I am going to need to go to the Taylor Keep regularly. I have a sort of tutor for Rune Forging.”

  Harris stared. “I’m the Inscriptionist; stay in your house. You really want to craft higher tier tunes?”

  “You really want to learn to inscribe them?” Declan countered. “I destroyed so many Gathers during the first lesson it made me sick. I lost three out of every four because she insisted I ‘follow the process.’”

  “You already forged a rune.” Harris sounded crestfallen. “By hand or with a station?”

  “Both. They’re on shit ore, but I made tier one Gathers.” Declan was desperate to help his friend recover some sense of purpose. “How do I get it off rock so crumbly I broke one combining it?’

  “That. That is Inscription,” Harris said, gaining energy. “Forging runes on quality material destroys the material. It’s better to forge them on their natural ore and then inscribe them onto something better. And some rune combinations work better on different materials or shapes. I’ll come by tonight with the chart and my posters. Give me three hours and I can give you a foundation of the basics of materials. In about a month we should be able to talk about the principles behind transfering runes. A year or so and you’d be ready to make your first attempts.”

  “No, I don’t have the skill.” Declan also didn’t have the will, rin, or the interest. He understood the value but it didn’t line up to his strength. “A friend paid to have my second room cleaned out. It’s some sort of apothecary. Grinders, cooktops, drains so heavy I have to wonder what they were draining and an entire wall—hundreds—of ruined products. I don’t think it was Wormy, that guy was an addict. But I think whoever lived there before him was a drug dealer.”

  “I have safety gear for mixing my potions,” Eden said. “You should be careful, it could be dangerous. As in ‘We need a new house arcanist for Ariloch.’ Pay a decontamination team to go in.”

  “I can’t afford to,” he said. “How about we work out a trade? You remove the poisonous stuff, I’ll fix something for you.”

  She glared at him. “I’d have done it for free. But I do have a bathtub that still won’t drain.”

  Declan made the mental change. “You’re the second woman I’ve given a key. If it’s that dangerous, you should be careful, too. I have to go meet Skinner. Then I have History, then I have etiquette. Whose stupid idea was taking classes? Right, it was me.”

  “I wasn’t kidding. I’ll go straight to my lab and then straight to your apartment. If it’s truly dangerous we’ll bring in the alchemy professors. If it’s just normal levels of dangerous I’ll handle it.” Eden had only picked at her tray but now she moved to leave. “House Arcanist’s work is never done. This time, it’s not even my house!”

  “What was your Illumination?” Roland asked. “Mine was exquisite. She spoke in my mind and affirmed everything I live for.”

  “Can I ask what it was? I didn’t understand mine.” Declan waited anxiously.

  “She said ‘You don’t have to do anything.’ The moment she did, I realized, I could get other people to do work for me. I don’t have to do anything.” Roland smiled contentedly.

  “I don’t think you heard her right.” Harris spent the rest of the conversation talking about grades of arcite ore. It was like dying, only more painful.

  Skinner was waiting when Declan arrived, and motioned for him to shut the door. “Interesting day at the court. Interesting day at the Academy. House Sullivan lodged a formal complaint. You’re from their territory, and thus, in their view, an arcanist associated with them.”

  “Tell that to the Sun Queen.” Declan relayed her words to his advistor. “Was I supposed to experience something? Get something? Change something? Everyone keeps asking what my Illumination was and I have no idea.”

  “Don’t waste another thought. Radiant Dawn works different for every person. Just because they experienced it one way doesn’t mean it’s the right way. I am your advisor and I will advise, but as you’ve already learned, I have duties that mean you must steer your career with my guidance. Tell me what I’ve missed.” Skinner sat back and listened.

  Declan told him most everything, leaving out only his choice in Healing Bloom and Tegan’s name. “Help me understand hardening of the mana veins. This sounds bad.”

  “If the veins aren’t prepared to support the arcanist, absolutely. Mana vein strengthening is a critical part of preparing for opening the arcsoul, but like anything, there are tradeoffs.” Skinner then began to actually explain—which was shocking.

  The mana veins moved mana through the body, to the arcsoul or away from the body in the case where an arcsoul wasn’t available, open, or if the body were flooded. To prepare for opening an arcsoul, one treated the channels so they could withstand the pressure without rupturing. This came at a price, as producing enough mana pressure to grow the vessels once the arcsoul was open would be not just difficult, but near impossible. “One could view this as positive. In my view, you were more than adequate. This lays a better foundation for what will come. I would suggest not tempting fate a second time. Instead, we should focus on exercises to strengthen the veins, and then treatments to harden them.”

  “Sounds expensive.”

  Skinner laughed. “It’s not just rin. The supply of venom from ghillas is limited, the pressure to produce already at maximum. Then consider the desire to double the size of the ArCore over the coming year.”

  “So even if I had the coins, which I technically do, I’d be competing with the ArCore candidates. And all of them will have the backing of major houses. Is that venom the only way to prepare veins?” Declan was already considering options. “The library.”

  “The library. Ghilla venom is so effective there hasn’t been good reason to use older methods. But arcanists survived the process and were deadly long before we established trade relationships with Huto.”

  The real problem was one of hours in the day and days in the week. “I want to go back to Taylor Keep to learn. I have shifts in the armory—one tomorrow. I can’t get this damned stone to bind, I might be ready to progress on soul-casting, I actually enjoy history and I need more etiquette if I’m going to have to deal with the houses. On top of being House Arcanist.”

  Skinner remained silent. “As an advisor, I advise. Do you want my advice?”

  “Please.” Declan had been trying to work the schedules.

  “Your House Arcanist duties are most important. Your armory shifts are an obligation you must not let lapse. Etiquette is a combat skill for someone in your position. You’d be a fool to ignore this opportunity to learn from Ava Taylor. She’s not the best but she’s competent and that can make a better teacher.”

  After waiting for more, he realized it wasn’t coming. “History? Soul-casting?”

  “You can learn history on your own,” Skinner said. “It’s the easiest cut of all, I simply needed you to understand the power earned, learned and forgotten. It’s there for anyone to dig up. Do less.”

  “Less what?”

  Skinner glanced around. “Less. Sleep. Relax. Laugh. Don’t ignore what is because you’re longing for what will be. What is our goal? Fast power or the greatest power?”

  It was a more difficult decision. “I want both. I need to be able to protect myself from blazed beasts. I won’t sacrifice my future for now, but I won’t suffer through now for a future that might never come. I want both and I’ll find a way to get it.” Declan was done waiting. “I’ll be by to check for errands but otherwise, you need to send messages. I have a lot to do.” As he left, Declan was certain Skinner was smiling.