Sebastien

Month 12, Day 9, Monday 9:00 a.m.

Sebastien spent the remainder of the day studying. She let her magic-casting facilities rest, except for a single use of the planar ward against a scrying attempt. The coppers seemed to be trying at random times, hoping to catch her off guard, but with the way the ward worked, it would start to veil her even without her conscious aid, and the stabbing feel of it in the skin of her back when it activated was impossible to ignore or sleep through.

After a couple days of research, she determined that a map-based location divination was her best option. Her blood was almost certainly at the coppers’ base, and Oliver was doubtful of their ability to access it. But that simply wasn’t acceptable. There had to be a way to actually solve the problem, and pinpointing the location of her blood was the first step to creating the plan to do so.

The spell she eventually settled on was meant to precisely determine the location of the separated piece of her blood on a map. With multiple castings, she could use more detailed, close-up maps to determine its location with increasing precision. Once she knew exactly where it was, she could destroy it.

‘Maybe I could have a Lino-Wharton raven messenger fly in an explosive potion, or force my blood to escape from its confines with a telekinetic spell, or even get Liza’s help with a switching spell or something. It is impossible for them to ward against everything.’

It also helped that the map-locating spell didn’t require any particularly expensive components.

That weekend, she bought alchemy ingredients at Waterside Market again, along with the ingredients for the scrying spell, and then spent almost the entire weekend brewing for the Stags to try and pay off at least some of the interest on her debt. She focused on the more intensive potions that Oliver’s enforcers would need, like the philtre of darkness and revivifying potion, as well as the blood-clotting potion, which she could produce a lot more of in a single batch. Every enforcer should be supplied with at least two.

Despite her inability to channel large amounts of energy through her new Conduit, she could still complete potions in smaller batches. They were worth more than many of the more common-use potions sold in the Verdant Stag’s little alchemy shop, and she made a single extra dose in a couple of her batches, for herself, so she still came out ahead.

It was likely that getting her blood from the coppers would take a combination of money and power, neither of which she had at the moment, especially since her current Conduit couldn’t channel the full power of her Will. Retrieving her blood, like figuring out a solution to her sleep problem, would likely be a long-term project.

Monday, in Intro to Modern Magics, Professor Burberry introduced the color-changing spell as their project for the week. It was labeled a transmogrification spell, and they were all given half a dozen different items in bright colors to use as components, plus a little vial of yak urine, which was apparently known for its ability to help dyes stay color-fast. They would be casting the spell on a white mouse with the intent to overcome its natural resistance and change the color of its fur.

The rest of Westbay’s group of Crown Family friends had been interacting with Sebastien more frequently, likely spurred on by the boy’s own sudden amicability toward her.

They sat around her, Ana on one side and Rhett Moncrieffe on the other, and the rest of the group scattered close by. After a single silent nod to Sebastien, Moncrieffe turned his attention to the pretty girl on his other side, who blushed under the weight of his attention. Sebastien was relieved he wasn’t as pushy as Westbay.

As Burberry lectured on the details of the color-change spell, Waverly Ascott tried to read a book on summoning under the table, while Brinn Setterlund gently covered for her and alerted her whenever she needed to pretend to be paying attention to the professor.

When the time came to cast the spell, Ascott succeeded without much trouble despite her lack of attention, then returned to her surreptitious reading, her straight black hair shifting forward to hide her face.

Ana caught the direction of Sebastien’s gaze and leaned a little closer to murmur, “She dislikes Burberry because Burberry is prejudiced against witches.”

Now that Ana mentioned it, Sebastien realized that there had been hints of that in Burberry’s lectures. Sorcerers reigned supreme in their professor’s mind. “But…Waverly is a sorcerer?” Sebastien murmured, turning her eyes back to the caged mouse in front of her whose hair they were supposed to be turning different colors.

“For now, yes. The Ascott Family doesn’t approve of her interests, but she’s preparing to make a contract with a powerful Elemental. She’ll have succeeded by the time we finish with the University, if not sooner.”

Sebastien was intrigued, and could admit she respected that kind of passion, even if she herself preferred the personal control of sorcery. Instead of a celerium Conduit, witches channeled magic through their bound familiars, which could be tamed magical beasts, creatures, or even sapient beings conjured from one of the Elemental Planes. There was less chance for a witch to lose control or go insane from Will-strain, as their familiar took on some of the burden of casting, and the witch would always find casting spells that were within the natural purview of her familiar’s magic easier. But in contrast to that, spells that were antithetical to the familiar’s natural abilities would be more difficult.

Witches gave up versatility for focused power and safety. And for some witches, maybe for companionship.

Sebastien returned her focus to her own spellcasting, but was distracted again as Alec Gervin snapped at the student aid leaning over his shoulder.

“I did exactly what you said! You’re bungling the explanation. It’s useless, I can’t work with you. Send over the other guy,” he said, jerking his head at the other student aid with a glower.

The student aid seemed taken aback, but Gervin was resolute and got his way.

To Sebastien’s surprise, Westbay waved the reprimanded student aid over and made a murmured apology for his friend.

Sebastien grunted in disgust. “Surprising, that you and he share the same last name,” she murmured to Ana.

Ana smiled demurely, her eyes remaining on her own mouse, which was cowering in the corner of its little cage. “Alec was never taught finesse. He’s failing several classes, and he’s afraid of what’s going to happen when the Family finds out. His father, my uncle, is a horrid man. I’ve no particular love for Alec, but it’s best to think of him like an abused dog. He lashes out at strangers because his master lashes out at him.” Her smile grew crooked, a little wicked. “He’s like a dog in many ways.”

‘That’s no excuse,’ Sebastien thought.

But as they were filtering out of the class, Sebastien brushed against Gervin, who was still glowering with those bushy black eyebrows. “Our student aid, Newton Moore, does paid tutoring,” she murmured to Gervin. “He taught me a spell, and I found his explanation to be very clear. Perhaps you’d prefer working with him?” Alec Gervin could afford it, and from what she’d learned, Newton could use the coin.

Gervin scowled at her suspiciously, but she was already pushing past him.

On Tuesday, after Sympathetic Science, Sebastien stayed to talk to Professor Pecanty while the other students left.

“How can I help you, young man?” he asked in that lilting cadence that made everything he said sound like poetry.

“I’ve got a couple questions about transmogrification.” He nodded, so she jumped right in. “Does it actually matter the conditions when components are gathered? What’s the difference between morning dew gathered before the sun rises or afterward? Or from morning dew and a bit of steam from a boiling cauldron?”

Pecanty’s genial smile fell away, and he seemed to puff up a bit. “I think you’re a little too young to be questioning the achievements in understanding of all those that have come before you. Surely you can see that the intrinsic properties of morning dew are very different than steam off your cauldron? This is Sympathetic Science, Mr. Siverling. If you still wish to question the expertise of myself and the people who have filled our library with books on the subject, please wait to do so until you are at least a Master of Sorcery.”

Sebastien’s shoulders tightened, and her chin rose involuntarily, even though she knew it wasn’t a good idea to challenge a professor who was so obviously unimpressed with her. “Well, what about the different types of transmogrification? Professor Lacer mentioned it. Some of it’s copying a template, and some of it uses ideas that are so vague as to be ungraspable. Are the delineations between different types of transmogrification officially recognized? I’ve never heard anyone talking about that.”

“Transmogrification is all the same. If you do not understand, it is because your foundation is patchy and weak. Understanding builds upon previous learning and enough practice that the feel becomes instinctual. If you are too impatient to put in the long-term effort without succumbing to your need to force the world into your little boxes of classification and order, you will never progress past petty questions that have no answers. Go now, young man, and try to see the beauty in the book of poems I assigned, rather than analyzing every word for its technical definition. Believe me, this type of questioning will not serve you well in my class, or in this craft.” He waved his hand at her and turned away dismissively.

Sebastien’s heart was beating loud in her ears, and she felt her cheeks tingle with blood. Clenching her jaw hard to keep herself from speaking, she strode out of the classroom and up to the second floor, where she’d recently found an out-of-the-way classroom that had at one point been used as a supply room for the elective art classes. One of her pseudo-tome pages made it easy to practice her fabric-slicing spell on one of the walls. She left behind light gouges in the white stone until her anger had dimmed and cooled to embers rather than a fire devouring her rationality.

Panting, she put away the slicing spell page, which was still intact but smoldering slightly, and set up a spell to practice sympathetic divination. She didn’t worry about someone walking in on her. She had locked the door, and besides that there had been enough dust in this room to tell her that it was rarely used and likely unmonitored. She’d cleared out a little corner in the back of the room to practice in. She couldn’t practice this divination in the dorms behind the paltry protection of her curtain, or in the public practice rooms, after all. It was illegal for anyone besides the coppers to sympathetically scry for a human.

The most difficult part of the map-based divination spell was that she wasn’t skilled enough to work past the huge beacon of the blood in her own body.

That was the downside to scrying for her own blood.

The upside was that if it was someone else’s blood, with a weaker sympathetic connection, someone as unskilled and untalented at divination as she was might not have been able to successfully cast the spell.

The first couple dozen times she attempted it, the little dot of spelled mercury she had dripped onto her map of the city made its way to the University, and more specifically, the western edge of the Citadel where the abandoned storage room was. She was scrying herself. “Yay,” she said dully, sagging bag as she released her draw on the special candles the finicky spell required.

It would have been a small silver lining if her ward had activated, but there had only been a small tingle in her back before it fell silent. Apparently it was impossible to cast a divination spell on herself while simultaneously warding one off, as they were strictly opposing thought processes, and her mind couldn’t split into two independent consciousnesses. This meant that she couldn’t simply cast a simple scrying spell on herself whenever she wanted to sneak around without being noticed.

More research revealed a solution to the first problem a couple days later.

She could piggyback on the searching magic of the coppers’ attempt to scry for her to override the pull of the blood in her own body and find the few drops they were using.

Of course, there were wards to stop that kind of thing, but apparently they were expensive, and generally not useful for law enforcement, because they had no need to disguise the fact that they were scrying for you. If you found and approached them, it only made their arrest of you easier.

She couldn’t practice that variation successfully until they made an attempt to find her at a convenient time, but she still tried to increase her facility with divination spells. Holding off the scrying attempt at the same time as tracking it back would be very difficult, and if she wasn’t prepared, either of the spells might fail. If the divination failed, she only risked Will-strain, but if the divination-diverting ward failed, she might actually be caught.

She set aside most of her free time all week to practice in the abandoned storage room, prepared to wake early and slip back out to eat breakfast before her first class started.

Her ire with Professor Pecanty flared back to life when she returned to Modern Magics on Wednesday, but she suppressed it.

Professor Burberry used a dab of hair-loss potion on the mice they had used to practice the color-changing transmogrification spell, then used another potion to help the fur regrow.

Some students’ mice grew colored fur, somehow permanently, inherently changed so that that was simply the true color of their fur.

Sebastien’s mice grew back a little splotch of white hair, which stood out starkly on its otherwise rainbow-colored pelt. She felt the uncomfortable prickling of shame as she stared at it. ‘Maybe if Professor Pecanty would actually help me understand, I could do it better,’ she snarled to herself.

Professor Burberry handed out contribution points to those who’d managed to create truly permanent change.

Ana nudged Sebastien, giving her a small smile. “Don’t be too harsh on yourself, Sebastien. I’m sure you can get it, if you try again. It’s not like your grade will be marked down any just because you didn’t manage to imbue the entire mouse with enhanced properties. You did change the color of the fur, and you did it perfectly.”

Sebastien shook her head, and Ana looked like she might keep trying to comfort her, or encourage her, or whatever she was trying to do, but then Westbay came up, holding his flower-patterned rodent, and distracted her. “Do you think the colors would pass down to a child, if I bred it with a white mouse? Or what if we bred a red mouse and a green mouse? Do we get brown mice babies?” He reached into his pocket and fed the creature a little piece of bread roll that he’d taken from breakfast.

“I don’t know, but I wonder if brightly-colored rabbits or other docile creatures might make a good gift product for children,” Ana said. “My little sister would probably love a bright pink mouse.”

Sebastien, with what she thought was incredible self-control, did not throw herself into practicing the color-change spell outside of class, maintaining her focus on preparing for the reverse-scry.

The only side project she allowed herself was making sure she had a dozen ink spells drawn on parchment and ready to go. She didn’t have the time to make real progress with the paper design, or practice any of the new spells she’d found until they were second nature, but she did have a couple useful ones that she’d been long familiar with. Having them ready in her satchel made her feel a little more prepared, even if they probably wouldn’t make much of a difference.

On Thursday morning, she got a little too engrossed with practice in the abandoned classroom on the second floor and forgot to stop for breakfast. She hurried back to the dorms to put the divination components back in the chest at the foot of her bed before History of Magic. Professor Ilma always jumped right into the lecture right away, and Sebastien would miss out if she was even a minute late.

In her hurry, she wasn’t paying attention to where she was walking, and ran right into Tanya outside the dorm as they both turned a corner.

Tanya was surprising solid, and rather than falling or stumbling, she spun around, snatching the spelled paper bird she had dropped out of the air before it could flutter feebly away. She didn’t bother to stop, simply snapping, “Watch where you’re walking, Siverling. You could put a lady’s shoulder out.”

“I’m sorry!” Sebastien called after her.

Tanya waved an uncaring hand in the air without looking back, her head bowed to read whatever message had been folded inside the spelled piece of paper.

As Sebastien grabbed the homework she’d left in her trunk and emptied her school bag of the bulky divination components, she heard the shuffle of hard leather on stone. She whipped her head around to see Westbay slouching against the side of her little stone cubicle, his chestnut hair perfect and his grey eyes staring out over the seemingly constant bags of fatigue under them, which seemed to be genetic, because he slept almost nine hours every night.

She shoved the lid of her chest shut, turning to him. “What do you want, Westbay? Shouldn’t you be getting to class?” The rest of the dorm was almost completely empty, except for a few students rushing off to their first class. With the sprawling expanse of the University grounds, they were already likely to be late unless they ran.

He shrugged. “It’s just History of Magic. A different section than whatever class you’re in. My professor won’t even realize I’m gone. Say, have you read any more of those Aberford Thorndyke stories I lent you? I got the latest issue delivered. I can pass it on once I’m finished, if you’re up to speed on the timeline.”

Sebastien was torn between rolling or narrowing her eyes. ‘He’s not one to skip classes so nonchalantly. Is he truly that desperate for someone to talk about his little detective stories, or is he fishing? How long was he standing there?’ She reached for the curtain beside the opening to her dormitory cubicle. ‘Best to be calculated in my response, let him feel comfortable enough to give himself away.’ “Sure, but I’m not finished with the stack you gave me before, so there’s no—” Her tongue stumbled to a halt and her eyes widened for a moment before she controlled her expression.

Westbay looked at her with confusion.

“I just remembered something. Homework. Sorry, Westbay, no time to talk. You should go to class even if your professor isn’t noting your attendance. History is important.” With that rushed tumble of words, she pulled the curtain shut right in his face and turned back to the trunk.

She was being scried.

As she pulled the components for the reverse-scrying spell back out again, she listened to Westbay’s footsteps retreat.

She poked her head out when she had everything laid out on the floor of her cubicle, just to make sure she was alone, then turned back around. The timing was lucky. Many of the most time consuming parts of the divination were in the prerequisite spells cast on the components like the drop of mercury and the map. Without being artifacts themselves, the magic would wear off somewhat quickly, but they were still ready to go at the moment.

As quickly as she could, she drew the spell array, placed the candles, dabbed a bit of herb smoke around, and began to scry. Carefully.

Half her attention was toward feeding the divination-diverting ward in her back, deflecting attention and slipping away from the prying tendrils of the rival sorcerer. That part was easier, and didn’t require the same focus that reaching out through space and the ripple of magic for a tiny missing piece of herself. She couldn’t get too focused on the spell, or her ward would grow weak enough that they might find her, but splitting energy and concentration like this was not something that came naturally to humans.

It was like trying to play two different songs on the piano at the same time. The reverse-divination was difficult and complicated, while empowering the ward took only a couple plinking notes, but it was still almost impossible to keep them going together. Trying to cast two actual spells at the same time would have taken the equivalent of four hands, and while she was reluctant to say that it was impossible, it would require both spells to be merged into one, more complicated spell with multiple outputs, rather than two separate spell arrays.

The drop of spelled mercury moved over the map, and at first her insides tightened with frustration, because it was just finding her again, but then it rolled right over the spot where it usually stopped.

The mercury settled at a spot she judged to be slightly northwest of the student dorms.

She held the spell for a couple more seconds, staring at the map. Then she let the magic go, shoving everything haphazardly into her trunk, uncaring of the hot candle wax spilling onto her belongings. She didn’t bother with a locking spell, because it was too different than the magic of the planar ward, and she couldn’t cast one without dropping the other.

‘My blood is at the University.’

She shook her head. ‘But the coppers have it, don’t they? I expected to find it at their station, or maybe at the prison or even a black site where they hold important evidence. So why is it here? Here, and at Eagle Tower, where the professors and high level students carry out experiments?’ She hurried from the room and out of the building, moving with purpose but without panic.

‘It could have been here all along, if my information was just wrong from the beginning, but I don’t think so. Did they give my blood to the University in hopes the diviners here could do a better job? The University does have a stake in my capture, after all. The book was theirs. But would the coppers give up such a big win? It seems unlikely. They’re tenacious, as evidenced by the continued attempts to find me despite their ongoing failure.’ She walked along the winding path into the cultivated woods between the Citadel and Eagle Tower. The scrying attempt was getting stronger as it went on, and had already been going for several minutes, longer and harder than most she’d fended off before.

‘Maybe that’s it. They’ve failed to find me and this is their next move. A better spell array than whatever they have access to at Harrow Hill, stronger thaumaturges, maybe more than one casting the spell at the same time. And they’re close to me, even if they don’t realize it. That’ll make it easier. This is their sharper knife, their bigger hammer, the thing they pull out when they really need a win.’

As Eagle Tower appeared through the veil of the trees, she looked up at the looming obelisk of pale stone. ‘If they’re powerful enough to find me, I have to stop them. Somehow.’