Ninety Days of Water

I love the sea on a wet day, when all the world is water. The rain punctures mirrored tidal pools like a shower of revelation, and the horizon where the vast sky meets ocean is a blue-grey line, or else not a line at all. I love the mingled smells of salt and fresh water that sneak around the window panes, and the slippery sounds of a downpour on the rocks outside this cottage. The sea by the village of Lightshale is pervasive. It’s something you live with, rather than beside.

Today, the run-off outside my window fills cups like the one my seaweed infusion sits in, warm and comforting on my desk. The distant thunder and the pattering on the shingled rooftop are cozy- reminders of how small we all are compared with forces of nature. The rumbling out at sea echoes across the water like a war drum for giants clashing in the heavens. Perhaps Gheltar is there, or Cthlaar, the Thunderslinger? The noise evokes primal fear in me, as well as childishness- it’s always fun to have something to hide from.

It wasn’t always like this, though.

I remember when I first arrived at Lightshale Tower. I treated the constant, dripping dampness as a place of exile. The ocean, as I envisioned it then, was either an insufferable parent to moisture, or a sickly, languid, sloshing thing that moved through the arc of the bay in slithering slow motion. It was like a watery millstone, eroding my joy until I was nothing but a vessel for grief, robbing me even of the ability to shed tears unmasked by its greater saltiness.

I saw it as merciless, but only in a stifling, inanimate way. I knew nothing of its vigour and animalism, then. I knew nothing of unbridled force and twilight fathoms- nothing that might make me respect the sea as an adversary. It was merely a wet reflection of the sky, with no wonder or meaning hidden behind its glassy face.

In those days, I learned only one truth about the sea, and that is this. The sea is a trickster. Every resentment you throw at it, it will fling back with a bitter spray. Devious as any rogue, it can spread itself as a trap between headlands, winking and sly, glittering like a thousand teeth in the summer sun. Just as easily, it can spit malice, that glimmering maw yawning to swallow you up. The ocean has many faces and embodies many secrets, but at any one time it shows you only what you are prepared to see.

Before I was the sea’s ambassador, I was a simple scholar, if there can be such a thing. I was and still am a mage from Blackmouth Academy in the green, fir-tree covered steppes of the Ashworn Highlands. I need not extrapolate on the mythic character of that establishment, for it is known universally. However, it is truthfully invisible to all but sorcerers, and those whom they invite, or, seldom, capture. Thus, I will tell you something of its appearance for curiosity’s sake.

An impassive, fortified structure of black sandstone carved into screaming arches, Blackmouth predates conventional history. Its towers are spiraling, its lawns sprawling, and its gardens populated by plants more living than they have right to be. Nothing is known of how, or why, its every stone was transported from the far-off Tyrian Bay, barely visible as a shimmering crescent from its highest windows, whence that kind of rock is exclusively found.

The Academy was my home for nearly a decade before my disgrace, and subsequent expulsion, of which I will give my account. Thereupon, I was moved to Lightshale, a far-flung magical outpost which comprised a single, roughly spiraled and naturally occurring calcite structure.

Like a long, horny fingernail bursting through the earth to accuse the sky, the Second School climbs high into the lingering mist over Baxxin Bay. It is so lofty that, even across half the continent, its peak was visible to me as a student at Blackmouth. On clear days, I had often crouched in the arches of tower windows, or hung about the rooftops with the gargoyles. There, I was transfixed by the marvelous vistas spilling out around the elevated tableland in all directions, like a dais around a podium. They were a mosaic from my perspective, a masterpiece comprised of all the finest emeralds and sapphires, veined with shining cobalt and framed all around with strings of pearls.

As a wide-eyed Apprentice, and later as a book-bound Adept of Runes, I had never once imagined that I would be sent out into that mosaic world. Not properly. Though I had made a brief foray into adventure as a Journeyman, I had never been without roots. I had never really been sent away. I had never been on my own, before I was an exile.

I arrived at Lightshale with little else but shame as my baggage, and was quickly shunted aside. Even in this quiet outpost, I discovered, work could always be found for the Masters to bury themselves in when I was around. Nobody wished to inherit my embarrassment.

I wasn’t allowed to climb higher than the first few floors of the weathered spire. Those coils I could explore I found resembled a series of caves, with caverns and passageways stretching deep underground, where the candles in them ceased to be lit, and the howling of the wind through the upper tiers became a dull, faraway hum. Eventually, the labyrinth became twisted and confused, with some tunnels ending in dead ends, and others in pools of water too black to risk wading through. I imagined that, at some point, the whole building, if it could so be called, met with entrances to the open ocean. It seemed less than secure. Although, how was I to know?

With little to do inside, I found myself driven outdoors, where I relished the gales and the lashing rain as an excuse for misery. I frequently wandered the bleak stretch of beach, braving the stinging spray of the waves and drawing the hood of my uniform robe -still the black of Blackmouth- tight to protect my face from barrages of icy needles.

Thus I had my first encounters with the ocean- the real ocean. The sea, I discovered, was not the pleasant, tame blue portrayed in paintings, but the wild, unruly mistress of sailors’ songs. Initially, I hated her. I loved the earth, the rich aromas of soil and pine-needles and the predictability of solid ground. The mountain air, with all its clarity and freshness, was my friend. The sun, not the wily tide, was my hourglass.

Most of all, however, I loved to be dry, and desired the same for my parchment. Runes were my passion, and I had a love of words that transcended mere syllables. I coveted every crafted stroke of calligraphy, every bold and powerful, magic-laden line. I lived for the patterns that brought fresh dimensions to the page, and that shaped reality in ways that poetry and composition can only aspire to do. Though, naturally, as my chosen love ran its course, I conquered those, too.

In the cool, dusty confines of Blackmouth’s eastern tower, I had cultivated a menagerie of spells- a stable more civilised than that of any Beastmaster Adept. Inky sigils twisted over my pages like tentacles. They squirmed in the depths of my subconscious, knotting themselves around my heart like so many, slimy hagfish from the distant bay. They spoke of submarine forces, of kraken and other leviathan I might compel in an instant, but all the while I contemplated them I remained free from the ocean's cold and wetness.

Other scribblings were lured from library books on my command. If I read lazily, or was distracted, they would lift off their parchment, drawn partway free by my hesitancy. I had an affinity for all of the various runes and inscriptions, and they would hover easily at my bidding. Angular and venomous they quivered, tasting the atmosphere like viper’s tongues. There were dark sigils, fine, misty symbols and runes that burned like fire, or were warped like red-hot iron in a forge. The ink of my favourites ran in my veins, but they all perished, dissolving easily, in a place like Lightshale.

This, my superiors must have known when they chose the destination of my ‘transfer’. Barely any work with delicate kinds of parchment is done in the Second School, which was another reason for the lack of tasks to occupy me, besides the fact that I wasn’t trusted there. Only coarse papers and fabrics survived in the humid air, so my most finely tuned powers were useless to me. Undoubtedly, Master Ulrik had turned his mind to this, and had smiled as he designed my punishment, his thin lips a curved slit in his scarred face...

No matter.

Suffice to say, I was not initially glad of the wet weather. In the sheeting rain, which soaked through any garment, I was more vulnerable than the others at Lightshale. Even the fresh Apprentices, some of whom had come in from the farmlands and the sunny deltas, didn’t shiver with the same thoroughness, as if the cold passed right through their bones. None of them slaved in heavy, woolen robes, and none of them were unprepared, as I was.

Yet, sometimes, it is the very state of vulnerability that forces us to accept new things, to re-examine old prejudices, and to forge unlikely alliances. Inevitably, perhaps, the sea grew on me, beating down my resistances as she pounded flat the sand I traversed, and caused the cliffs, over the course of millennia, to crumble. Giving in was my only option besides consuming bitterness, and far less likely to destroy me in the long run.

Eventually, I found something in her blackness and her brine to soothe me. The sea, I found, was in her more violent moods as hateful as I was. Like a doomed lover, she rushed at the cliffs, dashing herself to salt and spray. She foamed like a rabid beast, seething and sucking in the worn hollows of her prison, and tossing angry spittle at those who came to comfort her. She was black as jet and malic, and like storm clouds in a darkened sky, she roiled and heaved. A rebellious captive, she would not be contained.

This similarity was enough to tie us, in my mind, so that even on calmer days, the water became a source of enchantment for me. I began to wonder what lay beneath the surface, and as I made gradual discoveries, my personification of my neighbour fleshed itself out. I learned that, like the octopi she concealed, the sea could squeeze herself into any cavity. She could be playful.

On calm days, she would smooth herself into a glistening mirror, upturned to catch the gulls and ribboned clouds. When it was warm, she would become a glassy lens, distilling bands of light that filtered down to describe creeping sandbars, shimmering fish and skittering crabs. Some of these I saw in sketches, or in the skeletons and carapaces that were commonplace decorations in Lightshale, though faded artifacts failed to convey even a fraction of the beauty such creatures must possessed when they were alive and safe from the lecherous air. I knew this for a certainty, because I also glimpsed the submarine world myself.

Through long hours spent ignored in the catacomb-like library, I uncovered a spell that allowed underwater breathing with just a few ritual items. Once equipped, I quickly discovered turtles with shells like polished jade, ghost-like manta rays and forests of thick, ropey kelp, the tips of which brushed the surface light, but whose roots plunged deeper than any anchor. I found starfish as large as cushions basking on the continental shelf, and barbed snails that lurked like assassins in the shallows. Yet, these were not the strangest things. Inside dark caves, which recklessness drove me into, I found chimeras of fin and flipper, scale, torso, blowhole and tentacle. Eels swallowed the currents with hinged jaws. Ruffs of lace framed the floating heads of cephalopods with tiny wings, while fish swam with suckered trunks for noses, and hard beaks that curled devilishly.

I also learned two further things about the sea.

Firstly, the sea is a rogue. She throws a blanket over the human consciousness, so that the truth about her rarely appears in storytelling. She is like a smiling courtesan, outwardly calm, but scheming internally. She wears a camouflage of reflections, and hides behind a rippling fan.

Secondly, and more importantly, the sea is a temptress. She tugs at hearts like objects caught in her lapping tide, and the further out you wade, the stronger her current pulls you. She has the full lips of clams and the long eyelashes that fringe anemones. The shimmering shoals of fish that swarm about her are her sequined shawls. The white sand is her skin, and the pink coral her rosy cheeks. Her siren tongue whispers inside every conch that washes up on shore.

Within weeks of my arrival, I found solace in the water. I often turned my back on the sheltered caverns, where even in the library, the echo of dripping water could be heard, in favour of the wide outdoors. I started to believe that there was little books could teach me that I hadn’t already learned. Certainly, there were innumerable spells I did not know, but they all followed the same magical and metaphysical theories.

There had to be something more.

There was.

It has been three months now since I first set foot in Baxxin Bay- ninety days of water. Two lunar cycles have charted the tug of the moon on the tides, mapping the rhythm of ebb and flow that is just one instrument in an ongoing piece of celestial music. It’s difficult for me to believe that so much has happened in that time. Even my measure of believability has been stretched, so that I fear it may never return to its previous state, and I will for the remainder of my life be incapable of surprise. Yet, perhaps that might not be such a terrible thing.

I’ll leave it for you to decide. This has been the introduction to my tale, which I feel is worthy of catalogue, and which I am personally compelled to write. Now, however, my drink grows cold, and so I shall end my chapter here.

In the morning, I’ll tell you where it all began. It has been a long session, and my injured hand aches with the effort of commanding a pen. I am still weary, and may require days, or even weeks, before my health is restored.

Soon enough, you’ll understand.



Precisely ninety days ago, I lay on my back in one of a series of caves, through which the wind whistled and the sea wailed. Blue light filtered in through portholes like the eyelets of abalone shells, which were set into stone as weathered and lined as driftwood, while bands shadows painted the curves of the room, lengthening and darkening as daylight sloshed in. I seemed to float amongst the shadows, having none of my own to anchor me.

I might have been suspended on my cot of weeds, surrounded by echoes and effigies, alone in my detachment. My arms were folded behind my head, and my eyes traced and retraced an insignia of twins set into one of the natural stone walls- a pair of seahorses, locked together like hinged clamshells. The spiny arches of their segmented backs were in form and texture the perfect opposite of the smooth, bald rock against which they had been mounted.

Two sets of runes were engraved on a chunk of black sandstone beneath the two carved coral animals. When joined together, they read Tide Hollow.

I couldn't help but wonder who had made the tiny plaque.

Black sandstone is a sacred building material. Because of its inherently magical properties, and its imperviousness to spell damage, only sorcerers are permitted to use it. This was one of the terms of the original Pact between Blackmouth, the first and then only Academy, and the Emperor. I have seen first-hand the utility of the substance. Even at Blackmouth, where the Apprentices scrawled their initials in the library desks and defaced every other wooden surface, no matter how ancient or significant, the polished, ink-black walls of the castle remained unmarked. This was not for want of trying on the parts of my peers- attempts to graffiti the Academy's walls were as integral a part of Apprenticeship as all other modes of vandalism.

My second thought, as I studied the conjoined seahorses, lulled by the distant, muffled howling of a tempest into a thoughtful hibernation, was that Tide Hollow was not a label I could directly connect with Lightshale. Lightshale was the most recently established of the three schools and, as far as I had a way of telling, had always simply been Lightshale Academy or Lightshale Tower. It had not had a previous moniker, nor was it built on the site of an earlier establishment. Why, then, I wondered, would anyone think to engrave such a label on this most symbolic of stones? It could not have been a mark made with ease, and so it must have had some meaning.

With sleep as elusive as everything else seemed to be in Lightshale's transient caverns, I hopped out of my bunk with the intention of doing some research. While the humidity dissolved most fragile papers, and the salt poisoned the inks required by a runesmith of my calibre, there were still places for research in the Tower.

The many tunnels that comprised the school turned and twisted, bending like fishhooks and sloping sometimes uphill and sometimes down, but never in a manner consistent with gravity. It was easy to become lost, and even to forget that there were such things as direction, so readily did the spirit of the sea flush out the passageways its body could not reach. It was as though the whole place was liquid; a mess of swirling ideas and submarine creatures dredged too soon from the deep, still ghastly in all their paleness as they writhed, exposed, in the surface world, which was the waking world for me. Skeletons of fish, eels and other, less easily identified things were strung up for decorations, and the candle stumps that lit the passageways were lumped from something white that was not wax. It might have been fat or blubber.

I wandered, sometimes aimlessly and at other times with my goal fully crystallised, through Lightshale's mazes until I eventually came to a library. At least, I called it a library. Though there were several such rooms in the Tower, they resembled nothing like the libraries I had known at Blackmouth, with their erudite dust and aged vellum smells. The libraries at Lightshale were more like repositories for miscellaneous items- half study area and half storage closet. Their walls were lined with more bleached bones and dried out sea creatures. Some had been magically suspended from the ceiling, while others had been crammed carelessly into cupboards. Elsewhere, there were dried corals and enormous seashells, whose labels announced that they belonged to juvenile ammonites which might have grown five strides in breadth, had they lived. There were also displayed the jaw bones of sharks, some of which were propped up against the roughly hewn entrances and exits, so that they became terrifying archways through which visitors were required to step.

It was only in between these objects that any scrolls could be found- jammed into long cases like wine racks, or shoved into the necks of bottles. Even then, they were printed on the coarsest paper available. It was as if Lightshale thought books an obstacle to study. The rest of the library's contents comprised various phials and jars, each of which contained a different lurid potion. Idly, I selected one and examined it. The flask was bulbous and perfectly round except for a flat edge on which it rested lopsided. The shape of an octopus had been sculpted out of black glass, or possibly magically moulded from onyx, and was choking the container in its eagerness to unstopper it. I gave the whole item a shake. When the acid green contents hissed, I immediately replaced it.

'Find what you're looking for?'

The voice was not quite hostile. It belonged, I saw, to a grey-cloaked mage with eyes to match his washed-out, rainy garb, and a wispy, blonde beard like a smear of cloud. Folding his arms across the part of his breast where his garment was ribbed with whale bone, he scowled at my opposite robes.

'I didn't mean to interfere,' I apologised. 'Which library is this?'

The stranger laughed drily. 'How many libraries have you seen?'

'Three,' I replied, confused. Each had been a world apart from the others.

He shook his head. 'There's only one library here,' he said. 'It shifts. Everything shifts, just like the water- according to need and the unseen forces.' He made a fluid gesture with one hand, and I couldn't help but think it the physical equivalent of Blackmouth's many mottos and mantras. 'So, you, a Blackmouth sorcerer, might think that you've seen many libraries, when in fact, there is only this one.'

'And the location...?'

'That also changes. Don't bother to ask where you are.'

Despite his rebuff, the pale stranger was more receptive than most I had encountered. 'Do you know anything about a motif of two seahorses?' I asked him. 'I keep seeing it about the Tower, including in my quarters.'

'Do I know anything about it?' he repeated, sounding highly amused. A thin smile bent his lips. 'I wouldn't be much of a Wavecaster if I didn't. It's the symbol of my Academy.' He looked about to laugh again, but then his expression became grim. He looked me up and down. 'How do you not know of this, being a sorcerer yourself? I would think you no Apprentice.'

'I'm an Adept,' I said.

'All the more shameful, then. Do they teach you nothing of us at Blackmouth, in that fortress of arrogance?'

'We... I know a little. What do they teach you about us?' I countered.

'Nothing,' he replied confidently. 'Nobody at Lightshale needs to teach us anything about you, Blackmouth meddles so incessantly in our affairs. Rare is the year one of you doesn't come here, interfering and spouting praise or criticism. You'd think Blackmouth was the master, and Lightshale merely a smaller, less important fief. Your Master Ulrik will not acknowledge the unique solutions our branch of magic offers. He would impose on us the rules of pact-making, as though there were no higher magic than squabbling with demons.'

Although I was affronted, I could not wholly disagree with such a description of Master Ulrik. 'We are not all like our Masters,' I said cautiously.

The stranger only grunted again, his upper lip puckering in a sneer. 'You do not even read the words above our door,' he complained, raising a long, pale finger that was like so many of the fin bones in the skeletons overhead. 'There!'

I turned my head in the direction of the tooth-lined doorway and read aloud the words that glittered there, as finely as though they had been sprinkled in sand beneath the crystal surface of a pool:



As I read, I gulped, and was immediately conscious of my own lack of a shadow. The line reminded me of the most famous Blackmouth motto- If a hand without a lamp casts no shadow, shut away the light, which pre-dated Tellesing, originating, as though in prophecy, from the Oath itself.

It could not have been a coincidence. Further, while my deformity, which Blackmouth considered a mark of esteem, would have been disguised in one of that castle's dingy libraries, it was painfully obvious in this room. At Lightshale Tower, the tunnels were that was filled with a faint, bluish glow that emanated from nowhere in particular. I shuffled uncomfortably.

'Do you see now?' asked the nameless mage, coldly. 'Lightshale is not a pawn for Blackmouth to control. We do not bow to you. In fact, we may well eclipse you one day, in the manner that only things possessed of shadows can do.'

I opened my mouth to protest, but before I could, the stranger continued. 'We are invested in much greater forces than concern mere men, their souls and their influences,' he said. 'You Blackmouth sorcerers are preoccupied with acquiring tricks for yourselves. You are cheap magicians, twisted by selfishness and ego, so adjusted to living in darkness that you are blind in confronting the Light! You would do well to remember that here, and see if you don't find the experience educational.'

'I'm every bit the sorcerer you are,' I retorted, my initial quest forgotten. 'I'm not the one flinging insults.'

I had expected an explosion, but only a faint malice simmered behind those oyster-grey eyes. 'If you are such,' he proposed, 'and if our ways are truly equal, then prove it.' He flung his arms wide, so that his sleeves folded out like wings. 'Use anything in this room you wish. Astonish me.'

I searched around for something I could utilise with my particular talents. There was the octopus bottle with its venomous liquid. There were jars full of pickled things, slimy squid in a basin and tables lined with upturned shells that served as wells for ordinary ink, but there was nothing I could use to create even a slightly impressive rune. All the ingredients I was used to -crushed insects, powdered semi-precious stones and inks that had been left to ferment, or concocted at full moon, were absent.

'There's nothing,' I said finally. 'I'm an Adept of Runes. I can't use any of this.'

The mage shook his head, clicking his tongue softly. 'You can't,' he intoned, 'or you won't, because your don't consider any of it good enough for you. If you truly cannot, being so limited in your power that a roomful of ingredients won't suffice for you to work a single enchantment, then, well... I pity you.'

He started to turn away, and for a second I hesitated. Just as swiftly, however, I decided to let him go.

The stranger's challenge had soured my interest in the library, and so I tore through it in the opposite direction. I felt the eyes of every dead creature, and the eyeless sockets of every gruesome, resurrected wreck of bones, mocking me on the way out. Fortunately, there were no other Lightshale mages around. Indeed, although I knew that there were a large numer, I had encountered few in my brief first days in the Tower. Mostly, I saw them at meal times. They slipped from location to location as if by teleportation, or else they deliberately sensed and avoided me. Thus, the caverns seemed strangely empty. At times they were less a conduit for the tide, an organ for the sea's music or a series of organic vessels, and more like an immense sewer- a distasteful and abandoned network of pipes whose impossible labyrinth wove a nest for Death. Every drip echoed. Every footstep I made rang out loudly, determined to leave an impression, in case it was my last.

Tide Hollow, I thought. It was certainly apt. I had been a fool to think my quarters in Lightshale cozy. Truly, it was nothing if not a hollow place. It no longer had even a basic level of warren-like comfort for me.

Like a rabbit flushed from its burrow, I scurried out of the matrix into the grim outdoors, where the grey-streaked sky was as close as it ever got to being day-lit. There, I stumbled along the shore, letting the wind catch my cloak so that it blew out behind me where my shadow should have been. My robes scraped the sand whenever the wind let them go, trailing a line like a snake's furrow, winding away from the Tower. I crossed the beach, then the rocky harbour, and then uneven banks of tussock grass, before the shore finally opened onto a wide cove. Here the sea was a restless, lumpy mass like a thick stew.

For a moment, I stood buffeted on the hilltop, my stomach lurching in time with the sea. I didn't recognise my surroundings. Indeed, I had no idea where I was. A cluster of shacks and cottages huddled together, clinging like limpets to the low cliff that skirted the beach, out of the immediate reach of the bitterest gales.

Out in the roiling stew, I thought a squall might be brewing. They often sprang up quickly, with one echoing in Lightshale's caverns every other day. I decided to make my way towards this sheltered spot. As I got closer, I made out the rotting boards of walkways slicked with oil, docking posts and dinghies at risk of drowning, bucking and pulling at their tethers like trapped horses. Nearer still, fat ropes lay coiled like snakes, while the opaque amber windows of the houses made faint coronas of the candlelight behind them. Nobody was outside, with the exception of one person.

Alone on the crumbling pier that seemed to serve as both dock and fishing hole, a heavily robed figure was reeling in a rope. His clothes were black, as mine were, so deeply lightless that there was no misplacing their colour, even in silhouette. The cut of the hood that covered his head was unmistakable.

'Hey!' I picked up speed just as the wind did, half striding and half stumbling as it snatched my voice away. 'Hey,' I repeated, but the man -for I was certain that it was a man in my uniform- did nothing to indicate that he had heard me.

I started running towards the dock, but I had always been a slow, ungainly runner. The salty air stung the back of my throat and made my lungs ache. By the time I reached the place where the boats were tethered, the stranger was gone, having freed a mount and pushed it out into the storm. The squall picked up, the mists rolled in, and there was nothing but a banner of fog where he had been.



There's something about aroma that evokes recollection, as though scents are infused with memories.

Mealtimes were most aromatic at Lightshale, and so I was most heavily burdened by loss at those times. I missed the Adepts' dining hall at Blackmouth. I missed the heady smells of beer, the sweet stickiness of spilled things, and the rich, oaky whiff of the long trestle tables scuffed, scarred and stained not just by generations, but by centuries of mages. I missed the smell of history, which was lacking at the Second School.

I also missed the sound of singing, drunken or otherwise, which was most absent when Lightshale's howling winds made their voices heard. I missed solid walls of comforting stone in place of curious, light-bending tunnels. I missed the warmth of firesides and fire ciders, and the arcs of errant flame my colleagues threw around when they were rowdy. I missed the flavours and textures of meat, fowl, potato and tuber- the satiating fruits of the earth.

My loathing of Lightshale's pitiful offerings was foremost in my mind, once I pushed my longing for the past away. I poked dejectedly at a boiled sea slug, which, for all its lack of bones and exercise, was less tender than any of the succulent dishes Blackmouth might have served me. Scrutinising the slug, which I had been assured was a healthy shade of grey, I thought that I would never encounter anything saltier, or less appetising. Eventually, I gave up, and set my fork down with a clatter.

It was useless- there was nothing I could get here that was to my tastes, on account of all the salt. The salt of the sea permeated every part of the Tower, including its food.

Unfortunately for me, the one similarity between mealtimes at Blackmouth and Lightshale was their public nature. In a larger, tide-worn cavern, I shared a bench with an assortment of Adepts, Journeymen and Apprentices. Space was less segregated here- all ranks, both men and women, mingled. Across from me, two young mages whom I guessed to be Journeymen were giggling at what I guessed must have been my crumpled, contorted expression, for I could not decide which part of my face I wanted furthest from the slug.

One of the mages was slender as a reed, with strands of hair that fell out of her hood like corn silk. The other was plump, with lips like a bass' and fingers that put me in mind of sea cucumbers, and were probably covered in the juice of such. He broke his chuckling occasionally to lick their reddish stains.

'Haven't you heard?' said the first, who was so insubstantial that she must have been an Aircaster. There was a taunting hopefulness in the way she asked the question.
Simultaneously with tormenting my food, I had been tossing up whether to ask her and her companion about the twin seahorses. I quickly decided against it.

'It would be ever so cruel if they did not tell him,' remarked the second mage, who possessed a mass that would have lent itself to Tidecasting. The glitter in his beady eyes told me that he practically relished that cruelty. He sucked on his fingers again, leaning back in a way that entreated me to beg information of him.

Thinking the fat mage indulged enough, I said nothing.

The girl slouched limply, with satisfaction only glowing on her face. The rest of her was as dry and bleached as the decorative bones in the library, or any part of the shale from which the Academy took its name.

'There's another one coming,' she said, in a voice like one of the shell wind chimes stung around the more sheltered parts of the Tower. Her smile was a cat's, wide and purring. This time, I could not resist the bait.

'Another what?'

'Another one of you, from Blackmouth.'

Another exile, then, I thought. I wondered who it might have been- Alfonse, who was noble but timid, and never would have defended himself against punishment? Roseanna, who was haughty and proud? Or maybe it was the Lady Morganna, who had originally found only glares for the Protocol, and held her tongue between her teeth? There were other rebels at Blackmouth, I knew, but I could not think of any reckless enough to get caught.

Suddenly, I thought of the black figure by the docks. Even heavily robed, it was not round enough to be Alfonse, nor short enough for Roseanna. I had never seen Lady Morganna wear uniform- she and her exclusively female pupils dressed in a garb all their own, wearing leaves like crowns and insect wings like sun-catchers. It couldn't have been her. It couldn't have been any of them...

I only noticed when the thin mage giggled that I had knocked over a shell of powerful saline solutions- even the alcohol at Lightshale was laced with salt. It would have been enough to kill anyone without magic in their veins.

'The boy came down this morning. I saw him,' the Aircaster announced, gloatingly.
I resisted the temptation to ask her what he had looked like, or whether she knew his name. This was made easier when I remembered the squall, and the leaky boat that had been pushed out into the water. Surely, that vessel was doomed. It would have taken an immensely powerful sorcerer to steer it to safety.

Irritation prickled in the Aircaster's voice as she stabbed a spiky urchin with her fork, splitting its armour. Her facade of sweetness cracked as well. 'Don't you want to know?' she demanded. 'You'll be running errands with him, soon. Now that there are two of you, I heard that Master Illin intends to put you to work. So... don't you want to know?'

I pretended that I didn't. Maybe Blackmouth's newest exile had chosen death over dishonour, I thought. The Aircaster and her larger friend watched me suspiciously. I had not the heart to tell them that the much anticipated punch line of their handpicked jokes was dead.