MadMaxine

  Kyrae took in the atmosphere of the css as she stood to answer the instructor’s question. A few dozen mia and a half dozen elves coiled and sat around the atrium. Some were looking down on her metaphorically, and most everyone literally as she’d taken a seat close to the stage where the instructor had drawn several incomplete sigil constructs on the chalkboard.

  Ssiina, of course, was giving her a knowing smirk behind glittering golden eyes. The instructor, on the other hand…

  Kyrae couldn’t read him. An elderly nia’el man, he had spoken with a loud, crisp voice despite his small stature. And he’d singled her out.

  Not that she particurly minded—she’d have gdly volunteered an answer. But she couldn’t get her mind on the right path to find it. Instead, she wondered idly about the why.

  Perhaps she’d been chosen because of her family, her css. Perhaps she’d been chosen because she was an elf. Perhaps because she was a woman, or that the rumor mill had somehow made it known she was newbloom.

  From what she’d learned in Phaeliisthia’s library, newbloom women—and men—were treated rather well in her ancestral homend. But here she’d been told it could be seen as a way to grab for social status.

  “Hssen Kyrae, could it be that you do not know the answer?” the instructor said in a tone that cked much of the typical sibince of mian.

  There, a smirk. Cold, unlike her sister’s.

  The answer snapped into pce in her mind. Then the next, and the next. Why would such a simple question be used as entrapment? Perhaps he meant for it to fail?

  Kyrae cleared her throat and answered, in order.

  The smirk dropped. “That is correct. You must have received quite the education at the Emerald Pace.”

  “I had a very good tutor.” Kyrae sat down again and didn’t let her face show her emotions—she always found it easier to do without Issa around.

  The rest of the lecture passed slowly. Kyrae could feel eyes on her from behind, and the instructor made far more eye contact with her than was necessary. But more than that, the content was… incredibly dull!

  Perhaps she could excuse it if she and Ssiina weren’t joining after several lessons in. But Phaeliisthia had taught her more than this in the first week. Issa of all people could probably pass this without much effort.

  Not necessarily from the ck of complexity in the sigil constructs, but from the approach. Phaeliisthia had started the three of them with the basics, the history, and had built up an understanding of the fundamental processes.

  What was here was rote memorization and shorthand tricks for basic construction and Kyrae could not figure out for the life of her how anyone was supposed to actually learn sigilcraft from this.

  The next time the instructor made awkward eye contact, Kyrae stuck her tongue out. He faltered, and Kyrae looked away, ear tips heating up.

  What if that’s the point?

  The thought kept popping up. She heard her name called again, and realized immediately that the instructor simplified the nguage when calling on her. He had the first time too—she’d just brushed the thought aside as farcical. Were this the back streets of Ess’Syntziis, she’d have cut his robes when taking his coinpurse. But this was the cssroom and despite her own magical prowess and the fact that she was literally royalty, none of that could be brought to bear.

  It was enough to make her blood boil.

  Magic demonstrations were prohibited in css. She would get in trouble with people who were looking for mistakes, for any excuse to abuse their power in this holy pce that seemed less so by the hour.

  And so she stood, formed a construct, and smiled wide as bright light flooded the atrium.

  “This is the answer. Provided your goal is illumination.” Kyrae waved a hand and a sigil broke free from the construct, copied into the air. “Modification here to this sigil”—she drew it in the air and the room warmed—“would allow for heat. Cooling is a more complex substitution involving an additional component to dispel heat. The core of the construct you asked for could also be refined using other sigils.” She drew them, all symbols Phaeliisthia had said were rarely used. “But those seem to fall outside the scope of this course.”

  With a wave of her hand, the construct dissipated and the atrium was silent for a moment.

  “Is this lesson below you, Hssen Kyrae?” the instructor asked with a thinly veiled sneer. “I would think one such as yourself to be more apt at choosing their lessons.”

  “Perhaps—”

  “You should also be aware,” the instructor interrupted, “that magical demonstrations are not permitted outside of clearly defined exercises. Which I must inform you this is not. I will personally report this to Ussyri Tahaksa. You are excused from the rest of the lecture.”

  The blush spread from Kyrae’s ears to her cheeks and she quivered in barely held back fury. The best she could manage was a terse “understood” as she turned on a heel and walked quickly up and out of the atrium.

  She shared a quick gnce with her sister on the way past and nearly tripped on the ramp. She’d seen Issa furious plenty of times, and she’d thought she’d seen the same on Ssiina.

  Fear, yes. Anxiety, relief, frustration. This was none of those. Her typically calm younger sister was wide-eyed, slitted pupils narrow with lips curled back over exposed fangs.

  Kyrae stopped herself from reaching out, from gesturing that she was okay. Because she really wasn’t. She left the room at the edge of a run and colpsed against a wall on the other side, biting her tongue to hold in a scream as hot tears ran down her face.

  ***

  For a moment after Kyrae fled the cssroom, Ssiina hesitated. She bit her lip and held her tongue, extended fangs pressing against her chin.

  The silence stretched an awkward breath, then another, and right as the instructor took a breath to speak, Ssiina rose, forcing her fangs back up and setting her jaw forward.

  “Ssyri’zh Nazaan.” She remembered the instructor’s name, though she had only gnced at it when they were registering for their lectures.

  “Hssen Ssiina.” He bowed formally, properly.

  Which only incensed her further. “Why did you dismiss my sister?”

  A flicker of rage, barely noticeable. Ssyri’zh Nazaan cleared his throat and smiled. “She performed sigilcraft outside the allowable parameters of this course.”

  “Because you called on her. Why?”

  “I do not need to answer that question, Hssen Ssiina. Need I remind you that we are all here as equals under the eyes of Jaezotl?”

  Ssiina lifted her chin and sneered, purposefully simplifying her next words, clipping the sibince to the point of parody. “If we are all equals, why then would you simplify your Lamian for my sister? Do you presume she, who was more than following along to this lecture, who has learned from the best inside and outside the Emerald Pace, who I accept as my full-blooded sister?”

  “She—”

  Ssiina leaned forward, eyes on her as she tilted her head toward where the few other elves were sitting. “She what, Ssyri’zh Nazaan?”

  “I do not need to take this from you, Hssen Ssiina.” His head shook as he spoke, eyes unable to meet hers. “You are being unreasonable—you are also excused.”

  Ssiina gave a clipped hiss. “What am I excused for?”

  “I do not need to—”

  She turned to the css. “Do you believe I ought to be kicked out? Do you believe my sister ought to be kicked out?” With one hand, she gave a sweeping gesture to the elves in the cssroom, continuing in a falsely saccharine, overly clipped tone. “Are you having trouble following along? Might you need simplified nguage spoken as though you are a child?”

  “That is enough! I will—”

  “Do whatever you will,” Ssiina boomed, using a small array to amplify her voice over the instructor’s. “I will not see my sister sndered by a hypocrite. We are all equal here, Ssyri’zh Nazaan, I suggest you learn the definition.”

  She ignored the angry shouts and slithered out of the cssroom without looking back. The moment she left, chatter erupted through the doorway, drowning out the instructor’s voice.

  Turning her lower body over, Ssiina slid next to Kyrae, back along the wall, tail spread out before her. “I won’t apologize if I said too much.”

  Kyrae sniffed, wiping at her eyes. “You shouldn’t. And thanks—you sounded almost like Issa.”

  Ssiina pced a hand over her chest, mouth dropping in fake surprise. “I should hope not! My nguage was not so crass!” She leaned over and whispered, “Though I almost gave a rude gesture at the end. I had to force myself to leave quickly.”

  Kyrae grabbed her hand. “Thanks again, I mean it. Not just for me but for the other elves too. This pce is… I don’t know. It’s all the worst things about this damned Empire that I’d managed to ignore.”

  Ssiina leaned her head back and looked up at the muraled ceiling. “Without you and Issa, I don’t think I’d even know about all this. Not really, anyway—not what it feels like to be on the receiving end of. I’d probably be just as bad as—”

  “No,” Kyrae said firmly, pulling Ssiina’s arm toward her. “You wouldn’t. You’d already seen more than most ussen ever will by the time Issa and I met you. I don’t think there’s another ussen who’d even consider trying a fried wharf rat.”

  Ssiina shuddered, the motion rippling down to the tip of her tail. “No, I don’t suppose they would. Vile things.”

  “Yeah they’re terrible. Issa’s about the only person I’ve ever met who likes them. I had to get used to it because she won’t touch vegetables or sweet things.”

  “That’s one good thing about this pce, then,” Ssiina mused.

  “What?”

  “There’s no wharf rats.”

  MadMaxine