children of the Old Magic? There were so many strange portents of late and none stranger than this little girl he’d rescued in Blys.
“Did the spirits tell you that?” he wondered.
“Uncle ’Lias,” she replied distractedly. Her attention had now shifted across the Sanctuary lagoon, where refugees and Rowan students were popping in and out of the Warming Lodge. Mina watched them with quiet, attentive curiosity. Max knew what she was thinking.
“A charge will choose you,” he assured her.
“I know,” she sighed. “He is searching for me. But he cannot come to me yet—he is not strong enough. I must be patient.”
“You already know what your charge will be?”
“Oh yes,” Mina whispered. “I saw him in the circle. He’s wilder than you, Max. Even terrible Prusias will fear him! When the gulls cry out and the waters run red, he’ll rise from the sea to find me.…”
She grinned and clapped but would say no more. As the pair walked, Max reflected upon how much Mina had changed. The shy, nearly mute child from the farmhouse was gone, consigned to a past that might have been another existence. There was something of David in her now, an abstracted quality that made Max feel as though his questions were intruding upon a mind feverishly preoccupied with weightier matters. While David bore Max’s queries with weary patience, Mina was still young enough to believe that sheer enthusiasm was sufficient to explain the wildly complex concepts that she apparently mastered with instinctive ease. She might have been speaking another language; Max simply could not conceive of more than four dimensions or send his spirit on shadow walks or perceive the pervasive, Brownian buzz of ancient incantations. When she noticed that his nods were a polite appeasement rather than a meeting of minds, she ceased her breathless discourse and talked instead about her favorite bakery.
“You sound like you’re hungry.” Max smiled, spying the shop in question. “Let me get you something?”
“No thank you. Uncle ’Lias will have food waiting and I mustn’t be late.”
“Listen,” said Max. “Why don’t you come to the training grounds with me? I’m meeting my friend Sarah. You’ll like her.”
“But the Archmage is waiting.”
“I don’t care who’s waiting,” Max retorted. “I don’t want you doing such dangerous things.”
Mina glanced at him. “You once saved me from a monster and chased it down its well. Was that dangerous?”
“Of course,” said Max. “But I’m older. You’re only seven, Mina.”
“I might be seven, but I can go on shadow walks and make out the secret places. Can you?”
Max shook his head and acknowledged her point with a rueful smile. “No, I can’t do those things. I don’t even understand them.”
The little girl hugged him, her cheeks pink from their long walk and the cold. Already streetlamps were glowing with witch-fire, bathing nearby windows and awnings with a golden light. Turning her face up to his, Mina gazed at him with fierce adoration.
“I’m going down a well, too, Max. It’s just a different one than yours. But don’t worry about your little Mina. She knows the way out.”
Standing on her tiptoes, she kissed his cheek and ran off down the central lane, her shoes smacking on the cobbles as she cried hello and goodbye to the baker’s wife. Max watched her go, resolved to speak with David and Bram and do what little he could to protect her.
It was nearly dark by the time Max exited the hedge tunnel. His breath frosted in the night air as his boots crunched on brittle leaves. Curfew would be in several hours and the paths were crowded with students hurrying off to libraries, their magechains glittering by the light of lamps and lanterns. He said hello to a few but kept to the edge of the path and never passed within close reach. In the dark, it was not easy to determine if an approaching figure carried a book or a knife. Bram’s words echoed in Max’s mind:
He skirted the orchard and the Manse, hurrying down to the sea where the xebec lay anchored in Rowan Harbor. There’d been no word of Cooper or Ben Polk, and Max itched to speak with the hunched figure sitting near the xebec’s prow, silhouetted against the green witch-fire. The witch was just a weather worker, but she might have heard or seen something of value.
Turning away, he veered north along the coast and toward the training grounds that Sarah had mentioned. As he walked, the elegance of the academic quad gave way to a wilder setting. Here the trees grew thicker and the smoke of a hundred cooking fires scented the air. Up ahead, there were shouts and laughter, punctuated now and again by the ring of steel striking steel.
Through a gap in the trees, Max glimpsed a broad clearing that resembled both a military post and a gypsy camp. Long, low buildings and colorful tents lined the perimeter, surrounding archery ranges, sparring pits, and open-air smithies. It was chaos within; thousands of refugees huddled around bonfires and waited in long lines to hone their skills at archery or hand-to-hand combat. A small army of hogs, goats, and dogs scampered atop mounds of garbage, sifting through the waste for scraps of food. A shrill ring rose above the din. A crowd by one of the sparring pits gave a throaty cheer.
“Don’t go in unless you plan to burn your clothes,” warned a nearby voice.
He turned to see a boyish creature with curling brown hair and the hind legs of a deer. It was a Normandy faun, stepping gingerly through the underbrush before stopping to sniff at the base of a shaggy oak. Max recognized him at once; he was the twin brother to Connor Lynch’s former charge, Kyra.
“Kellen,” said Max. “What are you doing out here?”
“Truffles,” replied the faun, scraping at the soil with a hand shovel. “A cruel joke that they grow so near this abominable camp with its dogs and their reek, no? If the pigs should find them”—he shuddered at the thought—“I will throw myself into the sea.”
“A bit dramatic,” said Max.
“Monsieur has clearly never tasted truffles.”
“How is Kyra doing?” inquired Max. “Has she heard anything from Connor?”
“They weren’t dating,” Max chuckled. “He was just her steward.”
“Tell that to my sister,” Kellen grumbled, prizing out a beloved truffle and sniffing at it rapturously. He waved Max away. “Go swing your silly sword and thump your chest with the flea-bitten commoners. And when you itch, don’t say Kellen didn’t warn you.”
“Always a pleasure,” said Max, stepping into the clearing.
But as he strolled through the camp in search of Sarah, Max had to admit that the faun had a point. The clearing was very large, but it was packed with people dressed in filthy leggings, shirts, and jackets. Most were unwashed and some looked ill, gazing at him with rheumy eyes from within their tents. Why Sarah had chosen such a place to train was beyond him—Rowan offered pristine facilities for its students to hone their skills.
He finally found her in the midst of an exercise area, hanging by her fingertips from a crossbar.
“You’re late,” she chided. “I started without you.”
Without the slightest tremor, she raised her chin above the bar. Her sculpted arms were bare, the firelight gleaming on each muscle as they twitched beneath her ebony skin. At thirteen, Sarah Amankwe had only been growing into her considerable looks and athleticism. At eighteen, her beauty had blossomed in spectacular fashion. She had a dancer’s carriage and her close-cropped hair only seemed to accentuate her long neck and elegant features. Max was hardly surprised by her crowd of spectators.
But Sarah took no notice of them. Exhaling slowly, she completed another repetition and then another. Each was as smooth and effortless as the last. At fifty, Max stopped counting. The crowd of spectators grew. Some grinned with disbelief at the display, but others appeared sullen and almost resentful. None looked away until she had finished.
“Your turn,” she said, dropping from the bar and shaking out her arms.
“Where are Cynthia and Lucia?” Max asked.
“Studying,” Sarah laughed. “We have an exam tomorrow and they want to be Mystics, not Agents like yours
