Patience looked at her assignment, marked throughout with red ink. She sighed. Once more to beg a retake. I really thought that a class called The Art of Political Warfare would be more interesting. It’s all stuff that I can work with sorcery. Maybe if I wanted more than my devoted classmates I would be more interested, but political power seems like so much work. Then again, any next step seems like work. There’s no question of me being a bouncer like Mom was at my age, but I have to find something better than what the Moms hold now and that… also seems like work.
Making connections is so… Patience sighed again. I have to be charming, I can’t take my time to make some lasting emotional work because they’re not paying attention to a class I don’t give a rat’s tail about while I tap into the back of their brain. They’d notice while I was concentrating and that would just sarx everything up. And if it isn’t set up right… Patience winced in recollection. It’s been years since someone set me down that hard, and there’s a reason for it… yeah, I’m not going to be able to enchant their parents. And I can only go so far on the good opinion of their children.
There’s always mooching as an option, but if I’m not careful, that will raise eyebrows and get me caught. I can’t maintain status without some kind of capital. My parents aren’t rich enough to set me up, they’re barely rich enough to put me in this school. I may as well drop out and use their capital… but I love my Moms and that would… they love me for me, not for my sorcery. And that’s important, somehow.
Professor Auspice, standing immediately next to Patience, cleared her throat. Son of a hamster that scared the dickens out of me. “Yes, Professor?” Why you have to be so fiendishly resistant to sorcery I don’t know. Adults are just more set in their ways, I guess.
“Your prospects are a touch grim, Skarlefaxus. I’ve spoken with your other teachers. You’re well-liked, certainly, but not much of an academic.” Oh, thank you, Professor, for making certain that my failings were widely known. “I took the liberty of setting up a meeting with your parents.” What?! “We’ll discuss your grades, and your future.”
“Might I ask that Professor Marches be the one to represent the faculty, Professor?”
Auspice quirked a half smile. “No, we won’t be loading the table with your great advocates. I’ll be representing the faculty, along with Principal Gilding.” Great. The principal, who I’ve gone to great pains to avoid, and this creep. Elderly old thornseed too set in her ways to respond to anything like a light touch with sorcery. At least I’m almost done here. It might be worth working my sorcery on the principal… eugh, but I haven’t tried anything on her and what if she’s sensitive or perceptive or—worst of all—a fire sorcerer?
Patience slammed the door when she got home. Mom was waiting with a bouncer’s patience in the foyer. Mother poked her head in from an adjacent room, sipping at a glass of preserved water. Heaven knows why she drinks blittero when we can afford fresh water. “Why didn’t you tell me that Professor Auspice had reached out to you?!”
Mom replied blandly, “To give you an opportunity to tell us yourself that you were failing in your classes. And, from the sound of things, you might be falling back on old habits.” Meaning ensorceling my classmates. If that’s what you mean, just say it! Honestly, Mom, maybe the words half spoken thing does it at work but it’s just annoying the daylights out of me. Besides, I never stopped casting, I just got more careful. Patience winced. It was a day for it. Aside from Font Ever. I was not sufficiently careful with him.
Patience reached out with her sorcery to see just how deeply she was in trouble and encountered nothing but blankness where her parents were. You’re guarded against sorcery?! Mother is barely able to put up a decent ward without scorching your hair and you braved that because you trust me so little? She crossed her arms over her chest. “I don’t want to go to the meeting. It’s going to be degrading. What are my options?”
Mother popped in, and started counting on her fingers. “One, you fail out of the academy and get a job as a street sweeper.” She extended her middle next to her index. “Two, you learn enough sorcery to work lighting chandeliers. At least once upon a time, you were a precocious little thing.” I’m still precocious, you just haven’t noticed because you’re a dung fire sorcerer and Mom isn’t one at all. Adding her thumb, she went on, “Three, we get you a real tutor, and you knuckle down to graduate and put all those friendships to good use becoming upwardly mobile.” Dropping the thumb and adding her pinky, she concluded, “Four, you learn one of the family trades. Probably mine.” Oh, that’s real appealing. Thanks for implying I’m not patient enough to do Mom’s work, Mother.
The silence stretched on. Mother looked like she wanted to say something, but Mom was as blank as her emotional profile. “Yes, Mother?”
“We’re only getting involved because we love you.” You love me and that’s why you kept secrets? That’s why you tried to stop me from using sorcery? That’s why you don’t even realize that I can use fire better than you ever could?! Patience’s patience was at an end. This whole day I’ve been waiting to talk to you about what Professor Auspice said and the best you can offer me is a tutor or becoming a forger?! She worked her will, weaving in the cognitive dissonance that the One God would allow such a trial to come to one of His faithful, and inspired remorse by main force in her parents. The bubbles of blank serenity popped before her onslaught and—
“Mother?! What did you do?!” Patience’s heart burned. Her hands burned, sympathetic to her sorcerous reach. Patience curled in on herself, and fell to the floor.
“Oh, Patience. I was once like you.” You were never like me! I am competent! She tried to summon her sorcery and found burning pain. “Unfortunately, Fief is ordered quite unlike Dragold was. They have actual laws around sorcery and you’ve trod rough-shod all over them. You’ll attend the meeting, you’ll meet with your tutor, who will be our selection, and you will graduate. You will allow your sorcerous hold upon your classmates to lapse, and make new friends. I am truly sorry, my daughter. This isn’t the future I wanted for you. We’re still… exploring further options. But those will remain in our hands, until you demonstrate the willingness to put in actual effort.”
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Patience croaked out, “Mom…”
Her Mom strode over and knelt by her, stroking her dark brown hair. “It’s for the best, Patience. Your Mother learned a similar lesson some nineteen years ago, and hopefully you’ll learn your lesson a little easier.”
So I’m stuck with this tutor. That doesn’t mean I’m not going to make sure that he’s nice to me. Beyond whatever paltry assurances my parents can offer. I want him to help every step of the way. Perhaps write a sample essay or two—so that I can learn. Mother can’t work sorcery like that every day I’m being tutored. She doesn’t have the—ha—patience. And if I meet him at the door… all the more so.
Her tutor was fair-skinned, like most of the natives to this sphere of Fief, with brown eyes and hair. Rapt Preamble was his name, and he shook her hand confidently. “I’m quite certain we’ll find some way to salvage your academic career. I’ve been teaching students of the Academy for ten years!” Forgive me for not taking the word of a professional teacher who can’t actually land a teaching job. Patience started small, eking fondness for her into his emotional reality. He hadn’t even been warded like Mother and Mom had that night. His eyes took on an especial warmth when he regarded her, which her Moms didn’t seem to notice while introductions and explanations were made. Finally, they filed into the study and Patience suggested that they be left alone to see to their work.
Having determined there were no blazing traps waiting for her, Patience leaned hard with her sorcery. Not stopping at fondness, she instilled devotion into Preamble. He would take any fall for her, and if she didn’t graduate on the weight of her homework alone—“Come on, Patience, I know you can write this essay. You’re an articulate young woman.” What?
“Write an example for me. I haven’t written many essays.” Come on. He should be eating out of my hand at this point.
Preamble shook his head. “I’ll make sure you succeed and that’s not how you succeed. But if you haven’t written many essays, then we’ll start at the foundation of things. An outline.” What in the blazing demonic inferno is going on?! As her tutor painstakingly pulled her attention from her own thoughts to the words on the paper, she groaned to herself. Of course. They knew Mother wasn’t my equal in sorcery, and they knew I’d try something. So they picked the guy who, when he decided he liked me, would sincerely want me to succeed rather than taking the easy road to win my favor. Patience couldn’t just dispel the emotions she’d instilled, and she suspected that dislike would be even more unpleasant to bear than Preamble’s fondness, so with a sigh she began to learn how to write an essay on how to attack the cohesiveness of a political movement.
Patience eyed her paper warily, double-checking that it was her name at the top of it. There was barely any red ink on it at all. I suppose I should feel accomplished. Mostly I feel annoyed. I’ve been away from my people for too long, and I have to actually pay attention in class now. Nobody even talks to me anymore. Maybe I can convince my Moms to let me go on a date for good behavior. She started eyeing her classmates, picking out which ones were fire signs like herself and then factoring for her tastes. Her sense of gender was a bit skewed, given the nonconformity of her parents, but she generally skewed towards some stubble in her romantic prospects.
Ah, sarx, I need to be paying attention. Preamble will be grilling me on my classes tonight. How the mighty have fallen. I had whoever I wanted at my beck and call and now I’m the one at the beck and call of another. Paying attention in class. I haven’t done that in ages.
“As you all know, unofficially, Gnosis is the leader behind the separation of Reformation Fief from Loyalist Fief. But evidently, the One God did not see it suitable to pit two halves of our great nation against each other, but intends the utter annihilation of the anti-dragon faction within Fief. Icehold, our southern neighbor, has invaded Reformation Fief in the name of bringing the kingdom under the rule of a single bishop. While they support the Black Queen, this has extended only as far as leaving intact the religious institutions they encounter.” Well. Something interesting after all. “Icehold has enjoyed good relations with dragonkind for the last Age… well, through most of the previous Age.”
A month ago Patience would have leaned over and asked a classmate about that gnomic statement, but now she had very little in the way of a friend base. Between paying attention in class and tutoring taking up her leisure time… Patience sighed, and raised her hand. Time to look like a fool. “Yes, Skarlefaxus?”
“The previous Age, Professor?”
“Fief has publicly declared the Age of Steel, to celebrate revolutions in our understanding of sorcery and spirit magery.” I hear them snickering. Evidently this was common knowledge, but not so common that I needed it for my classwork.
In for a pawn, in for a knight. “Loyalist Fief?”
“Precisely so.”
“So Mom.”
“So Patience.”
“You said you were working on other options. I have no friends, I’m going to just barely pass, and I don’t think I’m any more suited to Mother’s line of work than you think I am to yours. What is this other option?”
“You’ve heard, by now, of the new Age?”
You’ve been—! Of course you’ve been checking up on me. You don’t trust me. “The Age of Steel. We touched on it.” Patience seethed quietly, recognizing her outrage as a secret worth keeping.
“Well, there is a college that’s been quietly teaching the sorcery that the White Queen is lauding as heralding a new age. There are several, in fact. Five, I think. But there’s one that is accepting only highly skilled fire sorcerers.” So now we’re just acknowledging that I’m a sorceress, where you’ve either ignored or been ignorant of my talents for six years. “It’s not cheap; though they offer apprenticeships, we didn’t think that was the best option.” We? Nice casual invocation of my Mother. Patience’s Mother dabbed her mouth with a napkin but said nothing.
That… actually sounds kind of interesting. I wonder what they’re teaching. If I can manipulate emotion now, what could I do with next-Age sorcery? “So you’re sending me away?”
Finally, Mother chimed in. “Don’t start, Patience. You’ve made quite a mess for yourself with your use of sorcery without regard for the consequences.” What, like you evidently did? “At a fire sorcery college, you’d be amongst peers. Not to mention, learning skills that could actually set you up for life. A formally trained sorcerer is worth their weight in gold.”
Mom coughed, suggesting that Mother didn’t actually know the market rate for trained sorcerers, either in civilized company or the black market. But aside from enrolling her in the Academy, they had kept Patience out of that side of their employment. It’s sneakiness and listening at doors that I even know Mother is a forger.
“So where are you sending me?”
“We’re not sending you anywhere, Patience,” Mom’s emphasis was carefully devoid of emotion. “We’re trying to give you an option where you’ll be challenged, taught, and engaged. That fire sorcerers are best equipped to counter the kind of mayhem you specialize in is just a bonus.” Okay, but where am I going? “But the college in question is called Bladesedge. It’s situated in a marsh sphere east of here. I gather the name is something of a pun, they teach metal sorcery.” I’ve never heard of metal sorcery. I don’t want to be a healer, the earth sphere of sorcery is boring. “It’s not earth sorcery.” I must be getting predictable. “It’s evidently something only fire sorcerers can pick up, and the applications are still being worked out.”
“You mentioned mayhem.” Patience looked up from her soup at her Mom, risking eye contact. “Just how much do you know?” That question in itself is a dangerous admission, but… it really does seem like they’re acting in my best interests. And Mother did burn down a records hall all those years ago to keep my suspension from sticking. Patience found herself uncomfortably considering the possibility that her parents had been worthy of her regard and on her side for a very long time indeed.
