Edward is sitting on the outside of my windowsill. My fourth-floor windowsill, with a thirty-foot drop below and no way to climb up (I've fantasised about climbing out a few tis over the past week). He doesn't look remotely concerned by that; in fact he lifts a hand to wave cheerfully at .
Stars help , my best friend is mad.
I cross the room from my desk to the window. I can open the window myself – a small rcy – but it opens outwards. If I flung it open it would knock Edward off and he'd fall to his death. Actually, would a thirty-foot fall kill soone? I don't know. It's not been relevant knowledge until now.
I open the window just a crack so that we can talk and ask, "What in stars' nas are you doing here?"
"I'm here to see you, obviously."
Obviously. "Well – yes – but – how did you get up here?"
He shrugs. "Levitated the top of a rope ladder up to your window." He gestures downward, but the angles are wrong for to peer out without opening the window further, which I'm not prepared to do. "It has a sticking enchantnt at the ends."
"Where did you even find a ladder? No – never mind that – what happens if you get caught?"
"I can't reveal my sources," says Edward. "And I won't get caught – I know when Electra visits and can arrange to not be here then, and you'd be surprised how rarely people look up."
"You an they won't notice the ladder dangling from a fourth-floor window?"
"I cast a veil over it."
Of course he did. Veils are a specific type of illusion; instead of having the appearance of an object that doesn't exist, they make an object that does appear like the lack of an object. They are not, as our Magical Theory teacher took pains to remind us, true invisibility. They are also very much not things a magician who's had their powers only a month should be capable of casting.
"Not a very good veil," he adds as if that makes much of a difference. "If anyone looks closely they'll realise there's sothing weird going on. But good enough I'd say I have maybe one in twenty odds of being caught. And if I am? I'm not in the room with you, so I'm not breaching Malaina confinent. They can probably get for casting an untaught spell and climbing Academy property without permission, but the penalties for that aren't too severe, especially since most of the staff are terrified of my father."
"Electra isn't," I point out.
"Which is why I'm here instead of subverting her ward network to co in the usual way."
"She has a ward network around this room?"
"How else did she know my dad paid you a visit the other night?"
Yeah, that makes sense. I was honestly too overwheld by everything that happened that night to stop and wonder how Electra knew what was happening.
"Well," Edward adds, "that and the fact I'm not capable of subverting her ward network. My knowledge of ward-breaking doesn't go much beyond the Explosion Theory and is entirely theoretical."
I'm going to regret asking, but I have to. "Explosion Theory?"
"Simple. The easiest way to break a ward on a building is to break the building itself. Hence, explosions."
I laugh. "Please don't test that theory on the room I'm living in."
"Wasn't planning on it."
"But…" I take a breath before spitting out the important question. "Why are you doing this?"
"You need ," he says simply. "You'd be unstable after another week or so trapped in there on your own. So I'm making sure you're not on your own."
I blink a few tis. There's a cool autumn breeze, delightfully fresh, that ruffles Edward's hair. I hope it doesn't get too much stronger; the thing that's unstable here is his perch on the windowsill.
"Do you… want to co in?"
He shakes his head. "I need to technically adhere to the rules. Besides, I wouldn't put it past Electra to ward the window."
"Then what…"
"We should study together," says Edward. I'm not even surprised at the thought he's going to turn a narrow stone strip thirty feet above the ground into a study space. "I don't suppose you could levitate this book – " he pulls a heavy textbook from sowhere – "and still have enough focus to study? I need sothing to lean on."
I shake my head. "I'm not that good."
"Yet," says Edward. "Pity. My simultaneous casting isn't at anywhere near the level I'd need to levitate the book while maintaining my veil. I guess that ans I'm doing things the awkward mundane way." He rests the book on his lap.
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I'm not sure I'll be able to focus on work right now, but I fetch my quill and half-written Magical Law and Culture Essay. The prompt is to discuss reasons behind the laws governing conjuration. Do you think the current laws are effective? What alternatives can you suggest? Sam tends to set very open-ended questions like this; I do enjoy them but it's hard to decide what to write.
"What are you working on?" I ask Edward.
"Advanced Magical Theory." He shows the cover of his book: A Course in the Mathematics of Enchantnts. "It's not as interesting as I'd hoped, I know most of it already. We only just defined fields."
I win my ntal struggle to not ask what a field is – presumably in this context it's not a piece of land with crops growing on it and is instead so abstract mathematical concept that Edward clearly considers common knowledge. Instead I focus on trying to explain why restricting the conjuration of precious tals is necessary to ensure economic stability.
It's the most productive session I've had in a while, to my surprise. I'm just wondering how best to fra my conclusion when the Academy clock strikes twelve and Edward announces that he needs to fetch my lunch. I suppose he's visiting as usual to keep up the pretence to Electra that he hasn't been with all morning.
She probably knows sothing is up, though it's hard to tell with Electra: the slightly suspicious way she remarks that I seem more cheerful today might just be her usual pattern of speech. I haven't done anything wrong, I keep telling myself, so I have nothing to be worried about.
I wrote the conclusion to my essay while waiting for her to arrive, so I give it to Electra to deliver to Sam.
She takes the five pages of parchnt from my hand and tucks them into her folder of papers. "How much were you supposed to write for that essay?" she asks.
"Two sides of parchnt," Edward says. He wrote precisely that amount; he considers Magical Law and Culture a waste of ti that could be better spent learning new spells. I'm trying to persuade him that it's useful for people who aren't Blackthorns and thus already familiar with everything the course covers, but I've made little progress so far.
"There wasn't a maximum, though," I add hastily.
"I shall have to suggest to Sam that he implents one, then."
I hope he doesn't. I liked writing that essay, and it would have been twice as hard trying to cut it down to half the length. Though maybe I could make my handwriting a little smaller?
Edward, stars curse him, is laughing at . As if he isn't just as bad with his extra-curricular magic.
"I should inform you, Tallulah," says Electra, "that your examination will be tomorrow."
My heart skips a beat, and before I've fully processed her words I'm halfway to a Malaina episode. Charles First-King. "What… examination?" I choke out.
"It is standard practice for all Malaina stability cases the defendant is assessed by a doctor specialising in Malaina to determine whether they are in fact unstable."
That hardly sounds pleasant, but it's not a test I haven't been warned about. It's not that she's suddenly decided I'm taking my final exams two terms early before we've covered even half the material.
I glance at the smile playing across Electra's face. Yeah, she definitely realised how I could misinterpret her words. I hate her.
"What do I need to do?" I ask, after taking a few seconds for my breathing to return to normal.
"Nothing," Electra says, "except be here at eleven tomorrow morning. Though it's not like you're going to climb out the window, is it?"
It takes every ounce of self-control I have to keep my face blank. Does she know? How could she know? Edward was careful, and if she knew wouldn't she have just punished him imdiately instead of…
Instead of holding it over both of us so we're constantly terrified of being caught, especially when she drops hints that she knows and has the satisfaction of watching us squirm?
This is exactly what Electra would do if she knew.
My heart sinks a little. Crazy though it was for Edward to do that, it worked. I felt more alive than I had in days, I smiled and laughed and worked effectively.
And now even that small rcy has been taken away.
It's only another week. I'll survive it.
Sohow.
I don't work all afternoon. Instead I spend it lying on my bed, staring at the ceiling and hoping against hope to hear a tapping at my window and see the familiar face of the grinning madman who's sohow beco my best friend. But he doesn't co. It's the sensible choice; the consequences of his being caught would be more serious than he tried to tell this morning, and I can't ask him to take that sort of risk for my sake.
I can wish he would, though, and that's what I do.
I keep wishing until six after noon cos around and Edward and Electra return. I have no more assignnts to hand in, and my next is due tomorrow morning. Maybe I shouldn't have written so much for that essay after all. Why couldn't I have just made myself work through a set of Magical Theory questions, or done anything this afternoon?
And if this examination is going to take up most of the morning then I'm going to end up being behind, missing deadlines and unable to keep up with Electra's practical work sessions, and –
"Tallulah, are you okay?"
I blink a few tis. Charles First-King. "Yup," I lie. "Fine." Edwin the Just.
I'm going to be okay, at least, and that should count.
I force myself to work for a while that evening, even though I just want to curl in a ball and read A History of the Kings of Rasin or sleep. The Magical Theory questions aren't hard, but the calculations are long and fiddly. I hate them.
I get them done by eight after noon. That's good: I don't have any more lessons to get through until tomorrow morning, and Spells howork is practical so I'll have to wait until tomorrow morning's session with Electra, so I'm only left with Enchantnts.
Which is a problem, because when I look at the assignnt I realise it requires us to research different forms of appearance-modifying enchantnt. Relevant books may be found in the library. And I can't go to the library: I'll have to ask Electra when she cos tomorrow morning and even then I won't get the books until lunchti. And I don't even know what relevant books are supposed to be.
Still. Nothing I can do about it now.
I read for two hours and then sleep. Well, try to sleep: despite my longing for it, it's a long ti coming, and when I do sleep I'm plagued by dreams of fire. The Academy is burning; the scent of smoke is in the air and the flas flicker against the dark night sky. I've climbed onto the statue of the Mages in a deserted Central Ring to watch – no, not to watch, because I'm the one doing this.
Hundreds of students asleep in their beds. Centuries of history, portraits and tapestries and books. Priceless research equipnt. All of it is being destroyed. Because of .
Edward is in there, I realise. He's going to die. I'm going to kill him.
And I don't care.
I wake sweating at two and thirty after midnight, wondering if that's what it feels like to be mala sia. Wondering if that's what I'll one day beco.
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