25

Xillon watched me expectantly.

“Uh,” I said. “Nice to meet you, Xillon.”

He looked deflated. “That’s it? You do know who I am, right?”

With some misgivings, I shook my head.

“I’m the first Keeper of status!” he cried. “I was a Ruler for decades! You must know my name!”

I shook my head.

Xillon muttered something under his breath, rubbing the wisps on his chin with the back of his hand. He looked surly.

“Um . . . why are you here?” I asked carefully. “And what is here?”

“The last original Keeper always waits for the next one,” he said sulkily. “I was met by the first Keeper of enhancement. He was met by the first Keeper of agri. She was met by the first Keeper of geo. He was met by the first Keeper of blood. But look, you really don’t know my name?” he burst out.

He seemed awfully hung up about that.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “So, what do I do to save magic and get out of here?”

Xillon glowered. “It’s not called magic. It’s called ‘the enhancement system.’ Magic is a stupid word that just means ‘declining system.’ They used to call agri that, too. Okay?”

Taken aback, I nodded.

“Besides,” Xillon said, flopping back into his hammock, which swung bizarrely from nothing, “you can’t save a dead system. It’s dead. Let it go. You’re here to build a new one.”

“That’s not why I’m here,” I said indignantly. “I promised to recreate magic, and that’s what I’m going to do.”

“Well, too bad,” Xillon said. “’Cause it’s not gonna work. Unless, of course, you’re absolutely obsessed with enhancement?”

Startled, I shook my head.

“Well, there you go,” Xillon said. “You can’t create a system you aren’t absolutely convinced is amazing. And you can’t create one you know nothing about.”

He sounded so sure of himself, I felt a flutter of desperation.

“But people need ma— the enhancement system,” I protested. “We can’t grow enough food without it!”

“People said the same thing about agri,” Xillon said, shrugging. “I still killed the system. People survived.”

I gaped at him. How could he be so casual about that?

“You could, of course, create a brand new system that’s all about growing stuff,” Xillon said. “That would work better than enhancement. You know anything about botany?”

Slowly, I shook my head. I wasn’t an incompetent gardener, but I’d never studied anything. Mother had always given me advice when I came across something tricky.

“Okay, what are your hobbies?” Xillon asked, putting his hands under his head and crossing his ankles. He leaned back comfortably in his hammock. “That might give you a good starting point.”

I swallowed. “I . . . I guess I’m competent at most things. I don’t have any hobbies I’m particularly interested in, though.”

Xillon squinted at me. “Really? How boring. I started designing my system almost as soon as I found out I was going to be the next Keeper. By the time I finished absorbing agri, I had all but the last few details worked out.” He sat up, looking highly self-satisfied. “I built an incorruptible, intrinsically fair, inherently stable currency. Isn’t status magnificent?”

Really? I thought. You’re praising yourself?

“It’s all right, I guess,” I said.

“What’s it like now?” Xillon asked eagerly, leaning forward. He looked like he was about to tumble out of his hammock, but he didn’t. “I haven’t seen anything of the world outside since I died and came here. Has it changed much since I made it?”

“Uh . . .” I said. How was I supposed to know what status had been like when he made it?

“Never mind,” he said, waving his hand and sitting back. “I know what it’s like now. I designed it with all of the long-term effects in mind. I’ll tell you what society is like now, and you tell me if I’m right. Okay?”

“Okay . . .” I said, thinking, What does this have to do with me designing a new system? Or saving magic, for that matter?

Xillon rubbed his hands together. “All right. First of all, is there social equality?”

“The Ruler is in charge of everybody,” I said.

Xillon waved his hand back and forth. “No, no, no. I mean everyone else. Do you still have classes?”

“We have landowners and vassals,” I said.

For a moment, he looked disappointed. Then he brightened. “But do landowners respect vassals as people?”

“Well, yeah,” I said. Duh?

“Can vassals become landowners?”

“Sure. Father did.”

Xillon clapped his hands. “Excellent! Status did that!”

Are you really taking credit for things other people have done for generations? I thought dubiously.

Xillon leaned back, putting his hands behind his head. “That’s just what I was hoping for. I always thought that — hey, do you want someplace to sit down?”

I looked around. There was nothing here except the hammock. “On the floor?” I asked skeptically.

Xillon laughed. “No, no. On a chair.”

He flicked his hand, making a funny little twirl with his finger, and a large, cozy room faded in around us.

The hammock was now attached on either end to tall bookcases, and a table filled with writing materials sat beside me. Off to the side was a tall vase full of dried brushgrass that gave off a fresh, earthy scent. Next to me was a large, squishy chair.

To the right was was a smokeless fire crackling in the hearth, and a stack of books was piled up in a corner. Conspicuously lacking were a window or door, but otherwise, the place reminded me of Grandfather and Grandmother’s room. I immediately felt much more at ease.

“This is my default space,“ Xillon said. “You can change stuff if you like, though. I don’t mind.”

“Change . . . stuff . . .?” I repeated, waving my hand foolishly.

“Sure,” Xillon said. “Nothing here’s substantial. The place can take whatever form you want it to be. Sight, sound, touch, smell, taste . . .”

“Taste!” I said. “Is that how you get food to eat?”

Xillon started laughing. “You really don’t know anything about this, do you? I told everybody who would listen. I can’t believe nobody recorded it. Look, we don’t need to eat. Or breathe. Or bathe. Or anything else like that. You can if you really want to, but there’s no necessity. We’re not exactly here corporeally.”

“What?” I asked, dumbfounded. “What does that mean?”

“It means I’m dead,” Xillon said cheerfully. “You’re alive, but your body’s in some sort of stasis someplace. It’ll keep on aging, but that’s pretty much it. Really convenient when you’re trying to concentrate on building stuff, believe me.”

I sat down heavily in the squishy chair. “So when I die, I’ll . . .?”

“Come here,” Xillon said. “One of those extra duties of a Keeper. Don’t worry, it sounds awful, but you’ll get used to it. There’s plenty to do, and it’s really hard to keep track of time without a body to make demands of you. I figured it was probably about time for another Keeper, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if it had been another generation, either. The years just sort of blur together.”

I’ll live longer than a lifetime without seeing anyone or having anyone to talk to. I felt ill. How could anyone think that was okay?

“Tell me more about my status system,” Xillon said eagerly, sitting cross-legged and wrapping his hands around his ankles. “I want to hear everything.”

I tried to answer patiently, remembering how awful it was to have questions with nobody willing to answer them. But as what felt like hours passed, the endless interrogation started to wear on me. Why did he even care that some vassals had more status than their landowners, or that all objects’ prices were fixed regardless of size or quality, or that children rarely wound up buying the land their parents had? It wasn’t like it would affect him any.

He seemed particularly fascinated that embezzlement was now a death crime, while stealing wasn’t. He kept coming back to it, as if it were some kind of strange mystery. I was starting to wish I’d never asked the Ruler’s husband what the word meant.

“But embezzling is stealing,” Xillon insisted, the third time he brought it up. “They’re basically the same thing. So why is the punishment so much more severe?”

I sighed. The man’s insufferable persistence was reminding me of Hurik when my brother decided something was unfair.

“Because it’s status, and they’re mathematicians,” I said. “They have to be incontrovertibly trustworthy.”

“But why?” Xillon demanded. “Why can’t people just calculate their own status and check it for themselves? It’s stupid not to.”

I was starting to get annoyed. “People can’t calculate it for themselves. They have status.”

“Exactly! The equation for calculating your own status is the easiest one! What do people think the third equation is for? Theory?”

“I don’t know the third status equation,” I said, exasperated. Was he stupid? “I’m not a mathematician. And neither is anyone else who has status.”

Xillon stared at me like I was speaking in a foreign accent. “Are you saying . . . mathematicians don’t have status?”

“Of course they don’t,” I said. “The oath of mathematics requires renouncing it.”

Xillon’s chest heaved and his arms shook. “And why . . . in the world . . . would anybody do that?”

“Because it’s the law,” I said. “If a vassal tries to learn mathematics without taking the oath, they’re forced to take the oath immediately. If a landowner tries, they get the death penalty.”

Xillon leapt up, seized his hammock, and hurled it the fire. It exploded, sending flares of light that didn’t sting my eyes and tongues of flame that didn’t burn my skin across the whole room. After a moment, the inferno vanished, and the room returned to how it had been before.

“Why did you do that?” I asked, my voice a high squeak.

“Venting,” Xillon growled. He whirled back over to the corner where his hammock had been, and another appeared. He flopped into it and glowered at me, folding his arms. “So. You’re saying that my perfect system has resulted in mathematics being taken away from all but a select secret society. That’s great. That’s just great. That’s so not what I intended. Any other disasters I should know about?”

I swallowed, glancing at the fireplace. Granted, he hadn’t actually damaged anything, but I still hadn’t liked that burst of rage. “Well, magic’s limited the same way,” I said tentatively. “An oath and death penalty —”

“I don’t care about enhancement,” Xillon said, waving his hand impatiently. “The system did that to itself. I assume the oath is still the one they used in my day, the enhancement-of-enhancement thing?”

“Uh,” I said. “I don’t know? Nobody can use magic without taking the oath. Except me,” I added gloomily. “Then magicians grow a little bit more every day.”

“Yeah, that’s the enhancement oath,” Xillon said, nodding. “It used to require renouncing agri, but the fanatics didn’t care. Are they renouncing status now to boost enhancement? That seems pretty stupid.”

“Well, they have to,” I said. “It’s the only way they can get magic at all.”

Xillon thought about that. Then he nodded. “Okay, that makes sense. With enough oath-takers around, drawing it in, there wouldn’t be enough power left over for anyone else.”

“Anyone else?” I blinked. “You mean . . . everyone else used to be able to use it?”

“’Course they did,” he said. “Systems don’t naturally stop people from using them.”

“Then . . . that law,” I said slowly. “The one forbidding landowners from using magic. I thought maybe it was targeting me. Or, well, a rising Keeper like me. It had an actual reason to exist?”

“Yeah, I imagine so,” Xillon shrugged. “Pretty good idea, actually, making people choose between the corrupt falling system and the virtuous rising one. Good way to hasten social change. I should have thought of it myself.”

“The death penalty for landowners was taking it a bit far, though,” I muttered.

“Eh, not really.” Xillon scratched his dubious insinuation of a beard. “Back in my day, landowners were the worst offenders. Thought manipulation was an ugly, ugly thing, and it got much worse when two landowners decided to wage war against each other and turn their vassals into armies. Before my system came along, it was possible for someone to be rich and powerful and malignant to the core. I wasn’t kidding when I said status improved things.”

I swallowed. I wasn’t sure what any of that meant, but it certainly sounded ominous.

“Look, if you want to study on past systems — and I suggest you do — the data’s in that pile there.” Xillon nodded at the stack of books in the corner. “You can see what every other system’s been like at its start, peak, and end. You can use that to decide what kind of system you’d like to make yourself.”

I hopped to my feet and moved over to the stack. “If you care so much about status, why didn’t you watch it from here, then?”

“Can’t,” Xillon said, making a face. “The data on a system only appears after it dies. Enhancement should be there now, though. It will have appeared when you did.”

Carefully, I pulled the top book off the stack. I opened the cover, and images flooded into my head. Shocked at some of the things I’d glimpsed, I slammed it shut.

“Yeah, you’re going to learn about a few unpleasant things,” Xillon said. “Like war. Try not to make a system that’ll encourage stuff like that to happen again.”

I opened book after book, the information flooding into my head like somebody else’s memories. There were so many different systems, it was dizzying.

There were some I didn’t care one way or another about. The agri system, with its ability to modify plants, didn’t really call to me. Mother would have loved it, so it was a shame she wasn’t here to see it with me. The taming system was bizarre, a really old one that had to do with wild animals being dangerous or something. Even with all of the images, I had no frame of reference to understand it. The word “domestication” kept coming back, but the concept didn’t really make sense to me. Apparently it was a good thing?

There were some I really liked. The sunstream system was amazing, with the way people harvested sunlight as if it were some kind of crop. They used it to run machines, which performed spectacular and wondrous things. My heart squeezed when I saw it end, when all of the machines stopped working. I wished I could have seen some of them personally.

Magma was fascinating. It was like a cross between the geo system, a recent one, and plasma, a really ancient one. I’d had no idea that there was anything like heated rocks underneath the dirt. It seemed that when the geo system had reshaped all of the land to create the Rulership, it had smoothed out not only the surface, but whatever was underneath that determined whether a piece of land was dangerous or stable.

I hated the blood system. It had been intended for use on animals, but the creator hadn’t built in enough limitations, so almost from the beginning, humans had used it on each other. The wars, murders, and exterminations made me want to scream and weep. Before that system, there had been humans in the world with purple skin and three arms. There were no longer.

The one that was the oddest to see was enhancement, because I had grown up with it in its nearly-diminished state. It wasn’t quite as bad near its peak as Xillon had made it out to be, but I still felt unsettled watching it. Thought manipulation and memory erasure hadn’t been common, but I still didn’t feel comfortable bringing back the possibility of such things again.

“Any ideas?” Xillon asked, waving at me from his hammock.

I shook my head to clear it. I felt overloaded, like I had been studying for weeks. Perhaps I had been. I was fairly certain it had been days, at least.

“I’ve learned that every system seems to have unintended consequences,” I said slowly. “Sunstream’s was that when it died, most of the world’s technology died with it. Geo’s was that it extincted almost every wild animal species when a Keeper decided to reshape all of the land into, you know . . .” I waved my hands in a round motion. “. . . the Rulership. Agri’s was . . . I’m not sure how to describe it . . .”

“Soil depletion,” Xillon said. “It also contributed to most domesticated animal species dying off, because people stopped breeding them. Plant-based foods were easier and more efficient, but the plants that replaced animal-based foods required a lot more nutrients than the soil could naturally provide. Geo was enriching the soil regularly, so the problem didn’t become obvious until agri was declining, and by then it was too late to do anything about it.”

I nodded. “So I need to build a system that can resolve our food supply.”

“Ehhh,” Xillon said, looking unenthusiastic. “Societies always have more than one problem. You might find something else you want to focus on more.”

What could be more important than food? I thought. Maybe you’ve never lived through a cold season when food supplies were running low and everyone you knew was hungry and the snows just kept on coming, but I have.

“I think I’ll focus on that,” I said.

Xillon shrugged. “Suit yourself. I’d find it boring.”

I went back to my studying, determined to find something valuable that spoke to me.

But, unfortunately, Xillon was right. Any of the older systems that had focused around food production, or at least would have been useful for it, were boring to me. It was intensely frustrating, because every time I tried to study the mechanics of one of them, my eyes glazed over and I just couldn’t concentrate.

“I don’t get it!” I complained. “Why can’t I do this?”

Xillon looked up from the illusion he was painting in the air with his fingers. He had swapped the hammock for a large couch some time ago; I wasn’t sure when. “Do what?” he asked.

“Concentrate!” I cried. “I have nothing to distract me! Why can’t I learn what I need to?”

“It doesn’t work that way,” Xillon said, shaking his head. “You’re not supposed to be able to learn things here that you aren’t interested in. You’re here to create a system, and you won’t be able to unless you’re passionate about it. Try focusing on details you find fascinating. You’ll find it’s easier to learn them than it would be normally.”

“But I have to solve the problem!” I cried. “I have a duty!”

Xillon rubbed a knuckle under his sparsely-wisped chin. “Is duty something you find riveting?”

I swallowed.

No. No, it wasn’t. Duty would be like Jontan: boring, safe, predictable, and guilt-free. Making something interesting would be like Derrim: wild, exciting, dangerous, and selfish beyond belief. Neither of those seemed like a good alternative to me.

But what else was I supposed to do? I was creating a system for other people to use. If I prioritized my self-fulfillment, I’d be ignoring what the world needed. If I prioritized what the world needed . . .

Ugh. I put my head in my hands. The thought of dealing with a system of dirt or fertilizer or plants for the rest of my life made me feel like screaming.

“I’m the wrong person to be here,” I mumbled. “Mother would have recreated agri.”

“Perhaps that makes you the right person to be here,” Xillon said, dipping his fingers in a pool of orange light that floated right next to him. “Do you think a system wants to take the same form every time? Because I don’t.”

“You . . . think systems can think?” I asked dubiously.

Xillon spread his fingers and swished an arc of orange in front of him. He poked his fingers back in the pool of light, which was now blue-purple. “Let’s just say I doubt it’s a coincidence that a new Keeper always has experience with both systems, and they’re usually much fonder of the one they’re not replacing.”

“You think systems have a death wish?” I asked skeptically.

Xillon poked some purple dots in the air beside him. “No, I suspect new Keepers are chosen based on the system wanting to see what their tastes will remake it to be.”

“So . . . if I’d taken the oath of magic . . .” I said slowly.

“If you were the sort of person who would swear your life to the enhancement system, I doubt you would have been chosen as a Keeper in the first place.”

That made me irrationally angry. “That’s so totally unfair! This has ruined my life! I didn’t want this — any of this!”

“I don’t think the systems are interested in fairness. I think they’re interested in changing.”

I glared at the illusion he was flicking with blue specks.

“Well, regardless of the reason,” Xillon said, smearing dark green all over the top of the blue specks and the orange streaks, “you’ve been chosen, so make something that you love. Trying to make something you don’t care about because you think other people need it is doomed to failure.”

“You did,” I said. It sounded more accusatory than I’d intended. “How did you manage it?”

Xillon burst out laughing. “You think that’s what I did? I was an economist, Raneh. The thought of designing my own currency was like the ultimate candy. What I wanted came first. Then I figured out how to make it serve society.”

Great, I thought, frustrated. And we’re back to me not knowing what I want in the first place.

“Go study the systems you liked best out of history,” Xillon said, waving his hands at the pile of books I’d left strewn around carelessly. “See what they did to improve society. See if it sparks some ideas.”

I stared at the fire crackling in the hearth. The warmth felt real from here, and the heat made me homesick. It reminded me of watching the fire for hours during cold season, bundled up and talking with family. If I never built a system, I would never get out of here, never see them again.

Finally, I reached over slowly and pulled the volumes that represented magma and sunstream onto my lap.

When the idea finally came to me, it was like a strike of lightning. I sat bolt upright, and the book that had been on my stomach tumbled onto the floor. Since it couldn’t actually get damaged, I paid it no heed, and made my armrest into a smooth writing surface. I snatched a piece of paper and a writing utensil from midair and started writing feverishly.

At one point, Xillon tried to interrupt me, but when he noticed I was concentrating, he shut his mouth and walked away. Relieved because even noticing he’d cleared his throat had been an unwelcome distraction, I dove back into the ideas I was outlining.

Many times, I went back over previous books, looking at details of other systems’ rules and what they had done — or failed to prepare for — in certain circumstances. A few times, I got lost in the details of an interesting one, experiencing it for awhile until I finally surfaced to notice Xillon had changed activities.

All this time, he didn’t interrupt me. I was grateful for it. Part of me wondered if I ought to be more polite and pay attention to him, but he didn’t seem to be complaining, and having so much unbroken concentration was a luxury. I didn’t have to worry that my neck would get stiff. I didn’t have to worry that my hand would cramp up. I didn’t even have to worry about sleeping or eating or breathing. It was pure luxury.

Every so often I resurfaced, feeling a little dazed, and looked around the room and wondered how long it had been. But then I’d stare at the fire, just staring, not thinking, until inspiration hit again, and I’d go right back to research or scribbling.

Finally, at long last, I put my writing utensil down, feeling numb. I thought that was it. I thought I had finished it. Now only one thing was remaining.

“Xillon?” I croaked nervously. I looked around and found him burying himself up to the neck in sand way off in the distance. “Could you look at this?”

Despite the seeming remoteness, he leapt out of the ground and onto his feet. The sand vanished from around him, and he reached my chair in two strides.

“Are you done?” he asked, holding out his hand. “Let me see.”

Swallowing, I handed it over. He took it and sat in midair, not even seeming to notice he had forgotten to make a chair appear.

He flipped through page after page, reading slowly, and I got more and more jittery. Now that I’d finished it, it seemed an awful idea. What had I been thinking? I hadn’t solved the problem of food at all, and even with all the precautions I’d made, it still might be extremely dangerous.

He stopped and raised an eyebrow, looking up at me. “You’re going to integrate the flower into the actual system?”

“Is that okay?” I asked anxiously.

“I don’t see why not,” he said, tapping his finger on the page. “Nobody’s tried it before, but then, the flowers have only been around for four systems.”

After that, he kept on reading without comment. My nerves rose to fever peak, and I started braiding and unbraiding the fringe of a rug that appeared next to me.

When he finished the last page, he set it down and stared off into space. I was dying to jump up and down and beg what he thought, but I couldn’t get the words out. I waited, my throat constricting.

He turned around and put the sheaf of papers back in my arms. “Your tastes are different than mine,” he said slowly. “But I think it’s designed well. If you want to use it, you should use it.”

My heart leapt. “Do — do you think it would be dangerous?”

“Of course I do. I think most systems are far too dangerous. You’ll notice the one I built is exceedingly cautious and has no overt power.” He tapped the papers I was holding. “But you’ve thought it through enough. I don’t think it would be a disaster for this to exist.”

I gulped, my hands shaking. That didn’t seem like high praise. “Well — well, maybe I should rethink —”

“Raneh,” Xillon said, and he looked far more serious than I had ever seen him. “I may look like a young man, but I assure you, I am not. I was ninety-four years old when I died, and I have spent a good deal of my time here in study. What you have made will work. It is not a system I would make. But if it speaks to you, then you should use it.”

I stared down at my papers. I looked up at him. “What happens to you when I leave?” I asked in a small voice.

“Then I leave too,” Xillon said. He shrugged. “I don’t know if I go somewhere else. Probably. The ghost system seems to suggest there’s something else after this.”

I tried to blink back my tears. I felt like an idiot. “Maybe I’m not ready. Maybe I shouldn’t leave.”

“An extra year of study isn’t going to help you,” Xillon said tartly. “And almost any system is better than none. If there turn out to be problems, someone will pass laws to make unethical things illegal.”

I swallowed and gathered the papers to my chest. I started to step forward, then turned back. “Are you — will you be okay?”

“Go!” Xillon shouted, pointing his finger at the nebulousness, looking exasperated.

I took one last look back at him, and I walked out of the room, through one of the walls of nothingness.

A tight, uncomfortable sensation squeezed around me, and I gasped for breath, suddenly needing to. I stumbled as my knees appeared, and my left foot started itching. My fingers felt stiff, and my arms felt tightly clenched around the paper. When my hair returned, it tickled my neck, and my eyebrows felt weird.

The bright light blazed around me, and my eyes hurt. I shielded them with both my arms, which were now empty — the papers had dissolved behind me. But the contents still remained in my head. Bizarrely, so did lots of other things I didn’t remember learning.

But I didn’t have time to think about that, because suddenly, I was standing outside the light in the Ruler’s top floor, blinking. A man in front of me yelped, and six men from around the room converged on me. They all held what looked like knives on a stick. Four of them pointed those things at me.

“Uh, hello,” I said foolishly. “May I speak to the Ruler, please?”

One of them spun on his heel and marched through the door to the Ruler’s area. I waited, twisting my foot around, wondering why it was itchy. And how did people deal with having nose hairs? The feeling of air swishing past them was driving me crazy.

The Ruler burst through the door, a wormthread sleeping gown fluttering around her, her hair only partially arranged. One of the filias, not tucked in fully, tumbled from her ear and plopped near her feet. She didn’t seem to notice.

“You,” she said tightly, shaking the overlong sleeves off of her wrists. “Did you bring back magic?”

I bit my lower lip. “Um . . .”

The Ruler gave me a hard stare. Her jaw was set, and her eyes looked dangerously unforgiving.

I gabbled as quickly as I could. “Look, I know you thought we needed magic, but I have a new system that’s actually better long-term, I thought it through and it’s going to be great, and —”

The Ruler turned to her men. “Kill her,” she said.

The men jabbed forward with their knives-on-sticks. I yelped and jerked a ring of fire up around me. Two of the sticks burst into flames, and the men holding them dropped them and leapt back, shouting.

“You need me to explain how the new system works,” I called, raising my voice to carry over the crackling shield around me. I knew how to be fireproof, but they didn’t. Yet. Hopefully they wouldn’t figure it out in the next few minutes.

“I can find out from your successor,” the Ruler said coldly.

“I don’t have an heir!” I protested. “You’d wind up with someone random! It would take a lot of work to find them!”

The Ruler smiled. “I would much rather work with someone you didn’t choose.”

That smile chilled me. She is really, really angry, I realized.

“Have things gone that badly?” I asked in a small voice, tightening my fingers to increase the thickness of the burning ring around me. The heat roared up, incinerating another stick someone tried throwing at me.

Two more to go, I thought. Unless they have more someplace.

“Badly?” the Ruler bit out. “No, I wouldn’t say things have gone badly. The caravans take far more stinksap than carriages and run no faster, which makes them completely useless. I can no longer create or destroy status. Nobody dares waste resources to grow crops for wood, paper, or clothing, which means we’re desperately short on almost everything. And some people are still going hungry. Oh, and let’s not forget how many former magicians have turned to crime in the past two years!”

My mouth felt dry. My fingers trembled, and the flames flickered around me in rhythm with them. “T-two years? I’ve been gone for two years?”

“And now apparently you’ve started this . . . strange fire thing we don’t even need,” the Ruler said bitterly, waving her hand. “I told you what would happen if you lied to me about saving magic! I wish you’d paid attention to me!”

She’s cooling off, I thought, relieved. We should be able to have a rational discussion about this.

The Ruler turned to her six men. “She can’t possibly stay that way forever,” she said, sounding tired. “Kill her when she sleeps.”

“What?!” I gasped. “Hey, wait a minute!”

The Ruler turned her back on me, opened the door back to her rooms, and walked through it, shutting the door softly. She didn’t even have the decency to slam it.

I looked around at the six men, feeling lost. They were all eyeing my fire shield. They had the same look Mother did when she found a bed of weeds.

“Um,” I said, my voice only shaking a little, “look. I’ll teach you all how to use my system if you just let me leave —”

One of them picked up a charred stick and broke the knife part off it. Then he threw it at me. It whooshed past my ear, and I felt a sting of pain.

I clutched my ear furiously. Is the Ruler trying to provoke me or something? How could she possibly think that’s a good idea?!

I could easily have escaped if I’d been willing to kill the men around me. The Ruler had to know that. I was controlling fire, not thayflowers.

Maybe she knows what war is, I thought, my skin prickling. I could feel each of the tiny hairs on my neck raise. Maybe she thinks I’m a threat to the Rulership that way.

If so, I really couldn’t blame her for wanting to kill me.

I have to prove I’m harmless, I thought, swallowing. The men continued circling me, looking tense and jumpy. I have to prove my system is meant to be useful, not aggressive. Fireproofing is absolutely basic, so I could teach these men how to use it in just a few seconds . . . but then they’d kill me. It might prove my system relatively harmless, but I’d still be dead. Think . . . think . . . think . . .

I spun around slowly, searching for some idea.

My eyes fell on the hallway that had been behind me. At the end of the hallway was a window. A gigantically tall, very skinny window. With wood shutters so that nobody would fall out of it.

I yanked the fire in close and dashed straight down the hallway. The men let out a yell, and I shoved the fire behind me in a straight wall, which was easier to maintain. I heard a shout and footsteps running the other way, and I wanted to hit myself. Stupid! There were two other hallways branching off the central area that I wasn’t blocking!

As I reached the wall, I drew the fire in a semicircle around me, which required far more concentration than a circle or a wall had. I had just enough focus left to ease a flicker into my hand and toss it at the shutters behind me.

I heard the shutters start to crackle. Then I felt a searing sensation on my wrist.

Argh! I jumped back, frantically beating the end of my sleeve into my outer skirts. Fireproofing only worked for fire being currently controlled by somebody, and I didn’t have the concentration to handle both the burning shutters and the semicircle. I might be the Keeper, but I was still completely unpracticed at this.

A knife-on-a-stick appeared under my nose. I realized, to my horror, that the semicircle had dropped. I turned around slowly, my heart pounding.

The man hesitated, his hand wavering.

I looked at his eyes as I heard other footsteps running towards me from the either end of the outer hallway. Maybe he realizes that I could have killed them easily back there, and didn’t. Maybe he appreciates that.

“Bye!” I said.

I seized control of the fire behind me and squeezed hard. The heat flared, and the black lumps of wood blocking my path powdered to ash. The man shouted and fell back, shielding his face. I scrambled up into the fire I was now controlling, and looked down at the roof of the next floor down, which was rather far below me. I swallowed, focusing as hard as I could, and leapt.

A huge burning ball caught me. I breathed heavily, from terror and relief that it had worked, then ran to the edge of the second floor roof and did it again.

I peered over the edge down to the ground from the first floor roof, trying to see if anyone was there. I couldn’t see without leaning forward farther than I dared, though, so I contented myself with shouting, “Look out below! Move out of the way!” before throwing the fireball down to catch me.

I heard shouts from the top floor as I reached the ground, and lots of people were running around and crying out and pointing at me all around the Ruler’s garden.

Time to go, I thought.

I bolted to my feet, stumbled over my ankle, which I had apparently twisted a bit, and started running down the path I needed. I was panting in no time at all, and my lungs were burning in a way that had nothing to do with my system.

That’s right, I realized, gasping for breath as I bent over, stopped because I couldn’t keep on going. I was in terrible shape when I left, after weeks of being kept prisoner. Apparently that hasn’t changed.

My eyes blurred as I stared down at the smooth, smooth ground beneath me. If I couldn’t run, I couldn’t reach the Ruler’s Road. If I couldn’t reach the Ruler’s Road, I couldn’t get back to my family. Not to mention that the Ruler still wanted to kill me.

Wait. I felt my eyes widen. This is geo-made stone. Geo-made stone is virtually indestructible. I couldn’t damage it if I wanted to.

I can use fire on this.

I dropped to the ground, tucking my arms around my knees and my head to my chest, and expanded a ball of fire around me. Then I shot forward, spinning down the street inside it.

People shouted and dove out of the way. I had to slow down several times to keep from barreling into less observant members of the crowd, but I still made a lot more progress than I would have running, even if I had been in shape to manage it. I kept on going so fast that I almost didn’t notice when I reached the entrance to the Ruler’s Road I needed. I definitely didn’t slow down in time.

Wham! My rear end smacked against the hard stone, and I tumbled out of the fireball, which disappeared around me.

The crowd started to draw slightly closer, murmuring to each other. I scrambled up to my feet and waved my hands threateningly. Most of the crowd looked scared and drew back again.

I shoved the stone door to the Ruler’s Road, and it didn’t budge. I looked down, and my heart fell. I’d completely forgotten they were kept locked. I couldn’t break through the stone, and I certainly didn’t have a key. Not that a key would help, because I’d probably melt it anyway . . .

My eyes fell on the small keyhole. Oh, duh. The entire lock was made from metal. I sent a blast of white-hot flame straight through it, and red liquid splashed out the other end. I shoved the door, hard, and then fell through it, nearly tripping and landing in the pool of molten metal on the other side.

That would’ve been a disaster, I thought, wincing as I caught my balance. Already I was seeing a potential issue with my system. Being fireproof didn’t actually protect me from hot metal, unless it was inside a fire I was using. Gotta figure out some way to make people generally heatproof, I decided. It’ll probably be tough, but I imagine it’s possible. That might also prevent heat stroke during the hottest hours of growing season . . .

I hurried up the steep stairs at the closest end of the caravan. It wasn’t easy, since my legs felt as limp and floppy as squishwood, and people were already poking their heads through the door to watch me, which was aggravating. Do you mind? I thought.

I fumbled for the door at the top of the stairs, and lurched into the room past it. It was larger than the sitting room the Ruler’s heirs used in the middle, and it had one-ten-and-two seats around an engine in the center. I found a row of vials in a bracket screwed to the wall, about one-third of them empty. I slid out one of the full ones and swapped it for the almost-empty one inside the engine.

I pulled the lever at the side of the engine, which was just where it was in carriages, and the caravan rumbled to life. It began to move slowly, very slowly, about one-quarter of a carriage’s pace.

I heard exclamations and murmurs outside, and I gritted my teeth, knowing that I was moving slowly enough that a person could easily walk next to the caravan at a brisk pace and keep up with it. I couldn’t enhance the efficiency of the stinksap, or multiply the caravan’s speed directly. But I could make the caravan use its fuel more quickly in order to move faster.

I opened another part of the engine, and found the tiny flame that kept it going. I pushed it hotter, and the stinksap bubbled faster. I watched carefully to keep it steady, wary about overheating. Sunstream had had technology much like this, and I’d learned enough about how theirs functioned to figure out what would and wouldn’t work here.

The caravan picked up speed. Not as quickly as it would have before, and not as fast as it used to go. But it was sufficient.

Sitting in the dim room, focusing on keeping the flame burning at exactly the right temperature, I at last had time to think for the first time since I’d built my system. The caravan was moving at a steady pace, and I knew it would be over a day before I reached my family.

Sorting out my thoughts, I noticed something strange. A lot of knowledge about other systems kept flying into my head and out again. I rather thought these were the previous original Keepers’ memories. The older the system, the vaguer and less frequently the knowledge came to me, but I still caught glimpses of many things.

Xillon’s knowledge was in my head an awful lot. It seemed like I knew mathematics approximately one-half of the time, and not the rest. It was disorienting. Whenever it was gone, I knew I’d known it, but I couldn’t remember exactly what I had understood.

Occasionally, I looked out of the tiny windows, and the sight was eerie. Not once did I pass an open door, and the walls were strewn with color, signal after signal that hadn’t been answered in two years. In some places, they were piled on top of others. I wondered how long it had been since people had given up on the Ruler’s heirs answering anything.

I found dry and tasteless snacks under the magicians’ seats, which I was grateful for because I was soon ravenously hungry. I kept the caravan going while I slept, even though it slowed down to its natural ponderous speed without me keeping the flame constantly elevated.

Curling up on the hard floor was uncomfortable, and I slept brokenly anyway, waking up every few hours to find the caravan had slowed to a stop and I had to replace the empty stinksap vial with a new one. There had been one-ten-and-eight vials, out of two-tens-and-four, on the wall when I left. By the time I had to slow down and start checking every few doors for some sign that I was near the area my family lived in, I had used all but three of them.

Finally, I reached an area that looked vaguely familiar. The air was crisp and cold, and it was darkening toward late evening. It seemed to be late growing season, because there were flocks of birds up in the sky. We only ever saw that many right before cold season.

Birds are all we have left, I thought sadly, watching black and gold wings flap through the sky. Birds and insects. I remembered the richness of the world during the taming system. Maybe someday, someone will invent a system that will bring our animals back again.

At the next door I opened, I found myself staring at the Childhome family’s land. My breath caught in my throat as I recognized it. They had cut down all their burrun trees, and many of their vassals’ allotments looked dry and scrubby. It was clear the harvest had been very poor this year. Still, I recognized it, and this was just down the road from my parents’ land.

I’m almost home, I thought, swallowing a lump in my throat.

I yanked a carriage out of the slot near the bottom of the caravan, and set it up awkwardly with one side sagging a bit. When I checked the carriage engine, I found its stinksap vial was almost empty. With a sigh, I climbed up the steep steps to the caravan’s other engine, and retrieved one of the vials that was there. There were only six on that side.

I trundled along the road in my carriage, which felt bumpier than I remembered, and looked out the window at our neighbors’ lands. They all seemed to be harvested bare, and there were very few birds hunting for food. Usually I would see whole flocks scratching for insects or gulping forgotten, overripe fruit.

The carriage rolled to a stop by the door to my parents’ house, and I felt a stab of panic. What if they had left? What if the Ruler had taken them to Central? What if they were visiting Grandfather Doss and Grandmother Rella?

I stood up on quavering legs and forcing myself to walk to the door. I knocked firmly, even though my arms were shaking.

The door opened, and Grandfather stood in front of me. For a moment, we stood staring at each other, frozen.

Then he shouted with joy and flung his arms around me, yanking me into the house.

“It’s Raneh!” he hollered loudly. “Raneh’s back!”

There was a thunder of footsteps, and Mother and Father and some boy I didn’t know came running down the stairs.

“You made it!” Mother gasped.

“How did you get here?” Father asked.

“Is Yaika with you?” the boy demanded.

Grandmother emerged from the kitchen, with specks of orange sauce on the end of her right sleeve. Her face, which looked older and more creased than I remembered, broke into a smile. “Raneh,” she said, and came over to hug me. I embraced her back, but the boniness of her arms made me worry. She felt even more fragile than she looked. I had a feeling she hadn’t been eating properly.

I hugged Mother, and then Father, and then looked around. “Where’s Hurik?” I asked.

The unfamiliar boy looked at me like I was a total idiot. “Are you blind?” he asked.

I did a double take and looked at him. He was tall, he was wearing a white tunic, and he was . . . skinny. “Hurik?” I asked in disbelief.

“Who else?” he wanted to know, folding his arms.

“But . . . but . . .” I fumbled for words. “But you’re skinny!”

Hurik snorted. “Blame Grandmother for that. She said if we had to live on rations, I could get a smaller portion size than everyone else, since I had ‘enough stored to live on for awhile.’”

“But . . . but . . .” I looked him up and down. There was something else that was bothering me. “Did you run out of dye or something?”

Grandfather and Hurik both burst out laughing. Father got a sour look on his face.

“Hurik took the oath of mathematics a year ago,” Mother said. “Without actually informing us that he was going to do it, mind you.”

“Or anyone else, for that matter,” Father frowned. “He took the oath and then informed us at the dinner table. Who does that?”

My mind reeled. Hurik was a mathematician? That explained why he was wearing mathematician white, but . . . really?

“You didn’t answer my question,” Hurik pursued, tapping his foot impatiently. “Is Yaika with you? Where is she?”

“I . . . I think she’s back in Central,” I said slowly. “She didn’t come with me.”

“Too good for us?” Hurik asked, looking annoyed.

“She hasn’t gone and gotten married without us, has she?” Mother asked anxiously.

“You’d think she might have bothered to come back to visit,” Father growled.

“It’s not like that,” I said, swallowing. “It’s not quite what you think. I . . . I have to explain something to you. We should sit down. It’s a long story.”

I told them everything from the beginning. Mother’s eyes went wide when I told them about having magic, and Father looked like he wanted to hit something when I told them how the Ruler had reacted to finding out about it. Grandfather leaned forward with intense interest when I described the place where systems were created, and Hurik was delighted by the fact that the creator of status had been a mathematician. Only Grandmother listened silently, without asking questions or interrupting.

Finally, I put my hands on my lap and looked at Grandmother. “What do you think?” I asked nervously.

Grandmother let out a deep sigh. “I’m glad you’re safe. But the Ruler had a point. I don’t know how we’re going to survive to the next year. We’ve run out of almost everything, and our harvest this season was the worst I’ve ever seen. I can’t be overjoyed to hear that magic’s not coming back. I’m sorry.”

There was silence for a moment, as my family members eyed each other uncomfortably. This seemed to be something they had talked about more than once.

“I did think about that,” I said tentatively. “And I came up with a solution.”

“What?” Grandmother asked bitterly. “Does your fire magically create more nutrients for the soil to grow things?”

“Not exactly,” I said. “But . . . well, I’ll show you. Come here.”

I got up and gestured for them to follow me. We passed Hurik’s garden, which was filled with digger roots, and Yaika’s garden, which had been taken over by tonna berries.

When we reached my garden, my heart skipped a beat, because the ornamentals had been dug up and replaced by food crops that had been harvested completely. Only frost blossoms were left, twinkling in the chilly air. They were one of the few food crops that could grow perfectly well through cold season.

No filias, I thought, getting down on my hands and knees and digging through the middle patch, which was now covered in bulge tuber vines. Does that mean no groverweed?

Just as I was starting to panic, my fingers brushed against a round seed. I breathed a sigh of relief and poked it, wondering how to activate it.

The small seed squirmed and put forth a tiny shoot. Then it budded a tiny leaf, then another, then another. I sat back, watching my family. To me, ridiculously fast-growing groverweed was a typical sight. But to them, this would be a new thing.

Mother was riveted. Father looked startled. Hurik and Grandfather were leaning forward in mild interest. Grandmother looked fierce and skeptical.

“So your system lets you grow food faster?” she demanded.

“Only this plant,” I said.

“Is that plant edible?”

“No, not really.”

“Then what good does it do?” Grandmother asked, frustrated.

“It grows very, very quickly,” I said.

“And?”

“And its roots grow very, very deep.”

“In what way is that helpful?” Grandmother cried. “We need food, not weeds!”

“How deep do its roots grow?” Mother asked slowly.

“Very,” I said, grinning. “Agri favored shallow-root crops because it could modify them more easily. That’s part of the reason we have this problem. But these will grow in any weather, seek out nutrients from the deep, and bring those to the surface, where we need them.”

My family watched as the plant put forth its first tiny flower bud. Even Grandmother seemed quietly reverent.

Three petals peeked out from the tiny bud, which unfurled delicately. A pattern of orange whorls traced itself across the petals. The red-gold spiral lifted its head to the sun. And then it burst into flames.

“Oh, yes,” I said. “And they do that.”

About a month later, I was working with Father to design a layout for a raised bed garden. We had figured out that the burnflowers also kept soil warmer, which made them ideal for keeping right beside crops to extend the growing season.

Sort of.

“Was it really necessary to make a plant that is constantly on fire?” Father groused, beating out the embers on one side of the box with a thick blanket.

“Yes,” I said, capturing the ones on the other side in my hands. “That’s how they work.”

“Next time, we are using stone for the walls, not wood,” Father informed me, his eyebrows twitching.

“Hey, Father!” Hurik called from the house. “Where do we keep the burnflower seeds? Someone came to get some!”

“Not again,” Father groaned, climbing up to his feet. “We’ve told them if they’ll just wait patiently, their groverweed will turn eventually.”

“I’ll do it,” I said, starting to get up.

“Oh, no,” Father said, pointing at the raised bed. “You are going to get those flowers under control before they burn down our entire experiment.”

I bit my lip to keep from laughing and tapped one of the flowers sharply. It dropped several seeds into my hand.

“Here,” I said, handing them up to him. “Now you don’t have to find the rest.”

“Thank you,” Father said, and strode off towards the house.

I frowned as I tried to figure out a way to twist the climbing clea stalks so that they wouldn’t be in danger of catching fire. It wasn’t easy. Climbing cleas tended to send out little tendrils to look for new supports to inch upward, so it wasn’t easy to convince them to stay away from another plant that stood taller and was within reach.

I felt around for the branch cutters behind me, deciding that the best solution was to chop off any stalks that leaned the wrong way. The climbing cleas sure wouldn’t like it, but it was better to have a small harvest than a big one that got roasted prematurely.

I heard footsteps pad through the dirt.

“Hi,” I said distractedly, waving my hand behind me. “Can you pass me those branch cutters, please?”

I held my hand out behind me, and the tool was placed in it.

“Thanks,” I said, sticking my tongue between my teeth as I chopped off one stalk, then another, then another one.

Somebody cleared their throat, sounding very annoyed. “Raneh. It’s me.”

“Grandmother?” I asked vaguely, carefully nudging a burnflower away from a clump of digger leaves.

“Do I look like Grandmother?!” the voice exclaimed.

I brushed my hair out of my face and turned around. “Okay, who . . .”

My voice trailed off as I saw someone in purple-and-blue-striped outer skirt folding her arms and watching me indignantly. A floppy purple hat hung off one ear, and filias dangled off of it. She was obviously two years older, but she looked like . . .

“Yaika?” I asked dumbly.

“Hi!” she beamed.

“Is the Ruler here?” I gasped, looking around.

Yaika scowled. “Is that all the welcome I’m getting? No, the Ruler is not here. I can go places by myself, thank you very much.”

“But if you can get here all the way from Central, so can she,” I said, my heart beating faster. “That means I’m not safe here. That means . . .”

“Oh, calm down,” Yaika sighed, nudging her hat as it slipped. “The Ruler has plenty to keep her busy. You’re not the most important person in the world, you know.”

Um . . . I thought. Since I was the only person in the world who knew how to use the new system, I sort of thought I might be.

“For your information, the Ruler is perfectly reasonable,” Yaika added. “When I pointed out that you could have attacked her and didn’t, and that you showed us a way to fix the caravans instead, she decided that as long as you don’t do anything aggressive, she’ll leave you be.”

“Well, that’s . . . nice . . .” I said warily.

What’s the catch? I thought.

“She sent me down here to fetch the caravan that you left stranded,” Yaika told me. “You didn’t break it or anything, did you?”

“No.” I shook my head.

“Good.” Yaika looked relieved. “I had to come down on another Ruler’s Road, which meant three days in a caravan and then three days in a carriage. I’d hate to have to go back the same way.”

“But it’s almost out of stinksap.”

“Eh, they all burn through the stinksap quickly these days.” Yaika shrugged. “Don’t worry, I brought enough for the journey.”

I looked at my younger sister, weirded out by how old she looked. She had to be fourteen now, but she looked fifteen, maybe sixteen, and her beauty had changed. Where before she had looked innocent and precious, like a fragile child that needed protecting, now she looked fierce and tough. Granted that the fragile facade had always been a lie, she’d still had some real innocence when I’d last seen her. Now even the pretense had been stripped away.

Did that happen because of me? I wondered, swallowing.

“Now, there is one other thing,” Yaika hedged. “I’m going to be here for awhile. You know, visiting my family. So you might as well, um, teach me all the secrets of that fire thing. You’re planning to teach people anyway, right?” she asked hopefully.

I stared at her. She stared back at me, her eyes wide and innocent. It didn’t work nearly as well as it used to.

“The Ruler asked you to do that, didn’t she,” I asked flatly.

“It’s part of the deal,” Yaika sighed. “So she’ll leave you alone. But it’s a good deal, Raneh. You weren’t planning to keep the workings secret anyway, were you?”

“No,” I said slowly. “But I was sort of planning to choose my students myself. I’d like to make sure they’re trustworthy and not likely to abuse it.”

“So teach other people,” Yaika said, waving her hand. “I don’t care. But one of them has to be me.”

“And then you’ll teach the Ruler.”

“All the Ruler’s heirs, too, if that helps.”

It didn’t. “I was planning to teach her everything as soon as I came out, you know,” I said, aggrieved. “And then she tried to kill me. Again!”

“She didn’t trust you. You really can’t blame her for that. But look! You’re still alive, and so is she, and we can all let bygones be bygones! Right?”

Yaika stared at me hopefully.

The thought of doing anything to help the Ruler really grated on me. I’d done everything to be friendly and helpful, and she’d just been nasty. But then, what was the alternative? Start a conflict? Let it escalate into a war? That was absolutely not an option I could live with.

“All right,” I sighed. “Bygones.”

“Great! So!” Yaika flopped onto the ground beside me. “Show me the first thing about your system.”

“The first thing?” I asked. I ran my finger through a burnflower. “That would be fireproofing.”

“Okay, show me the second thing. That sounds boring.”

I rolled my eyes, but I obliged. I took a hint of fire from the burnflower and held it over my hand. “That might be changing the temperature of the flame.” It flickered orange, then green, purple, yellow, blue, red, green, then back to yellow again.

Yaika’s eyes lit up. She clapped her hands. Then she asked the strangest question I’d ever heard.

“So, can I paint with it?”