The following morning, I reached for my glasses out of habit and had them on my nose before I remembered that they were useless, and for this I have given thanks many times over, for had I set them aside I might never have discovered—

“They work.”

Ivy sat up, rubbing her eyes, and then peered at them. “They’re missing a lens. One you don’t need anymore, at that.”

“But they work,” I said, baffled. The glass lens remained hazy; I’d gotten into the habit of looking over the rims, and had long since stopped attending to the trouble of it. But the missing lens was not just clear: it had infused some of the sleeping bodies around me with an unmistakably eldritch glow.

“I suppose it would make sense,” Ivy was saying. “You can see better without the lens rather than with them. Should we pop the other out? Perhaps Chester could find a way to do so without breaking the frames.”

“No,” I said, stilling her with a hand. She had that faint aura too, something I noticed only when she turned so that part of her body was in shadow. “No, I don’t know why it’s working, but I would rather not jeopardize the side that is.” Her expression made it clear I hadn’t explained myself yet. “The empty side is giving everyone a halo.”

“Are you sure it’s not the sun?” she asked. “For once it’s up.”

It was… and a finer autumn morning I would have been hard-pressed to recall, a cold, dry day with a gentle breeze that smelled of apples. I shivered, closing my eyes at the benison of the light on my brow. “Ah. No. I don’t think it’s the sun.” I offered them to her. “Can you see it?”

Perplexed, she took them and set them on her nose, closing the eye on the side with the glass and squinting through the empty one. “Nothing? Perhaps it is something that needs magic.”

“Perhaps,” I said, accepting them back from her. Once again, I spotted the faint illumination wreathing my companions. Living things seemed more vital when they were not drained of their magic. Could this glow be related? Perhaps it indicated magical aptitude? I could hope.

Explaining the state of my spectacles brought me in for the predictable ribbing about vanity, or my inability to duck a blow like a proper man. I gave back on that one, not seeing Radburn or Guy exercising themselves on the field against my guard, but Guy shrugged that riposte off with a laugh: “I’m not eager to put myself on the dueling ground with a man who can’t die.”

“Really, Morgan,” Eyre said. “I know you have some attachment to them, but they seem beyond recovery. Why are you still wearing them?”

I slipped them from my face and offered them to a puzzled Last. In the Angel’s Gift, I said, “Do you see anything when you look through them?”

The captain lifted them and gazed through them without setting them on his face, the skin around his eyes wrinkling. “No,” he said, handing them back. “But they have changed.”

“Changed how?”

“They are charged,” Last said. “As your staff is.”

And my staff had been blooded. So had the spectacles. Was that the link? Magic to blood and back? I rolled the thin wire leg between my fingertips, sensing something. A tingle against skin. In Lit, I said, “The frame shows me things now that one of the lenses is missing.”

I had all their attention now.

“Did it work for your captain?” Chester asked.

“No. But he can tell they’ve been…” I sought words. Enchanted seemed hyperbolic. “Energized. Magically.”

“So what is it you see?” Guy asked.

I set them on my nose, looked again at my human companions. They all nurtured their small glows, each and every one of them. With effort, I could discern differences: Chester was strong, and Ivy. Guy more than Radburn, who was somehow more diffuse than any of the others. Eyre was a deep banked heat, glowing like coals. The genets burned too, Kelu and the Pearls less than Almond. Even the drake smoldered.

I looked out further: the human knights that fringed our group were vague to my new sight, but the Vessel was bright. Not, I was surprised to find, as bright as some of my companions. “I see light,” I said finally.

“We all see light, Morgan,” Guy said dryly. “It’s how our eyes work.”

“I see light in you,” I amended. “In all of you. Not so bright that it occludes your features; it doesn’t appear to be physical, and when I look directly at you I don’t see it the way I see your face. I….” I grimaced. “There’s no word. It’s not taste or sound or the way your skin feels heat, but there is something of all those things in it.”

“Light,” Radburn repeated, uncertain.

“I think it may be magic.”

“You’re seeing divinity?” Guy asked, and I couldn’t tell now if he was teasing or not. I noticed the Vessel listening from in front of us.

“I’m seeing something,” I said. “Which I suspect may be… the magic in all of you. But hell if I know, Guy. There was nothing in my studies about enchanted spectacles. The usual thing is swords, shields—”

“Cups,” Chester said.

“Food,” Eyre murmured. “Food is sacred.”

“And blood,” Radburn said with a shudder.

“Says the man who is fascinated by cannons.” Guy rolled his eyes. “Have you noticed what a cannonball leaves of a man? The pieces are not clean.”

“May I?” Eyre asked me, quiet, and it was a measure of my trust in him that I handed them over without hesitation. Ivy was… well. Ivy. And Last was mine in a way I was hard-pressed to describe to people who’d grown up committed to democracy. Giving what I perceived as my sight to those with a claim on me was natural. I had not realized Eyre was part of that circle until I felt his fingers graze mine as the spectacles left my hand.

Did he know? Did it matter? I watched him study the frames, the reins resting on the pommel of his saddle. He even ran his finger along the inside rim encircling the empty space, and I wondered if he felt something: a heat, a pressure, something that signified their new ability. “Fascinating,” he said. “They seem in every way to be unchanged, and yet….”

“And yet?” Chester asked, curious.

“And yet one perceives them to be uncanny.” Eyre folded the legs and passed them back to me. “That may be observational bias. I now know them to be magical, so perhaps I impute to them properties that exist only in my own mind. Hard to say without some more obvious sign.”

“So if we posit the glasses to be magical, and to indeed be indicating magical aptitude,” Chester said. “That would mean we all have it? And remain unaware of it, somehow?” He looked forward toward the priestess and said, “Honored Vessel? How did you learn that you contained magic?”

I liked the way that sounded: containing magic. As if we were all marvelous gifts, capable of amazing things. It made me forget for a moment what elves had been using magic for on the Archipelago. I looped an arm around Almond, who was riding in front of me today.

The Vessel canted her head. “I did not learn that I contained magic in the way you suggest. I grew up knowing. How could I not?”

“So how did you learn to use it?” Radburn asked.

“Could you teach us?” Chester added.

She made a noise: frustration, I thought. “The magic must manifest itself first. Learning without knowing how to reach it accomplishes nothing.”

“So… there’s an energy,” Ivy murmured. “And there are activities one can put it to. But one has to know… where the energy is? Before it can be channeled?”

“Like a lake that cannot be used for irrigation until one pumps it out, perhaps,” Eyre offered, and the Vessel nodded. I noticed Last listening very intently, and wondered what he was making of this.

“So what we lack is maps leading us to our own internal waters,” Chester said, frowning in thought. “How is this accomplished? You must have found your way, Honored One. How did you do it?”

“Through prayer and meditation,” she replied, surprising none of us. The disappointment was palpable, though. Having had it revealed that they showed signs of magical potential, my companions wanted very badly to experiment with it. Furthering the interview only made it clear that the path available to the Church would not suit any of us. Priests grew up in a paradigm that made the discovery of one’s magical potential as natural as every other part of maturation. They believed in their divine heritage, and as children they groped toward it with the encouragement of their elders. Of course they stumbled into it if they had sufficient power to merit the awakening. The rest of us—older, more skeptical, blinder in some ways than children—would have to find our own path.

It was perhaps to be expected that the conversation would turn to Last, who had made himself obvious in a way unusual for him.

“How do the elves do it, then?” Radburn asked him.

“It is not the same,” he said slowly, thinking through the concepts or his translation or both. “The land is not the same. And we… we no longer are the same. Once magic came to us easily. Now it is consumed by our enchantment.”

My lips tightened into a thin line, hard enough to make my cheeks hurt. I touched one of them and murmured, “Of course,” before returning to the conversation at hand. “I don’t think the situations are comparable. Every elf born after the curse has been… fettered, is the only word I can imagine. They have not had the experience of growing into magic naturally either.”

“We’re all blind and in the dark together,” Chester muttered.

“This is assuming your glasses are revealing magical potential,” Guy pointed out into the ensuing silence. “You are hypothesizing it, but there’s no corroborating evidence. In fact, you could make a convincing argument that you’re wrong; we evince no signs of magical potential, so how could you posit that we have it at all?”

A pause, and then the discussion erupted with a fury… naturally, for the most vociferous arguments were usually fueled by issues on which there is almost no data to validate one side or the other. Eyre waded into the ensuing mess and I left him to it. Eventually, the discussion settled back into what had become an old groove: assuming that humans had magic, how should society change to reflect this new axis of power and influence? Elves had a king—what should humans have?

Again, Last rode further forward than was his wont, listening. Was this discussion somehow relevant to his duty to protect me? I hoped not.

“What if we’re the only ones with magic?” Ivy asked suddenly, interrupting the course of the discussion. “Should we be kings?”

“It’s unlikely that we are,” Chester began.

“—assuming, of course, that we have magic at all, as this hasn’t been proven yet,” Guy put in.

“The Church sowed divinity in us all,” Chester finished to her. “If we can have it, then presumably so can everyone else, or their efforts will have been in vain.”

“We’re just talking in circles,” Radburn complained. “None of this is getting resolved.”

“Since when have we cared about whether we resolve things?” Guy said.

“Usually we just talk about them,” Ivy said. “But I agree with you, Radburn. It is getting tiresome. It was one thing to have discussions about things we had no hope of affecting. Now….”

I could sense them all looking at me.

“Now we will have to make do as everyone does who suffers through history’s grand changes,” Chester said.

“Poorly,” Guy said.

“Without the benefit of hindsight to make the choices seem obvious,” Chester said.

“I don’t see as we’re making very many choices,” Radburn muttered.

“I don’t know… this trip seems rife with potential for dramatic choices,” Guy said.

“I am hoping for very little adventure,” I said firmly, to keep any perverse spirits from developing ideas. “I would like to arrive, open the vault, undo the enchantment, and have everything settle into place with as little fuss as possible.” At their looks, I said, “I have already had enough adventure for my lifetime.”

Guy snorted. “I reckon not, given how long your lifetime’s likely to be. Eventually you’ll get bored.”

I thought only the genets felt my shudder, but Ivy drew in closer and rode alongside me for the remainder of the afternoon.

That evening, Last did not summon Sabaf for Chester’s tutelage. We arrived to the sward adjoining our camp and found him waiting alone, hands folded behind his back and expression inscrutable, even for him. To Almond and Ivy, who had decided to accompany us, he said, “Please sit at the corner of the field.”

I glanced after them, then said in the Gift, “Last? What is this? Will you be taking on Chester as well, then?”

“Tonight,” Last said in careful Lit, “The two of you will practice against one another.”

Startled, I said, “Is this wise?”

“He’s better than you are, my prince. We all will learn something from this.”

I snorted. “I already know he’s better than I am. Everyone is.”

Last held up a hand. “Not so much true anymore,” he said. He looked at Chester. “You will obey?”

“You are the armsmaster,” Chester said. “If this is the exercise, I’ll do my best.”

“Good. To your weapons, then.”

“My staff,” I said, dubious. “And his sword. Is that right? Or shall I find a sword, or cut him a staff?”

“You shall use the weapons you are comfortable with.” Last added to Chester, “You may instruct later. Bout first, so you can make catalog of one another’s strengths. Do not fear to test him—he can feel pain but it won’t last.”

“You notice he’s not at all concerned about telling me to pull my blows,” I said dryly.

“You’re coming along well,” Chester said, by way of reassurance. We both knew it a very minor one, though; his eyes were suffused with affection and amusement both. God knew what my countenance revealed. Chagrin, I thought. What Last hoped to accomplish by teaching my friend he could pepper me with holes like a woman’s pincushion I had not the first notion, but no doubt his reasons would be revealed in time.

“On your guard, then,” Chester said, sword lifted, and I raised my staff… and then we fought. And surprisingly, I did not do so badly. As we worked and the sweat began to trickle down my skin, I felt more confidence, fought with more aggression. We laughed, and it was pleasure.

“Enough,” Last said, and pointed at Chester. “Stop it.”

“I’m not—”

“You are,” Last reproved. “You do no one any service by holding back. You cannot kill him. Stop treating him differently than you do Sabaf.”

“Sabaf is a warrior,” Chester protested.

“Your companion is the prince who guards the King-Reclusive,” Last said, and there was no brooking him then. “He too must be a warrior, and a more significant one than Sabaf, or you. Now, work him hard, or I will, and make you watch.”

That paled Chester so visibly that even in the gloaming I could see the bloodlessness of his cheek. Would it be so hard to see me impaled? I supposed it would. Memories of Kemses fighting, his arms holding in the loops of his intestines, swamped me.

“All right,” Chester said to me, quieter: an apology. “Let’s do this, then.”

From the moment he sprang for me, I knew Last had been right to halt the earlier exercise. My belief that I’d somehow advanced to Chester’s level had been delusional, and powered by his desire not to witness me attacked by someone who would tear me apart, he drove me hard. I had all of one lucky moment where his blade caught on the incised patterns in the staff and he faltered, but that was the only time he gave me an opening, and the only thing he earned for it was a bruise. I spent all my time retreating before his attacks, and the staff, which had seemed a perfect weapon for preventing injury, now felt too unwieldy to respond to the nimble jabs of his much quicker sword.

Perhaps I had chosen the wrong weapon at that. What good something that prevents injury in a people who cannot die?

“Come on, Morgan,” Chester growled. “You can do better than this.”

“I’m not sure that I can,” I said, backpedaling from his latest advance.

“Stop fighting me as if I can hurt you—”

“You can!”

“I can’t!” He feinted and I stumbled away, and then he was in my face. “Stop shying away! For God’s sake, you’ve killed a man!”

“I never want to again!” I exclaimed, and this realization stunned me for how deep a wound it revealed.

Into that echo, that silence, Chester pressed his attack, and I reacted, and knew my parry had been too well-aimed. I pulled that blow with everything in me, so violently I tripped.

Chester caught me. I grabbed for him.

I grabbed through him.

We both gasped, froze. I had never been so aware of the crease of someone’s shirt beneath my fingers as I was in that moment, knowing that my physical touch was a lie and what I was actually holding was something far, far more precious.

“What… what is that?” he whispered, trembling.

“Sssh.” I moved the hand, careful, up his arm. Set it on his heart and spread my fingers, feeling the warmth sparking there. “Do you feel it?”

“Yes?” He swallowed, and I watched the starlight move over his throat. “Is that… what I think it is?”

I closed my eyes and let my head drop until my brow rested against his temple. Flexed my intangible grip, gently, gently, and felt the radiance shimmer. We were quiet together, sensing my touch. He quivered, now and then, but that was all. We barely breathed.

“Can you reach it now?” My voice was rough with it, the unexpected intimacy. The shell of him, the flesh, was nothing to this.

“Let me… let me try.” He bit his lower lip and then breathed out once, a long exhalation. Calmer, he closed his eyes. A moment later, I felt the heat shift in my palm.

“Again.”

He nodded once against my head. This time the movement was more distinct, and Chester’s inhale was shakier. “I feel it.” He lifted his head, just enough to meet my eyes, his own glimmering wet. “I feel it.”

I couldn’t help a smile. “So,” I said. “Practice.” I pulled tenderly, just enough to make the heat move, waited for him to tentatively pluck it back into place. For several heartbeats we replayed our duel in this liminal space, our blows mitigated, softened, become this passage of energy from hand to hand, until I felt I could have circumscribed the boundary of Chester’s soul entire and made it mine.

“You have it,” I said at last, releasing my grasp. The heat sank back into him and he was still, the attentive stillness of a hound at the scent. Then he nodded too and swayed into me. I caught him, hand spread on his back now, and over his shoulder I saw Ivy... Ivy who had risen as if to leap to our sides, and had been arrested by what had happened after. Her eyes shone with something... amazement, and a sweetness.

I had done this to Chester in violence, by accident. Could I do it with intent? I held a hand out to her and she took it unafraid. Drawing her into our embrace, I sought the light in her and found it, easily, as if Chester had given me a map. With soft fingers I tickled it, laughed when she gasped and grabbed my arm. “Winifred’s grace!” she exclaimed. “Is that what you’ve done to him?”

“Is he petting the inside of your heart?” Chester asked ruefully, but I could hear the smile in his voice. He was still leaning on me, and this I encouraged. I didn’t think he’d be able to stand straight without aid after a revelation of this magnitude. It was one thing to witness the use of magic by the highest human priest in the land—another to finally touch it in your own soul.

Ivy had her eyes closed, concentrating on the sensation. “Is that....” She pressed her lips together.

“The magic in you,” I said. And she had it in abundance, more in fact than Chester did... I thought of Last’s words and attempted a tentative exploration. They were not much different in capability, I thought... but Chester’s well was drier. The moment I understood it I felt it as an unbearable thirst and shuddered, and both of them straightened, their voices a blent chorus of concern.

“May I... could you...” I drew in a breath. “Would you permit me a terrible liberty?”

They glanced at one another.

“Would it hurt you?” Ivy asked.

“Or one of us?” Chester added.

“No,” I said. “At least, I am almost entirely certain. And if it pains any of us we can stop. But there is an enormous need and it would take so little to assuage it.”

They exchanged another look. Ivy said, “Go on.”

I sank into them instantly, one ghostly hand in either heart, and coaxed an arabesque of light from Ivy’s down through my body and into Chester’s. They both stiffened in shock, and then Chester’s knees gave beneath him. We both lunged for him before he could fall.

“How... how could I have not known what I was missing?” he asked, mazed as if we’d hit him. He turned blindly toward Ivy. “And now I have the smell of you on the inside of my... my head. My spirit?”

“I hope it’s a good smell,” she said with a halting laugh.

“Like flowers and the sap of trees and growing things,” I assured her, because I smelled it too, and tasted it, and felt it as warmth.

“You gave him a little bit of me,” Ivy murmured, eyes wide. “Some of my power.” A pause, and I could see the pride commingle with her astonishment, opening her shoulders. “I had enough power to lend to someone else.”

“Yes,” I said.

She turned that look on Chester, and I recognized that mix of warmth and responsibility that lit it. She was no longer Ivy Miller, the woman defying society to be one of the few of her sex to attend the university. She was not the poor but smart one, common in looks, who’d managed to maintain herself in that unusual lifestyle by frugality and perseverance amongst far better off men, and often far less intelligent ones.

Now she was also Ivy Miller, who had something even Chester St. Clary, a man of power and privilege, had lacked and needed. And as I watched, the knowledge was not transmuted into glee or haughtiness or condescension... but communion. For Ivy it was enough to be on closer to the same footing, and if that footing had to be negotiated constantly, all the more reason to communicate with one another and learn something.

And I hadn’t thought I could love her any better.

All this was no surprise, though. The true surprise was my reaction to Chester’s humility and gratitude, and the trust he showed us both in accepting our aid. I had thought of him as kin, because we were more alike than we showed, we two. But seeing his reaction to being brought low and forced to accept charity—and such charity!—to have at last the culmination of all the dreams of his religion....

I wanted to keep him at my side with a zeal that shook me. I did not want Chester the way I wanted Ivy, but I knew, suddenly and with conviction, that I loved him and wished not be parted from him.

It was at this moment, shattered by revelation and with my arms full of two people I wanted never to release, that I found Last standing across from us. He did not look at them. Did not need to. He merely met my gaze and said in our tongue, low, “The Prince compels.”

The world fell out from beneath me.

“Morgan?” Ivy asked, her hands fluttering on my arm in worry. “What is it?”

The Prince compels—the words echoed, too loud. How to explain all the ramifications of what we’d done?

“He’s distressed because he has discovered that there is only one magic under God,” Chester said to her, drawing both my gaze and Last’s. “And so there is also only one king who directs it.”

She pursed her lips. “You mean to say that there will be no human director of magic, the way there is an elven one... but that we all answer to the same individual? That makes sense, I admit. I would be surprised did God see any division between us. It would be like parents deciding that one of their children was somehow some entirely different species from the others.”

I stared at Chester. “You understood him!”

Chester clicked his tongue against his teeth dismissively. “Locke. I’m a linguist. I’ve been studying this language all my adult life.”

“You’ve been studying the written form,” I pointed out. “I am no linguist but even I know the spoken form of the language is not somehow encoded in its orthography. Without some living speaker of the tongue to guide you—”

I stopped abruptly.

Ivy was already nodding, the merriment gleaming in her eyes. “The Church.”

“Yes,” Chester said. “The vocabulary is much diminished, and the accent different, but it’s the same tongue... and it was the first I learned in addition to Lit, and how I discovered my talent for it.”

“All this time,” I said, numb. “I have been speaking to Last....” Memory clouded my eyes. “You... you were riding so quietly alongside—”

“To listen, yes.” Less mirth now. He looked at me, somber. “Have my actions cost me your esteem?”

I considered what it must have been like, this man who’d made the elven glyphs the focus of his scholarly career, to discover abruptly that the impenetrable enigma of it was impenetrable no longer, but in fact linked to something he’d known all his life. To hold back from knowing more, from drowning in the excitement of that discovery.... “No,” I said. “No, I would have done the same. But those conversations were not intended to be shared.”

“You said nothing that surprised me,” Chester said, quiet. “And nothing that reflected poorly on you.”

Had I? I could no longer remember, save that Last and I had discussed elven metaphysics, and his concerns about humanity knowing overmuch of them. I looked to Last, who said in accented Lit, “It hardly matters now. You are their prince.”

“You suspected,” I said, thinking of his interest in the conversation this morning. He nodded, a dip of the chin. “You noted that my response to physical peril is magical,” I continued. “And thought that if Chester pressed me, I might try the same tactic on him? And learn thereby whether the human capacity for magic was indeed widespread?”

“It worked,” Ivy said.

“It worked,” I agreed. And sighed. “And now, the inevitable complications.”

“The price we pay for any change,” Chester said. Softer, “But oh, what a thing we buy with it!”

“Worth it,” Ivy murmured, resting one of her hands on Chester’s arm and leaning into me, so that both of them were close, their breaths pluming against my neck. I quivered, remembering Kemses’s faithful, wrapping him in their arms, sharing magic with him. Had humans always had the wells of magic? Was the divine gift solely related to the ability to use it? So many questions I had no answers for. Who could give reply?

But we had one last member of our party unaccounted for, who had effaced herself so effectively I had not seen her behind Last. She peeked out past him, unsure of her welcome until I extended my arm past Ivy’s waist, and then she padded toward us.

“Can you do the same to her, then?” Chester asked.

“We exist to give our magic to our masters,” Almond replied, ears low. “I have always lived to serve.”

“That service drains them.” Last’s tone was warning.

I glanced at Almond, who nodded. “We have one draught, Master. Once it is given, our time on this world is done.”

Her words echoed through me like a horrible portent, and I ignored it to concentrate on the logistics. “I don’t understand,” I said to Last. “If it is solely the province of the royal gifts to compel magic from the unwilling, how is it that all elves now have this power? I have suffered that attention. I have seen it done gently as well, with your lord and his beloveds. Was it always thus?”

“What a world it would be if it had been,” Last said. “No, my prince. The enchantment gave us the thorned touch. Some called it just compensation for the loss that came to us after Dissipation. If magic could not be redistributed by the king, at least everyone could make a try at it. Everyone could feed.” His face was a mask. “It was a demon’s gift.”

“Then before the immortality came, there would have been no call for the creation of the genets,” I said. “Because there would have been no ability to utilize them.”

“Maybe they were able to be utilized at all because of their genesis,” Ivy suggested. “You told us they were born of the royal magic?”

“That only explains the genets, though,” Chester said. “It doesn’t explain... this.” He touched his chest, hesitant.

Ivy pursed her lips. “But we received the gift divine. Perhaps before then there was nothing for an elf to steal from us.”

“Save that the humans on the Archipelago surely didn’t come from the populace touched by Winifred... did they? I could not tell by the look of them.” I glanced at Last.

“Hard to say,” he said at length. “The ships have visited us enough. Who knows what congress took place between those who came to trade and those who left? We have been through several generations of humans since.”

“Oh God,” I said. “All this. It’s maddening. Too many mysteries.”

“We live for mysteries, don’t we?” Ivy asked, a smile twitching at her lips.

“Not when so many lives may suffer for our ignorance,” I said. I touched my fingers to Almond’s head and sighed. “And yet we must make shift with what we have.”

“And that,” Chester said, “includes informing our companions that you can make their magical potential manifest.”

A sudden silence as the rest of us contemplated that.

Said Ivy, “I hope your spectacles were right about everyone having it.”