Violet was in her office, seated on the button-tufted chair that was the closest thing the Sphere had to a throne. Hands gripping her mug of breakfast tea, she tried to hold her mouth closed, but each time she did, it again fell open in shock. The banner had been sent to her by a staff member stationed in the hospital:
Eve Anemone Nox has given birth to a baby witch.
The birth took place yesterday, September 1, at 11 o’clock WST.
It bobbed in the air, only a foot away from her face, mocking her. She had hoped, even prayed, for the end of the Crisis, the ugly event that threatened every day to end her career as Regent. But now that it had arrived unannounced, and with the birth of a Nox, she didn’t know how to react. The WHO had been working for decades to find a cure for the Typic Crisis, and here, finally, was a breakthrough. Surely the appropriate reaction would be unmitigated joy. Instead, Violet was gripped by fear and anxiety. Fear that the Noxes and other political rivals were planning something; fear that instead of solidifying her precarious reign, the breakthrough would somehow further destabilize it.
She’d have to meet with Dr. Diop, the head of the WHO, immediately. Violet was drafting the summons for the doctor when she heard a knock at her door. She glanced at the gold-framed clock on her wall and closed her eyes to steady herself. She’d completely forgotten about her briefing with Iris. Violet willed the door open, revealing Iris standing on the other side, looking ludicrous as always in a pair of impractical wedge sandals, purple camouflage pants, and a lavender military jacket. It was so hard to take her seriously, with her odd turns of phrase, cheap typic jewelry, and witch’s take on military fatigues—but Iris was undeniably good at her job. Violet must have looked shocked, because after a beat, Iris waved to get the Regent’s attention, an armful of kitschy bangles clinking as she did.
“Regent,” she said, pushing strands of her permed, bleach-blond hair out of her eyes. Her commitment to the asymmetrical bob, which had lasted through all the years they’d known each other, mystified Violet. “Our three o’clock briefing?”
Iris was the head of the Shrouded Vow Taskforce, the team responsible for protecting the secrecy of the Witch Sphere. At the age of eleven, every witch took the Shrouded Vow, an oath to keep the Sphere secret from typics by employing only the most discreet practices of magic when in the typic world. The Sphere, despite its recent troubles, was a respite from all the suffering and ugliness of the typic world, and keeping their world hidden from typics kept it that way. Iris and her team monitored a real-time map for any changes to the Baseline, the concentration of magic in the typic world. That morning, a report had appeared on Violet’s desk, something about a disturbance that had taken place in New York City the day before. Besides earthquakes and hailstorms, which were biblical rarities, the only thing that could disturb the Baseline was a tremendous—or tremendously public—display of magic. When she’d received the report that morning, Violet immediately scheduled a briefing. But now, with the news that the Typic Crisis might be over, the idea that a couple of typics might have seen some behavior they couldn’t explain seemed trivial.
“Yes,” Violet said. “Come in.” She swiped away the banner of text—which only she could see—and clamped her hand around her mug. She spun her index finger in a slow circle above the drink, and the tea followed the movement, mixing in her packet of Sweetening Solution. “Go ahead, Iris.”
“Uh, we’ll need the Spherical map,” Iris said.
“Yes, of course,” Violet responded, shaking her head as she rose. She walked to the door on the back wall of her office, and Iris followed. She held her hand against the handle and, after a moment, heard the door’s lock release. This was her personal entrance to the Hollow, the room where, once a quarter, the Council met to manage the affairs of the Sphere. It was a large and sunken room, with deep purple carpets, cherry oak walls, and a narrow panel of windows near the ceiling allowing minimal light into the space. The walls were dotted with gilded portraits of former Regents and notable Councilmembers, and in the center, there sat a long table with sixteen seats.
Violet entered and sat at the head, watching as Iris walked to the opposite end of the room. What could it mean? she wondered absently. The new birth. In theory it was positive, but still, she could feel a familiar terror bubbling up in her body. Always a damn Nox, she thought, glancing at the spare chair positioned by the door. Certainly, she was paranoid. But it wasn’t just Violet’s imagination that kept her in a state of perpetual anxiety. Her fears were well founded. Her reign had been pocked with misfortune from the beginning, had attracted the ire of Sphere veterans for decades. It was common knowledge that witches all over the Sphere wanted her gone. So now any news, big or small, positive or negative, filled her with an immense and all-consuming dread, even if only for a moment.
When she reached the far wall, Iris raised her arm and lowered it slowly. As she did, a large scroll of fortified paper unfastened from the ceiling and rolled open, revealing a map of the Witch Sphere in pale, muted colors. Several wrinkles in the ancient map were lined with glittering purple ink, places it had been craftily repaired. The black lines demarcating the borders were glossy and bright, as though the enchanted ink had been freshly applied, but the map was nearly as old as the Sphere itself. With the stroke of a hand, Iris could switch the view from Sphere to typic world and back, underlining the link between the two dimensions. A link that typics did not—could not—know anything about. In the bottom right-hand corner of the map, a series of numbers in a looping, elegant gold script changed by the second, hovering around an average of 330.62: the Baseline, the combination of atmospheric magic and all magical ability held by witches in the typic world.
Iris placed her index finger and thumb over New York City, then slid them open, dragging until the map decreased in scope and increased in detail. Gold dots blinked in buildings, parks, and ferries, each representing the magic of a witch living among typics.
When Iris finally stopped, Violet trained her eyes on a small corner of the map, and had to work to withhold a snarl. “These are the disturbance sites?” she asked. A portion of lower Manhattan, a small section of Brooklyn, and tiny portion of Washington Heights were peppered with ugly clusters of thorny, copper spikes. She’d seen a number of disturbances in her time, and these were standard. She wasn’t interested in having her time wasted—on today of all days. “How could these have caused any sort of notable spikes in the Baseline? They haven’t even left the borders of the New York state, let alone the continent.”
“Right,” Iris agreed eagerly. She’d anticipated the question. “It’s a combination of frequency and intensity. We’ve been seeing the spikes in the Baseline for a few days now. Initially, we thought they were random, but they’ve since become more frequent. Yesterday there was one large occurrence of magic in the East Village, then again the smaller dots along Manhattan and part of Brooklyn. If you’ve had a look at—”
“Iris, why are you here?” Violet asked, her voice cool and curt.
Iris flushed. “Sorry?”
“I’m meant to be concerned about a handful of ignorant, under-supervised, teenage witches sneaking out of the Sphere and into New York for a few weekends?” Violet dug her nails into the table to keep herself from shaking as she spoke. She needed to meet with Dr. Diop immediately—anything that stood between her and that meeting was nonsense. The banner had thrown her completely off balance, and she wouldn’t be able to control this new development until she understood it. She’d summon Dr. Miloy, too. And, only if absolutely necessary, they could include the Nox later on.
“Well, Regent, historically, you’ve been extremely interested in these kind of details,” Iris replied. Her voice was calm, but she was nervously clasping and unclasping a single bedazzled button on her blazer.
“Iris, you’ve been doing this job for longer than I’ve been alive,” Violet said, rising from her seat and gathering her robes around her. “I don’t have to tell you how to send a letter of sanction, do I?”
Iris closed her mouth into an impervious line. “No,” she said. “No, you don’t.” She tapped the map to send it back up, and by the time it fully disappeared, Violet had transported elsewhere.