Zal

I batted the branches out of my way as I stomped off through the woods. I couldn’t deny I was running away like a coward, but I also couldn’t deny I was beginning to doubt my own convictions. My training and my knowledge of the laws screamed that Torian was a rogue mage—a practitioner of unknown power who used illegal spells of coercion, depriving citizens of proper choice.

But with everything Torian had told me about their life in that Sun-forsaken Lab, about the Star-born Infomancers, about the origins of this world—my world—my doubts grew.

Why did our world not have a story of its beginnings? Wasn’t it human nature to wonder, to find answers, even if the answers were pure guesswork and total shite? Had the Star-born, these Originators, somehow prevented us from even asking the questions? With what they’d done to poor Torian—I’d seen the mess of metal glinting on their back and shoulders when they’d thought I was off gathering wood—who knew what the arrogant arseholes were capable of?

I’d begun to doubt everything I’d ever learned, chiefly whether I should turn Torian over to the tribunal at all. Would they bother to listen, to understand what Torian had to say? Would they take the trouble to be kind?

Shite, that song, all about reaping what you sow. It had squeezed my heart enough to make it weep. If someone were to sit in judgment on me, on the Congress of Mages and Seigneurs, on all the Sun-born and Earth-born inhabitants of the world, would we be found lacking?

I needed clarity, and for that I needed to cast the divination stones so I could see the paths before me and make my own bloody choices.

I broke out of the tree cover onto a plateau that overlooked the river. The gibbous moon rode high over the mountains, and the tattered remains of the earlier clouds didn’t obscure the stars. Perfect.

I tossed my pack down, then drove my staff into the earth amid the frost-killed grass and sat, cross-legged, the staff at my back. I pulled out the worn square of leather with its four lines—peace, prosperity, principles, partnership—and spread it on the ground in front of me.

Had this come from the Infomancers too? Had they imposed rules on the world so deeply and subtly that no citizen had ever suspected they all danced to someone else’s tune?

Can’t think like that. Didn’t matter anyway. My spells worked. My connection to the Sun was real, palpable, useful. So to blazes with the Infomancers. I refused to let them choose my path for me.

I pulled the pouch on its leather thong from under my shirt and shook the divination stones into my palm. Still warm from my skin, they shone in the combined light from my Sun Stone and the moon.

“You’ve always spoken true for me. I have faith you’ll do so now. What must I do with the Moon-born?”

I closed my eye and selected the opal by touch, its surface smooth and cooler than the others. “Moon for peace.” I tossed it toward the divination mat, heard the soft spat as it landed.

Next, the agate, its roughness familiar, unmistakable. “Earth for prosperity.” I cast it after the opal.

The flake of Sun Stone thrummed against my fingers. “Sun for principles.” Yes, principles. That’s the crux of the matter, isn’t it? Which principles took precedence: the ones I’d vowed to uphold as a mage, or the ones I lived by as a man? For the first time, they seemed to oppose each other. Nevertheless, I flicked the tiny bit after the others.

“Stars—” Shite, I didn’t want to cast the quartz chips. It seemed too much like giving in to the Star-born and all their plots. But the stars didn’t belong to the Infomancers. The stars were there for all, shining in the sky every night. So. “Stars for partnership.”

I flung the handful of quartz in the direction of the mat and took a moment to breathe, praying to the Sun that the answer would be obvious because I’d never felt so uncertain in my life. Learning to live with a single eye had been less disorienting than having the foundation of my beliefs upended by one slight, impossible person.

I opened my eye.

The Sun Stone flake and opal were aligned, touching in a tentative kiss, directly on the partnership line. The quartz chips were off the grid entirely, and the agate lay between principles and prosperity.

“Bloody wonderful. How am I to make sense out of that?” My own divination stones had a worse sense of humor than the fragging Infomancers.