“I don’t have a one-word response to that.”
“I’m honestly shocked you’ve had a one-word response to anything.”
Something dangerously close to a genuine smile flickered across Allaster’s lips, there and gone too fast to be sure. He picked up their staffs. “Again?”
Kasira didn’t respond, instead watching as the other mages in the arena returned their weapons to the rack and departed together for lunch, as they did every day.
“Corynth?” Allaster leaned against his staff, still proffering hers.
She brushed a hand over the crown of her head with a sigh. “We’ve been training all week. I’m half convinced this is some new tactic to drive me away.”
Allaster’s lips twitched into a frown. “I thought you were enjoying this.”
“I was. Iam, but I want real work, not just study.” She kept her voice light, leaning into the back-and-forth they had established the past few days. Though in truth, part of herwasenjoying their sessions. The rhythm of tending to beasts, reading, and sparring she had settled into over the past week had had an effect on her she didn’t know how to parse. The nightmares that usually kept her up had become less frequent, and the anxious energy that had a habit of gathering in her sternum remained dormant.
But today was the last day before Vera’s deadline, and all of Kasira’s planning had come down to a single chance. If she failed to convince Allaster to grant her magic, Vera would toss her back into Belvar’s depths and throw away the key. But if she succeeded, everything would change. That cottage by the lake she and Loraya had promised each other, that safety, would suddenly be in reach.
Allaster straightened, his eyebrow arching. There were several more pieces of that jewelry on his body now: a new loop in his right earlobe and a ring around his left pinky. She had tried researching the metal several times now and had come up empty. Whatever it was, it wasn’t a commonly known substance.
“Real work,” he repeated, shifting his staff to his other hand.
“Yes, real work.” She approached him to take back her staff, temporarily bothered that, even at her full height, he still looked down at her. “I want to go on a beast mission.”
To her surprise, Allaster actually shifted back from her, as if seeking more space between them. He studied her openly, as if he might find an ulterior motive perched on her shoulder, and she stared back unflinchingly.
“Very well.” He returned their staffs to the rack with a snap of his fingers. “This way.”
Kasira swallowed her surprise and followed him down the nearest hall. He led her into the portal room, where he gestured broadly at the six doors surrounding them. “The portal room grants access to all six nations, one door per country, though the Avari one no longer works. Throughout each, mostly in cities and towns near large populations of beasts, leaders possess a soulice to contact us with when they need help.”
Kasira studied the crossed swords of the Kalish door. “These can go anywhere in a country?”
“Anywhere a connection has been established with a soulice.”
“So, could we, say, visit the Endia Peaks in Ayador? Or the Melonair Shoals off the eastern Riviairen coast?”
“More or less.” Allaster regarded her curiously. “How do you know of all these places?”
She shrugged. “Books.”
He didn’t need to know that they never belonged to her. Whatever her con had been, she used to find a local bookshop or take a copy off the shelves of her latest mark and spend the night burrowed beneath a blanket dreaming of faraway lands. It was why she had fallen asleep more nights than one beside the fire in the main library since arriving at Amorlin, a stack of books her only company.
Allaster’s gaze lingered on her before he pointed at the open book symbol on the Miravi door. “The soulice sends a signal to these doors, which light up with a color indicating the class of the beast. Green for O and H classes, yellow for U and F, and red for K and C. Only a mage can open the doors, and if no one is nearby, a leopard spirit will fetch us. The goal of beast missions is to safely ensure the return of the beast to the wild,withoutviolence. That means employing behavioral strategies the beasts recognize and respond to.”
Her mind spun the letters about until they made some approximation of sense, at which point she gave him an unimpressed look.
“Your classification system is ‘Oh Fuck’?” she asked. “I thought you were a professional.”
“I am a professional,” Allaster replied as he inspected his already pristine hair in the reflection of the polished stone walls, looking thoroughly displeased by it. “It isn’t my system, though I can assure you, Mora was as professional as they come.”
“Was she also more pleasant?”
Allaster’s face grew sober. “She was more than you could ever hope to imagine.”
It occurred to Kasira then that if Allaster had been at the Library for over a century, then he had known Mora just as long. Her loss must have hit him hard. Perhaps his irritability had less to do with Kasira and more to do with losing someone he loved and receiving an enemy in their place.
That loss was something she could understand. The way someone’s absence could make everything around you a little dimmer, a little less solid. The way it could make you question everything, like whom you trusted and what you wanted and how far you could be pushed before you shattered.
Maybe Allaster was just in the process of breaking, same as her.
