“I gathered that much,” she replied. Allaster’s allegiance should be neutral, his ties to his home cut, but with a brother who ruled one of the six nations—and who had been a mage of Amorlin before that—it didn’t surprise her that he couldn’t be entirely impartial. How long had they served together before Ambric retired, giving up his magic in favor of politics?
“Kalthos has recently begun pushing harder to get new mages in,” Allaster continued. “It’s a thinly veiled attempt to plant Kalish agents inside our walls.”
“Which is why you’ve been turning them down. I thought you were going to tell me something I didn’t know?”
“I’m starting to regret it,” he muttered. “Now, the Kalish rely heavily on vylor steel, both economically and culturally.”
“Is that what you call beast hunting?”
“I find it more pleasant than ‘and when they murder innocent creatures.’” His lip curled, but he continued, “Recent reports suggest their supply of vylor is running low. Unless they can find new mineral deposits, their stores are likely to run dry by the next year’s end.”
He pointed to the X’s along Jacara. “Which is why the Kalish have made several attempts to bypass the Library with scouts in preparation to invade Jacara. The Jacari have closed trade to the Kalish, and they don’t accept Kalish ships at port.”
That, she hadn’t known, but the Malik got little in the way of news with their remote postings. Most of it trickled in from siblings and friends in the royal army, or towns they passed through on their routes.
“What does Kalthos want?” she asked.
Allaster crossed to his desk, waving a drawer open with a flick of his hand. He withdrew a ball of silver-white metal and tossed it to her. She caught it, then let it go with a gasp. The ball clattered to the floor, rolling against a serpentine figurine of a Silpa.
“What was that?” She inspected her hand. There was no physical mark, but touching the metal had been like touching ice, if ice sucked out your life force. She didn’t know how else to explain the depleting feeling of somethingleavingher.
Allaster waved his hand, and the ball reappeared in it. He put it back in the drawer and closed it. “That is makhet. Twice as strong as vylor steel and infinitely more versatile. The direct translation of the Jacari word is ‘living metal.’ When in contact with an organic host, it becomes malleable through a mental connection. Think of it as a rare and powerful parasite that is incredibly difficult to mine and mold. The Guild, the sacred Jacari organization responsible for it, kills outsiders who trespass in its mines.”
Which made it exactly the sort of thing Kalthos would go to war for. Slowly, the pieces fell into place. She hadn’t just been sent here to bring the Library under Kalish control; she had been brought here to remove it as an obstacle.
“You’re standing between Kalthos and the makhet,” she said. “This is why you were so concerned about me being a spy. You thought I was here to get you out of the way.” And he wasn’t wrong. Allaster suspected far more about Vera’s plans than Kasira had anticipated.
He inclined his head. “And once the Kalish have done that, they will use Amorlin and its power to conquer Jacara, repurpose its makhet into weapons, and begin their systematic extermination of all beasts, a move that will have dire consequences for the entire world.”
She frowned. “Consequences?”
He huffed lightly, sinking into his desk chair like a man weighed down. “How much do you know about beasts’ connection to magic?”
Kasira took the seat across from him and nearly sank into how comfortable it was. “Nothing. I always thought magic only came from the Library.”
His brow arched. “Then what do you think artifacts are?”
“Products of mage magic?” she ventured weakly. “The bastardization of science crossed with the sin of magic?”
Allaster laughed softly. “So youhavebeen listening to the priests.”
“They can be difficult to avoid.” Even outside the orphanage,Haidra’s followers were everywhere. Preaching from street corners, ushering people toward evening services, handing out flyers she had used to stuff the ends of her too-big shoes. At the end of services, the faithful would spill into the streets, an ever-growing echo spreading through the city.
Allaster steepled his fingers, tucking them beneath his chin. “Artifacts are manifestations of magic. We know very little about what causes an object to go from ordinary to magical, just as we aren’t certain what led to the divide between non-magical animals and beasts. Nearly half the mages here have made the study of magical theory their primary focus, and even with centuries of research, we’ve scarcely learned anything. But we suspect it has something to do with the complex web of magic that makes up the world.”
Kasira glanced around the office, as if this web might suddenly appear. “Are you saying Amorlin isn’t the only source of magic?”
“It might very well be the original one, which would explain why the Library was built here. But even if magic began here, it did not stay here. It lives in every beast across the six realms and in the hearts of their people.”
“That,” said Kasira, “sounds like the sort of heresy that would get one hanged in Kalthos.”
A wan smile curved his lips. “Then you can imagine my struggle in imparting to them why the continued existence of beasts is so important.”
She could imagine it very well. Kalthos wouldn’t listen to Allaster’s what-ifs, his theories rooted in magic. “It backfired, didn’t it?” she asked, sensing where this story was going. “Kalthos thinks that if it destroys the beasts, it’ll destroy magic. And if they believe you when you say magic lives in our very veins, they will want to cull it all the more.”
“Not Kalthos,” he corrected. “Ambassador Vera. Conversely, King Carthur is … malleable. Enough so that he’s agreed to marry his son to the Yadora heir, even if only to keep the Yadoras from seizing power themselves. They’ve garnered enough support in recent years to do it.”
“And Vera smells blood in the water,” Kasira said with cold understanding.
