“So mum was a Brandt, right? Well, I suppose that’s pretty obvious, given my startling good looks. This ain’t no Cottingly chin. I know, I know – a Brandt marrying a Cottingly, insane right? Everyone thought so. Her family disowned her and everything, and the Cottinglys only tolerated it because Uncle Nick had three kids already, so – oh, right, you’re new. Uh, we Cottinglys don’t do the Acanthos thing where our mage picks a successor from the kids. It causes way too much tension in the family; we just take the first-born of each generation, right? And nobody was going to have a goddamn Magistus Brandt, but there were three older kids, so it was okay.

“Until uncle Nick had that accident. Whole family died; it was a tragic loss. And Mum was pregnant. So it was really awkward all round, right? We had another aunt, but she wasn’t pregnant, and Mum was. Very tense all round, I’m told. Mum and Dad had to be… quiet, with the family. Everyone was worried that someone might slip something into her tea or something.”

“Wait,” I cut in, “your family were going to kill her?!”

“Well, probably not. But it was a possibility. Brandts and Cottinglys really don’t like each other. And they wouldn’t have to kill her; an abortificant would do the trick. Mum was still in contact with a couple of her family even though she’d been disowned, and one day she didn’t come back from the hospital; just went to stay with her granddad. Everyone thought maybe she’d, y’know, dealt with the problem herself.

“But she came back a month before she was due and had a baby shower. Her granddad gave her a present for the baby; a cash present that was just enough to send a kid to Refujeyo. Nobody had any idea how he’d managed to get that out of the Brandts. That’s a lot of money, it’d make it hard, maybe impossible, for them to send their own kid, and this wasn’t their problem. But it calmed things down a lot.”

I frowned. “How did –?”

“Right, right; you’re new. Well it was taken as a kind of overture of peace, right? A way of saying, ‘okay, this is our screwup; we’ll pay to send the kid and you can send another Cottingly of your own.’ It solved the problem, calmed everything down. Until the birth, at least.” With one hand, he gestured to himself and his sister across the room.

“Nobody knew she was having twins.”

“Well, she did. Her granddad did. Dad did, but the rest of the Cottinglys sure as hell didn’t. And then she pulled the best ‘screw you’ move in history – she didn’t tell anyone which of us was born first.”

“But your birth certificates – ”

“Private midwife, nobody else there but Dad, same time recorded on each. Slight timekeeping mistake – oops! – happens all the time.” He grinned. “So Mum, of course, thanked her granddad for the kind gift and said she’d use it to send her second-born to Skolala Refujeyo.”

“And nobody knows which of you is the actual Magistus or Magista?”

“Well, me and my sister do. And Dad does. And the other one of us is kind of the de facto Brandt mage heir unless they send someone of their own, which they haven’t yet – I don’t think they’ve decided whether they want one of us instead, but they might just be dithering to annoy the Cottinglys. Either way, Mum was a legend at ‘screw you’ plots.”

I noted the ‘was’, but decided not to ask. “And now you’re both here.”

“Yep! And one of us will have to change our name after school… or not, I guess, if we don’t feel like it.”

“Have you picked the Cottingly heir between you, yet?”

“Picked?”

“Well, only three people know your actual birth order – and the midwife, I suppose – and I doubt your dad will say anything. If you two want the second-born as the Cottingly mage, who’s there to correct another innocent mistake?”

Magistus laughed. “Oh, you have a devious little mind, Kayden.”

“Of course, it’s all my devious mind. Nothing an upstanding person like yourself would have already thought about extensively and discussed in detail with your sister.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to stay for the initiation trial?” he asked in the manner of someone asking if I wanted another drink. “You’d fit right in.”

“God I hope not.”

Magistus chuckled again. “Oh, hey, is that Deluae? Deluae!”

While Magistus peeled off to talk to his friend, I scanned the room for Kylie. I couldn’t see her; she must have slipped away. I should probably stay a little while after talking to Magistus, to be polite.

So there were families that didn’t get along, and families that did. Made sense, I supposed. It occurred to me for the first time that a lot of the mage kids were probably related to each other. That was how it worked, right? Powerful people married other powerful people. I certainly didn’t see too many of them marrying commonfolk.

Well, Max’s prediction that I would be ‘walking flypaper for weirdos’ hadn’t panned out. Maybe he was wrong and I was awesome. Or maybe Magista’s guest list had just been very carefully made. I scanned the room for Saina and found her quickly, a flash of bright yellow accents in a sea of grey; she was talking to a small group of girls, and laughing. Max; other side of the room, talking about a painting with a boy I didn’t know. Clara; nowhere in sight. The Magistae; both involved in conversations. Ugh, I was going to have to talk to more strangers. Or just kind of lurk in the corner, being weird.

“Hey, you. Australian kid. Can you take maybe three steps to the left?”

I spun around. A very short, stocky redhead boy with the squarest jaw I’d ever seen on a teenager was looking at me while he wrapped black cloth around his knuckles. Between us stood another boy, and it took me a moment to recognise the back of the head and elegant embroidered sleeves as Simon’s.

“There really is no need,” he said. “Anybody behind me is perfectly safe. It’s the area behind you that should be cleared.”

“Do I want to know what’s going on?” I asked.

“This liar says he’s wearing the Madja signet ring, and that’s bull,” the redhead said. “I’m going to prove it.”

“Kayden, meet Virgil Spines,” Simon said. “Virgil is studying to take his grandmother’s place serving one of the most influential English magical families. Kayden is here temporarily, to deal with a personal problem.”

What was the appropriate way to deal with that kind of dismissiveness? Sarcasm? Upping the ante, becoming twice as dismissive about Simon’s studies? No; I didn’t know enough about him to pull that off. I elected to just walk away.

But my curiosity got the better of me. “What are you guys doing?”

“I believe Virgil already explained that,” Simon said, flashing the hideous ring on his hand. “He wishes to test the authenticity of my seal and won’t seem to take ‘no’ for an answer. Although surely you know, Spines, that there are simpler and safer ways to test this?”

“Scared, Madja? Just admit you’re a liar and we can stop.”

“I’m not lying. I’m trying to talk you down for your own protection.”

“If you’re not lying, step up.”

“Must we do this at a party?”

“Well, yeah. How can we prove it without witnesses?” He nodded at the hall at large. A lot of people were watching, I noticed – they weren’t gathering and making a scene, but they seemed to have realised what was going on and were peeking up from separate conversations all through the room.

I wished I knew what was going on.

“I’ll try not to break any teeth,” Virgil said graciously.

Simon shrugged. “They’re your teeth. Do with them what you like.” He stepped forward and spread his hands, palms up.

Virgil raised a fist.

I darted between the two. “What the hell?!”

“Oh, right – I forgot you’re new,” Simon said in the tone of someone who definitely hadn’t. “The Madja ring contains a protective pressure field that stops most forms of violence aimed at the wearer.”

“But a bit of home-cast lead made by a little boy who wants to be like his uncle doesn’t have that kind of enchantment,” Virgil said. “So if Simon won’t step up and admit he’s a liar, the bruises will have to admit it for him.”

“There really is no need to cause a scene,” Simon said.

“You started this, not me.” Virgil raised his fist again. He looked like he could put quite a lot of force into a punch.

“Oh, for crying out loud.” I smacked Simon across the back of his head with the flat of my hand. Or at least, I tried to; as my palm brushed hair, something like a slow electric shock surged up my arm to the elbow and my hand flew back. I gritted my teeth, refusing to cry out. Pins and needles raced up my arm, and when I managed to very slowly flex my fingers, the joints seemed to creak.

“Proof enough?” Simon asked calmly.

Virgil couldn’t seem to think of a response. After a few seconds of tooth-gritted silence, he stormed off.

“Thank you, Kayden,” Simon said. “You certainly saved me some embarrassment there.”

“How?” I asked, through gritted teeth of my own. I tried to rub some life back into my arm. “The ring’s clearly real.”

“Yes, but with how hard he was planning on hitting me, he would have been thrown quite far. Magista would be extremely upset with me for causing that kind of scene. I don’t think she wants her first party to involve calling in the kuracar.”

“Why was he so pissed at you?” I asked. “Don’t get me wrong, I can see why anyone would want to take a good opportunity to punch you, but…”

“He is the kind of person to take certain facts of life personally,” Simon sniffed.

“You were a total dick and said something awful to him?”

“I’m never a ‘total dick’. I was perfectly polite.”

“Huh. I’m sure you were.” Some people were still looking at us, I noticed. Still hoping for a scene, probably. Maybe I should go, politeness or not. “Well, have a great time, Simon; I have to go catch up on my homework.”

“Behind already?”

“Well, you know, substandard commonfolk education and all. Can’t expect me to be able to read short stories or write down dot points at your genius lightning speed.” Also, the fingers on my slapping hand were starting to feel hot, and I didn’t want to be around that ring any more. Not while it was on the hand of someone so punchable.

By the time I’d reached my room, my hand felt mostly normal again, if a bit sore. I could hear Kylie humming to herself behind her bedcurtains – she had skipped out early. I changed quickly, eager to be out of the robes. They still felt like a costume.

“So,” I said conversationally as I hung up the robe for the next mage event I got roped into, “he really is fun at parties.”

“Yeah, weird.”

I slid over my bed back into the main part of the room. Max’s map-in-progress was still laid out there, a few rows of butcher’s paper neatly taped together taking up the entire middle of the room and already covered in footprints. Most of the paper was blank, and what was on it was mostly little rows of sums I couldn’t understand or tiny, strangely labelled flowcharts. Scattered in a few places were the kinds of top-down maps I was used to, plotting small sections of corridor, but so far they were too small and disjointed to make any sense, at least to me. I tried not to step on anything important-looking.

“Did you have a good time?” I asked Kylie’s bedcurtains.

“Mmm. You seen a baby peacock present?”

“What?”

“You know, peacocks? Big tails?”

“I know what a peacock is.”

“Right. They fan them out to attract mates, right? So baby peacocks, when they little and don’t have tails yet, they jump around with butts in the air, practicing on anything they see. But they’ve got nothing to show yet. That’s them magelets.”

“Ha! Yeah, I guess so.” I should probably get some sleep, I figured. It wasn’t late, but I wanted to get up early the next morning and see if the portal to the valley was in the mouth of the cave leading to it. If all the outside areas had portals in the mouths of their caves, that meant it was pretty likely that all the actual tunnel parts were in the same general area, right? They just lead elsewhere for sunlight and weather variation? If so, I still might be able to find the location of the cave network.

“I’m gonna turn in early,” I said.

“Kayden?”

“Mmm?”

“Have you done your homework yet?”

“Yeah, most of it. I got a bit ranty about the Omelas thing but Instruktanto Ahuja shouldn’t – ”

“Have you done your magic homework?”

“This again? I know, I know; I’m a weirdo, putting English before – ”

I stopped talking. Kylie had pushed her curtain open. Her eyes were red, her expression serious. “Have you done your magic homework?”

I shook my head.

She handed me her tablet. “Here are the categories,” she said quietly, “if you want to jot them down.”

I glanced at the textbook page before me.

THE CARDINAL SPELL CATEGORIES

The modern Cardinal system, which usurped the Liona system in 1916, collapses and reorganises Liona categories into a much simpler five-point system. While only ninety eight per cent of spells fit the Cardinal categories, it is generally preferred for its layered definitions which allow a neat overlap of categories that can be easily charted. The Cardinal spell categories are: evocation, change, contract, prophecy, and translocation.

Evocation spells encompass most of Liona’s elemental category, and also include –

I kept reading for a few more seconds, but I wasn’t taking anything in.

My hand, I realised, was over my heart. I looked up into Kylie’s wide eyes. At the mark on her face.

“You don’t think –?” I started.

“Evocation,” she said quietly. “Prophecy. Hell of a coincidence, right?”

“Holy fuck,” I said.