With a glance, Isyd made sure that they hadn’t left any piece of the Ingraced Blysht laying around. He then turned to face Tekla Dumnchory as she crossed the entrance. She was dressed in her usual uniform, but she had let her raven hair fall past her shoulders. Hanging at her right arm was another woman who looked diminutive in comparison with Tekla’s height. She had a pale complexion and her blond hair was twisted and braided into an intricate bun. Her pink dress was too long and expensive to be worn in any taxing activity which marked the woman as part of the nobility, and so did the gilded and diamond-encrusted brooch that attached the satin shawl on her frail shoulders.

Isyd didn’t recognize the woman and was certain he hadn’t seen her around the Academy. He glanced at Julya and Norran next to him to see if they had a better reaction but they looked as perplexed as he was.

Why in hell would Tekla bring a stranger here?

“Oh, I am glad to see you here, I had feared you had left already!” Tekla said. “I was making our esteemed guest visit the Atelier and she insisted I show her everything so here we are. Julya, Norran, be honoured to meet Pani Halyna Kazkan, the Baroness of Vilriver!”

The Arcanysta’s eyes went wide and they bowed profusely. Isyd followed their experience, averting immediately his eyes in deference. He’d been gawking at the woman and he knew by example that many members of the szlachta – the nobility of the Commonwealth – could take it as an insult to their honour.

Pani Kazkan let out a crystalline laugh and waved her hand. “Good evening! I am sorry to impose, but I pestered Dumnchory here to show me everything about your Atelier!” she said with such a shrill voice that Isyd winced. “I was so curious to see it and hear about it! My sons never share anything of their work, you know how boys can be secretive. So, tell me, what kind of… magic do you do here?”

Julya seemed first taken aback – magic? – but she quickly recovered. She pasted a welcoming smile on her lips.

“My husband and I are Arcanysta, your Grace. Like everyone else in the Atelier, our work revolves around Arcanes and the Arcanic Arts. We specialize in material research.”

“Material research? What kind of research is that? Do the materials often get lost?”

“Er…no… It’s… We study the relationship between a material and the Grace. Mostly, this comes down to researching and tabulating lists of their properties like their elasticity, their Grace sensitivity, their melting temperature…”

“Oh, you melt things? Just like candy, isn’t it?” Pani Kazkan turned to Tekla, batting her eyelashes. “Dumnchory, you cheat, you didn’t tell me you made candies in the Atelier!”

Tekla gave her the largest smile Isyd had ever seen on her face. “Unfortunately, we do not make sweets in the Atelier, your Grace, though it may be something I look into now that you pointed it out.”

“And fireworks! Think about the fireworks! I am such a fan of those as well!”

Isyd exchanged a confused look with Norran. Fireworks? Did the woman think they were pyrotechnicians?

As he was wont to do when uninterested, Isyd was about to retreat in his own thoughts and dismiss the silly woman from his mind. However, something stopped him and forced him to focus his attention back on the situation at hand, and this something had a lot to do with the awkward weight in his pocket.

That woman shouldn’t be here. The laboratory had been reserved by Hidrss for the Commission to study the Blysht, and thus nobody except the members could enter it. All the Pupils knew it and certainly, Tekla Dumnchory knew it. So why did she bring this inane noblewoman here? The Atelier was big, they could have spent a day exploring it and not even covered half of it. Once again, the letters he had seen on Tekla’s desk came nagging at his mind. The letters had bore a fancy wax seal on them… Something was clearly afoot and Isyd felt like he was far from having all the pieces of the puzzle.

“We do far more than fireworks!” Tekla said. “The Atelier is where the future is built as I have told you. Arcanes to forever change the way we live, and the Blysht is just an example among many others!”

“Oh, really? I want to see more!”

“I am sure Tutor Hidrss will be sharing more of the Blysht with everyone in due time once he is back,” Julya said curtly.

Tekla met her gaze. Julya did not back down; she was still smiling but something in her posture had gone cold and hostile. Tekla had talked about the Blysht outside of their circles, she had just confirmed it. The mention of Hidrss was obviously meant to remind Tekla of her place. The woman didn’t take it well.

“Was there any progress yet?” she snapped. “The Atelier doesn’t pay you for nothing!”

“The progress is slow… but it is coming along, Ms Dumnchory,” Julya said.

Pani Kazkan held tighter on Tekla’s arm. “Well, it doesn’t matter if we cannot see it now! It is getting late anyway, and I must return soon. Dumnchory will have more chance to explain it to me at the party during Korochun!”

“Oh… I didn’t know I was invited…” Tekla said.

“Of course you are, silly woman! I am impressed by your brilliant mind and I want to introduce you to many people! We will have such a jolly time! Just remind me of asking Pia to prepare everything for you!”

The two women began retreating from the room. Isyd and the Ravasz bowed but they didn’t even glance at them. Pani Kazkan was taken by her prattling and Tekla was smiling wide and nodding to everything that was being said. Isyd now understood why Tekla had been in such a good mood lately. Silence fell in the room once the door closed.

“Well… that was unexpected…” Julya finally said after a while.

“Those women be damned!” Norran spat. “Nothing good ever comes when the szlachta takes an interest in the business of normal folk!”

“Normal folk? Come on now, darling, we are Arcanysta! Plus, the Kazkan family is an important patron of the Academy. It is normal for the matriarch to pay a visit. Expected even.”

Norran tsked. “Still, I curse Tekla Dumnchory for bringing her here. It can only mean bad things for us!”

Since Isyd had known him, Norran Ravasz had always been easy-going and enthusiastic if somewhat distracted. It was the first time, Isyd saw him being so passionate about something other than Arcanes.

“Why do you say that?” Isyd said. “Why would it be bad?”

“The szlachta cares about the Arts only so long as it can further their own goals. They have no love for the science and the craft of it, it is only a tool for their game. And therefore, so are the Artysta…”

“You cannot make a such sweeping generalization, Norran!” Julya said.

“I can and I do! Have you forgotten I worked for them, my love? I know their kind!”

“Still, I refuse to believe all of them are like that!”

Norran tsked once again. “Isn’t what happened to us in Blotnia proof enough?” he grumbled.

Julya was about to respond, but Isyd beat her to it. “What happened there? Does that have anything to do with your reason for leaving Blotnia?”

The couple exchanged a look between them, hesitating on how much they were willing to share with him. In the end, Norran shrugged and nodded.

“We left Blotnia because it was no longer safe for us. It is kind of a convoluted story and not an interesting one…”

“I am interested,” Isyd said.

“Fine… At the time we were running a private workshop. Think of it as a diminutive version of the Atelier. We made ends meet by selling our Arcanic skills to the public while conducting our private research on the side. That’s how we stumbled on the Blysht and constructed our first theories. We were quite excited, perhaps overly so. We shared our first hypothesises with the Arcanyst Guild based in Blotnia and at first, it didn’t go anywhere. However, around a year ago we were suddenly barred from entering the Guild and participating in their work; overnight we were made pariahs and no explanation was given.

“After that, clients became rarer until they stopped entirely. We had our suspicion before, but this was the confirmation that the Guild had been colluding against us. We still manage to get by, though. Norran had contacts and old friends and my years as an accountant had taught me to be careful with our finances. All of it to say that we managed to stay afloat. This probably displeased whoever had it out for us, because a few months back we received our first threats. Anonymous letters and billets demanding us to stop our work as Arcanysta. It started with a few, but it quickly escalated. Then, one evening, someone broke into our house. Thankfully, they must only have wanted to scare us, or at least not to hurt us, because they targeted our papers and ledgers and stole our research documents and burned the rest. It was the fire that alerted us. That’s when we decided to leave Blotnia for good.”

“I am sorry this happened to you,” Isyd said. “But how does that have anything to do with the szlachta?”

This time it was Norran who spoke. “Around the same time we were barred from it, the Guild was bought by a szlachcic! Many Arcanysta eventually left, but we were the first and the only ones not given an explanation of what was happening. ”

“The purchase had been underway for a while now. I believe it is only a coincidence…,” Julya protested.

But even as she was saying, Isyd could see she wasn’t looking confident. It could have been a coincidence but then again…

Julya clasped her hands together. “Anyway, all of this is in the past! Let’s not talk about it anymore since there’s no point! We are now safe in Vilriver, and most importantly we have the Blysht!”

Isyd fished out the Lightsphere and Blysht and handed them over. Norran’s smile had come back and he was visibly shaking with excitation. In his eyes was the same light Isyd had recognized in Hidrss’s when he stared at the Ingraced Blysht. It was the Arcanyst’s mind taken by the fever of imagination!

“Today is the day the Blysht became a functioning piece of technology,” Norran declared. “Let’s celebrate it during the Korochun!”