Everything depended on your bloodline. Mages handed down the ability to control power to their children, as the commonborns handed down the lack of ability. And because some mages had more natural strength and control than others, mages formed marriage alliances designed to increase the future strength of their families. And none had more carefully cultivated generations of strength than the royal line. Being born as royalty ensured a birthright of great power.
Until me.
Here I was, child of our current queen’s younger brother, daughter of two of the strongest mages ever to live, and I was utterly without access to power. It was a great accomplishment, really. The first child ever born to a mage not to inherit their ability. I’m sure the Royal University would have loved the chance to study me. Thankfully my royal status was enough to prevent that, at least.
But I had received the education of a princess, even if I could not use all of it, and I easily understood the import of the composition in Layna’s hands. The mage assigned to this team had cleared this section of wall of old workings and then left. In what he no doubt felt was an abundance of caution, he had provided the commonborns with one of his compositions—a working designed to give a section of rocks a final check before the workers began clearing it. The sealed commonborn probably had a small stack of similar, unworked compositions in a pocket somewhere, to release as they progressed with their work.
Once such a thing would have been impossible. Commonborns were not allowed to possess written words. Only the richest among them could afford to purchase compositions from the poorest and least powerful of the mages—the only mages who would stoop to such a degradation as selling compositions. And these purchased compositions were carefully sealed and color-coded for purpose, ensuring a limited range of use.
It was my parents who had changed all of that. They had traveled to the previously closed Sekali Empire and discovered a different world there. A world where all commonborns were sealed as young children, their access to power blocked, allowing them free access to the written word.
The discovery of the sealing composition had rocked both Ardann and Kallorway. But neither of our kingdoms could follow in the footsteps of the Empire. The sealing composition drew directly on the energy and power of a mage, and when it worked its purpose, it sealed the mage as permanently as it sealed the commonborns. In the Empire, whole clans were devoted to this purpose, the sealed mages raising their unsealed children in the knowledge that by one day taking their turn to seal a large collection of commonborn children they would serve their people and bring honor to their families.
But the enmity between the two southern kingdoms was of long standing, and centuries ago we had decimated our mage numbers in ancient battles. We didn’t have enough mages to make the sacrifices of the sealed Sekali clans, even if we could have convinced or compelled enough mages to do so. And so my parents had suggested a compromise.
Instead of imprisoning mages who had failed the Academy and proved themselves unable to control power to a sufficient degree, those mages would conduct sealing ceremonies instead. There were not, of course, a great many failed mages, but their numbers were joined by those mages who had misused their power in severe enough ways to warrant permanent imprisonment. Now we could imprison their power instead of their bodies, clearing the mage cells and benefiting the commonborns at the same time. Sealing ceremonies were much rarer in Ardann now, but they had been common at the beginning, thanks to the traitorous mages who had attempted to help Kallorway seize control of our kingdom.
I had no way to know if this man was recently sealed or had been sealed two decades ago while young. Many of the sealed now worked as teachers in the commonborn schools, served as officials at the palace and among the disciplines, or worked for the rich commonborn merchant families. But others, like this man, chose to ally themselves with mages, working in partnerships.
I considered the man in front of me. His bearing proclaimed him a soldier.
“Let me guess,” I said. “You’ve recently finished with the Armed Forces?”
The man looked surprised, some of his color slowly starting to return now that I was showing no sign of handing out angry punishments.
“Aye, that’s right, Your Highness. His Lordship and I heard there was better gold to be had with the clearing teams.” He referred to his mage partner using the general honorific awarded to all mages. “I’m not getting any younger, and I have to be thinking about laying something aside for retirement.”
Layna sighed, speaking quietly, her words directed at me.
“That mage still should have known better. He would have been fully briefed.”
I shrugged. “We’ll have to ask him when we get to Bronton.”
In the Armed Forces, many tasks were completed by sealed commonborns without the physical presence of their mage partner. But Layna was right. This mage should have known the same principle didn’t apply here where maintaining his post at the Wall offered only boredom, not danger.
Sealed commonborns might be able to safely read and use compositions provided by mages, but sealing didn’t grant them the mage ability to sense power. The mage should have known that some of the compositions embedded in the Wall might have been crafted to resist probing compositions such as the one he had provided to his team. What those compositions could not do, however, was hide their own power. The mage needed to be present so he could feel any lingering workings he had initially missed. He would have felt the power and, if he didn’t sense it in time to dismantle it, he would have been able to protect his men, at least.
I frowned, my eyes wandering to the injured man who was now being tended by one of his worried-looking companions.
“We can’t leave yet, though. We need to heal that man first.”
Layna grimaced, looking from the worker to me. “You know my compositions are all keyed to you specifically, Your Highness.”
I narrowed my eyes and drew myself up to my full height—which wasn’t saying a great deal.
“Yours may be, but don’t try to pretend all of theirs are.” I gestured at the three mage officers still surrounding us.
As my personal guard, Layna keyed her compositions to me—both to render them useless if they fell into other hands and to make it easy to resist temptations such as this one. She had been trained to keep her whole focus on her charge. But the same wasn’t true for the other guards who had been assigned just for this journey. And I knew one of them was only on assignment to the Royal Guard from the healers.
“That man was injured in service to Ardann—and due to the negligence of the mage entrusted with his care. He’s a laborer, so there’s every chance he can’t afford a healing clinic. And clearly we can’t trust the mage in charge of this team to do the right thing by his workers. So it is left to us to act. And if you won’t, I will.”
I reached slowly for one of my internal pockets, the movement making my position clear. I wasn’t in imminent danger which meant I far outranked Layna—she had no authority to prevent me using one of my own stored compositions. But neither would she want to see me deplete my supply—not when I was the only royal in Ardann who lacked the capacity to restock. Every one of the compositions I carried for my protection had been provided to me by others.
The captain blew out an exasperated breath. “Very well. We will heal him and then make all haste to Bronton.”