“Spring can’t come fast enough,” Alyss muttered from under her scarf.
“Winter can’t hold on long enough.” Eira sighed contentedly, stretching her arms high overhead.
“You’re crazy.”
“So they tell me.”
“Lucky for you, I like crazy.” Alyss hooked her elbow with Eira’s. “Now, you didn’t tell me.” She held out the book. “Hear anything?”
“It’s not something I can command…” Smother at best. “You know that.”
“That’s because you don’t try and command it. You just suppress and sink into your ‘ocean.’”
“Because I’d rather not hear the whispers.” And there was no sound in the bubble of water Eira imagined herself within.
Alyss sighed dramatically. “You have a gift and you do nothing with it. So it falls on me to encourage you. Just hold the book and see if you can make it talk?” Alyss pressed the book into Eira’s hands. “Anything?”
Eira turned it over and flipped through the pages. Despite Alyss’s enthusiasm, she kept her magic bundled away. “No, it’s quiet.”
“Damn.” Alyss took the book back and shoved it into her bag, fitting it amongst the salves and potions that she was carrying to the clinic. “One day I’ll find something truly special for you to listen to.”
“I hope not.”
“You have a gift,” she repeated. As if Eira would suddenly agree on the one millionth time.
“I have a curse.”
“Stop being so down.” Alyss jostled her lightly. “It’s positively frigid out here. I know you can’t scowl when it’s this bloody cold.”
Eira cracked a smile. Then, it fell. “There was something, earlier…”
“What?”
…kill the sovereign… That was what the voice had said. A voice as cold as winter’s midnight. Eira shook her head.
“Nothing.”
“I know when it’s something, now tell me.”
“I ran into Noelle and Adam by the Waterrunner’s storeroom.” It was at least partially the truth.
“Oh, Mother above, no doubt mashing faces.” Alyss scowled, and proceeded to rant on something Adam had done during one of her history classes the entire walk to the clinic.
The West Clinic was a three-story structure located on what Eira considered to be the center level of Solarin. There were two others in the city, but this was the largest and always the busiest by default. It was where new clerics were trained in the arts of potions and salves, and Groundbreakers assisted them. It was also where Waterrunners, like her, studied how to use their magic to help the dying transition into the next world.
For every five non-magical people flooding in and out of the clinic—Commons, as they were called in the Tower—Eira saw one sorcerer.
Sorcerers were easy to spot for two reasons. The first being that most, like Eira and Alyss, wore black robes of varying styles depending on their rank and type of elemental affinity. The second being that Commons would take wide steps to avoid being in a sorcerer’s path.
Eira and Alyss entered through the main lobby, but stopped off in a side room, where they prepared for the day. They both tied masks over their faces and covered their hands with thick gloves before bidding each other goodbye. However, before Eira left, she couldn’t help but notice even Alyss had more people on her list than she did.
Sighing, Eira tucked her hair behind her ears and forced herself to focus. She may be the runt, the outcast, the weird one…but these people still needed what comforts she could bring. She looked at the first name on the list, cross-checked it against a cleric’s ledger, and then proceeded to a room in the far back wing where all activity was hushed by the presence of death itself.
Eira drifted from room to room, her magic at service to the people of the Solaris Empire. It had been the idea of the empress, they said, to make sorcerers at the behest of the people. To make use of magic beyond times of war and bring it into the sun from the shadowed corners and back alleys sorcerers had been repressed into for as long as time was counted in the Empire.
The tools of her trade were simple—a bowl and some wooden tokens. Eira would fill the bowl with water and then place the token at its center. Using her magic, she could record the words of the sick into the token and turn it into a vessel for his or her family to listen to later, just in case the worst befell them.
When Eira was finished, she returned to the Tower alone. Alyss would take at least double the amount of time. As a Groundbreaker, she was actually trying to heal the people. She could do that much. All Eira functioned as was an assistant to a friend she knew well—death.
Eira wandered the empty halls. Classes were in session and the sorcerers who weren’t attending were out in the city. People were tired of being cooped up, and they were eager for spring.
… I can’t believe… I’ll get him back…
… Prince Baldair is dead…
Eira paused at the familiar voice. The Tower Library was unassuming in the afternoon sunlight streaming through the back windows. It was completely silent—just her and the murmurs.
“Who are you…were you?” Eira whispered, taking a step inside. A tendril of magic reached out through the air without her permission, grasping, searching. Seeking that familiar voice that she’d heard so many times in these halls.
For the first time, Eira didn’t try and stop her magic. She dared to let her power wander, as Alyss would encourage, just to see what it would find.
…All of this…end very soon… The voice whispered from somewhere across space and time.
Eira paused by the back windows, looking out over the city.
Someone had been here. Someone immensely powerful. Someone with magic strong enough to imprint their words onto the very fibers of the cushions, or the stone of the walls, without even realizing it. Unintentional vessels, such things were called, and they were regarded as being highly uncommon.
Eira had tried to tell her teacher otherwise once and was reprimanded. Her theory on unintentional vessels being far more common than anyone realized—if you knew how to listen for them—was of the many things she now kept silent on.
“That reminds me…” Eira started back up the Tower, pausing at the storeroom across from the Waterrunners’ workroom. Instruction echoed out through the cracked door. She used one particularly zealous order to hide the soft squeal of the storeroom’s hinges as she slipped inside.
Luckily, Noelle and Adam were off elsewhere. Eira did a quick round of the dusty shelves. A single bulb of glass—a flame magically hovering within—danced with the long shadows cast by Watterunner tools.
“All right, Alyss. Fine. Let’s see if you’re right. If this is really a gift.” Eira gathered her courage and asked the air, “Who were you trying to kill?”
…just imagine, Emperor Solaris… the icy voice from earlier whispered as if in reply.
Eira spun, heart racing. She wasn’t used to the voices replying. The traces of magic were ornery things, difficult to pin down in the best of times. They spoke to her on their terms, never on hers.
Or, maybe Alyss was right. Maybe she’d never really tried.