Rise of the Zero-Star Mage

"Zero stars," Master Crane says, and three hundred people laugh at once.

Not a ripple. A roar. The Hall of Assay has a dome built to carry a whisper, and it carries this all the way up to the bank gallery.

Dacian Holt laughed first. Six stars, front row, head back, both hands on his plate like it might fall off from joy.

My hand's still on the stone. A crystal the size of a goose egg, and it's as black as it was when I put my palm on it. A minute ago my cousin Casimir lit five on it and the Ferrand side of the Hall stood up and cheered.

"Take your hand off, Ferrand," Crane says. "It has read you."

"Read it again."

"Stones don't guess."

Over his shoulder I can see my mother. She's not looking at the stone. She's at the clerk's desk already, with her gloves off.

"House Ferrand withdraws its name from the candidate," the clerk reads out, loud, so the gallery gets it. "The candidate is struck from the house register as of this hour."

Not a minute. This hour. She had the paper ready.

Here's the sum that matters, and I'm doing it while the Hall is still laughing. House Ferrand borrows against its heirs. Casimir's five stars are worth about six thousand crowns of credit at the Holt bank. My zero would take two thousand off the house's standing the moment it's filed. So the house files me out first. The bank-man in the gallery nods at her. Business.

"Tuition bond," the clerk goes on. "Four hundred crowns. Assigned to the candidate in person."

"To the candidate," I say. "Who has no plate, no trade and no house."

"The Register doesn't set the terms, young man. It records them."

Crane holds the dark stone out to me.

"Take it. A stone that's read dark is spoiled. It won't light for anyone now."

So that's the custom. You carry out the thing that failed you, in front of everyone, like a man carrying his own coffin.

I take it. It's warm. That's the first strange thing, and nobody notices it but me.

"What does a dark do for money, Ferrand?" Dacian calls across the Hall. Half his year turns to watch.

"Stands still, Holt. Same as your bank."

A few people laugh at that one. Not three hundred. Enough.

The Hall steps are where the trades wait for the readings. Dock crews want the one-stars. The lamp guild wants twos. Nobody's waiting for a zero except a short man in a wet felt apron with one eyebrow.

"Hob Sayer. I run the Butts."

"The practice yard."

"The target shed, lad. Live butts. Students need something to cast at that flinches." He looks me over like a horse. "You've got the build for standing still. Two coppers a hit."

Four hundred crowns. Two coppers a hit. Twenty thousand hits. I'd like to say I didn't do that sum on the steps of the Hall with my mother's signature still wet, but I did.

"Four coppers for second-order."

"Nobody casts second-order at the Butts. Ward-posts cap every lane to first."

"Then it costs you nothing to say yes."

He thinks about it the way men like Hob think about free things. "Four. Fine. Shed's behind the College. Be there by two."

So I'm not a Ferrand. I'm a butt. One hour, and I've got a trade.

The Butts is twelve lanes of packed sand behind the College wall, with a shed at one end and a post at the head of every lane. The posts are oak, sleeved in lead, and the lead is what matters. It drinks any spell above first order before it gets down the lane. That's the whole safety of the place.

Hob dresses me himself. Wet felt to the knees, a soaked hood, a tin face-plate with two eye slits.

"Keep your hands in the sleeves. Students aim for hands. They think it's funny."

"Which lane?"

"Three."

I walk down to three, and I look at the post, because I grew up in a ledger room and I look at what things cost. The lead sleeve on three is split top to bottom. Grey, dull, peeled back from the oak like old bark. Somebody sold the good lead off this post and left the rest.

"This post's dead."

Tull, the prefect running the lanes, doesn't even come down. Three stars, prefect's armband, a voice built for a yard. "Posts are inspected monthly, butt."

"Then they inspected the wrong post."

"Lane three or the gate, Ferrand," Hob says, and I can hear the crown somebody already paid him in it.

Lane three. I stand on it.

First-years. Cinder, Cinder, Cinder. Little hot slaps on the felt. I count them, out loud, under the hood, because counting is the only thing in this yard that's mine. Eleven hits by three o'clock. Twenty-two coppers. Nineteen thousand nine hundred and eighty-nine to go.

Then the yard goes quiet in the way a yard does when money walks in.

Dacian Holt, gloves off, with Casimir a step behind him trying not to be there.

"I want the dark," Dacian tells Hob, and puts a crown on the shed sill. "Second-order. For the plate. I'll stay inside the posts."

The Butts allows it for fours and up. The post caps it anyway. On paper.

"Teo." Casimir's at the rope, low. "Get off the lane."

"Two coppers, Cas. Four for him."

"He's not doing this for practice."

"Then he should pay more."

Dacian walks down to three. He stops at the post and he looks at it, the split sleeve, the peeled lead, and he looks at me through the slits. He saw it. He saw it before I said a word.

"Lane three's post is dead," I tell him, loud, for the whole yard. "Whatever you throw comes down the lane whole."

"Then you'd better hope I miss."

Tull laughs. The first-years laugh, because the prefect did. Casimir doesn't. Hob is looking at his crown.

Dacian's hands go up. Ember Lash. Second-order, a rope of fire the length of a lane, and he's six stars, so it isn't a rope, it's a road.

I don't move. Here's the thing nobody in that yard understands about me yet. I've been hit by better. I grew up in a house where being wrong cost money, and I never once stepped off a lane I was told to stand on.

It hits me in the chest.

The felt goes in a breath. The hood goes. The tin plate on my face is a stove lid. There's a second where I can't breathe and the whole yard is orange and I think, so that's the price of a crown.

Then nothing.

Not pain. Not fire. A pull. Like the whole road of it went in through my ribs and kept going, down, into somewhere I didn't know I had.

The smoke clears and I'm standing. Burnt felt hanging off me in strips. My shirt's open where the Lash went in and the skin underneath is clean. One red line across the collarbone, that's all, like a cord was pulled tight there once.

The dark stone in my fist clicks. A small glass sound, like a cup set down on a table.

Words come. Not in my ears. On the stone, under my fingers, and in the air in front of me, flat as a clerk.

*Vault open.*

*Holder: Teo Ferrand. Stars: zero.*

*Spell taken: Ember Lash, order two. Charges: six.*

Six. He had six, and now I'm holding them.

*Vault widened. Stars: one. Slots: two.*

*Warning. Order above three will stop the heart.*

Up the lane, Dacian has a hand on his own chest like something's been pulled out of it. His face has gone the colour of the lead. Casimir is running. Tull has stopped laughing and hasn't found anything to replace it.

Dacian comes down lane three the rest of the way, close enough that I can see his plate shaking against his collar.

"Why aren't you burning?"

I get my feet under me. I look at the stone, and the stone looks back, flat, counting.

"Do it again," I tell him.