Excerpt: THE OUTCAST MAGE by Annabel Campbell
In this glittering debut fantasy, a mage bereft of her powers must find out if she is destined to save the world or destroy it. Perfect for fans of Andrea Stewart, James Islington, and Samantha Shannon.
Read the first three chapters of The Outcast Mage, on sale January 28, below!
1
NAILA
It felt wrong to be sneaking out in the bright light of afternoon.
Dusk would have been better; there would have been shadows for Naila to slip into, her dark robes and pitch‑black hair blending into indigo twilight. As it was, she emerged into a bustling Amorian afternoon, robed strangers hurrying past her, shafts of purple light scattering through the glass dome high above their heads. She paused at the edge of the surging river of people, expecting someone to point out that she wasn’t supposed to be here, but no one even glanced her way. They ignored her just as a real river would have, while she faltered at the edge of it, unsure of how or where to cross.
She slipped in at the periphery, her head bent, her bag clutched to her chest so she would look less like a student. She could feel her heartbeat through her tightly folded arms. It was ridiculous to be this nervous; pupils in the Southern Quarter ditched their lessons all the time. The difference being, of course, that Naila wasn’t a normal student: she was a prospective mage, training at the magical Academy of Amoria.
Still, unless she was recognised, no one would suspect her truancy. Her robes were edged with a stitched‑in ribbon of white, marking her as a mita—the lowest rank of mage—but she was old enough to simply be an untalented or unconnected graduate. No one else knew that the class she was missing, Introduction to Elemental Magic, was just another in a long list of classes she was failing year‑on‑year.
The crowds carried her away from the Academy, past the pastel‑painted shophouses which skirted the edge of the Market District, and the open fronts of teahouses with benches that spilled onto the wide avenues. Ahead of her were the narrower streets and crooked buildings of the Mita’s District, paint peeling despite being sheltered within Amoria’s glass. Naila’s room was only a few streets away, in one of the old Academy dormitories that now stood mostly empty. She’d thought being close to home might calm her nerves, but it only made it worse. A low and menacing heartbeat pulsed beneath the normal murmur of the crowd.
She’d been hearing rumours of the march all day: the great Oriven was coming to speak to the people, descending from Amoria’s lofty towers to the streets of the Central Dome. Mages were gathering from all over the city to hear him speak, and he could have found a crowd anywhere: the sparkling avenue of Artisan’s Row or one of the wine bars in the Sunset District. But he had chosen to come to the Mita’s District, to the poorest mage homes, to meet them on their own terms.
It didn’t seem to matter that he was a lieno, the highest rank of mage, his robes edged in gold thread that cost more than most mages would earn in a month, or that he lived high above them in luxurious apartments framed in Amoria’s violet glass. Never mind that he was a member of the Lieno Council, who ruled over all of them, and whose decisions made Amoria every inch of what it was today; the lower ranks of Amorian mages still clamoured for him, greeted him like one of their own.
Naila knew she should be going in the opposite direction. She was close enough now that the uneasy heartbeat was resolving itself into the shouts and chants of a restless crowd. The sound built like a roar in her ears. The streets near her home were almost unrecognisable, packed shoulder‑to‑shoulder, anticipation rolling off them in waves. Even if she wanted to leave, she was now caught by the current of people, dragged beneath its surface. Battered between shoulders and elbows, Naila clung to her bag, the buckles digging painfully into her arms.
But there was still that stubborn curiosity lodged in Naila’s gut, the burning desire to see this Lieno Oriven for herself. Too many of her own classmates had whispered eagerly at the prospect, and Naila needed to understand why. Surrounding her were mages who not only looked down on people without magic, but who actively hated them, attending the rally of a man who had coaxed this hate from a flicker to a blaze. Hollows they called the magicless population of Amoria; empty inside.
In front of her, someone shot a spell into the air; a lurch of power, followed by a sharp crack which ricocheted off the inside of Naila’s skull. Her heart seized and she stumbled backwards, her mouth filling with the hot, metallic taste of magic. Her foot glanced off someone else’s and a man shoved hard into her back.
“Hey! Get off!”
Stumbling, Naila half turned to apologise and instead locked eyes with the mage behind her. His expression slipped from directionless anger to malignant interest, his gaze tracing over the raven sheen of her hair and the unusual black of her eyes. For an awful moment, Naila thought she’d been recognised.
She didn’t wait to find out if it was true. She ducked further into the crowd, no longer caring if she was shoved sideways or took an elbow to the ribs. It was too late to fight her way back to the Academy, so she pressed onwards, using her long limbs and narrow frame to force her way to the edge of the crowd. She slipped under arms, pressed between shoulders, and dived for the briefest gap in the throng.
Breaking free into the alleyway felt like surfacing from underwater, a stumbling, breathless release. She pressed a hand against the cold wall of the neighbouring shophouse and bent forward, swallowing huge gulps of air into her lungs. Even here it felt like the crowd was pressing in on her from all sides, their magic and their intent thickening the air, making it heavy and harder to breathe.
She shouldered her bag, searching the smooth shophouse wall for likely handholds. There: a window ledge and the rusted bracket of the store’s sign. It had been many years since she’d been a child scrambling over the rooftops of the Southern Quarter, but her body hadn’t forgotten the way. There was one gut-lurching moment where her foot slipped against the smooth facing, her slipper hanging from the very tip of her toes. But she already had her arm over the lip of the shophouse’s flat roof and she managed to wrench herself up in one final burst of effort.
She sagged onto her arms, her lungs heaving, but with the sweet taste of success on her tongue. She was so caught up in her accomplishment that for a second she didn’t realise she wasn’t alone.
Of course she wasn’t. Mages had magic, and they had used that power to lift themselves up and out of the crowd. There were fewer people up here than in the street below, most of them with robes edged in gold or silver; levitation magic was no easy feat, and so those who had used it were from the upper classes of mage. But where lieno and trianne lined the other rooftops, there was only one mage on Naila’s, a conspicuous circle of empty space around him. It was as if everyone else was keeping a wary distance, and in an icy moment of realisation Naila understood why.
This mage’s robes were edged in the gold of a lieno, but alongside the gold stitching was a braided cord of vivid scarlet. A wizard.
There were only eight of them in all Amoria, mages with the power to level mountains and shape the world as they saw fit. A single wizard had more magic at their command than half the population of Amoria put together. They were the heads of Amoria’s Academy, and even other mages eyed them with a mixture of awe and apprehension.
Worst of all, he’d know exactly who Naila was. There wasn’t a mage in the Academy who hadn’t heard of the hollow mage.
Naila found herself paralysed by fear. She was still crouching at the edge of the roof, her heart pumping ice water through her veins instead of blood. She couldn’t even make herself look at him, her eyes instead fixed on the hem of his robes, her gaze level with his boots. The wizard himself made no move to acknowledge her, his thick coat perfectly still, his body angled towards the crowd. She could feel the enormity of his power, though, as if the whole world was bending down towards him.
Hardly daring to breathe, Naila dragged her gaze away, making herself stand and cross to the edge of the roof facing the street. She had to pass in front of him to do it, and she could feel his attention switch to her like a shadow falling across her back. She was trapped now, between the mob and this powerful stranger.
Below her, the crowd surged against a makeshift stage, individuals lost within a single, heaving entity.
And there he was, the origin of this commotion, like a stone thrown in water: Lieno Allyn Oriven.
He moved along the edge of the crowd, impossible to miss even among the clamouring throng of people. He bowed and waved, taking people’s hands as he passed. The hem of his robes was so heavily embroidered with gold that he was dazzling to look at, the sun catching golden threads when he moved. The sinuous form of a dragon was stitched along one of his sleeves, the mythical ancestors of the mages, a badge of power. He looked like the perfect Amorian, composed and powerful, and Naila hated everything about him.
Oriven mounted the stage with one arm raised, his smile bright against the black of his beard. “My fellow mages!” he announced, his voice warm with a touch of amplifying magic. “I am so heartened to see so many of you with us, so pleased to be among our great people.”
Another thundering cheer. Each of these mages possessed a thread of power, and they tugged at the magic around them, in the stone, in the air, in the glass walls of Amoria herself. To Naila, they felt like eddies on the surface of a lake—and no pull was greater than that from the wizard behind her.
But Naila found herself searching instead for the points of stillness in the crowd. She could just sense them, hanging back in doorways, pinched faces peering out of windows: the non‑mages of Amoria. The hollows. It was their stillness and their fear that Naila could feel winding itself around her heart.
“Our momentum is growing. Soon the Lieno Council will be forced to listen to our—to your—demands!” Lieno Oriven opened his arms, embracing the crowd with his words. “Our fair city is in decline—we’ve all seen the signs. The Southern Quarter is so dangerous the Surveyors won’t even patrol those streets any more, and the Mita’s District is not far behind. We’re overcrowded, our resources stretched: we must act!”
Oriven would never actually say that non‑mages were to blame. He didn’t have to. All he did was point to what was wrong with Amoria. It was true: the city was overstretched; the streets of the Central Dome were crumbling and crowded with people—but not with mages. As Amoria’s magic‑users dwindled, the number of non‑mages only grew, and it was all too easy to infer the source of Amoria’s apparent decline.
The rest of it seemed to happen on its own. Oriven had the mages in his feverish grip, his words creeping insidiously into their minds and falling back out of their mouths. They leaned into his speeches like starving flowers towards the sun, these people who didn’t wear the gold of the lieno, but the bronze and white of the lowest ranks of mages. Their lives were as far from Oriven’s as they could get while still having magic, and yet still they drank in his words.
Naila couldn’t see the non‑mages any more—the crowd had swallowed them up. Tension was building, thick and stifling. It was the same dragging sensation she’d felt in the crowd, as if all of them were being pulled down towards some inescapable conclusion—a long inhalation before the slow, inevitable unfolding of disaster.
The man who stumbled and fell was unremarkable. A non‑mage, from the cut of his tunic and the absence of colour on the hem. He caught himself on his hands and knees, oblivious to the circle of attention growing around him—and of the mage who was sprawled at his side.
“He pushed her!”
Naila couldn’t see who had spoken, but the words spread like fire through the crowd.
“The hollow attacked her!”
The mage drew back into the body of the crowd, but the man was still penned in. Naila saw his fear and confusion as he tried to push free, but he was met with a wall of bodies and shoved back into empty space. The first spell flew with a sharp crack, and threads of gold magic choked his arms and legs. He collapsed hard on the ground, mages closing in around him.
There were answering shouts of surprise and outrage. Non‑mages tried to break through to reach the man, but their way was blocked by people wielding a power they could not hope to match. Naila looked with desperation at the stage—surely even Oriven didn’t want this. He had to summon the Surveyors; someone had to.
But Oriven was already gone, the stage damningly empty.
No one was stopping them. Naila wasn’t stopping them. Her heart was pounding, caught impossibly between helplessness and a burning desire to act. She was already edging forward, her toes over the seething crowd below. If she didn’t do something, no one would. If she didn’t act, she was no better than the other mages who were backing away.
Naila drew a sharp breath and—
A thin hand closed on her shoulder.
“Don’t.” It was the wizard who shared her rooftop, his voice hard and cold.
The buzz of magic was right against her now, a hot breath against her skin. The very air trembled with his anger.
“Why isn’t anyone stopping them?” she whispered, her voice cracking. “I have to—”
“Go now.” There was no spell or incantation, but the last word seemed to ring in Naila’s mind like a word of power.
She was on her feet, stumbling towards the edge of the roof. Ahead of her was the path home, the path to safety, while behind her was the howl of the crowd and a city she didn’t recognise any more. For a moment she hesitated, her heart aching to turn back, to do something to stop those awful cries. But what could she do in the face of such power?
Naila scrambled down the side of the shophouse and ran.
2
LARINNE
Larinne was unusually withdrawn when they left the council chamber. Her sister was doing what Larinne should be doing: greeting other senators, grasping the hand of an ally or offering a curt nod to her opponents. Dailem was born to this life: resplendent in butterfly‑light robes, teal edged in gold, her dark hair curling over one shoulder. Despite being five years Larinne’s senior, Dailem’s tawny brown skin was flawless, her face rounder and softer than Larinne’s. There was an ease and confidence to her, unruffled by the events of the council meeting, while Larinne could feel herself drawing inwards, becoming sharper and less approachable.
She had already seen a few weighted glances, could read the mood of her fellow senators like magic on the air; she needed to smile, reassure, pull others into her confidence, but she couldn’t make herself do it. They shouldn’t feel reassured, and there was certainly nothing to smile about.
The wide stairway was crowded with Amoria’s political elite, lingering outside the council chamber like children after the school bell. There were too few of them, in truth. Every lieno in the city was invited to attend the Lieno Council, to understand the workings of their city, but around her Larinne could only see familiar faces. Like Larinne, they were the senators, the politicians and the heads of committia—the lieno responsible for running the city. The growing disinterest from the rest of Amoria only left more room for people like Allyn Oriven to thrive, unfettered and unobserved, his influence creeping through the Senate like a shadow growing in the dark.
There was a slight commotion by the arch of the chamber doors, and a small knot of people emerged: the representatives of the Shiura Assembly, the only non‑mages invited to attend the Lieno Council meetings. They moved as a unit, a defensive formation if Larinne had ever seen one, their strides perfectly matched.
As the Consul of Commerce, Larinne worked closer with the Shiura Assembly than anyone else on the Senate. The members of the Shiura managed more of Amoria’s exports than Larinne did; they were the ones with connections in the caravans and their representatives in Jasser. The non‑mages of the isolated city wielded their own kind of power. She knew she ought to stop them, say something—but what would she say? Oriven doesn’t represent all of us, the council will protect you, we won’t let him get his “Justice.” But how much of that was true?
She took half a step towards them, forcing a smile onto her thin lips, and tried to catch their attention.
“Honoured members of the Shiura,” she started.
Only one of them heard her and looked up, his eyes narrowed in suspicion. He inclined his head exactly enough to be polite and then continued onwards, not even breaking his stride. Larinne was possessed by the certainty that she had failed a critical test.
“Your face is showing,” Dailem said close to her ear, and Larinne bristled at the admonishment.
It was something their mother had always said to them: the council sees your position, not your face. Anything you gave of yourself was a weapon to be used against you.
With a deep breath, Larinne composed herself. “And you’re not shaken by this at all?”
“Oriven preaching about the hollow threat isn’t exactly new.”
Larinne flinched at her sister’s casual use of the word hollow.
“Dailem!”
“What?” Dailem smiled coolly to a passing senator who had clearly wronged her in some way. “They’re his words, not mine. Hollow is a meaningless term.”
Anger flushed through Larinne’s veins, but in the Tallace family tradition she kept it from her face. “You know it isn’t. Haelius—”
“Haelius needs to watch himself now. That business with Oriven’s rally…”
Larinne grimaced, an uneasy feeling twisting in the pit of her stomach. There wasn’t a single person, mage or otherwise, who hadn’t heard about the violence at the rally in the Mita’s District. When Larinne found out that a wizard had stepped in, using magic to restrain the crowd and extract the unfortunate non‑mage, Larinne had known immediately that it had to be Haelius. At first, she’d been relieved he’d been there to help, but the more she heard, the more it sounded like an innocent mage had been attacked and the wizard had only added to the violence.
Whatever happened, it was clear that Haelius was less popular than ever with Oriven and his allies.
“He’s never made peace with the council,” Dailem added, reading Larinne’s hesitation. “Be careful with that one.”
Larinne failed to suppress a scowl. “It’s Oriven we should be careful of. He’s using what happened as an excuse to push through this new ‘army’ of his. What if he succeeds?”
For the first time, there was the smallest wrinkle between her sister’s eyebrows. “Even more reason to be careful.”
“You think this motion will pass?”
The Justice, Oriven had called it, a special force of mages dedicated to the protection of Amoria. A magical army by another name. The Surveyors had always been the law enforcement; a constantly rotating group of lieno who anonymously patrolled the city. This would be different—a group of mages dedicated to combat and defence, and who answered expressly to Oriven. There had never been such a thing in Amoria, not even when they were still on the brink of war with Ellath.
“Dailem,” Larinne urged at her sister’s silence. “You can’t think he’ll get this?”
“Won’t he?” Dailem asked quietly, and Larinne was surprised by the bitterness in her sister’s voice. “I think this offers the Senate everything they want. They’ve been drawing lines in the sand for years; might as well get themselves an army to stand behind it.”
“But the Assembly—”
“What are they going to do about it, except make their own army in response? This is the beginning of something, Larinne. If Oriven gets this, it will set us on a path we can’t easily come back from. I’ve never seen an army without a war to fight.”
Another council member bowed as they passed, and a warm smile spread across Dailem’s face. “Ah, Lieno Gadrian, I was hoping to catch you—I hear we have an Ellathian visitor. A priest, no less.”
Dailem was walking away, her hand on the lieno’s arm, a brief glance at Larinne her only farewell. But her words lingered behind her, settling on Larinne’s shoulders like a physical weight.
A war to fight. Surely such a thing was impossible. The Amorian mages and non‑mages had lived peacefully alongside each other for hundreds of years. There’d always been some tension between them, rivalry even, but outright conflict? That would serve no one.
And if lines truly were drawn between the two halves of the city, on which side would Larinne stand? More to the point, on which side would Haelius stand?
Dailem’s words continued to weigh on Larinne as she descended the Central Tower, making her way slowly back towards her own offices. The council chambers were situated at the top of the city’s tallest tower, a true linchpin of Amoria. Up here, she was above even the glass dome of the lower city. It sloped away from the Central Tower like an enormous canopy, enveloping Amoria in a protective bubble of amethyst glass. Far below, she could just make out the wide streets and colourful shophouses of the Market District, and beyond that the glittering curve of the Aurelia, a circular canal which separated the city into two great concentric rings. The dome itself was so vast, Larinne could barely see the edge of it.
Amoria was the stuff of legends: a magnificent glass edifice, raised from desert sand and dust in a feat of magic that few now could even imagine, let alone understand. It towered above the Great Lake, delicate spires piercing the dome with bridges strung like ribbons between them. Here, Larinne could just make out the luminescent stone of the White Bridge, connecting Amoria to the mainland: a bright artery of life and trade. From this height, it looked like little more than a thread stretching out towards the distant shore, fragile enough that a sudden storm could sweep it all away.
These days, that felt all too true.
“Larinne!”
The call startled Larinne from her thoughts, but when she turned she found a familiar, old mage hurrying down towards her, one laborious step at a time.
When he reached her, Larinne bent to kiss him at the top of his forehead, the skin beneath her lips as thin as paper. “All right, slow down. You caught me.”
“Good. Hmph, no, none of that.” Reyan waved Larinne away as she offered him her arm. “I’m not that old.”
Instead of answering, Larinne pressed her lips together and slowed her pace to walk alongside him.
“I sent a communication to your office today,” he said with a thin note of reprimand; Lieno Reyan Favius was an old friend of her mother’s, and he was the only mage in all Amoria who would still talk to her as if she was a child.
“Did you? Well, I’m afraid I haven’t received it.”
“That assistant of yours not doing her job, eh? I could find you a better one from among my people. A senator of your prominence ought to have no one less than a trianne working for her.”
“My assistant is excellent and not less than anyone,” Larinne snapped back; Larinne’s assistant was a non‑mage, a point on which he frequently voiced his disapproval. “She’s worth ten of your witless new trianne. If you had any sense, you’d be trying to steal her for your office.”
Reyan’s eyes were pale grey and watery with age, but they’d lost none of their fire as he glared at her out of the corner of his eye. “Yes, yes, all right. I’m sure she’s very good, if she’s managed to earn your approval.”
Somehow, Larinne knew this wasn’t meant as a compliment.
“Still, didn’t give you my message, did she? I suppose I’ll have to get to the bottom of these missing documents on my own.”
“What missing documents? And what does that have to do with me? Communications are your area, not mine.”
“Clearly! If you’d got my communication, then you’d know.” That imperious tone had entered his voice again, but he glanced over his shoulder, a touch of anxiety in his expression. “Best not to discuss it here. Get your ‘excellent assistant’ to put your poor Uncle Reyan into your busy schedule.”
Larinne tolerated the rebuke with only a small twitch of her eyebrows.
“This business with Oriven…” she started.
“Yes, well, best to stay out of these things.”
Larinne blinked, not expecting the suddenness with which he’d shut down the conversation. Eyeing him shuffling down the stairs beside her, Larinne couldn’t quite tell whether his silence meant he was for or against Oriven’s proposals, but then Reyan was as hard to read as her sister.
They walked the rest of the way in silence. When they reached the arched bridge that led across to Larinne’s offices, Reyan stopped and looked up at her, deep wrinkles carving worry into the lines of his face.
“You need to meet with me, Lieno Tallace,” he said gravely, startling Larinne with the use of her title. “This is important.”
Larinne’s mouth lifted in the edge of a smile. “I know, Uncle. It’s always important.”
“Hmph. You wouldn’t think it, with the way you children ignore me. Give my regards to your sister. She’s even worse than you—always rushing off somewhere.”
“I’ve never seen you stand still for even half a minute.”
“Yes, well, at my age you have to move twice as much to get half as far.” He narrowed his eyes at her, unusually serious. “Stay out of trouble. Your mother asked me to keep an eye out for you both, and I intend to.”
“When am I ever in trouble?”
Reyan dismissed her with a wave of his hand.
Larinne stood for a moment with her arms folded, watching him continue down the stairs, her fingers tapping an uneasy rhythm against the tops of her arms. When he’d vanished around the bend in the stairway, Larinne let out all of her breath at once. She straightened her shoulders, set the face of Lieno Tallace back into place and then turned to head back to work.
3
NAILA
The chimes of the noon bell reverberated through the Central Dome, announcing loudly that Naila was late.
It had taken hours, but when sleep finally came it had been of the kind that only left her more exhausted. She’d woken many times, the blanket twisted around her legs, her skin sheened with a cold sweat. Yet at some point, exhaustion must have dragged her under, because now half the day was gone.
She kicked herself free from the tangled mess of bedclothes. There was barely enough time to wash, so she splashed a little cleansing water on her face and pulled on her crumpled robes. They were made of a rough, homespun fabric, the coloured hem to show her rank nothing more than a dirty white ribbon. Too tight in places and too short in others, they barely reached halfway down her shins, but her pitiful Academy allowance wouldn’t stretch to anything else.
She didn’t even try to do anything with her hair: it hung limply round her face as usual, falling in a thick mess of tangled black strands. There was no time to care: Trianne Marnise had been looking for a reason to throw Naila out of her class for months—the last thing Naila wanted to do was give her one.
Naila’s haste meant that she was ill‑prepared for the wave of discomfort which struck her when she stepped out onto the street. Everything was entirely normal. Bright sunlight fell through the purple glass high above Naila’s head, touching everything with a slight violet hue. Mages and non‑mages hurried past her in purposeful strides, footsteps and rattling wagons filling the air with noise. It was as if nothing had happened, nothing had changed—and perhaps it hadn’t. Yet Naila felt strangely sick at the normality of it, as if the scene in front of her sat over reality like a tracing that didn’t quite match.
Maybe it isn’t quite the same, Naila thought. There was still a tension in the air, a new way that people looked at each other: not a who are you, but a what are you, and are you the right type of person to be here? She saw the black robes of the Surveyors three times before she even turned a corner into Main Street, though their masked faces were anything but a comfort. Was this part of Oriven’s great plan for the Mita’s District?
She wished he hadn’t been right about its decline. The district was named for the lowest rank of mage, but these days hardly any mages remained. It lay firmly in the shadow of the Academy tower, populated by old dormitories meant to house Amorian students.
In reality, the dormitories were homes now, housing non‑mages rather than prospective students, many of the buildings sliding into varying states of disrepair. Something, no doubt, that Oriven would choose to blame on the encroaching non‑mages, rather than the council’s deliberate neglect. Naila lived in one of the only buildings that still functioned as a dormitory, and she was the last student living on her floor. Her classmates lived with their families in the glittering spires which pierced the Amorian skylines, in apartments meant for the higher ranks of mage; Naila wondered if they, too, were starting to feel empty.
The only tower Naila had ever entered was the Academy itself. It was not the biggest tower, nor the tallest, but it ran straight through the very heart of Amorian society. Every mage who showed the barest flicker of magical potential had to pass through its doors to learn control, and magic‑users travelled far and wide to study from the great masters of magic, the wizards themselves. Most students, however, would never experience that lofty privilege: the wizards taught in the High Academy not the shabby classrooms below. The night before had been the closest Naila had ever come to a wizard, and it was probably the closest she’d ever come to one again.
As she approached the entrance to the Academy, Naila half broke into a run, her heavy bag bouncing hard against her back. Unlike most of the young mita, she couldn’t use the pattern rooms: rooms woven with complex magic which allowed mages to travel between them in the blink of an eye. As a result, she was almost always late. She could already see the sour look on Trianne Marnise’s face and hear the whispers of her classmates as she tumbled in at the back, an added edge to her daily humiliation.
The entrance hall was hushed in the way one would expect to find in a temple rather than a school. Naila’s feet slapped loudly off the opaque glass floor, and she felt like she was drawing the heavy gaze of every disapproving mage in the room. Enormous, carved pillars of glass reached up to a cavernous ceiling, which seemed made to amplify every cough and dismayed intake of breath.
“Oomph.” For a horrible lurching second, Naila didn’t realise what had happened. Then her hands slapped hard against the floor and everything clattered down around her. Her bag, never properly secured, had spilled its entire contents onto the floor, all her worldly possessions scattering away from her in a mess of books, pens, coins and lint.
The mage she’d so dramatically collided with had also thrown up an armful of books, and they’d come to land around him in an undignified heap. He didn’t quite seem to realise what had happened, blinking slowly at his scattered possessions. He got to his feet and brushed down his robes with short, brisk motions, tugging his wide sleeves straight at the wrist; sleeves which were edged in a braided cord of yellow gold and vivid scarlet. A wizard.
It was only once he straightened up, looming over her, that Naila felt him. His magic hummed in her ears, a bright heartbeat of power that threatened to overwhelm her if she looked at it too directly. Without even a syllable of an incantation, he extended a hand towards one of his books and it slid easily up through the air and into his outstretched hand, the casual gesture enough to manifest his will into magic.
There were perhaps three people in Amoria who could wield magic without speaking a word, and only one who could do it with so apparently little effort. Suddenly, Naila’s hands felt like they were sticking to the cold glass floor, a sick feeling rising in her throat.
“W‑Wizard Akana.”
Recognition was beginning to dawn on him as well. He peered down at her as if she were a specimen at the bottom of a jar, his eyes sketching over her hair and then settling on the pitch‑black of her eyes.
Wizard Akana’s face was narrow featured and unkind, his drawn‑down eyebrows etching deep groves in the centre of his forehead. A flat, angry scar marked his left cheek and jaw, disappearing beneath a high collar rumoured to hide worse scarring on his neck. The stories the students told suggested he’d burned himself with his own magic, experimenting with powers no one was supposed to understand.
His eyes studied her without mercy.
“You.” He said the word almost like a question, but Naila had no idea how to answer it.
She pushed herself back from him, scrabbling to stand. Her legs and arms were trembling, and suddenly she was back on the roof of the shophouse, watching a man get attacked for merely falling next to a mage.
“Sorry, Wizard,” she managed, her voice small and weak in her own ears. “I was running and—”
“You’re late.” He narrowed his eyes. “And now, so am I.”
His thin mouth drew to one side as he looked down at the books scattered about his feet, but it only took one circular motion of his hand for them all to jump back up into his arms. Despite his lateness, he took a moment to glare down at her one last time and then—in the greatest display of power that Naila had ever seen—he vanished.
Naila had never seen a mage travel without a pattern room, and he’d done it without even a single word of a spell. His sudden departure sucked the air in towards where he’d been standing, fluttering the pages of her books and lifting the hair away from her face. For a moment, all she could do was stare in mute astonishment.
Then the first bell of the afternoon rang overhead, reminding Naila of exactly how late she was. She stumbled to her knees, scooping her belongings back into her bag without even looking at them. Then she heaved her bag over her shoulder and ran.
When she finally reached the classroom four floors up, Naila was flushed, sweating and out of breath, her hair sticking to the back of her neck. As she pushed open the heavy glass door, a familiar nausea welled up from the pit of her stomach. She took one long breath and braced herself for the wall of disapproving silence undoubtedly awaiting her.
What she found instead was an atmosphere of barely controlled chaos. It was clear there had recently been some kind of commotion: the whole class bubbled underneath with hurried whispers and exchanged glances. Trianne Marnise was gripping the lectern in front of her as if it represented her hold on the class, her brown fingers turning white at the knuckles. Her thin eyebrows were raised as she waited for the class to acknowledge their transgression, her lips curled inwards over her teeth.
Naila tried to use the agitation to slip in unnoticed but, of course, the only free desk was right in the centre of the room. Hugging her bag against her side, she half turned to slide between the desks, intently focused on not bumping into the other students. She kept her eyes down, having long ago learned it was always worse to meet their gaze.
The effect of Naila’s presence was immediate: a heavy silence rolled in behind her. She’d been so focused on picking her way to her desk that she hadn’t noticed the reason for the class’s excitement, and now it caught the corner of her eye, a black shadow at the edge of her vision.
A Surveyor.
Naila froze, her hands tightening on the strap of her bag. The Surveyor stood in the corner, their body obscured in formless black robes, their face hidden behind a mask of concealing magic. For a moment, all Naila could hear was the rush of blood in her ears. What were they doing here? Who had they come for? Were they here because she’d knocked over Wizard Akana? Or maybe they were here because she had been at the protest the night before?
A million reasons flowed through her mind, each more ridiculous than the last. And yet, whatever the reason, Naila was possessed by a cold, awful certainty that they’d come here for her.
“Another interruption?” Trianne Marnise said with a thin veneer of patience. “Please, do keep standing there, Mita Naila. We’re happy to wait.” Trianne Marnise weighed the emphasis heavily on Naila’s title, as if it were something that set her apart from the others. In reality, all the young mages in this class were mita, and would be until they sat their exams.
What set Naila apart was that she was sure to remain a mita forever.
“Sorry,” Naila stammered for what felt like the hundredth time that day.
The focus of the trianne and her class was now firmly united on Naila. Whispers trailed her down the row of desks.
“He’s here for you.”
“Hollow.”
“Hollow mage.”
Someone stuck out a foot and Naila stumbled, hitting her hip hard against a desk, sending pens clattering to the floor. She wanted to glare down at the petty mage who had tripped her, but she couldn’t make herself look away from the Surveyor. He had leaned forward, like a predator smelling weakness in its prey, and she felt the weight of his eyes behind the shifting blackness of his mask. Somehow, she managed to fumble her way to her desk, feeling the screech of her chair in her teeth.
“Good,” said Trianne Marnise in a tone which implied exactly the opposite. “Let’s begin.”
Naila spent the rest of the lesson waiting for the axe to fall. She held herself very still, trying to keep her breath even, her pulse throbbing just below her neck. Her gaze kept sinking back towards the Surveyor and the inescapable gravity of his presence. The law enforcers of Amoria were not usually found in Academy classrooms. That one was here meant he’d been summoned.
Yet the only thing Naila could read from the dark form was boredom; once class resumed, the Surveyor leaned back against the wall, one black boot pressed against the glass, not even offering a pretence of interest.
Trianne Marnise’s class was on the Theory of Magic, a lesson which was typically filled with long, ponderous lectures and very little practical work. It was, therefore, a class in which Naila excelled.
Like all mages, and better than most, Naila could sense and feel the energies which ran through all things, living and inert: the bright defining anima, untouchable and unalterable, and its strange sister-power, magic. Even now, she could feel the flickering threads of it swirling around her, magic being tugged this way and that by the competing presence of mages.
“Mita Naila, perhaps you would like to demonstrate.”
Naila started, her gaze snapping back to the class.
Of course, this was what it had all been leading to. Trianne Marnise stood with her hand outstretched, a small marble of clear glass resting in her palm.
“Come now, Mita. This is a simple demonstration.” She smiled with affected patience. “The infants in level one control could manage this.”
There were a few sharp intakes of breath and more whispers. They knew, they all knew.
Naila stood anyway, her limbs heavy with dread. It wasn’t enough that she looked like none of them, a physical imprint of how little she belonged here, but she was also at least three years older than any of her classmates. She felt it now more than ever, picking her way to the front, like an awkward bird that had outgrown its cage. She couldn’t bring herself to look at the Surveyor, but she could feel the pressure of his gaze and hear the rustle of black fabric as he leaned forward. This was what he had come for.
“This is a magical item intended for the use of mages,” the trianne explained, as if this were merely part of her lesson and not a carefully laid trap. “For a mage to use it, all they need do is touch it with a small amount of their power: set the magic within the item moving.”
She reached out to drop the marble into Naila’s hand, a shock of cold glass against Naila’s skin. Its magic sang out in her mind immediately; it was made to train young mages and the magic was a swirling storm within it—easy to detect and easy to use, if one had the power.
“When the mita activates the glass,” Marnise continued with her careful charade, “it will emit a bright white light. An item such as this is designed for the use of all mages, making the application of power needed very small. Mita Naila, please demonstrate.”
Naila stared at the marble, her dread all caught up with the churning power within it. What the trianne asked was impossible, and Marnise knew that as well as Naila.
Never in all her seventeen years, never in any of her classes, never once in her whole life had Naila been able to do magic.
She tried anyway.
The classroom was oppressively quiet. Naila tried to focus her mind away from it, away from the sound of students clearing their throats and shuffling in their seats. Instead, she sank inwards, towards the well of power that was supposed to exist inside her. Frowning down at the tiny fragment of glass in her hand, she pushed all of her will towards it, reaching out to it, begging with it, pleading it to light. Everything she had here, her entire future in Amoria, all of it felt wrapped up in this tiny, insignificant marble. This time, it had to work.
The glass was utterly unmoved by her efforts. There was not the faintest flicker of power, let alone light. She felt empty—hollow—as if she were shouting inside an empty room. Next to her, Trianne Marnise blinked through her smile, the expression so fixed it could have been a mask.
“Mita Na—”
Naila was saved from whatever Trianne Marnise had been about to say by the loud, repeating chimes of the fourth bell.
As one, chairs scraped, pens clattered and bags were pulled out from beneath desks. Naila watched the students get up to leave, like standing on the edge of a flood and watching the boat pull away without her; somehow, she knew she wouldn’t be leaving so easily.
As if on cue, Trianne Marnise hissed in her ear, “Stay where you are.”
The Surveyor bore down on them, the black robes making him seem larger and more impressive than he really was. Trianne Marnise bowed her head in respect: Surveyors were called up to serve from within the higher ranks of mages, most often lieno, but Academy matters were usually solved from within, which meant that this was most likely one of the wizards. Naila half wondered if this was where Wizard Akana had been in such a hurry to get to—perhaps he’d find a way to punish her after all.
Holding herself straight, Naila stared up at the Surveyor, fixing her eyes on the deepening black shadow within his hood. The concealing magic was a disconcerting sight, and Naila’s stomach did a strange flip as she tried to focus on where the mage’s face should be. It only made her grit her teeth, more determined than ever that he wouldn’t see her fear.
“Surveyor,” Trianne Marnise began, “I’m sure you can see the reason you have been brought here. This is a school for mages, not for hollows.” Naila flinched at such a casual use of the cruel word.
“Did the girl not test as a mage?” The man’s voice sounded as if it was underwater, warped and distorted by magic, but Naila could hear a note of affected surprise.
“Perhaps she did, but there must have been some mistake. As you can see, she has shown no magical ability—as I said, less than I would expect from the children in the very lowest classes.”
“Perhaps.” The Surveyor stood very still, invisible eyes tracking over Naila’s skin. “May I?” he asked, lifting one gloved black hand.
Naila’s heart was beating so fast she felt sick. She stared at the hand, knowing exactly what it meant.
“I— yes…”
The Surveyor placed two fingertips lightly on Naila’s temple and she gasped; he’d sent the barest hint of his power towards her and it felt like someone had pulled on a rope attached behind her heart. Naila’s power—her very sense of self—leapt to obey this mage’s command, as if he could reach in and take her life into his hands.
“She is a mage,” he said, as if it were the simplest matter in the world.
Trianne Marnise tried to maintain an expression of polite understanding, but wrinkles appeared on the bridge of her nose. “They call her the hollow mage, Surveyor. She may appear to be a mage, but she has not passed a single one of the practical classes. I believe she sits in the infant control class. Though she may have been able to pass the exams to reach this class, she can move no further; she is already several years older than her peers and there is absolutely nothing I can hope to teach her.”
Naila felt the heat of blood in her cheeks. It was true. It had been two years since she’d watched Ko’ani graduate from this class and move on without her, and she was the last student Naila had considered a friend. Every year, the gulf deepened between her and her fellow students.
“Have you learned control?” the Surveyor asked.
And there was the crux of it. As if on cue, Naila felt the stir of the force inside her, a shift in the power that both elevated her to the life of a mage and condemned her. There was a simple reason all mages in Amoria had to attend the Academy. Naila had only ever heard rumours, but these stories were written into the very bones of the city. If a mage didn’t learn to control their gift, it would grow wild, a seething storm caught within the fragile casing of a human body. In the end, it would crack them apart, tearing right through them and everything around them.
Naila’s voice wavered when she answered him. “No.”
The Surveyor addressed Marnise, his voice flat. “Then she cannot leave the Academy. Those are the rules.”
“I believe this to be an exception!” The trianne’s patience began to splinter at the edges. “This is a class for the talented young mages of Amoria. We are known here for our excellence. Why, this class even contains the daughter of Lieno Oriven himself.”
“Does it, indeed?” Naila hadn’t thought it would be possible to hear sarcasm through the strange warping magic of the Surveyor, but she did. She was possessed by a sudden, dizzying lightness: was he on her side?
“This is a disgrace. Lieno Oriven himself has—”
“What this is,” said the Surveyor, “is a monumental waste of my time. I consider this business concluded. Good day to you, Trianne Marnise.”
With that, the Surveyor turned and walked away, his footsteps clicking on the glass floor. Trianne Marnise watched him go with wide, unblinking eyes, her mouth pale at the edges.
“I see,” she called after him. She lifted her chin and suddenly the calm expression of control was back, her dark eyes narrowing. “We’ve known for some time that this girl has support within the faculty. It is unfortunate that you were called to resolve this matter.”
The Surveyor stopped abruptly in the doorway, the black robes swirling about his feet.
“It is a capital offence to allude to the identity of a Surveyor,” he said without turning, and suddenly the air in the room grew heavier, charged with his power.
Even Trianne Marnise looked uneasy.
“I—” She swallowed. “I did nothing of the kind. This is not the end of this, Surveyor. I will be raising this matter again—with the Lieno Council, as well as the faculty.”
For a moment the Surveyor just stood in the doorway, the magic of the room bending down towards him. And then he sighed, sagging a little within the black robes, his appearance suddenly smaller.
“Do as you will.”
In the glass city of Amoria, magic is everything. And Naila, student at the city’s legendary academy, is running out of time to prove she can control hers. If she fails, she’ll be forced into exile, relegated to a life of persecution with the other magicless hollows. Or worse, be consumed by her own power.
When a tragic incident further threatens her place at the Academy, Naila is saved by Haelius Akana, the most powerful living mage. Finding Naila a kindred spirit, Haelius stakes his position at the Academy on teaching her to harness her abilities. But Haelius has many enemies, and they would love nothing more than to see Naila fail. Trapped in the deadly schemes of Amoria’s elite, Naila must dig deep to discover the truth of her powers or watch the city she loves descend into civil war.
For there is violence brewing on the wind, and greater powers at work. Ones who could use her powers for good… or destroy everything she’s ever known.
