“I don't understand,” Dalliance said, “I can just look at my status and tell you how much Spirit I have, or how much mana.”

  “You'd think so," said the professor mysteriously. Tall, reedy, with thick spectacles, Professor Drains presented an appearance halfway between a crane and a dignified gentleman of letters. “In point of fact, every facet of the system is based upon your natural physiology. I invest in a point of Wit, and I'm smarter. So do you, and so are you -- but less. Or more, or in a different way. There are some dozen orthogonal dimensions to intellect by itself, you know. The System gives you the total, not the breakdown."

  He gestured at a strange brass device on the table. "For mana, you're in luck: there are only . . . well, four, but we'll call it three for now. Plus your type, and sensitivity, there's absorbtion, capacity, and expressive power. ACE for short. Now, we'll just start with this mana engine: It produces fire-aspected mana, just enough to leak into the atmosphere, not enough to harm you. So, if you place your hand atop the mana engine and open yourself to the Mana, you'll begin to fill your soul more quickly, and should see your mana increase."

  "I'm at capacity."

  "Say what? But but . . . your thaumic token. I sense it there, in your pocket. You ought to keep it topped off, what?"

  "But then how would I cast spells?"

  "You absorb from the token—ah, you've done that much before, am I right?"

  "Yes sir. But. Um, nothing's happening."

  The professor stared at Dalliance's hand on the brass plate of the mana engine as if he could see right through the skin and bones to the mana channels beneath.

  "Your token holds your . . . the term is 'vis' - your personal mana, aspected with your own mix of aspects. It is naturally yours, so is easier to reclaim. Ambient mana tends to enter the system via osmosis—but not in your case. You are shut tight as a schoolmarm's . . . you're quite tense. To loosen your control over your mana, try to picture that your hands are very cold, and near a fire. you WANT the warmth, you feel your gooseflesh settling into normalcy, the warmth is a part of you.”

  Dalliance felt something change, but his mana count did not.

  "Expend some. Into the token, that's right . . . now, again."

  His mana ticked up by two points.

  "Fantastic. Yes. How many was that? Seemed a bit on the meagre side."

  "Two thaums."

  "Two? Well, it's not nothing." He scribbled.

  Dalliance's legs shook and sweat trickled down from his armpits. The run had been every bit as grueling as he had been warned it would be. As the flush from the run began to fade, gooseflesh broke out along his flanks and back.

  "Very good. Your capacity . . . I'm sure I don't have to explain what that means."

  Dalliance shook his head.

  "Good, good. Just right over here."

  There was a basin. It was filled with water. The instructor took a small cotton swab, dipped it lightly in a vial he held, and swiped it over Dalliance's forehead.

  "Now, just submerge your head and let's see how much mana you hold."

  "I could just read it out."

  "This has to do with how your basal capacity will scale as you grow. Are we going to argue each little step?" He looked a little stern.

  "No, I'm sorry," Dalliance said, backpedaling.

  "Right. In you go."

  Dalliance put his head under the water. There was a tingling sensation along his forehead where he had been swabbed, and then a flare of light as the oil burned. He could see his face reflected in the bottom of the basin, lit by a green flame.

  Emerald green.

  It flared out in an instant, and the professor pulled him up out of the basin. "That looks to be right about a six," he said. "Six-five if we're being generous. And I've already typed you."

  "You did?"

  "Oh, yes. When you walked in, I examined you. You're leaking Air aspected mana in the main, with trace amounts of Fortune aspect."

  "Is that good?"

  "It isn't bad. You'll be a fine [Aeromancer]. Never you worry."

  "Am I done?"

  "Nearly. This is just like a thaumic token." He handed Dalliance a large brass square. "Except that it glows based upon capacity. I have filled it to within ten thaums of fullness. I want you to fill it to completion as quickly as you can, at which point it will go blue. You may then retrieve your thaums."

  Dalliance focused. The brass was not just like a thaumic token. Where the token seemed to almost suck at the skin, the brass was . . . inert.

  His mana—vis—bubbled against the inside of his skin. He could feel it, close to the surface. Ready to push into the square.

  “I visualize it like light, myself,” said the professor, observing him with interest. “Just think of your hand glowing, shining on it like—there you go!”

  Dalliance felt resistance immediately, which helped greatly. Feeling what was resisting meant he could feel himself pushing.

  “A half second. Considering that I taught you how just now, I’d say that’s an excellent time. Green marks across the board.”

  He searched behind his desk for a moment before revealing a stamp in the shape of a 9. He dipped this in rubber paint.

  “All done!” he said cheerfully, and pounded the stamp down on Dalliance’s left hand, on the back. Despite his gentleness, the missing fingers still twinged.

  Dalliance saw the pip only after the stamp had fallen. Six, not nine.

  “Ver-y good,” said the professor. “Go along now, you’ll be in House Wakinyan, they should have a queue by now.”

  They did.

  Dalliance stewed in the hot sun, waiting in the queue to join Thunderbird House. If Effluvia had used a mana engine during one of the hunts, it followed that she knew how to absorb mana. And in all of their meetings talking about preparing for the Academy, it had never occurred to her to tell him.

  It was ironic: Parsimony thought they were so close that she’d teach him spells, but she hadn’t even covered the basics.

  It had to have occurred to her that being able to recharge his mana would have helped him, as a mage, survive better in the hunts. He could have helped more people.

  Admittedly, he didn't know where he would have found the time; running out of mana hadn't really been a consistent problem. He shoved this awareness down, unready to face it.

  The nobility, with their inherited skills, their generational advantage: It didn't seem fair.

  Of course, he didn't have any particular read on the significance of his measurements. Perhaps he was getting upset about nothing. His expression had seemed to be good. If he could work on his intake . . . it had been his first time, after all. He probably wasn't some sort of magical cripple, just unpracticed. How could he be anything else without friends who shared important information?

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  No. This wasn't about that. That's not what today was about. He would be in a good mood. He was going to be happy.

  Topaz had told him to, after all.

  Dalliance busied himself admiring the Houses demonstrating their virtues with an eye toward hyping up their newest acquisitions. It was certainly worth seeing.

  Wakinyan house sported a dozen fliers, zipping around overhead on giant kites, throwing colored smoke rings at the crowd that smelled like rosewater. Halcyon’s members gamboled about in the fountains, skipping rope with the spray or freezing it into fantastical designs, only to allow them to meld back into the flow again. Phoenix’s stage was entirely taken up with a portal, its surface rippling flame, through which they could see the entirety of the Commencement Ceremony, itself included. The Earth mages bared their chests and took strikes from hammer and pick with equal aplomb. Like Da, he thought darkly, but they’re wasting magic on it.

  The line ahead seemed interminable, and the bobbing of the fuzz balls on the yarn tassles of the girl in front of him kept catching his attention from the corner of his eye like a circling wasp might.

  Focus.

  This is what he’d wanted. He had it now. Everything was fine.

  He was next in line, and then the girl with the weird hat stepped forward, and it was just him, face to face with her.

  She had red hair, red as an apple.

  "Are you a Solomonari, too?" he asked.

  She squinted at him. "I don't dye my hair," she said slowly, "if that's what you're asking."

  "I'm sorry," he said, as unsure now as he had been confident a second earlier.

  "Air aspect?" she asked.

  "Yes . . . ?"

  ". . . Miss Precipitation. Incisive. Rainy to my friends."

  "Miss Precipitation?"

  "You don't want to be my friend?" The squint deepened, threatening to become a scowl.

  "Rainy."

  "Detective Rainy," she added. "Attached to Vault Station."

  "A detective?"

  "I'm slumming it," she admitted cheerfully. "Community activism looks good on the CV for when there's an opening for a super. Should be soon, so I need it."

  He was entirely lost.

  "Just listen to Detective Rainy, there's a good boy. Run along to the House, just follow the queue."

  WIthin the long, low-roofed building they eventually trooped into, all open courtyards and archways, or large portrait windows left ajar, the newcomers were settled into a semicircle, and given the rules, and background, of House Wakinyan.

  Detective Rainy would be their House ‘Mother’. They would study here, use the textbooks here—not to be removed upon pain of her extreme displeasure—and eat here. She would provide food. They could leave for lunch if they wanted to waste mana on frippery instead of learning magic. They could knock on her door if they had something urgent that needed addressing. It had better be urgent, or they would regret knocking.

  The House itself had been founded by one of the four kings. No, he didn’t practice Air magic—but he believed in the Philosophy of Air. No, Rainy wasn’t a [Philosopher]. Simply put, the whole of the thousand different gusts, each moving in their own direction for their own reasons, produce the sum of the weather and bring the clouds from the seas, the rain from the clouds, water the land, and so on. For everything to be at its best, we all must go as we’re directed to do by our own goals.

  In class, the goal would be to listen very carefully.

  “Now off you go, duckies, time for your first class, with the best teacher you’ll ever have.”

  The blackboard said Incisive Precipitation. Detective Rainy crossed it out and wrote, in big swooping capitals: RAINY.

  "Or 'Detective Rainy'," she said without turning around. "That's my day job--finding lost things, or hidden ones, or the people who hid said things and or people. For this semester, I shall also be teaching introductory Divination."

  "Of all the schools of magic," she continued, more focused now, "Divination has the most potential for abuse, more than anything save Mind Magic and Necromancy, which join it on the Interdicted List. 'Why are we learning something interdicted, Detective Rainy?' Because it's just certain advanced spells which ended up on the naughty list, and the rest are still useful.”

  She set the chalk down with a click, the sound echoing in the silent room.

  "[Locate Object]. It's the simplest spell in the book. Learn it. What is it? It's a scrying spell. Each of you, come to the front, pick a name out of this hat, go somewhere that isn’t here, learn to cast the spell, then find the person whose name you drew. Get them to sign yours, you sign theirs."

  She held up a slip of paper.

  "Bring it back. When you're the one being located, focus on what that feels like. That's your homework. Maybe they’re in the bathroom? Don’t you watch them, because we all know who traded with whom, and they shall tell me."

  The look on her face made it clear what she'd think about that.

  The instructors, it seemed, came in all shapes and sizes, from the very tall and handsome Detective Rainy, to the very old, such as Instructor Rufus.

  "Today, we will learn how to cancel our own spells," said Instructor Rufus. Despite the lowborn-sounding name and his disinclination to even offer his surname, Instructor Rufus was a very fastidious man, with long white mustaches that dripped down past his chin, neatly curled at the tips, and a shorn scalp covered with tattoos. Instructor Rufus had opined that they should not be able to cast any spells at all without first knowing how to cancel them.

  "Those you learn through the System as skills," he said, "come with 'cancel' as an innate option. You can always turn a System skill on and off. That is not true for a spell you have cast. It does what it’s going to do, unless you cancel it."

  "To cancel your spell, you see, you take hold of the mana-channels bringing power to the spell, and you cut the flow of mana to nothing. This causes the spell to immediately fail."

  "Some of you are thinking, 'But spell failure is dangerous!' Well yes. But think further. Instructor Rufus doesn’t want me to die, Instructor Rufus must know something I don’t. What does Instructor Rufus know?”

  Instructor Rufus glanced around the room and grinned at them. "Instructor Rufus knows that if you break the data channel while leaving a spell powered, spell failure is very dangerous. If you break the power channel, the spell cannot do anything, and is thus completely safe."

  "This is why, before you cast any spells in my Aeromancy class, you will learn the non-elemental spell, [Cancel]. Why is it non-elemental?"

  No one raised their hands.

  "[Cancel] uses as its basis the phenomenon of elemental annihilation. This is also called 'Null'. As 'Null Mana' is everywhere, we can think of ourselves as existing in a null environment at all times, with as much of it available as we want."

  "Is that how Archmages fight?" Dalliance asked after raising his hand and being called on.

  "A raised hand, how cute," said Rufus. "No, that’s not how Archmages fight. If you want to fight with Null, first you have to take hold of the opponent’s channel. Do you want to spend half the fight taking hold of some other man’s channels? I don’t. The indignity. Besides, while I’m trying that, the other man has just hit me with a fireball. But I like your style—jumping ahead to long-term application. Good one.”

  Not all instructors were so keen on class participation.

  Mister Dusk was the Incantations professor. Very focused was Mister Dusk. No unnecessary flourishes. No repetition. His primary rule was simple: If you didn’t understand what it meant, don’t say it.

  A student's comment that they wouldn't be able to say anything, then, was met with a completely deadpan, "Good. My talking should be more than enough for the two of us, and I cannot abide interruptions."

  It was a surprisingly straightforward manner. The living stuff of the world—mana—didn’t understand what you wanted without being told, and every part of the spell was a different instruction.

  Dalliance realized that he knew, for example, that [Locomotion] lifted things. But he hadn’t thought before about what that meant: The outside of the thing that you’re lifting is this shape. I want it to keep being that shape, to within these tolerances, while we use the wind, which we source from somewhere, to apply force to it in opposition to gravity and to cause it to follow this vector.

  They were all made to break down their spells in similar forms. Mister Dusk explained that all of them were asking the Mana to do horrendously complicated things for them, and the Mana didn’t naturally know how to do any of that for humans, because the Mana was created for the dragons. Or possibly for the Fae, or for elder elementals like the djinn. It didn’t matter anyway, because it wasn’t created for humans and had no idea what humans wanted.

  So, you pointed your fingers and waggled them in special ways because that was the finger-wiggle that mana had learned meant you wanted this or that. And you said the syllables in certain ways and orders because that was how the mana had learned to understand that you wanted this or that other thing. And there were so many things you had to tell the mana that it wasn’t possible to explain all of them with just your voice or your fingers—unless you had unusually fast fingers or used meta-magic to simplify the commands that could be given, so that all of them would be expressed through the fingers.

  Gesticulation, or Incancation with the voice, was defined as a 'data channel,' one of several possible parallel methods of communication with the Mana.

  Data, it was explained, was information without context.

  Your fingers provided the context, and allowed the data to be information, i.e. a spell.

  Spell circles, other mages if casting in groups, or ritual contexts were also data channels.

  Mister Dusk did not offer homework for the first-day students. Dalliance wasn’t sure if this was a good thing or not. On the one hand, he didn’t want to do homework. On the other hand, he felt like he needed to practice.

  Poor man’s telekinesis, Mister Dusk had called [Locomotion], and as Dalliance experimented with it, he discovered this was true. He could pick things up—anything at all up to two hundred pounds—and place it where he wanted, even if that required maneuvering it around obstacles or shoving past them, if they were lightweight, which made the spell much stronger than he had originally understood. He could even change where he wanted to put things mid-cast, though the timing was tricky, and the one-handed finger gestures were difficult for him.

  He wasn’t great at it yet. It was apparently easier with two hands.

  The spell that he had at first thought was just a good learner's spell . . . no. This was a bit of magic that would grow with him for a long time to come. He just had to master it.

  Everything was fine.