would have made them hard enough to read: the distortion made it near-impossible.
"If I could trace them out, I suppose," he said, trying to puzzle out the nearest sigil. Three spokes, so it would be an action…
"Don't be stupid." Auri, avoiding the Sigillic, crossed to tug on his arm. "You can't maintain a casting like this nearly—" She broke off, and went back to her chair, kneeling down to peer underneath it.
"What?"
"Come see."
Her cheek was shining blue, reflecting a strong light source beneath the chair. Fallon hurried to poke his nose around the other side of the chair's leg, and found that the light was coming from the base of the chair, from a sphere embedded into the wood.
"I did it after all," Auri said, reaching out to stroke the curve before Fallon could object. "It's warm."
"I don't think that's a focus," Fallon said. "It looks dark, not clear."
"What else could it be? I read that Lady Rennyn's focus is black. Maybe I accidentally summoned the way she did." She smiled, and poked the sphere again. "It feels good."
Resting back on his heels, Fallon murmured the cut-off for the detect Sigillic. "I guess this is progress. I'll dig it out in the morning."
"And then go find out what you can about Lady Rennyn's students."
"That too, for all the good it'll do me. None of them are in the city."
"They'll have to come back for her annunciation as Duchess. You can do it, Fallon."
He'd have to. Without being able to read the structure of Auri's Sigillic, he had little chance of understanding just what had gone wrong. And even if he stumbled upon a solution, his ability to cast was greatly limited by the strain Auri constantly placed on him. Nor would it be sufficient to somehow enlist the help of his teachers, or the Hand mages, or even the Grand Magister. He needed an expert in the Eferum, and there was only one mage considered so brilliant, so revolutionary, so sheerly powerful, that she would have any hope of saving a girl trapped in a dream he couldn't admit to.
If Auri was ever to find her way back to this world, they needed Rennyn Claire.
CHAPTER TWO
Kendall Stockton returned to Captain Faille's quarters to discover her so-called teacher standing daydreaming on a footstool while a pair of dressmakers scuffled around her feet fooling with her hem. Really, there were times Rennyn Claire acted almost as silly as she'd pretended to be when Kendall had met her.
Not bothering to point out the obvious to someone who couldn't be trusted with stairs and frequently came over dizzy and had to sit down, Kendall instead looked over the dress.
"It's not as fancy as I expected," she said, considering the floaty, dark blue sleeves and the tiny silver flowers embroidered on the broad black waistband. Not bad, though it failed hide that Rennyn was still too thin, and it was cut low enough to show neck and shoulders. Rennyn didn't exactly try to hide her throat, but she rarely wore anything that gave a good look at the scar left by her demon uncle. "Wasn't it supposed to be green?"
"This is just for today's audience." Rennyn glanced down at her dress as if she hadn't really thought about it yet. She was the type who would wear exactly the same thing every day, if no-one poked at her.
This dress was a good deal more like what a nearly-Duchess would wear than the plain skirt, blouse and jacket Rennyn usually went about in, but she still didn't look as expensive as most of the ladies Kendall had glimpsed flitting through the palace. Her teacher's long black hair was caught back from the sides with a dark ribbon and the rest hung down her back same as always—she never tried to do anything with it. If Kendall had hair so nice and straight, instead of a mop of dirty blonde curls, she wasn't sure she would bind it up in braids either. Though it was probably just that all the braiding the Court ladies liked was too much effort for Rennyn at the moment.
"How long have you been standing on that?" Kendall asked, handing