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eyes – glittering with something my child’s imagination mistakes for fear – follow the movement of the paperweight as I heft it higher. I have his attention now.
    I’m growling like a street dog. I feel my mouth stretch into a snarl and I throw the thing at him, using my mind as well as my arms. ‘I’ll kill you!’ I scream.
    I am nine. I have barely learnt to melt stone. Did I really think I could hurt the Archmage? But I do hurt him. As I feel him take the paperweight from me, I splinter off a fragment of glass and send it flying through the air. I aim for his eye, but I miss. It buries itself in the flesh over his cheekbone. Blood spurts from the hole in his face like water from a fountain, but Benedict doesn’t make a sound. He catches the glass disc with his mind; returns it to the desk; extracts the splinter from his face and melds it back into the paperweight, a bloody smear on the glass. And he hurts me.
    Oh, he hurts me. Every muscle in my body spasms into cramp. The agony is unbearable. I roll on the floor, screaming. Begging to die. I think he will kill me. I see a look in his eyes  …  but then his lip curls. The pain retreats but darkness gathers and wades towards me. I fight him. I scream for Swift, try to crawl across the floor to where she lies like a dead thing. I glimpse her face. Her eyes are open. I see her blink. Then darkness, cold and wet and unrelenting, grabs my throat and I fall.
    I am unconscious for days. They tell me that when I finally wake, I cannot speak. Much of that year remains dark and lost. I don’t try to remember.
    I never see Swift again.

2
    In the years separating that life from this, I have visited Benedict’s library many times – night-time expeditions when my only company is Swift’s ghost, guiding me to those books she needs me to read. But twice a year I’m forced to endure being in my father’s presence in this place. At those times I stand in front of his desk, my tutors’ reports spread over its polished surface. While he lists my failings as daughter and mage, I look at the paperweight. And remember.
    Mages do not make things. That is work for non-magic kine, for the guilds. Except for the mages of Tierce, the city of glass. The adepts of Tierce vie with one another to create the most beautiful objects, melting sand, silica and pigment with their minds and forming the glass into intricate shapes.
    My father’s paperweight is one of the masterpieces of Tierce. I still wonder what truly happened seven years ago – how much I actually remember and how much I imagined. Did the glass really respond to my touch? Was there a buzzing, or was it the blood surging in my head – my own fear and rage – I heard? That night is so dark in my memory I can’t be sure.
    Now I lean over the desk, watching the swirls of metal frozen in the glass. I can hear myself breathing – too fast – as I reach out a finger and touch the paperweight. It feels cold and dead. Are the silver threads moving? I bend closer  …  then jerk backwards as the door clicks open and my father enters the room.
    It takes all my will and years of practice to stand calmly and meet his eyes. They are a clear yellowish-brown. Lizard’s eyes. On his right cheekbone is a shiny round scar. His hair and neatly curling beard are still dark above the white lace collar he wears over his black robes. But although he has hardly changed, at sixteen I have grown nearly as tall as he. I keep my face empty, my eyes blank. He has never once mentioned what he did to me that night. We both know I will never tell anyone. My mother was declared mad. I carry her taint.
    Aluid is nowhere to be seen and I allow myself a small sigh of relief. At least I won’t have to watch his eyes bulge with outrage as he lists my crimes.
    â€˜The third precept, Zara?’ My father walks to his desk and sits down. I am not invited to sit.