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might have lived a few years—maybe even the rest of your life—without knowing magic. But I’m running out of time. I need an apprentice.”
    She hadn’t quite followed him.
    “So you’re a virus?”
    He stared at her through the fire. “A body will develop antibodies for anything it doesn’t understand. It’ll even kill the wrong type of blood.”
    Right. She understood that.
    The firelight pronounced the shadows on his face. For a moment, he almost looked like her father, with the lines grieved into his skin. His eyes held hers steadily.
    With the next flick of flame, he was the Mage again, waiting for her response.
    She curled her sleeves around her fists.
    “Why do you need an apprentice?”
    He leaned forward with a smile, teeth glinting in the light.
    “Magic is dangerous. Can’t let you whippersnappers run amok with it now, can we?”
    His smile dropped at her raised eyebrow. The navigator’s seat rocked as he leaned back. “Sorry. I’m not old enough to say ‘whippersnapper’. There’s more than one reason. An apprentice gives me security that what I know won’t die with me and my old world. I can’t teach my mercenaries—they don’t have magic—and I can’t write it down. Tried that, doesn’t work. There’s only so much you can learn from a book. With magic, you gotta learn by doing .”
    Aiden yawned. Silence stretched out between them again. She felt a yawn pulling at the back of her jaw, too.
    “Also, magic is dangerous. If us Mages didn’t have the shield to worry about… well, we’d probably have more apprentices. Maybe even set up a school.”
    Mieshka remembered she was skipping. She hid her wince.
    “Buck said there were other people with magic. Besides Mages.”
    “There are. One’s with the Water Mage, one’s in Terremain. ” He paused. “There are several in Mersetzdeitz, but then everything’s in Mersetzdeitz, isn’t it?”
    She smiled at the joke. That was what they said about Mersetzdeitz. Pretty city, bigger than Lyarne, and untouchable on its plateau. Mersetzdeitz was Lyarne’s ally, bordering Lyarne’s mountains. Several train tunnels connected the two.
    And yes, everything was in Mersetzdeitz.
    She shifted where she sat. The edge of the wall had dug into her back.
    “Is there anyone else in Lyarne?”
    “I don’t suppose there is.” Aiden shifted, too, sitting more upright. “Your guess is as good as mine. The only way I can track magic is by sending Buck out with the Bee—er—Energy Detecting Device.”
    So that’s what it was called.
    “You don’t have to decide now, but I’ll need an answer within the week. I really am short on time.”
    He made to get up. She followed him, knee cracking as she stood.
    “I’ll talk to my dad. Will I miss school?”
    “Any more than you are now? No. I won’t wreck a perfectly good Lyarnese education. But there is one thing.”
    He’d stopped just as she’d thought he would pass her.
    “I need to put a tracking spell on you. As insurance. Hard to keep track of people, these days.”
    She froze. More magic?
    He must have seen the look on her face, because he quickly added: “Don’t worry, this won’t hurt.”
    That’s what he’d said before.

    A few blocks away, at the top of an Uptown highrise, James Redenbacher sat behind his desk and enjoyed the sun-filled scene of Lyarne’s sloping cityscape.
    He wore a tailor-made, well-pressed, slate-grey suit over a dove-grey shirt, with a pair of gold cuff-links that his wife had given him on their last anniversary. His tie was a metallic robin’s egg blue, and his shoes had been polished this morning.
    His office was warm, with a large, flat-screen TV built into the bookshelf on the wall opposite the windows. His desk, equipped with a few secret panels, had been ordered from a carpenter in Mersetzdeitz. Its top was protected by a rectangle of sage-green leather, on which sat a small laptop computer and a large glass of alcohol.
    When the phone rang, he turned