Again, Lord Varen raised his hands. The agitated crowd hushed.

“But this is not the time or place for grief,” he said, his green gaze steady. “We are gathered here to celebrate new magic. Mage Lakewell?”

The oldest of the three honoured mages took another step forward. Lord Varen nodded at her, then joined his fellow councillors. Excitement thrummed through the waiting crowd.

Mage Lakewell’s lips moved as she silently recited a short incant. Next she sketched a sigil on the air, where it glowed molten gold. In her outstretched left hand appeared a small flowerpot, but instead of a ripe bloom it contained a single stalk of renna, rotting with grain blight.

Those mages close enough to clearly see the pot and its contents sighed. Grain blight was a curse gifted them by the careless farmers of Feen, who three summers before had failed to purge their own crops of the disease before its spores blew over the border into Dorana. Used in ale-making and baking a sour, nourishing bread, renna grain was highly prized. Being a fickle crop it grew grudgingly elsewhere, which meant importing the grain was difficult and ruinously expensive. All of Dorana was pinched by the shortage.

Barl felt her fingers curl, nails biting her palm. So, had Mage Lakewell defeated renna blight? For if that was her achievement…

Another sigil burned the air, this time the bright crimson of fresh blood. Another sigil, dark green, then one of sky blue, and finally a fifth of storm-cloud purple. The plaza’s air crackled, prickling bare skin and stirring unbound hair. Mage Lakewell recited a second silent incant, her lips moving too quickly for the syllables to be discerned. Her right hand hovered above the blighted stalk of grain, outstretched fingers slightly hooked. In her face, a fierce concentration.

With a shudder that shook the plaza’s cobblestones and splashed the water in its fountain, the incant ignited. Remmie and Barton’s transfixed pupils squealed. Even the fancy-pants First Family children cried out, and more than a few of the adult mages behind them. Barl caught her breath as the magic’s power surged through her, searing nerve and bone and muscle.

Now the potted stalk of grain was obscured by a thick greenish haze. There was sweat on Mage Lakewell’s face and she breathed deep and hard. The incant was costing her.

“A’bar’at!” she said, the command bursting from her in a grunting of pain.

A flash of light. A roar of discharged power. The greenish haze vanished to reveal a healthy stalk of renna.

Cries of joy. Rapturous applause. With a careless wave of her hand Mage Lakewell returned the pot to wherever it belonged and waited for the acclaim to subside. Her lips were curved in the merest hint of a smile.

Remmie turned, his face alight with admiration. “Remarkable. Don’t you think so, Barl?”

“It was well done,” she admitted, because it was, and she couldn’t with honesty say otherwise.

Mage Lakewell stepped back, and into her place stepped Mage Tranter. Her great achievement was an incant to render harmless any poison brewed, on purpose or by accident, from the fruit of the yababi bush. Since yababi was the favoured poison of certain warlike Ranoushi clans, and a crucial ingredient of extensively popular yababi paste, which had been known to turn rancid and kill by mistake, thanks to Mage Tranter Dorana stood to make a good deal of coin.