“You always said that me setting foot in this College was a dream, too, and look! Here I am, with my own privy workroom and more magework to occupy me than I know what to do with!”

He spun round, his pained eyes wide with disbelief. “You can joke about this?”

“Remmie…” Bracing her hands on the desk, she pushed achingly to her feet. “If there is a joke here, you have to see it’s on me. You have to see I’m the joke. A bad one. Please, let’s not fight any more. I asked you here because the warding incant is ready, but I don’t dare attempt its creation on my own. And there’s no-one else I want beside me as I do.”

Except Morgan.

The tightening of his lips told her he knew she’d not spoken the entire truth, but instead of challenging her on it he crossed to the workroom’s small, stained-glass window and stared down into the empty courtyard below. There’d been a garden there once, but mage-mist had ravaged it to rotting slime. Every time she felt like giving up she made herself look at it. Made herself remember the ruination that was Rumm, and the sound of talons clicking on the Council chamber floor. Reminded herself, forcefully, that she didn’t have the luxury of giving up.

“D’you remember when we were five, and you tried to incant your way off the roof?” Remmie said eventually, his back still turned. “You mistimed the sigil and knocked out two front teeth and Pa was so angry over you disobeying him that once he was certain you’d not really hurt yourself he paddled your behind until you shrieked the leaves off the trees in the front garden.”

“Yes, Remmie. I remember,” she said, pulling a face. “Thank you so much for reminding me.”

Unsmiling, he looked over his shoulder at her. “Do yourself a mischief over this incant and I’ll paddle you, Barl. I swear it.”

Eyes stinging, sick with nerves, she moved to the workbench. Forty-nine sigils. No mage in history had ever attempted to create so many for a single incant. Well, she’d spent her life claiming she was a great mage.

And now the time has come to prove it.

Forty-nine sigils. Their completion took her nearly three days and in nearly three days Remmie did not leave her side. She cursed him. She cuffed him. Once she threw a crucible at him. It made no difference. “Do your worst. I’m not leaving,” he said, and kept his word, and stayed. Did her bidding like an apprentice, kept anxious Venette Martain and the College’s mages at bay, brought her food and drink, listened as she cursed the difficulties of her enormous task and encouraged her in those moments when she thought she’d have to admit defeat.