Rumm bowed. “Sir.”

“I’ll be in the library.”

Another bow. “Shall I bring supper to you there?”

Morgan hesitated, then nodded. “Something light. With a jug of strong red wine.” Because his nerves were still unsettled from his mishap with the tilatantin. “In an hour.”

“One hour,” said Rumm, with a third and final punctilious bow. “Yes, sir.”

His attic and the library: the two rooms of the mansion where he felt truly at home. The rest might as well not exist, were needed only to satisfy base, begrudged human urges for sleep, food and bathing.

Only his mansion of the mind had real value.

Slouched deep in a leather chair, surrounded by the collection of books he was transforming into the greatest arcane library in Dorana, he studied again the inflammatory words of Rubin Cylte.

And if no way of doing a thing can be seen, still let the thing be attempted, that the way might be found. For many things done easily now were counted a challenge in their time. And many things done commonplace were once new and despised.

Not a popular arcane philosopher, Cylte. Every so often there was a call to gather his books and pamphlets and treatises and have done with them once and for all. Not bred in a First Family was one popular refrain. Unorthodox was another. Both accusations were true. Cylte had been common and outrageous and had paid the price for both crimes, eventually. But in the sixty-odd years that had passed since the controversial mage’s downfall, Morgan had found no greater voice lifted in praise of experimental magics. His father was unaware he’d purchased one of Cylte’s rare books. There was no need for him to know, especially since knowing might well hasten him into the family crypt.

It was Cylte’s ruminations on the reconfiguring of sigils that had inspired him to exchange dreaming for daring, and undertake a reworking of Hartigan’s transmutation incant.

For many things done easily now were counted a challenge in their time.

Words to provide comfort when the work was not going as planned.

Cheered a little by the dead mage’s encouragement, Morgan put that book aside and turned to his Compendium of Catalysts. Therein must lie the answer to his collapsing sigils. He had to find it. His was a First Family, but it wasn’t first amongst the First. There were more illustrious names in Dorana than his. To be recognised, to become one day head of the Council, Dorana’s most eminent mage, he had to make his mark. He had to be seen as the peerless mage he knew himself to be, no matter what more highly ranked mages hinted and winked at.

I must be known as the greatest innovator in our history… and protect it from the dangers I alone seem to see.

When Rumm brought him his supper he put aside the Compendium and ate, distracted, as he examined the question of the recalcitrant sigil. He remained convinced that azafris was the correct central catalyst. Very well, if oil of atlar was an incompatible counter-catalyst, and tilatantin was combustible, and urvil root wasn’t strong enough to be effective, what did that leave him? Frill root, perhaps. Or possibly susquinel. Though that was a dangerous notion. The wretched stuff was almost as bad as azafris. Mishandled, it could do a careless mage real harm.