The Chancellor will pay. For stealing my people’s magic, forcing them to live in hiding. What would my father say? Would he be proud? Even if I messed up the first time?

I glance at Zora, then Kai, and can’t help but admire her posture. The way she moves. I need the Yakanna, Jhamal, all of us united. But something in Kai’s body language, the way she moves, the knowing way she runs everyone around her, tells me that will be easier said than done. I turn to Jhamal, walking close enough to him to feel his warmth.

“You think—” I start, when something dents my peripheral vision. “We’re not alone. Quick.” I gesture at a lamppost across an intersection. Kai’s girls move in one motion, bare shoulder pressed into the back of the girl in front of them. We duck behind a pile of debris as the growing footsteps get louder. The Chancellor’s footmen march past, sentries patrolling. We stick tight together and I notice how the Yakanna curve around one another, moving as one unit. Except for Zora, who is stuck to my side. Jhamal’s on my other side, wariness written into his brow. He needs food, rest. He’s held up the strength of the both of us for so long.

“Left,” the Patrolman yells, and his men rotate on their heels. The drum of their footsteps races my pulse. If they even so much as look in our direction, we’re caught.

“Halt.” The march comes to a standstill, their knotted fingers over their chests, when a siren wails. We scurry backward to tuck farther behind an old rusted communal trash dump, and I swear if that Patrolman listens hard enough, he could hear my thumping chest. A truck rolls to a stop beside them.

“Macazi,” the driver says to the sergeant leading the march. “Sixty degrees north of here, looting, another group on the southern quadrant vandalizing government property.”

The sergeant nods and more Patrol hop off the back. The truck rolls off and the marching formation breaks into a jog. They disappear around a corner and I step out, motioning for the others to come out too.

“That was close.”

He said “Macazi….” Those the Chancellor deems unfit to be bound to magic at the Binding ceremony are cast into community housing, given bare minimum wages. Most die or disappear. Some he keeps and lets his researchers experiment on, I’ve even heard. I shudder at the thought. You don’t treat people like that to no consequence. The tags on the Chancellor’s tower, the looting, vandalizing statues… it all makes sense. The Chancellor has more than us working against him. When the City started to fall, they probably saw their opportunity to step out against the tyrant who kept them as second-class citizens for so long.