Edhir’s jaw tightened, but he made no complaint. Instead he stood and made his way to one of the many shelves lining the walls. He lifted a mounted sphere from one low shelf and brought it over to the table. It was a strange tool—Mehr had never seen the like of it before. The sphere was faceted glass, etched with symbols, and surrounded on all sides by movable dials and calipers, all etched with small, intricate measurements. Without a word Edhir began adjusting the calipers and dials around the sphere, his eyes narrowed. Another mystic brought over a scroll and unfurled it. This one was covered in lines and equations. Catching Mehr’s questioning look, Edhir said, “This is a map of the stars.”

“I didn’t know stars could be mapped,” Mehr said honestly.

“Oh, they can,” Edhir said, distracted. He adjusted another dial in slow increments. “The Maha, praise him, discovered that by tracing the movement of the stars, we can predict storms.”

“How is that possible?” Mehr asked. She leaned forward, her eyes fixed on the sphere. Now that she was looking more closely, she could see that the symbols were etchings of the celestial bodies: the moon and sun and dozens of stars, all arrayed across the sphere’s surface. As Edhir moved the dials, the facets moved too, the sphere turning in a smooth arc.

“Everything in the world comes from the dreams of the Gods,” Edhir said, still moving the dials with care. “Almost everything they’ve dreamed is perfectly designed, and adheres to its own laws. Just as we obey the law and the faith, the seasons, the tides of the great ocean, the movements of the stars, all follow the order set down by the Gods. But in Irinah, when the dreamfire falls, the order—bends.” He stopped to look down at the map at his side, then adjusted one dial a mere increment to the left. “Look.”

Mehr looked. Mehr did not know anything about the order the stars obeyed, but she knew there was something subtly wrong with the surface of the sphere. There were hairline gaps between its facets, a strange order to the stars.

“As we grow near a storm, the celestial bodies begin to change their behavior,” Edhir explained. She could hear the enthusiasm in his voice, the sheer love he had for his subject. “Their patterns alter. We’ve theorized that the storms are a time when the world the Gods have dreamed is at its most fragile, softened so it can be remolded. But—it’s only a theory,” Edhir said, looking up, a flush rising on his cheeks.