“Here in Cresh, we’ve unfairly labeled Moonrise Islanders as being warlike and primitive. But today I’ll be showing you a rune native to the Watatzi, a small but engineering group confined to an island just southwest of the border of the Sunrise Isles.”

The majority of the students around them gave Devon the awed and intrigued reaction he was looking for, but faint apprehension churned in Yenni’s stomach.

“This rune was only recently discovered by a mentor of mine, Magus Gilles Desroches!”

He paused, allowing for some of the class to react with noises of surprise. Yenni knew of this Magus Gilles Desroches, if only because when Devon wasn’t peppering her with questions about runelore, he was singing the praises of this man, who was apparently something of a rebel and an eccentric within Creshen magical society. He was the foremost Creshen expert on runelore, often taking research trips to the Northern Sha Islands—the ones like hers that had not succumbed to Cresh’s campaign of colonization three hundred years ago. And though Yenni had come to understand how little the average Creshen respected runelore, Desroches’s books were still incredibly popular. She attributed his success to the vivid pictures his works painted of life on the Islands, which Yenni had to admit were engaging.

Or perhaps it was something more. Desroches’s most popular work, Runerise, was meant to be a manual on the basics of runelore, and the history of runes on the Islands. She’d noticed how her fellow students, Creshen and Islander alike, carried the book openly, like a badge. Perhaps reading the works of Desroches, and being labeled a radical by association, gave them some sort of thrill.

But what did Devon mean when he said Desroches had discovered a rune? Expert or no, from what Yenni had read of Runerise, Desroches’s understanding of runelore was still quite basic. He might understand the forms and songs, but he didn’t grasp how runes were integrated into the very fabric of Island society, so she highly doubted the Sha had seen fit to bless him with their divine inspiration, thus allowing him to create a new rune.

“Without further ado, I give you the deception rune!” Devon boomed.

Yenni’s frown deepened. She had never heard of such a rune before. Perhaps this was a Creshen translation she didn’t understand.

Devon lifted the shaggy, wheat-like hair that fell in waves to his ears, and Yenni gasped. On each of his temples he had painted a rune she had never seen.

He pulled ach’e, and the runes on his temples blazed, but curiously his eyes blazed as well, like a Master infused with runelight.

And then the room erupted into birds.