“If children start showing magery without malice, we have to change the Code,” Arianya said. “It has been changed before, on other things. It will take time, so you, child, must be careful. I will tell all the Marshals here in Fin Panir, but they cannot be everywhere every second.”

She began with Marshal Padlin. “It is magery, though they hoped it was not. The girl wanted to light the room her parents wove in, to help them. My order is that until a council has made a decision on changing the law, magery that shows no malice will not be punished. It must be reported to a Marshal and then to me, but such a child must not be harmed in any way—nor the family, either.”

He bit his lip even as he nodded. “I see that, Marshal-General, but there’s folk as will be frightened, and frightened people hit first.”

“If you talk to them beforehand, they’ll be less frightened. I want you on the council I’m calling—”

“Me! But I’m just—”

“A Marshal, one of whose flock has shown magery without warning. Exactly the person who knows what it’s like for Marshals. Meanwhile: talk to your yeoman-marshals first and then the grange. I’m on my way to tell others.”

The others, she realized, must include those in the Fellowship not only in Fintha but also in Tsaia, where magery had also appeared. Was Beclan Mahieran the only one? And why was this happening now? Everything had a cause; this must have a cause. If she could find the cause, maybe she could stop it. Change it back.

A cold breath ran down her backbone, a whisper as of drawn steel. To think of changing it back … how was that different from undoing … was she really contemplating an appeal to Gitres Undoer? No. The High Lord had gifted some humans with magery; the High Lord must have chosen to reawaken the gift. It was not her place to stand in the way. It was her place to stand between innocent children and those who would condemn them.

Two days later, she faced Marshal Sofan and his yeoman-marshal Rort across her desk; two Knights of Gird stood by the door. Downstairs, five Marshals waited to try them, but they had the right to hear the accusations from her and to make—if they would—such pleas of mitigation as they wished.

She remembered Sofan from his marshaling ceremony five years before, a thickset man, broad-shouldered, heavy-boned. His yeoman-marshal was a hand shorter, wiry. Both glowered at her; the knights who fetched them had told her the two had been angry to be ordered to Fin Panir and had protested all the way in.

“Gird never meant the Code to kill children,” Arianya said at the start. “You have admitted to inciting to kill, and approving the killing of, a young child.”