Yesterday, far more awake, Morgon had worked it, with Tancreda standing by (and her brother, too—Morean noblewomen did not spend time alone with male students for any reason) on a glass of hideous, dirty water, green with some sort of an algae bloom that was particulate in nature.

He mastered the working, powered it, and felt the ops inhabit the working and give it life.

And then—nothing. The water in the glass remained a lurid green, like an advertisement for the enmity of the Wild to the works of man.

He cast it three times, the third with Tancreda’s brother, an apprentice of the first year, barely able to summon a candle flame, measuring the working’s energy before and after ops.

Stefanos shrugged. “You cast a great deal of ops,” he said.

Morgon had shaken his head.

Now, a day later, and so tired that he could barely write out his notes, he had an idea. The idea was foolish, but Tancreda told him he was a fool all the time.

She was close behind him, insisting that he stop and take a meal.

He shook his head. “In a moment,” he said. He lifted the lurid glass of slime—and drank it.

Tancreda tried to dash it to the floor. “Oh, by the risen Christ, you will turn into something damned. At the least, you will never kiss me with that mouth again. Oh, my God. Stefanos, fetch a doctor—no, the Grammarian.”

As if summoned, the Master Grammarian appeared at the door. “What has happened?” he demanded.

Mortirmir shrugged. Were his guts churning? Did he imagine that?

“He drank the water,” Stefanos said. “Sir,” he added a little too late.

“Water?” the Master Grammarian asked, but he was not a master magister for nothing, and he picked up the clawed-foot glass and examined it. “Algae—a form of plant—did you know that?”

“I thought it might be an animiculus,” Mortirmir said.

“Why did you drink it?” demanded the Grammarian.

“I learned the working. It is supposed to purify water. Power goes in—quite a lot of power. But the water does not appear to change.” Mortirmir shrugged.

“You can purify water by boiling it,” the Grammarian noted.

Morgon stopped looking at his hands and thought. He looked at the Grammarian. “In which case, the water is purified, but the solids—mud, particulate matter, animaliculae—remain.”

The Grammarian nodded. “Yes.”

“And so with this working, but there is no warmth. I drank the water to ascertain the effect—whether it was, in fact, purified.” He shook his head. “It certainly tastes like raw bile.”

The Grammarian nodded. “Sensible, in an insane, over-tired way. Have me summoned if you fall sick.” He walked out through the door.

Tancreda shook her head. “You will be sicker than all the sick dogs,” she began.

Mortirmir shivered. But the process was on him—he ignored the lovely Despoina Comnena to pick up the magnifying glass he had used on the manuscript. Instead, he looked at the algae in the glass. Magnified, it was even more horrible.