“No, Tilly,” she said after getting a firm command of her voice, “it’s all right. Please let them in and then you may go on to your work.”

Tilly bowed deeply from the waist and backed away a little as she held the door open wider for the men to enter. As soon as all seven of them had glided into the room, Tilly hurried away, closing the door behind her.

Chapter 2

Magda slid the ornately engraved silver box to the side of the table, placing it beside a well-used collection of exquisite metalsmithing tools, semiprecious stones in divided trays, and small books filled with notes that had belonged to her husband. She let her hand rest for a moment on the table where his hands had been when he had sometimes worked at the table, late into the quiet of the night, crafting items like the extraordinary amulet he’d made when the war had begun.

When she had asked its purpose, he had said that it was an ever-present reminder of his calling come to pass, his talent, his duty, and his reason for being. He said that it represented a war wizard’s prime directive: to cut the attacker down, to cut them down to their very soul. The ruby red stone in the center of the intricate lines represented the blood of the enemy.

He said that the amulet represented the dance with death.

He had worn it every day since he’d made it, but left it in the First Wizard’s enclave, along with his singular black and gold outfit, a war wizard’s outfit, a war wizard’s battle armor, before he had stepped off the side of the Wizard’s Keep and dropped several thousand feet to his death.

Magda lifted her long brown hair back over her shoulder as she turned to the seven men crossing the room. She recognized the familiar faces of six members of the council. Each face was fixed with a stony expression. She suspected that the expressions were a mask for a bit of shame they likely felt at what they had come to see done.

She had known they would come, of course, but not this soon. She had thought that they would have paid her the grace of a bit more time.

There was another man with them, his face shadowed by the hood of his loose brown habit. As they came closer, into the weak light leaking in around the closed shutters, the seventh man pushed the cowl back to rest on his rounded shoulders.

The man’s black eyes were fixed on her, the way a vulture’s steady gaze fixed on a suffering animal. Men often stared at her, but not in this way.