Muscati made artifice seem so simple. Use runes to dictate a new property for an object, or bind it to new rules with wirework, and conduct magical energy through the pattern to empower it. Studying his breathtakingly intricate schematics, I hovered each time on the edge of epiphany not just about the particular magic they invoked but about the natural laws they employed or circumvented.

As I read, the sky outside darkened. The luminaries in their wall sconces came on, glowing with a soft echo of the light captured by the solar artifice circle on the roof. The new Falcon must be awake by now—this stranger who could never again leave the cloistered Mews without me at her side.

I cradled my aching hand. She had to be a fire warlock, of all things, the rarest and deadliest of mages. Fire warlocks left charred and smoking holes in the pages of history: cities laid in ruin, battlefields of ash and bone.

But nothing had disturbed the serenity of the Empire in fifty years, since the Three Years’ War. Under the Serene Accords, its client states governed themselves peacefully enough. They gave Raverra trade privileges and Falcons in return for military protection, as well as infrastructure such as good roads, aqueducts, the Imperial Post, and the courier-lamp network. Raverra mostly left its tributaries alone, its Serene Envoys murmuring an occasional well-heeded word in the ears of their leaders, be they kings, dukes, or consuls. No foreign power had had the strength or will to threaten the Empire since it defeated the mad Witch Lords of Vaskandar in the Three Years’ War, in the time of my grandparents. Without an enemy, there was no need to unleash the power of a warlock. My Falcon might stay hooded for the rest of her life.

Hooded, and trapped in the Mews, her life bounded by a line as stark as one of Muscati’s circles.

A familiar, peremptory double rap on my door warned me in time to stuff Principles of Artifice under my pillow before my mother swept into the room. Her attendant, Ciardha, paced behind her, holding a small chest. Ciardha was no mere servant, but a scion of a prominent Ostan merchant family with a discerning eye and a sharp mind, to whom my mother entrusted her most important tasks.

“Good Graces, you haven’t even started yet.” La Contessa’s eyes swept the bed. I forced myself not to glance at my pillow, hoping my book didn’t show. “Were you reading again?”

“I was thinking about fire warlocks.” It wasn’t a lie.

Ciardha, without fuss, took up my burned hand and started smoothing salve on it. I stood at stiff attention.

My mother gave the gown I’d laid out an appalled look. “You can’t receive the doge in that, child. What were you thinking? You could wear that dress to the market, perhaps. Ciardha, when you’re done with her hand, help Amalia get ready.”