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The Argentgard was quiet at this hour. Silver trees grew up through the floor and bent toward a ceiling that let the light coming through the sea above shine.
Between the roots, small pale flowers opened and closed. No one tended them. They simply grew, the way things did down here, in the deep mists of the Great Hall.
Vinanna arrived first. She stood at the edge of the garden with her hands behind her back and did not sit, even though there were chairs. Her Knights Moralis uniform was clean.
Beldaruit was already there, even as smoke sculpture. He sat in his sealchair near the largest of the silver trees, a book open in his lap that he was not reading. He watched her settle into the space and said nothing until she was still.
"Thank you for coming," he said.
"You said it was important," Vinanna said. "I assume it is."
"It is." Beldaruit closed the book. "Your people detained someone last week. Near the Rosset atelier. A man using magic that your Knights did not immediately recognise."
Vinanna's eyes did not move from his face. "We did. He was questioned and released. His memories of the encounter were addressed."
"And what your Knights observed before the questioning. A wand. Not ink, not a page. A carved piece of wood and spoken words." Beldaruit set the book aside. "I have been waiting some time to hear a firsthand account of that."
"You knew about them already."
"I knew they existed. Knowing and understanding are different things." He folded his hands in his lap. "What came out of the questioning?"
Vinanna was quiet for a moment. Then she reached into her coat and placed a folded report on the table between them. She did not push it toward him.
"A community," she said. "In Scotland. Their own concealments, their own governance, something they call a Ministry of Magic. A society that has existed alongside Outsider society for centuries without either fully knowing the other." A pause. "None of it falls under the Pact."
"No," Beldaruit said. "It would not."
The bell somewhere below rang once for the hour and went quiet.
"They are not a threat," Vinanna said. "Not presently. But they are unknown, and unknown is its own kind of problem."
"Which is why I asked you here." Beldaruit looked at her steadily. "I think we should learn more. Not through Knights, not through formal contact. Something more discret. Someone who can go into their community, source, school and observe from the inside."
Vinanna considered this. "Easthies," she said. "He is thorough. Loyal. He would be my first choice for something that requires careful judgment, athough he is finishing his third test, we would have to wait until he is done."
"I would rather not wait." Beldaruit said it without sharpness. "The man your Knights detained came from a world that is currently unsettled. Their report mentioned conflict. Old conflict returning. Waiting a year may mean arriving to find the situation has already changed to worse."
Vinanna looked at him. "You have someone else in mind."
"I do."
"Who?"
"My youngest apprentice."
There was a short silence. Then something crossed Vinanna's face that was almost amusement. "You want to send a student."
"I want to send someone who will not be looked at twice," Beldaruit said.
"Their school begins at eleven. A Knight would stand out. A Witch would stand out more. A boy who appears to be simply another student, curious and unremarkable, would not stand out at all."
"Qifrey is not unremarkable."
"No. But he is very good at appearing to be." Beldaruit's voice was quiet. "He arrived at this Hall with nothing. He has spent years learning to watch and hold what he sees. I would trust him with this more than I would trust almost anyone else, and I say that without sentiment."
Vinanna studied him for a long moment.
"My student will complete his third test within the month," she said at last. "When he does, I will send Easthies after him. Qifrey should not be alone in a foreign fraction any longer than necessary."
"Agreed."
She picked up the report from the table and held it out to him. He finnaly took it.
"Do not make this more complicated than it needs to be," she said.
"I never do," Beldaruit said, with the particular warmth of someone who knew that was not entirely true, and did not mind.
Vinanna left without a farwell. The pale flowers opened and closed between the roots of the silver trees. Beldaruit sat alone with the report in his hands and the sea above pressing quietly against the roofs of the Hall, the way it always had been.
He opened the report.
He began to read.
-----------------------------------
Qifrey was having a perfectly black and blank dream when something hit his desk.
He woke up badly, the way he always did, all at once and already annoyed. He lay still for a moment with his eyes open, staring at the ceiling, listening.
The room was dark. The small lamp on his desk had gone out at some point in the night. Through the window the sea light filtered in, faint and greenish and unhelpful.
Something shuffled on his desk.
He sat up.
There was a bird on his desk. A large brown owl, blinking at him with the total indifference of a creature that had completed its task and was now waiting to be acknowledged for it.
Beneath one of its feet was a crumpled envelope. It had landed on his ink pot. The ink pot had not survived.
Qifrey stared at the owl.
The owl stared back.
Then it stepped off the envelope, spread its wings, and left through the window it had apparently come in through, knocking a small stack of his notes onto the floor on its way out.
He sat in the dark for a moment.
(lets ignore fact they were underwater)
"Right," he said, to nobody.
He got up, stepped over the notes on the floor without picking them up, and looked at his desk. The ink pot was on its side. A slow black stain was spreading across the corner of something he was fairly certain had been important. The envelope sat in the middle of it all, slightly damp, with his name written on the front in a handwriting he did not recognise.
He picked it up. Turned it over. A red wax seal on the back, stamped with a crest he had never seen: a large letter H, four animals in the quarters around it. He tilted it toward the faint sea-light from the window.
A lion. A snake. An eagle?. A badger.
He looked at it for a long moment. He only recognised them due seeing them inside books..
Then he set the letter down carefully on the one dry corner of the desk, went back to his bed, and lay down.
He stared at the ceiling.
He got back up, took the letter, and got back into bed.
He opened it.
--------------
The letter was two pages long.
Qifrey read the first half of the first page.
Then he put it down on his blanket and sat very still for a moment, looking at the wall.
Then he picked it up and read it again, in case he had misunderstood something.
He had not misunderstood anything.
He got dressed in approximately forty seconds, just pulled his cape over his sleeping outfit, shoved the letter into his pocket, and left.
The Great Hall was almost empty at this hour. The sea light came through the high windows in long pale columns. Qifrey's footsteps were not quiet. He was not trying to make them quiet.
He turned the first corner and nearly walked directly into a girl from the year above him, who was carrying a stack of reference texts almost as tall as her head and had clearly not expected anyone to come around that corner at speed. She made a startled noise. Qifrey sidestepped without slowing down.
"Sorry," he said, already past her. He didn't care for other people's opinions. Not now.
The corridor that led toward the Argentgard wing was longer than he wanted it to be. He went faster.
At the bottom of the east staircase he found Olruggio.
Olruggio was sitting on the bottom step with a sketchbook open in his lap, doing what he usually did at unreasonable hours of the morning, which was work in silence and pretend he had not gotten up before dawn to do it. He looked up when he heard the footsteps. He opened his mouth.
Qifrey went past him without stopping.
Olruggio turned to watch him go.
"What-"
But Qifrey was already around the corner.
He passed two knights on their morning round near the west corridor, both of whom turned to look at him with the particular expression of people deciding whether a running student was their problem or not.
He was around the next corner before they decided.
The Argentgard door was heavy. He pushed it open anyway and went inside.
-------
Beldaruit was in his garden.
Of course he was. He was always in his garden at this hour, or at least his smoke was, sitting in the sealchair beside the largest silver tree with a cup of tea.
Qifrey crossed the garden in ten steps and held up the letter.
"What is this."
"Good morning, Qifrey," Beldaruit said.
"What is this."
"It appears to be a letter." Beldaruit looked at it with mild interest. "Has something happened to the envelope? It looks a little damp."
"An owl dropped it on my desk in the middle of the night and knocked over my ink pot."
"Ah." Beldaruit nodded, as though this was a reasonable and expected series of events. "Owls are the preferred messenger of wandwork witches. You will get used to them."
Qifrey stared at him. "What do you mean why would I get used to them, what even is wandwork?"
"In time, yes."
"Beldaruit." He said it at a volume that was not quite shouting but was making a serious effort in that direction.
His teacher looked up at him with an expression of patient, faint amusement. "You don't have to yell-da-ruit."
Qifrey closed his mouth. He stood there for a moment, letter still in hand, the specific indignation of someone who had run across the entire Hall before breakfast and arrived to find the other person entirely unruffled.
He sat down on the ground next to the sealchair.
Beldaruit looked down at him with some fondness and did not comment on this.
"Scotland," Qifrey said.
"Scotland," Beldaruit agreed.
Qifrey looked up at him. "Where is Scotland."
"It is a country. In the northern part of an island called Great Britain. Quite far from here."
"Full of unknowings."
"Mostly, yes. Though not entirely, as it turns out."
Qifrey looked back down at the letter.
"It says a professor is coming to take me to buy school supplies. What school. I already have a school."
"A different school," Beldaruit said. "One that uses a different kind of magic entirely. No sigils, no ink. They use wands, carved wood, and spoken words. It is called wandwork, and we know very little about it."
"We," Qifrey said.
"The Hall. The Wises."
"And you want to send me there to learn more?"
"I made a recommendation that you go, yes. You are not obligated. I want that to be clear."
Qifrey was quiet for a moment. He turned the letter over in his hands without reading it.
"You already decided," he said. His voice came out flatter than he intended.
"I recommended you," Beldaruit said carefully. "There is a difference."
"Is there."
Beldaruit set his cup down. He looked at Qifrey for a moment, and his expression had shifted into something quieter and more direct.
"Say what you are actually thinking," he said. Not unkindly.
Qifrey did not say anything for a moment. The pale flowers opened and closed beside him. A small fish drifted past on the other side of the glass ceiling, slow and unbothered.
"It feels," Qifrey said, and then stopped.
Beldaruit waited.
"It feels like you are trying to send me somewhere far away," Qifrey said. "For a year. Possibly longer. And you are being very calm about it."
"I am calm about most things."
"You are calm about this specifically. About sending me away specifically."
Beldaruit was quiet for a moment. When he spoke, his voice was the same as it always was, warm and unhurried, but there was something more careful underneath it.
"I am sending you," he said, "because I trust you more than almost anyone else I could have chosen. Not because I want you gone. Those are not the same thing, Qifrey."
Qifrey looked at the letter.
"You are the only student I have ever recommended for something like this," Beldaruit continued. "That is not the action of someone who wishes to be rid of a student."
Qifrey did not answer. But some of the tension in his shoulders had shifted, just slightly.
"When do I leave," he said at last.
"Three days," Beldaruit said. "The professor will come for you then. We have a great deal to discuss before that."
"I have questions."
"I would be concerned if you didn't."
"A lot of questions."
"I have," Beldaruit said, with complete serenity, "almost all the time in the world to answer them."