Chapter 2

The Lower Quarter divided into a dozen smaller neighborhoods.

Ren had grown up on Stepfast Street, north of the busier markets. It would always be home, even if she'd lived on Balmerick's campus for the last four years. She skirted the growing crowds and took the road that led to the building where her mother lived. It was a drab, square structure with only brightly painted doors to mark it as more than abandoned stone. She aimed for the pearl-blue door at the far end of the building. It swung on groaning hinges, and somehow the sound was even worse than she remembered. She took the stairs on her right and found her mother's second-floor entry unlocked and unwarded.

"Well, that's just incredibly safe of you, Mother.…"

It was silent inside. The kitchen was the dining room was the living room. One wall boasted open shelving and a half-rusted stove. It cornered into a fold-out table where every single Monroe family meal had taken place. A hop and a skip would set a person firmly in the living room. There was the knee-high table her father had built, surrounded by cushions her mother had sewn. Ren saw three teacups abandoned there. Not a sign of company, she knew, but more a measurement of the passage of time. The color variations of the stained tea bags in each cup marked how long they'd mulled there in silence.

Ren set to work. Arranging the cushions. Washing the cups. There were abandoned clothes that she folded in a neat stack. Next, the magic. It was a delicate balance of improving her mother's quality of life but keeping enough to get in the practice reps she needed for her graduate work. She'd learned all about continuous spells during junior year and had been using them to save a few precious ockleys ever since.

A cleansing enchantment kept back the mold common in the Lower Quarter's poorly lit living spaces. Magical sealants along the frames of every door and window warded against infestations. Each spell already sat in the air—thick and stagnant from when she'd last cast it—though each one faded to uselessness by the time the first of the month came around again.

Refreshing them was like scrubbing out an old canteen and filling it back up with fresh water. Once she finished the normal spellwork, she took the threaded edges of all that magic and layered a longevity spell of her own invention through them. It took, binding invisibly through everything like a braid. Ren was wiping sweat from her forehead when one of the two doors at the far end of the room opened. Her mother emerged, not from her own bedroom, but from Ren's.

"First of the month," she said without preamble. "Almost forgot. Tea?"

Agnes Monroe was a spitefully beautiful woman. Life had given her physical body every reason to surrender, but she wore the years and suffering like armor. Her skin was a shade darker than Ren's, deeply tan. Shifts down on the wharf had drawn out the constellations of freckles running down her neck. She hauled crates of fish sometimes, and her arms were lean and muscular from the work. The deep creases around her mouth spoke of a woman who laughed often and loud. Or at least, a woman who had once had plenty of reasons to smile.

"No thanks," Ren said. "I'll be late for class. How's work?"

"It's work. What about you? Interviews going well? Any prospects?"

Her mother slid around her to fetch the tea, pausing only long enough to kiss Ren lightly on one cheek. Her stomach churned as she watched her mother get the stove going. The decision to attend Balmerick had centered on the hope of finding favor with one of the five great houses.

The city of Kathor was a distinct hierarchy, and Ren needed to earn a position with them if she ever wanted to do anything of consequence. The second semester of her first year as a graduate student should have been full of interviews, recruiters eager to learn how she'd gotten such high marks on all her tests, but only the lesser houses had shown any interest.

Until yesterday.

Her advisor had left a note outside her dormitory. Ren had an interview with House Shiverian this morning. She also had no plans of sharing that news with her mother until she'd secured a position. False hope was a fuel that Agnes Monroe already knew too well.

"Nothing worth mentioning."

Her mother set out a mug. "I don't get it. You're the top of your class."

"I'm technically fifth."

"Fifth," her mother repeated. "Out of hundreds. And with none of the resources their families could offer them."

Ren knew the numbers. She always hated being reminded of the numbers, even if her mother's claim was true. The oldest houses had been in Kathor for six generations. Her mother and father had left southern Delvea when they were only about Ren's age. Like many others, they were lured by the bright possibilities of a sprawling new age city. Kathor had replaced the original settlements and become the epicenter of trade and magic. Her father used to describe the day they'd first landed in the city's harbor. A pair of dreamers, her father used to say, but she knew her parents' dreams were eventually reduced to backbreaking shifts and poor living conditions. The one time her father had demanded more from the world, he'd been killed for it.

"I'm working on it, Mother."

"Oh, honey, I know. I'm not mad at you. I'm mad at them. The unfairness of it all. See, this is why I gave magic up. We talk about this in our meetings, you know. It's called voluntary dependence. Every time we use magic, we're leaning into the system they built for us.…"

Ren had heard all of this before. Any discussion that focused on "they" was a dangerous road to let Agnes Monroe walk down at such an early hour. A road that always led back to her father's death. Ren never questioned her mother's decision to give up magic, and she shared her mother's distaste for the city's elite, but she preferred a more rational approach to dealing with those inequalities. Her mother favored conspiracies and wild speculation.

"I have proven myself for four years. It will work out. I am not concerned."

The steadiness of her voice acted as a salve. She saw the tension riding her mother's shoulders shake loose. She turned back around, fussing over her cup of tea. Ren needed to go. She wanted to have at least an hour to go over her notes on House Shiverian and their various business concerns, but she hated the idea of leaving her mother here in the lonely morning light. It helped to remember she'd be returning with Timmons for break in a few days.

"Why were you sleeping in my room?"

Her mother glanced back. "I don't know." The two of them looked at each other, quiet for a moment. Then her mother spoke the begrudging truth. "There's less of his ghost in there, I guess."

In the first few years after his death, Ren would have walked over and cupped her mother's face. She would have pulled her close and whispered what her mother had always whispered to her when she'd had nightmares as a child. No darkness lasts for long. But now they stood ten years in the shadow of Roland Monroe's passing. The clouds still hung thick over both of them. Ren knew this darkness would exist until she dragged them out from beneath it.

When her mother turned back to her tea, Ren strode over and wrapped her in a hug from behind. Her mother's hand settled half on her wrist, half on the iron bracelet that she'd once worn.

"I am a Monroe," Ren whispered her father's words. "And a Monroe stands tall."

Her mother squeezed her forearm. Ren left her there, sipping tea.

Outside, the city of Kathor was stretching tired limbs, rising to the glittering invitation of another day. It wasn't until she reached the public waxway portal that she felt sunlight on her neck. Ren savored the warmth before tucking her shirt into her trousers and turning her bracelet over. She traded the plain brown cardigan for a fashionable plaid jacket, then she removed a forest-green tie from her bag and knotted it artfully under her shirt's collar. All the minor adjustments that would have made her look like a snob down in the Lower Quarter, but without which she'd look out of place up at Balmerick. After glancing at herself in a storefront window, Ren turned.

Her eyes drifted once more to the Heights. How bright the buildings looked in that empty sky. It helped to see it from down here. Sometimes as she walked around campus, talking with friends or sitting in on lectures, it was easy to feel like Balmerick was actually her home. The school had that effect. Slowly luring a person into comfort. But from below it was easier to see the truth of where she belonged, even after four years of navigating their politics and climbing up their ranks.

It didn't matter how calmly she went about her business. No mantra or meditation could fully tamp down the panic she felt whenever she thought about her true situation at the school.

She was a mouse.

Balmerick, the hawk.