Test of Magic

This story is set four centuries before the events of Mage Errant.

There was sulfur in the air as Kayro’s wagon rolled through the grey stone city of Alikea. Admittedly, there was always a hint of sulfur coming from the hot springs and volcanic vents on the sides of Mount Cairn, but it almost choked the air today, lying heavy enough that the air itself seemed tinted yellow.

Kayro scowled, moved the quarterstaff leaning next to her on the wagon’s bench, and wrapped her shawl more tightly around her face. The noble families were feuding again, it seemed, and once more failing to take care of their duties. The various noble claims to legitimacy came from their ability to soothe the volcano, prevent eruptions, and restrain the choking gases of the volcano, but as often as not, they spent more energy jockeying against one another for power and wealth, neglecting their duties to the city-state. 

After all, most of their homes had wards and enchantments to keep the air clean, so they had little worry for the lungs and health of the poor.

Kayro preferred to avoid Alikea when she could— for that matter, she usually preferred to avoid most big cities. They almost never lacked for plenty of affinity testers of their own, their shops carrying many more exotic materials than a simple wagon ever could.

Not, of course, that Kayro’s wagon was by any means a simple one, nor did she lack in exotic materials, but she wasn’t much one for competition. She preferred to keep well out of the way of irritable competitors, who had plenty of ways to make the life of a traveling affinity tester miserable.

No, Kayro was perfectly happy wandering from village to village, just her and Stinky.

The tortoise in question turned his head to look back at her, as though he knew she was thinking of him, and Kayro couldn’t help but smile, and toss him a mottled yellow squash. The mossback, four times the weight of the biggest horse, caught the squash with surprising agility, then easily crushed it in his beak.

The fact that Stinky could do the same to a man’s head— and had done so before, in fact— was a big part of why no one messed with her wagon. Or with the little garden of rare herbs growing on the top of Stinky’s shell, despite the fact that some of the plants were worth as much as the average laborer made in a year.

Kayro had never known anyone else who had successfully raised a mossback tortoise before, nor trained it to haul a wagon. But then, most people didn’t find baby mossbacks and raise them, and even among those that did, few mossbacks were as relatively calm and gentle as Stinky. 

Relative being the important term, of course.

The only reason Kayro had brought Stinky and herself to Alikea, risking the irritation of the city’s affinity testers and the odds of Stinky biting some drunk fool enough to irritate him?

The damn bounty.

The great Ordas Firethief himself had offered his son’s weight in gold to anyone who could figure out the boy’s affinity. None of Alikea’s affinity testers had succeeded, and, for more than a year now, affinity testers had been rolling their carts and wagons into Firethief’s villa. Not just traveling affinity testers like Kayro, but even established affinity testers from other cities— even from Tsarnassus itself, rival of Alikea, and the greatest city on the continent.

Every one of them had failed.

Kayro had largely ignored the call for a long time— she was sure one of the other affinity testers would get it long before she could head south to Alikea.

The rumors kept going, though, and as Kayro reached the southernmost villages on her yearly route, she found herself hesitating.

It wasn’t the gold that drew her attention— at least, not mostly. She certainly wouldn’t turn down that much gold, after all.

No, more than anything else, it was the challenge. 

There were affinity testers out there who thought it enough to just have a wide variety of materials to show to new mages, that all the job really needed was a collector’s instincts.

Kayro had nothing but disdain for those frauds. No, to be a true affinity tester required far more than just a collection of shiny gewgaws and rare minerals.

Affinity testing required a clever mind for puzzles, for deciding what oddity to show a child next. Non-material affinities were especially tricky— telling the difference between frost and ice affinities, or between galvanic and lightning affinities, were tasks that couldn’t be accomplished by merely showing display cases to new mages. Kayro could finish in a village in a day or two, where other testers would take as much as a week. 

Affinity testing required a keen eye for body language, for spotting when an affinity sense was reacting. Kayro could spot the tiniest flinches from a new affinity sense, even ones the owner couldn’t feel at all.

Affinity testing required an exhaustively comprehensive knowledge of affinities— advising parents on what their new child’s magic might be good for, or where to get it trained, was as much a part of her job as discovering what a child’s magic was.

Affinity testing required a deft hand at navigating the social world— for heading off the anger of disappointed parents, for helping calm a village nervous about some rare and dangerous seeming affinity, for a thousand other duties. Kayro was particularly proud of herself there— she kept a comprehensive list of affinities in all the dozens of villages she visited each year, and had arranged literally thousands of apprenticeships over her career, sending teens with letters of introduction to other villages on her route, to find someone who could teach them how to use their magic.

Affinity testing required compassion, to help comfort a child who had failed to inherit their parent’s affinities, or even one who had been unfortunate enough to be born mind-blind.

Kayro could go on and on about her job— there were few careers more challenging, and even fewer more rewarding, to her mind. Kayro loved what she did, and took pride in it like nothing else.

It helped, of course, that Kayro had a far larger collection of material samples than just about any other traveling affinity tester. Some of the established, city-bound testers might have her beat, but Kayro was justifiably proud of what she, her master, and her master’s masters, going back over a century, had put together.

---------------------------------------------------

To Kayro’s mild surprise, the great Ordas Firethief himself came to greet her after she pulled into the inner courtyard of his great walled villa. There was a bit of a wait after she’d been let in, but no more than a few minutes.

Dozens of windows peered down at her from all sides, to make up for the complete lack of windows on the outside of Ordas’ villa. There’d been too many assassinations and assassination attempts between the noble houses of Alikea in recent years to risk such obvious security risks as outer windows.

Kayro could actually see the difference between the air outside Ordas’ wards and inside— his wards made a sharp-edged dome of clear air, with the yellow smog outside pushing down against it fruitlessly.

There were several more wagons and carriages in the courtyard, a couple of which were being loaded by servants.

Ordas Firethief strode, shirtless and sweaty, into the courtyard before Kayro could make more than a cursory examination of her surroundings. He was heralded by Stinky’s irritable, surprisingly high-pitched squeaking— the tortoise wasn’t fond of strangers approaching the wagon. If she had to guess, he’d probably been practicing the sword in one of the villa’s other courtyards— even though he had no need for swordplay with his magic, he was a notorious lover of it.

The Firethief himself was every inch as big as the stories told— six and a half feet tall, with shoulders so broad they’d be better suited to a bear than a man. Ordas’ shaggy curls and beard weren’t, however, quite so red as the stories told— they were more of a coppery brown, maybe an auburn, than actual red.

“Welcome, welcome!” Ordas cried happily, seizing her wrist in one meaty paw and shaking it vigorously. “Ready to meet my son’s challenge, I hope?”

Kayro nodded politely, trying not to wince at the sweat the huge mage was dripping on her hand. 

“Should I bring Balin out to your wagon to get started, then?” Ordas asked.

Kayro shook her head. “No, I’d like to meet him, run some other tests first.”

“He’s already been tested for mind-blindness, many times,” Ordas said. “The boy’s got more imagination than he needs to be a mage, if you ask me.”

“I have no doubt, but these are other sorts of tests,” Kayro said. “Meant to try and discover what form his affinity senses might take.”

Kayro had, in fact, harbored some doubts about whether Balin had already been tested for mind-blindness- it would hardly be the first time a noble family went out of their way to hide mind-blindness in one of their scions.

She had talked to several other affinity testers on her way to Alikea. Traveling testers were usually friendlier than established ones in cities, and meetings were always an excellent opportunity to not only trade rare materials with one another, but to share all the latest gossip.

And the one thing every affinity tester in the region was gossiping about now was the Firethief’s son.

Several of the other testers she’d spoken to had reputable secondhand stories about attempts made, and many of their stories involved memory tests being done. Balin had passed the various visual memory tests with flying colors, and Kayro knew the others well enough to trust them there. She wouldn’t need to waste her time on the hours-long tests.

“I thought you could only test for affinity senses once you knew someone’s affinity?” Ordas asked.

“Well, I can’t tell exactly what someone’s affinity senses are going to be, but I can narrow down the odds,” Kayro said. “Affinity senses have… certain patterns in how they appear. Affinities often appear mimicking a person’s weakest sense— though that depends on the sense. The relationship is reversed for other senses. There are a few other factors that weigh in as well— chronic pain, for instance, can heavily affect the resultant affinity sense. When I have an idea which affinity senses are most likely to appear, I can alter my testing program appropriately.”

Ordas’ eyes started to glaze over halfway through her explanation, so Kayro didn’t bother explaining her specific methods. Not that she would have gone into detail— like the books, they’d been passed down by her master, and she had little interest in sharing them widely.

In truth, she didn’t need to use the tests most of the time. More often than not, she just showed a series of display cases to the teens being tested, arranged by affinity frequency. Kayro’s master had, on his retirement, passed down a whole set of Ithonian surveys, laying out the statistical distribution of affinities in a region. On top of that, he’d provided his own notes, plus his master’s notes, plus her master’s notes, and she’d started her work before the fall of the Empire itself.

With two dozen samples per display case, it was rare that Kayro had to go past the third case to discover an affinity.

She was confident this puzzle wouldn’t be so simple.

After Kayro grabbed her bag with the necessary tests inside, Ordas led her through several wide stone corridors— ones with enchanted doors and murder-holes in the walls and ceiling. This whole villa was built for defense. 

Whenever they passed a doorway or intersection, members of Ordas’ huge extended family watched them. Ordas had been born the son of a poor merchant, and when he’d risen to power, he’d moved his whole extended family in with him.

Kayro couldn’t help but notice that none of them looked particularly friendly. Oh, they hid it well enough that someone less perceptive might not have noticed, might have thought the family members just curious, but…

For some reason, the family didn’t want her here.

Finally, they entered a small internal courtyard, with a little garden. The shade-loving plants inside were the first bits of green Kayro had seen in the dour stone city.

There was a skinny teen boy facing away from them on one of the benches, hunched over a book.

“This is my boy, Balin,” Ordas said. He reached out to slap Balin on the back, but the skinny teen dodged out of the way without even looking.

As Balin rose and turned to face them, Ordas snatched the book out of his son’s hands.

“What have I told you about reading this crap, boy?” Ordas said. “These are women’s stories. If you feel the need for books, we have plenty of volumes better suited for men.”

The mage glowered at his son, and seemed ready to repeat an old and well-trodden rant before remembering that Kayro was there.

“I’ll leave you to it, then,” Ordas said, then vanished out of the courtyard.

Kayro watched him leave, then turned her attention to Balin.

If not for his hair, the exact shade and curl of his father’s, Kayro would never have thought the two related. Balin was short, delicate, and almost painfully skinny.

She took her time looking over the boy, who never once met her gaze.

“So how many affinity testers have looked at you before me?” Kayro finally asked.

“Forty-seven,” Balin responded in a quiet voice.

Kayro nodded slowly. “I imagine you’re pretty tired of us by now.”

Balin didn’t respond.

Kayro sighed. This was going to be a tough one.

She pulled seven spellform-covered wooden cubes, each half the size of a fist, out of her bag. One by one, she activated them, and they started orbiting around Balin’s head.

“Whenever one of these cubes chimes, I want you to point to the cube that made the noise,” Kayro said.

Balin only responded with the faintest of nods.

Yep. Definitely going to be a tough one. 

--------------------------------------------

The various sensory tests took a little less than two hours, after which Kayro gave Balin a break so she could return to her wagon and compare his results to her charts. 

The results were depressingly inconclusive. Balin was a little less likely to have an affinity sense emulating his vision or hearing than average, but he was still well-within normal ranges, so she couldn’t count it out entirely. 

She’d have to use the standard array of affinity tests, rather than a more focused set, unfortunately.

Part of her wanted to just expose Balin to every affinity material in her wagon, but given how huge the magically expanded space inside it was, and the absurd number of materials that the wagon had collected over the century and a half it had been used by masters and apprentices, that would take weeks.

Well, more likely a week, but…

She was alerted to someone approaching by one of Stinky’s high-pitched squeaks.

Kayro looked up to see one of Ordas’ relatives hesitating just out of reach. Or, at least, what they thought was out of reach— the mossback’s neck could stretch a shocking distance.

“It’s alright, Stinky, let him by.”

Kayro eyed the man appraisingly as he approached and shook her hand. Soft hands, weak physique, clothes that were both wildly expensive and utterly tasteless, plenty of makeup applied to hide the onset of middle age.

Given Ordas’ obvious preference for bravado and gratuitous manliness, she was guessing this fellow was some distant relative, most likely held in low esteem by the Firethief, but kept in style due to the simple fact of their relationship. Would be low in the family hierarchy accordingly, probably trying to pump her for information to get an advantage in his schemes. She’d seen his type often enough, they were one of many reasons she avoided nobles when she could.

“You should leave,” the man said, before even introducing himself.

Kayro blinked. “Excuse me?”

“Two of the last five affinity testers left in a hurry under mysterious circumstances, with visible bruises, and a third mysteriously vanished, leaving his wagon behind.”

“I don’t understand, is another noble family interfering with the testing?” Kayro asked.

The unnamed man shook his head. “It’s this family that’s the problem. Ordas has always encouraged competition for his favor— flatters his ego— but it’s gotten out of hand in recent years. No one trusts each other anymore, to the point where there have already been a couple failed assassination attempts, and quite a few exiles, some self-imposed. You should leave, for your own safety.”

“Why are you telling me this? What’s your angle?” Kayro asked, not bothering to hide her suspicion.

“Because I’m leaving for my own safety,” the man said, gesturing to a couple of wagons and carriages being loaded. “I’m taking my wife and my kids, and never coming back to this city. Just trying to do a good deed before this place explodes.”

With that, the man turned to leave.

“Why is this place about to explode?” Kayro asked, before the man could step away. She realized that she’d badly misjudged the man.

He paused, but didn’t bother to look back at her. “Because the whole city knows that Ordas is dying, and his only heir hasn’t shown any magic yet. If one of the other Volcano Guardians doesn’t snap up this estate after Ordas dies, my family is going to murder each other over it.”

“And what happens to Balin?” Kayro asked.

The man looked back at that, a sad look on his face. “If he doesn’t prove to have an affinity that will let him replace his father as Guardian, I wouldn’t bet a shaved copper on him outliving his father. Flames, even if he does, I doubt he’ll make it to adulthood and full power. Too many people, inside and outside of this family, stand to gain from the kid’s death.”

With that, the still-unnamed man was gone.

------------------------------------------

The story wasn’t hard to get. She just went to one of Alikea’s pubs that night— not a shabby one, but not too nice, either— and bought a few drinks in exchange for stories.

Two months ago, Ordas and two other Volcano Guardians had driven off a mad alchemist from the depths of the Green Mountains. The naga water mage would have been a terrifying foe even without the alchemy, but his habit of turning whole lakes into cauldrons for brewing toxins and flooding towns and villages with poison made him a threat enough that the Volcano Guardians put aside their rivalries to drive off.

They’d managed to kill the mad alchemist, but at terrible cost to the city. One Guardian, a sulfur mage, had been killed outright and another, a stone mage, had been crippled for life, explaining how the current state of the city had gotten so bad. 

Ordas had seemed fine at first, but a few weeks ago he’d collapsed in the middle of one of his workouts. 

The stories Kayro collected that night all differed on what, exactly, the poison was, but the one thing they all agreed on was that healers could only prolong the Firethief’s death and hide the symptoms, not save him entirely. The slow poison had been in his system for too long when it was finally discovered.

The rumors had only leaked out into the city less than a week ago, explaining why Kayro hadn’t heard about them yet.

Quite a few people were considering leaving the city for fear of an eruption now. Losing one Guardian and having another crippled was an awful blow to the city, certainly, but the Firethief…

Well, the powerful heat mage had been absolutely vital in suppressing eruptions the last few years. He’d drained huge amounts of heat from Mount Cairn, again and again, that one of the other Volcano Guardians had then blown away from the city on massive wind-currents.

Kayro knew that the stone and magma mages among the Guardians were far more important to suppressing eruptions— especially for their work venting gas buildup inside the mountain— but that was a largely invisible process to the populace, compared to the spectacle of a river of fire flowing away from the mountain to disperse harmlessly far away from the city. The Firethief was easily the most popular of the Volcano Guardians among the public, and things were hugely unsettled with the rumors of his impending death.

Kayro had unknowingly stepped into a viper pit, and all her instincts were screaming at her to get out as fast as she could. 

If she did that, though, she’d be condemning Balin to death. 

--------------------------------

Kayro started the testing bright and early in the morning. Balin obviously would have preferred to be asleep— no surprise, it was a rare teen indeed that tolerated mornings.

Stinky was as sleepy as Balin looked, and let the boy pass in Kayro’s wake without a challenge. Balin just stood there staring nervously at the tortoise as Kayro began unfolding the side of her wagon.

“Long as you don’t try to attack me or to pet him, Stinky won’t bite you,” Kayro said. “He’s bizarrely even-tempered and lazy for a mossback.”

Balin made a nervous noise in response, and didn’t take his eyes off the tortoise.

His gaze didn’t stay on Stinky for long, however, as Kayro kept unfolding the wagon.

And unfolding it, and unfolding it, and unfolding it.

Within a few minutes, Kayro had opened up dozens of cases and shelves into a shop-like enclosure four times larger than the wagon itself— and that was only a fragment of the wagon’s internal size. 

Kayro couldn’t help but take satisfaction in Balin’s amazed expression. The instant she finished unfolding the wagon, she started counting to herself to see how long it would take him to make the usual comment.

It usually only took a ten-count at most until…

“How powerful are you?” Balin demanded.

Kayro blinked in surprise. “Most people are more amazed by my wagon being bigger on the inside.”

The boy rolled his eyes. “I’m not some village peasant, I’ve seen spatial enchantments before. One this large has to be worth a dragon’s ransom, though. You’ve got to be monstrously powerful to have kept someone from stealing it, even with your tortoise.”

“Thank you for not calling him a turtle,” Kayro said.

“What?”

“Most people refer to him as a turtle, despite the fact that he’s a tortoise,” Kayro said.

Balin shook his head. “They’re… not strictly wrong to do so? There was a lot of debate about whether they were tortoises or turtles between the philosophers of the Empire. I agree with the tortoise side of the argument, but… they do spend an awful lot of time in lakes and rivers for tortoises.”

“Sure, but only in the shallows where they can walk around— they don’t swim at all,” Kayro said. “Real turtles swim.”

Then she remembered what was at stake, and shook her head. “As much as I’d enjoy arguing natural law, I’ve got a job to do, unfortunately. Take a seat here.”

Balin seemed to fold back in on himself as Kayro unfolded a chair from the open side of the wagon and gestured at him to sit.

“You never answered my question,” Balin said quietly.

“What’s that?”

“How powerful are you?”

“Wrong question,” Kayro responded, then hit a nearby lever.

A wheeled clothes-rack began sliding out from the side of the wagon, then sliding out more and more, to an absurd length, but instead of robes or jackets hanging from it, there were skeletons. Dozens of them, some of them yellowed with age.

“It doesn’t matter how powerful I am,” Kayro said. “It matters how powerful my wagon is, and how it reacts to threats.”

Balin seemed suitably impressed as she hit the levers. “What about dragons, though?”

“Never had one try to mess with the wagon before, but that’s what the ballistae are for, just in case.”

“Ballistae?”

Kayro sighed, then changed the subject back. “So, you’re interested in natural philosophy? Is that what your book yesterday was about?”

The teen lit up with excitement, and began to explain, in detail, the arguments of the Ithonian natural philosopher he’d been reading yesterday.

Kayro put on her best listening face, and got to work testing him.

---------------------------------

It actually helped to have Balin distracted as she did the tests— somewhat counter-intuitively, having a teen actively focus on trying to find their affinity could make things more difficult. It was a false positive problem— teens were constantly getting excited and thinking they’d felt something for one affinity or another when they hadn’t.

When they were distracted, though, their affinity senses kicking in would be much more surprising to them.

Kayro only spared half an ear for Balin’s excited monologuing, enough to know when to interject with a murmured sound of agreement or a vague questioning noise. Most of her attention was focused on the testing apparatus, which slid various display cases on rails around the boy at low speeds. Given how many thousands of the cases lurked in the depths of her wagon, she needed to be methodical about which she sent past him, unless she wanted to take forever doing this.

It really said something that even with her magical wagon, she didn’t have nearly the most impressive collection among affinity testers. Some settled, city-bound testers had dragon-lair sized warehouses full of samples, with multiple storefronts and hundreds of employees.

Though even if she’d had the opportunity, Kayro wouldn’t trade her wagon for any storefront, no matter how large. Even if she didn’t love the road, even if staying still for too long didn’t drive her mad…

Her wagon was truly special, almost alive. The Ithonian Empire had once intended to have thousands of them riding the roads of the Empire, testing every teen in every village. The project had collapsed due to the expense before more than a hundred or so had been built, and today…

Well, most of the rest of the Ithonian testing wagons had been destroyed after the fall of Ithos, in the battles between power-hungry warlords. The few that remained had, over the years, failed one by one— due to insufficient maintenance, or crushed in battles between great powers, or simply vanished without a trace.

Including her own, Kayro knew of only five of the Ithonian testing wagons left, and one of those wasn’t stable enough to move any longer, and was permanently stuck in a village square a day’s travel south of Lemannen.

Someday, even her own wagon, as lovingly maintained as it was, would fail, and then something truly special would be gone out of the world.

The two of them spent hours and hours testing before lunch. Kayro skipped all of the common samples every other affinity tester would have tried, and jumped straight into her more exotic samples. Balin never seeming to tire of discussing the nesting habits of gryphons or reports of giant toads in the southern forests of the continent.

It perhaps wasn’t the most rigorous of methods, but to amuse herself, Kayro slid animal part samples from species Balin discussed in between cases of crystalline minerals (arranged by color and degree of translucency), cases of exotic woods (arranged by density and buoyancy), and cases of fabric samples (everything from spider-silk to flax linen to one particularly disgusting spool of thread woven from the nervous systems of a post-Ithonian warlord’s enemies).

None of them provoked the slightest response as they slid past Balin.

Kayro tried dragon venom (sealed in airtight, heat-resistant enchanted ceramic so it wouldn’t catch on fire), amiant (a fibrous rock that wreaked havoc on lungs, that she kept carefully sealed behind glass), and venom from the mapmaker snail (kills painlessly in just a few hours, kept preserved and isolated by powerful enchantments).

No luck.

Kayro tried thirty different types of pickles, and dozens of other fermented foods. There were, after all, never a shortage of various fermentation mages— in fact, Kayro was utterly convinced that human civilization was impossible without fermentation magic.

No luck.

Kayro tried six hundred and four different minerals.

No luck.

She tried a hundred and six species of moss.

No luck.

No luck, no luck, no luck.

Finally, with a groan of frustration, Kayro began to fold up the wagon for lunch.

----------------------------------------

Ordas came to check on their progress during lunch, just as sweaty and tired as before.

Now, though, Kayro was looking at the man through a different lens. Was the sweating just from exercise, or was it a symptom of the poison?

She honestly couldn’t say. Maybe it was just her imagination, maybe she was just imagining something she was already looking for, but something about Ordas seemed… off. His cheer and bravado a bit brittle, his voice just a little fatigued.

Kayro did her best to settle Ordas’ presumed worries with a few nonspecific platitudes, but she had no idea whether they had worked. Or if Ordas really was that anxious about things— the man was impressively hard to read, if he really was worried.

Ordas largely ignored his son while he spoke to Balin. He did reach out to clap Balin on the back as he passed, but the lad dodged his hand with ease.

Balin really wasn’t one for physical contact, it seemed. Kayro made a mental note to give him plenty of personal space— affinity testing was easier when the subjects were comfortable.

Then it was back to testing.

-----------------------------------------

Kayro was an hour into testing Balin against various esoteric alchemical compounds when she came to a realization.

She carefully eyed Balin’s slender form again, then sighed, and hit several unobtrusive levers.

Wooden ward segments on rails slid out from the wagon, connecting unobtrusively to one another to block scrying or simple eavesdropping.

“May I… ask an awkward question?” Kayro ventured.

Balin gave her a look that was equal parts irritation and nervousness. “Yes, I was born in the wrong body. Do you have an issue with that?”

Kayro shook her head. “No, I’d already guessed, I wouldn’t have brought it up if that was all. I was more curious about, well… whether that was why things with your father seem a bit…”

She hesitated, looking for a polite adjective.

“Terrible?” Balin offered. “Miserable, maybe? Strained to the breaking point?”

Kayro winced. She’d clearly hit a sore spot, and probably shouldn’t have brought it up, but…

Any clue might be relevant to solving the puzzle of Balin’s affinity.

Balin surprised her by chuckling. “No, that’s not the problem my father has with me. When I told him I was a boy, he was entirely supportive of me. Shouted down plenty of our distant relatives who didn’t like the idea, even exiled one of the worst offenders. Plenty of them still don’t like it, but none of them are willing to cross him. The problem is that he expects me to conform entirely to his idea of manhood, and he’s perpetually disappointed in me for not being a violent brute like him. He’s always trying to drag me to the training fields to practice swordplay with him, always getting disappointed when I bury myself in my books.”

Kayro gave Balin a blank stare, then shook her head. “I’ve got to be honest, I have no idea how to react to that, kid. That’s… really strange.”

Balin shrugged. “He’s a supportive father, just… not a good one.”

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked. It really wasn’t any of my business.”

Balin shrugged again. “It doesn’t bother me. I’m just glad you’re not judging me for it.”

There was a long, awkward pause, then Kayro started running test samples past Balin on their rails again.

“You can turn off your ward now,” Balin said. “Someone’s bound to get suspicious if you leave it on for too long— I guarantee more than a few people have been checking in on us periodically.”

Kayro gave him a surprised look.

“I wouldn’t have lasted as long as I had in my father’s house if I wasn’t observant. Quite a few of my relatives wouldn’t mind if I had an… accident.” 

Kayro grimaced, but nodded and withdrew the ward back into her wagon.

“You know, my body is why I first started studying Ithonian natural philosophy,” Balin said, after a few more minutes of awkward silence.

Kayro gave him a curious look, but didn’t respond.

“They supposedly had healers who could modify your body, give people born into the wrong one a more comfortable form.”

“I’ve heard a lot about the Empire, but I’d never heard that before,” Kayro said.

“It took a whole team, both of healers and mages with human affinities. It was a rare skill even at the Empire’s height, and by the time it fell, the only mages left who could perform it were lost in the fall of Imperial Ithos. As for why no one talks about it anymore, or tried to redevelop the skills… It’s cause of the warlords. Some of those archmages and generals battling to try and rebuild Ithos? They went out of their way to purge any documents or books that made the Empire look decadent to their eyes, and most of the books mentioning that type of body-sculpting were lost.”

Balin looked depressed at that, but before Kayro could think of what to say, the boy shook his head and continued. “Anyhow, trying to find out more about Ithonian body-sculpting magic led me deeper into natural philosophy. Even if my father never uses it, he owns a massive library for the sake of his social image. Haven’t come close to reading all of it. I just with my father was fine with me being a scholar instead of a warrior.”

Kayro wanted to comfort the boy, but it wasn’t her place. Instead, she carefully guided the conversation back to natural philosophy as she sped more test samples along their rails.

As Balin rambled, and Kayro carried out the tests, a suspicion dawned in the back of her mind.

She was cautious not to show it on her face, but carefully altered the order of the upcoming samples.

As Balin rambled more about the books of natural philosophy he was interested in, a vial of fluid slid along the rails right behind his head.

Balin twitched, ever so slightly. He probably didn’t even realize it, the motion had probably been entirely subconscious on his part. The twitch was so small that if she hadn’t been so alert, so suspicious that this vial of fluid might be related to the boy’s affinity, that she wouldn’t have noticed it at all. She imagined others had tested him with this fluid before as well, but hadn’t noticed it— it was that small of a reaction. 

After all, the sample she’d just used wasn’t what she suspected his affinity to be, but it was closely related. Enough so that his affinity sense had reacted just the tiniest bit. She hadn’t tried it before because, well…

It was just too common of a material. Just too absurdly common. She wouldn’t be surprised if the vast majority of other affinity testers had already tried that one.

The actual affinity material, the one the fluid was related to?

Not a single person alive wasn’t exposed to it most every day of their lives.

She didn’t even have samples of her actual suspicion, due to the sheer ease of finding it. She’d never even imagined someone having it as an affinity and not realizing it.

Kayro did her best not to show anything on her face, and just kept running more tests. She even took care not to end the test session early, and did her best to focus on what Balin was saying.

The instant the test session was done and Kayro’s wagon folded up, though, she was off to Ordas’ training yard to speak to him.

In her pocket, Kayro carried a little metal sample vial.

An empty sample vial.

---------------------------------

To her surprise, Ordas was training alone, battering a training dummy with a practice sword. The Firethief noticed her the instant she stepped into the training yard, but didn’t stop his workout.

Kayro took a moment to look around the yard. 

Unlike every other open courtyard enclosed in the huge villa, there were no windows looking down on the training yard. Just hard-packed dirt, weapon racks, and other training supplies, all well-used and well-maintained.

Kayro was thinking about how best to approach the Firethief, to get him back to her wagon so they could speak privately behind her ward, when she noticed the wards running around the training rings, engraved into the stone ring surrounding the hard-packed dirt.

They were anti-scrying wards, easily as good as her own.

Kayro smiled at that. It seemed the Firethief used this training yard as a meeting-place fairly often.

Without looking over at Ordas, she walked over to the nearest weapon-rack and grabbed a quarterstaff, then moved over to one of the warded training rings.

A few heartbeats later, the Firethief joined her.

She didn’t bother trying to talk to him at first, just moved to engage.

The warlord might not have needed swordplay, might have magic that could drain the heat from one army, freezing them all solid, and then roasting another army with the drained heat, but… 

He was a bloody good swordsman anyhow.

Kayro was more than a little skilled with a quarterstaff— even with all of her wagon’s defenses, it was foolish to travel without at least some ability to protect herself. She didn’t always get daily practice in, but she certainly practiced more days than she missed, and counted herself reasonably skilled.

She barely held off the heat mage’s attacks. Even in his poisoned state, the man was fast, agile, and ridiculously strong. She never even managed to push into the offensive against him— he seized that early in their bout, and never let it go.

After the fifth time Ordas landed a hit on her— this one right on her sternum, hard enough to bruise— the two of them, sweaty and breathing hard— took a break.

After she drank from a waterskin offered to her by the warlord and rested for a couple of minutes, Kayro took the chance to speak.

“You have a plan for if your son doesn’t have an affinity worthy of being a Volcano Guardian? No matter how powerful he becomes, most affinities won’t work for being a guardian.”

“That’s none of your business,” Ordas said. “Your only worry is figuring out what his affinity is.”

Kayro stopped herself from snapping at the man. “May I have your permission to speak my mind, without worrying about you obliterating me off the face of Anastis?”

Ordas scowled at her, but nodded.

She quickly double-checked to make sure the training ring’s anti-scrying wards were still active. “I’m fairly confident that I know what Balin’s affinity is, just one more test to run to be sure, if I’m right. And if I am right, he’ll never make it as a Volcano Guardian, and he won’t survive you by wrong, judging by the rumors in the city and among your own family.”

Ordas snorted. “I’m not going to discuss my plans for my family with some common grifter who hasn’t even solved the problem yet. You expect me to believe you’ve already solved the problem after just a day, when some of the other affinity testers couldn’t do it with weeks? That your collection is so much better than any other affinity tester’s?”

Kayro shook her head. “Not at all. If I’m correct, the material your son has an affinity for isn’t rare at all.”

“Let me guess, it was just plain bad luck that stopped any other tester from figuring it out?” Ordas sneered.

“Nope. The reason none of the other testers figured it out is that your son already knows his affinity, and has been hiding it all along.”

That got Ordas’ attention, and not in a good way. 

“You had better be very cautious about the next thing you say,” Ordas said, his knuckles white on the hilt of his practice sword. Kayro was pretty sure she could feel a chill in the air around her.

“Your son is incredibly observant and intelligent. I think he knows he’s in trouble if his affinity doesn’t rival yours, and the only solution he could think of to help himself in the short term was to fake not knowing his affinity. That only works for so long, though, and if he doesn’t have a powerful or at least promising affinity by the time you die— and judging by the rumors, you don’t have long now— he knows that he’s done for. Either one of your rivals, or some greedy soul in your extended family is going to do him in.”

For a moment, Kayro was sure Ordas was either going to strike her with his practice sword, or maybe just freeze her solid. After a few heartbeats, though, he visibly mastered himself.

“You’re not the first affinity tester to accuse him of hiding his own affinity, so unless you can prove your claim about knowing his affinity, I’ve got no reason to listen to you any further. What is this mysterious affinity supposed to be, anyhow?”

Kayro noted that he hadn’t denied his approaching death, but she didn’t comment on it. Instead, she pulled the little metal sample vial out of her pocket.

The one that had been empty, but which she’d filled up while they were resting. 

----------------------------------------

That night, there was an explosion at the villa of Ordas Firethief.

The people of Alikea hid in their homes, fearing a war between the Volcano Guardians, like the ones that had devastated the city and risked eruption multiple times over the century since Ithos’ fall. 

Dawn came with no civil war, but with a thousand rumors instead.

By the end of that day, the rumors began to congeal, to take proper form. The stories of imprisoned phoenixes escaping or ancient Ithonian superweapons vanished, and one narrative had taken precedence above all others.

Ordas Firethief had destroyed his own library— and with it, his only son and heir. 

There were plenty of rumors that bore some vague resemblance to the truth— rumors that Ordas had incinerated his son for being mindblind, rumors that he had incinerated his son for having an embarrassing affinity like hemorrhoids or dandruff, rumors that he’d incinerated his son for simply having a weak affinity. 

Those rumors were almost drowned out by the others, though. Rumors that Ordas’ son had been the one to poison him, rumors that Ordas’ son had been killed and replaced by an illusionist, rumors that Ordas was going mad from the poison.

There was no such speculation or rumor-mongering from the other great powers, however. The very night Ordas destroyed his own library, he sent messages to the other Volcano Guardians.

His son had developed one of the forbidden affinities, those affinities, like yellowstone or plague affinities, must be wiped out on discovery.

The Guardians all quietly accepted his story, even the Firethief’s rivals and enemies feeling pity for the man. None sought to interfere with the affinity tester who had discovered the forbidden affinity— it would be impossible to keep track of forbidden affinities without affinity testers, and punishing them would only convince other affinity testers to not report forbidden affinities.

And, thanks to said pity, the lot of them quickly agreed to the Firethief’s proposed division of his worldly goods once the poison took him— they were even generous enough to only plan to take two-thirds of his fortune and divide it among themselves once he passed, instead of the lot of it.

It wasn’t long before another scandal reared its head, involving an archmage running a smuggling ring, and Alikea turned its attention to new matters.

So it was that an affinity tester’s wagon, hauled by a mossback tortoise, carried its owner unmolested away from the city of Alikea and its brimstone fogs.

Ordas had promised any affinity tester who solved the problem of his son’s affinity the boy’s weight in gold, and, indeed, the wagon was heavier by that much gold.

That wasn’t the only additional weight on-board Kayro’s wagon, though. 

Not by a league.

------------------------------------------

It was a week before Kayro let Balin out of the depths of her wagon, just to make sure no one was watching them any longer.

There was enough food, water, and air deep inside the wagon for Kayro to have survived a month, and the boy had a seizable portion of his father’s library to keep him entertained, but…

Kayro doubted it was healthy for a boy who’d just had his whole life upturned to spend so much time alone.

She’d guessed right about Balin’s affinity. She could have solved it before confronting Ordas, lowered the risk of the confrontation— but she hadn’t wanted to risk an ambitious family member moving too soon if they suspected she’d solved it. Best to have the Firethief nearby, watching covertly, when she made the final test of Balin’s affinity.

Of course, there was another reason she’d confronted Ordas in the training yard.

It was a convenient and unsuspicious place to work up a sweat.

After all, what sort of affinity tester would carry around vials of human sweat in their collection? It was absolutely inconceivable that a teen with freshly formed mana reservoirs wouldn’t have been around sweaty people or sweated themselves.

The giveaway should have been obvious much sooner than it had— Kayro should have taken note of the way that Balin easily dodged Ordas’ sweaty back-slaps. 

It had been their conversation about Balin’s dislike of athletics and love of reading that had inspired Kayro to test the boy against seawater— close enough in alchemical composition to human sweat.

And, since a sweat affinity wouldn’t even remotely work to help prevent Mount Cairn from erupting, well… 

The only way to keep Balin alive had been to fake his death and smuggle him out of the city.

Once Balin was out of the hidden chamber in the heart of the wagon, he almost immediately started bombarding her with questions— about what had happened since he’d been smuggled away, mostly.

Once that was done with, the boy moved onto a whole different line of questioning.

“So what now?” Balin asked. “I don’t have any marketable skills, no money of my own, and my magic is utterly useless.”

Kayro raised an eyebrow at that. “Sweat magic is hardly useless. You’re going to be far more comfortable in hot weather than most people, I promise you that.”

“Yeah, but there’s lots of affinities that can do that. There’s nothing really interesting that sweat affinities can do.”

“Assassination’s not interesting?” 

Balin spluttered at that. “How can you possibly assassinate someone with a sweat affinity? Drown them in your own sweat? That doesn’t sound particularly practical.”

Kayro shook her head. “Nope. Stop them from sweating. They’ll overheat surprisingly quickly in warm weather or when exerting themselves, often fry their own skull in just a short time. Almost undetectable method of assassination. You don’t hear about it much, though, because sweat mages are so rare.”

Balin was quiet for a long time before responding. “I… I don’t think I want to be an assassin.”

“Don’t blame you there, kid. Though… you ever consider testing affinities for a living?”

Balin shot her a surprised look at that.

“Your dad’s suggestion, believe it or not,” Kayro said. “Take your time deciding, though— if you don’t like the idea, I’ll use half the gold I got from your father to set you up for life, enroll you in the university at Lemannen or something like that. Become a naturalist, whatever you want. Regardless, you don’t need to worry too much about your future. Your dad made sure of that.”

Balin just looked confused at that, and spent a long time staring silently at Stinky’s plodding form in front of them.

“Why did he do it?”

“Why’d he do what, kid?”

“Make sure I’m provided for, make sure I’m safe.”

Kayro rolled her eyes at that. “Because he’s your dad, Balin. He’s not the best dad, or even a particularly good one—“

“He’s a terrible dad,” Balin muttered, though his heart didn’t seem in it.

“But he is your dad, and he does care about you. I think he just had to accept that he couldn’t control the situation any longer, that his reputation alone wouldn’t be enough to protect you after the poison took him.”

Balin didn’t respond immediately, and Kayro did her best to pretend not to see his tears.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Balin said, a third of a league later. “How could he be so supportive one day, then such a miserable demanding bastard the next, then go so far to protect me the day after that?”

Kayro shrugged. “People are a mess, kid. Some of the most awful misers I’ve ever met have had moments of shocking generosity, some of the most sadistic battlemages I’ve ever met have risked their lives to protect innocents, and some of the most honest people I’ve met have been incorrigible cheats at cards. Expecting others to make sense, to be consistent, to conform to your expectations for them… it’s a fool’s game. We’re all too much of a mess of scars, happy memories, fears, and foolishness inside to ever make much sense. To be human is to be inconsistent and hypocritical.”

“So…”

“I don’t know why your father was the way he was, Balin. Just do your best to remember him for all of it— the good, and the bad. For all his power, he was just human.”

It was almost a full league later when Balin finally spoke up again, as they rolled northward, farther away from Alikea. “I don’t think you ever mentioned what your affinity is.”

Kayro grinned at that, and popped open a small compartment behind the wagondriver’s bench. Out of it she pulled a shed snakeskin, the size of her little finger. It was so fragile that she could probably tear it by blowing hard enough on it.

“I’ve got an affinity for the shed skins of the Sphinxgrave Isle dirtsnake. This skin’s from a fully grown adult. They camouflage themselves in the dirt and fallen leaves of the forest floor, and eat small insects. Utterly harmless, can’t hurt anything bigger than a cricket. Only live on a single, league-wide island, a hundred and fifty leagues away from Ithos or any other land.”

Balin just stared at her in disbelief. “You have an affinity for the skin of a harmless snake?”

“The shed skin of a harmless snake, once it’s dried up a bit. You want to talk useless affinities, there’s a useless affinity.”

Balin shook his head. “Alright, I’ve got to know how you found out about such a weirdly specific affinity. I’ve never even heard of Sphinxgrave Isle, let alone the Sphinxgrave Island Dirtsnake.

Kayro put the fragile snakeskin back in its compartment, and leaned back into her seat. “Now that’s a story, kid— it’s how I ended up meeting my master and becoming an affinity tester. It all started back during the Ithonian Empire, when they went to war against the sphinxes up in the Skyreach Range…”

In front of the wagon, Stinky the mossback tortoise ignored the incessant chatter the humans were making, and just kept plodding along down the road. Every now and then, he’d reach out and snag some leaves from a tree beside of the road, or snatch up a rabbit crossing the dirt road.

He didn’t need them, of course, he was just snacking for its own sake. Kayro fed him amply and in great variety. And cleaned his shell regularly, and scratched behind his eyes, and tended the garden on his back. He hardly noticed the weight of the wagon behind him, and being around so many humans, Stinky never had to fight off other mossbacks for territory.

It seems improbable that any of the great Ithonian natural philosophers had ever found a way to measure the happiness of multi-ton omnivorous reptiles that were happy to snack on human flesh. It seems even more improbable that any of them ever devised methodologies for surveying happiness across populations of mossbacks.

If they had, though, and someone applied those methods today? 

It was unlikely they’d find a happier tortoise than Stinky, no matter how hard they looked.