An empty bowl beside a pot of soup, covered and kept warm by the stove, was all that remained of dinner by the time Keynin's father arrived home late into the evening. Apologizing to his wife for his tardiness, and thanking her and Keynin for cooking he sunk down into one of the chairs in front of the fireplace. Keynin busied himself reviewing his class notes currently strewn about the study. The exercise, accompanied by the crackle of logs in the fire, and the rhythmic sounds of his mother filing parts for a ship's clock served much more to relax his anxieties than it did provide him with any actual practice. Should he have needed to study now, that would have meant he failed to learn it earlier in the year when it was first taught and tested. Once he heard the sound of his father returning his now empty bowl to the kitchen and grabbing his nightly cup of tea did he return to the living room.

  "Dad, I hope things with the locals haven't been too hectic for you, barring the obvious."

  "Never let anyone say you aren't observant." His father joked. "Believe me they have. It's been nonstop complaints about how the main roads near town are still falling apart, and that the docks are too small, and fees too high."

  "All things they have been complaining about for years." Keynin's mother interjected from across the room. "I thought you had managed to push a motion to the council a while back."

  "Oh we did, but the Sudford city leaders complained that we were only hiring locals to do the work and demanded they get some of the contracts. Now they're delaying the process any way they can while the repairs get more and more critical."

  "You think they're purposely causing problems?" Keynin asked, confused. "Isn't Kavad still the head of that group? We had dinner with his family a few months back and they seemed... well, happy to have us there."

  "They were happy to have you there."

  Keynin looked at his father somewhat incredulously. "I'm a student, and I'm not exactly trying to take over your job, much as you wouldn't mind the retirement. I shouldn't be that important, at least not to an entire city."

  Berkan stretched in his chair. "I wouldn't be too sure, Keynin. You are a student, quite a good one too. And perhaps most importantly to those like Kavad, you're currently studying at Sudford, not the capital."

  "I certainly wouldn't know it was. They all see me as The Duke's little experiment, only good for drawing complaints about favoritism or lax standards. Kavad actually seemed to appreciate how well I was doing."

  "Controversy can be good too, as far as some leaders on concerned. When you succeed, Sudford will be remembered as the city that opened it's doors for you, even if you had to squeeze your way through."

  "I'm not acting as some crier on the street for them." Keynin said, somewhat more forcefully than he intended.

  His father took a sip of his tea, staring into the hearth for a moment before continuing.

  "I didn't say you were, and I don't think Kavad sees you that way either, for what it's worth. The fact that your success might benefit him doesn't mean he can't be happy for you as well. Oftentimes those are the outcomes we hope for: when success for one is success for all."

  "Then what's different when it comes to Amesport? Would the town's success not bring more people to Sudford in turn?"

  "Its not always easy for the mind to compare potential success against current loss, Keynin. Sudford still has the largest port on the Whitepeak, but they suspect some of their traffic might dry up if it gets too easy to move goods out of Amesport. Is that selfishness, or understandable self interest?"

  Keynin didn't have an answer. He shrugged, before pivoting to his more pressing question.

  "Would you know if there's something unusual with the summit this year?"

  His father raised his eyebrows. "What news made it out of the Keep. From what I could tell they had plugged the cracks pretty well, so to speak."

  Keynin's father listened as he recounted his adventure for the third time that day, nodding along with the story.

  "That would be the Eudrians, they've got a delegation here for the summit." He said, confirming Keynin's theory.

  "Since around a year or so ago, both us and the Eudrians have lost a number of ships making the transit in the deep ocean. Now that happens, but rarely so many, or without the disappearances lining up to a major storm. I had passed along a warning to the locals, but our fishing vessels don't get out that far, no one around here was overly concerned. The Eudrians sent some of their riders out to look for pirates or some other cause, but nothing showed. Then around six months ago an amalgam rolled through the island of Sleet near their southern coast. It apparently dropped a number of imprinted entities stable enough to cause chaos for several days."

  That's more than a little terrifying. Keynin thought. He had seen imprinted entities, just called imprints by most mages and scholars, only once or twice. All creatures carried some amount of mana within their bodies. Amalgams, and other magic storms for that matter, would often kill unlucky animals unable to find shelter, ripping that magic from their victims to fuel the maelstrom. These fragments, imprints of the animal's Will, could gather like metal drawn from ore in the heat of a blast furnace. With enough power they would drop from the storm, a ghostly remnant fueled by a core of raging energy, constantly shifting between the forms it had known in life. They were always violent, whether from fear or anger nobody knew.

  "At first people thought a ship carrying imprinted weapons or charged ore had been subsumed somewhere out on the seas." Berkan continued. "But, a few weeks later reports of similar destruction began to trickle out of the hinterlands near Tessia at the center of the continent. There have been two or three more, at least that we know of, in the time since. All the royal houses are on edge, but no one wants to be the first to publicly raise an army. In the end, the duke thought to call on all the mages and scholars already brought in for the Summit to provide insight for this informal quorum."

  "That parts been kept somewhat quiet though. No one wants to see the merchants spook and send the price of good spiking if it isn't that serious. If I had to guess, The Duke is also aiming to break the ice on calling up reserves. The Isles were never large enough to project force any distance beyond borders, so the other nations can follow our lead, without anyone feeling like we're using the issue as an excuse to gear ourselves for conflict. Though the debt of gratitude all sides will owe Duke Chiros could be a substantial payment all its own."

  "That seems insane." Keynin said. "Entire countries waiting for permission to use their own armies?"

  "Fear and uncertainty have always found a way to undercut reason. I just hope the reputation of our dear duke doesn't get washed away with it. He's always been a bit of a schemer, and now is not the time to appear less than truthful."

  For the next few hours Keynin returned to the same halfhearted studying that had occupied him earlier. He wished now that his earlier foray had not been cut so short; a restless mind was far easier to ignore if the body didn't also long for more activity. He was considering getting out for a nighttime walk when a knock at the front door interrupted his thoughts. Keynin was not sure who exactly he expected to see as he walked to the door, but the young Ojirian woman still wearing the white robe that was the Sudford Lyceum's dress uniform was not them.

  "Somna?" He asked, trying to mask the mixture of confusion, annoyance, and a whole mass of less defined emotions rising to the surface. "What are you doing in Amesport?"

  Somna was an old acquaintance of his; they were in the same class at the Lyceum, and having grown up in one of the other outlying towns around Sudford they had seen each other a lot in those early years. Keynin wasn't sure when he had stopped calling the Ojirian a friend. He had for a while, but somewhere along the line had become a bit of a monster to him. In some ways she had to be. The inescapable politics of this island. Part of him wanted to be angry. Part of him saw, reflected in her green slitted eyes, the pressures that drove her. Sure, they were different in source to his own: she came from a large, magically talented family whose shadow diminished her successes and accentuated her failures, but he knew well enough the nagging anxiety, the ever present feeling of betraying someone, or something about yourself with every small failure.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  "My family is catching the Amesport ferry to the capital tomorrow, instead of heading from Sudford." She answered. "Still studying for the summit exams?" She asked awkwardly.

  "Not exactly." Keynin answered. "Just running through material I already know to try and relax. You?"

  "Sort of mostly in the same boat." Somna replied, before taking a deep breath. "They've added some extra material to the natural history practice, and I've heard some of us will be in a mock debate on top of it. I… thought you could use the extra review."

  An interesting way to avoid asking for help. Keynin thought, though it was not his primary concern. He was very much not a fan of the apparent last minute addition. " They're adding a debate portion to the exam. As in against other students, or some of the scholars they've got to help administer the tests? Are they gonna try and pretend that's getting graded objectively? Or they're not even going to bother with the pretense."

  Somna gave an annoyed shrug. "I don't know. I've heard that its not even going to be given to everyone, or count towards the results; that they're using it as a recruitment tool."

  Keynin's mood darkened further. "Oh, so what? They've invented some new test, and they get to decide who even gets to take it, and pass people based on… examinee zeal?"

  Somna narrowed her eyes at him. "They're just looking for people who can help with their amalgam issue, they're been…" She stopped her explanation, seeing the understanding in his gaze. "Of course." She started, before Keynin cut her off.

  "Don't start with that shit again, you aren't the only one with parents in the island government."

  "Yet here you are, starting your shit again about how every change the lyceum makes is out to target you specifically." Somna said, crown feathers rising in agitation.

  "That one would be easier to dismiss if I wasn't right so often." Keynin hissed.

  The two stared at each other in silence for a few seconds before the will to re-litigate yet another new version of an old argument sputtered out.

  "There are a number of foreign delegations that will be watching the summit." Somna said, not looking at him. "I was wondering if you wanted to run through some of the things they might ask about one or twice." She turned back to him. "If the Isles' students can keep up with the visiting scholars it'll look good for the school. The islanders must carry themselves well."

  "The islanders must carry themselves well." Keynin repeated the line he had heard so many times from his instructors at Sudford. It had become his mantra every time he needed to grit his teeth and work with another particularly abrasive student. Common ground that would hold together long enough to see an assignment through. Interesting, how that line is always there to excuse poor behavior, never correct it. "Fine." He said after a moment. "My dad's already let me borrow the house's study."

  "Alright." Somna replied, following him in.

  "So." Keynin said after they had made their way to the study. "Natural history, not Aether Mechanics?"

  "Yeah, I thought that was weird as well." Somna said, approaching the large map that hung on the wall. "Not to draw too much from too little but… my guess is they think these were somewhat normal storms whose power got magnified by some outside force. Debating the formation of an unusual phenomenon would be an Aether Mechanics question, since it's not, we're looking for natural phenomenon that might cause the effect. Here." She said, tapping at a clawed finger on the northeastern end of Eudrial, where the tailing end of the Splinterwood mountain range met the sea. "Argue the charged ore theory with me? There are a number of mines along the Splinterwood."

  "Weather would be my main concern." Said Keynin. "Amalgams move like regular storms, in which case you would expect them to move south to north along the eastern coast. If the storms are eating something from the mines in the north, how do they move down the coast again to attack Sleet?"

  "The Eudrians might be transporting it." Somna suggested. "Most of their larger cities are in the south, thanks to the warmer climate and better access to the rest of the continent through the chainlakes." She pointed to an area near the center of the continent. The Chainlakes were a group of small circular lakes near the center of the continent. A series of rivers connected them together, giving rise to the name and allowing easy navigation farther into the continent. Where the formation met the sea, the individual lakes had been eroded away into a loosely connected archipelago. "Goods in transport also give some reason for the different tracks these storms have followed."

  "Possible." Keynin admitted. "Still doesn't explain the attacks farther inland." He pivoted his focus to the other side of the map, on the west coast of the continent. "How about Akeirna, or the frostlands past their northern border? The prevailing winds sweep down across the continent. That might give us a single point of origin, with natural events causing the variance. It's not great; a storm lasting long enough to sweep down from the frostlands then back up the eastern coast would be an unusual event all on its own."

  "It would also struggle to explain where the energy is coming from." Somna said. "Charged ore decays away on the surface, even if we assume it could have been unearthed naturally."

  "Really?" Keynin knew how charged ore was refined, as well as a bit about the process of forging and inlaying the resulting metal to replicate the properties of an inscribed tool, but his textbooks had never covered the prospecting process.

  "Yah, my eldest brother found work as a Seekermage with the Eudrian Trader's Guild when he left the Lyceum.

  As one does when you're from Somna's family. Keynin thought to himself. Such positions usually accepted only those a decade or more out of school.

  "He taught me a bit about the divination process when they're looking for new veins." She continued. "You have to look for the traces it leaves in the rocks and soil, nothing else remains for long on the surface. That's actually the main reason the mining towns got so big, they have to do at least the first step of the refining process on site before they ship it out."

  "Huh." Keynin considered the problem in silence for a moment longer. "Say, do you know the theories about how charged ore forms?"

  "Which ones? The common ones that say the ore veins are almost like ancient amalgams themselves; tons upon tons of imprinted mass crushed in the heart of the earth, but then there are the real conspiracy theories."

  "The former ones, mostly. Can charged mass get… I don't know… into a volcano." Keynin said with a small laugh. "That sounds insane as I say it, but I can't see how else you get that much magical energy into the air."

  "It's not that far out, you're thinking the right way. Still, there was an eruption off the coast of Tessia two decades ago and the ash cloud was visible a day's sailing away. I don't see anywhere an eruption could take place that wouldn't have been seen by merchants or fishermen."

  "Is there any way the source itself could be moving?"

  Somna looked at him. "Possibly. The examiners will want to avoid that kind of speculation though. Besides, we're back into Aether Mechanics again."

  "Can we avoid it?" Keynin asked. "Either the speculation, or deviating from the relevant field?" He threw up his hands in exasperation. "Is that the test? Combining our knowledge from multiple subjects? I just… I don't get how this is supposed to be anything other than a thin veil to cover it up when they just choose the examiner's personal favorites. We've got researchers coming in from across the continent, I doubt that we're going to be adding much to the body of knowledge."

  "Keynin, it's not just the speculation that's the issue. Any large magical source capable of dumping that much magical energy out into the world, begs the question of what, if anything, is at the helm. And that question will get the accusations flying a moment later. This event is going to have enough yelling and pointed fingers as it is."

  "And so what? We're left to discuss it in hushed tones off to the side?" I can't see how that's supposed to help anything."

  "Is cooperation not helpful? Is it better if this meeting fails to happen at all?"

  "I don't know." Keynin said with a sign. "Yes, it should be good to meet, but is spending our time hamstrung by paranoia, unable to even look at the evidence objectively any better?"

  Somna, for once, did not have a reply.

  A further search through the study's supply of relevant books revealed no new information. That was to be expected to some extent; land surveys did not often make for interesting reading, and while Keynin's family did enjoy the odd tale of adventure through some long forgotten ruins, the ones they did have were already well known. Snapping closed her last prospect, a book by a Tessian researcher who had gone on a five year expedition into the frostlands, Somna closed her eyes and leaned back in her chair.

  "Well." She said to Keynin. "I think a proper night's rest would do more good for our odds in the next couple of days than another round of sifting for clues."

  "This was your idea." Keynin replied. "Regardless, the practice won't hurt."

  "I suppose not." Somna said, stretching as she made to leave. "Don't disappoint the duke tomorrow."

  Keynin rolled his eyes, both at the comment and at the lack of any kind of thank you from the Ojirian. "I know, my family can't just smooth over a bad performance." He replied, unable to resist the small jab. Somna refused to answer with anything other than an annoyed snort as she opened the front door and then walked out into the night, joining with a number of other townsfolk even at the late hour. He turned around to find his father bearing an expression that both asked if his last comment was really necessary, and answered the question as well. He shrugged back.

  "What others start isn't always your obligation to continue." His father said from his chair.

  "And if I want to?"

  "Sometimes what the situation needs, isn't what you want Keynin. Regardless, she is right about rest. The ferry leaves at dawn tomorrow to get to the capital on time."

  "Very well." Keynin said heading upstairs. Three days he would spend in the capital. He thought again about his place at the Lyceum, and the Isles at large as he finished packing. In some ways, this last minute addition to the coming day's tests were a matter of course for his studies so far. He would overcome this latest hurdle as he had all the others. That was his path.