There were half a million people in the city of Greatwen.

  Five lived in the palace along the banks of the River Tembus.

  Forty-four lived in spark workshops, found wherever the city was thriving.

  Two thousand were cloistered away, in churches and the spiraling towers of the cathedral.

  Two hundred thousand lived on bustling streets, in townhomes, and brick apartments built with the reforging of industry.

  And the rest, well the rest, lived wherever they could…

  There were half a million people in the city of Greatwen, and Eliza Scaggs didn’t trust a single one.

  She came out of her laboratory covered in soot, tracking it across the white tile of her kitchen floor, but she didn’t care. She was exhausted, and all she wanted was to sit down with a nice cup of rot brew tea. Partially, because she was fond of warm drinks, but mostly, because it contained a powerful stimulant, one to which she now found herself addicted, and she knew her hands would not stop shaking until she took another sip.

  So, Eliza put the pot on the stove, sat down, and sighed. Breaking this addiction was almost on the top of her to-do list, sliding in neatly just under finishing her current project, the reason she was taking it in the first place.

  Waiting for the pot to whistle, she gazed out her back window, squinting as the mid-afternoon sun reflected off the patch of rocky soil she called her garden. It was a square of ground enclosed by a stone wall about a head higher than a man can reach, covering roughly the same area as her two-story townhouse, about twice that of her working-class neighbors.

  I really should not have sacked my gardener, she thought, and just then a little face popped up over the wall. She blinked and it was gone. A few seconds later, the face popped back up again and, a few seconds after that, dropped back down again.

  Quietly closing the back door, Eliza snuck outside and made her way along the sidewall, keeping out of sight as she went to investigate.

  “You’re scared!” a tiny voice squeaked from the other side.

  “Am not!” another, tinier voice retorted. Both voices sounded mushy, like children.

  “Then go and do it.”

  “Why do I have to do it?”

  “You said you weren’t ‘fraid no witches.”

  Eliza winced at the w-word.

  “Mum said she don’t come out in the daytime.”

  She shrugged to herself. It was a fair observation; she wasn’t exactly a morning person.

  “Then do it. You have to get it on her doorstep.”

  Eliza had had enough. She waved her hand, commanding the back gate to open, and stepped through to see two bratty children, one boy and one girl, standing beside her wall with what she could only surmise was a bag of poo.

  “Look, I’m sure you are both very brave, but—”

  “—Ahhhhh!” She was cut off by the shrieks of children fleeing for their lives.

  “Would you please not call me a witch?” she very politely asked their backsides.

  After a passing workman gave her an odd glance and widened his berth to the other side of the street, Eliza sighed and went inside, pausing for a moment to check her reflection in the hallway mirror.

  She jumped back.

  Staring at her from the mirror was a face like a skull with black patches over its eyes and on the tip of its nose. She rubbed at the black, and her finger came away covered in soot.

  “No wonder—” she started saying but cringed as her reflection bared soot-covered teeth.

  She rushed to the washroom and, in a vain attempt to—retroactively—not have terrified those children, mopped at her face with a wet towel. A few seconds into it, she gave a resigned groan, accepting the damage had already been done, and washed the rest half-heartedly.

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  There was a knock at the door. Polite but forceful.

  Eliza swung it open to find a weed of a boy, barely in his teens. His shirt yellowed, his breeches frayed, his appearance was one step up from a beggar. But at least, he didn’t appear to have any bags of poo with him.

  “Yes, well, what do you want?” she asked curtly.

  “I’m looking for Scaggs…” He peered past her, confused.

  “And what makes you think you haven’t found her, boy?”

  “It’s just you don’t look so…” He trailed off, not finishing, but Eliza motioned him to continue.

  He started again, “Um… scary… or um…”

  She lifted an eyebrow, continuing to motion him to continue.

  “Old.”

  Eliza grimaced at that one, raking her fingers through the gray streak in her long dark hair.

  “I was wondering if she…” The boy gulped. “If you… were looking for… needed an apprentice?”

  “No,” she said flatly. She’d hired an assistant once, one who had taken meticulous notes. It turned out he’d been taking them for her rival, Thelemule. The old wizard was selling her designs in his shop before she’d suspected a thing.

  “Please, ma’am, I’ll work for free… but I guess I will need a little food.” He said that last part like it might somehow be the deal breaker.

  “Don’t call me ma’am. I don’t take apprentices. I’m not the type. Plus, you need a certain level of education to even start. Learn to read, then go find a wizard or something—”

  “I’ve read two books, ma’am—witch…”

  Eliza glared at him.

  “Lady?” he asked, searching for approval. At least he was trying.

  “Two whole books, have you?” She tried not to smirk.

  “They were my grandfather’s. The only books I have.”

  “Fine, amuse me. What books then?”

  “The Enlightened Verses—” he started saying.

  Eliza snorted. Everyone had a copy of the Verses. The Church practically threw them at you, whether you could read or not. It was more or less a songbook, neither hard to read nor educational.

  “And Wordsworth’s Dictionary,” he said.

  She crossed her arms. “You just read the dictionary?”

  “Yes… lady, many times.”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “Well, it’s better than the Verses,” he said, echoing her thought, and she smiled despite herself.

  “True, but I read hundreds of books, perhaps thousands, before I ever learned to cast a spell.”

  The boy looked up at her in awe, like a lost puppy. But that wouldn’t work, not on her. He was playing her somehow; she was sure of it. She had tried to get rid of him nicely. Now she was going to have to be blunt.

  She pointed toward the city square. “Look boy, I could go down that road to the nearest school and find a dozen students, each with the proper education, who would be begging to be my apprentice. You understand that, don’t you? You’re of no use to me.”

  The boy drew back as some, but not all, of the innocence fell from his eyes. “You sound like my stepfather.”

  “A wise man.” She nodded, relieved to have found an exit.

  His eyes hardened. “No. No, he’s not.”

  Glaring at him, she flicked her wrist back and forth, while in the entryway, a row of candles alternately went out and reignited with each motion.

  Half her time was going into the menial work of preparing and cleaning her lab, things she really ought to have someone else do… But it wouldn’t help if that someone else cleaned her out instead.

  “Sorry,” she finally managed to say. It was the smart choice, the safe choice, and she closed the door feeling an instant sense of relief.

  When she got to the window, the boy hadn’t left. He was staring at the front door with his face scrunched in frustration. Eliza wondered if that’s what she looked like every time someone had told her, ‘No.’

  He was lifting his sleeve when she saw it, a heavy purple bruise that started just above the elbow.

  The old burn scars on her legs itched as she thought she might have just called the man who had given him that ‘wise.’ She thought of her own master, of how easily he’d taken her in, and then she imagined him slamming the door in her face.

  Eliza cracked the door open. “What’s the definition of… aardvark?” That was usually the first word, wasn’t it?

  “What?” the boy asked.

  “You said you read the dictionary.”

  He froze, dumbfounded.

  “You don’t know, do you?” She shooed him away, turning her back, but did not close the door.

  “A… large, possibly mythical, burrowing mammal… native to Akebu… reported to have a long snout and… an extensible tongue suitable for feeding on termites and… ants?”

  She had no idea if that was correct. He might have been making it up. “How about the definition of magic?” she asked.

  “The… application of spark over natural forces for… practical purposes?”

  Eliza turned back around. “And have you got one, a spark?”

  “Only a little one. A month ago.”

  “Show me.” And with a flick of her finger, all the candles in the entryway went out, leaving them in the dim light of a sun that had just set.

  The boy exhaled, and as he held his hand out, palm up, flickers of blue light no larger than static discharges danced across his fingertips.

  “Tiny,” she whispered. Well, you can’t win them all. The spark was rare, maybe one in three hundred had it, but his was too weak to be of much use. She should have led with that question. It would have saved her the trouble.

  Then as the boy dropped his hand and lowered his head, specks of blue flickered throughout his dirty blond hair, but he didn’t seem to be aware of them. Nothing extraordinary, not enough to become a proper wizard, but he might have a future as a craft mage—if someone gave him the chance.

  Well, it’s not like anyone had ever actually asked her for an apprenticeship before, unless she counted those kids she’d scared off earlier. And even if it didn’t work out, there was an awful lot of cleaning to do…

  “Fine then, just food, and I won’t have time to teach you anything, probably.” That’s how her master had put it.

  The boy stared at her, stunned.

  “And no formalities. I don’t think I could stand to be called Ma’am or Lady all day. Call me Eliza. No wait, that’s a bit familiar. Call me Ms. Scaggs.”

  When he didn’t reply, Eliza cleared her throat and opened a hand, palm up, to the boy. “And you are?”

  “Ol-Oliver,” he stammered out. “But my stepdad calls me Ollie.”

  “Do you prefer that?”

  “No.”

  “Oliver it is then, but please don’t get your hopes up—And don’t tell anyone you’re working for me. I don’t need the attention.”

  “What should I tell them?”

  “I don’t know. Don’t tell them anything. Or tell them you’re doing odd jobs for food. Come back tomorrow.”

  “Okay.”

  She wandered back to her lab, wondering if Thelemule had just gotten the better of her again. Was an innocent face with big, wet eyes really all it took? She’d let her guard down, let herself be manipulated, but it had felt right, in the moment.