I felt a brief flash of anger. And that’s what you’ve been wanting, isn’t it? It had been the subject of one of the last conversations I’d had with Sonder, the previous year. He’d wanted Luna away from me, from my influence …
I saw Anne’s eyes turn to me and forced the feelings down. This wasn’t the time. ‘I don’t want to stop being Alex’s apprentice,’ Luna said. ‘Not like this.’
‘But if it’s the only way…’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said. ‘You know how slow Council courts are. By the time we’d brought a petition for dissolution, had it received, set a hearing, gone to the hearing, had the hearing resolved and had Luna entered into the records as an independent apprentice, we’d be dead five times over.’
‘What if you ran?’ Anne said.
‘You mean out of the country?’ Luna asked.
‘That could work,’ Variam said. ‘Just pick some place where they have crappy relations with the British Council so the Keepers can’t get an extradition.’
‘And while you’re gone, Alex could go through the courts with the dissolution,’ Sonder said. ‘Then you could come back afterwards.’
‘Sonder, if Luna has to run, it’ll be because the resolution’s gone through and is also applying to me,’ I said. ‘I’m not going to be in much of a position for court proceedings.’
‘Oh.’
‘I guess that could work,’ Luna said slowly, ‘but…’
‘Better exiled than dead,’ Variam said.
‘But then what?’ Luna said. ‘It’s not as though it’s going to expire, is it?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘It won’t. If you do this – if any of us do this – we’ll be exiled until the Council decides to repeal the resolution. Which probably means for ever. We’ll never be able to come back to our old lives.’
‘I don’t want to do that,’ Luna said. ‘Not if there’s any other way.’
‘What other way?’ Variam said. ‘Because if this vote thing falls through, which seems pretty likely, then the Keepers are going to be showing up right at your door. And don’t think you can hide and wait for it to blow over. Catching people is what the Keepers do.’
‘I don’t like the idea of running away,’ Luna said.
‘There might not be a choice!’
‘Maybe there is.’
We all looked at Luna. ‘What are you talking about?’ Variam said.
‘The problem is that I’m Alex’s apprentice, right?’ Luna said. ‘What if we changed that?’
‘How would—?’ I began, then stopped.
Variam got it a second later. ‘Taking your journeyman tests?’
‘It’d work, wouldn’t it?’ Luna asked. ‘The resolution says Alex’s dependents. Well, if I’m a journeyman mage, then I can’t be anyone’s dependent.’
‘It would work…’ I said slowly, ‘but…’
‘No, it wouldn’t,’ Variam said. ‘Have you seen the waiting lists for those tests? They’re months long.’
‘Actually, they’re not,’ Luna said.
‘Okay,’ I said to Luna. ‘You’ve obviously got something in mind. Let’s hear it.’
‘Here’s the thing,’ Luna said. ‘I know your plan’s always been for me to take those tests someday, but I was worried that the Council would do something to block it. Claim I was an adept and wasn’t allowed, or something like that. So I went and looked up the laws. Turns out, any apprentice has got the right to demand to be tested as a journeyman. There are only three conditions.’ Luna held up her fingers, ticking them off one by one. ‘First, you have to be officially recognised by the Council as an apprentice. Done that. Second, you can’t be wanted for any crimes or breaches of the Concord. Done that too. Third, you have to have been sponsored for the apprentice programme and you have to have been attending classes for at least fifteen months. I’ve put in more than twice that long.’ Luna lowered her hand and looked around. ‘No requirement for Council approval. Doesn’t even say that you have to be a mage. It just says you have to be a recognised apprentice. I checked. And there’s a time limit. When you put in the request, you can demand for the tests to take place within a time window. The minimum you can ask for is five days.’ Luna raised her eyebrows. ‘It’s within the deadline.’
‘Okay, that might be what the law technically says,’ Sonder said. ‘But no one actually does it.’
‘No rule says you can’t.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Sonder said. ‘You couldn’t get the trial agreements done.’
‘No rule saying you need those, either.’
‘You two are losing us,’ I said. Both Variam and Anne were looking puzzled. ‘What are you getting at?’
‘Those waiting lists Vari was talking about?’ Luna said. ‘They’re not for the tests. They’re for the meetings with the mages setting the trials. The reason it takes so long is that they need to agree on what each trial’s allowed to contain. If you skip that part, you can jump the queue.’
‘Yeah, except that there wouldn’t be any restrictions on what you got,’ Sonder said.
Luna shrugged. ‘Not like we’d be able to get much out of them if we negotiated it anyway.’
‘That’s crazy,’ Sonder said. ‘They could send anything at you! They could kill you!’
‘Meh,’ Luna said. ‘They pretty much never kill apprentices in those tests any more. Last one was more than ten years ago and that was only because he had a heart condition.’
‘Wait,’ Anne said. ‘That’s supposed to be good news?’
‘Is it really that much more dangerous than the stuff we do anyway?’ Luna asked.
‘All right.’ I held up a hand. ‘Let me think a second.’
The four of them quieted, looking at me. ‘Luna,’ I said after a moment. ‘You’ve got a lesson with Chalice tomorrow morning, right?’
Luna nodded.
‘Then I’ll come along with you. If she thinks you’re ready, then we’ll go ahead with your plan.’
‘I don’t think this is a good idea,’ Sonder said.
‘Then please see if you can find anything better,’ I said. ‘For Luna, and for all of us. We don’t exactly have a lot of options here. You know a lot more mages who are experts on Council law than I do. If you can dig up anything that’d help us, we’d be very grateful.’
Sonder didn’t look happy, but he didn’t argue. ‘Vari,’ I said. ‘I’m guessing Landis’ll be going home after the party. Can you meet him there? Break the sponsorship transfer plan to him?’
‘Yeah,’ Variam said. He looked at Anne. ‘You’d better come too. He’s going to want to talk to you.’
‘Then that’s enough for tonight,’ I said. I was tired and having trouble concentrating. All of a sudden, I wanted to be on my own. ‘Let’s get some sleep.’
The others didn’t move. ‘What about you?’ Luna asked.
‘I’m going to be fighting the political angle with Talisid.’
‘With us,’ Variam said.
I sighed. ‘Yes, with you. Now come on. You’ve got things you should be doing.’
All four were reluctant, but I eventually got them moving, chivvying them out of the living room and down towards the storeroom and the small patch at the centre that had been cleared and box-warded for gates. Sonder was the most eager. Anne was the most reluctant; she lingered at the door and I think she would have stayed if Variam hadn’t been pressuring her to go. Luna went without protest, but she kept an eye on me, and I knew that she’d be expecting me tomorrow. It felt like a long time before the last gate closed and I was left alone in the storeroom.
2
I trailed back upstairs into the living room and dropped on to the sofa. All of a sudden, the energy that had kept me going through the discussion was gone.