Page 72 of Awakened Ash and Alchemy

“Why, Miss, he’s our Great Captain and Field Commander. Second only to the Commander, and next in line, should Lord Gellar decide to pass the torch.”

So it was a ranking system embedded not just in titles but in fabric, buckles, color shades, and stitches.

“What about that pair of ladies, back there?” She pointed to the duo obviously gossiping about her, who stopped and stared with wide eyes at being caught. “They have silver embroidered in their cuffs like me. I know I asked before, but what does that mean?”

Tamarr followed her gesture discreetly, careful not to make the glance obvious as the two women pretended they weren’t watching.

“They’re the officers’ wives or daughters, Miss. The silver on their cuffs marks those who are permitted within certain areas of the inner wards of the Keep.”

“Permitted?” Again, Angela studied the silver threads embroidered in her sleeves. “Not ranked?” She had an awful lot more patterning worked into the cuffs. The weave was denser and a lot more complex than what the two women scurrying away had.

“Yours carry identification and protection. Not all those who wear silver threads are allowed access to certain areas…” Tamarr paused, her voice lowered like a whisper, “Like the War Room.”

“So the threads are like keys?” The way her world used keycards or coded locks. Which meant her gown was not simply clothing.

It was clearance.

Which meant the women whispering in the corridor had not been admiring the color of her gown. They had been reading her cuffs.

No wonder those soldiers in the War Room looked at her like some oddity.

It made it seem real, not just about the threat of the Black Cloaks, but with the Vanguard circling her aunt, Zarek’s public defense of her had just painted a target on her back inside the Keep as much as outside it.

She needed to know what she could do to protect herself and her aunt.

So, she would attend school like a child, in hope of answers, and to find a way to go back home.

TWENTY-SEVEN

Magic testing had been an experience Angela would never forget.

Each day she’d go to Magick School, where a new ancient practitioner in long robes shuffled into the empty classroom clutching various instruments of supposed mystical importance.

At first, it reminded her of all the mediums, tarot readers, and aura cleansers who’d beg Aunt Claudine to run a class in the bookshop after hours. It was good for business, but it bored Angela to tears.

What they did to test out her powers in Paradox was so much weirder.

The first wizard waved his hands over her, as Zarek, and his bulky mass of leather and lethal weapons, leaned against the door watching the proceedings bluntly warned: No touching.

And then there was the warning of heat that rippled through the air anytime someone got close to breaking that rule.

One wizard held up oversized cards and asked, “What do you see?”

“The backs of your cards,” she’d answered flatly. “Sorry, am I meant to say cardboard, or a patten?”

The wizard huffed at her with his bushy gray eyebrows that were so thick they blended into his hair. “Tell me the shapes of the symbols on these cards”

“They’re all rectangle to me.” She shrugged. Zarek snorted to hide his laugh, and the wizard shuffled out the door.

The next one had rung bells around her head until she’d gotten a headache.

And the list went on for two days: smoke, powders, chimes, humming, and a particularly enthusiastic reader who’d tried to divine her aura by staring at her forehead for fifteen unbearably long minutes.

“Move this object,” a mage said, pointing to the sphere made of some crystal-like stone.

She picked it up with her hands. “What stone is this?”

His sighs of disappointment were barely louder than the snores from the other elderly wizard waiting his turn to test her.