First-year students learned to make the unguent of preservation, and only those who succeed were allowed to move on to the greater mysteries. Yema had been one of them, a lifetime ago. Magister Yema ran a hand along the wall, felt the grooves of the mural that told the story of the fall of Audec, the founding of the city, and the birth of the City Mother. Yema left this place behind years ago, when mere science could no longer hold his attention. Artifice was so limited, merely pushing the elements to their limits, instead of shaking the foundations of the world itself. He heard shuffling in the room ahead, the flapping of wings, sycophantic birds hopping about courting favor with the other oligarchs. This one sent his assistant to talk to that one’s assistant, talking circles around one another, always angling toward another agenda. They built tentative alliances with whispers and baseless promises behind doors that had survived the tide of years.
