In her dream Izzi rushed about on errands. She was for some dream-logic reason still an acolyte in her red robe. Every mage or magian she passed pointed her in a new direction on a different task, until she had no hope of remembering them all. She sped down a Magekadeh tunnel to fetch something, but then she could not even remember what, and started to panic. She turned to run back the other way.

Wake up! Pay attention! The words broke through into her dream, but her dream-mind took them as yet another urgent task. She turned again in her dream-tunnel maze.

Wake up, Izzi, said Mother, who did not belong in the dream.

But it was not Myzina, of course. It was one of her remaining wards, designed to drag Izzi from sleep to face whatever challenged the khan.

“Mother,” sleeping Izzi called softly. “Where?”

A final turn toward the imagined voice tangled her legs in her robe, tripping her up. Her arms sprang out to catch the non-existent fall, wrenching at her shoulder sockets. The jerk woke her instantly. 

Feeling foolish, betrayed by her own mind and body, she untangled herself from her bedsheet, threw it aside, and sat up.

Pay attention!

Shut up! She silently shouted at the book, and clenched her hands in her hair. Leave me be. I’ll get to you.

First she had to make sure they were safe. It was well past midnight and the Khan of Penza seemed at ease, but its protective wards of sorcery vibrated like a cobweb with a new catch. She closed her eyes, sent her own imaginary roots down to mingle with those of the trees, and drew on the timeless throbbing magnetism of the foundation stones. So grounded, she reached out with her magesty, feather light, feeling her way through the invisible web of connections, searching for anything disturbed, anything misplaced, anything newly woven.

Father slept. The servants and staff slept. Down in the courtyard the visiting caravaners and their stabled horses and camels slept. Izzi sucked in a breath of jealous frustration—it felt like she’d had hardly any sleep at all. 

The nightjars out in the apricot trees started up a mournful chittering and the latched windows of her room rattled. The wards were so delicate they drifted like gossamer threads out into the night air, catching a premonition of an approaching presence. Mother had taught her the sorcerer’s skill of holding her thoughts on the knife-edge between asking a question and wanting an answer, and she balanced there as she murmured an incantation, a glamour to hide herself and the household. 

She swung her legs out of bed, wriggled her feet into her favourite slippers, and padded across her carpets to peer out across the rooftops. There! A ghul’s spirit quested through the night, sending a ripple through the twinkling stars as if they were reflections in a disturbed pool. Because the khan was built at the very edge of the city, these invading thoughts sometimes tickled the khan’s wards even before the magians’ own.

She recited a spell her mother had taught to make her own questing spirit seem large and frightening, and challenged the malevolent being. Its disembodied presence cowered back into the desert, reluctant to test her power. 

The Kythians had lately resorted to less-than-wholesome tactics. Izzi thought the ghul may have been dragged from eternal sleep by their mages, which was insanely risky, given the consequences for their souls if the thing turned on them. The questing spirit was a force Izzi could tackle. Kalu had taught them how to repel the actual ghul, if it came to that, but he’d also told them to ready their souls for oblivion—their chances would not be good. 

The nightjars croaked like toads for a while, then eventually fell silent. Quiet minutes passed, and the branches of the apricot trees, draped in the invisible wards, hung heavy and still again. Izzi sensed their roots clawing deep into the rock, bolstering the foundations, and their limbs embracing the timbers of the walls in their deep entanglement with the building. 

With the war getting ever closer, even jackals and some of the big secretive cats had braved the city. Her questing thoughts felt their magesty, along with the comforting presence of the khan, its ancient illustrated stones and timbers proud and strong.

Down in the courtyard, the caravaners, horses, and camels breathed deeply and silently, never knowing the work Izzi did to protect them. Satisfied any danger had passed, she turned her thoughts back to the book.