Madness Everthorn watched the black spellbook bounce inside a boy's satchel as he ran across the muddy churchyard below her tower window. He had until dawn to reach the council. She had until dawn to stop him, or every plan she had laid to seize the high sorcerer's throne would burn in front of the very wizards she meant to unseat. She had taken the boy on as an apprentice because he was clever and hungry. She had not counted on him being clever enough to read the book she kept chained to her desk, or hungry enough to sell her for a council seat. The chain lay cut on the floor. The wax seal on her workroom door lay cracked. She stepped over both and took the stairs down. Outside, the Crimson Void Tower threw its jagged shadow across wet grass. Red light bled from its narrow windows onto the headstones of the old graveyard that ringed its base. She knew the boy would cut through the stones. It was the fastest path to the road, and he was young enough to think the dead did not notice. She found him crouched behind a weathered marker, catching his breath. Moss furred the cracked stone. The name on it had worn to nothing. He looked up and saw her and reached for his wand. "Give it back," she said. "They'll protect me," he said. "Once they read it." "They'll thank you and hang you the same afternoon." He cast first. A white bolt struck her shoulder and spun her half a step. She did not answer with fire. Fire would burn the book. She pressed her palm to the old grave instead and spoke three words her apprentice had not yet been taught. The stone drank the words. Then the ground drank the boy. He went down to his knees, then his waist, the wet earth closing around him without sound. He screamed once. She stepped forward and pulled the satchel free before the soil took his arms. "Please," he said. She looked at him. She thought of the council chamber, the twelve seats, the one at the head she had promised herself since she was his age. "You should have stayed clever," she said, and let the grave finish. The grass smoothed itself over him. She wiped mud from the spellbook's cover and checked the pages. All there. She turned back toward her tower and had climbed three steps of the path when a lantern rose over the churchyard wall. An old man in a blue star-stitched robe held it up. White beard, kind eyes, a staff tipped with soft yellow light. Thardwin Everheart. Her shoulder still burned from her apprentice's bolt. Thardwin's lantern swept the ground where the grass was still settling, then rose to her face. "Madness," he said quietly. "What did you just bury?"