8. Loop 0, Part 8

The Spire was visible from almost anywhere on campus. Twelve stories tall, built with white stone that rose above the treeline. Its blue-tinted windows ran its full height, but at the peak, where my uncle’s office was, it always gave off a faint glow. Whether it was night or day, like a lighthouse that had gotten lost on its way to the coast, but was still valiantly trying to be seen at all times.

Whether that was comforting or ominous depended on your relationship with the man who lived at the top. Mine was a little complicated.

My uncle’s private dining room occupied the eleventh floor, just below his office. The express lift was the only way up past the eighth floor without clearance, and even the lift required a password that changed weekly. This week’s was “perseverance.”

I thought it was a dig at me, but with my uncle, you could never be sure. The room itself was modest by the standards of a building that used to house royalty. There was a round table for eight, though it was only ever set for two. Walls lined with bookshelves rather than portraits or finery or any number of things royalty would have. This said everything about where my uncle’s priorities lay.

The enchanted windows could show any view he wanted, just like the cafeteria commons. Tonight, he had chosen the sunset over Freehaven, Restralia’s capital. There was amber light and long shadows which fell across rooftops and church spires and the surrounding swamps. It was beautiful, which probably meant he was in a weird mood.

My uncle was already seated when I walked in, and the food was already on a plate. Tonight’s course was roast chicken, root vegetables, and a bread still warm enough that steam was rising off the crust. He poured me water without asking, because he knew I’d drink whatever required the least decision-making or arguing.

He looked up as I entered. The shadows under his eyes were somehow deeper than they’d been at dinner yesterday or even this morning.

“You skipped lunch,” he said.

“Finn told you.”

“Your friend is worried about you.”

“Finn worries about everyone. It’s his whole personality.”

“It’s a good personality to have.” He gestured at the chair across from him. “Sit. Eat.”

I sat. I even ate because the bread was good. Not because not eating would lead to a conversation about eating, which was worse than the act of eating. Maybe. The chicken was fine, but the vegetables were a war crime, as always.

An entire institution dedicated to the mastery of magical arts, and nobody had thought to enchant the kitchen into producing food that didn’t taste like boiled cardboard. I had been working on a food conjuration spell since last year. The day I cracked it would be the day I stopped coming to meals entirely, and everyone in my life would be worse off for it, except me.

For a few minutes, we ate in silence. It wasn’t the comfortable kind. Something was off. Corwen kept glancing at the door like he was expecting someone or worried about something.

“Thane tells me you embarrassed a flagstone and a third-year in the same afternoon.”

“The flagstone was an accident. And Marsh was just a guy who picked section four, which tells you everything you need to know about his ambitions. I barely even had to try. It was great.”

“Your professors say you’re brilliant when you deign to participate.”

“Participation is overrated.”

He set down his fork. “Your father used to say that.” His voice was steady. “Before he got too tired to say much of anything.”

The room went cold. Not literally. The heating enchantments in the Spire were excellent, but something in my chest constricted and the bread in my hand stopped being interesting. He didn’t bring up my parents often. Neither of us did.

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My father had been a Yarrow, Corwen’s brother, and one of three triplets, a talented enchantment mage. He had left Restralia for Kratos after the war because he’d fallen in love with a woman who’d refused to leave her part of the country.

My mother, Pazra, had been just as stubborn and just as brilliant, and together they poured every ounce of that brilliance into the Kratosian factory system until it wrung them dry. My mother burned through her mana channels by the time I was eight. My father followed two years later.

Corwen arrived in Kratos the day after my father died. Two days too late to say goodbye and too many years too late to talk his brother out of staying.

“That’s not fair,” I said.

“No, it’s not.” He met my eyes. “But neither is watching you waste the kind of potential he would have given anything to see nurtured. Your parents worked themselves to death, Lazlo. I know that, but I also know that giving up entirely isn’t the lesson you should have learned from them.”

“How would you know what lesson they wanted? You could have saved them. You could have stopped all of it, but you were too late to do anything. Always working, just like them.”

The silence that followed was the kind that had weight to it. I regretted the words before they’d even finished leaving my mouth, but I couldn’t take them back. My uncle’s expression didn’t change.

“Yes,” he said. “I was.”