Artisan's Labyrinth

On the thirty-first day after the dust of the Great Reckoning settled, the Tower Master's office in the Crystal Spire welcomed four Archwizards.

That number, when Antico thought back on it later, struck him as rather interesting.

Thirty-one was neither a round number nor some especially auspicious one.

It was an ordinary number of days, the kind no one would deliberately remember.

Yet it had happened on that day, not the day before or the day after.

It was as if something had been quietly accumulating in an unseen riverbed, and on that day, the water level had just happened to rise over that threshold.

Ron was the first to arrive.

Salamander came about a quarter of an hour later, dragging his feet as he walked in, his cuffs still stained with the scorch marks of something or other. Who knew what he had run into on the way?

The moment he entered, he clapped one big hand on Ron's shoulder.

Then he dropped heavily into the widest chair with a clang, and the chair legs let out a low groan of misery.

When Vinard walked in, he had a thick booklet tucked at his side, and he still had not put it down before entering.

He nodded to Antico in greeting, his gaze instinctively sweeping over the furnishings in the room.

Chloe was the last to come in.

The black silk had not been tied back again, and her gray eyes looked almost translucent in the indoor light.

Seeing that everyone had arrived, Antico did not immediately speak.

With a beckon, Lady Mercury carried a tray among them and refilled everyone's tea.

Only after all that had been settled did he sit back in his own seat and look at the others.

"Before we discuss the Artisan's Labyrinth, there