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the other neophytes mocked for wearing moth-eaten robes and living in an abandoned room on the top floor of the Academy – asked me to stay behind after the lesson. I had been the only student to fail to rust a piece of iron.
    I hunched on a bench, shivering gently and staring at the terracotta tile between my feet, tracing its faded red pattern with the toe of my boot and waiting for the humiliation to start. I waited. And when nothing happened, I looked up.
    Gerontius was leaning with his back against his desk, arms crossed, watching me. After we looked at each other a bit longer, he spoke: ‘There’s more of your mother in you than your father. But how much, I wonder?’
    My mouth fell open. No one spoke of my mother. Ever.
    â€˜Shut your mouth.’ The old man raised an eyebrow. ‘You look gormless. No child of Eleanor – or Benedict, for that matter – could be as daft as you look.’
    I shut my mouth and sat up. Part of me came alive for the first time in a year. Now that I was paying attention, I sensed what should have been obvious to me all along: Gerontius was nervous. And he didn’t like my father. When he said Benedict’s name I could feel his dislike ringing loud as the city bells.
    â€˜You’re cleverer than any of this lot, yet you don’t even try to learn. Why?’
    I felt my mouth grow thin and stubborn. It was only another lecture. All the tutors nagged and pestered and punished. None of them could make me work. I would rather die than grow up to be an adept like Benedict. I cursed the fact that I’d been born mage-kind, which I knew was madness or heresy or both. I did just enough at the Academy to keep my father from  …  No. I wouldn’t think about that. I shuddered and looked back at the tile.
    â€˜Something happened to you last year. I know what it was.’
    I didn’t dare look up. My heart began to thud. What was coming? What did this old man know about me?
    â€˜You named her Swift. It suited her at least, but you never bothered to ask her real name, did you?’
    My head jerked up. I leapt to my feet and edged backwards. But before I could get to the door it slammed shut behind me.
    â€˜No running away, Zara. Your mother wasn’t a coward.’
    It took a moment before I could find the breath to get the words out: ‘How do you know?’
    A sad smile crept over his face, faded. I felt loneliness, faint as the scent of last summer’s rosemary, waft through the room. ‘Because I loved her like a daughter,’ he said. ‘I’m betting you take after her. I could be wrong but I don’t think so. I’ve read the letter, you see. Maybe I shouldn’t have read it, but I’m gambling on you and the odds are stacked against me. As they were against her.’
    Letter?
The other students were right: the old man was mad. But mad or not, he had loved my mother – there was no mistaking his emotion. Even so, I would be a fool to trust him; to ask the questions teeming in my head. But the temptation was too much.
    â€˜Who are you talking about? My mother, or Swift?’
    â€˜Both of them.’ He smiled again at the confusion in my face. ‘Your mother was the best student I ever taught. Including Benedict, rot his soul. I never understood why she slept with him. But Nature makes fools of us all when we’re young. It’s been a long time since I’ve had to worry about that, thank the gods.’
    Gerontius rubbed his nose. ‘Eleanor was a heretic, Zara. Your mother believed kine are human, just like us. Shocking, isn’t it?’
    He watched me, his broad, red-veined face with its tiny, shrewd eyes as bland as if he was discussing how to pull water from air and use it to dissolve iron. I was terrified. Was this a trap? Was it my father, being clever and evil? Or was this man a miracle?
    The old man’s eyes narrowed. I was too stunned to control my face. If