Archive of Our Own

“We shouldn’t be up here,” Neal muttered, clambering after his brothers as they climbed into the attic. Jessa was behind him, determined to keep up with her older brothers even if she was all of seven years old, especially because this was the first year that she was alone at home. “We can find half a dozen other places to go—”

“In this snowstorm?” Graeme shook his head. “Name one, little brother.”

“Uh—” Neal racked his brain. Their bedrooms were out, magically expanded house or not, and the basement, such as there was one, was absolutely freezing. “Well, it isn’t like Mama isn’t busy with dinner…”

“I don’t want another lecture on how I’m letting my Mandarin slip,” Graeme hissed in that same language, and Neal grimaced. From the awkward way the sentence was formed, it was slipping. 

“I’d also like to avoid another round of practice,” Will grumbled from the attic. He’d had a rough time during morning practice—indeed, only Neal had scraped through without any criticisms after three and a half months at boarding school. 

Neal sighed, recognizing a lost cause when he saw one, and reached down a hand to help Jessa into the attic.

It was more cramped than he remembered, the last time they’d come up here to hide. The ceiling was low, bare beams exposed over their heads, and only Jessa could stand. He and his brothers had to crouch, and Will, who had shot up like a tree over the last year, simply gave up and crawled. The dusty boxes that filled the room didn’t help, and making the whole space feel much closer and smaller than it was.

Graeme poked into the nearest box. “Old textbooks,” he said with a sigh, pushing them casually out of the way. “Papa’s, it looks like—from his Healing residency, I think—”

“I want to see!” Neal interrupted, making for the same box. He’d started in the Healing program at AIM, just like Papa, and there had to be something useful for him. 

“Nerd,” Graeme muttered, as Neal started pulling out books. An English-French medical dictionary, that would come in useful, a No-Maj anatomy textbook, six out-of-date editions of textbooks that Neal would have in his upcoming years… and a package of letters tied together with a ribbon.

Neal pulled them out, spreading them across the floor curiously. They came in two different types—one set was white, and had obviously travelled by No-Maj means, while the others were magical. The magical ones were in red, the paper higher quality, and they were much thicker.  

“They’re letters from Mama to Papa,” Will hissed, picking out the addresses first. “We should put them back—they’re private!”

“Probably…” Graeme agreed, but he was frowning and poking at the pile of magical letters with a finger. “These are spelled, though, I think? My magic’s reacting to it.”

“So… they’re not letters?” Jessa asked, picking one up and opening it. She skimmed the first few lines and grimaced. “Gross.”

Graeme grabbed the letter from her, looking over it himself before he mimed gagging. “The text of the letter—it’s over the top, even for Mama and Papa. But the text… my magic keeps shimmering over it.”

“So cast Revelio?” Neal suggested.

“How about we don’t?” Will countered. “These are Mama’s and Papa’s—they’re private. Can we not?”

Graeme didn’t listen, in favour of pulling out his wand and casting the spell. Nothing moved on the page, which, now that Graeme had pointed it out, did seem a little odd. It was just around the words, the slightest hint that something was there, but he didn’t know what to do about it. Graeme tried a few other spells, to no avail.

“It’s tied to your father’s signature,” a voice came from the door as Mama heaved herself up into the attic. Graeme dropped the letter like it was a hot potato, scrambling backwards, but Mama only picked it up with a soft, nostalgic look on her face. “Not his magical signature—too easy to break, even then—but a combination of both his magical and biological signature. Your signatures are close enough to see the spell, but no one else would be. I hadn’t realized he’d kept them.”

“It’s Papa!” Neal said, leaning forward and somehow eager to defend his father. “Of course, he kept them.”

“I’m not surprised that he did, but I hadn’t realized,” Mama replied, gathering the rest of the letters and the ribbon that had held them together. Her hands moved over the words, almost reminiscing. 

“Um—” Graeme cleared his throat awkwardly. “Can we ask—why were they spelled, Mama? They were just—just love letters, right?”

“They were.” Mama smiled, looking around to each of them. Neal and Graeme had been kneeling over the letters, Jessa squatting beside them, and Will sitting with his legs crossed on the floor across from them. “They were love letters, and they were so much more than love letters too. It was a complicated time, my darlings—a complicated and difficult time.”

They didn’t answer. Judging from a look around at his siblings, they were all curious. Only Jessa looked it, because Graeme was too cool for it now at fifteen and Will was by personality reserved. Still, their silence was telling enough.

Mama saw it too, because she tucked the letters, wrapped back in their ribbon, on her lap. “Make yourselves comfortable,” she said softly, “and I’ll tell you.”

Neal exchanged a look with his siblings, and they all sat. Mom looked around to each of them, and then down at the letters in her lap. 

“The year was 1967.”

The deck of the sea hawk was icy, and Meiling suppressed a shiver. No one else was shivering, but then again, they were the chosen representatives of the National Magic School of China. None of them would dare show any sign of weakness. Indeed, that was exactly why they had been chosen.

One would think that, in the last millennium, someone would have seen the sense in making cover on the ship. Someone had brilliantly come up with the spells for the boats to fly, but their ancestors forbid that they do anything about comfort other than the basic weather shielding spells that kept them all from dying. 

She supposed they should all simply be thankful that they had been allowed to sleep belowdecks, out of the wind and damp, even if they were training on deck all morning. 

“The American Institute of Magic is a new school,” Zhang-laoshi was droning on, and the slight curve of his lip showed what he thought of that. “It was opened less than twenty years ago, when the Americans realized that they did not have enough space at their school for their students. Make no mistake—this is not Magical China. The shenren ( 神人 ) here do not avoid the fanren (凡人), but rather are seeking greater integration.”

There was a rustle among her teammates—Ruofeng beside her, from an old paper-caster family, raised a hand.

“But why?” he asked, his tone infused with disgust. “The fanren—they cause only war and strife and endless trouble. It is in their name.”

He was making a play on words, fan (煩) as in useless, inconvenient, and troublesome rather than simply mundane and unmagical. It wasn’t the first time that Meiling had heard the pun, and she doubted it would be the last. 

Zhang-laoshi shot Jiawei an unimpressed look. “Because they are Americans,” he replied, “and Americans are nothing if not foolhardy. Which brings me back to the point of this lecture, which is that despite your personal feelings and misgivings, you are representatives of Magical China. You represent our honour, our status, and our standing; of course, you are superior. However, your superiority should be shown through our victory in these games, and our victory alone. To your fellow students, you should show nothing but politeness. Our superiority is a given truth, and it is a fact that is, not a fact that need be proven.”

Meiling huffed a little. Part of Magical China she might be, but she was from Singapore, and the Singaporean clans had stood apart from the rest of China for many years. They were too ensconced in trade, too surrounded by the rest of the world. Singapore was a small island, and one where the magical side had no consistent rule—instead, the Indian, Malay and Chinese magical communities were generally looked out for themselves, answering primarily to their ethnic communities where needed. Meiling, as an ethnic Chinese heirloom-caster and Clan, went to NMSC, while the Indian and Malay magicians she met in the streets of Singapore went to their own schools in India and on the Malay Peninsula respectively.

There was no magical space in Singapore. Magical spaces required upkeep, and there was no magical government in Singapore to enforce any kind of maintenance. Instead, magical shops were clustered on the same streets as non-magical ones, and indeed sometimes even in the same spaces. A passcode, a question to someone wearing the right pin on their shirt, dress, or headscarf, and they’d gesture to a backroom where the magical goods were sold separate from the non-magical ones.

Her friend Yifei, a paper-caster from Hong Kong, was raising her hand. “What if we’re asked about the—the unrest? ” she asked, phrasing her question very carefully. They weren’t supposed to know about the unrest—and many of their classmates didn’t, depending on how long it had been since they had stepped out of the magical world. For those that did, however…

It was hard to miss the Red Guards marching in the streets, harder still to miss the denunciations that happened in the public squares. Government officials, teachers, scholars, anyone who disagreed with the amorphous, shifting ideals of the non-magical state—they were being rounded up and killed. The news reports said otherwise, sometimes, but Meiling heard the truth on the streets. 

“There is no unrest,” Zhang-laoshi said, his mouth fixed in a harsh frown. “Any unrest belongs to the fanren, and this is their issue. Magical China has existed in one unbroken line for more than five thousand years and will continue to exist for thousands more. There is no unrest in our country.”

“Understood,” Yifei replied, sitting down gracefully, and folding her hands on her lap. “There is no unrest in our country.”

Only Meiling could tell from the bland way that her friend had said the words that she didn’t believe it. It was hard to believe, not for anyone who spent any time in the non-magical world at all. They knew what was happening, and while their country seemed determined to ignore it, the revolutionary fervour that had swept across China was overwhelming. It was hard not to think they wouldn’t be engulfed, eventually.

“That is correct.” Zhang-laoshi said fiercely, as if sensing their disbelief, but he turned back to the wider group. There was Meiling, Jiawei, and Yuhui on the main team, with Yifei as their team Healer and Ruofeng as their team manager. “Behave in such a way that brings pride to yourself, your Clans, and to Magical China. Be aware of where we are, but more importantly of who you are, and of your standing in the world. Do not disappoint us.”

“Yes, sir,” Meiling murmured along with her teammates, recognizing the end of the lecture, and they were all thankfully sent below deck for lunch.

The first thing Meiling thought when she stepped foot on the campus for the American Institute of Magic was that everything was so green. 

Rolling lawns stretched in every direction from where they had landed—green, without upturned clods of soil, without burns or skid marks or anything marring it at all. Green, where it was impossible that thousands of students stood together in the morning for training. Green, which felt odd, which felt like peace, to which Meiling was not accustomed.

The National Magic School of China—only a half-century ago the Imperial Magic School of China—was brown, red-brown like the dirt, like the bare stone mountains that surrounded them, like the dust that they kicked up at morning and evening training. Their buildings were weathered brown wood, reinforced over centuries with magic, and even the parts of the grounds that weren’t dirt were paved in red-brown stone. 

Nearby, Meiling could see the cluster of buildings that made up AIM. There were fewer of them than she’d expected, but then, AIM was much smaller than NMSC. Her own school provided schooling for all ethnic Chinese, whether they lived on the mainland, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, or any of the other numerous huaqiao communities. Anyone magical of ethnic Chinese descent was entitled to school there, and while there were some that didn’t, they were few indeed. That meant that NMSC was closer to a small city than a school, with students numbering in the tens of thousands rather than a mere thousand or two.

“Welcome to AIM!” A voice called out—a young voice. A young man around their age, with dark skin and hair, was hurrying towards them, a green wizarding robe worn over a regular, non-magical school uniform. Meiling had seen similar uniforms on the non-magical students in Singapore. Beside her, Ruofeng shifted uncomfortably in his yuanlingpao, the formal uniform of the paper-casting houses. Meiling, in her heirloom caster’s feiyufu, was far more comfortable. “You must be the team from the National Magic School of China!”

Meiling exchanged a look with Yifei. Of their delegation, the two of them were most comfortable in English, which was spoken on the streets of both Singapore and Hong Kong, but it would be improper for either of them to step forward and speak for the group. On the other hand, Zhang-laoshi was standing with them and hadn’t responded, and a glance at his face suggested that he was somewhat horrified to be greeted with a student instead of a fellow teacher, at least, if not the Headmaster.

“Yes, that is correct,” Meiling said quickly, stepping forward in decision. “My name is Song Meiling—with me are my teammates, Wang Jiawei and Huang Yuhui, as well as our team Healer, Li Yifei, and our team manager, Liu Ruofeng. Our teacher is Zhang-laoshi . We are very pleased to meet you.”

“Matthias King,” the young man replied, holding his hand out to shake. “Very pleased to meet you. I am sure you’ve had a very long journey to come here, so allow me to guide you to your residence while you are here—you will be in one of our new townhouses, which we hope is comfortable and to your liking. The Welcome Banquet is at eight tonight, in our main dining room. Until then, you can take your ease. I’d be happy to give you a tour, or…”

Meiling knew, without having to look at her teammates, that none of them were interested in a tour of the grounds. Or rather—she and Yifei might have been, if they weren’t so tired, but the others had no interest in any sort of cultural exchange. 

“I think that now we are tired,” Meiling said, bowing slightly out of habit. “But perhaps some of us shall join you tomorrow.”

“Very well.” Matthias smiled, a flash of white against his dark skin. “I will simply show you to your townhouse then, and be back to guide you to the main dining room shortly before eight, then.”

“Thank you.” 

The townhouse he showed them to was obviously new, possibly even built within the last year. Each of them had their own bedrooms, tiny as they were, as well as a central common area with the barest set-up for a kitchen.  Clearly, the general thinking was that students were to take their meals in the dining room. 

The beds were far softer than Meiling was accustomed to, the blankets both thicker and softer though AIM was further south and warmer than her own school. She would have luxuriated in her room, in the rare moment of privacy that was even rarer when she was at school, but there was no chance of that.

“Zhang-laoshi wants us in the common room to discuss the training schedules,” Yifei said, standing in the doorway, sounding apologetic. 

Meiling rolled her eyes. “We haven’t gone through them enough times on the ship? We train every morning for two hours, then another two in the afternoon, and there will be no change at AIM. We do need to prepare for the banquet, don’t we?”

“Apparently not.” Yifei smiled. “Our ancestors forbid that we look anything but our best, but no, we do not need hours to prepare.”

Meiling sighed. “No. Of course not.”

The American Institute of Magic had gone to some lengths to decorate their main dining room. White tablecloths covered all the tables, and there were covers on all the chairs as well. Each table had a centrepiece and a sign with the name of a school, which shot high sparks in their school colours. More sparks lit the rest of the room, magical garlands and fairy lights, but nothing could hide the fact that this was a school dining room. 

The walls and floor were wooden, and while they were in good condition, no one would call them fine. In Singapore, her nainai would have sniffed and called it second-rate, good enough for the family on a regular occasion but certainly not when they were aiming to impress. 

Their table was small—other tables were larger, to accommodate bigger teams. The regulations permitted the use of strategists, anywhere from one to three of them, whose sole role was to develop and provide an overarching strategy for their players, but they were not mandatory. NMSC had not included any, the thinking being that Ruofeng as team manager would provide any strategy needed, while the players would follow his orders. 

In game, much as in life, Meiling couldn’t help reflecting. Heirloom-caster Houses provided the soldiers, while paper-caster houses provided the scholars. It was not, and had never been, an easy balance.

“I sincerely hope we will not be poisoned,” Yuhui remarked under his breath, looking around. Knowing him as well as she did, Meiling could see that he was suspicious, but any other onlookers who didn’t speak Mandarin would read his expression as polite interest. Of them all, only Yifei looked genuinely interested—well, Yifei and Meiling herself.

NMSC was not the first team into the banquet, and most of the other tables were already filled with chattering students. She could hear English everywhere—they were in America, she supposed—but some half the tables were babbling in English. There was a loud table in what Meiling thought was Hindi, from one of the schools in India, and she also thought she could hear Arabic from another table. Students were moving from table to table, especially among the English-speaking tables, but she couldn’t identify most of them.

“Welcome, welcome!” A tall, Black witch with her hair tied in a beautiful orange wrap stood at a podium that had appeared at the front of the room. There was no table at the head of the room. “Welcome to the American Institute of Magic and to the opening of the 1967 Triwizard Tournament. I am Headmistress Geraldine Baker, and we are very pleased to have you here. We hope you are all settling in…”

Meiling could tell that, apart from herself and Yifei, the rest of her team wasn’t listening. To be fair, she didn’t think most of them could understand it; in theory, only students who spoke English had qualified for a position on the NMSC team, but the definition NMSC applied for students who “spoke English” had been a decidedly low bar. She had never heard her teammates speaking English at all, while she and Yifei sometimes used the language to speak of things which were… probably not appropriate for anyone from the central heartland to overhear. 

It didn’t matter. Most of the rest of the speech was routine information that they all knew from the schedules that had been sent to each school weeks ago. This was a straightforward tournament, if larger than most of the previous ones—a grand total of thirty-two schools, but it was a straight elimination ladder. Once disqualified, the schools and their representatives were invited to remain to the conclusion, but it was not required. They would begin playing a week hence, with the round of sixteen covering the first two weeks, then the round of eight over the next, the quarterfinals the week after that, and the semi-finals and finals over only the last two weekends. The whole tournament would last six weeks, where students from all schools were invited to participate, as they pleased, in AIM student and academic life.

“And with that, I do hear some rumbling tummies,” the Headmistress paused, smiling, for a pre-emptive round of cheers that stemmed primarily from one large table near Meiling’s, “and so, please—in order of table number, you may proceed to the buffet!”

The round of cheers at the table beside hers turned into a round of heavy sighs, and Meiling realized that her own table was towards the end. She was not the only one who realized so.

“They could at least have had the guests going first,” Ruofeng was muttering. 

“There are thirty-two schools,” Jiawei pointed out, gesturing to the raucous table beside theirs. “Indeed, I do think the guests are going first—the last table is AIM, if I make out the signage correctly. We simply have the poor luck to be last of the guests.”

Ruofeng snorted, looking away. 

“Perhaps it is an honour,” Yifei added blandly. “Perhaps they have put the schools they consider to be strongest last.”

“It does not matter,” Yuhui said, with a shake of his head. “At least if the food is poisoned, we’ll know long before we take a bite.”

Ruofeng laughed, bright and sharp, and Meiling let out the breath she hadn’t even realized she was holding. 

When it was their turn, nearly a half-hour later, Meiling stood in line behind the others. There was rice here, but it was a rice she didn’t recognize, deep red and studded with tomatoes, peppers, sausage and shrimp. There were also salads, several kinds (though not the papaya or mango salads that she was most used to), and heaping piles of barbequed meats. There were ribs, both pork and beef, as well as chicken, and there were platters of bread, potatoes, corn, carrots, and dozens of things that she didn’t recognize.

She was pulling on something labelled pulled pork onto her plate with a pair of tongs when someone bumped into her from behind. Her tongs slipped, and despite her best efforts at catching it, the meat went—well, not on the floor.

Onto the very well-dressed young man behind her, who managed to catch the tongs. 

“I’m so—” Meiling began.

“Sorry,” the young man answered, and Meiling sucked in a breath.

He was tall—even for an American, he was tall. He had a long, pointed nose, light brown hair swept back in a widow’s peak, and the brightest green eyes that Meiling had ever seen. Not that she had seen many, but it was impossible that there could exist brighter eyes than those, she would swear it by her ancestors. For a second, it seemed as though he was equally flabbergasted as her, but he gathered himself faster than she did.

“It is my fault, all mine,” he said, pulling out a wand to wipe the sauce from his suit jacket, and Meiling marvelled at the fact that he knew a cleaning spell. And not just a cleaning spell, but a good cleaning spell. 

“No, not at all, I ought to have been—been more careful,” Meiling stuttered out. “Song Meiling. Er—Meiling Song, I mean. Call me Meiling. I am a player with the National Magic School of China.”

“Meiling.” The man said softly, as if he were sounding out her name for himself, and Meiling realized he wasn’t speaking with the same accent as the Headmistress had spoken, that his English had sounds to it that she didn’t think were standard. In English, Meiling spoke with something of a British accent, the product of years of colonialization and the choices of the non-magical Singaporean government, but his accent wasn’t British either. “Baird Queenscove. I’m the Healer for the American Institute of Magic team.”

“It’s, er—” Meiling cleared her throat. “It’s very nice to meet you.”

“I—I agree,” Baird replied.

She didn’t know what to say next, and neither did Baird, it seemed. Instead, both of them stood and stared at each other, until whoever it was behind Baird cleared his throat. 

“Do you mind, Baird?” he asked, prodding Baird. “Yes, she’s very pretty—but can you take your staring and awkward flirting out of the buffet line?”

Meiling flushed, and so did Baird, and both of them hurried down the line without looking at each other again.

Still, she felt the brush of his arm against hers as they reached for the food, and the light flap of his suit jacket against her back as he went back to his own table.

She watched him all dinner. 

It wasn’t all the time. She could hardly watch him all the time, not with the conversation floating around the table. Ruofeng was unimpressed with the dinner—then again, he was unimpressed with everything—and Yuhui was his sycophant, but she thought the food was delicious. Different than what she was used to, sitting heavily in her stomach, but still delicious. Yifei didn’t comment, but kept returning to the shrimp-studded rice, while Jiawei ate what seemed like his weight in barbequed meats. 

Baird was seated at the raucous AIM table, on the other side of it and in a corner, almost hidden from Meiling’s view by his teammates. He was quiet—while the people around him chattered, he listened and nodded and only offered comments from time to time. He seemed distracted, and once she caught his eyes on hers, and he shot her a bit of an embarrassed grin.

She blushed and looked back at her table.

“He is handsome,” Yifei murmured to her. “If you like that sort of thing.”

Meiling didn’t answer.

“He’s not Chinese,” Ruofeng interrupted brusquely, frowning at her in disapproval. “Whoever he is. He’s an opponent, and we are here to demonstrate our superiority and win. We are not here to make friends. Do not forget that, and do not be distracted. You are better than that.”

“It’s nothing.” Meiling forced a laugh. “I suppose I was—I was just impressed that he knew such a good cleaning spell. For when I spilled the pork on him, I mean.”

Ruofeng looked skeptical, but he turned to Yuhui and let it go.

Whatever she had said to Ruofeng, it didn’t stop her from seeking Baird out after dinner. This was time that they were meant to mingle with the other competitors—in theory, they were to make friends, and Meiling even thought some of the schools were genuinely doing so, but not hers. Ruofeng and Yuhui stayed at their own table, while she and Yifei took the opportunity to distance themselves and Jiawei followed them like a lost bird. There was music, and snacks had been laid out where the buffet had been.

Baird was standing in a group of friends, all men with at least half a foot on her. 

“Good luck,” Yifei whispered, smacking her on the arm, and pulled Jiawei with her to another group of English-speaking students. Not Americans, Meiling didn’t think, but she didn’t pay attention.

Instead, she hovered, not knowing how to break into this circle. Was she supposed to just… walk up and join them? Should she wait for a good opportunity, but then, what did a good opportunity even look like? Should she maybe… apologize again for bumping into him? But it looked like he’d taken care of any hint of a stain on his clothing, and she didn’t think that would be anything except a transparent excuse to interrupt his conversation.

One of his friends, the one who was behind them in line at the buffet, spotted her. He nudged Baird and gestured towards her. He looked over at her and smiled—a smile that lit up his green eyes. 

“Excuse me,” she heard him say to his friends, and then he came over to her. “Meiling, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Meiling replied, more than a little tongue-tied. She spoke better English than this, she really did. “And it’s Baird, right? The name is unusual, isn’t it?”

“It’s an old family name,” Baird said. “It means poet, or bard. And Meiling…?”

“Er—the characters are 美,as in beautiful, and 靈, as in clever.” She paused. “It’s—it’s a play on a common girl’s name.”

“It’s perfect for you.” Baird cleared his throat. Perhaps he was as tongue-tied as her. “Your English is very good.”

She laughed. “I should hope so—I’m from Singapore. It was a British colony, on the non-magical side. English is very nearly my first language.”

“Right.” Baird smiled, embarrassed. “I’m sorry, I really didn’t mean… well, would you like to dance?”

Meiling had no idea how to dance, but it couldn’t be that different from footwork drills. “Yes—yes, I would.”

It became patently obviously shortly thereafter that Meiling did not know how to dance, but Baird laughed it off. She learned that he was a seventh year, and that contrary to what she had first believed, he was Canadian—his mother was French-speaking and French was his first language, but his father’s family had a long lineage in England that he considered an odd historical fact. It was because of his father that he had come to AIM, partly for the already well-known Healing program and partly because his father had wanted him to speak better English.

That was refreshing—in China, lineage was everything. Clan identity, Clan connections defined who they were meant to be. Meiling was a Song of the Singaporean Clan Song, and they could trace their roots back four hundred years on the island. She could go longer, if she needed to—the Imperial Records would be able to trace it even further, almost to the emergence of magic itself. As a member of the Singaporean Clan Song, Meiling was an heirloom-caster; as a member of the Singaporean Clan Song, Meiling would be a soldier.

Baird Queenscove had come from a name and family that could trace itself more than a thousand years in history, a noble warrior family, and Baird Queenscove didn’t care about that at all.

“Are you seeing him again?” Yifei asked, perched on Meiling’s bed after having warded the room to keep out eavesdroppers. It was after their formal lights-out, but in a new place and with so many places of privacy, it was just nearly as hard to enforce here as it was at NMSC for all that there were fewer of them. “He seemed nice.”

“He is nice.” Meiling giggled softly. “Too nice for his own good, I think. Very gentle in nature.”

“So…?”

“Yes, I am seeing him again. We’re… after classes and the end of our practices tomorrow,” Meiling admitted. “I’m going to meet him in the main library. I can tell Zhang-laoshi that I am keeping up on my studies, he isn’t an instructor for the heirloom-casting house.” 

“Careful with that.” Yifei shook her head. “Even if he isn’t, he may suspect.”

“Not fast enough, I don’t think—and if we win our games, I don’t think he will care very much.”

“Maybe.” Yifei leaned back against the wall, her nightdress fluttering around her. “For your sake, my friend, I hope so.”

“Thank you.” Meiling reached out to touch Yifei on the arm. At AIM, she and Yifei had not typically run in the same circles—she was an heirloom-caster, always kept running from magical defence classes to physical training, while Yifei was buried in books. They’d known of each other, those not from the Mainland typically did, but not well until their team selection. “You are a good friend, Yifei.”

“Hah.” Yifei grinned, her dark eyes dancing. “I will capitalize on your goodwill in the future, Meiling. Have no doubt about that. We are free for the next few weeks, so see your Baird while you can."

Meiling did. A study date in the main library, then another one a day after that when Yifei came along to provide her with a cover story. Later that week, they slipped off on a walk of the woods, carefully avoiding the townhouses where Meiling knew that Ruofeng and Yuhui would be spending their time. She would have liked to go off campus, see more of America, but like at NMSC there was no chance of that.

“It’s a… tense political situation here,” Baird had explained regretfully. “If we were at home in Montreal, it would be a very different matter—in Canada, the wizarding community is so small that we largely live with and alongside No-Majs. However, because of the history of racial segregation in the No-Maj community here, we aren’t allowed off campus because of possible violence.”

“The… racial segregation?” Meiling asked. American politics were not her strong suit.

“There is a long history of slavery in the American South,” Baird explained quietly. “Black witches and wizards often escaped and brought their families and some lucky few with them to their own warded towns. They’ve always been apart. Even after the end of slavery, there are problems, and there are risks if we travel off campus.”

“I understand,” Meiling said with a sigh. “In Singapore, we live in the non-magical world as well. We dress the same, walk the same streets, and buy our supplies from the same shops. Magical stores are hidden within non-magical ones. But in China, with the civil war, with the Land Reform Movement and so many things, Magical China is separate now. Most of my classmates have never stepped for in the non-magical world.”

“What is that like?” Baird asked curiously. “The cultural divide…”

“The cultural divide is huge.” Meiling smiled and plucked at her feiyufu. “To begin, our school uniforms would get us laughed out of the street at home.”

That weekend, Meiling won the first Triwizard Tournament game for NMSC against the Cascadian School of Magecraft. They were one of the weaker teams, a school even newer than the AIM, and so it was expected.

Meiling had worried that, having seen her in action, Baird would back away. Many men did, not just here but at home too. She was an heirloom-caster, set on the soldier’s path from the day she was born, but she was also a woman, and women were supposed to be ladylike. Even in the magical context, among heirloom casters where women were the guardians of the line, there was such a thing as being too strong for a woman and Meiling had always been that.

She was powerful. She had inherited tight precision and control over her fire, and she was fast and athletic. Few even at NMSC were faster than her, and it was her and Jiawei, their team fighters, who had put the Cascadian team into the dirt in less than thirty minutes.

Baird still slipped her an invitation for a picnic that evening at dinner.

“Why would it bother me?” he said, after prodding at Meiling enough for her to explain her unusual quietness. “I am not a fighter.”

“I mean…” Meiling chewed on her sandwich. “Don’t men care about that? About being… I don’t know. Stronger and more powerful?”

“Maybe some men do,” Baird allowed after a moment’s thought. “But I think there are different kinds of strength. Magical strength and the ability to fight are one, but they aren’t the only ones. Only the easiest ones to measure and compare, I think.”

Meiling made a soft noise, something between surprise and agreement, and took another bite of her sandwich.

The weekend after that was Uagadou—three Animagi came at them, but it was only the smallest, a bird, that posed them any trouble. The panther and the hyena were too large and, while excellent fighting forms, did not hold up to magic. The bird, however, slipped through their defences and had almost found their keystone before Yuhui tracked it and froze it in its tracks with a detailed paper charm.

“That was closer than it ought to have been,” Zhang-laoshi scolded them that night, the five of them in the common room where Meiling and Jiawei in particular were facing his fury. “Song, Wang—where were your heads? Wang, Song could have handled the big animals on her own, and your target ought to have been the bird from the beginning—”

“I understand, sir,” Jiawei said, his eyes downcast, and none of them said that Ruofeng’s instructions in the arena had been quite different. “It will not happen again, laoshi.”

“It had better not, or you will bring shame on your country.” Zhang-laoshi turned on Meiling, his fury still palpable. “As for you, you had better not think I missed your carrying on with the baigui. He is a distraction—you ought not, and you are his better.”

“I was not distracted, laoshi,” Meiling replied, suppressing a gulp. “We will not come close to losing again.”

“See that it does not,” Zhang-laoshi snapped. “But you are not nearly as secret as you think you are. I caution you to think of your own prospects, Song—your teammates certainly are aware, and with them are their clans, and I will leave it to your family to deal with your indiscretions.”

“Sir,” Meiling acknowledged, though her own internal calculations were not so terrible. Her family was Singaporean, and while traditional in some respects, was liberal in others, and she didn’t think either Yifei or Jiawei cared enough to bring it back to their Clans. Ruofeng and Yuhui were a different story, but they were from Beijing and Xi’an, the Chinese heartland, areas in which her own clan had and wanted few connections. She was Chinese by heritage and ethnicity, but she lived in Singapore, and these lines mattered even if Magical China decreed that they did not.

“Dismissed,” Zhang-laoshi said finally, scowling, and they scattered to the winds.

She didn’t say anything about it when she met with Baird next. What was the point? How did one describe an entire culture to a Westerner? And anyway, it wouldn’t make a difference—Meiling wasn’t going to stop seeing him, no matter what Zhang-laoshi said. 

Baird was kind. He was kind, and he was gentle, and he radiated a quiet confidence that drew Meiling like a moth to a flame. 

“What’s wrong?” he asked, after a half-hour of cookies and tea that Baird had picked up from the dining hall. “You’re unusually quiet.”

“It’s nothing,” Meiling replied automatically. “Nothing at all.”

Baird raised an eyebrow. “Protesting a little much, aren’t you?” 

“I’m sorry?”

“It’s Shakespeare.” Baird smiled softly, reaching out to touch her arm. His hand was broad and warm, and uncalloused. “Or I think it is—I am not entirely sure. It means that you’re protesting too much for there not to be a grain of truth, or that something is bothering you.”

Meiling shrugged. “It’s really… Magical Chinese politics, and all. My teacher has noticed that we have become close.”

“Is that a problem?”

“No.” Meiling hesitated. “Yes.” 

“Which is it?”

“It’s not a problem for me, or for—for Yifei or Jiawei.” Meiling paused to think, to try to work out how to explain. “Yifei is a paper-caster, but she’s from Hong Kong, which is outside the Chinese heartland, so she and I, we have more in common than we do with those from the heartland. We are both—we have grown up in international cities, ones which are so old and so crowded that there is no exclusive magical enclave. Which means, really, that our Clans are… we are more familiar with the outside world than those from the heartland. Our families have—not often, but have—married outside magical Chinese society.”

“Married?” Baird smiled again, this time with a hint of humour.

Meiling flushed. “No, not that—I didn’t mean—marriages are mostly arranged for us, so all I meant was that the fact that you are not Chinese is not a problem for me, or Yifei—”

“Don’t worry about it.” Baird touched her shoulder. “Go on.”

“Jiawei is from Shanghai, another large international city, and though he is from a magical enclave, he is an heirloom-caster. Like me.” Meiling hesitated. “Chinese magic has two major forms: paper-casting and heirloom-casting. Paper magic is slow, methodical, but is capable of far more advanced spells than heirloom magic. Heirloom magic is fast and aggressive, most suited for fighting. Heirloom-casters are trained to be Aurors, military—paper-casters are for everything else. We are born into our magic styles, one must be born into an heirloom-casting clan to be granted a magical heirloom, while everyone else uses paper magic. Er…”

“There’s a class divide?” Baird offered.

“Yes.” Meiling smiled gratefully. “Paper-casters run the government. Heirloom-casters run the military. We are supposed to balance, and there were times in centuries past when we did. But that is—now, I wonder. In any case, Jiawei and I are both heirloom-casters, and he has more loyalty to me than he does to any paper-caster or their Clans. He trusts me to know what I’m doing. The others… well, they disapprove. That is all.”

“Is that all?”

Meiling was silent for a few minutes. That was everything in a nutshell, but it also wasn’t, because if it was, it wouldn’t bother her. The facts of magical Chinese society were just that, they were immutable by people like her. 

“They think that you are distracting me from winning,” she said finally. “Not Yifei and Jiawei, but the others. That is not true, and winning—winning is everything.”

“Hmm.” Baird’s tone was quiet, non-committal.

“What is it?”

Baird didn’t answer for awhile, not until Meiling poked him in the side. It still took him another few, long moments to answer.

“I’m not so foolish that I don’t understand the politics of the tournament,” Baird said quietly. “I know that the politicians see this as an opportunity to advance their national agendas, prove their superiority. I can see that this means much to Magical China, and I worry—I worry what happens to you if you don’t succeed.”

Meiling shrugged. She tried not to think too much about it. She’d be shamed if she didn’t win—she’d probably receive a less than ideal posting as an Auror if she didn’t win. If she did, she’d get praised for it, but that was all. Winning was the expectation. 

“We’re children, Meiling.” Baird’s voice was hard. “This is a game. This should be nothing more than a game. We shouldn’t be—be tools for politicians. It shouldn’t matter whether we win or lose, and the results of this shouldn’t weigh on our futures. The result of this shouldn’t weigh on your future.”

“It’s not—” Meiling started, but she cut herself off when Baird shot her a knowing look. Instead, she looked away, across the grounds back at AIM. It was a beautiful school.

“You don’t have to respond,” she heard Baird say. “It is what it is. Even if we weren’t underage, we’re just two people—or just one person—against an institution. There’s little we can do about it—other than, perhaps, rebel ourselves.”

“Rebel?” Meiling looked over at him, smiling slightly. She couldn’t see Baird ever being rebellious. He was a Healer—he was a Healer because he was caring, and he was kind, and he enjoyed helping people. She’d never seen anyone less like a rebel. “You?”

Baird laughed, a low chuckle that warmed her chest and made her knees a little wobbly. “I see the humour,” he said. “I just mean—our options are limited other than what we, as individual people, choose to do. That’s all. In any case, we are running against the dinner hour—shall I walk you to the dining room?”

“I’d—I’d like that,” Meiling said, after a moment. It wouldn’t be very wise to risk Ruofeng or Yuhui seeing him, least of all Zhang-laoshi , but at this exact moment she couldn’t bring herself to care. They were already almost at the third game in the series, her time in AIM nearly half over, and she wanted to spend what time with Baird she could. All the time she could get, for the time remaining.

On the way there, Baird offered her his hand. She took it.

Castelbruxo fell to them that following weekend. They were easier, in truth, than the Uagadou game—their training was primarily wand magic, though the players were unusually fast and strong. She suspected that they were taking stimulants, but whatever it was, it was no match for her fire.

That night, Zhang-laoshi looked at her askance, no doubt knowing that she hadn’t broken anything off with Baird, and Ruofeng and Yuhui sniggered when they saw her with Baird. They called him her huaping, her flower vase, because he was so soft compared to her. They found it amusing—they thought he was amusing—but he was also inconsequential other than his effect on her. And they’d won, so there was little they could say to her when she’d brought them victory.

Her time at AIM was half over—there was only the semi-finals, and if they won, the finals. Both AIM and NMSC were still in the games, along with Mahoutokoro and Ilvermorny, and about half of the other schools had stayed on campus even after losing. Most of them were English-speaking schools, closely allied with Ilvermorny and AIM, and most of them had reason to stay on at AIM to make connections. 

Meiling had no doubt that if they lost, they’d be shipped back to NMSC on the Sea Hawk with no further ado. No reason to stay and witness the finals, not when they could be scolded at NMSC surrounded by their peers. It was all the more reason for her to win—or at least for her spend as much time with Baird as possible before she had to leave.

Two weeks. A little over two weeks, and she felt the days slipping away from her like sand through her fingers.

She and Baird spent some time together every day. There was talking, and there were snacks, and there was even studying. They were always out in the open, because even at AIM it was frowned upon for girls to enter any of the boys’ dorms, and the same otherwise. It was the library, or under the trees near the edge of campus, or picnics on the grounds, or the dining room. Their hands became fast together, whenever they were together.

“You do well in the winter for someone from a tropical city,” Baird offered once, as they walked the grounds. It was March, early in spring, and the air still carried the winter chill. Baird never noticed, and she’d never seen him in anything but his usual uniform, with none of the additional scarves, jackets, or cloaks that others wore. “Singapore is tropical, isn’t it?”

“Yes, but the National Magic School of China is in a much colder region,” Meiling explained with a smile, squeezing his hand. “Our heirloom-caster dorms are not heated, but for any magic we use ourselves, and we are not permitted clothing outside of our uniforms. I’ve adapted.”

“Montreal is colder than here,” Baird said, with a deep breath of the early spring air. “But I wonder…”

Meiling waited for him to finish, but he didn’t. “You wonder?”

Baird didn’t finish his sentence, or at least she didn’t think he did. It was a moment, before he said, “I wonder if I could kiss you.”

Her breath caught, her fingers squeezing his as she looked up into his face. He was blushing, but his green eyes were intense and very serious. 

“Yes,” she said, and to her surprise she sounded breathless. “Yes, I—yes.”

He leaned over, and his breath was sweet, and his lips were soft and light and almost shy. It was Meiling who reached upwards, who pulled them together and deepened it. Baird tasted like mint, like the cleaning and disinfecting spells that he used so often as a Healer, and surprisingly Meiling liked it. He tasted clean, and she never wanted these last two weeks to end.

The morning of the AIM semi-final match dawned bright and cold. Baird’s friends had been ribbing him all week about the rivalry, about him sweet-talking Meiling into going easy on them, while Baird had been laughing it off. He was just a Healer, he said, over and over again—he was just a Healer, and he doubted that Meiling would be thinking of him while facing off against their players.

As for Meiling, Zhang-laoshi gave them a pointed lecture on not allowing their foolish personal connections to interfere with their play, one which Meiling… effectively ignored. She wasn’t going to let her relationship—she supposed they should call it a relationship—affect her gameplay, but there was nothing she could do to convince anyone of that, so there was no reason to try. 

The tournament grounds were an isolated stretch of swamp and tall grasses, further to the south than AIM. After three rounds, Meiling had come to hate it—the earth beneath her feet was deceptive, and every step carried the possibility of her feet sinking into the mud. The long skirt of her feiyufu caught on the grass, in which their opponents often took the opportunity to hide. No matter how much of the grounds she burned each game, they’d be magically restored before the next.

It was a waste of magic. She still did it every match—she was ordered to do it—because she and Jiawei needed clear sightlines to work.

Meiling didn’t recognize the part of the arena they had started in. The tournament organizers changed their starting points every time, lest the players start learning the terrain. 

“Split up,” Yuhui told them, activating a paper spell to take his feet out of the mud. “Ruofeng says that AIM is not very strong—they have tricks, but they are not strong. Either of you should be able to take out their players with no difficulty. I will remain to guard our keystone.”

“Very well,” Jiawei replied curtly. It was more or less the same strategy they’d used against Castelbruxo, and he took off in long strides that showed what he thought of the grounds. He was a storm-mage, and the grasses rustled with an unseen wind as he passed by.

Meiling, too, needed no further instruction. Drawing her fan, she plunged into the grasses (best that they be left standing else the burns mark her path) and headed for the nearest grouping of trees.

It was silent—silent but for the squish of her feet against the soft earth, the whisper of her feiyufu against the tall grasses. No birds, and it was far too cold for the buzzing of insects. It was better for her, easier for her to stay alert for the sound of anyone approaching. 

She reached the trees but heard nothing. Her fan out, she concentrated on what she needed and drew the character for search and followed the subtle sense of tugging that her fan gave her. She kept her eyes up—it was far more likely that an attack would come from above her or at her eye level than it would come from below. AIM was not Uagadou, known for their Animagi, and most of their players were bigger than her.

She wasn’t looking. It was odd to say that she wasn’t looking when she very much looking for her opponents, but she wasn’t watching her feet. One foot squished down into the mud, something that happened not infrequently in the marshy ground of the arena, and the other—

The other caught in the roots of a tree, and she went down heavily into the mud. 

It was a soft fall, nothing that should have hurt her, and yet it did. Her foot was still caught under the roots, and her ankle was a ball of pain. She’d broken bones before—few heirloom-casters at school hadn’t—and it took her only a few minutes of shock and an ill-advised wiggle for her to realize that her ankle was broken.

That was just—that was swell, she cursed. Zhang-laoshi would have so many words with her over it, not that he was ever in a position of traipsing through marshy swampland, and Ruofeng and Yuhui would snigger at her, and she didn’t care about that at all except that she did. 

Because that was stupid. As if they had the right—they were paper magic users of the Upper House, and they’d never be asked to do anything physical. They were too bright for that, the brutal discipline of the warrior class was beneath their future as scholars and government leaders, and none of them had ever spent a single day in the intense physical training that Meiling counted a minimum of three hours in daily.

It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that she and Jiawei would take the blame for any losses or mistakes, not even when it was Ruofeng or Yuhui who gave their orders. It wasn’t fair that if they lost the tournament, it would be their fault, and that if they won, it would be their paper-caster teammates who received the acclaim for having planned their strategy. 

To her embarrassment, a few angry tears leaked out onto her cheeks. She was cold, and she was wet, and she was dirty, and she hurt. It hurt, even if she had only herself to blame for being stupid enough to trip and fall down, and it hurt even more to know the mockery she’d be in for when Yifei eventually tracked her down and Healed her enough to move her. 

There was a pop beside her, and she turned around to see Baird in his tournament clothes. Not the school uniform or robes she’d usually seen him in, but a collared shirt with his sleeves rolled up and blue jeans. 

“What are you…?”

“Couldn’t bear the sight of you crying,” he said briskly, but she knew from the smile on his face that it wasn’t just that. “Your Healer is caught up elsewhere on the field.”

“It’s against—” Meiling started, then she stopped and tried again. “Your own team—”

“It’s just a game, Mei,” Baird replied, detangling her leg from the roots as gently as he could. It still hurt like nothing else, and she couldn’t hold back a gasp and whimper. He shot her an apologetic look, before he twisted his wand in a healing spell and the aching waves of pain started receding. “Anyway, I’d think it was against the spirit of the game for a team to win because one of the other side’s players had an inopportune accident. Not much of a competition, is it?”

Meiling didn’t know what to say to that. He had a point, but it was a point that no one in her world would have ever made. Her falling down was her own failure—there was nothing more to it than that. Inopportune accidents didn’t happen to people who just did things right the first time.

“If we win, I want AIM to win fairly, against the strongest your school can bring.” Baird patted her on the ankle. “And if we lose, I want to know we lost against a strong opponent. Go on.”

She realized he was done, and her ankle didn’t hurt anymore. “Baird—”

“Go.”

“I—” she scrambled upright, looked at the path she was taking through the arena, and then back at Baird. “Later, right?”

“Later.” He smiled again. “Nothing could change that.”

“Right.” Meiling bit her lip, and turned resolutely in the direction that she could now, faintly, hear the sound of combat. Jiawei was in trouble. “Later.”

NMSC won the match, Meiling hitting two AIM players who had gone up against Jiawei two on one from the side like lightning in darkness. They went down, and then it was just a matter of rescuing Yuhui who had gotten in trouble and led the last AIM player away from their own keystone.

NMSC won, and Meiling wasn’t sure they would have if Baird hadn’t come to her rescue.

“Hi,” Meiling said, stopping at the table in the library where Baird was working. He always worked at the same table, sometimes with friends but just as often alone. Today, though, she was glad she’d caught him alone—what she wanted to say, what she had to say, was too personal for her to want it heard surrounded by his usual group of friends.

NMSC had won the semi-final, and that meant there was a week left. A single week left, and Meiling—

Meiling didn’t want this to end. 

“Hello,” Baird said, looking up from his books with a smile. His green eyes crinkled slightly. “Did anyone give you a hard time?”

“I should ask you the same,” Meiling replied, taking his hand and sliding into the seat across from him. “In my team—no one has really commented. I think—I think they think you are weak for having done it.”

“I’m getting my fair share of jokes on my end.” Baird chuckled. “But the semi-final match was further than we expected to get anyway, and they really are only jokes. We’ll cheer on Ilvermorny in the final, and that is all.”  

Meiling ignored that. “I don’t think you’re weak for doing it,” she said, looking down at his hand. Soft, with none of the calluses hers had. “It is—as you said, it is a game. It takes courage to stand up for your convictions, to choose not to play by the rules that people expect.”

Baird quirked an eyebrow at her. “Thank you?”

“I—” Meiling blushed. “I just wanted to tell you that. I admire that.”

“Mei…”

“I really like you.” Meiling took a deep breath. “We have—I will only be here for one more week.”

The smile disappeared off Baird’s face. “I know,” he said, and his voice was serious. “I—I do not want this to end in a week, Mei. I don’t know what your circumstances are, and I know things are difficult for you, but…”

Meiling nodded, looking up to meet his eyes. She kept her voice down—it was unlikely that any of her classmates were in the library, and she hadn’t seen any of them nearby, but it was still better not to be overheard. “It is—it is hard to get out of Magical China, at least while I am at school. They are also strict about our mail. We can send and receive letters, but they tend to be read and searched, especially in the heirloom-casting houses and for students who aren’t from central heartland. Any—anything sent to me or by me while I’m in school will needed to be spelled.”

Baird nodded. “I understand.”

“Do you?” Meiling grimaced. “I know, here in America, it must sound—"

“Mei, I’ve watched you here at AIM interacting with your classmates for the last five weeks.” Baird smiled, squeezing her hand. “I’m not so unobservant that I haven’t noticed the undercurrents, and everything you told me lines up with how you and your team behave. And America is not perfect, we have our own cases of mail-searching, even if it might not be routine. If you say that letters to you at school will be have to be spelled, then so they must.”

Meiling let out of sigh of relief she hadn’t even realized she’d been holding. “I have more freedom when I am in Singapore. I can send you letters openly then, but only through the non-magical post, which takes weeks. As for the spells—I don’t know them. This is magic that isn’t covered for heirloom-casters, since we’re intended to become soldiers anyway. In theory I should be able to cast it, but I will need to ask Yifei—”

“Why not just tie it to our own signatures?” Baird interrupted. “Once the spells are set up, the mechanism isn’t complicated—or it isn’t for wand-users. Can you use your fan like a wand?”

“I—” Meiling blinked. “I don’t know. I’ve never tried.”

“Try.” Baird had a glimmer of excitement in his eyes. “Cast Lumos. It’s a light spell—the incantation is Lumos, and the wand movement is…” He pulled out his wand and flicked it, lighting the top of his wand.

“I don’t…” Meiling started saying again, before she shrugged and pulled out her fan. There was no harm in trying, and her wand folded up looked a little like a short wand. “Lumos! ”

It didn’t work. Or, rather—a small light glimmered at the top of her wand, before it was extinguished. 

She frowned. “Lumos! ” she snapped again, this time meaning it, and the same light appeared at the top of her wand. It wavered, and then it steadied.

“I thought your fan was just a channelling device.” Baird grinned. “No reason it wouldn’t work the same way as a wand does when folded, though I suppose the men’s swords are long enough to make it prohibitive.”

“So… the spell?” Meiling couldn’t help but smile herself, even if a part of her almost felt… betrayed. 

She’d always been told that she was an heirloom-caster. She was a fighter, a soldier, and that was what her magic was good for. It was up to paper-casters to form the basis of government and handle other functions. But what did that dichotomy mean when Meiling was perfectly capable of generating the exact same magic? Where was the line, if Meiling could use her fan exactly like a wand, for all the same purposes?

“Right.” Baird snapped his fingers. “I can ask one of the Charms Mastery students to make talismans for us—it won’t be surprising if we exchange tokens. I’ll need a clipping of your hair. Once we have them, you’ll need to write two letters, one which other people will see, and the other which will be hidden. You place one on top of the other, press the talisman into them, and the incantation is Occultare Secreta. If you receive a letter from me, just use your fan and, while holding it, the incantation is Revelio Secreta.”

“Occultare Secreta ,” Meiling murmured, fixing the words in her memory, and thanking five years of fan training that she had no need to write it down. “Revelio Secreta . I—thank you, Baird.”

“There’s nothing to thank.” Baird reached for her hand again, and this time he pulled her into his arms. “Indeed, it’s nothing—nothing compared to the chance to… to give ourselves more time.”

Meiling would have liked to devote as much time as she could the next week to Baird. Even if their planned contact worked, and she had no reason to believe it wouldn’t, it wouldn’t be the same. They wouldn’t be able to see each other in person for years, not even if—if the best possible scenario happened. Baird was graduating this year, heading for further training at the magical hospital in Montreal, while Meiling would be going back to NMSC and Singapore. Neither of them would be able travel halfway around the world easily.

Unfortunately for her, Zhang-laoshi had other ideas, and doubled their training going up to the finals. Yifei had to patch her up twice, once when Jiawei blasted her into the side of a building, and another when she was caught in one of Yuhui’s traps. She met with him at dinner or for late night snacks, but it didn’t matter—either time she would be falling asleep into her food. He only shook his head, said something about how they had time after the Tournament, and walked her back to her townhouse.

After the week before, the game with Ilvermorny was anticlimactic. It was a hard fight. Unlike every other team they had come up against, Ilvermorny met them head-on in a melee fight. Yuhui went down first, leaving her and Jiawei fighting a pitched two on three battle, then she and Jiawei evened the score—and then he went down, and Meiling was left fighting alone.

She was fast, and she was powerful, and she was very good at what she did. She won, fire spinning around her while the last Ilvermorny player, his wand spluttering out of magic as his core ran empty, saluted her and conceded. There would be portraits of this moment spread throughout the world, because apparently it was a very compelling moment, but all Meiling could think was, that’s it, that’s over then, we’re going home.

AIM threw a celebration for them that night, another banquet to mirror their welcome, and a part of Meiling was amused that it was AIM who was throwing a celebration for them. Zhang-laoshi had done little other than acknowledge the victory, then decreed that they should leave the banquet as early as was polite and then return to the townhouse to pack their things. They’d be leaving first thing in the morning, and there would be further festivities in China, and there was no need for them to continue to celebrate here among foreigners.

It was a good thing that AIM did throw the celebration though, because it was the only time that she could see Baird to pick up the talisman.

“This is for you,” he said, fastening the locket around her neck. It didn’t look like anything particularly special, only silver with their engraved initials, something that Meiling knew would be overlooked as a lover’s token—which it also was. “I just want you to have—something to remember me by.”

They were surrounded by people. The moment was anything but private. It wasn’t what Baird would have said otherwise, nor what he would be inclined to say, and part of Meiling missed that. She wanted to know what he would have said, but the rest of her was glad that there was nothing there that would suggest any plan for them to stay in contact. It was better for her if there weren’t—not because of her family, which might have approved of him anyway, but everything else.

“Thank you,” she replied, her eyes filling with tears. She sniffled and reached up to him for a hug. “I’ll treasure it. I will.”

Under the eyes of all of AIM, the remaining schools, and most importantly the rest of her team, there was little else that Meiling could do.

The Triwizard Tournament was just a game. It was six weeks of Meiling’s life, and yet it held a much bigger place in her mind. NMSC celebrated their victory, but it was expected—it would have been shameful if they hadn’t won, so the celebrations were more reserved and it was back to her usual training and classes.

Baird wrote to her—the covers were filled with sweet nothings, which Meiling held as just as important as the contents they hid. Inside, he was worried for her.

I’ve heard very concerning things out of China recently, both magical and not. I know that magical China sees itself as separate from the No-Maj world, but our worlds are not so separate. There must be newbloods in your world, people from non-magical families with magic, and it is hard to stop witches and wizards from going out into the No-Maj world. I hope you are well—write back soon.

Meiling found it excruciating to write letters of nothing but sweet tidings. How many ways were there to say “I miss you” over and over again, or “I like you”, or “I wish I could see you”? She made a go of it, balking at an outright I love you, even though it was writ across every other line.

Inside, her tidings were grimmer.

The official line is that there are no newbloods in Magical China. Of course, that isn’t true, but they’re adopted into paper-caster families as soon as the magic becomes apparent. I know little about it other than the general policy because the only families who are honoured with a newblood child to adopt are high in status. No paper-caster clan in Singapore has ever been so honoured, nor as far as I know anywhere other than in the central heartland.

There are whispers here. They were here before I came to AIM, but not as strong—or maybe I was more preoccupied. I don’t know. We live on a mountain of divides, and while I think there is an uneasy truce, these days it seems more uneasy than most. I don’t know how to describe it.

She signed it, spelled it (taking three or four tries to do it correctly), and sent it out. He wrote back, and so did she. 

All their letters showed signs of tampering.

“Wake up!”

The order cut through a dream, and Meiling started awake. Around her, the nine other girls in her bunk were exchanging looks; Xiaomei was cursing while swinging off her bunk, her fan in hand as she reached for her tiny wardrobe. It took Meiling a minute to realize that the lights flashing in the window weren’t part of her dream, and that the noise was more than the yelling of their dorm mother, or the rustling and murmurs of her roommates.

The door to their room was left open, and sickly yellow light flooded in. Other rooms were waking up too, and their dorm mother was going down the hall, rapping at doors in turn. It was late, Meiling’s internal clock guessing between the hours of two and three in the morning.

“What’s going on?” Yulan was asking, sounding worried. “Xiaomei?”

Xiaomei shook her head, but she didn’t answer. Instead, she just pulled out a feiyufu and started pulling it on. 

It was probably best to follow suit, and with a looming sense of dread, Meiling realized that whatever had happened was not good. Her roommates were from clans spread across Magical China, more than half from the central heartland, but Xiaomei was from Taiwan. Things were different there than in the central heartland, and from the mostly ignored city-states of Singapore, Hong Kong, and Macau. 

“Girls!” Their dorm mother rapped on the door once more, her mouth a grim line. “Assemble in front of your dormitory within the next ten minutes. Do not tarry.”

With a look around the room, Meiling did as she was told.

Outside, it was worse. There was a scent in the air—fire, certainly fire, but not like a clean, wood-burning fire. There was the scent of magical fire, familiar to Meiling as a fire mage, an electric buzz that carried hints of the users’ personalities. But that was overridden by something else, something sickly-sour and sweet, and the scent of acrid sulphur.

They assembled into lines without being told. They were heirloom-casters—ten per room, they were trained to operate as a unit. They weren’t like paper-casters of the Upper House, where the students who showed the most potential were given more privacy and comforts, but they were already soldiers. Meiling could see, from a look around, that it seemed to be all the girls from the fifth year and up; across the dirt track that counted as a road, the heirloom caster boys were assembling fourth years and up. 

She caught Jiawei’s eye, but he only shrugged and gestured to the front of them both, where their teachers were assembling.

“Students,” Cong-laoshi called out, and Meiling snapped to attention. “The unrest which is affecting non-magical China has come to roost. We have students who have come under the sway of this—this radical ideology, this championship of the proletariat, this cultural revolution —and we are being called to respond. Our orders are to put this riot down, by force, by whatever means necessary. We are not our non-magical neighbours, succumbing to rampant violence and forgetting our noble and imperial history. We are Magical China, and we stand strong and in adherence to our traditions.”

He paused and looked over their assembled groups. “I see several faces missing. I can only assume those missing from here are with the rioters. Show them no mercy. I remind you—all of you—that we are heirloom-casters. Soldiers our families may have always been, soldiers rather than scholars, but we more than any other are the old imperial families that these rioters seek to displace. Think of your families, and your clans, and think of the magic that you wield from their bones. If you lose here, the fight will come to you in your homes.

“The fourth-year boys will remain here, to defend the heirloom-caster dorms. Rioting remains across the campus from you, at the paper-caster libraries first and spreading to the Upper House dormitories, and you should have plenty of warning and backup if they come in your direction. Everyone else—we move out. And remember—no mercy.”

Meiling swallowed, her fingers tightening on her fan, and she followed the rest of her classmates to the other end of campus. 

It was a horror. She didn’t know the paper-caster buildings very well, but at least one of their libraries was well and truly burning. It was being given to the fire, Cong-laoshi ordering all the earth-mages to clear firebreaks that it wouldn’t catch on the remaining buildings, while Meiling and the other mages were sent to respond to the Upper Paper-Caster House dormitories. 

Smoke was climbing out of the windows. Even under the smoke and soot, Meiling could tell that this building was far finer than hers—she’d heard that the top paper-caster students, the ones who showed the most potential, were permitted to room in groups as small as two. Students were awake, many of them trying to get out of the burning building, but they were being stopped by other students barricading them in. 

The smell was nauseating. She would have thought burning bodies would smell like roasting meat, but it didn’t. There was a taste of copper in the air, blood cooking in people’s bodies, and it was so thick that she could taste it on her tongue. The smell of acrid sulphur was even stronger here, and Meiling realized after a moment it was the smell of burning hair. 

Meiling felt sick, and she felt even sicker to see students—she didn’t know them—holding up paper spells that kept the Upper Paper-Caster House students locked in. She didn’t even think before firing her first fire spell into someone’s back, a tornado of fire that had him cooking, and she wasn’t the only one. Xiaomei was beside her, her own fire launching into the rebels, while Jiawei had joined her other side. He smelled of electricity and rain, his storm coming with them, but even his winds couldn’t banish the scent.

A student turned to face her, a new paper spell coming out, and Meiling shot fire at him without blinking. It was so automatic, so fast—and this, unlike the Tournament, was not a game. He fought back, but he was a paper-caster and not even of the Upper House, and the result was inevitable when Jiawei slammed his sword through the boy’s back as Meiling faced off against his front.

People were dying. She could hear the screams of students inside the Upper Paper-Caster House dormitories, and she could hear the screams of the students in front of her and beside her. Her body and her fan moved almost of their own accord, more than a decade of combat training taking over, while her mind—

She didn’t want to do this. She didn’t want to turn her magic on other people, not like this. And yet, what else was she to do? There were people inside the Upper Paper-Caster House dormitories, people that included Yifei as much as Ruofeng and Yuhui, and while she might not care for many of them, neither did she want them to die. Not like this. And her fighting was breaking the formation keeping the students inside the burning building, and so she fought. 

She fought, and she knew people were dying by her hand, and she hated it. She hated every minute of it. And it didn’t end.

The sun rose, mere hours later, and the riots didn’t end. They only shifted. 

Barricades went up, the rioters—the Red Guard, Meiling was smart enough to admit, whatever the teachers said—sheltering behind them. Breaks in the fighting happened, but it didn’t stop. Not for two weeks, not until the military was called in and twenty thousand adult, full duty heirloom casters flooded the streets of National Magic School of China.

No more letters came into NMSC, and none went out.

The news was no better at home. That, Meiling learned, nearly the first night arrived in Singapore. Her clan house was far emptier than it had been her entire life, with more than half of her relatives sent around Magical China.

“It was not only at school,” Baba explained, shaking his head as he rearranged the scrolls they kept the household ledgers on. He was a paper-caster, and he grew magical plants for the apothecaries. “It’s been happening all over Magical China—in the magical enclaves in Beijing, Shanghai, Xi’an, at the Imperial Records House, everywhere. Mama is in Yunnan now, putting down a revolt there; your brother Yiling is in Guangdong.”

“Oh,” Meiling said, looking away. “The school riot…”

“It was bad?”

“Yes.” Meiling bit her lip. “I fought.”

“I had thought you would.” Baba’s smile was sympathetic. “If it happened at school, it was inevitable that they would call on you.”

“I hated it.”

“Yes.” Baba’s eyes were perceptive. “I had thought that, too, was inevitable.”

“What do you mean?” Meiling looked up at him, surprised, but Baba only shook his head again, this time a little sadly.

“You’re not like your mother, or your brother,” he said, and his voice was gentle. “Or your sister. You take more after me. You’re… hm. Soft.”

“Soft?” Meiling frowned. “But the Triwizard Tournament—”

“The blasted Tournament is different,” Baba interrupted firmly. “The Tournament is a game. You like pleasing people—you always have, even as a child—and where pleasing someone is a competition, you’re all too happy to do it. But you do not like hurting people, and that is where wanting to please stops. Not that your mother and brother do either, but…”

“But?”

“They put it aside more easily than you.” Baba shrugged. “That is all.”

“But how do they…” Meiling paused, trying to find her own words, before merely giving up. “Put it aside?”

“What else are they to do?” Baba sighed. “They are heirloom-casters, as are you. Your path was carved from birth. We cannot join the rebels, because we are a vital part of the very system they fight against, and we’d be likely to be hunted down after they took the central administration. And so, we have to fight them. We may not always like the central administration, but to us, they are better than the Red Guards would be.”

“So, for me…” Meiling looked down at Baba’s ledgers. They were only the household accounts, and they were richer than she’d seen before. Active duty meant more money, she realized. “Do I just… learn? To be harder?”

“You must.” Baba’s dark eyes were sad. “If you want to stay in Magical China, or even in Singapore, you will have to.”

Meiling didn’t like that, and she spilled it all out in rambling, disjointed form in a letter to Baird. She didn’t know if he wanted to hear it, but it had been more than a month since she’d heard from him or since she’d been able to write, and she thought that her silence warranted an explanation.

An explanation, and many apologies. In the end, the letter was more than a dozen pages long, and finished:

I’m sorry for not writing this past month. After the riots, we were under martial law—no letters were allowed in or out of school. There were classes, but we were closely monitored, and the heirloom casters had to assist with rounding up the last of the rioters as well. I’m so sorry.

At least she didn’t need to write a cover of sweet nothings. She couldn’t; she didn’t have the energy. The scent of human bodies cooking still lingered with her, hanging about her feiyufu no matter how many times she cleaned them. She’d asked her cousin, a water-mage home from duty in Henan, to put them under her strongest spells, but with no luck. Her cousin said that she couldn’t smell them, but Meiling could. The smell was all over them.

In Singapore, Meiling dressed as any non-magical woman would. They lived in the world here, not merely the magical one, and this letter would go by non-magical post. She paid extra to have it travel by airmail, an obscene amount that she knew she couldn’t afford more than once, but she hoped—

Baird couldn’t have forgotten about her. He wouldn’t have, he couldn’t have. She didn’t know if she’d hear back from him at all this summer, not by nonmagical post, but she didn’t even know if they’d be allowed mail at school next year. Would she have to wait until the New Year break to hear from him again? 

Would he even respond to her then?

The locket hung on her chest, and she touched it absently. It had Baird’s signature in it, both magical and biological, but it wasn’t comforting the way a letter would be. 

She’d have to wait and see. There was nothing else she could do, and no other way to contact him.

Summer holidays at NMSC were short. A bare month, just the hottest days of the year, and she was back at school.

The military still crawled over campus, less of them than the year previous as most had been reassigned to put down rebellions all over Magical China. The heirloom-caster sixth- and seventh-years would be assisting them, the word was, and receiving on the ground training for their work after they graduated. Meiling didn’t know what to think of that. It was nothing that she hadn’t known she’d be doing her entire life, but at the same time…

She never thought she’d be doing it now. Not with the riot last year, not with the memory of burned flesh that still sometimes haunted her, even if the smell had finally been banished from her feiyufu.

She caught sight of Yifei when she arrived, a lucky chance meeting—as an heirloom-caster, Meiling had little to do with the paper-casters other than when she went out of her way to see any of them, and in the aftermath of the riots last year there had been precious little opportunity.

“Yifei!” she called out, hurrying after her. “How are you?”

The other girl looked tired, but turned with a smile. “Meiling. I am—well, I suppose our dorms have now been rebuilt, so there is that.”

“I’m glad you survived.” Meiling sighed. “I didn’t know if you did.”

“I have the water element—sheltered me more than many.” Yifei shook her head. “Yuhui was not so lucky, though Ruofeng survived. Pity.”

Meiling shivered. “It was a bad night.”

Yifei looked around—there were other students arriving, but they were meeting their own friends, and no one seemed to be listening especially to them. She leaned forward and down to Meiling’s ear, pulling her in as is for a hug. “It will get worse.”

“How?” Meiling wrapped her arms around her friend, pasting a joyous look on her face. “The riots are bad enough, still happening— ”

“My brother works in the central administration. They blame us,” Yifei murmured. “The free cities. Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore—we are the only places where magicians live among the non-magical, where there is no magical enclave, and therefore we must be where this new ideology stems.”

Meiling’s jaw dropped, but she fixed her expression into one of happiness. “But we’re the only cities that haven’t had riots,” she hissed. “The Cultural Revolution is a Chinese non-magical movement, one launched by their own non-magical government; we have nothing to do with it!”

“Do you think that matters, Meiling?” Yifei pulled back, a much better smile plastered on her face. “They’ll be turning against us within the next two years—time to bring the rebel cities under control. Tell your clan.”

“I will,” Meiling promised, and she meant it. 

But promises were easier were easier made than carried out. All mail at NMSC that term was banned—nothing incoming, and nothing outgoing. She couldn’t have let her family know if she tried, and instead only passed the word through the other students in the heirloom-casting school from Singapore, Hong Kong, and Macau as she could and hoped one of them would be able to get the message out earlier than her.

She wasn’t able to tell anyone her news until the New Year break, which lasted between the last week of December and the Lunar New Year. There, as the first thing she did, she told as many clan elders as remained in Singapore her news. Her grandparents, her great-uncles and great-aunts—or half of them, anyway—circled the great carved mahogany table, all of them carrying fans belted at their waists or their swords in hiding.

“It isn’t like we haven’t heard other whispers,” Waigong said, at the end of Meiling’s very short report. “We should begin preparing.”

“To do what?” Her great-uncle Yu replied, raising an eyebrow. “We are Chinese—not of the central heartland, no, but we are Chinese. We may not support them, but we are members of Magical China.”

“And even if we wanted to do something,” Great-Aunt Lin added, “What could we do against the entire force of the army? Especially when more than half of us have been sent on active duty elsewhere. Singapore has only two thousand magicians, and only three heirloom-caster clans. Even if we had the full support of our Malay and Indian brothers and sisters, even if all the other Singaporean clans stood with us—and there is no guarantee they will—we will be run over. We cannot stand against a force of even the size sent to clear the riots at the school. We are not ready.”

“Still, we must do something,” Waigong said, turning to face the other elders with a stern look. He waved at Meiling. “Your duty is done—leave this to us to discuss, Meimei. You may go.”

Meiling fled, recognizing a decision that was far, far out of her hands. She hadn’t even finished school, hadn’t even changed out of her school uniform, and she didn’t—she didn’t…

There was a letter waiting for her in her room. There were, in fact, three letters, and all of them were by non-magical post. She tore them open.

Meiling, I’m so glad to hear from you. No need for so many apologies. The news, both magical and No-Maj, is reporting on the situation in China. I had some inkling that, if you weren’t writing, something had to have happened. I am just glad to hear that you are all right, at least physically. I hope you could talk to someone about the riots—I wish I could be there for you, but by the time you receive this letter, I know you’ll be back at school. I’ll try your school address as well, but god only knows what the situation will be then.

There were more words about his family, about Montreal and his residency, and he signed it off with another plea for her safety.

His second letter was also sent by nonmagical post, and it was much shorter.

I haven’t heard from you, and while I don’t know anyone else at your school, I can only imagine that they continued not allowing any mail at all—or that my letters or yours were confiscated. I don’t believe you wouldn’t write to me if you could, or at least I hope that isn’t the case. I’m sending you this letter to Singapore, and hope I hear from you after your winter break. I hope things aren’t going too badly for you at school.

Things are well in Montreal—my residency is exhausting, as they said it would be, and I’ve moved to my own apartment closer to the hospital. Fewer hours on the metro mean more hours I can sleep. You can still reach me at the address I gave you, my parents’, but otherwise here’s where I am now…

Meiling tucked that letter away, along with the new address, and reached for the third letter.

Three letters, and I know you can’t have read any of my last. I am sounding a little desperate, I suppose, but there were things that we didn’t say last year that we probably should have. 

I love you. I love you more than is reasonable for someone I’ve only really known for six weeks in a Tournament. I miss you. I miss your fire, and your laugh, and how sometimes you don’t know what to do with your hands and you fiddle with your dress. For all the talent you showed as a player, you are also so much more, and I wish I had more time to uncover all those parts of you. 

Please write back to me. 

She would write back. But for the moment, Meiling just took the letters and held them, and she pressed them against her chest as if it was Baird, really here, and there she sat in a puddle of emotions that she couldn’t describe if she tried. There was relief, relief that even after her long silence, Baird wasn’t holding it against her, but there were also tears prickling at her eyes from something that wasn’t either joy or sadness, and there was something she thought might have even been love. She didn’t know.

It was many long minutes before she picked up a pen. 

Baird,

I’m so happy that you haven’t taken any offence at my long silence—you were right, we weren’t allowed letters at school last term, not even from our families. Your letters to me at school were probably confiscated, I didn’t receive any. 

Things are worse than they say in Magical China. My family has been sent on active duty throughout China. The riots are everywhere, and they put one down and another begins elsewhere. Where does it end? And it will only become worse. I’m hearing from students who have connections in the central administration that they may react against us, the clans who live outside the central heartland in Singapore, Hong Kong, and Macau. Apparently, since we are the only ones who live outside exclusive magical enclaves, we must be the ones at fault—despite the fact that we alone out of the major cities have gone without a major riot. 

She paused in her writing, a truth that had been living in the back of her mind since the riots coalescing in firm, tangible form.

I do not want to be a soldier, she wrote, and her words were rebellious on the page.

I do not want to be a soldier. The riots were—I can never forget them. I dream about them. I didn’t know most of the students who died, and I didn’t like most of the ones that I did know, but they shouldn’t have died like that. After I graduate, they are already talking about assigning us out to put down revolts elsewhere, and I do not want to do it. I do not think I can. My father says that if I stay here, I must. I, like every heirloom-caster, was born to be a soldier, and I do not want to be one. 

Where does that leave me?

She chewed on her lip for a moment, thinking. She’d need help, but she thought Baba would. Baba would understand.

We’re allowed letters next term, but only from our families. Please write to me in Singapore as you would if I were at school, but your covering letter should be to my father. He will send them onto me. A reasonable excuse for writing to my father would be arranging a marriage to me, and he can send it on supposedly for my thoughts. Our mail is still read, even from our clans. I hope that is not too strange for you. 

I can’t say I really know what love is, but I think I love you too. I miss you. I miss your kindness, and your strength, and the way that you make everything seem easier. I miss you more than words can say.

She put the letter down, sealed it, and went to speak to Baba.

Baba was in his gardens, his elbows deep in the loam as he weeded the plant bed. He specialized in things that were difficult to grow, many of them specialty ingredients, the only things that they really had space for even in the magically expanded grounds. He liked it, he said—the challenge was one that he appreciated, and they brought in good money. 

Baba was from the lower paper-caster house, the students that had been weeded out as being not promising in their first few years. Meiling wondered at that sometimes, before she’d realized that most of the training of the first few years was rote memorization of the type that Baba simply hated. Measuring the water levels and nutrient content of soil was one thing, memorizing reams of Confucian teachings was another. 

He heard her out, puttering between plant beds as she told him about the letters and her plan, and then he looked up at her with a raised brow and eyes that were all too sharp.

“How much of a ruse is your cover?” he asked.

“I don’t—” Meiling looked away. “I don’t know. Westerners—they do not arrange marriages, Baba.”

“But if he asked?”

The pause was long, before Meiling acknowledged, “I’d be inclined to accept, yes.”

Baba nodded with a sigh, straightening as he walked over to the piles of fertilizer that was stacked in a corner, spelled not to smell. “Tell me about him, Mei. You met at the Tournament, I can only assume.”

“Yes.” Meiling paused. “He’s a Healer, Baba. He lives in Montreal, in Canada. He comes from a long magical lineage, for a Westerner—a thousand years long. But that isn’t what I like about him, Baba. I like that he thinks, and he looks at things not quite the way that we would look at them.”

“Mmhmm?” Baba said, gesturing for her to go on. 

“He is strong,” she blurted out. “Magically strong, yes, but more than that. He is not a warrior, but he has the courage of his convictions. In the Tournament, he—he told me that it was just a game, that even if the countries used it as a show of strength, it was only a game. And then, when I slipped in the semi-final game and broke my ankle, he came in and healed me. Because it was only a game, and it wasn’t a fair game if I didn’t fight in it. I don’t know if I believe his reasoning but I… I admire that he believes in it, and that he acted on it.”

“That shows strength of will,” Baba noted, and he turned back to his plants. “I will do it, Mei. Have him send me the letters, and I will pass them onto you. I trust you have a good spell for coding and decoding them.”

“Yes,” Meiling replied, a smile she couldn’t help spreading across her face. “Baba—thank you, I couldn’t—”

“If he does ask, Meiling,” Baba interrupted quietly. “You should consider it. Go, if you can. The news out of my old friends in the central heartlands is not promising, not for any of us. You are only seventeen, and you are only one girl. You may get out, and you may be able to live the life that you want to. If you stay, Meiling, you know what will happen. You’ll have a place of honour, but what does honour mean when you are turning your magic against your own people? If not here in Singapore, then against our cousins in Macau, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.”

Meiling’s smile disappeared, Baba’s sombre tone bringing the reality of their world back to her. She nodded, just once, and went out to send her letter.

The first letter to her at NMSC arrived a mere three weeks after the end of the New Year’s break. It took about a month for a letter to travel by nonmagical post between Singapore and Montreal, or so she thought, and accounting for the time for her letter to get to Baird and another to come back, he must have written right away when he received her letter.

As she had asked, Baird’s cover letter was to her father, supposedly to inquire about arranging a marriage to her. She skimmed it out of curiosity and snorted—Baird had no idea how to go about arranging a marriage, though she supposed it was normally out of their hands anyway. Normally, it would be family negotiating, with the input of the prospective bride and groom, rather than someone on their own behalf. He talked too much about his admiration of her, and not at all about anything that would weigh in a marriage decision. Baba’s letter was short, amused, saying only that he was sending this letter on to make her laugh.

Decoded, Baird’s letter was fiery in passion.

Mei—I am glad to hear you are well, at least physically so. It does not sound like you are well otherwise, and I wish I were there. Or, better yet, I wish you were here and safe with me, where you can’t be forced into doing the things that you so clearly do not want to do. 

I don’t know what I can say about your country. I just don’t know enough, not the way that you know them. I know facts, I know what you tell me, but there is a glacier of things I don’t know. It is ridiculous for the central administration to come after your city, and Hong Kong and Macau, and it sounds like you are being scapegoated for a problem that is not your own. Our worlds, the magical and the non-magical, are indelibly integrated whether we like it or not—we live on the same lands, and history shows that, despite the best of any magical society’s attempt to separate, we are not immune.

It is easy for me to say, but you should not have to be a soldier if you do not want to be. You can be anything that you want to be. You can do anything that you want to do. You are not defined by your magic, Mei, or your bloodline, or anything else. To me, at least, you will always just be Meiling.

By the by, I hate writing the cover letters to your father, though I know they’re necessary. How am I supposed to know what a good argument for marriage negotiations is? What am I supposed to talk about?

Meiling couldn’t help but stifle a laugh as drew her wand and burned the letter. She could keep it, but the less she had, the better.

It was a few days before she could find the privacy to draft a reply, sitting out in the dirt behind her dormitory building when they were to be sleeping.

I wish I were with you too—preferably in Singapore, that I could show you the wonders of my hometown before the worst happens, but wherever you are. I miss you. 

I wish it were so easy to say that I could refuse to be a soldier. This is what I was trained for—this is what I know. My entire education has been based around being a soldier, from the magic I know how to do, to my book studies which are focused on military history, strategy and tactics, and even logistics. I cannot easily switch to being a scholar, or a Healer, or even an artisan like my father. I don’t know how, and I don’t know what I would be. I just know, now, that I cannot be a soldier.

In terms of what to write to my father, it really doesn’t matter. If you do well, he’ll write a letter asking for my thoughts; if you do poorly, he’ll write one saying he’s sending it onto me for my amusement (like your last one, unfortunately). Still, if you are that interested, your last focused too much on ardent professions of love and admiration; our clans look for benefits. You should focus on your lineage, your magical element and strength that could be passed down to our children, and any connections you might have that they would gain. 

She spelled it, added a brief cover note thanking Baba for passing it on and agreeing that it was very funny, and walked over to the central mailing depot to throw it in the bins where the mail would be carried out the next day.

As the year rolled on, Meiling’s future became clearer and clearer. It loomed in front of her—it had been approaching for years, she knew, and for a few weeks a year ago, the reality of it had slammed into her. Not games, not a tournament, but real people dying by her hand for a cause she wasn’t sure she believed in. She’d had a year to come to terms with it.

She hadn’t.

The word flew throughout the heirloom-caster dorms. They were the warrior class, the military aristocrats, and they more than any other knew the shape of the revolts. Yunnan and Guangdong were in flames, their rural, mountainous and wild natures giving rioters plenty of places to hide. In the bigger cities, they hid among the non-magical population, blending in with the non-magical Red Guards, limiting what the military could do. There was no semblance of law, the central administration had decreed that any magicians caught being a part of this reprehensible movement were to be executed without trial. 

Inevitably, it was heirloom-caster clans who carried out the orders. It would be Meiling carrying out those orders in only a couple months, because the word was that all seventh-year heirloom-casting students would have only a week at home to process their military recruitment paperwork before being deployed. 

It made her shudder to think about it.

Baird’s letter was a welcome distraction. This time, the covering one to her father was a reasonable facsimile of a marriage negotiation letter—he’d followed her advice, stripping out his own feelings and noting his extensive noble lineage, his magic, and the fact that he was well-connected within the Canadian wizarding community. It was, surprisingly, one that Meiling thought would have even passed muster if it were real. Baba’s letter on top asked for her thoughts, though he blandly referred to the difficulty of an international match “in the present circumstances.” A warning, Meiling knew.

Decoded, Baird’s letter was more open than it had ever been.

Mei—I will do what I need to do for you. If you need help, if you need somewhere to stay, if you need anything from me, only tell me and I will be there.

I don’t care about your training. You were trained as a soldier, does that mean you can’t do anything else? You can do new things. You can learn new things. You can learn to be a scholar, or a Healer, or anything you want to be, either in the magical world or not. It just takes time. 

I love you. I still love you. My cover letter to your father—would it work?

Meiling read it twice. And then she read it a third time, and she wished she didn’t have to burn it, but she did anyway. It was safest that way, especially because the contents were downright incriminating. If she was seriously considering leaving, then the letter could not exist. 

Her letter back was short, scrawled in the toilets after Meiling had formulated the entirely of the letter in her head during a strategy lesson. 

Baird—I hope you mean what you said. I trust you to mean what you said, because I have to.

They are planning on sending us out a week after we finish school. I have only a short window of time to escape, if that is what I am going to do. I will be in contact then, but likely not by letter—I do not think there will be time for another exchange of letters.

As for your cover letter—for myself, I would have accepted for reasons other than your lineage, your magical strength, and your connections. I would have accepted because you’re you —because of your thoughtfulness, your conviction in your beliefs, because you are not swayed by the pressures around you. 

For my family, and with my acceptance, it would work.

She took a deep breath, looked it over, penned a brief note to Baba agreeing that given her upcoming deployment a marriage overseas would be unwise, and sent it out.

The end of the year rushed past, while Meiling made plans in the safety of her own head. There was no room for error—she had a week, a bare week at home, and she needed to know exactly what she would do and how to do it to get out. A wasted day was the difference between making it out and not.

There was no escape by magical means—that was, if not entirely out of the question, likely too difficult to pull off. She’d have had to pretend to be Indian or Malay, but she neither spoke their languages well, nor did she do magic in the same way, nor did she have a good disguise spell at hand.

She did, however, have non-magical identification. It wasn’t much—an old British subject identity card, since she’d been born under British rule, which was easily exchanged for Singaporean documents including a passport. She’d have to bribe someone to rush it, but that could be done. Then, a non-magical flight to Canada. It would be expensive. 

Baba would loan her the money. With the news out of the central administration, having someone outside the country would give the clan, if things went poorly, a contact outside Magical China. That could mean much, when push came to shove.

The days ticked past, her last days at school, and Meiling used every one of them go over her plan. She thought over the weaknesses, considered what she needed, and made a list of things to pack. Once she left, it would probably be many years before she would be able to return.

The school year finished with no applause, no celebration—among the heirloom-casters, they knew what awaited them. They were silent, packing their bare dormitories that never gained much life and travelling home. There were goodbyes, but fewer than anyone could have expected, because they’d all see each other again in the coming weeks. Meiling did as the rest, mimicking grim resignation and shaking her head when anyone asked her if she had any idea where she would be deployed yet.

At home, there was a letter waiting for her at home. It was short—only a telephone number and the words, call me with your arrival details when you know them.

Baba was in his gardens again, and this time he was expecting her. 

“So?” he asked, looking up from the plant he was re-potting, eagle-sharp eyes on the envelope in her hand as she hovered.

“I’m going,” Meiling said, the envelope shaking in her hands. “I have to go, Baba. I can’t stay here. I can’t go and do as Mama does, or Yiling. I cannot.”

Baba studied her, and he nodded seriously. “I know, Meimei.”

“I need money.” Meiling’s voice was quiet. “It is—I need to borrow money. I will pay you back, when I can, when I am settled in Canada.”

 “No need.” Baba sighed, shaking his head. “Take the money from my office, and don’t think of paying it back. It is a gift.”

Meiling shut her eyes, and she reached over and gave her father a hug. His hands were covered in dirt, so he didn’t do the same, but she felt him rest his head on hers. “Thank you, Baba. I—thank you.”

The next few days passed in a flurry. She packed. She spent a full nine hours in a government office apologizing for not having exchanged her British subject papers earlier, and then paid the official off to get her passport to her the next day. The day after was a trip to the airline office, where she paid for a one-way trip to Montreal, Canada, a city that she’d never seen, a leap-frogging series of flights that stopped in Sydney, Honolulu, and Vancouver before finally arriving in Montreal. 

The day she left, she stopped by Baba’s office, where he was checking the household accounts. She’d have liked to say goodbye to the rest of her clan, but she couldn’t—it was best that as few people as possible know with any certainty her plans. Her father would likely be overlooked, he was a Lower House paper caster who merely grew plants, but the rest of her family would not. They needed the plausible deniability of being able to denounce her, no matter how they might personally feel about it.

“I’m going,” she said. Her bag was already packed and ready at his door, and her documents were tucked away in a small pouch at her side. She didn’t really know what else to say—she was closest to Baba of all her family, and he’d helped her so much and given her so much money, and now she was going. She was going, and she wouldn’t see him again for a very long time. That much she knew.

Baba stood up from his desk and walked over to her. His hands on her shoulders, he looked at her very closely for a moment, and then he leaned over and kissed her on the forehead. “Go, then, with our best wishes. Send us post when you arrive, that we know you are safe, but do not expect a quick reply. We will do our best, but things will be… difficult, for some time. We love you, all of us.”

“I love you too,” Meiling said, blinking back tears. “I—Baba—”

He patted her on the back as she sniffled a few times, and then she took a deep breath. “I’ll go. I’ll write when I get there, non-magical post. Until—until we can speak again.”

Baba nodded, and he pointed her out the room. She suspected he didn’t have it in him to say anything else, and she turned and went before her courage failed her.

The airport, the aeroplane—all these things were new to Meiling. She lived in the non-magical world, more or less, but she’d never taken an aeroplane. In different circumstances, she would have been more excited about the prospect, taken the time to enjoy it, but not in these ones.

Instead, she walked up to the gates, her ticket and passport held in a shaking hand as she kept one eye on her surroundings. There was safety among the non-magical, but still every other person was an Auror coming to arrest her. Her heart beat like a rabbit’s, and she hoped the smiling attendant who took her papers didn’t notice. 

She only felt herself calming only when the plane took off, when the aeroplane shook and lifted, and she saw the island of Singapore falling below her.

She tried calling him from a payphone in Sydney. She had a layover of about two hours, which was just enough time for her to find her new gate, exchange some money into Australian dollars and navigate the telephone tree for an international call. 

It rang. And it rang, and rang, and rang. After eight rings, Meiling hung up.

She would have tried again in Honolulu, but by the time she found the pay phones and realized they were swamped with tourists, she had only twenty minutes to get to her gate to board for Vancouver. She might have tried anyway, but the person on the phone in front of her didn’t seem to be wrapping up anytime soon, and after five minutes of anxious pacing, Meiling gave up and ran to board her next plane.

She tried again in Vancouver, counting out her limited money remaining. She had enough to get to Montreal and take a taxi to Baird’s apartment, with some allowance for error, but she thought she could spare a few dollars on a call—especially because the pay phones didn’t seem to differentiate the American coins she had already exchanged from the Canadian ones. She popped in a quarter, and waited.

The phone rang and rang. Meiling let it ring on a little longer, feeding it an extra five quarters, but no luck.

She’d just have to arrive on Baird’s doorstep, and hope he was happy to see her. 

The last flight, five and a half hours long, crawled by. She tried to sleep, but with little success—she'd spent half the last day sleeping on the flights to Honolulu and to Vancouver, and after more than twelve hours on various planes, her legs were cramped. Below her, in the window, she could see mountains turning into flat plains and then lakes and trees.

In Montreal, the air was thick with both French and English. All signage was in both languages, and she hailed a taxi to take her to Baird’s apartment. Montreal, she could see outside the window, was a mix of the old and new—large, blocky, concrete buildings fought for space alongside rows of low-lying, townhouses. Metal stairs lined the streets, leading up to second and third floor apartments. Dozens of narrow, one-way streets formed a maze that it would take Meiling weeks to learn.

On the way there, her stomach was a roiling pit of anxiety—would Baird remember? Would he recognize her?

He had to, didn’t he?

The house the taxi driver dropped her off at was like any of the others on the street—a second floor apartment, up a set of rickety stairs with a mailbox on one side. The number of the apartment was right, 255B, and Meiling rang the doorbell.

There was no answer. 

She waited a few minutes, and tried again.

No answer.

Biting her lip, Meiling checked the mailbox. There was mail there, maybe a day or two’s worth of it, and much to her relief it was all addressed to Baird Queenscove. There was a utility bill, and a notice from the landlord about a rent increase coming in the next few months. She didn’t open it, instead stuffing them back in the mailbox, and took a deep breath before ringing the doorbell again.

There was still no answer at the door, but there was a call from the street below her.

“Are you here for Baird?” 

The speaker was an older woman, grey hair streaking black, and she spoke with a strong French accent. She gestured up at the door Meiling had been standing at. 

“Yes,” Meiling called back down, her heart seizing. “I tried calling him—he didn’t answer?”

“Baird has been at the hospital the last two days,” the woman said, shaking her head in disapproval. “That hospital of his works him far too hard. He should be home soon. You may come inside and wait in my apartment, if you like—"

“No,” Meiling said, coming to a snap decision. “No, I’ll go wait for him at the hospital. Do you—by any chance…”

The woman smiled, a glint of humour in her eye. “Yes, I’ll Apparate you there, if you like. As long as you don’t expect me to stay. I’d just give you the coordinates, but Baird said you wouldn’t know how to Apparate.”

“No.” Meiling flushed, embarrassed. “No, I don’t, it wasn’t—it wasn’t something covered at my school.”

“It’s not covered as a standard in many schools,” the woman said, and held out a hand. “Come on. My name is Mirielle Desrochers—I’m your downstairs neighbour.”

Meiling hesitated for only a second, and then she went.

L’Hopital de la Francomagie was an old, vaguely European building stationed on the banks of the St. Lawrence River. There was something about it that reminded Meiling of an abbey, though she’d never seen an abbey before. About half of the windows, on the bottom half of the building, was arched, while the stone above it seemed to have been added later. There were gargoyles decorating the roof, and as Meiling watched, one of them stood up, walked along the rooftop, and sat back down.

“The front doors are over that way.” Mirielle pointed. “I have to go to work—I work at restaurant in the wizarding district. Will you be all right?”

“Yes.” Meiling smiled. “Yes, I will be fine. Thank you.”

Mirielle smiled back. “De rien. I’ll see you later, I’m sure.”

With a wave, Mirielle turned on the stop and disappeared, and Meiling settled down on a bench close to the front doors.  The day was sunny and warm, but not hot, and there was a nice breeze off the St. Lawrence River. She tilted her head up, catching some of the rays of the sun, and waited.

It was an hour later that she saw Baird come out of the hospital. The locket on her chest warmed slightly, attuned to the signature that it had been built to recognize, and she looked over to see him—looking tired, bags under his eyes, but his face lit up to see her.

“Mei,” he said, and his voice was raspy. “Mei, I—”

Meiling didn’t wait for him to finish. She launched herself at him, her full weight crashing into him. He staggered, a soft oomph escaping from him, but his arms went around her as he clung to her. Almost to her own surprise, Meiling was weeping—this time not from sadness, but from joy.

“Baird,” she murmured in return, sniffling into his collar. “Baird.”

“…and we went to the courthouse that very day and got married,” Mama finished, a wistful, nostalgic look in her eyes. 

“I thought it was a dream, at first,” a voice came from downstairs, from the trapdoor into the attic. Neal looked down, his eyes widening as he saw his father. Papa was smiling softly, his eyes shining with the same nostalgia. “I’d just come off thirty-six hours of shift in a row, and I’d only slept maybe three hours in the on-call room. I thought I was hallucinating. May I come up?”

Mama laughed, shifting over to let him climb into the attic. Papa hoisted himself up, sitting with his legs dangling into the house below. “I am almost done now, Baird. There is little more to say.”

Papa took her hand, rubbing small circles on the back of it. “But I still want to hear it.”

Mama favoured him with a fond look and turned back to the rest of them. “I moved into your father’s apartment—it was a very nice apartment, charming—”

“It wasn’t,” Papa interrupted dryly. “It was a Healing resident’s apartment—I had a bed, a table with a single chair, and a sofa that I had asked friends to help me take off the street that sagged. The fridge was empty. Your mama asked me, the next day, if we were too poor to have food.”

“Mirielle was very kind,” Mama continued, almost as if Papa hadn’t said anything at all. 

“Auntie Miri?” Jessa piped up.

“Yes, your Auntie Miri,” Mama said serenely. “Mirielle helped me find the grocery store, since we weren’t so poor that we couldn’t buy food, your father was just not very good at getting to the store and buying himself food, nor at cooking it. And then I went out and found a job, first at a restaurant and then later teaching, and we worked it out. We figured it out, in time.”

“What about—about everyone else?” Will asked, his brows still furrowed in a frown. “What about Yifei, or Jiawei… the other students, and the revolts…”

Mama was silent for a minute, then took a deep breath. “The army, including your Waipo, your uncle and many of your distant cousins, put down the revolts. The Cultural Revolution never succeeded in Magical China. But that doesn’t mean there weren’t other effects. 

“The central administration did take over our cities. Singapore—we barely even fought. Only two thousand mages, and we were always divided among the Indians, the Malays, and the Chinese. Great Uncle Yu tried pulling together those he could, but it was too late, and most of those who could fight were exhausted from putting down revolts elsewhere in China. Hong Kong was different, twice as large and far more cohesive, so they fared better for some time. But they couldn’t hold out, and were conquered by the time any of you were born.

“The Singapore I grew up in is not the one of today—then, it was still almost a free state. Now, it is not. Sometimes, we—your cousins—fight to regain what was lost, as do the other cities, but…” Mama shrugged, looking away, and Papa squeezed her hand. “Sometimes, I help someone from the cities who is wanted for rebellion escape. That is all I can do, now.”

“But what about Yifei?” Will insisted. Will was persistent, and especially so when he thought someone was avoiding the question. He often caught things that Neal didn’t. "And Jiawei?"

Mama looked at him for a moment, and then she sighed again. “Jiawei and Yifei married, about a year out of school. It wasn’t the most… advantageous match for her, but Jiawei was a younger son of a younger son, not needed for his clan’s lineage, and he was willing to move to Hong Kong and take her name. I think they both wanted the match, Jiawei to get out of Shanghai and Yifei for heirloom-caster strength for her clan. The Hong Kong Lis were leaders in the resistance. Jiawei died a few years later in the fighting, but Yifei and their son survived and escaped. They’re living in Vancouver now.”

“Oh,” Will said. He looked like he would have asked more, but a few seconds passed, and he remained silent.

“If that’s all…” Mama said, looking purposefully down the trapdoor. “I think each of you has some work to do, have you not?”

The speed with which Neal and his siblings reacted would have been astonishing, if they weren’t Queenscoves, and if they weren’t Mama’s children. Jessa was down the trapdoor and out of the hallway beneath first, Neal and Graeme hot on her heels, while Will slipped on the ladder and fell the last three rungs. He was up in a flash, all of them hurrying down the hallway and out of sight.

Meiling and Baird stayed for a few seconds more, their hands clasped together.

“Dinner can be heated up whenever we’re ready to eat,” Meiling offered softly. “Just a pot-au-feu tonight, and I went out to the bakery for fresh bread.”

“Was it worth it, Mei?” Baird asked, completely ignoring her comment about dinner, or indeed about having walked out in the middle of a snowstorm for fresh bread. “Taking a risk so huge, moving here for someone you’d known for six weeks, leaving who you were in Singapore?”

“I could ask you the same thing.” Meiling smiled, squeezing his hand. “Was it worth it to you?”

“How could it not be?” Baird kissed the back of her hand. “I have you.”

“And it is the same for me, Baird.” Meiling leaned into him. “It is the exact same for me.”