“Those are the ideographs our nanshurs learn,” Weishu replied. “Another bead, if you will.”

Evvy chose a cylindrical bead, blue on white. “Porcelain,” she said scornfully. Of another, more intricately detailed blue-on-white bead, she also said, “Porcelain.” Two more: “Brown glass with white rubbed over the raised marks. General, did you make these?” The general spat on the plate in front of him. “Oh,” Evvy said. Briar could tell she was thinking aloud. “You don’t make things. You have mages that make your beads for you. But you can use the spells that are put into all this writing?”

“Yes,” Jia Jui said. “That is how our magic is taught. Is this not the essence of your magic?”

“Our academic mages write spells on paper, or in books. It’s the speaking of them, sometimes with scents, herbs, inks, and other aids, that helps them to complete the working,” Rosethorn explained quietly.

Evvy wasn’t listening. She was passing the string of beads through her fingers. “Wood. Briar, what wood is this?”

Briar reached over her shoulder and sent out a tendril of his own power. “Willow.”

Evvy wrinkled her nose. “Wood’s no fun for me, either,” she explained to the emperor and the mage general. She seemed to have forgotten that Hengkai was angry. Briar knew that she was sunk into her power, letting her own stone magic spread around her hands. Her fingers sped over more beads. She had missed a big one, but Briar did not call her attention to it. Either it was the detested porcelain, or Evvy would return to it.

“Maybe you asked the wrong student for this test — oh!” Evvy stopped. “Wait a moment….”

She worked her fingers back past flat rectangles of willow etched with circles centered on holes, past bone cylinders dense with ancient Yanjingyi letters, and past three brown glass cylinders. When her hand found a round grayish-white bead studded with small red spots, she stopped.

“Interesting,” she said, turning the bead over. “There’s spells in each of the red beads stuck in this marble globe. Even though they’re glass I can tell because the magic soaks into the stone.” She looked up at the emperor. “The main bead is marble. It changes magic. That’s how I can tell what’s in the glass beads.”

“Nonsense.” One of the other mages from the previous night walked up to stand before the table near Hengkai. It was the older one, the man with silver hair and mustaches. “All know that marble houses magic and protects it.”

Evvy ignored him. “Whatever’s in these beads is nasty, and each one is different. There’s illness — smallpox in one and cholera in another. Fire in three, one very hot, two more normal. Choking smoke in two, and icy wind in one. The gold rings around each red bead keep the magic from leaking onto the top of the marble, so only the general knows he carries these. He’s got …” Evvy hauled up the loops of the necklace, her black eyes scanning it for the pale orbs. She looked at the emperor. “Twenty of them.” She scowled at the general. “And you wear another necklace and bracelets like this wrapped around your arms, all loaded with bad magic.”

“You dare lecture me on the magic of war, peasant wench!” shouted the mage general, pushing forward against the halberds. He glared up at the guards who fenced him in.

“Perhaps Evumeimei only means that the spells in the stone beads are corrupted,” Jia Jui suggested. “As a student she would understand that far better than war magic or the craft of being a general.” She bowed to the emperor as Weishu turned to look at her. “In my first years I spent much of my time going over mage strings to find which beads had gone stale. It is one of the earliest senses a young mage develops. General Hengkai has fought many battles recently. Is it not possible that his most personal tools are worn-out?”

Evvy, really interested in her test now, had returned to her scrutiny of the beads. “I never said I was anything but a student stone mage. Oh, more bone, more wood. More glass. Carnelian! Briar, it’s carnelian!” She held a large reddish-brown stone up to him.

“I can see it’s carnelian,” he replied, amused. The emperor, Jia Jui, and Parahan were also smiling at his student’s enthusiasm. Briar knew carnelian was one of Evvy’s favorite stones because it had been so hard for her to get her hands on any when she lived in Chammur. Even here in the east, where it was more common, she had yet to tire of it. Now she turned the bead around, eyeing it closely. Slowly, so slowly at first that Briar thought he imagined it, her eyebrows drew together. By the time she turned the bead on one end to look at it in a different way, everyone could see that she was frowning.

“Evumeimei, what is wrong?” the emperor asked.

“Who put strength and fear spells in this?” she demanded hotly. “This is carnelian. It’s for protection and thinking!”

“Perhaps it is so in your benighted teachings, student.” The old mage was also frowning as he looked at the emperor. “Your Imperial Majesty, Light of Knowledge, will you humor this peasant infant at the expense of true Yanjingyi mages? She knows nothing of our ancient symbols, of our learning that has been passed down over centuries —”

He fell silent when the emperor raised his hand. “Honored Guanshi Dianliang, I remind you that this western student knew exactly the nature of the spells on the snake-hole bead,” Weishu said calmly. “She also recognizes the spells on this carnelian bead, do you not, child?”