Emily wants nothing more than to leave this cursed city, despite all the lies and tears it took to get this far west. Even the air is black, gritty with soot and ash. It clings to her hair, dusting her vibrant red locks with flecks of gray. Rain comes and burns like acid on the exposed skin of her forearms and neck. The ambient grime turns to mud and leaves her just another miserable face on the faded streets of Tal. A tower, stories taller than the building surrounding it, emerges from the omnipresent haze. She steps up her pace, hurrying toward the sanctuary of its ancient halls. The stones are black, which does not surprise her, but the ebony glitters with a clarity and cleanliness that does not seem possible in this polluted clime. "Emily!" Once, the sound of her name in that tone, shouted by that voice, would have stopped her in her tracks. She still feels the thrill of fear, but she keeps going, breaking into a stumbling, exhausted run. She's through the archway now, footsteps heavy on the Collegium cobblestones. Her wet hair clings to her face despite the violence of her movements, but she barely notices. "Don't you do this, girl." He is close. The run, after miles of travel, has left her gasping. He is bigger, stronger, faster, than she will ever be. In her heart, she knows that she will not make it to the tower. It doesn't stop her from trying. Now that her mother is dead, she fears nothing as much as giving up. He grabs her arm a half-pace before the stairway. She cries out as the hard jerk he gives her sends her sprawling across the black jade. A crack echoes off the walls as her jaw connects with the corner of a step. Her eyes meet those of the guard who stands at the top of the stairway before the entrance. His expression is flinty; he will not abandon his post. Fingers dig into the soft flesh of her arm like a vice. There is nothing gentle about the way she is hauled back to her feet. "Poppa, please!" she sobs. Tears and pain obscure her vision. "You should've listened," he says as he throws her over his shoulder like a bale of hay. She kicks her feet and writhes like a snake, but he has wrestled beasts all his life. He holds her fast and begins the long walk back to their farm in the foothills. He makes it three steps. "Put her down." Emily lifts her head and through the curtain of her hair sees a woman's dainty lower half, clad in black. Emily's heart beats faster, hope and humiliation waging silent war. As magic swirls around them, her father's muscles go rigid with protest. It doesn't save him from compliance with the arcanist's order. "You can't do this," he says through clenched teeth. "Your name is Emily?" asks the black-clad woman. Even her hair is black, but it shines with slick perfection. She is flanked on either side by a burly man in cloth-of-iron. Emily nods. She is too overwhelmed to speak. "I caught her before she made it through the doors!" her father snarls. He knows the law: once a girl enters the tower, she belongs to the Collegium and no one else. Until then, she belongs to her menfolk or the magistrate. The arcanist studies Emily's father the way a precious child might consider his least-favored meal. "You're trespassing," is all she says. Emily wriggles free of her father's grasp. ## ANALYSIS I've been thinking a lot about different education models lately, both because my son is approaching two and because I'm going back to work in a couple of months. The last two years have really changed how I think about education and public school, and  writing fiction is one way I process different mental paradigms. During National Novel Writing Month I considered trying to write a boarding school story in the Verraine universe. I realized that parenthood has made it difficult for me to write a story about sending a pre-pubescent child off to a school to get lectured at with limited supervision and sporadic contact with home. I tried to imagine a "magic school" setting aligned with educational and parenting principles that I actually agreed with, but still had enough drama and conflict and excitement to carry a story. Halfway through the brainstorming I realizd that that Naomi Novik had already done a brilliant job of it. Check out _[A Deadly Education](https://www.naominovik.com/a-deadly-education/)_ if you have a high tolerance for brutal cliffhangers. It's excellent. Of course, just because one author has says something similar to what I want to say doesn't mean that I can't put my own spin on things. _The Black Stones of Sanctuary_ is perhaps one of the few stories I've ever written that count as a "power fantasy" in that it represents everything some very specific emotions I have about protecting children I have taught. It's not my most polished work, but it's from the heart in a way that honestly few things I write are. Speaking of polished, the ambiance of the Tal and the Collegium is modeled on a weird thing I stumbled across in my reading: the architecture of 10 Downing Street. For readers who (like me) tend not to keep up with British politics, it's a where the Prime Minister lives and has his offices. It's probably comparable to America's White House, except more like a townhouse than a mansion. It was (shoddily) built by a complete scoundrel in the late 1600s. Sometime during the 1730s, King George II tried to give it to his treasurer, but Sir Robert politely declined by asking him to make it the official residence of anyone who wound up with his position; he was basically the king's Prime Minister. 10 Downing Street eventually developed into a center of government in the 1800s. They almost demolished it because of all the gambling dens and gin parlors and brothels springing up in the surrounding area. During industrialization, it acquired a truly heinous coating of soot and other gunk. The grime was so bad that when they finally cleaned it and did some restorations, people were so startled by the cheerful yellow stonework the government wound up painting it black to get people to stop complaining. The Tallan Collegium was created as a safe haven for mages after a pretty nasty war, during which the Cult of Valor tried to control or exterminate anyone with magic abilities. The Cult was able to spread because many people _would_ like to see mages exterminated. Mages tend to have a lot of individual destructive power, but at this time in Verraine's history are relatively rare, which makes them vulnerable. The glittering black tower, with its clean edges and pristine appearance, represents a compromise between flaunting their power and allowing people to forget that they _do_ have power. Just because they _could_ keep a white or golden building standing tall and bright doesn't mean that such an act would be wise. ## Further Reading - Here's the [official history of 10 Downing Street](https://www.gov.uk/government/history/10-downing-street). - For a fantasy series with what I consider to be a realistic take on what a society with only a few innately powerful individuals would look like, check out _[Imager](https://www.lemodesittjr.com/the-books/imager-portfolio/imager/)_ by L. E. Modesitt, Jr.