The Guildhall

The Charter says who may cast, and where, and for whom. It was written after the war to keep magic in the Academy's hands, and it has kept it there. A registered mage carries papers. An unregistered one carries a price. The Excise enforce it at every Charter port, with brass meters and a great deal of patience.

Every citizen in the Charter register is written in black, while the Lowborn, working folk of the lower class, are written in crimson; those of them who find magic usually discover and learn it on their own. Some captains paint that crimson across their hulls now, and dare anyone to challenge them.

The Guild owns the lanes, the contracts and most of the debts. It will lend a captain a freighter and hold the debt until the ship is paid for, and it has never once been in a hurry. The Collector works for the Guild in the way a storm works for the sea: nobody gives the order, and everybody knows.

Magic runs in the sky the way water runs in a valley: downhill, toward whatever wants it most. Where it runs strongly a ship can ride it for almost nothing. Air mages feel the currents in their teeth. Everyone else follows the dotted blue lines on a good chart, and trusts whoever drew them.

A magehold is a tower with a Charter license and a garrison. They were built along the lanes to keep the peace, and they still do, for a fee. Their batteries do not ask who you are before they fire. Fly high, or fly with papers.

Where the drain engines absorb magic, the sky goes still: no wind, no mana, no sound. Lamps burn blue and then not at all. The Hush moves at the speed of a walking man toward whatever holds the most magic, and nobody who flies into it comes back quite the same.

The beastborn carry an animal's blood, a little or a great deal: Trace, Blooded or Deep. The clans keep the old lines, hawk and bear and fox and wolf, and the rarer ones turn up in the mines and the foundry towns. The Charter counts them as neither mage nor mundane, which suits the Charter very well.

Some people are born with magic the Academy did not teach and cannot license. Menders, Wispers, Quickeners, Shapers: the Charter calls them all leaks and hunts them all the same. The Undertow smuggles them out one crate at a time. Control comes with time, stillness, and someone beside them who does not flinch.