"Void," Dil cursed, pushing his way past me. "Professor!"

  An old, white-haired man, swaying like a shell-burst survivor, croaked something. He sat in a dark wooden chair, by a desk covered with instruments I recognized.

  Straight edges, curve templates, compasses of various sizes.

  Engraving drills.

  The man was a warder. The hall stretched two stories, seven or eight meters in height, and wide as the Bucket's loading bay. Dark, smoky-topaz-brown wood paneling on the walls, hung with blackboard com readouts, most of them blank and inactive.

  Smooth wooden desks in rows, oiled and polished by generations of elbows so that their reddish-brown surfaces reflected the ceiling lights.

  Circular magnifying lenses with high-power light-strips around their edges rose like crab arms from the tabletops. More tools. The chemical smell of hot metal, the ozone of electric engines, various dusts not yet sucked away by the ventilation.

  And warding materials.

  Slabs of polished rock, black with reddish veins, stood stacked in meter-long, wood, travel crates. Hexagons of steel ship armor, squares of glazed ceramic, even some concrete, littered the various desks.

  For a second, I felt like I'd been transported back in time, to the Academy on Shaya, the classrooms and workshops. Even the chairs were similar, straight-backed and uncomfortable, with soft cushions, blankets, fluffy sweaters on their seats to make them bearable.

  Except here the chairs looked like they'd been pushed back in a hurry, some of them up-ended and overturned, spilling their contents on the floor.

  Spilling their students into a pile in the middle of the hall.

  Blood. Drops of it. Pools by the students.

  Like in a different memory. No fire outside the windows. Yet.

  I rushed forward, searching for gunshot wounds.

  Someone grabbed me, yanked me back.

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  "Let go," I yelled, twisting. "Get the medkit."

  Lana, Beligio, Yey-Trien were going to die. Someone had broken in. I needed to get the rectors, the bailiffs, find the assassins before they could do any more damage. I struggled, trying to pull lose, trying to pull my foil, yelling for the medkit.

  "Sir," a smooth, soothing voice in my ear. "Sir, you need to stand down."

  Stand down? No, that was wrong. That was later, after the fire, after the cavalry regiment had arrived with their tanks and their atmospheric fighters. After the battle, and the Hall of Punishment burning down.

  "Sir!" Smooth voice. Comforting. Used to handling panicking officers.

  Dil.

  I was on New Millet. Newm. I didn't know these kids sprawled on the floor, their white-haired professor struggling to stand. Nobody was going to die. I hoped.

  My brain established control over my emotions. I stopped struggling, and Dil softened his hold. Good hold, over the arms, with my elbows locked behind my back but hands still in front. One of those that didn't feel like you were held, but incapacitated you anyhow.

  Took crudmucking guts to pin a warder in a rage.

  Maybe Dil didn't know what I was capable of. One look at him, his eyes cold, icy, absolutely steady and full of fear all at once, disavowed me of that notion. Dil knew.

  Guts. I liked him. And I needed to help these kids.

  "I'm calm," I said. "I'm calm. We need to get a medkit."

  "On it," Dil said, flowing away from me, grabbing an orange box from a shelf by the door. I grabbed the other, following him deeper into the hall, Carter and her two guard friends moving in behind me.

  Bless whatever ancient administrator who'd decreed that all workshops had to have adequate medical resources.

  The kids weren't hurt. No gunshots, no wounds. Nor were they all kids, their ages ranging from teens to a woman older than me. Some of them had the stained and calloused fingers of warders, most had not. All of them looked drained and weakened, hollow cheeks, bones sticking out beneath thin skin. Nosebleeds.

  As we moved them, checking pulse and breathing, stretching out the silent ones in recovery positions, propping up the moaning ones with pillows, we revealed a pattern on the floor.

  A circle, recently engraved, its edges passing through the cracks between the stones. More circles attaching to it. Everything filled in with white paint to make it stand out, half-meter-sized dots along the lines. Instructions on where to stand, names written by them.

  An attunement circle, helping mages work together. Created by a warder for a specific purpose. The lines were precise, although I would have done them differently.

  An armor ward. Big one, with places for thirty-two mages. There weren't thirty-two people in the room, counting me and the guards. But filled, it could likely protect the entire city.

  The memory of the line where the artillery craters ended flashed through my mind, the dark-red grass churned up, revealing black soil beneath. The stench of spoiled vinegar. That's how far the armor ward stretched.

  Or not. The upper stories of the buildings had been littered with holes. Not blown through, but holed, shredded.

  They didn't have enough power to infuse the entire ward. That's why the artillery was getting through.

  Answers, but not ones I liked.