The first time he used Challenger rank without thinking about it was at the water basin on the ground floor.

  The pipe had been temperamental for two weeks, the kind of temperamental where it worked fine for everyone else and then produced a thin cold trickle when you specifically needed it to work. Zelig stood in front of it on a Tuesday morning with his hands under the trickle and felt the low irritation of someone who had somewhere to be and a pipe that had decided not to cooperate.

  He put one hand on the pipe without deciding to.

  Pushed a thread of mana into it, just a thread, feeling for where the blockage was the way you feel for a knot in a rope. Found it, three inches up from the valve, a calcification the size of a thumbnail. Pressed against it with the mana, not hard, just steadily, the way you press a stuck drawer.

  The pipe coughed once and then ran properly.

  He stood there for a second with the water running over his hands.

  He had not known he could do that.

  He filed it away and washed his face and went upstairs.

  The second time was on the Row.

  He was mid con, a man watching with the particular skeptical attention of someone who had seen street performers before and was not going to be caught, when he felt the man’s attention beginning to drift in the wrong direction, toward the hand doing the lifting rather than the hand doing the showing.

  At Base rank he would have shifted his physical position, created a new visual point of interest, something loud enough to pull the eye back. He had done it a hundred times. It worked but it was effortful and effort showed if you looked for it.

  Instead he pushed a small pulse of mana into the air between them, not visible, not dramatic, just a faint warmth that landed on the left side of the man’s face and made him turn his head left instinctively the way you turn toward unexpected warmth.

  Half a second. That was all he needed.

  He finished the lift. Pocketed everything. Thanked the man. The man walked away having enjoyed a magic trick and having no idea he had been redirected by something he would not have had words for even if he had noticed it.

  Zelig stood on the Row and thought about that for a moment.

  Subtle influence. Not mind control, nothing like that, just nudging the physical senses in a direction that produced a predictable response. The kind of thing that at Base rank required visible misdirection and at Challenger rank required almost nothing.

  This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

  He thought about what it would be at Great rank.

  He thought about what it would be at the ranks above that.

  He packed up his things and walked home thinking about it the whole way.

  Marie had a bad client day.

  He knew before she said anything because she came in and put her bag down with the specific weight of someone setting down more than just a bag. Sat at the table. Did not reach for the mending immediately, which she always did, which meant the day had used up the part of her that the mending required.

  He put water on.

  She sat.

  “The diagram woman.” Zelig said.

  “The diagram woman.” Marie confirmed.

  He waited.

  “She sent it back again.” Marie said. “Four times now. Four times I have done this piece to her specification, which changes every time she sends it back, and today she sent a note saying the problem is that the original garment was poorly constructed and I should have flagged this before beginning.”

  “The garment she brought to you.”

  “The garment she brought to me.” Marie said. “That she has owned for six years.”

  Zelig poured the water and put a cup in front of her.

  She looked at it. Looked at him. “I can’t drop her. She pays well and she pays on time and the Middling Ring talks to itself and if she says something bad about my work it gets around.”

  “I know.”

  “So I’m going to do it a fifth time.” She said. “With a smile.”

  “I know.”

  Marie drank the tea. “She also spelled my name wrong in the note. Twice. Differently both times.”

  Zelig said nothing.

  The corner of Marie’s mouth moved. Just slightly.

  “Mari with an I the first time.” She said. “Marre the second time. Like a horse.”

  Zelig looked at his cup.

  “Don’t.” Marie said, but she was already almost smiling.

  “I’m not doing anything.” Zelig said.

  “You’re doing the thing where you don’t laugh and it’s somehow worse.”

  He kept his face straight for another three seconds and then he could not keep it straight anymore and Marie laughed first which meant she had lost and she pointed at him across the table like that proved something.

  It was the best the room had felt in a while.

  He went to the Metarealm that night in a good mood, which was unusual. He did not generally arrive at the Metarealm in a good mood because the Metarealm was not a place he associated with good moods, just with work.

  The purple sand was the same. The heavy air was the same.

  The pyramid was not the same.

  He saw it immediately. More of it above the surface than before. Not dramatically more, maybe another meter of it visible, but enough that the shape was clearer now. Four sided, the carved markings running further down than he had been able to see before. He walked to it and stood in front of it and looked at the new section.

  The carvings were the same script as the artifact label from the vault. He could read more of it now than he could have two months ago. His Eastern script study was slow but it was accumulating.

  He read what he could.

  Three words. Possibly four, the fourth uncertain.

  The first three were clear enough. They said: belonging to the.

  The fourth, if he was reading it right, was a name.

  He stood in the purple dark and looked at the name carved into a pyramid buried in his father’s realm and felt something he did not have a clean word for.

  He stood there for a long time.

  Then he went back to the forms and worked until the headache came and let the realm push him out.

  He lay in his room in the dark afterward and listened to the building settle around him and thought about whose name was on the pyramid.

  He thought he already knew.

  He was not ready to know yet.

  So he put it away and closed his eyes and slept.