The Sin System: My Wife is Envy

Chapter 54: Magic Train

The teleportation terminal sat at the city’s eastern edge, where the buildings thinned and the road widened into something large enough to accommodate everyone who wanted to be somewhere else.

It looked like someone had decided a train station needed to be more serious about itself. High walls, a vaulted ceiling running with mana-light strips, dozens of archways along the far wall arranged in rows, each one active with a low pulse you felt in your back teeth.

The queue for the Academy gate occupied most of the eastern section. Three nobles near the front were having a disagreement about luggage organization that had clearly started well before they arrived.

An older woman in maintenance robes moved along the row of active arches with a calibration tool, pausing at each one, marking something on a board.

"One hour," Sebastian said, checking the schedule board.

"One hour," I confirmed.

He took in Anastasia, who had fixed her attention on the nearest gate arch with the completeness she gave things she was filling in for the first time. Then Tessira, who was watching the boy with the paper bag and making no comment about it. Then me.

"I will wait with the luggage," he said.

He went to find somewhere to do that.

The waiting area had benches in rows facing the arches. Most were occupied.

Tessira took a seat. I sat beside her. Anastasia sat on my other side and immediately began watching the archways.

"How does it work," she said.

"The gate reads the mana signature of the destination and opens a fold between the two points. You walk through one side and exit the other."

"And the sensation."

"I don’t know. I haven’t used one."

She shifted toward me.

"You do not know what it feels like."

"No."

"But you are going to go through it."

"Yes."

She considered this.

"Acceptable," she said.

Tessira, from my other side: "I have used one. Once. It is like being rearranged. Everything goes at the same time and arrives at the same time, but there is a beat in between where neither of those things is happening yet."

Anastasia glanced across me at her.

"A beat," she said.

"Less than a second. But you register it."

"Unpleasant."

"Unsettling," Tessira said. "Which is different."

Anastasia sat with that distinction.

"Do people ever fall off," she said. Not to either of us specifically.

Tessira looked at her.

"Fall off what," I said.

"The island. If the whole city is floating, the edges must end somewhere."

"There are wards along the perimeter," Tessira said. "Standard mana barrier, maintained by the city administration."

"And if the wards fail."

"They don’t."

"If they did."

Tessira held her gaze for a second.

"Then yes," she said. "People would fall off."

Anastasia looked back at the arches.

"I appreciate the honest answer," she said.

The bench was exactly wide enough for three people if nobody moved their elbows anywhere ambitious. Tessira had her bag on her lap. Anastasia’s two books were in my bag, by her instruction, on the grounds that she was not carrying luggage and did not intend to start.

"You will want to eat before we board," Tessira said to me. "The transit journey is twenty minutes and there is nothing in between."

"You have read the intake materials," I said.

"You sent them to the estate. I read what was available." She reached into her bag and produced something wrapped in cloth. "I also spoke to the woman at the intake desk."

She held it out.

I took it.

"What is this," I said.

"Something from the market this morning. I was up early."

Anastasia was watching this.

"You were managing the logistics," she said to Tessira.

"Someone should," Tessira said. She had faced back toward the arches.

"I did not know to do that," Anastasia said.

"You have been doing other things."

The statement was level and accurate. Anastasia said nothing.

I opened the cloth. Something pastry-based, still warm enough to mean she had timed it correctly.

"Thank you," I said.

Tessira kept her eyes on the arches.

Anastasia glanced at the pastry.

"What is that made from," she said.

"I don’t know," I said.

"Ask her."

"Tessira. What is this made from."

"Ground millet, butter, something they called northern spice. The woman said the recipe was from before the empire standardized the trade routes."

Anastasia put out her hand. I broke off a piece and she took it, held it for a moment, then ate it.

"That is what butter tastes like," she said.

"Yes," I said.

"I had a concept of it. The concept was wrong."

Tessira, from my other side, was watching her.

"What did you think it would taste like," she said.

"Something with more resistance. Based on the context in which it appeared in the documents I read."

I kept my eyes on the arches.

The hour passed.