Blood Over Bright Haven

“But there was one last thing Elder Sertha had said about the Tiranish: they couldn’t knowingly separate parents from children. Their religious laws forbade it. So, braced over Carra, Thomil rasped a Tiranish word the Caldonnae had little use for: ‘Mine…my daughter.’”

Thomil adopts Tiranish values to protect himself and Carra, gaining some agency over the cultural assimilation forced on him. Because the Tiranish guards do not see Kwen people as individuals but do slavishly follow their religious dictates, he claims Carra as his despite the fact that ownership does not matter to his people.

“And of the few women who did make it to a graduate degree in magic, most donned green robes and went into teaching. Why pursue research, after all, when its highest levels were inaccessible to you? Better for a lady mage to employ her talents training the next generation of great male innovators—unless she was a perpetually unsatisfied monster like Sciona, always after what wasn’t hers.”

Misogyny in Tiranish culture means that while women can become academics, their options afterwards are limited to teaching. In Tiran, even the most intellectually capable of women exist to support men, whether in or outside of the home. Sciona’s rise and her faith in herself are anomalies; it is highly unusual for women to seek to promote themselves rather than their male peers.

“The cauldron shot toward the ceiling—and into it, right through Founding Mage Stravos’s handsome copper-haired head. Cracks burst like lightning across Mordra the First’s inventions and Highmage Sabernyn’s trial, and shouts of shock rang through the chamber.”

This passage foreshadows the climax, when Sciona blows up the mages and herself to upend the heritage of Tiran. The scene also symbolizes several key events: The destruction of Stravos’s image echoes Sciona’s later acknowledgement that she harms the Kwen people with her magic; her superior performance represents her eventual rise over the achievements of the other mages; the cracks in the portrait of Mordra the First echo Sciona’s commitment to breaking apart Tiran’s power structure; and finally, the explosion connects her to the traitorous mage Sabernyn, whose murders she outdoes.

“A legacy highmage didn’t have to be any good if his assistants had the skill to do the bulk of his work for him. But that wasn’t what bothered Sciona. What truly got under her skin was the knowledge that Cleon Renthorn didn’t need four assistants. He was talented enough to pull through any project on his own; he just felt entitled to the work of others.”

Class differences are a vital thematic current in the book, with Sciona seeing herself as a self-made overachiever who lacks the privilege of mages like Renthorn. Renthorn has intelligence and is a man, but his real power in Tiranish society comes from his upper class status, which makes him “entitled to the work of others.” In other words, Renthorn accepts the suffering of those he views as inferior as his due.

“Tommy answered in words Sciona didn’t understand—Kwen pidgin—and it occurred to her that, though she had spent her whole life alongside the quiet Kwen, she had never really stopped to listen to their language. It was a rough sound, fitting the rough people who scraped out lives beyond the barrier.”

Sciona, at this point in the novel, does not view Kwen culture as real, so thus delegitimizes their language as “pidgin”—a derogatory term for a linguistic hodgepodge, typically used to describe the speech of adults for whom the dominant language is not their first language. Sciona’s ignorance and blinkered perspective show her superiority complex: After all, she has never asked herself how many languages Thomil speaks and compared it to the number she knows.

“I’ve devoted my entire life to magical research. I wouldn’t have done that if I didn’t believe that magic was a uniquely powerful force for good and progress. The idea that a great mage used this knowledge for something as petty as murdering his colleagues…it disgusts me.”

Sciona’s words here foreshadow her future depression and her later choice to murder her colleagues in the same manner as Sabernyn. Sabernyn’s actions were blamed on ambition and jealousy; meanwhile, Sciona’s greater atrocity ostensibly rights the fact that magic siphoning needs to be stopped—a conviction she adopts through her connection with Thomil and growing respect for the suffering of the Kwen people.

“Perramis was a prominent enough figure for Sciona to know, even at six years old, that he had married another woman and now had two sons. At six, she was old enough to know that a man didn’t deny his child his surname without malice. By the time she was twelve, Sciona hoped that she had been born a bastard. Because if that wasn’t the reason, the only other explanation was that she was a girl.”

Sciona’s characterization and understanding of the world is heavily warped and shaped by her father’s rejection, although she rarely acknowledges this. Her grief and anger towards her father show the impact of his failure to love her. Although Sciona empowers herself by refusing to give her father a place in her life, her belief in herself is challenged by his absence.

“It is only right for the world to bring back upon him what he brought upon the world. This is why I can’t worship your god or agree with the way he measures virtue. He allows this gray space for delusion. You take a void and name it ‘goodness,’ and it is so? If you can lie to yourself that you’re a good person, despite all evidence, then suddenly it is so?

The moral crux of the novel is that intentions do not matter if actions are destructive. Sciona’s mental illness in the following chapters is directly precipitated by her realization that she has unknowingly caused great harm. This passage illustrates just one of the many ways Thomil changes Sciona: He views her as a good and valuable person despite her own failures, inspiring her to forgive herself enough to commit her act of rebellion.

“Many of Jurowyn’s contemporaries and successors had dismissed his accounts, accusing him of fabricating the more fantastical elements—the cliffside cities that rivaled Tiran in size, the shapeshifting sages with their bodies wound round with tattoos, the wolves the size of horses.”

The close-mindedness and corruption of Tiran has cut off its residents from the beauty and wonder of the outside world. Tiran’s engineering-like magic has wrecked the potential for enchantment by extracting the life of its fantasy landscapes for comfort and convenience.

“I’ve humored you in your outlandish claims about religion, all right? But the hard fact remains that your people rejected the true God and, by extension, Truth itself. Leon gave your kind a chance to join Him in the light, and your ancestors refused. You continue to refuse Him, despite all evidence of His holiness and supremacy.”

Sciona’s diction in this passage shunts the blame for Kwen suffering onto the Kwen people themselves through dehumanizing phrases like “your kind” and an emphasis on the overwhelming power and righteousness of her God. This reaction is a defense mechanism against the horrific siphoning she has just witnessed, but her resorting to these stereotypes illustrates her internalized beliefs about Tiranish superiority.

“Sciona looked down and pictured herself breaking on the cobblestones below, her organs spattering the curb, her brains leaking from her cracked skull. One fewer mage in Tiran to suck the life from the rest of the world. But it would be like dropping a pebble to dam a river. Meaningless.”

Violent imagery highlights the duality of Sciona’s mental health crisis—she is both personally responsible for killing people with magic and completely meaningless to the system of power. Her life and death do not matter to the city as a whole, yet her own understanding of her existence is tainted by what she has done. Her suicidality underscores the specific gruesomeness of the death she envisions, contrasting it with the description of her as the anonymous end of “one fewer mage.”

“The Tiranish had an almost obsessive aversion to dirty things. While Thomil couldn’t be around to protect his niece, a thick layer of soot was the best defense against the sort of trouble that plagued a pretty Kwen girl—even a scarred one.”

Tiranish fixation on purity is emblematic of a society build on the taint of blood. It also highlights the hypocrisy of the Tiranish feminine ideal: Tiranish women are delicate and must be kept innocent, but a Kwen girl like Carra is liable to rape by someone like Renthorn. Tiranish morality is surface performance, which is reflected in their dislike of dirt but countenancing of murder and abuse.

“Where the masculine mind derives contentment from mastery and accomplishment, the feminine mind derives contentment from submission. Thus, the ills of the female psyche arise from a rejection of the authorities within the subject’s life and may be treated with lobotomy, the correct application of which I have outlined in the pages herein.”

This discussion of alchemical lobotomy borrows heavily from real-world use of this discredited medical procedure. Lobotomy was common in the 1930s and ’40s and disproportionately affected women in the US, where it was touted as an effective treatment for mental illness. The procedure, which severs the two lobes of the brain via the nasal cavity, rendered its victims placid and childlike—traits considered preferable in women. Misogynistic ideas about women’s independence and sexual agency meant that families often subjected to lobotomy young women who displayed not symptoms of mental illness but unwillingness to conform.

“Well, for one thing, Kwen don’t just die from Blight hitting our bodies. During my lifetime, about a quarter of the deaths in my tribe were from direct Blight. The rest were from starvation because resources on the plains are finite, and when all the game and crops are also dying of Blight, it’s hard to find enough food to go around.”

Sciona is blinded by her privilege; despite her intellect, her understanding of how the world works is limited by the narrow view afforded by her station and blinkered by her assumptions. In contrast, Thomil, as a Kwen man, can see the full scope of the oppression his people face, including the havoc Tiran wreaks on non-human life in Kwen lands. This complex exploitation decimates one place for the benefit of another while never considering the suffering inflicted.

“But Sciona couldn’t do that. Not when science was supposed to be the godliest of arts. Not when this creeping doubt kept pointing out that all Tiran’s knowledge of God came from Leon, who, it seemed, had been a prolific murderer, plagiarist, and liar. There was too much dissonance from God all the way down.”

Calling Leon a “murderer, plagiarist, liar” indicates Sciona’s final severing from her peers. Her open-mindedness enables her to unravel the lies undergirding Tiran’s power structure and religion. Her recognition that Leon built their society on harm inflicted on the Kwen tribes allows her to recast this beloved figure as an evil man whose actions parallel those of the similarly discredited Bringham.

“Unbidden, Sciona recalled the sense of power she had felt at mapping to the distant ocean. There was an abstract thrill that always accompanied magic, bending reality to one’s will. For her, the excitement had turned to horror the moment the abstract turned to skin, blood, and stripped bones. But what if it hadn’t? Horror could be close to excitement…fear could be close to excitement.”

Sciona’s exploration of her feelings highlights the similarities between her and Renthorn. Although he is corrupt, violent, and aggressive, she understands his motivations. Even though she reacts with horror at the deathly cost of magical power, she can imagine the “abstract thrill” that propels Renthorn’s fascination with “skin, blood, and stripped bones.” The novel obliquely references the Kwen belief that doing good matters more than intension—both Sciona and Renthorn intend to become the most powerful mages they can be, but only she pulls back and attempts to rectify the wrongs Tiran has committed.

“This was one of the subtler changes that had taken hold over the past two and a half months. Sciona didn’t just tolerate Thomil anymore; he had become part of her process, part of the way she did magic, when, for twenty years, it had been a solitary art.”

Sciona slowly abandons the possessive individualistic mindset of Tiran and adopts the Kwen value of cooperative societal unity. Her reliance on Thomil is not anti-feminist: She does not rely on him because he is a man, but because no person can accomplish great deeds on their own.

“No one had ever told Thomil that. It was always, You let your daughter speak like that? From other Kwen, the tone was as fearful as it was judgmental. From the rare city guard who terrifyingly chose to comment on Carra’s conduct, it was an implicit warning: That little rat’s going to get herself into trouble.”

Both Kwen and Tiranish women are held to impossible and restrictive standards in Tiran, but only Kwen women could die for transgressing the harshly oppressive state. Thomil’s support of Carra’s rebelliousness—and Sciona’s praise for it—shows their disillusionment with the restrictions of Tiranish society. They’ve accepted the idea that risking one’s life to break tradition is worth maintaining one’s humanity.

“All that benefits Tiran pleases God. I am sorry that the burden of knowledge has come upon you too early, before you were ready to bear it, but bear it we all must.”

Many passages in this chapter demonstrate the insidious, casual cruelty of Tiranish beliefs. This excerpt directly calls human suffering necessary and good if it benefits Tiran’s status quo. The formal diction of this passage reflects the official and institutional nature of this idea; nothing Sciona has discovered is a surprise to the Archmages, but a regular part of daily life.

“It was how he got to sleep at night beside his wife, Sciona imagined. The corpses that had made his fortune weren’t girls like his daughters, weren’t ladies like his wife, weren’t old men and women like his esteemed parents. The people he fed on had to be of intrinsically lower quality. They had to be monsters.”

Repetition and simile emphasize the dehumanization that undergirds a mage’s life. Those of the lower-classes, and especially Kwen people, must necessarily be considered “monsters” or otherwise unworthy of human dignity to justify the mass murder that powers magic. Acceptance of this principle has corrupted the mages so completely that Sciona cannot see a way to cure them of it.

“Sciona Freynan is no less. She is our creation. We, the High Magistry, must acknowledge this and take responsibility for her. I insist on this.”

Bringham forces the mages to take full credit for the meteoric rise and the betrayal of Sciona, his surrogate daughter and unofficial heir. Calling her “our creation” renders her accomplishments moot—she is recast as the result of male labor and tolerance.

“They both knew this was a delusion, a precursor to something that could never be. They couldn’t have this—Thomil couldn’t really belong to a Tiranish woman, and Sciona couldn’t really belong to any man—without losing some vital part of themselves. There was no future here. Thomil would never meet Sciona’s father nor endure the scorn of her archmage father figure. Sciona would never have to shiver through a dark winter in Thomil’s homeland. There was only this moment, and its isolation rendered it invincible.”

The depressing fantasies of potential futures highlight the contradictions at the heart of Thomil and Sciona’s short-lived romance. Their love cannot last, fractured by their cultural differences, the disapproval of both cultures, and the need for rebellion. Nevertheless, Thomil’s choice to follow Sciona’s final wish by leaving with the Kwen escapees illustrates how his memories of her will continue to sustain him long after their kiss.

“But true witches—meidrae of the Kwen—had never practiced such evil magic. They had used their knowledge to heal the sick and watch over those they loved. Sciona was no witch. Her place had never been in Thomil and Carra’s home or even Alba and Aunt Winny’s. She had always belonged here with insatiable men, her brothers in greed and ego.”

Sciona self-flagellates here, writing herself off as unworthy of love or community. She is convinced she belongs with men she considers evil-doers, rather in the pleasant domestic spaces implied by the word “home.” This partially explains her decision to die alongside the mages she kills.