"Start again from the west," Corren said, fingers spread over the map as if shielding it from drafts. "Name each hemisphere's major actor and the rationale for their ascendance."
Riven obliged. "Elyndra: the center of civilization. The Grand Confluence is here." He tapped the starburst sigil in the midst of the continent, outlined in gold. "Population highest, access to the oldest crystal veins. Most directly overseen by the Valoria. The world's heart."
Corren nodded. "Continue."
"Almaris is ruled by Merchant-Kings. The habitat is marginal, desert, salt flats, coastal marsh, so governance is fractal and power changes hands often." Riven paused. "Their Aether condensers are artifacts from the Dawn Age; I calculate a high probability most are reverse-engineered from ruins no state has fully mapped."
"And their chief virtue?"
"Throughput. They extract and refine more than their climate would imply. As for faith—" Riven allowed himself the slip of a grin, "they market piety the same as any commodity, but it doesn't guide their policy."
Corren's mouth compressed to a line. "Trade without faith, power without restraint. An open infection." He motioned with his chin. "Next."
"Caelmare," Riven said, "is an island system, nominally a Council, but informally ruled by law of the fittest, naval dominance, and a monopoly on mechanical Aethercraft." It was a running joke in the palace that, for all their bluster, half the Empire's own measuring devices came stamped with Caelmare's floating anchor sigil. "They play the long game. There is always a backup copy."
"Very well." Corren's fingers drummed on the margins near the arctic rim, where the map's lines began to crowd and blur from the inaccuracy of available records. "What about the north?"
"Mournspire Mountains: population insignificant, but the only site with storm-bound Etherium and blackstone accessible enough to be mined. The dominion there is both rich and violently self-isolating. They send tithe to the Empire rather than risk annexation."
"Why?" Corren leaned in, the ligature of his lips as sharp as the lacing on his robe.
"The alternative is direct war, which is—" Riven calculated—"cost-inefficient for both sides. Better to take tribute. They have no aspiration to expansion, only to be left intact."
Corren seemed satisfied, or at least as satisfied as the man ever allowed himself. "Good. You understand the structure. How does the network optimize itself?"
Riven gestured at the gold inlays, linking the nodes continent by continent, a latticework of engineered dependency. "It concentrates command at the closest stable hub and offloads liability to the periphery. The further from the center, the more unpredictable the flow, but also the less regulated." He glanced at the magister, sure he already saw the comparison. "The pattern repeats at every scale. Even in this palace. Even in a family."
Corren's expression grew, for a breath, almost transparent. "There are some models even I prefer not to extrapolate. But yes. In a world built for hierarchy, the pressure always equalizes, somewhere."
They spent the next forty minutes scrubbing through every major corridor of empire, dissecting it the way a taxidermist might peel the skin from a layered, impossibly expensive pet. Corren limited his praise, but Riven noticed the quick, involuntary flicker of the man's approval each time he anticipated a question or skipped the rhetorical deadweight.
It was, Riven decided, the closest to mutual respect he could expect in this arrangement, precisely as he preferred. He learned nothing new in the world's arrangement, only confirmed his suspicion that it was constructed to be autopsied, not worshipped.
By the time they reached the theorized territories, the Southern Expanse, a giant grey brushstroke beyond "TERRA UNCHARTED", Corren's posture softened.
"No empire lasts long in a place where maps end," the magister said, almost to himself.
Riven traced the edge of the blank with a finger. There was a faint, almost invisible residue of pigment along the margin; he wondered how many times the mapmaker had gone back to erase or extend the world's edge as reports arrived, each time pushing a little more fog into the abyss.
"Does the Emperor care about what's beyond the line?" Riven asked.
Corren shot him a look. "His Majesty cares about what can be measured and managed. Beyond that…" He shrugged, a rare small gesture. "Mysticism."
Riven analyzed the void another moment. Then: "We should send more surveyors."
Corren laughed quietly, though it sounded more like a short cough. "That's a topic for the Ministry of Sight. Not for princes or their tutors."
'Or is it?' Riven thought.
He closed the lesson, as ever, with review: a ritual more for the magister's comfort than for his own need. When dismissed, he gathered the wax tablet, the stylus, reclaimed his notepad of margin observations, and prepared to leave.
But Corren lingered, hands steepled.
"Before you go," the magister said, "one question."
Riven paused politely.
"What have you learned here that you could not have intuited alone?"
Riven weighed the angle. "I already understood the shape. But I did not know the words for the lines and boundaries, nor the taste of exception."
Corren nodded once, just shy of approving, just short of cold. "Remember: names matter as much as numbers, in governance. The mistake of most thinkers is believing themselves immune to other people's stories."
It was not praise. It was a warning, or maybe just another variable to be added to the world's calculus. He left without further ceremony, boots silent along the corridor's axis; Riven waited until the footfalls faded, then doubled back to the table and the map.
He stood a long time, reviewing the lattice. He traced the perimeter with one thumb, then sketched a hidden spiral around the conduits: a web, binding all to the center, invisible in the diagrams, visible only in its effect.
The world lived by its patterns. But what was a web, except a system built for catching things less clever than its builder?
He pressed his palm against the inlaid Aether crystal at the center, felt again that faint hum, that pressure—
Not a trap. A lever, waiting for a hand.
–
The afternoon's lesson, politics and metaphysics, replaced ink with silence.
Corren returned, this time with no map, only a folded ream of papers hand-bound in red thread.
The magister's face today was pale, drained, the hollows beneath his cheekbones shadowed in the high noon light. Riven catalogued the physical tells: a tremor at the right wrist, slightly uneven pupils, two pages of new marginalia tucked into the sleeve.
"Sit," Corren said, voice careful. "Today is not for geography. Today is for context."