“No—” Gwenna begins.

“Yes.” My expression is firm. “I can see if there’s a legitimate artifact and try to get it before they do.”

“How do you know if it’s legit? What, are you some kind of artifact expert?” Lark scoffs.

“No, but I can read Old Prellian,” I say, and before I can add onto that, Master Tiercel rings a bell. I straighten and move to the front of the line of our group, ignoring the curious looks that Lark is shooting in my direction.

When he nods, I step forward for our team, and so does someone for Master Crow’s team.

“Each of you select one artifact and set it on the table in front of your team, and then someone else in your team will take their turn and select.”

I stride forward to the shelves with crisp, authoritative steps, and then move my face a mere handspan away, squinting and examining each thing as best I can. There’s a music box. A spoon. A plate. A tool of some kind. A wand. A goblet. A lamp. An ewer. The scatter of objects ranges from the mundane to the fantastical, and all of them are highly ornate in the style of Old Prell. My vision is terrible without my spectacles, so I pick up one object and hold it practically to my nose, trying to read the writing painted on the underside of a vase.

“Is there a problem, fledgling?” Master Tiercel calls out.

“No, I’m just making sure I don’t miss anything,” I tell him, and set the vase back down on the shelf. It looked authentic and appropriately old enough, the porcelain surface cracked and crazed, but the tidy writing on the underside was absolute gibberish, mimicking Old Prellian glyphs without knowledge of what they mean. It’s obviously a fake.

I squint my way down the rest of the shelf, looking for obvious issues. Several of the “artifacts” have a bold yellow paint on them that makes me pause. Prellians crafted their dyes from minerals and foodstuffs and most of their yellows were murky at best. Blues and reds and earth tones are the colors prominent in Old Prellian artifacts, and I pick up a yellow cup and eye the glyphs crawling along the edge.

Cup of Neverturnal Milks from a Great Pigeon

Yeah, it’s a fake. I suspect all of the yellows are fakes, and that helps me rule things out. My opponent picks up an artifact with confidence and returns to his table, and then all eyes are on me, waiting.

“Do we need to set a timer, fledgling?”

“No, I’ll pick something.” I just don’t know what. I eye the next shelf, worried, and then spot what looks like an ugly, stone-encrusted egg behind a comb and mirror set. I pick the egg up and look for glyphs, as Prellians labeled everything that had a function.

Weight of Crushing. Charges Left: Zero.

Prellian artifacts with a specific set of charges always have a countdown glyph engraved on them, magically updated as each charge is used. Pursing my lips, I turn the egg over in my hands and then set it back down on the shelf as if it’s a fake. I walk toward a series of glassware and pick up an ewer, then say, “Does the artifact need to have charges?”

“What?” Master Tiercel demands, clearly annoyed at the time I’m taking.

I turn, facing him with the useless ewer in my grasp. “Does the artifact have to have usable charges or does it just need to be a legitimate artifact?”

He tilts his head and gives me an annoyed look. “Do you think we would put working artifacts in here?”

I want to say I don’t know, would you? Because some artifacts are absolutely useless other than being amusing at parties. Like the only artifact we have at home that still works—an ewer of delicate water. It makes any water it pours have a light floral taste to it, a nod to some spoiled noble’s taste preference. But I’m probably not supposed to know that and everyone’s staring at me with resentment. I put the pitcher back, intending to head back for the egg when I see the perfect solution.

It’s a small bowl with a glyph on the metal lip, and a pretty red enamel on the edges and the two fluted handles. I recognize that bowl, because my mother gave one to my grandmother long ago. It’s a bowl of infinite olives, another kitchenware nod to some Old Prellian nobility who couldn’t be bothered to make their own snacks. I snatch it up, glance at the bottom to confirm that it is, indeed, a bowl of infinite olives, and then return to my table proudly.

“Finally,” Master Tiercel says. “Next up, choose your artifact.”

Lark heads out for our team, and as she does, I cough and cover my mouth, bending over. As I do, I whisper, “Don’t pick anything with yellow on it. They’re fakes.”

“How do you know?” Mereden whispers back.

Gwenna grabs her hand and squeezes it, then gives Kipp a meaningful look. “Just listen to her, all right? She knows what she’s doing.” Her gaze moves to Lark, who has a bright yellow flute she’s bringing back to the table and purses her lips.

I try not to wince, because everyone knows that wind instruments weren’t popular in Old Prell. It was in the Mancer Wars several centuries ago that flutes became popular in music. But no one’s perfect.

I manage to keep a straight face as Gwenna picks up a knitting hook of some kind that has the domen sign on it, the one of the bird with its wings spread that is a favorite of forgers everywhere. She wouldn’t know, so I’m not going to judge her. Kipp picks a delicate knife and Mereden chooses something that looks like a clasp, and then all the artifacts have been chosen for our team.

Master Tiercel and Archivist Kestrel stroll past our table, picking up each item and then setting it aside. “Fake,” Tiercel declares loudly as he picks up Lark’s object.

“Fake,” he says to Kipp’s blade.

“Real,” to Mereden’s clasp, and she lets out a gasp of pure delight.

“Fake,” to Gwenna’s knitting hook.

He pauses and eyes my bowl, then looks over at his companion. Archivist Kestrel nods sagely.

“Real,” Master Tiercel says in a sour voice. “Two points for Master Magpie’s team.”

I grab Lark’s hand with excitement, and I’m pretty sure Kipp’s tail curls around my boot with delight. Two points is good considering our team has never gone over the finer points of forgery. Or even the less fine points of forgery. Or any points at all, really.

The points are tallied for Master Crow’s team and they only have one artifact declared real. “One point for Master Crow’s fledglings. Let us begin round two. Fledglings, please come and choose.”

Master Crow looks like he could spit nails, glaring at me as I get to my feet. I smooth sweaty hands down the front of my pants and wonder if I need to get a fake this time to seem as if I’m like everyone else, or if I want to score points for my team. I debate this mentally as I continue down the long row of packed shelves. To my surprise, the man opposite me hurries over to the ewer I’d held last round—the one when I’d asked if items needed charges—and snatches it up.

Too late for hiding under the radar, I suspect.

Everything I touch now will come under scrutiny, I realize. They’re all watching my every pause to read glyphs, my every hesitation in front of an object. I need to go back to the egg from before, but as I turn around, I see a thick palm-sized disk on a chain, the metal tarnished and scuffed. It has glyphs at four equal points on the surface, one of them the ornate eye used to denote the home of the gods, which the Old Prellians believed was in the great north, past the mountain range of my home. I pick it up and turn slowly until the medallion shivers in my hand, indicating that I’m facing north.

Well, I can’t very well put it back now and pretend like I don’t know what I’m doing. I return to my table with the medallion and set it down as discreetly as possible. Mereden, Kipp, and the rest of the team pick items, and I do my best not to wince when each forgery arrives on the table. At least they’re avoiding the yellow like I’d asked. But it’s clear from what they’re choosing that they have no knowledge of Old Prellian art or enchantment, or even the basics of glyphwork. I make a mental note to bring this up to Hawk. My team needs classes on how to spot forgeries.