The trouble with being an Alver, a user of mesmer, was most of us ended up bartered and indentured to the Lord Magnate Ivar. A man who’d become a wretched connoisseur of Alvers, whose authority was the most feared and most revered in all four regions of the east. Ivar ruled from the Black Palace a hundred lengths away, and I had no plans to be his shiny new ornament.
