idea why a person would want to magically conjure a puff of air when you could just as easily make one with your mouth.
She closed her eyes and instead tried to think of how it had felt when she had faced the ARIS prototype in the Dome with the Needle halves in hand. The great yawn inside her, and then the gnaw of hunger, as essential to her body as the need for air or the lure of sleep. Sloane focused on that gnawing, not even knowing what she hungered for, with breakfast still sitting in her belly. The desire was shapeless still, but she felt it.
She always felt it.
She held up her hand and hummed. And then she felt it, at last, the first tingle of magic she had detected on Genetrix. A moment later, it was more than a tingle; it was as if she had opened a door a crack to see who was knocking and found an inferno waiting at her doorstep. Burning consumed her body, stinging her eyes, scorching her throat. She screamed and thrashed against it, but the burning kept coming.
She couldn’t see—her hair had blown across her eyes, and her clothes had pulled away from her; air swirled around her like a skein of silk at first and then like tight threads, binding her, lifting her—
A sharp crack sounded. The window that covered the oculus had broken, and glass was spilling down like a waterfall in the center of the room. Someone shouted, “Slo!”
Something hit her in the head, and the fire went out. Sloane fell back and landed hard on the tile; her head slammed into the ground, making her wince. Esther, who was also on the floor, crawled over to her, her hair clinging to her painted lips. Light was streaming into the room from above.
“You all right?” Esther said, pushing her hand under Sloane’s head to feel her scalp. “Shit, Sloane, you don’t do anything halfway, do you?”
“Essy,” she said, “Slo’s gonna vom.”
At least she had enough presence of mind to turn her head away from Esther before she did.
THROAT SIPHONS ARE HERE—BUT AT A COST
by Corey Jones
MagiTech Mag, no. 240
Ever since Abraxas (then operating under the name of its former parent company, IBM) first dipped a toe into siphon manufacture in the United States in the 1970s, it has dominated the tech sphere in North America. This latest release, the first consumer-focused throat siphon, is no exception—yet its prohibitive cost of more than $5,000 per unit has many complaining about the company’s priorities. They have left cost-cutting efforts to smaller, inferior manufacturers and instead focused solely on innovation. The narrowness of vision seems to have paid off. Abraxas’s presence in the market has never been greater.
Researchers at the Cordus Center have estimated that only 20 percent of the population possess the magical faculties necessary to make use of a throat siphon, so the development of the device has been controversial since its inception—it seemed unlikely that manufacturing them would be profitable for any company, large or small. But Abraxas’s current CEO and founder, Valens Walker, insisted. “We don’t need to sell every siphon we produce to every consumer,” he said in an interview with the New York Times last winter. “We just need to sell the best ones available.” So far, they do. MagiTech Mag’s reviews of Abraxas products have yielded As across the board, whereas the closest Abraxas competitor, Trench, averages a B-, with its startlingly cheap wrist siphon as its standout product.
So what about Abraxas’s throat siphon? Well, it came to me in a sleek gold box, so clearly Abraxas is playing up the exclusivity angle. The object itself is far from inconspicuous—it’s a seamless metal plate, copper in color, that’s engraved across the front with one of three patterns, floral brocade, herringbone, or damask. It’s two inches high, so there’s no way to hide it behind a collar; this thing is meant to be displayed, and I’m sure fashion designers will accommodate with neck-revealing clothing, as they did with shortened sleeves when wrist siphons were first released.
The look is a little bit much for me, to be honest, but it’s lightweight and adjustable, so I hardly noticed it while I was wearing it. As to its performance, though—well. If you’ve ever attempted a throat working before, you know why those who can, will, almost exclusively, use this type of magic. A throat siphon is particularly attuned to those who hum or sing their workings, being so