All The Turns of Light (29 page)

Water ran and splashed inside the water closet. Mug hovered near the door and swung a bundle of eyes back toward the penswift. “Trust me, she’s mobile again,” he said. “Donchen here just collapsed time and freed her. Or something like that, you’d have to ask him.”

“Is she all right?”

“She answers questions before we ask them,” replied Mug. “And she seems a bit confused. Otherwise, she’s unharmed.”

Meralda emerged. “Mrs. Primsbite,” she said, managing a weak smile. “How good to see you.”

“I’ll forgive the lie, dear. But my visit isn’t all business. Everyone has been worried sick about you,” replied the penswift. “It’s so good to see you up and about. What happened to you in the salon?”

“Now is perhaps not the best time,” began Mug.

Meralda shoved a heap of cups and books off of her bunk and motioned for Mrs. Primsbite to sit. “Now is as good as any,” Meralda said. A cup of coffee appeared in her hand, and she took it to her desk and sat. “Ask your questions.”

Mrs. Primsbite produced a pencil and her notepad. “You saw something in the clouds, and you went stiff as a statue,” she said. “What was it you saw? And why did it affect you so?”

Meralda lowered her cup. “I saw machines in the sky,” she said. “Flying machines. Hundreds of them. Thousands. I only thought I destroyed the black death. In truth, it seems I only helped it hatch.”

“Flying machines? Airships? What manner of crew do they carry?”

“They are not airships. No gas envelopes. No gas at all. And they carry no crew. They are not vehicles,” replied Meralda. “I can only assume they are weapons.”

Mrs. Primsbite’s pen scribbled. “There have been dozens of sightings by the crew,” she said. She held up her notepad and showed Meralda a sketch depicting a thick saucer-shaped thing, its surface covered with tubes and conduits and mechanical protuberances. “Is this what you mean?”

“That is an amazing likeness,” Meralda said.

Mrs. Primsbite nodded. “Is that what caused you to fall into your, shall we say, fugue state?”

Meralda sipped coffee. “No,” she said at last. “There was something else.” She put her cup down before her hand began to visibly shake. “I saw, quite clearly, a tall, thin man walking. A man so tall his head matched our altitude. This creature saw me, and called me
unmaker
, and I believe I unintentionally slowed time in my immediate vicinity nearly to a halt.”

“Nearly, indeed,” added Donchen.

Mrs. Primsbite wrote. “And when you slowed time, Mage, did you employ this unmagic you spoke of earlier to do so?”

“I did. I did it without thinking. The unmagic could easily have brought not just me but the universe to a halt.”

“And yet it did not,” said Donchen quickly.

“So it seems this unmagic can be used without ending the world,” Mug said.

“Donchen, what was the speed of light yesterday?” asked Meralda.

Donchen recited a figure.

“And today?” asked Meralda.

Donchen sighed, and rattled off a new set of numbers, ones slightly different from his first reply.

“I have no idea what kind of long-term effects this might present,” Meralda said. “No idea at all. But if my actions before could be expressed as tossing pebbles into a pond, I am now throwing millstones. We see not ripples, but waves. What comes next?”

“Baseless assumptions?” asked Mug.

Meralda sighed. “Surely you understand my concerns.”

Mrs. Primsbite smiled. “Mr. Kerns is the science editor,” she said. “But I am no stranger to the topic. Yes, I see why you are concerned. Though I hesitate to add to your burden, I must show you this.” She rifled through the pages of her notebook before finding the one she sought. “Is this the giant figure you saw?”

Meralda inhaled sharply. Drawn in Mrs. Primsbite’s flowing hand was the face Meralda had seen, its sunken eyes filled with rage, its toothless mouth open in preparation for a scream.

“That is what I saw,” Meralda said. “How did you know?”

Mrs. Primsbite closed her notebook. “Two of the telescope spotters saw the same figure,” she replied. “Both sightings were so brief they made no official log of it. Neither wanted to talk. But of course, beer is a potent relaxing agent,” she added. “You aren’t imagining things, Mage. However unlikely it may seem, that creature, or a facsimile thereof, is out there, stalking us. And there’s more–heavens, where did I put that drawing…”

While she thumbed through the pages in her notebook, Donchen perched on the corner of Meralda’s desk, and Mug came to hover above her right shoulder.

“Here it is,” said Mrs. Primsbite. “Does this look familiar?”

Meralda studied the drawing the penswift produced. It appeared to depict the sky, through a gap in the clouds. But instead of the Moon or the Sun, a portion of an impossibly large ring dominated the sky, stretching from horizon to horizon, its circumference unimaginably vast–so large, in fact, that only an arc of the circle showed.

“You mentioned beer earlier,” Mug said. “Did someone perhaps have quite a lot of it, before they described that?”

“He was perfectly sober,” said Mrs. Primsbite. “And of a certain elevated rank. He insists he saw this structure, and I for one am inclined to believe him.” She looked to Meralda. “Does it ring any magical bells, Mage?”

“I have no idea what that might be,” Meralda said. “An optical illusion of some sort, perhaps.”

“It’s not just giants and sky-rings, either,” Mug said. “The crew reports seeing flying things in the storm. I wasn’t inclined to believe they were seeing anything but nerves and boredom until I saw one myself.”

Meralda’s eyes suddenly shone like coals. “It was black, approximately circular or saucer-shaped, perhaps ten feet in diameter,” she said.

“How did you know?” asked Mug.

Meralda moved to stand before the porthole. “Because there are two such objects pacing us now, some two hundred feet out,” she replied. Her crimson eyes brightened. “They are not living things.”

“Vonat?” asked Donchen.

Meralda shook her head. “I suspect so.”

Mug exchanged a worried six-eyed glance with Donchen. “Mistress? How can you be so sure?”

“Unmagic,” said Mrs. Primsbite, in a near whisper. “I don’t mean you’re using it. But it has changed your senses, has it not? Allowing you to see things we cannot?”

A raccoon landed in Mrs. Primsbite’s lap before scurrying off to find refuge within the stacks of debris. The penswift rose, her demeanor unfazed as she slipped her pencil behind her ear.

“It seems the interview is over,” she said, smiling. “Thank you for your time, Mage. I have tea every afternoon at three o’clock sharp. You are invited, and I will not touch a pencil nor remember a single word spoken. Good day, all.”

Mug and Donchen offered goodbyes. Meralda’s eyes shone, and she frowned, deep in thought, while Donchen coaxed the raccoon into a laundry basket.

“Nameless,” Meralda said, at last. “Faceless. Come here.”

The two crows appeared, squawking and flapping.

“Do you see the flying machines which follow us?” asked Meralda.

Aye,
replied a crow.
We have no love for them.

Ugly things,
said the other.
Shall we smite any that draw too near?

“You shall not,” Meralda said. “I only want them watched.”

The crows hopped, shifting from claw to claw in unison.

They sometimes fly alone,
said a crow.

Perhaps if we slew a few, the rest would keep a distance.

“Or perhaps they would move against us by the thousands,” Meralda said. “Have you observed the direction from whence they came, or to which they depart?”

They fly to and fro, aimless as zephyrs,
said a crow.

Let us smite them, and be done,
suggested the other.

“Absolutely not,” Meralda said. “If you have nothing helpful to add please just return to your patrol.”

The crows vanished in mid-squawk.

A bright flash of reddish light bathed the cabin briefly in a fiery glow. Meralda felt a wave of dizziness wash over her, and then she felt her heart race and her face flush.

I’m angry, she realized. Furious.

Memories came racing back, and Meralda put her hands on her hips.

“We’ve never had a fight before,” she said to Donchen. “Never a cross word.”

Donchen’s brow furrowed in confusion. “We still haven’t,” he said.

“No. We just did. You stormed out. I let you go. I was glad to see you go.”

Donchen stepped closer. “Meralda. No. This did not happen.”

“It did,” Meralda said. “It will.”

“I tell you it will not,” said Donchen. He reached out to take her hand, and she opened her eyes, which were ablaze.

“You left me,” she said. “For an Alon librarian. How
dare
you.”

Mug flew in close. “Meralda,” he said. “I don’t know where you are, or what you think is happening, but Donchen hasn’t left you and we’re aboard the
Intrepid
and you aren’t making sense. So calm down, focus on the here and the now, and stop this nonsense.”

Donchen took Meralda’s hand, and squeezed it.

The light in her eyes faded, and she swayed, and Donchen caught her.

“What—” she began.

A sudden rain of coffee cups, each full and accompanied by a saucer, a lump of sugar, and a stirring fork, dropped into the cabin.

“Never mind,” said Donchen. “Stay here. Stay now.”

“I was furious with you,” Meralda said. “But I can’t remember why.”

Donchen smiled. “Let us hope we never know,” he said. He led Meralda to the berth, and sat down with her. “Deep breaths,” he said. “Try to relax.”

Meralda squeezed her eyes shut. “They called me Mad Meralda,” she said. “Even the papers.”

“No, they did not,” said Donchen. He lifted her chin so that she met his eyes. “These things are not true.”

“Is it possible to be awake and have bad dreams?” asked Mug.

“My people believe so,” said Donchen. “Meralda. Look at me. Can you see the truth in my words, that none of these terrible events took place?”

Meralda studied Donchen’s face. Donchen is sitting beside me looking worried, she thought. He believes we did not quarrel, that he did not marry that awful Alon woman, that I am not known as Mad Meralda, the red-eyed Witch of Tirlin.

But even as she looked at Donchen she saw faint motion at the edges of his face. There, somehow occupying nearly the same space, was another Donchen, and another, until the line of them stretched off into an eternity of nearly identical Donchens.

Nearly identical. But there were differences. That one really did marry an Alon librarian. And that one there took to drink.

“Focus,” she whispered, closing her eyes. She remembered her first days of training her Sight, as Fromarch admonished her to ground herself before she attempted to See.

“Sight can be tricky,” the old wizard had said. “If you’re not careful, you might See things that aren’t, that never were. Or you might See the future, which is even worse. Go in calm. Focus only on what you need to See. Ignore the rest, or you’ll waste all your time chasing will-o-the-wisps. Or you might get lost. Don’t do that. I’m too old to train another apprentice.”

“Here and now,” Meralda said. “Only the here, only the now.”

She opened her eyes. Donchen stared back, but only one Donchen, and she caught him up in a sudden fierce hug.

“Forgive me,” she said. “You too, Mug.”

“There is nothing to forgive,” said Donchen.

A single crow appeared on Meralda’s desk.

‘
Tis done,
it said. A pair of feathers fell from its rain-soaked body.

“What is?” asked Meralda.

The flying disc. We brought the wreckage here. Nameless bears it, near the end of the loading ramp,
said Faceless.

“I told you to leave the discs alone!” Meralda said.

“You did,” Mug said. “They just didn’t listen.” His leaves visibly curled and wilted. “I don’t suppose the flying machine came quietly, did it?” he asked.

Nay,
said Faceless.
It
fought, but we vanquished it. I would not love to fight two at once,
he added.
They are sturdy, these metal fiends.

Nameless is tiring,
said Faceless.
The ramp, if ye please?

Meralda rose, her hands clenched into fists.

“You acknowledge I told you to leave the discs alone?” she asked.

Better to know an enemy before he strikes,
said Faceless.
You are not yourself, Mage,
it added.
We did what is best.