The Magic Engineer (40 page)

“Why aren’t you working?” Liedral stands in the doorway to the kitchen.

“I came in to see about you. I keep worrying.”

She shakes her head. “What about your projects for Brede and Kadara, or your engine? You always used to talk about your engine.”

“This business…between us…your fears that I’ll hurt you, that I have—makes it hard. I hate the damned White Wizards.”

“So do I. But you tell me that you can’t do anything to heal me.”

“I’ve tried everything.” Dorrin clenches his fists. “Rylla has no ideas, either. We know what they did. Somehow, they linked the torture to images of me. But I don’t know why.”

“Darkness! Standing around won’t solve either our problems, or anyone else’s.” She walks to the table and looks at the wedge of cheese, then at the knife. Almost without thinking her hands reach for the hilt, and her fingers curl around it.

Dorrin turns toward the table, frowning slightly. What can he do to remove the distance between them? He rubs his head and turns.

Liedral’s eyes are blank as she shifts her grip on the knife and steps toward Dorrin. The knife rises, as if she does not really see the blade.

Dorrin’s eyes widen, and he steps back.

“Liedral.”

She continues to lift the knife, then draws back her arm.

“Liedral.”

He backs up. She steps forward, both hands now going around the hilt, the tip pointed toward his heart. Dorrin eases backward, noting the blankness in her eyes, and gently, oh, so gently, tries to project some sense of order, reassurance toward Liedral.

She steps forward.

Dorrin concentrates, and steps backward, but Liedral, eyes white, lunges forward, the knife slamming like a firebolt toward his chest.

He twists sideways, his hands grasping for her wrists, but she turns. Powered by muscles knotted like iron wire, her wrists wrench clear of his fingers, and the knife slashes toward him again.

Dorrin stumbles as he backs away, and the edge of the table digs into his hip as he tries to twist clear of the knife. His hands clamp around Liedral’s wrists, but the knife continues to move toward him—Liedral’s arms are like iron bars pressing down on him.

“Oh…” Merga stands in the doorway, eyes wide and mouth open.

One of the benches crashes to the floor, and Dorrin staggers back, losing his grip on Liedral’s right wrist.

The knife slashes. Dorrin twists frantically, and pulls Liedral toward him, instead of resisting.

A line of fire rips across his chest and shoulder, but he manages to grab both her wrists and twist.

The knife thuds dully on the floor.

Dorrin gathers—too late—what little order-sense remains, and thrusts it upon Liedral, but she has collapsed like a sack of milled grain, and he staggers again, trying to hold her upright, even as the fire continues to burn across his right shoulder.

“Master Dorrin…master Dorrin…what be—” Merga’s words stop by themselves.

Dorrin shifts his grip, trying to hold on to Liedral. How deep is the slash across his shoulder? It does not feel deep, but how would he know? He has never been stabbed before.

“Why…why did you hurt me?” Liedral’s eyes flutter, and her voice is almost childlike as she half rests, half lies in Dorrin’s arms. Blood oozes across the slashed edges of his shirt.

“Hurt you?” Dorrin blurts. “You took a knife to me.” He
tries not to wince as he sets Liedral in a chair and quickly kicks the knife across the floor toward Merga. “Take care of that, please.”

“Yes, master Dorrin.”

“But you hurt me…you whipped me. Didn’t you?” Liedral’s voice is less childlike. “You whipped me. It hurt.”

“I never touched you. How could I?” Dorrin lets his senses examine the long, shallow wound—more than a scrape, but not deep enough to cut into the muscle. It already stings. He winces as he thinks of the crushed astra compress he needs.

“Indeed…how could he?” repeats Merga as she scoops up the knife and wipes it clean, her eyes flicking from the bloody slash across Dorrin’s shirt to the woman at the table.

Liedral’s eyes open wide, and she shudders. “I tried to kill you. I…tried…to kill…you…” Her hands touch the table, and she bends forward, her body convulsing in heavy, wracking sobs.

Merga points silently to Dorrin’s shoulder, then steps toward the table. “We all do things we shouldn’t…”

Dorrin opens the door to the storeroom, and to the herbs and dressings within. He hurries as he fumbles out what he needs, listening to Merga.

“…that man of yours…he wouldn’t hurt anyone…”

Dorrin’s jaw sets. There are some he will hurt.

Dorrin lights the lamp on the table in the predawn darkness of the kitchen. His hand strays to the dressing that covers the shallow gash across his right shoulder, then drops as he hears steps.

Liedral stands by the doorway from the hall, a blanket wrapped around her shift.

“Are you all right? I didn’t want to wake you.” He adjusts the wick and straightens up.

“Yes…No…What am I supposed to say? Darkness! They wanted me to kill you…to kill you…” Liedral shivers, one hand on the wall.

Dorrin extends a hand.

“No…I’m sorry. I can’t help it.” She shivers again. “I love you, and I can’t touch you! Darkness! I hate them.”

Dorrin pulls out the chair. “At least you can sit down.”

Liedral leans forward with her arms on the table. “…hate them…”

After a time, Liedral sits up. “What did you do to them? Why are they so afraid of you, or us?”

The smith shrugs. “I don’t know. They’ve been reading your letters to me, and mine to you, I think.”

“You didn’t tell me?”

“How?” Dorrin asks dryly.

Liedral laughs. The sound is harsh, bitter, short.

“You need something to eat. You’re pale. I’ll get you some cheese to go with the bread.” Dorrin’s head turns toward the cutting table; he sees the knife that Merga has left and frowns.

“I’m still hungry, if that’s what you mean.” She looks at the knife, so like the knife that she used on Dorrin, and shivers. “Where are the things that were in my cart?”

“They’re in the racks in your storeroom. Why? What does that have to do with cheese?”

“My storeroom?”

“I built it for you.”

Liedral sighs. “Why didn’t you ask me to stay last time?”

“Because I was young and stupid.” Dorrin looks at the plank floor. “What do you want from the storeroom?”

“I can get it. I’m not made of glass.”

Dorrin grins and points to the solid door at the far end of the room. “I thought it should be easy to get to.” He picks a lamp from the sconce and uses his striker before heading to the door. “It has an outside door too.”

“You need more lamps.”

“I need more of a lot of things.” He opens the door. “All your goods are in those racks. Some of them…I don’t know what they are.”

“That’s why I could still make coins.” Liedral’s slippered feet whisper across the packed, cold clay floor.

Dorrin follows her with the lamp as she rummages through the shelves.

“Here we are. A cheese cutter.”

Dorrin raises his eyebrows. “How does it cut cheese? There’s no blade.”

“You’ll see. I thought it might be useful for people like you.” Liedral shuffles back to the door, then steps up into the warmth of the kitchen.

“How about you?” Dorrin follows her back to the cutting table, snuffing the lamp and replacing it as he passes the sconce.

“It might have been better if I had an aversion to knives.”

“You didn’t want to use it.” Dorrin touches her shoulder ever so lightly.

“No. But I did. It wasn’t like I did, but I still did it.” She looks to the window, and the drizzle outside. “Would you put the knife away?”

Dorrin bends and takes the knife, putting it back into the cutlery box.

Liedral adjusts the cutter and applies it to the cheese, ignoring what Dorrin is doing. “See…The wire cuts just like a blade, maybe neater.” Liedral slices off three thin wafers of cheese, one after the other, and drops them onto the battered plate.

“Wire…You wouldn’t think…” Dorrin’s mouth drops open. “Wire…black iron wire, or black steel wire…Magic knives, and I’ll bet they couldn’t even see it. Need to build a drawing wheel, and special dies—but it should work.” He reaches out to squeeze her shoulder, and she shivers and backs away.

“I’m sorry…I can’t help it.” Liedral eases away from the smith.

Dorrin looks at her. “I’ll talk to you later.” He turns and walks out the kitchen door, heading through the drizzle to the smithy.

“What are we working on this morning?” asks Vaos, pumping the bellows to bring up the fire.

“Wire drawing.”

“I haven’t done that.”

“We’ll be doing a lot of it, I think.” While he still doesn’t know exactly how he will make his magic wire knives, Dorrin knows they will work—and the White Wizards deserve whatever havoc they cause.

“Go get some breakfast.” He nods toward Vaos.

“Yes, ser.”

Magic knives—the White Wizards deserve those and more. His fingers whisper across the iron bars.

Dorrin reins up outside the barracks. He wipes the mixed sweat and water from his eyes, wondering if the continuing rain will wash Spidlar away and save the White Wizards the problem.

Where will he find Brede or Kadara? He finally dismounts, tying Meriwhen to the only rail he can find outside the long one-story building. A single trooper lounges outside the door. As Dorrin approaches, the man sits up.

“I’m looking for a strike leader named Brede,” Dorrin says.

“Who are you?” The trooper, hand on blade hilt, eyes the staff, the saddlebags, and the flat and leather-covered object that Dorrin carries.

“Dorrin. I’m a smith.”

The trooper straightens. “Wait here, master Dorrin. I’ll be right back.”

Dorrin waits in the cold drizzle, but not for long.

The door opens, held by the trooper, who beckons Dorrin inside. Dorrin shifts his grip on his things and turns sideways to get past the soldier.

“Dorrin. It’s good to see you. Kadara has her squad on a local patrol. She’ll be sorry to have missed you.” Brede is clean-shaven. His leathers and blue tunic are clean, and his boots polished. But the circles under his eyes remain, and his face is so thin as to be gaunt.

Several troopers watch from the space before the hearth, which contains only dying embers.

“It’s not a pleasure call.”

“Before we get to that…” Brede clears his throat. “We have a mystery. Dorrin, didn’t you just bring Liedral back from Kleth? She was sick, Kadara tells me.”

“She was tortured and beaten,” Dorrin says sharply.

“At least she’s alive. With you, she should get better.” Brede coughs. “Did anything strange happen to you on the way back?”

“Was it that obvious?”

Brede chuckles, almost harshly. “Two dead bandits with all their clothes. One has a broken neck, and the other’s chest is caved in with a single blow. Their blades are lying by the bodies, and there are cart tracks in the mud.”

“Yes, I had some trouble. Liedral was fevered, and I wasn’t sure she was going to make it.”

“Why did you travel with her, then?”

Dorrin sighs. It gets so complicated. “Because Jarnish is tied up with the Whites, and she was there.”

Brede stares. “You didn’t do anything? When we’re in a war for our lives?”

“I didn’t say that,” Dorrin snaps. “The last time I saw Jarnish, he was in his undergarments scrubbing chaos off his body with freezing well-water.”

“You did that?”

“I just made sure he couldn’t ever get near chaos again.”

Two of the troopers who have been inching closer abruptly turn away and edge back toward the fire. Brede shakes his head.

Dorrin starts to lose his grasp on both the saddlebags and the heavy leather-covered object, and he fumbles with all that he carries.

“You need a hand?”

“Take the big one. It’s yours, anyway.”

Brede reaches for the leather, then grabs, as he realizes the weight. “What…? This is heavy.”

“It’s as light as I could make it. That’s the problem.”

Brede pulls back a corner of the leather to see the black metal, then motions toward the left end of the long building. Dorrin follows the gesture toward a small room with an oblong table and half a dozen armless chairs. Brede closes the door to the small room and sets the shield on the table.

Dorrin takes one of the armless chairs, turns it sideways, and sits.

Brede lifts the shield. Then he sets it down and adjusts the straps before trying to use it. “It’s not too bad, but it’s really not quite big enough.”

“I can make them bigger, but they’re heavier. There has to be a certain concentration of the black iron for it to throw off white fire. There’s probably some trick to it that I don’t know, but I thought I’d make one for you to try out.”

“I’ll see.” Brede nods. “You look like you have something else.”

Dorrin points to the saddlebags. “I think I might have something like a magic knife.”

Brede raises his eyebrows. “I thought you couldn’t deal with edged weapons.”

“I can’t. I have trouble even carving meat for more than myself.” Dorrin opens the bag and extracts what he has brought.

“What is it?” Brede frowns.

“This is really a model.” Dorrin explains, as he stretches the wire taut between the two black bars. “You can wedge the black iron bars—I could make them as handles—in trees or behind boulders.”

Seeing Brede’s confused expression, Dorrin takes out the dried cheese and sets it on the table, then stretches out the wire and forces the bars apart.

Thump…
The wire slices through the cheese, and both halves bounce on the table.

Dorrin hands one half to Brede. “Try to cut it with your belt knife.”

“No, thank you.” The strike leader fingers the hard cheese. “How would this help?”

“You told me that the levies will have to use the roads. This wire is strong enough—I’m sure—to cut through a man or a horse that rides into it. Because it’s black and order-based, it’s hard to see, especially in the rain or at dusk.”

Brede winces. “I don’t know. There’s something…almost evil…about something like this.”

“You don’t know?” Dorrin snorts. “You complain that you want weapons, and I do what I can, and you’re upset because it’s nasty. Darkness! Any weapon is nasty. That’s why I get sick when I use a staff.

“You want nasty? What about the Whites? They tortured Liedral with whippings and beatings—and visions of me. They did it to plant an image of her using a knife on me, and she did. They’re twisting minds—”

“The trader took a knife to you?” Brede studies Dorrin.

“The slash is just about healed.” Dorrin shrugs. “Anyway, they’re twisting minds, and you’re worried about whether their levies get chopped in half by your strong right arm or by my cheese-slicer.”

“Cheese-slicer?”

“That’s where I got the idea.”

Brede smiles wryly. “I’d hate to think what you’d be like if you didn’t have some restraints.”

“It would make life easier.” Dorrin takes a deep breath. “How many of these can you use?”

Brede reaches for his purse and empties two golds on the table. “As many as I can buy. No…don’t give me that business about food. If you won’t use the coin personally, buy more iron to make your cheese slicers. But don’t give them to anyone but me or Kadara. And don’t tell anyone else.”

Dorrin understands. The more it seems like unknown magic, the better.