The Mask And The Master (Mechanized Wizardry Book 2) (12 page)

But someone clearly thought he did, because the Board of Governors hadn’t had him fired yet. 
After magically rewiring my first boss’ brain, completely botching a high-profile presentation on a project with royal backing, and sparking a wizardly blockade,
I guess they must be waiting for me to
really
mess something up.  Poison a well, maybe, or blow up the palace…

His thoughts continued in a sour vein as he made his way towards the Parade squad workroom at the far end of the building.  Dame Miri had told him there were spare parts from a ruined Melodimax that could come in handy, and even though the others had offered to fetch them, he’d decided to make the jog over from Civic Central himself. 
Spheres if I know why.
  It certainly didn’t have anything to do with wanting to postpone his debriefing with Dame Dionne on yesterday’s events. 
No, nothing like that.  Just a random whim,
he thought grimly. 
That’s how we big-thinking, creative leader types are.  You never know what we’ll do next.

Lundin exhaled.  He looked up briefly, wiping the rain out of his hair, and there was Samanthi.

He stopped.  She was just coming out of a Cavalier storeroom not a dozen steps ahead of him, with a shallow crate in her arms.  A pair of armored boots filled the crate.  As she shifted the box in her arms, she cussed out the bulky equipment under her breath.  The sight of her scowling and grumbling at something filled his heart with absolute joy.  It was a point of continuity in a rapidly dissolving world.

Before he could speak, she happened to turn towards him.  Her scowl disappeared, and her brown eyes went wide.

“Burn me,” she marveled.  “Who let
you
in?”

“Hey, Sam,” was all he could manage.

“Hey yourself.  Look at you.  Look at you,” Samanthi said, smiling broadly, shifting the crate to rest on her hip. “Horace Lundin, the flaming Civic.  Those apes made you a senior tech?  Or was that just a nightmare I had?”

“No, no.  I have a staff and everything.”

“How many have died?”

“A dog bit one of them, but he’ll pull through,” Lundin shrugged.

Samanthi bit her lip, looking up to the ceiling and trying not to laugh.  “It’s not funny,” she said sternly, “because somebody’s going to think you learned how to be a screw-up from
me
.  Speaking of screw-ups, are those wizards outside your fault?”

“I didn’t write their rhymes, if that’s your question.”

“That’s not my question.”

“Could it be?” he asked.  She shook her head.

“You sure know how to pack a lot into a few weeks, Horace.”  

He put his wet hands on his waist. They just looked at each other for a moment.  “You saved Mathias’ life,” Samanthi whispered.

“I did?”

She nodded, lifting the crate back up into her arms.  Lundin took a step closer, lowering his voice.  “What are you doing?  Is he okay?”

“He’s fine.  We’re out on assignment again first thing tomorrow; a combined team with Cavaliers, Shock Troopers, double platoon of army grunts.”

“Spheres.  What’s going on?”

“I—” she gritted her teeth and growled, looking down the hallway behind him.  “I’m flaming late already.  If I don’t keep moving I’ll hold up the whole expedition, and Kelley will be totally insufferable.  By the way, Kelley’s totally insufferable since you’ve been gone, totally smug, like the squad is finally running the way he wants.  If we weren’t working so hard I’d probably take the time to punch his face in, but there has been no time, no time, and I have to get these damn seven-leaguers working in the next half-hour—”

“You’ve gotta go,” Lundin said, nodding slowly.

She looked at him, her round face sad and searching.  She shook the boots at him in their crate, speaking faster than the spell box.  “If I don’t get the ranine coils in these seven-leaguers working, I’ll never be able to keep up with the ‘nauts at full pace.  And they want me keeping pace with the ‘nauts.  Wearing gear.  Me!  I’ll actually be wearing seven-league boots and running with the ‘nauts.  It’s that important that the whole team moves fast.”

“It sounds important.”

“It is important.  Mystery ‘nauts in the Tarmic Woods, something called the Golden Caravan.  We’ve got to find it.”

“Wow.  Sounds like you’re off to save the city, aren’t you?”

“Maybe—if we don’t screw it up.  So maybe it’s just as well you’re staying here, huh?”

Lundin’s face fell.

Samanthi swore and immediately stepped closer, lowering her head to look in his eyes.  “Horace,” she said, concerned. “I didn’t mean that, you idiot, it just slipped out.  It was just a stupid joke.”

“It’s all right.”

“You should be on this team,” she said.  “You should be in our squad.  You should be saving the city again.”

He smiled tightly.  “I’m a Civic now.  Everybody saves the city in their own special way, right?”

“Burn me.”  Samanthi shook her head.  Lundin put his hands in his pockets and looked at the ground, while she shifted the crate awkwardly to her other side.  The silence hung in the air until she growled again and tapped her foot.

“Now the conversation’s hit rock bottom, and I have to leave,” she fumed.

“Go, go,” Lundin said, as brightly as he could manage.  “Life’s depressing.  The conversation’s been great.”

“Liar,” Samanthi said with a fierce, shining grin.  Then she was moving, jogging down the hall the way he’d come, off to the Recon workroom he knew like the back of his hand.  Lundin’s throat got a little tight as he watched her go.

“Say hi to Sir Mathias,” he called after her.

“Don’t kill your staff,” she shouted out, not looking back.

 Lundin turned back around, wiping some raindrops off his sleeve with too much force.  The gaslight pressing down on him was setting his teeth on edge, and his feet felt almost as heavy as the strange something that had just appeared in his chest. 
The one place I really want to be
, he thought, fighting the urge to look over his shoulder,
and I can’t stand to be here anymore.

He took a deep breath and started walking again.

“Come in,” Ouste murmured.

The candlelight reflected off the Herald’s white tunic with an eerie glow as she stepped into the sorcerer’s chambers.  Ouste looked up at the tall woman in her doorway calmly, only moving her eyes.  For the past thirty-five minutes, the court sorcerer had been stationary in the same position; legs in a deep lunge, arms outstretched with palms up.  Her muscles were quivering with tension.  She could feel the weight of stillness sinking into her flesh, molding her body and giving her its strength.  After learning how to be still, it was that much easier to know how to strike.

“Sorcerer,” the Herald said, bobbing her head.  “I apologize for the intrusion.  I delivered a report to Chief Dawkins last night.  Upon review, he said I should relay it to you at the earliest convenience.  It treats upon arcane matters.”

I do, in fact, have a familiarity with the subject,
the sorcerer thought, the barest hint of a smile on her face.  She simply nodded, her long crystalline earrings casting dazzling, faceted patterns against the carpets.

The Herald cleared her throat.  “A group of Petronauts on the Civil Improvement and Development team made a presentation yesterday of an apparatus called a ‘spell box.’  They—”

“This is the so-called ‘mechanized wizardry’ project, yes?  Started under Sir Kelley Malcolm’s squad?”  Ouste recalled the green-eyed, pockmarked Petronaut yammering to her on the Feastday about a revolutionary spellcasting machine his team was making.  He’d even introduced her to his technician, a simpleton named Lundin, who’d babbled about the need for testing the concept. 
To think that the grandson of such a fine wizard would sell his soul to that world of steel and oil,
she thought, a little sadly. 

A passing butterfly could have knocked Ouste over when word came that Princess Naomi had been down to the Petronauts’ den and had taken a liking to the mechanized wizardry nonsense.  The caprices of a young girl would quickly pass, of course; but until they did, Ouste had made it crystal clear that she expected to be kept abreast of every meaningful development with the project.  Chief Herald Dawkins had been absolutely correct to send this woman down to her on this rainy morning.

“Yes, sorcerer,” the Herald said, quickly referring to her notes.  “Senior technician Horace Lundin was indeed in Sir Kelley’s Reconnaissance squad before his recent transfer.  He—”

“Did it work?”  Ouste cut in smoothly.  Her bare arms didn’t quiver in the slightest as she spoke.

“No.  The machine spoke phrases they claimed to be in the language of wizards, and the Petronauts displayed ‘ojing’ that turned from tan to white as the machine spoke.  They claimed that proved—”

“The ojing turned white?”  Ouste’s eyes narrowed.  She suddenly felt the stiffness in her extended limbs.  She forced the pain away and looked up at the Herald.

“Yes, sorcerer.  I can’t say from what cause.”

“You saw them change color?”

“And change back when the machine stopped.”

Impossible
. 
Petronaut trickery. 
Ouste grimaced impatiently.
“Go on.”

The Herald brushed a wisp of hair out of her face and skipped forward in her notes.  “There were a great many promises made about the benefits of simple, fast, repetitive spellcasting.  The otherwise largely hostile crowd seemed receptive to that concept.  Then, they attempted a full demonstration.  They had a caged dog, which was unfriendly to a man.  They declared that they would cast a spell of friendship on the beast, and make it docile to him.”

Ouste suddenly leapt to her feet.  The Herald took a step back involuntarily, her mouth open.  The sorcerer could feel the blood lurching through her muscles as her body protested the sharp movement.  But a sudden suspicion had gotten the best of her, and stillness was no longer an option.  “Go on,” she repeated, her voice low.

The Herald nodded, her calm demeanor eroding.  “The spell continued for, uh, sixty-two minutes and twenty-four seconds before concluding, at which point the dog was sleeping.  But when the man opened the cage and attempted to pet the dog, it became agitated and attacked him.  The project was clearly a failure, and I left, having seen all I needed to see.”

Ouste gently raised her arms above her head and brought them down again, in great slow flaps, like an eagle on a long journey.  The Herald watched her, thoroughly off balance.  “A spell of friendship?”  the court sorcerer asked.

“Yes.  Mr. Lundin specifically said it was the only spell they had completed, start-to-finish.”

She wrapped her arms around herself, stretching her aching shoulders.  Her pale blue eyes were full of light as her mind raced ahead.  “Tell me, Herald.  Did the Petronauts seem surprised when the spell failed?  Especially Mr. Lundin.  In your judgment, was he expecting the spell to succeed?”

“I’m—yes.  I can’t imagine otherwise.  Why demonstrate something that would fail?”

“Was he confident?”

“Before it went wrong, yes.  Very confident.”

“Would you say, Herald,” Ouste asked, lowering her arms to her sides, “that Mr. Lundin had seen the spell succeed before?”

The other woman tilted her head, folding her hands in front of her.  “Forgive me, sorcerer.  I’d only be guessing, and I have very little data—”

“Please,” Ouste encouraged, smiling.

The Herald nodded, fidgeting with her hands.  “Yes,” she said, finally.

Ouste’s brain was boiling, but she kept her body calm as she clasped her hands in front of her, consciously mirroring the poor Herald.  “Thank you, Herald,” she said in dismissal.

She swallowed and bobbed her head.  The woman was nearly old enough to have grandchildren, and yet she was reduced to the composure of a schoolgirl.  Ouste felt a twinge of sympathy for the hapless messenger.  “Sorcerer,” the Herald said, hesitantly, “if I may emphasize, the demonstration I saw yesterday was an abject failure.  My uneducated guess is that Mr. Lundin may have had prior successes, but I don’t wish to mislead you or the Regents into thinking there’s any evidence that—”

 “Don’t worry,” she said in a soothing voice.  “Any decisions the Regents make will be based on your report, nothing hypothetical.  Thank you for being our eyes.”

Partially reassured, the woman bowed again.  She left the copy of her report on the table by the door and bolted from the room.  Ouste exhaled through her teeth, shaking her head.

She had replayed the events of the feastday ten thousand times in her mind.  She saw herself at the center of a painstakingly laid plan, with Princess Naomi’s death virtually assured and no trail linking the business back to her.  After all, what better alibi could the court sorcerer have than conducting the heir’s defense during a magical attack?  She was proud of the plan, but it wasn’t the selfish thrill of a cat burglar entering a mansion with a hungry sack.  She’d known, as they all had, that regicide was a grave crime, and they’d only embarked on the dark path after many long months of soul-searching.  There was no following that road halfway.  They’d all been committed to covering every eventuality, and anticipating every complication, because the worst possible result would be…
exactly what wound up happening.
  Princess Naomi alive, more popular than ever; traitors exposed in the palace; and her own credibility compromised by a rival wizard.

She’d racked her brains for weeks about the identity of that magical enemy.  For another wizard to spot her ruse and to decide to act against her bespoke an experienced, supremely confident magical mind.  And to have the time to complete a spell against her seemed to suggest foreknowledge of her plan.  But what experienced wizard, with the life of the Princess at stake, would search through his mental arsenal and decide, of all the spells in creation, to cast a spell of
friendship
?  And to do it clumsily, no less (she had endured a thoroughly embarrassing physical tic in her neck for days after the event).  It had worked, of course, but it simply wasn’t a choice any sensible wizard would have made.  In all her ruminations on the events of that day, she’d never been able to piece together a reasonable explanation for her enemy’s use of that spell.