The Mask And The Master (Mechanized Wizardry Book 2) (27 page)

Lundin stabbed a finger at her emphatically.  “Yes.  Yes, Elia, thank you for some positive thinking.  That’s all we need.  A little— go team,” he wrapped up the pep talk abruptly as the carriage door swung open.

“This way, please,” the sergeant said, his voice clear and clipped.

“A little manic today, Horace,” Dame Miri whispered over her shoulder as she disembarked. 

“Didn’t sleep well,” Lundin admitted.  It felt like his heart and his brain had switched places; he could hear his pounding heartbeat reverberating through his skull.  He’d had a discomfiting realization during the night. 
Princess Naomi decided to send us to Campos because her senior advisers told her to. 
And who was sure to have been in on any conversation the Heir had about the future of magic in Delia? 
Ouste
, he thought, clearing something unpleasant out of his throat. 
That bald lady must be the one who told Her Highness to send us here, and I can’t believe she did it with our best interests at heart.

Maybe she just wants us out of the way.  Maybe she knows this Colonel Yough is impossible to impress, and the project’s doomed.  Whatever she’d got in mind for us, I doubt I’m going to sleep well until I figure out what it is.

Lundin was the last one to leave the carriage, wincing as he stood up straight for the first time in hours.  He stretched out his long limbs and massaged his shoulder blades.  A sheen of midsummer sweat was plastered to his forehead as he looked up the hill at what would be his new home.

That’s a lot of bricks
.  The vapid thought was about the only thing that came to mind as he stared at the imposing compound.  Lundin didn’t know too much about the going rate for brick-makers in the Tarmic Woods, but whatever it was, the proceeds from the thick palisade must have kept them fat and happy for years.  The brown brick walls encircling Fort Campos rose up a story and a half, and they were wide enough for guards to walk their crenellated tops. 

Their convoy had stopped a few hundred meters outside the fort, along the bumpy supply road.  The underbrush was kept cleared away on either side of the muddy path.  Starting at about twenty meters from the fort’s walls, the tall trees were cleared away too, leaving an expanse of bare, clay-filled soil.  The barren area, he supposed, meant that that would-be invaders couldn’t try to overleap the walls from the treetops.  Not that any sane soul would have tried it even if the trees had been closer.  Not with the deep ditch that surrounded the wall on all sides; a dry moat filled, no doubt, with sharp stakes or something equally undesirable.  There was a single log bridge that he could see, supported with two tall pylons on either side, that traversed the ditch and lead to a metal portcullis.  The sealed bastion above the main gate and the four other towers at each corner of the brick wall were undoubtedly brimming with soldiers.  Beyond the wall, it was impossible to see anything except the highest tower of the fort, perhaps three stories high in the same brown brick.  More than two hundred Delian soldiers called Campos home. 
So it can’t be all bad
, Lundin thought, putting a smile on his face.

 He dusted off his sleeves and followed his team as the sergeant lead them forward.  The road was crowded with carriages and hard-working bodies.  Black-and-gold uniforms flashed this way and that as the other wagons in the convoy discharged their passengers and began giving up their cargo.  Across the bridge, pennants were streaming in the summer breeze, carried on long poles by enlisted men and women.  A small knot of gleaming officers was visible next to the flags, standing at attention just outside the main gate.

“An honor guard,” Dame Miri said, inclining her head towards the fort.  She flashed Lundin a smile.  “I think Colonel Yough’s eager to see us.”

I should make sure the equipment’s okay
, Lundin thought, seized with an overwhelming desire to turn around and bury himself in his luggage until they were safely ensconced in their new workshop.  He pressed his teeth together, shaking his head. 
You’re the leader, Lundin,
he told himself, putting on a Dionne voice in his mind. 
And this is one of those moments where leaders need to talk to other leaders.  This is where you charm Colonel Yough into becoming mechanized wizardry’s biggest supporter. But it’s also where you draw firm boundaries with her so she knows that this is a Petronaut project, not a military one. And it’s also where you establish yourself as a strong figure whose orders are not to be trifled with, but who’s also a friendly team player who in no way represents a threat to the structure and hierarchy of this woman’s command.

Basically, here’s where you work some magic
, he thought heavily as they approached the bridge.

Lieutenant Colonel Farmingham turned around as the Civics crossed the bridge, the logs thumping underneath their soles.  His face brightened with something a little more formal than a smile as he broke away from his conversation with his superior.  Lundin was relieved to see him here.  Their liaison to Campos had been nothing but cooperative in the last few whirlwind days.

Colonel Yough was a short woman with a blocky face and heavy, drooping eyes, which she turned on the Petronauts as they stepped forward.  Her armor was more ornate than anyone else’s in the honor guard, festooned with medals that he was prepared to be very impressed by.  And yet—maybe it was just a passing cloud, causing the sunlight to fall oddly around her, but her ensemble came out looking muted and worn, making her recede rather than lifting her out. 

“The Petronauts?” she said in a clenched, sorrowful voice, like a grieving cat or a grandmother with a head cold.

“Colonel.” Lundin bowed humbly.  “What a pleasure to meet you.  We’ve heard so much about you!”

She blinked like a toad blinks, her eyelids sinking down slowly and yawning back out of sight.  “Oh?” she asked.

Ba-boom.  Ba-boom. 
Lundin’s heart was thumping against his ears.  “Oh yes,” he said.  “Princess Naomi herself told us she has great respect for you.”

“Never met the Princess,” Yough said.

“Well!  Well, it does your reputation that much
more
credit, then, that you should be so esteemed, without, uh, her, and you, having met!  Please allow me to introduce my team,” he said in a rush, relieved, as Dame Miri tapped her toe against the back of his boot with an innocent look on her face.  Lundin sidestepped to let the Civics come forward. 

“I’m Horace Lundin; senior technician, I suppose.  This is Dame Miri Draker, formerly of the Parade squad.  It’s a great personal honor that she’s agreed to help this project.  The Feastday Hero, they call her back home.”

Yough smacked her lips, completely inscrutable behind her mournful eyes.  Lundin fought to keep smiling as Dame Miri dipped her head respectfully and made her greetings to the honor guard.  “And uh, from the Civil Improvement and Development team, Mister Martext Goolsby; Ms. Elia Desh; and Mister Willl…”

Lundin clamped his mouth shut. 
Sweet Spheres, I almost said “Willl with three L’s,”
he thought frantically. 
What in the black flames is his last name? 
The bespectacled faces of his Civics looked over at him, and his throat started to tighten up.  And then, miraculously:

“It’s okay, sir,” Willl with three L’s said.  He turned to the honor guard with a bashful grin.  “Willl Wythernsson.  Mister Lundin knows I don’t care for it,” he explained.

“Oh, come on, Wythernsson’s a fine name.  Sticks in the mouth a bit,” Lieutenant Colonel Farmingham admitted, after stumbling a bit over the syllables.

“Wythernsson,” Yough said, tilting her head as she looked at the blond technician.  “Are you Svargath?”

“Nope.  Second generation Delian.  My grandfather’s family sent him out of Svargath as a midling during the famines.  No food for him there.  So he moved to Delia, and here I am.”

“Here you are,” she repeated.

“Here we are,” Lundin said just as pointlessly, as he stared at Willl with three L’s.  The tech had smoothed things over before anyone in the honor guard gave Lundin’s mental hiccup a second thought.  The blond man’s face was as blank as ever, with no sign of realizing what an embarrassment he’d just saved his boss from. 
You clever, useful little savant
, he thought. 
What have you done with my Willl?

Colonel Yough cleared her throat; not to draw attention, but because something juicy was actually lodged in her throat.  After she was done coughing, she swished it around in her mouth, frowning, and swallowed it down.  Involuntarily, Lundin swallowed too.  “When can you do your demonstration?”  she spun one hand in a circle on ‘demonstration,’ clearly unsure how else to represent the event.

Wow. We’re just jumping right in, aren’t we? 
“Well, Colonel,” Lundin said, mustering up his confidence.  It was time to set the boundaries.  “We’ve got a lot of sensitive equipment to install, and a good many work-hours before our latest spell is ready to my satisfaction.  I know you run on a military timeline here, but this is a Petronaut project, and I have to insist that it proceed on a Petronaut schedule.”  He put his hands on his hips in a forceful, leaderly stance.

Colonel Yough nodded once, very slowly.  Her forehead furrowed.  “When can you do your demonstration?” she said again, with an air of having missed something.

“Two days?” he said quickly.

“Fine,” she said.  She put on a smile that just made her eyes look sadder, and stepped forward with her hand outstretched.  “Welcome to Campos, so pleased to have you,” she mumbled as she shook hands down the line, her leather gloves cold to the touch.  “Ask Colonel Farmingham for anything, feel right at home.  Dinner in the officer’s mess tonight, be my guests.”

“Thank you, Colonel, what an honor.  We’ll be there,” Lundin said.  She didn’t even look at him as she finished giving Martext’s hand a shake, turning on her heel and walking away through the portcullis.  Half the honor guard bowed their heads briefly and followed her into the fort.

“Goodbye,” Lundin whispered under his breath.

“Right then!”  Farmingham said, clapping his hands.  He jerked his thumb over his shoulder.  “While the grunts are unloading your gear, how about seeing your new home?”

They followed him under the portcullis, sunlight beating down on their heads as they stepped into the open compound.  Fort Campos’ walls made a great rectangle around a handful of buildings.  Colonel Yough and her entourage were striding purposefully across the courtyard to the central keep.  Lundin felt a low ache in his stomach as she got farther away from them, and tried to focus on Farmingham’s tour. 

The central keep seemed taller from inside the walls than it had looked outside.  His eyes traced up the pentagonal structure.  About two stories up, a shallow, diagonal roof sloped inwards towards a central tower that rose up nearly another two stories.  The lookout tower provided what he could only imagine was a stunning view of the forest in all directions.  The sloped roof at the base of the tower was dotted with hatches, about four on a face. 
Gun ports?
he wondered.  It was difficult to imagine needing to deploy cannons against invading bear cubs, sparrows, or whatever fiendish adversaries they had to deal with in the woods.  But the ideal fort could hold against any enemy, he supposed, no matter how unexpected—so the Army could be forgiven for making their preparations a little on the excessive side.

In the shadow of the fort was an attractively arched brick building, with elegant lines and studded wooden doors.  Lieutenant Colonel Farmingham was pointing at it just as it caught Lundin’s eye.  “Haberstorm Hall, we call it,” he told them.  “Our place for guests who wouldn’t take well to the barracks.  Lord Portikal was visiting us around two weeks past, and that’s where he and his staff bedded down.  Since we’re not expecting noble visitors for the next few weeks, that’s where we’ll be setting up your workshop, to give you privacy.  Don’t worry—we took out all the hangings, the pianoforte, and the gilded furniture.  Nothing to distract you from your work.”

“Thank you,” Lundin said tentatively.

“So that’s your workshop.  As for your accommodations,” the officer gestured ahead of them to a wooden building past Haberstorm Hall, almost abutting the southeastern wall.  It looked more like a barn than anything else.  “Our newer barracks is on the north side, but it’s stuffed to bursting, I’m afraid.  This one’s only got two dozen soldiers bunking on the main floor, and you’ll have the loft all to yourselves.  Just, uh, keep the midnight parties to a minimum.”

“Or we could just invite you too,” Dame Miri suggested.  As they laughed together, she smoothly asked him, “Colonel Farmingham, how long have you been stationed with Colonel Yough?”

“Ten months now,” he said cheerily in his musical voice.  “A very fine officer.  Keeps the fort ticking like clockwork.”

“And what makes her tick?”

He half-opened his mouth.  Farmingham gave her a rueful smile, and looked across all the ‘nauts.  “I take your meaning, Dame Miri.  Not sure how she took to you just now, are you?”

Lundin nodded, grateful to Miri for getting the topic going.  The officer raised his hands reassuringly, walking backwards as he led them towards their barracks.

“Colonel Yough just isn’t one for ceremony, that’s all.  Pageantry and official welcomes and all that don’t make it too high on her priority list.  Look.”  He stopped, putting his hands on his hips.  “Here’s what the dispatch from Her Highness told her to do: give you a workshop, take a look at your project, and evaluate it.  She’ll do all of those things, believe me.   But if I were you, I wouldn’t expect a lot of, uh, warmth from her in the meantime.”

“What about dinner tonight?  Is there something we should be sure to talk to her about?”

“Stars and Spheres, you’re a nervous bunch!”  Farmingham turned away with a laugh.  “Figures.  I’ve never met ‘nauts who understood how amazing they looked to the outside world.

“I promise, if you just calm down and do your work, everything will turn out fine.  It’s not like you have long to wait.  After all, you’ll be doing your demonstration in two days, isn’t that right?”