The Mask And The Master (Mechanized Wizardry Book 2) (29 page)

The two men just looked at her.  The nightbird squawked.

“Is that how you try to cheer someone up, Ms. Elena?” Kelley asked with genuine curiosity.

Samanthi pressed a hand to her temples.  No sense in getting off the honesty horse now.  “I wasn’t so much going for a goal as opening a floodgate,” she admitted.  Sir Mathias was looking back and forth between them, his eyes wide, ready to shield his face from the imminent explosion. 

“I think I prefer your floodgates closed, if it’s not too much trouble, senior tech,” Sir Kelley said at last.  He turned back towards the woods.

“Sir,” Samanthi nodded.  She brushed her palms against each other, feeling oddly chipper.  “Do you want to slap me in irons now, or would you mind waiting until the disciplinary hearing back home?  It’s just that I don’t trust Zig to handle everything all by himself—”

“I have a niece.”

Kelley had his arms crossed over his chest and was looking straight down.  A leaf blew by, right at ground level, and he stepped on it automatically.  The leaf stayed pinned under the toe of his shiny black boot.  Samanthi and Mathias watched him as he tapped one finger against his tricep, lost in thought.  “I have a niece,” he murmured again.

“What’s her name?” Sir Mathias asked, softly.

Kelley looked back, a wary edge in his green eyes.  He held Mathias’ gaze for a long moment.

“Cruzia,” he said at last.

“Cruzia.”  Mathias put his hands in his pockets.  “…that’s, uh—”

“The world’s worst name?  Oh, I know.  I told my brother he was naming his daughter after a pleasure island, or some kind of pastry.  But in a thoroughly shocking turn of events, he didn’t listen to me,” Kelley said, pressing his knuckles into the palm of his other hand, “and so his chunky little baby was saddled with a chunky little name.  Cruzia.

“Not a beautiful child.  Not really.  Not one of those charmers, you know, who turn more heads at age two than they will at nineteen.  But whenever I saw her, as soon as she could run, she would run to me, like this—” he raised his hands up to the sky, as if reaching for the Spheres— “and she would say ‘Tyyyyy-mon!  Tyyyyy-mon! Up!’

“And I’d pick her up; and I’d put her on my shoulders; and she would wrap her arms around my forehead, or cover my eyes with her hands; and she’d bury her face in my hair, so when she laughed I could hear it inside my head.  I could feel it, like it was me laughing.”

He lifted his toe slightly.  A puff of air caught the five-pointed leaf and sent it gliding over the grass just a meter or two before it stopped.  Kelley watched it, scratching his jawline with a knuckle.

“Cruzia must be about thirteen, now,” he said, looking at the ground.

Sir Mathias let out a long, slow breath.  “I’m sorry, sir,” he said.  Samanthi leaned against his shoulder, her fingers laced together just below her waist.  She nodded too.

Kelley looked at them in turn, holding his chin high.  “That’s fine,” he said after a long silence.  His pockmarked face was full of shadows.

Samanthi stood up straight, wiping her hands on her overalls.  She jerked her thumb over her shoulder, pointing back to the longhouse.  “What do you say, sir?” she offered, “How about we put our heads together to stop these firebounders before they give one more weapon to one more kid?”

Sir Kelley actually smiled.  “Well, well, Ms. Elena.  You do know how to cheer me up after all.”

Chapter Four

Greatsight

“I’d like to say something first.”

Lundin stood behind the antique easy chair, resting his hands on its back.  Dame Miri and Elia looked up from the spell box, with its gaping trumpet pointed right towards him.  Willl with three L’s paused on the stepstool with the second
ojing
in his hands.  Martext, sitting at a wooden desk with the team journal folded open in front of him, set down his stylus mid-sentence with palpable annoyance.

“I just wanted you to know,” Lundin said, looking from face to face.  His long fingers tapped against the weathered wood.  “I just wanted to make this really explicit,” he started again.  “To get it out there, to make sure it wasn’t taken for granted.

“I wanted each of you to know that I
absolutely
trust you.”  He nodded as he said it.  “I trust our equipment.  I trust our preparations.  But really, here’s what it boils down to: I trust
you
.  You’re the best team out there.  A hundred times better than a tech like me deserves.  And so, as we take the plunge and start this experiment, I have no worries, and I have no reservations, because you’re the ones looking after me,” he said, his eyes happening to rest on Elia, “and I can’t think of any place I’d rather be than in your hands.”

“I think that’s a come-on,” Dame Miri said in a stage whisper.

“That was not a come-on,” Lundin said as Elia giggled, her cheeks flushing just a little. “Just wanted to say I’m proud to be working with you, and I’m confident this test is going to be absolutely great.”

“Why are you holding the chair so hard?”  Willl with three L’s asked, frowning.

“I don’t know what you mean, Willl,” Lundin said lightly, unclenching his hands and giving them a little shake to get the blood flowing again.  The curlicues of the wood had left white imprints on his palms.

“That’s it, that’s all I wanted to say.  Please go back to work.  I’ll just be here,” he said, sinking down into the chair.  Its springs were pointy against his rear as he settled down to wait.

 He had made the decision during that long carriage ride from Delia.  With everything riding on this first demonstration, holding back any gesture that might impress Colonel Yough would be negligent, almost suicidal.  That meant that there was only one choice for who would be the test subject this time around. 
It has to be me
, he told himself again. 
This is the sort of thing leaders do.  They take responsibility.  They exude confidence.  They live and breathe for their projects.

And sometimes they die from them
, his head automatically filled in, despite his firm orders not to.

Lundin put on a smile as Dame Miri attached the wizard’s hat to the top of the spell box.  Underneath the hat was a little pile of Lundin’s hair, donated to give the spell a stronger personal connection.  As Miri set the hat down, the tip of the silly blue cone folded over on itself.  It looked ridiculous on the wooden edifice, but not half as ridiculous as the mock beard Martext produced from somewhere and looped around the trumpet’s spindly stem.  The salt-and-pepper beard hung down over the front face of the spell box like the pelt of a geriatric raccoon.  Elia was laughing so hard that Dame Miri had to take the first
pingdu calabra
disk away from her and set it in place herself.  Lundin kept his smile up, but his stomach was churning as the team bantered back and forth.

He wasn’t actually afraid of dying from this test.  They weren’t good enough wizards to kill someone with magic, even by accident.  Fatal spells were just too long and too convoluted to stumble across.  He also wasn’t afraid of real failure; a true, goose egg sort of failure, the way the spell of friendship didn’t do a thing to Cort because of improper interspecies coding.

No, he was certain that the spell would do something to him.  But ruling out ‘no effect’ and ‘instant death’ still left an awfully wide range of possible outcomes, and the uncertainty was what kept Lundin curling and uncurling his toes in his boots, trying to keep the fear off his face.

The goal was for something to happen to his eyes.  They were calling the spell ‘Greatsight,’ which was suitably heroic
and
suitably vague, so they could claim that however his vision changed, it was exactly what they’d intended.  Would he be able to see longer distances?  Look clearly through darkness?  Develop a minutely sensitive color sense?  He’d crafted the spell as carefully as he could to focus on distance, expanding the subject’s field of vision.  But the eye was such a barely understood marvel in the first place that it was hard to know how to go in and tweak it.  The thought gave Lundin surprising comfort, as he looked down at the backs of his hands. 
The fact that my body works at all is magical
, he thought, rotating his wrists.
So having a spell cast on me just gives me a little bit extra, that’s all. 

Dame Miri was standing in front of him.  He looked up at her and took in a breath.  She smiled.  “Ready, boss?”

“Yeah,” he said, meaning it.

“PingduH’lethDagrissIthM’NaveiOrvisMalfinnio—”

The words came out in high-pitched syncopation, like a tree full of chittering squirrels.  Lundin rubbed his hands against his knees and adjusted himself in the uncomfortable chair.  They were experimenting with running the spell box at a lower volume.  The same sponge used to make the articulating lips of the speech apparatus was now also lining the inside of the projecting trumpet, soaking up sound as the machine spoke.  Though they weren’t actually sharing Haberstorm Hall with anyone, there was a constant stream of traffic past the building to the fort proper next door.  A few curious officers had peeked in in the morning, paying their respects after last night’s dinner.  All very friendly and welcoming, yes, but until Greatsight was a proven spell Lundin really didn’t want a single military soul in the room, forming opinions that could get back to Colonel Yough.  So quieting the spell box down seemed like a prudent way to hide the fact that the magic was actually happening right now, which would probably bring the spectators in twice as fast if they knew it.  Especially since it was—what, ten at night now?  With much of the fort fast asleep, it seemed bad form to have their magic blaring out at full volume.

Lundin’s brain was doing the same mental babbling it always did when he got anxious.  He frowned, looking up at the dangling
ojing
.  Sure enough, their kid leather surfaces were crawling with white in that odd, mesmerizing way, like watching a splash of cream swirl its way through a cup of black tea. 

“Something wrong, senior tech?”  Elia called out, standing up from her stool by the spell box.

“No, no.  I don’t feel anything, but that’s expected.” 
And nerve-wracking
. 
No wonder wizards carry
ojing
around.  Without the encouragement of those things turning white, that little ‘yes, you
are
having an effect,’ people would be too embarrassed to ever cast spells
.  It was a little embarrassing as it was, for the five of them to just be sitting there looking at each other as the spell box chattered on.

“If you feel anything, shout it out,” Martext said, taking notes.

“—OrssLikiA’tielHavirImShoreaPinth—”

I feel a rusty spring in my butt
.  He kept the observation to himself, though, scooting forward in the chair with a grimace.  Colonel Farmingham wasn’t kidding when he said they’d taken away the fancy furniture.  Haberstorm Hall was still beautiful inside, with fluted columns lining the high walls and a stained-glass window of the dynastic crest sending colored sunlight down to the floor.  But there were huge blank spots between columns where tapestries or enormous paintings had clearly been hanging for some time.  The wall was a darker shade of gray in those places, after years with less exposure to dust and light.  The cavernous hall could feel like an inviting greatroom, he was sure, with the right furniture and candelabras and a gilded pianoforte there in the corner, where guests could congregate to sing and laugh.  But without any of those things it was downright monastic; and not the fun, ale-brewing monks of the Halcyon Territories either, but the self-flagellating vow-of-misery types you heard about in Svargath.

There really wasn’t anything to complain about.  As a workspace, Haberstorm Hall was as roomy and functional as the pristine Civic workshop. 
A little art on the walls would give me something to look at in all this dead time, that’s all
.  Greatsight was more involved than the spell of friendship, so even with their further speed improvements to the spell box it would be about an hour fifteen before the Enunciation finally wound down. 
I should have brought a book
, he thought, drumming his hands on his knees.

“—ArvorealaIthPingadaEmSh’maiTronnDoptari—”

Minutes crept by.  They were waiting for the next set of disks to finish now.  Number three?  Number four?  Willl with three L’s was eating some kind of vegetable, raw, crunching loudly with every bite.  Martext was listening intently to the spell box, occasionally making notes on pronunciation whenever he caught something.  He’d been an amazingly quick study in Old Harutian, for someone who hadn’t known the language at all a month ago, and Ronk’s linguistic tips had made his ear even better.  Elia had all the remaining pairs of disks laid out on the table in order, and was quadruple-checking her work.  Dame Miri was standing next to her stool, bandaged hands on her hips, looking up at the
ojing
.

“What do you think they are?” she said softly.

Lundin shrugged, glad to hear a non-mechanical voice.  “You know, I asked Archimedia about that when she first gave them to me.  She wouldn’t say.  Just that they were… what was it… ‘precious.’”

“Did she make them?”

“No idea.  I don’t even know if they’re a thing you make, or if they just come that way.”

“You mean, like off an
ojing
tree?”  Willl with three L’s said, his mouth full.

Lundin started to dismiss the comment before he caught himself.  He had to keep reminding himself that Willl with three—that Willl
Wythernsson
might have a better head on his shoulders than he let on. 
It’d be easier to take him seriously if he knew how to chew, though.

“Huh. Interesting, Willl.  I always assumed they came from animals, but, I guess the
ojing
could be circles cut out of a leaf, or some leathery bark, right?  But the question is, whatever the
ojing
come from—”