The Wizard That Wasn't (Mechanized Wizardry) (7 page)

“Have you ever heard one of these things sing?”  Sir Mathias said.  “I’ve heard dogs that sound better.  Why don’t you have a dog try to speak your magic?”

“For starters, I’m more of a ‘bird’ person,” Lundin began.

“A squawk box would speak a spell the same way every time,” Dame Miri said, stepping closer to the technicians, her curiosity getting the best of her.  “You’d need that consistency between trials to know if you were making any progress.”

“Exactly.  Exactly!  If we worked with human wizards right off the bat, like Samanthi said, we’d never have a prayer of isolating any variables.”

“That’s why I’m a senior tech,” Samanthi called out from inside the Melodimax.

“But what makes you think a machine making some sounds will turn into magic?”  Dame Miri asked, her pale face thoughtful.  “It doesn’t really speak.  It doesn’t understand anything it sings. Even assuming that you punch in the right words for it to say, isn’t there more to magic than that?”

“Maybe,” Lundin admitted.  “But if there isn’t, wouldn’t that be nice to know?”

 Miri looked at him for a moment, then broke into a brilliant, wicked smile.  “You might want to stand back, Sir Mathias,” she said over her shoulder to the wavy-haired giant across the room.  “I think your technicians just got me excited too.  Ms. Elena!”  She swept past Lundin to crouch next to the visible portion of Samanthi’s body.  “Do you know how to work the plate press for a squawk box?”

“No, Dame Miri,” Samanthi said, emerging with beads of sweat on her tanned forehead.  “One of your techs—the tall one?—told me it just was a noisier version of the fibercard presses we use, but I think she was humoring me.”

“She was.  Let me show you how it’s done.”

Lundin felt a hand on his shoulder and nearly jumped out of his boots.  He turned to look up into Sir Mathias’ face, the big man’s features lined with concern.  “When did you get over here?”  Lundin asked.

“I’m fast,” Sir Mathias said simply.  “Here’s the thing, Horace.  You two have an interesting theory here, but there’s a feastday in two weeks and we have more than enough Recon squad work to do between now and then.”

“Samanthi and I are up-to-schedule on our preparations for the feastday, Sir Mathias,” Lundin said.  He’d already prepared what to say for this part.  “Any hours we put in on the mechanized wizardry project are on our own time.”

“You mean, like quarter to eleven on a night like this, when normal men and women are already three drinks deep.”

“After we finish this project, Sir Mathias, I promise we’ll have more than three drinks.”

Mathias grinned, despite himself.  “I’m just saying, you two already had a bad workload before you decided to learn how to tame the raw energy of chaos in your spare time.  So if I hear a single syllable of complaint about how busy you are, I’ll fill your throat with foam from the fire douser.  That is, if you’ve fixed it yet.”

“The repair’s ready for testing,” Lundin said in a very small voice, nodding.

“Two more points,” he said calmly, with one hand on the technician’s shoulder and a thick finger in his face.  “Promise me you’ll sleep between now and the feastday.”

“Yes, Sir Mathias.”

“Two.”  Here, the big man’s voice went low and grave.  “Tell Sir Kelley what you’re doing.”

Lundin swallowed.  Kelley had been extremely displeased with how their visit to Tymon and Archimedia had turned out.  He’d wanted to see Lundin discouraged and humiliated, and instead the technician had come away with stacks of books and scrolls on loan from Archimedia, and a head full of exciting new theories on the nature of magic.  Since then, the squad leader had been throwing himself into coordination efforts with the Palace Guard, and had been nowhere in sight at the warehouse or anywhere in Workshop Row. 
Thank the Spheres for small favors.

“He’s the squad leader.  What you two do in this workshop is his business—regardless of whether or not it’s in your spare time.  And if you don’t tell him, someone else will.”

Lundin nodded, crestfallen.  Somehow, he’d hoped that Sir Mathias would help keep the secret; but, of course, the junior Petronaut’s duty to his squad leader came first. “Understood, Sir Mathias,” he said quietly.

Mathias blinked.  “Wait… you don’t think I’ll tell him, do you?  No!  I was talking about some blabbermouth in the Parade squad leaking the news.  Spheres!  He’d flay me alive if he thought I knew anything about this and didn’t put a stop to it immediately.  No, Mr. Lundin; deniability is my only way out of this brewing fiasco.  And to that end,” he said, clapping the shoulder of a very perplexed Horace Lundin, “I’m off to have three drinks.  Dame Miri!”

“Sir Mathias?”

“Will you accompany me to the pub like a civilized creature, or have you caught the work madness too?”

“Nothing about you at a pub is civilized,” she said.  “I’m just going to stay until we get the first disk punched.”

“Well, since I won’t see you before then, happy feastday.  None of you saw me here.”  Sir Mathias nodded to each of them and was gone, stooping his head to fit through the door into the starlit night.

“Come on, techs,” Dame Miri told them gleefully, pulling up her sleeves.  “There’s work to be done.”

Chapter Six

A Journey Of Ten Thousand Paces

Ruched red drapery flowed across the ceiling in Princess Naomi’s chamber, the billowy fabric gathered up every two meters only to spill downwards again in a series of elegant waves.  The room felt lower than it was, as a result, and adult visitors found their heads naturally inclining downwards once they stepped inside.  It was as if they were bowing to the child princess before they even saw her; a shamelessly premeditated trick of interior design Lady Ceres Mitrono and the other Regents had approved when setting up the heir’s apartments after Queen Tess’ passing.  Also, the gilded furniture, in dark wood and velvet cushions, had been made child-sized to let Naomi receive supplicants in comfort. 
Let the visitors adjust themselves to
her
.
 
The poor girl needs every advantage she can get,
Lady Ceres thought, watching her young charge from the doorway.

The furniture was gone now, except for a single, severe black cabinet.  Gone were the tapestries, the music boxes, the sumptuous chaise, and the soft, sculpted animals the princess had loved as a girl.  Everything decorative, comforting, and familiar had been removed from Princess Naomi’s chambers when the First Ordeals began.  Had it been only six days?  Ceres shook her head slowly.  It seemed like it had been years since the ceremonial shears had removed Naomi’s long braid, not quite blond and not quite brown; “Like a fine stein of lager,” Mortimer had described it with irreverent bombast, she remembered with a smile.  Now the beautiful hair was gone, safely installed in the Haberstorm family vault, and the spiky-headed youth sitting on the floor in silent isolation was no longer the girl she had been.  Whether she would emerge from the Ordeals as a successful midling, that sober stage between girl and woman, remained to be seen.  And whether she would navigate the Second Ordeals, six years later, to become an adult and claim the crown was so far on the horizon as to be beyond consideration. 
Not worth worrying about
, Ceres thought, her square face creased with anxiety. 
Not
when there’s so much in the here-and-now to fret over.

“Her color seems good,” Ouste said at her shoulder, with an air of accentuating the positive.

Lady Ceres looked down at the court sorcerer, her sturdy arms crossed over her chest.  Ouste was older than she by a few years, a woman of willowy build—though, in Ceres’s experience, a heavyset wizard was as rare as a two-headed goat—whose silver robe clung tightly to her body.  Ouste’s head was shaved to the skin, and her ears were bejeweled from lobe to auricle with an array of glimmering stones, some black, some clear and prismatic.  She looked up at the regent with pale blue eyes.

Ceres exhaled through her teeth.  “Her current pallor becomes her, I suppose.  Whether I would call that good is another matter,” she said, gazing again at the Princess across the room.

“She bears the fast well, for a child of her constitution,” Ouste revised her comment evenly.

“Eight more days.”  The regent tapped one finger against her arm, keeping her face calm.

The two women watched the heir in silence for a moment.  A servant’s footsteps on a lower floor echoed faintly in the air.  Finally, Ouste said in a quiet voice, “I would not wish it on my child.”

“Yes, well,” Lady Ceres said, clearing her throat, “what we wish and what we must do are distant cousins, at best.”

“We’re only enforcing a tradition from a darker time.  It is Naomi who bears the cost.”

“As I am perfectly aware,” Lady Ceres said, her temper mounting.  “Generations of Haberstorm children have undergone the Ordeals.  An heir cannot ascend to the Throne without enduring them.”

“Does Naomi want to ascend to the Throne?”  Ouste’s voice was flat, her blue eyes fixed on the girl.

Ceres shifted her weight, her trouser legs rustling against each other loudly in the still chamber.  “Princess Naomi is the heir.  She will be Delia’s queen.”

“If she succeeds.”  The sorcerer turned to face Ceres, folding her hands together.  “If she survives,” Ouste whispered.

“Bite your tongue, wizard.”  Lady Ceres would not look at the other woman, her throat growing suddenly tight.

“Lord Torvald nearly died.”

Ceres frowned, thinking back on the golden-haired youth.  “Lord Torvald underwent the Second Ordeals and was found lacking.  Custom dictated he be removed from the succession and banished, along with his shame.   Her brother’s failure is immaterial to Naomi’s journey.”

“A strong, hardy boy like him, with every virtue a king might crave: banished.”

“A necessary action.”

“‘Necessary.’”  The wizard tasted the word dubiously, like a bad piece of meat.  “So Delia may be the center of technology, the center of progress, the center of experimentation and advancement.  But when it comes to our monarchy, all that matters is tradition, no matter how barbaric.  Maybe the peasants would not be testing their might in rebellion if they knew their government was willing to change with the times.”

Lady Ceres stomped forward, not trusting herself to respond.  Ouste’s thin hand on her arm stopped her, and she whirled around.  “Tell me, Lady Ceres,” Ouste said, with new urgency, “that you truly think this child—
this child
—can endure where her brother could not.”

The weary lines deepened on the regent’s face as she gently pulled her arm away.  “She has no choice,” Ceres said.

Ouste watched as the towering woman made her way across the bare room, approaching the Princess with surprisingly delicate steps.  Naomi looked up at Lady Ceres from the floor, her thin legs curled over each other in a meditative pose. 
Thirteen years old
, Ceres thought sadly, bowing as the too-pale face turned up to her.  Ceres raised her hands.  “Step by step, a journey of ten thousand paces,” she said, her voice catching on the ceremonial language.  Her fingers fluttered along with her words.  “A waypost in a barren field; the earth cracks for want of rain.”

Princess Naomi’s brown eyes fell, and her head drooped.  Her golden hair stuck up in jagged peaks where the shears had hacked their way through.  Lady Ceres, despite herself, shot a quick glance back to the court wizard.  Ouste stood with her arms crossed over her silver robes, her pale eyes revealing nothing.

Naomi’s hands began to move in her lap, almost imperceptibly.  Ceres squinted to make out the words as the girl made the signs of her reply, fingers flicking in the only language she would ever speak. 
<>
Princess Naomi gave the traditional response in hand language, not looking up at her regent.

Ceres set her jaw.  She walked to the tall black cabinet and slid open a drawer half-a-dozen centimeters across.  She removed a black leather pouch and slid the drawer closed.  Lady Ceres turned back to the Princess before her quick mind could estimate just how many drawers were remaining in the Cabinet of Ordeals.

Naomi’s head was still hanging against her chest.  Ceres pulled the drawstring on the pouch and, gingerly, with gloved fingers, removed a translucent circular disk bigger than a two-sestari coin.  Reflected sunlight against the red ceiling cast a troubling, bloody shadow on the disk of salt.  There were four others like it in the pouch.

“Your Royal Highness,” Ceres said, getting the heir’s attention as gently as she could.  “Are you ready?”

After a painful pause, Princess Naomi looked up at the regent.  She nodded, once, and opened her mouth.

“Everyone has a moment,” Lundin elaborated, tightening the knot, “when—I suppose—a switch gets thrown, and suddenly you’re
on
.  And whatever your function is, you start doing it; you start blasting forward, full speed ahead.  You’re like a machine, finally put to work.  And you just do the task you’re made for.  You don’t know how it’s going to turn out, but you trust that whoever put you together knew what they were doing, and that they made you good enough to do what you have to do.

“It makes you wonder what you were doing with yourself beforehand, though.  What is a machine doing before it’s turned on?  Nothing—well, except gathering mold and falling apart.  So if a person—hypothetically—can look back at his life and see the moment where he switched on, does that mean his previous thirty-one years were spent amassing a world-class mold collection?  That everything up to this new point was a total waste?

“But you wouldn’t say a
machine
was wasteful, or aimless, or lazy, just because it was turned off.  After all, it wasn’t the machine’s idea to be switched off in the first place.  Machines love to work; that’s what they’re for.  So this hypothetical person can’t be blamed either for having been ‘off’ for a few decades, while he waited for the powers-that-be to flick a switch.