The Mask And The Master (Mechanized Wizardry Book 2), page 38
“Six await orders. Two from the mission at Campos have yet to return. They separated away before the captives were loaded in the treader. Sir Ulstead tells me they’re on their way home; they’re mask-bound, so he’s been watching one of them make steady progress north to us. The other mask may be damaged.”
“Leave me Ulstead, then, and take the other five. I want a strong display of our native force in Amiers. That will calm any nerves when the Svargath join us. Speaking of which,” he said, reaching for the roll of message paper and tearing off a piece. “I will send a courier bird east this instant. I’ll instruct the Svargath to make their ships ready, and meet you in Amiers in… how long will you require to prepare the camp? Two weeks?”
“The limit is the speed of their boats, not the speed of our preparations,” Dame Hanah muttered, resting a palm on the tabletop.
“I,” she began, then closed her mouth. She looked down at her old hand, wrinkled and laced with scars.
Torvald stopped his search for a quill, and frowned at her. “What?”
“The things we sow, we must be ready to harvest,” she said, setting her caution aside. She looked her future king in the face, her hazel eyes dark with concern. “All our talk with Svargath, so far, has stayed just talk. But when you send them that message, everything will change, and there won’t be any going back.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Are you certain this is your path to the Throne?”
“Of course,” he said, straightening up. He put one hand on his hip and traced lines through the air with the other. “It’s as we’ve discussed for years! We march on Delia with the Svargath from the northeast and the southeast simultaneously, while the common people rise up everywhere between. The more overwhelming our position, the sooner the Regents will surrender, and the fewer lives the fight will claim. Our troops alone, even with our technological edge and the common people on our side, would require a long, bloody slog to rout the Regents’ Army. We don’t have the numbers. But with allies behind us—”
“Are they allies?” she said bluntly.
“The Svargath recognize me as the legitimate heir to the Throne, yes! They want to see me succed! They want a fresh start with Delia, not the fear, and distrust, and ignorance they get from the Regents.”
He took a step closer to her. “I know you’ve had your doubts,” Torvald said, patiently, “but I thought they were past.”
“It’s my duty to pose any unwelcome contingencies to you,” Dame Hanah said, feeling a little stiff.
“And I value your attention to duty.” He raised his eyebrows, making a solicitous face. “If you have another source for fourteen thousand soldiers, by all means, let me know.”
“No, Master Torvald.”
“Then the message to Svargath goes out today,” he said, snatching up his quill. “And I promise you, Dame Hanah,” he grinned, “that the harvest will be delicious.
She bowed her head as the young man went on. “I’ll remain here to oversee Iimar’s progress with mechanized wizardry, and make decisions on its applications based on the potential it demonstrates. You and I should remain in close contact to deliberate the best moment for me to reveal myself to the public. Perhaps at the head of the second Svargath force, marching along the southern coast? News travels fast on the coastal road, and it will carry straight to Delia…”
One little scrap of paper, affixed to one little bird, Dame Hanah thought, watching him write out his message as he spoke. How can the whole world turn on things like that?
She shook her mind clear and brought herself back to the present, where her young King would need every bit of her attention and expertise if he was to ever see that coronation feast.
They barely spoke to each other all the next day. The hatch clattered open and breakfast was dropped on the stone floor of their cell: two loaves of coarse bread and a jug of tea. Martext took his portion to the corner chair and ate in silence. Elia lay back on her cot, tearing little bites out of the soft middle of the loaf and popping them into her mouth one at a time. When she had finished the methodical evisceration, she chomped her way through the crust in large noisy bites. Lundin barely touched his bread. He paced the length of the room over and over, pausing only to take another cool swig from the jug now and again.
The sunlight through the windows made it early afternoon, as far as they could figure. Lundin was curled up with his notes when the door came crashing open. It was their two leather-clad guards, grinning in the doorway.
“Just you,” the sharp-faced woman said, pointing her chin at him.
“Be careful,” Elia said as they led him out. Whatever she meant, he appreciated the sentiment. Lundin gave her a little smile as the door clicked shut.
“Your progress?” Iimar the Enchanter said, raising an eyebrow.
“We’ve been working steadily,” Lundin said with his hands folded in front of him. Instead of having the candles strewn across his workroom, today Iimar had all of them piled in the center where yesterday’s sand had been. He was sitting cross-legged on the stone floor in the midst of his iron candelabras and waxy tapers. Two waist-high pedestals flanked his little cathedral of light. His silk jumpsuit was blindingly white against the candlelight, and made his olive skin look even darker. Where does he keep all these outfits? Lundin wondered, squinting into the dark corners of the room.
“Some of our transcribing was inaccurate, I think. Your magic has a whole vocabulary we’re not familiar with—”
“Can you mechanize me?” Iimar snapped.
Lundin fought the urge to swallow. Yesterday seemed to have worn on the wizard’s patience. “With enough time and resources, yes,” he said, keeping his voice steady. “Our process can replicate your spells.”
The wizard nodded. “Then you’ve kept yourself alive for another day.
“I couldn’t face seeing your assistants today, Mister Lundin,” Iimar said, standing and stretching up to his full height. The white silk affixed itself snugly to every contour of his body. After one involuntary glance south, Lundin resolved to keep his eyes firmly locked on the wizard’s face. “I was concerned that I might do something rash to them.”
“Well, then, thank you for—”
“Are they necessary to you?”
“Absolutely, Master Iimar,” Lundin said immediately. The look in the Enchanter’s eyes was making him nervous.
The wizard raised a hand, and Willl with three L’s stepped forward from his place in the shadows. The blond tech’s lip was starting to heal. “Ponder this,” the wizard said. “Since you, Mister Lundin, are so cooperative, and Wythernssen here possesses all the knowledge your subjects have… what need do we have for them? Aren’t they redundant?”
“Sir, I absolutely cannot work without them,” he said. “I—I’m good at ideas, and keeping big picture thoughts in my head, but for the details? For the ‘how’ of any project? Without both Elia and Martext, I’d be absolutely lost.”
“Work with him,” Iimar said, jerking his head towards Willl with three L’s.
“I. Master Iimar, that wouldn’t be the same.” He tried desperately to keep the animosity out of his voice, avoiding the traitor’s face as assiduously as the other man was avoiding his.
“Oh? Oh? It seems to me that you underestimate the scope of Mister Wythernessen’s expertise. Show him!”
Willl with three L’s pulled a scroll case from behind his back and drew out a wide roll of paper. He spread it out against one of the pedestals, and Lundin’s eyes widened. Blueprints, he thought, scanning the document. Complete blueprints for—
“He has already sketched, from memory, the complete design of your… your spell box? Right down to the hat.” Iimar said, smiling, as he tapped his finger against the scroll for emphasis.
Lundin looked at Willl with three L’s, with his long blond bangs and his vapid eyes. Burn me. You were paying a lot more attention than I thought you were.
“Our machinists stand ready to manufacture this device,” the wizard went on, “and many more like it. Now, I may not be a Petronaut, but I’d say that Mister Wythernssen knows a great deal about the details, and the ‘how,’ of every project you worked on. So tell me, colleague, why should we keep your assistants around?”
Lundin looked at the scroll more closely. “Because this is wrong,” he said, pressing his finger on the paper.
“Hmm?” Willl with three L’s said, tilting his head. Iimar swiveled to look at him as Lundin investigated the blueprints.
“Try to install the bellows this way, and they’ll rupture by the twentieth word,” he said. “Not enough space, by at least five centimeters. And the way these tubes are laid out? Air flow to the mouthpiece would be a fraction of what you need to get proper Mabinanto sibilance.”
“That’s just how our spell box was,” Willl with three L’s objected, tracing his fingernail in a circle around the hosing diagram.
“If that’s how you remember it, by all means, have the machinists use these plans. I’m just telling you, you’re going to have a lot of broken boxes around.”
“It’s not true. Master Iimar, that’s just how our box was—”
The wizard raised a hand, and Willl with three L’s fell silent. “So, Mister Lundin, could you draw up a more accurate plan?”
“Not by myself,” Lundin shook his head. “Elia and Martext worked most closely with Dame Miri on the latest improvements to the motors, which helped us shave a few dozen seconds off per disk. I couldn’t guarantee anything without their help.”
Iimar narrowed his eyes. “I don’t believe you.”
“Like I said, try these plans if you want. But they won’t work.”
“You’re saying that Mister Wythernssen is lying about what he saw?”
“No, no, no. But these things are too complicated for one person to hold all the details in their head. That’s why you need other pairs of eyes looking over your shoulder; so they’ll catch what you miss.” He laced his fingers together behind his back. “And that’s why I need my techs, if I’m going to give you what you want.”
The candlelight flickered as Willl with three L’s bumped a tall candelabra with his foot. He leaned in to Iimar’s ear and whispered too loudly, “Master Iimar, he’s lying. I can—”
“Give me my space,” Iimar the Enchanter said forbiddingly, clenching his fists.
Will with three L’s took three quick steps back, holding the scroll case up to his chest. The wizard glared forward at Lundin. “You and your assistants have until tomorrow morning to document the spell I showed you yesterday, transcribed into your method. I shall call them in, and them alone, to present it. If their efforts or their demeanor are not to my liking, I will do something to them; but it will not be rash. It will be very purposeful.
“Do you understand?”
Lundin nodded vigorously.
“If your team survives,” Iimar went on, turning pointedly to Willl with three L’s, “your next task will be to help Mister Wythernssen correct his blueprints for the spell box, so we may begin production on something close to the desired schedule. I hope I make myself clear.”
Their footsteps clopped in the hallway as Willl with three L’s and the guards marched him back to his cell. “I know you lied,” the blond tech said, after a long stretch of silence.
“You know all about lies, don’t you,” Lundin said absently. A whole party of soldiers was filing past, armed to the teeth, moving with the hurried economy of people with a mission and a time crunch. He looked down a side hallway and saw the square room where he and the Civics had first entered the castle from the tunnels below. The room was packed with soldiers, filing through the door and out of sight to the underground. Where’s everybody going? he wondered.
“I had the blueprints just right.”
“I’m telling you what I remember. Seeing as I started the project, and Samanthi Elena and I invented the burning thing, I should think you’d listen. But if you want to ignore me, and ignore Iimar, and do it your way, that’s on your head.”
They were turning down the last hallway. Willl with three L’s was silently fuming as he kept pace with them. Lundin looked over at him.
“What are you doing here, Willl?” he asked, feeling almost sad.
Willl with three L’s looked up, surprised. Then his blue eyes softened too. He adjusted his glasses—newly repaired—and looked down at the floor.
“I have two homes,” he said. “If they’re gonna fight, then no matter what I do, one of my homes will be unhappy with me.”
“Two homes. Delia and Svargath?”
“This is the right side to be on though, I know it is,” he said, nodding. “Delia needs a King. We all know it.”
“Sure, yes, fine! What does Svargath have to do with any of this?” Lundin hissed. They were almost at the cell door.
Willl with three L’s blinked. “We’re giving King Torvald an army. I thought he would have told you that,” he said, perplexed.
The guards had to shove him bodily into the cell as he stood there, stunned in the hallway. Even Martext stood up at the sight of him, showing a modicum of concern. The door slammed shut, followed by the customary rattling of locks.
“Spheres,” Martext said as he and Elia stepped closer. “What happened to you?”
“Busy afternoon,” Lundin said, his brain racing. “Okay. One. We have to finish transcribing Iimar’s spell from yesterday, and you have to present it to him tomorrow, or he’ll kill you.”
“I’m not doing anything to help these people,” Martext said.
“Then he’ll kill you. Elia too. So don’t do it for them; do it for her.”
“Yeah, do it for me,” Elia said, her eyes very wide.
“Two. I need you to think of everything you know about the spell box. Willl’s already drawn them a set of blueprints—perfect blueprints. I fed Iimar some nonsense about why they were wrong to slow them down. We need to be ready to draw up our own set of blueprints at a moment’s notice, with enough non-glaring flaws so that these people don’t get anywhere.”
“Great! Hey, that’s actually good news!” Martext relaxed his frown a little as Elia whispered cheerily.
“Three. And it’s not so much an action item as, a, well.” Lundin wet his lips and blurted it out. “It’s not a civil war we’ve got coming up.
“It’s an invasion.”
Chapter Eighteen
The Warlord’s Valley
Dame Miri wiped the sweat off her face. Her silken sleeve was just as bad at absorbing moisture as it had been the last time she’d tried to wipe herself clean. Typically, the temperature’s supposed to go down when the sun sets, she thought sullenly. This evening was clearly an exception; she felt like the bright white moonbeams tanned her skin every time they filtered through the canopy of trees. She pulled the mask back down over her face, wrinkling her nose at the stink of her own sweat and saliva, which covered the inside of the faceplate like a coat of varnish after all this time in the woods.
Can it really have been three days? she thought, shaking her head. Her legs and empty stomach registered woeful assent. The face of that strong-jawed ‘naut was far brighter in her mind whenever she put the mask on, which seemed promising. She had to be close now. There’s no doubt I’ve made better time than a Campos search party would have, Dame Miri thought. Of course, unless the kidnappers give me a hot meal and a comfy bedroll before we get to fighting, I have no idea how much use I’m going to be when I get there. The mask’s golden eyes beamed down at the dirt in front of her. She stepped over a cluster of roots and rolled her shoulders, stifling a yawn.
The leaves moved, about a hundred meters to her left. It could have easily been a squirrel, or a mouse, but Dame Miri stopped in her tracks. Something didn’t feel right about that sound. There was a quiet whining noise, like a motor—
On instinct, she leapt straight up. Twigs shattered against her head and shoulders, and she scrambled for a sturdy branch. Down on the forest floor, a gunshot barked, and a ball of lead sailed through the air she’d just been occupying. As she hoisted herself onto the teetering branch, the footsteps in the leaves below started running towards her.
“Spheres,” she hissed, wrapping herself around the branch. It was barely thick enough to hold her weight; even worse, the tree was leafless and dead, so the wood was that much likelier to snap at any moment. She inched herself towards the tree trunk, praying she could make it. It was only about two and a half meters away, brightly illuminated by the golden cone from her eyes.
My eyes! Burn me, Dame Miri thought, grabbing the wire looped around the back of her head. Talk about a target! Wearing this mask at night, I might as well shoot myself.
She formed one last mental picture of the way towards the square-jawed ‘naut and ripped the mask off her face. With a flick of the wrist, she sent it sailing like a discus through the trees. It clattered and spiraled on its way down with a chaotic light show that would do the Parade squad proud. The footsteps below slowed their stride. That’s right, look over there, she thought, squirming towards the trunk.
Dame Miri braced herself against the trunk and crouched onto her toes, looking down. She’d been spoiled by her built-in torches all this time; the ground but was nothing but a black ocean an indeterminate distance below. She furiously willed her eyes to adjust faster. I can only have jumped so high. Odds are the coils could handle it if I dropped back down. Then again, the ranine coils had started sounding awfully labored just before sundown. With unfamiliar hardware, and no way of knowing how well it had been maintained, she had to treat every jump now as a risk.
She ground her teeth. To come this far, and then to get stuck in a tree and shot by that gun-toting hostile below? (A ‘naut, too, from the sound of those motors and gears.) Unacceptable, she decided.
The footsteps kept heading towards her tree, rather than chasing the mask. Dame Miri shimmied around to the far side of the trunk and wrapped both hands around a fist-sized branch. She swung down and held herself there by her arms, her feet braced against the dead tree’s trunk. Her eyes were adjusting. It was only about five meters to the ground, and there was another tree close behind her. She couldn’t see the ‘naut, but she heard the unmistakable sound of another round being chambered into a wrist gun. Dame Miri held her breath. She’d have to risk it.
