The Conjuring Man, page 18
The infirmary wasn’t as crammed as he’d feared – some patients had been transferred to Farrakhan, or simply healed and discharged – but there were still two patients in each of the beds, as well as dozens of small mattresses and blankets scattered everywhere. The air was surprisingly clear – the staff had been taught to keep everything as clean and sterile as possible – yet Adam could still smell the stench of fear and desperation. In theory, healing was free and there were enough healers to cope with everyone. In practice ...
Adam scowled, inwardly. Healing was a complex discipline, perhaps the most complex subject in magic school. It wasn’t easy to train a healer, and even the basic spells were so draining they couldn’t be cast very often, no matter how desperately they were needed. He felt the tiles grow warm in his hands as he walked towards a young man, not much older than himself. His broken leg wasn’t a death sentence in the university, but back home ... without proper treatment, the poor bastard would’ve been crippled for life.
“Hi,” he said. He wasn’t sure how to broach the subject, so he started gently. “How are you feeling?”
The patient surprised him by smiling. “Well, apart from the broken leg, things could hardly be better,” he said. “Have you seen some of the Nightingales?”
Adam grinned. “We have something we’d like to try,” he said, and outlined what the spell circuits were meant to do. “Will you let us?”
“Of course, if it works,” the patient said. “What if it doesn’t?”
“I heal you,” Lilith said, before Adam could say a word. “And we go back to the drawing board.”
The patient nodded. “I dare say they’ll be glad to get me out of here,” he said. Adam was entirely sure the patient was right. “What do I do?”
“You pull back the blankets, then lie still,” Adam said. He put the spell circuit together, pretending not to notice how little the hospital gown concealed. The patient wore nothing beneath his underwear, save for a cloth wrapped around his broken bone. He was used to a complete lack of privacy – he’d grown up in a cramped house, then moved to a university dorm – but there were limits. Lilith looked away. “Let me do all the work.”
He pressed the spell circuit against the broken leg and waited. The leg seemed to twitch, as if it wanted to bend in an impossible direction, then settled down. Adam frowned as the magic faded. Had it worked? Or had the spell failed? The bare skin looked right – he pulled away the cloth, revealing pale skin – but was it purely cosmetic? He didn’t know. The only way to test it was ...
“Stand up,” he said, holding out a hand. “Let me help you to stand.”
The patient carefully – very carefully – swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood, hissing in pain as his feet touched the ground. Adam blanched, half-expecting the man to collapse into a heap, before he steadied himself. He was tottering around like a small boy who was recovering from a fever, but he was standing. No, walking. His bone had been repaired. Adam waved to a healer, who hurried over to prod and poke at the patient’s leg. It seemed fine.
“Feels like it went to sleep on me, but nothing worse,” the patient said. He gave Lilith a toothy smile, one that – under other circumstances – would get him turned into a frog. “You want to go down to town for drinks with me?”
“What a great idea,” Lilith said, with suspicious affability. “Can I bring my boyfriend?”
“Aw,” the patient said. “Why does every pretty girl I meet have a boyfriend?”
Adam pretended to take the question seriously. “If you meet a girl with a boyfriend, you met a girl with a boyfriend,” he said. His old teachers had said something similar, although it was about jerks. “If every girl you meet has a boyfriend, they don’t want to date you.”
“I don’t get it,” the patient said. He pretended to sulk, pasting a ridiculously over the top expression on his face. “Why do they take one look and decide they don’t want to date me?”
“It saves time,” the healer said, briskly. “And I want you to stay here for the rest of the day so I can make sure nothing went wrong with the healing process. If you’re still fine tomorrow morning, I’ll discharge you and you can go back to being rejected by girls.”
“Or straight back to the militia, to see if a uniform can compensate for an ugly face and worse smile,” the patient said, cheerfully. “If this works – I mean, if my leg doesn’t break again in an hour or so – will everyone get the same treatment? I wasn’t the only one wounded in combat.”
Adam felt a wave of respect, even admiration. He knew far too many people who wouldn’t give a damn about others, certainly not people who weren’t part of their circle. “I think so, yes,” he said. “It’s just a matter of producing the right tiles, slotting them into place and then charging the spells.”
He eyed the tiles thoughtfully as he collected them. They’d checked the charge as best as they could, using the detector to gain a rough feel for how much magic had been infused into the metal runes, but it was difficult to be sure how much remained. They’d need to carry out more experiments, now they knew they had a workable concept. He wasn’t sure what would happen if the magic ran out midway through the spell, but he didn’t want to find out the hard way. It would be akin to torture, no matter how unintentional. And probably unethical as well.
“I’ll let you know what happens,” the healer said, as he chivvied the patient back to his bed. It was a dismissal, easy to recognise as such. “If it works ...”
Adam nodded, waved goodbye to their patient and led the way back to the workroom. Lilith followed, saying nothing until they were back behind their wards. Adam closed the door and put the kettle on, remembering – with a flicker of amusement – how irritating it had been to prepare drinks for Master Landis and Lilith only a few short months ago. Had it really been less than a year? He’d come to think of the university as home, and Beneficence as just another city-state ... he wondered, suddenly, what his mother and siblings would make of him now. And Master Pittwater ...? A stab of guilt shot through him. Matt had said the old man was in the infirmary, but ... he was old. It was quite possible Master Pittwater was dead already.
I’ll see if I can visit, when the war is over, Adam thought. Master Caleb was already in Zangaria – or, perhaps, further afield. There were few reports from the distant war when everyone was preoccupied with the fighting on their doorstep. And see what the guild will make of me now.
“The healers will be unsure what to make of it,” Lilith commented, as she took her tea and sipped it gratefully. “They’ll be worried we’ll put them out of a job.”
Adam shook his head. “We can’t adapt the spell as we work,” he said. The spell circuits either worked or they didn’t. As far as he could tell, there was no middle ground. “The healing tiles will never be as flexible as spells cast by a proper magician.”
“Perhaps,” Lilith said. She stared down at her hands for a moment, then looked up at him and smiled. “Of course, they’ll free up the healers for more ... complex ... treatments.”
“Yeah.” Adam took the detector and placed it beside the tiles, carefully measuring the ticks and pulses. It looked as if most of the tiles had been drained dry. He wondered if that meant they’d needed all the magic to cast the spell, or if much of the magic had bled elsewhere. “I doubt we’ll be putting them all out of business.”
He frowned as he inspected the last of the tiles. They were doing better now – they had a baseline for charging tiles, as well as a system of measurement – but he still had the feeling they were groping in the dark. There were things he couldn’t sense, things he only knew were there because he’d been told they were ... he wondered, numbly, if there were things Lilith and her peers couldn’t see or sense, only deduce through inference. He’d scanned a number of old books that talked about magic in religious terms ...
Lilith drained her mug and stood. “I have to get back to my masters,” she said, giving him a quick kiss. “Send for me when you have the detector ready for testing?”
“I will.” Adam felt his heart twist at the thought. There were others who could help them do it, weren’t there? Yes, his thoughts answered, but none he trusted. The idea of asking anyone else felt wrong. “It won’t be long.”
“I know,” Lilith said. She gave him another kiss. “Good luck.”
Chapter Nineteen
“I think I got the first set of tiles and clockwork wheels done,” Taffy said, as she entered the workroom, shortly after Lilith had gone. “I just had to put them aside to finish the detector.”
Adam nodded, then held up another set of tiles. “What do you make of this?”
Taffy frowned as she studied the etched runes. “You’re casting a shadow of a spell,” she said, slowly. “Which spell?”
“Something clever,” Adam said. “You know how chat parchments work? How they use blood to link two parchments together, but the blood actually draws magic from the user to power the charm, which is why mundanes can’t use chat parchments? Except ... Princess Daphne was clearly able to use one to do more than just chatting. Why?”
Taffy grimaced. “Because Arnold was doing all the work?”
“Perhaps, yes,” Adam said. “But he still needed to work his magic through a princess who wasn’t – who isn’t – a magician in her own right. So it’s clearly possible to craft a chat parchment requiring only one magician, or perhaps none.”
He picked up one of the tiles and passed it to her. “Hold this,” he said, pressing his fingertips against the other tiles. “Can you hear me?”
Taffy jumped, nearly dropping the tiles. “I heard ...”
Adam grinned. “If you press your fingertips against the alpha tile, I should be able to hear everything you say, as long as you’re touching the tile,” he said. “And vice versa. I don’t think there’s any more range limitations than there’d be for the average chat parchments.”
“I’ll try,” Taffy said. “Do you have to be touching the tile to hear me?”
“No,” Adam said. “The tiles are linked together. Your voice will be carried to whoever is holding the other tile. There should be a way to put more than two sets of tiles into the network, as you can do with chat parchments, but I haven’t figured out how yet.”
Taffy studied the tiles thoughtfully. “You performed the linking charm here, before you separated the two? Couldn’t you simply add a third tile at that point?”
“I tried,” Adam said. “It didn’t work.”
He scowled, then snorted at himself. A year ago, the chat tiles would have been a fantastic accomplishment. Mundanes simply couldn’t talk to each other over long distances without magical help. The fastest horseman in the world, exchanging his worn-out horse for a fresh one every few miles, would still need weeks, if not months, to get from one side of the Allied Lands to the other. It often took weeks to send a letter, then get a reply. Now ... he contemplated his work, wondering how it would change the world. If he could call his mother at any moment, even though she was a very long way away ...
And you needed a distraction, his thoughts mocked him. You didn’t want to think about what you were going to do.
“I was thinking the Levellers will need it,” he said, trying to dismiss his thoughts. The nasty feeling at the bottom of his stomach made it impossible. “They have real problems coordinating their efforts.”
Taffy nodded. “Let alone talking to anyone inside the other cities,” she agreed. “They need more than just chat parchments.”
“Yeah.” Adam smiled. “Did Dalia tell you that?”
Taffy flushed. “We talked.”
“I’m sure you did,” Adam agreed. “When’s the wedding?”
Taffy drew back her fist. “Oh, do be quiet,” she said. “At least I can be reasonably sure she’s not Arnold in disguise.”
Adam nodded. Dalia had been a nobody before she became one of the most radical members of the city council ... and a rising star. There was no reason to think she had any ties to the king’s forces, let alone that she was anything other than a young girl who’d been given an opportunity and set out to make the most of it. Hell, she’d clearly been there when the fighting had broken out, although accounts of just what had happened were vague. Adam was sure, given her attitude, she’d played a major role. She’d certainly played one since the uprising had turned into a revolution.
“I suppose he’d have trouble pretending to be her,” he said, finally. “Good luck.”
“Thanks.” Taffy made a rude gesture. “It might come to nothing, of course. Jasper’s been sniffing around her too.”
Adam raised his eyebrows. “Really? Charming.”
“Yeah.” Taffy smiled, although there was little real humour in the expression. “It’s quite funny watching him fawn over her, then remember she’s a mundy and ... I don’t know. I can’t tell what she thinks about it either.”
The door opened. Lilith stepped into the workroom, face grim. “Did you finish the detector?”
“It’s ready,” Taffy said. “Are you?”
Lilith hesitated, noticeably. “I ... you do realise” – her eyes flickered to Adam – “that you don’t have to do this?”
“It has to be me,” Adam said. He disliked the idea of putting anyone else on the spot, particularly Taffy. “If you don’t want to do it ...”
“It has to be someone, if you’re determined to do this,” Lilith said. “Just ... just make sure no one ever finds out.”
She turned and led the way down to the testing spellchamber. Adam swallowed, hard. There was only one way to test the detector and no one, including her father and the rest of the university board, would have any trouble figuring it out. But as long as no one made it clear ... he scowled, wondering if Jasper would work out the details and then make a big song and dance about it. It wouldn’t be that hard to ask someone else, someone with fewer ties to the three of them. But there weren’t any other candidates he trusted.
He picked up the detector and walked into the spellchamber, carefully placing the detector on a simple wooden table. The chamber had been stripped of nearly all magic, save for the wards pervading the walls. Adam suspected they’d be better off using another storage chamber, but Lilith had insisted, pointing out the spellchamber was designed to monitor and record magic as well as protect the occupants. They might be in some trouble, if they couldn’t repair the damage, but ... he scowled, feeling his unease shift into fear. He hadn’t felt so uncomfortable since he’d discovered, in a way he couldn’t ignore, the dangers of walking into the magic quarter back home. Too many magicians had no qualms about hexing mundanes who ventured into their territory, even if they were potential customers ...
“The detector is ready,” Taffy said. If she had any doubts, she kept them to herself. “Adam? Lilith?”
“You stay near the detector and keep the canceller to hand,” Lilith said to Taffy. “Adam and I will start at the other end of the room.”
Adam nodded, bracing himself. “I’m ready.”
Lilith hesitated – it was, he supposed, a mark of how far they’d come – and then raised a hand and pointed it at him. Adam felt his legs wobble as the spell settled over him, his limbs twitching weakly. The spell fogged his brain, the haze pervading his thoughts and making it harder to think clearly. He knew something was wrong and yet, it was almost painfully hard to put his finger on it. Lilith was keeping her distance, and yet she was overshadowing him and ...
“Adam,” Lilith said. “Walk to Taffy.”
Adam felt his legs jerking into motion. He knew what she’d done – he knew they’d planned for her to cast a compulsion spell on him – but it still felt wrong, as if the world had suddenly tilted on its axis. He tried – he tried so hard – to resist, to slow himself, and yet it was far from enough. His body jerked violently, as if it was being yanked back and forth, before staggering towards the other side of the room. Taffy looked alarmed as he staggered towards her – the irreverent part of his mind insisted he looked as though he’d probably had a little too much to drink – and past the detector. It ticked loudly, sounding the alarm. Taffy lifted the canceller and pressed it against Adam’s chest. His legs buckled and collapsed. The floor felt as if he were back on Voidsdaughter.
“Adam?” Lilith was kneeling beside him, her green eyes worried. “Can you hear me?”
“Yes,” Adam managed. Anger boiled through him, even though he’d known what she intended to do. It had been his idea. “Did it work?”
“The detector detected you,” Taffy said. “I don’t think you could have passed it without the spell being noticed.”
“The spell was also very crude,” Lilith reminded them. “A subtle spell would be harder to detect, even here.”
Adam forced himself to stand. His thoughts were reeling, emotions crashing from one extreme to another faster than he could follow. He was angry and calm, accepting and furious, understanding and resentful ... he had thought it bad when Matt had made him act like a fool, but this was worse. Lilith was stronger than Matt and ... he told himself, again and again, that it wasn’t her fault. They’d worked out what they needed to do. And he’d agreed it should be her, rather than someone he didn’t trust so much ...
Taffy frowned. “How do you feel?”
“I’m not sure how to put it into words,” Adam said, slowly. His mouth felt dry. “It was like ... being a child again, caught up in a storm of emotion and throwing a tantrum without even the wit to know it wouldn’t get you anywhere and then ...”
He shook his head. “It wasn’t pleasant.”
“It never is,” Lilith said. “Do you really want to proceed?”
“I can volunteer instead,” Taffy offered.
