The Wall of Storms, page 70
Phyro nodded with a grin on his face. “That would indeed be a far more impressive demonstration. I assume that the silkmotically charged rod also charged me, thus allowing my fingers to attract the paper dancers?”
“Exactly. The silkmotic force can flow through the human body quite effectively. A better way to channel and store the silkmotic charge would involve a suspended bar of metal, which we in the trade call a prime reservoir.”
Phyro climbed off the sling. “Show me.”
Miza brought out a long iron rod, which terminated in a rounded knob at either end, and suspended it in the sling. “Charging such a prime reservoir is tedious with a glass rod; so we use a silkmotic generator.”
He moved another of the machines over to near one end of the rod. It consisted of a wooden stand on which a glass globe was mounted in such a way that it was free to revolve about an axle. Miza attached a small metal chain to one of the knobs at the end of the suspended iron bar and dangled the other end of the chain onto the globe. Then he handed a folded bundle of silk to Phyro and started to rotate a crank to the side, making the globe spin.
“Hold the silk against the glass, please,” he said.
Phyro did so. The metal chain clanked gently against the spinning surface of the globe, sounding like rain striking a tiled roof.
“This is a much more efficient way of building up the silkmotic force on the glass globe and transferring it to the prime reservoir.”
After he judged the prime reservoir to be sufficiently charged, Miza stopped the spinning globe. He went about the suite, extinguishing lamps and closing up the shutters on the windows. The interior of the suite was now quite dark.
“Try moving a hand close to the prime reservoir, slowly,” he said.
Phyro cautiously moved his hand closer to the metal bar. Just as his fingers were about to touch it, a spark arced across the gap like a miniature lightning, illuminating the room momentarily.
“Aw!”
Phyro jumped and waved his hand violently. He looked down at it to be sure it was uninjured. “It bit me!”
Miza laughed. “That’s what happens when an object filled with silkmotic force is discharged, which means that the silk motes spill out into another object that moves close to it. Only some objects will cause the discharge, though—we call them channeling material—metals and people being the best. Other things like silk or glass—we call them damming material—do not seem to allow the motes to move about freely, which is why we support the prime reservoir with a glass stand or suspend it from silk ropes.”
Phyro made a mental note of the detail and continued to play the role of the curious but idle young man of wealth. “Fascinating. Is silk the only source for this kind of force?”
“Not at all,” said Miza. “Substantially the same effects may be achieved by rubbing amber with fur, or leather against glass—indeed, the combinations almost seem infinite.”
“And are the motes from leather and fur different from the motes from silk? Er, in other words, is there a leathermotic force and a furmotic force?” He was thinking of the latest letter from Théra, which described the differences between the lift gas that powered the Imperial airships and the lift gas that powered the garinafins. “Please excuse my ignorance, but the topic is of great interest.”
Miza smiled and nodded. The interest from Phyro was clearly exciting to him—being able to share his learning with someone who was not going to compete with him as a street magician clearly engaged his professorial mode. “This was a topic long debated among practitioners of the art. After much research, I am of the opinion that all materials we’ve investigated so far generate the same force, and out of respect for tradition, we call it the silkmotic force, regardless of the source.
“However, the force does seem to come in two varieties, which may correspond to an excess of silk motes and an absence of them. We denote them the Rapa and Kana varieties after the twin goddesses, and label one type white and the other red. All you need to know is that if two objects are charged with the same variety of silkmotic force, they repel each other, but if they are charged with different varieties, they attract each other.”
“Have you found any other uses for the silkmotic force besides magic tricks?”
Miza nodded proudly. “Of course! A good street performer needs variety. The best part of my show is when I cure people with the silkmotic force.”
“Cure people?”
“You’ve already experienced what it’s like to be shocked by the silkmotic force on discharge,” said Miza. “But it’s also possible to use your body as a prime reservoir and fill it with the silkmotic force via a generator, in which case you’ll experience a tingling sensation. The silkmotic force is particularly effective against conditions like gout, epilepsy, and acute as well as chronic pains. It’s a real crowd-pleaser when I play doctor.”
Phyro wasn’t sure just how seriously to take this part of Miza’s explanation. Healing was a difficult art, and many remedies seemed to him mere superstition or just-so stories. He preferred to focus on phenomena that could be more easily verified.
Pointing to the porcelain jar that was at the heart of the dispute earlier in the market, Phyro asked, “Can you show me how this works?”
“Ah, you’ve come to the most interesting of my apparatuses. It’s called an Ogé jar, after those islets in the east. And I have never seen any other magician with such a device.”
That was apparently as much as Miza was willing to say. Clearly he considered the trade secret of great value.
Phyro didn’t press. Instead, he excused himself for a moment, claiming to need to use the toilet. Instead, he went into the suite downstairs from his and knocked on the door.
The door opened, revealing Consort Risana, the smokecrafter.
“Ma, did you hear everything?” whispered Phyro.
Risana nodded. She had poked a speaking trumpet connected to a tube—one of Rin Coda’s inventions—through the ceiling to rest against a crack in the floor of the suite above. With the other end, she had been keeping tabs on the discussion between Phyro and Miza.
“You really think this man has useful information?” asked Risana.
“Absolutely,” said Phyro. “I’m not sure what do to with it exactly yet, but I have a hunch that Théra will figure it out.”
“You are gambling this will turn out to be more than mere tricks to fool the gullible?”
“It’s a calculated risk,” said Phyro. Then he grinned. “There should be a little bit of Tazu in everyone’s life.”
Risana smiled affectionately. “You always quote your father’s most outrageous lines.” But then the smile faded as her husband’s dangerous situation returned to her mind.
Phyro tried to steer the discussion back. “Useful or not, I still have to get the information first. Magicians tend to guard their secrets jealously, passing them on only to trusted apprentices. This is why I asked for your help.”
“Why not just tell him who you are? I’m sure he would tell you what you want to know if you convinced him it could help the emperor with the war effort against the Lyucu.”
Phyro shook his head like a rattle drum. “If we tell him who we are now, he would demand an outrageous sum for his knowledge. That’s the sort of man he is, or at least the sort of man he thinks he is. But he really wants to do something noble, something impressive that would make him proud. We just need to . . . help him.”
“I thought I was the one who was supposed to figure out what people really wanted,” said Risana, chuckling. “You really are your father’s son—I can’t tell if you’re suggesting this plot because you really think it’s the right thing to do, or because you just want to drive a better bargain.”
“Even patriots may be tempted by profit,” said Phyro. “It’s expensive to run an empire, and I’ve learned a few things these last few years.”
Phyro ordered a hot pot. The waiters came in and set up a small brazier, and then placed the clay pot on top. Plates of raw ingredients were left for the guests to cook to their own liking. Soon, the room was filled with the delicious scents of meats and vegetables cooking in rich broth.
“Let me have a taste,” said Phyro, and clumsily, he managed to shift the clay pot in such a way that some of the soup spilled onto the coals below. Smoke quickly filled the room.
Phyro slid the window open just a crack. “My apologies. I’m sure the smoke will dissipate soon enough.”
Miza coughed but nodded in assent.
Phyro watched Miza’s face, praying that his mother was working her own sort of magic in the suite below.
A different sort of smoke was now coming into the room from the crack in the floor, but Miza wasn’t paying attention as it blended into the smoke from the brazier.
Phyro watched as the smoke in the room took shape, solidified, and wrapped itself like a serpent around Miza.
“Tell me about the Ogé jars,” Phyro prompted.
“They store the silkmotic force,” said Miza.
Phyro saw that Miza’s eyes had a glazed look. His mother had succeeded.
Miza popped off the stopper and showed Phyro the inside of the jar: It was also lined with a layer of silver foil that stopped about halfway up the walls. “The first jars I made held seawater, but then I found that all I needed was some channeling material on the inside. For street performances I still fill it with seawater, for effect, but we don’t need to.”
Miza plugged the stopper back into the jar, making sure that the chain rested against the foil at the bottom. Then he spun the crank in the silkmotic generator again to charge up the prime reservoir. Finally, he held the jar in his hand and brought the knob at the top close to the prime reservoir, generating a loud zap and bright sparks.
“Notice how the silkmotic force from the prime reservoir flowed into the Ogé jar?” asked Miza. “Would you like to hold it? Just one hand on the bottom, please.”
Phyro gingerly accepted the jar, holding on to the foiled bottom with only one hand.
“Don’t worry,” said Miza. “The silkmotic force is stored in the porcelain—the dam between the two channeling surfaces on the outside and the inside. The jar is perfectly safe to handle, as long as you only touch the bottom.”
Phyro was hardly assured. The memory of the last shock from the prime reservoir was still fresh in his mind.
“Try grasping the knob on top, which is connected to the inner surface, with your other hand,” said Miza. “And try not to drop the jar.” He giggled.
Phyro gritted his teeth and grabbed the knob on top of the jar with his other hand. He yelped from the resulting shock and dropped the jar like a piece of hot coal. Miza, who had been prepared, deftly caught the dropped jar with one hand.
“Sometimes these jars can keep on discharging a few more times,” he said. “Handle with care.”
Phyro could feel a numbness in his hand where the jar had shocked him, and his chest felt tight, as though his heart didn’t have enough room to beat.
“I have to sit down,” he gasped, and sat on the ground.
“Breathe, friend, breathe,” said Miza. “No matter how prepared you are, the silkmotic force is so powerful that the jar will pry itself out of your hand. It’s as if you can no longer control the muscles in your fingers.”
Phyro finally caught his breath. “That’s incredible.”
Miza laughed. “So many interesting tricks can be designed around the Ogé jar. The problem with the prime reservoir and the silkmotic generator is that they’re too bulky and too hard to operate in a discreet manner. Anyone can intuit the flow of the silkmotic force, and though the sparks generated are pretty, the trick loses its effectiveness because the audience can see how it’s done. With these jars, however, I can charge them up ahead of time away from the crowd, and then bring them around with me. Because they look like ordinary jars, people don’t suspect that they can pack such a punch. And they can hold a charge for days.”
“Why are they called Ogé jars?” asked Phyro. “Did you invent them there?”
Miza hesitated. Now that the air in the room was clearing up a bit, he seemed to be becoming more inhibited as well. “I did get them in Ogé, but I can’t claim to be the inventor.”
“Oh?”
“I was in the Ogé islets during what was probably the lowest point in my life. None of my tricks were drawing much of an audience, and even in backward Ogé, where I thought the people would be less jaded than the inhabitants of the big cities, I wasn’t getting good tips. It got so bad that I had to sell a lot of my equipment just to stay fed, and I knew once I started down that path, my life as a magician was over.
“In despair, I went to a shrine for Rufizo, and prayed for help.
“I fell asleep and dreamed of a handsome young doctor who came to me and showed me the design of these novel jars. He explained that these silkmotic devices could be used to treat various diseases, but they could also be used to perform magic tricks. He said that I could use them to get rich, but that I had to promise to help the people of Dara when such knowledge was needed.
“After I woke up, I constructed an Ogé jar according to the instructions in the dream, and it worked! Ever since then, I’ve traveled around Faça as an itinerant doctor and performer. I never did find out how a magic trick could help the people of Dara besides giving them something interesting to think about.”
Phyro looked at him, hardly daring to believe his luck. Maybe the gods of Dara still cared. “I think your moment has arrived.”
The evening’s performance by Consort Risana and Prince Phyro was canceled.
For the rest of that evening, Prince Phyro continued to ask questions like a hungry student while Miza patiently explained the wonders of the Ogé jar: how the silkmotic forces flowing from its inner and outer surfaces were equal in strength but of opposite varieties; how connecting multiple jars together in series or parallel had a cumulative effect, resulting in either longer sparks or thicker sparks; how the size of the jar and the smoothness of the foil affected the storage capacity; how connecting two channeling rods from an Ogé jar to the legs of a dead frog made them kick and swim. . . .
The next morning, Miza was on a messenger airship bound for Ginpen.
While Lady Risana and Prince Phyro continued to travel around the islands to rally the population, Empress Jia was faced with the challenge of assuring the jittery people that the House of Dandelion was still fully in control.
Swarms of locusts appeared in the fields of Géfica, near the Imperial capital. The winged insects, forming a dense, living cloud that hovered near the ground and crawled over it, devoured everything in their path. The crops in the field were devastated, and the peasantry hid in the basements of their houses, not daring to emerge.
In the past, locust plagues were sometimes taken care of by fleets of Imperial airships spraying poisoned mist over the affected area, but now, with the airships out of commission, there seemed to be nothing that could be done except to wait for the plague to take its course.
The people of Dara whispered that this was a judgment of the gods, that it was a sign that the appearance of the Lyucu marked the end of the House of Dandelion.
“What do you want from me?” raged the empress at the statues of the gods in the Imperial shrine.
“Every sign can be interpreted in multiple ways,” said the prime minister. “The key is to come up with an interpretation you like.”
“If you want to have a second act,” said Soto, “this is the moment to seize the story.”
Empress Jia strode into the farm fields of Géfica herself. She took up a wooden winnowing shovel and swung it at the swarm. The insects attacked her, biting her arms, face, feet. She ignored the pain and continued to swat at the insects.
The ministers and generals rushed over to protect her, urging her to return to the safety of the carriage. The empress shoved them away.
“The people must eat, and I’ll kill these mindless creatures one by one if that’s what it takes,” said the empress. “Some have mistaken my reticence as weakness. If the gods truly want the House of Dandelion to end, then let them kill me today in this field. I’m not going back.”
Moved by the empress’s courage, the ministers and generals also picked up shovels and forks and went at the swarming insects. Soon, the peasants cowering in their houses emerged to fight the locusts alongside the great lords.
As they swatted at the endless living tide and bore the stinging pain, more than a few in the crowd thought they must have looked quite mad, but there was also a kind of frenzy in the joy of taking action—however symbolic—that made the crowd feel invincible.
Jia no longer felt she was engaging in political theater. She felt bonded to the subjects around her as though the people of Dara were a single organism. She was buoyed by waves formed from their courage and rage. It was glorious to struggle against heaven and earth as a woman, as the Empress of Dara, as a member of the proud race descended from the Ano and the natives of these islands.
Then, from all directions of the compass, flocks of birds approached: ravens, gulls, starlings, magpies, doves, even falcons. . . . Never had Dara seen such a large flock of birds of so many species flying in unison.
They fell upon the locusts and devoured them.
Gradually, the cloud of insects shrank and then disappeared. The birds, having satiated themselves, dispersed as suddenly as they had come.
Empress Jia fell to the ground, exhausted.
The miracle of the birds was deemed to be a sign from the gods, and made many once again believe in the strength of the House of Dandelion.
But Prime Minister Cogo Yelu carefully investigated the source of the locusts and wrote a secret report to the marshal.
Marshal Mazoti surveyed the tall stack of reports in front of her from the Imperial laboratories in Ginpen and all around Dara: the dissection of the garinafin carcasses, the feeding habits of cattle, the fire tube from Tan Adü, the mysterious devices powered by the silkmotic force, the habits and history of locus swarms. . . .
