by Frank Morin
Dougal had declared that everything to do with Hector be destroyed, and Camonica was proving far too efficient.
"We need to get out of here," he told Jean. Turning away from the balcony doors felt like abandoning his only hope of learning the truth. "We'll have to look elsewhere."
"Where?"
"I don't know yet, but I won't give up."
Connor wanted to beat Camonica for a week. Why hadn't she waited just a few more minutes? He hated failing, but the secret was gone.
Releasing quartzite to embrace soapstone, Connor drew a slender column of water out of the river below the balcony. He and Jean stepped onto it and he lowered them to the bank.
The balcony doors of Hector's rooms were flung open, and Camonica rushed out, followed by a billowing cloud of smoke. The apartment glowed with the light of the flames inside. Connor grabbed Jean's hand and fled into the shadows. He doubted Camonica had seen more than a fleeting glimpse of them, not enough to recognize them, but his heart raced with fear anyway.
"How did she know we were there?" Jean asked.
"She must have been tapping soapstone," Connor said, cursing himself for using that stone. "Perhaps to help douse the smoke. She would have felt me manipulating the waters."
"That was close," Jean said, her cheeks flushed with excitement.
"Close enough for one night," Connor agreed.
They didn't speak much on the long trek back to Lord Nevan's palace. He left her there and continued on to the Sculpture House, lost in thought as he traipsed through the chill darkness.
Hector had been hiding something.
Was it the secret they sought, or something different?
How was he ever going to find out?
Chapter 27
Hamish entered Verena's workroom without knocking. In recent days, she had barely let him step inside before chasing him away. Whatever she was working on, it had entirely consumed her attention. It was like she'd gotten a secret mission too.
It was time to share what he had learned and snap her out of her solitude. They worked best as a team and time was too short to delay.
Besides, he needed more things to blow up.
Verena's workroom was a cluttered mess. The cavernous space opened to the outside, but the giant double doors were closed. A windrider sat near that outer door. It looked like one of the new models Verena had been working on. She had suggested she could modify them to allow for non-Builder pilots. Hamish wasn't convinced, but was interested in seeing her ideas. Verena was as clever in her way as Jean.
Hamish grimaced as he scanned the room. He had to stop thinking about Jean so much, but her face popped into his mind at the most random moments, and thoughts of her distracted him whenever he wasn't focused on his work. He really needed to sneak across the mountains and visit his family in Alasdair. In fact, he had decided that part of the field-testing of his new suit would be to also risk a visit to her. Connor might not be able to leave the Carraig yet, but maybe Jean could? Even if she couldn't visiting them would boost everyone's spirits.
Tables, benches, and cabinets cluttered much of the workroom. Battle leathers and dozens of pairs of gauntlets, from simple leather gloves to armored battle fists, covered one entire table.
Verena walked around a tall wardrobe, concentrating on a steel-clad gauntlet on her left hand.
"Since when do you use gauntlets?" Hamish asked, walking closer.
Verena frowned at him. "This isn't a good time, Hamish. I'm busy."
"We're all busy, but that's not a good enough excuse any more. We need to talk."
"Tomorrow. I promise. But right now I'm just too busy." Verena gestured at a desk near Hamish. "I've got some sweetbreads in the center drawer. I've been, ah, saving them for you."
He rushed over. They weren't just sweetbreads, they were the good ones. The cooks had started limiting the quantities he could take when he visited the eating hall. Hamish grabbed up several of them and shoved them into his pockets, then popped an entire pastry in his mouth.
He closed his eyes to savor the soft sweetness. It was glazed with a bit of honey, and was still warm. How did she manage that?
"Wis mmm wunful," he muttered around the mouthful of treat.
"You're welcome," Verena said, turning back toward another table. "See you tomorrow, Hamish."
"Before I go, why don't you tell me the big secret you're working on?"
"What are you talking about?" Her voice sounded a bit strained, like when she was deciding whether or not to punch him.
"You wouldn't have admitted you had food in here if you didn't have something even more important you were trying to hide from me."
"I'm not supposed to tell you. That's what secret means."
"Secrets aren't supposed to be kept from friends," Hamish said. "Otherwise they become a security risk."
"That doesn't make any sense."
"Of course it does. If you keep a secret from me, but I know you're keeping secrets, then I won't trust you with my secrets either, so our work can't get done and we'll have to tell someone we trust less. They'd be a security risk, so it's better to tell me instead."
"How much marble have you swallowed today?"
"Not much," he responded carefully. "I've switched to obsidian. Better for the mind."
When Verena hesitated, Hamish added, "Fine, then I won't tell you my secret either."
"You can't keep secrets," Verena said.
"I can if you can."
"I mean, you lack the capacity."
"I do not," Hamish exclaimed. "I haven't told anyone about my research with diorite."
Verena smiled. "Arguing with you is so much fun sometimes, but diorite isn't much of a secret. Dierk has been researching it for months."
"Not my kind of research," Hamish assured her, extracting a throwing dart from a pouch at his belt with a flourish. "Kilian requested something more subtle."
"Diorite isn't subtle," Verena said, but she drifted a bit closer. Verena loved research even more than Hamish, and the promise of something new was a chance she couldn't ignore.
"It's as subtle as I am."
"Again you prove my point."
"I'll give you proof." Hamish took aim and threw the dart.
It struck the closest strut of the distant windrider and exploded. The thunderous sound echoed really well through the huge chamber, and a cloud of dust concealed the wagon for a moment. When it cleared, the strut was gone, the wagon listing badly as it leaned on broken supports.
"See. Subtle."
"Breaking that wagon is not subtle," Verena exclaimed. "I just finished repairing the faulty thrusters on that one."
"If I had used more diorite, I could have destroyed the entire thing," Hamish explained. He didn't explain that he had been aiming for the pitcher of water on the table next to the windrider. He had glued a single grain of diorite to the tip of that dart. "That little bit does targeted damage."
Using the darts had been a brilliant idea. He didn't have a lot of diorite, and it was so dangerous, he didn't dare use an entire piece of stone. So he'd focused on determining the smallest amount possible and what it could do.
He'd gotten his testing down to a single grain, but trying to throw that at things was really inaccurate. Gluing them to the darts gave him a stable platform.
And it looked awesome when those darts obliterated things.
A single grain of diorite, with its release rate opened wide, could blast a hole in standard armor, and even crack the outer layer of hardened granite scales on one of the Strider vests he'd created. Blowing off the strut of the windrider was another great test. He should have thought of that sooner.
He had tried to convince a local farmer to let him try it out on one of his recently-butchered goats to get a sense of how it would perform against flesh and bone, but the man had seemed offended by the idea of losing the meat.
"I don't see why Kilian would entrust you with diorite at all," Verena said. "That's a recipe for--"
&nb
sp; "For brilliant results," Hamish finished for her. "So what did Kilian order you to study and keep secret from me?"
She paused. "How. . ."
"Oh, come on. He told me to keep diorite secret just like he told you. Kilian is always saying things that don't make sense. You know I know, which means he knew I'd know you know, you know?"
She sighed. "You're probably right, although don't ever repeat that last sentence again."
"I've been wanting to run some of these ideas by someone anyway," she added, then extracted a piece of dark stone from a drawer. The hard, smooth-sided stone had an almost metallic gleam to it, but was clearly a stone. "This is blind coal."
"I haven't heard of that one."
"It's a new power stone," Verena said, excitedly.
"What does it do?" Hamish slid a finger along the smooth edge of the stone and leaned forward, but Verena pulled it out of reach before he could lick it.
"Don't be mean. How else am I supposed to get a feel for it?"
"You are not licking my stone," Verena said. "I'll give you a little piece later."
"So what does it do?" he asked again, eager to get his hands on it.
"It's aggressively slippery."
Hamish laughed. "You mean it'll help you fall even on flat ground."
"Not exactly."
"So what, exactly?"
"I'll show you." Verena retreated several paces. "Throw one of those darts at me."
"No way," Hamish said. "Didn't you see what it did to that wagon?"
"Do you want to see what this can do, or not?"
"Not if it means hurting you." Hamish liked Verena, but even if he was willing to risk hurting her, everyone in the compound would take turns beating him for a month if he did. They all loved her.
"Do it, Hamish. I won't get hurt."
"Fine, but I warned you." Hamish drew out another dart, but did not open the release rate on the grain of diorite before throwing it.
Verena snapped out a gauntleted fist, and the dart deflected away just before striking the gauntlet. It was almost as if she'd activated a mini shieldstone.
She frowned, then picked up the dart. "I can't prove this thing if you don't open the release rate."
"It's a bad idea," he repeated.
She tossed the dart back to him. "Open it this time, or I'll open it and throw it at you."
Hamish considered the dart. He approved taking necessary risks as part of their research, but she was acting foolish. "Let's set up the gauntlet on a dummy and throw the dart at that."
Verena shook her head. "I've been testing this with all kinds of stuff already. I know what I'm doing."
"If you get hurt, it'll be my funeral."
"Do it." She got that obstinate look in her eye that made him nervous.
Hamish took a deep breath, aimed, and threw the dart.
He held his breath as the dart flicked across the distance between them. Again she punched out with her gauntleted fist. The dart didn't explode, but again deflected past her without quite touching. It struck a tall, steel cabinet behind her, then exploded, knocking the cabinet over and leaving a black dent in its side.
"Told you," Verena laughed.
Hamish couldn't wait to try it himself. "How'd you do that?"
"Like I said, blind coal is slippery. When I open the release rate just a fraction, it creates a slippery barrier. Things just sort of slide off and slip past. I can step right through elemental barriers. I even walked through a closed door the other day."
"Really?" That was amazing. Hamish needed one of those gauntlets. Did she realize they could access the locked pantry any time with that?
"It felt really strange," she said. "I had to open the release rate more than fifty percent for that one, and the stone disintegrated after I walked back through. Only lasted a few seconds opened that much."
"That seems awful fast."
She nodded, showing him the gauntlet. He noted tiny pieces of blind coal worked into the armored glove. He touched one and felt for the invisible crack that held its power in check. Verena had opened the release rate only a bit, perhaps ten percent. The stone felt like a quarter of its power had already been drained.
"Was this a new stone when we started?"
She nodded. "With stones this size, I can usually get up to three uses before they crumble, but it depends on the amount of force it's deflecting. For stronger barriers or greater force, the stone burns out really fast."
"That could be a problem trying to use this in battle."
She nodded. "That's what I've been struggling with. It could be a life saver, but only once or twice before needing to be replenished."
"You could use bigger stones."
She shook her head. "I tried that. The larger stones burn out fast too. It's strange, but I don't get twice as much protection from a stone twice as large. This size seems to be the best protection to duration balance."
"So either we need to use a lot of them and cycle through them," Hamish said. "Or we use them only in very specific situations."
"Like fighting rampagers."
"What else have you discovered?" Hamish took a seat on a nearby stool and popped another of the sweetbreads into his mouth.
"Combining the slippery property with basalt increases the spin rate on speedslings by fifty percent," Verena said, gesturing toward her Swift, which sat on its custom rack.
The little craft looked menacing, as if crouched to leap into the sky. She had painted the armored exterior a mixture of blue and gray, which would help it blend into the sky. The speedslings slung along the sides of the seat were longer and narrower than the standard weapons. By increasing the spin rate, she'd get those little projectiles moving even faster. He shuddered to think what they could do to any soldiers unfortunate enough to get hit.
They might even stop the rampagers.
"Did you add the puking dooms to your Swift?"
"Not facing front. I added them to the base. I can incinerate anything under the Swift, and all it'll do is add more lift. It's a good compromise. What about you?"
"I tried using diorite in a speedsling," he admitted. "But they're too volatile. Even just bouncing around inside of one as they come up to speed, they tend to explode."
"You didn't hurt yourself, did you?"
"Not bad. I poured some sandstone into the bandage and it healed up pretty fast."
"It would be nice to have exploding projectiles," Verena noted.
"Not if I blow myself up. That hurts."
"What if you embedded the grains into something else?" she suggested.
"I'm working on that. Caramel didn't work, but there should be something that could protect them from the little bumping they do in the speedsling, but not enough to keep them from exploding on impact."
"And it can't adversely affect the air-slip-drag ratio," Verena said.
She was always throwing out new terms she invented to explain what they did. Flying was so new, there weren't enough words. She was good at inventing them, and she was smart enough to eventually teach all that formal book learning to new flyers. Meanwhile, Hamish would be soaring over the countryside in his new suit.
"Maybe some kind of tiny arrowhead," Verena added, getting sucked into the creative process. "Or even using the standard hornets from the other speedslings. You could attach those little grains between the projecting edges, which would shield them from accidental damage."
"Better to drill a hole in them and place the diorite inside," Hamish said.
"That would be better, but would take a lot longer. No way we could produce enough for the standard speedslings."
"We don't need to enhance all of them. Those weapons can already chew through people and armor, and probably even pierce slow Boulders."
Verena nodded slowly. "You're right, but we could make some of the modified hornets in our custom speedslings for when we're facing rampagers."
Hamish nodded in turn. They needed every advantage the next time they faced those monsters,
and having the ability to unleash thousands of exploding hornets into their faces would be just the thing.
"I knew coming here was a good idea."
The door behind Verena opened and Kilian stepped through. Hamish shushed Verena before she could speak and pulled her around to face Kilian as he approached.
He gave them a long look, then sighed. "Can neither of you follow orders?"
Chapter 28
At first Verena felt a flash of guilt, but Kilian didn't look angry, or even surprised. More like resigned.
"You knew we'd end up talking about our projects, didn't you?" she asked as she rushed up to give him a hug.
"You waited until you had each gained a foundational understanding of the stones assigned to you and made concrete progress in your research, didn't you?"
"So it was all part of your plan?" Verena asked.
"You don't need to play games about it," Hamish said, approaching more slowly to shake Kilian's hand.
"If you'd started comparing notes immediately, you would have gotten distracted," Kilian said. "We don't have time to waste. I do what I do because it must be done and I don't have time for delays."
"I don't think working together would have delayed us," Verena said. She could see his point, but she didn't agree with it. Hamish might have gotten distracted, but she wouldn't have. Would she?
"Regardless of how we got here, show me the fruits of your labors," Kilian said.
Verena explained about the progress she had made with blind coal, then showed him the gauntlets. "I started with jackets, but they required too much stone to work properly, and they didn't allow the wearer enough flexibility in positioning the stone."
"I like this idea," Kilian said, trying on one of the gauntlets and examining the stones.
"As long as you see the blow coming, you can position your fist to take the hit," she said. "And it'll slide past."
"What about applying it to shields?" Kilian asked.
"Possible," Verena said. "I considered that, but the stones only give us a few defensive blocks. On a shield, they'd be spent blocking hits that the shield might have been able to handle on its own. I needed something more specialized."