by CJ Brightley
“Had a little fall. No permanent damage, but I’m supposed to rest,” she said.
“Oh, dear. Well, I’d meant to ask you if you could meet me after work, but if you’re not well…”
“Meetings are fine,” she said. “Just no real work. I can divert the cab and come now, if you like.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course.” She put her head out the window and called up to the cab driver. She would usually have amplified her voice with magic, but, obedient to the healer’s instructions, she shouted instead. “Change of plan. Head for the University Magic School.”
The cabbie nodded, and turned her horse at the next intersection.
“What’s it about, Master-Mage?” asked Hope.
“I’ll tell you when you get here,” he said.
“All right. See you very soon.”
The memories flooded in as she entered the Master-Mage’s book-lined office, scene of both triumph and disaster for her. He had called her there to tell her that the Realmgold had asked for her to work with Dignified, but before that she had been disciplined there for cursing her unfaithful lover with impotence in a rage-filled moment. Her own… problems with physical desire stemmed from that unfortunate incident, complicating what might otherwise be a very satisfactory relationship with Patient.
Not only the Master-Mage, but a dignified older woman also wearing the broad wrist-cuff of a High Mage sat behind her old teacher’s desk. Amiable introduced his colleague as Honesty of Heatherbrook, a name Hope recognised immediately. “The chair of the Council of Mages,” she said.
“That’s right,” said Honesty, with a professional smile, and pressed palms with Hope.
“Take a seat,” said the Master-Mage. “Are you sure you’re all right? You have a nasty bruise.”
“Yes, the healer’s taken care of it,” she said. “Nothing to worry about, I just have to take it quietly for a couple of days. What was it you wanted to see me about?”
“Well,” he said, “I’ve been watching your career with interest.”
He proceeded to give an outline of everything she’d accomplished, which was, of course, not news to her, nor, by her expression, to High Mage Honesty. Years of lecturing and writing academic papers had made Amiable, for all his excellent qualities, long-winded. She waited as patiently as she could, given her headache, for him to get to the point.
“And so,” Honesty finally interrupted, “we would like to talk to you about your advancement to Senior Mage.”
Hope, who had been mentally drifting, snapped into focus. “What?” she said. “I mean, um, thank you?” Meanwhile, excitement was rising in her belly, and mentally she was repeating: yes yes yes yes yes. That would show Mother.
“It is unusual,” went on the High Mage, “to advance one so young.”
Hope nodded and tried a shy smile, while forcibly restraining her feet from dancing.
“However, given the excellence of your results, and the value to the magical community of the techniques you are involved in pioneering, we feel — that is, the Council feels — that we would be prepared to consider an application, provided that you undertake to convey to those who are interested the methods you are using.”
“Convey…?”
“We thought a lecture series,” said the Master-Mage. “Not a regular class, something open to students, professors and graduates alike. And a book.”
“Some articles,” said Honesty. “And then a book. I edit Magical Research.”
“Yes, I know,” said Hope. “And I will start that article soon, I promise.”
“Article series,” said Honesty. “You can use most of the same material in the articles and the lectures, and do them in either order. Some people write the articles, then do the lectures and hold interactive seminars, and having developed and refined their ideas turn them into a book.”
Hope pulled her lips between her teeth and bit down on them gently, as an aid to thought.
“I’m not really very good at teaching,” she said, remembering a classroom session she had taken a turn at leading. Nobody had even listened to her.
“It’s never stopped anyone else,” muttered Honesty.
“Really, Mage Hope,” said the Master-Mage, “we would like to disseminate this knowledge more widely.” Since he was excused by protocol from using her title, the fact that he did so had to mean something, probably that he was reminding her of her responsibilities. “I’m starting a new Research Institute, did you know?”
“I didn’t,” she admitted.
“Incorporating the library of recovered Elvish texts which your youthful discovery made possible,” he smiled. He was referring to her semi-accidental uncovering of invisible writing on some old Elvish books, recording spells that the old Empire elves didn’t want their human slaves to know about. It had won her a scholarship. “It turns out that among the newly freed gnomes are a number who have preserved ancient knowledge of lifemagic, in a completely separate tradition from our own. They also have some very interesting things to tell us about matter magic and making new materials. And the beastheads, those people from the northeast, their oral tradition also records very old spells going back to the Empire, ones that we’ve lost, or perhaps never had. We’re going to put it all together and see what sense we can make of it, but your colleague’s mathematical approach is just the kind of thing we need to make it a proper study, not a patchwork of bits and pieces.”
“Well, we’ve made limited progress in applying it to lifemagic and mindmagic,” she protested. “It’s mostly the energy applications we’ve been working with…”
“Now, now, you took the design of my brain research machine and brought it back a quarter of the size and twice as good,” he said, his eyes sparkling in their wrinkled sockets. “No false modesty, please. And besides, I know you’re not a full mage in lifemagic and mindmagic.” Hope frowned. The reason she had never progressed beyond Mage-Minor in those disciplines was that Amiable had forbidden her from doing so after she cursed her lover. She had very nearly been expelled. He went on, “We need to get these methods in the hands of people who are full lifemages and mindmages, so they can start to make the progress you’re making. I’ve agreed with the Realmgold, in fact, that we will take you into the Institute, if you’re willing, though of course you’ll still be available to the Clever Man’s Works as a consultant.”
“Please do think about it very seriously,” said Honesty.
“I’ll… I’ll do that. Thank you,” said Hope. “Excuse me, my head has been hurting on and off, and I can’t concentrate for long. I’ll have to go now, but I’ll let you know my decision by the end of the shift-round.”
“Please do,” said Honesty. The two older mages rose and saw her out, the Master-Mage insisting on working a small headache relief spell before she went. She found another cab and headed home. As soon as she was in the cab and didn’t have to push herself, her energy drained out of her like a broken pot.
Briar hummed cheerfully as she entered the flat she shared with Hope. She dropped her lawyer’s satchel by the door and began to replace the wilted flowers in the vase she kept in the middle of the table with those she had bought on the way home. She danced a couple of steps. The partners had called her in yet again to congratulate her on the work she was doing, and she felt like a box of light.
Still humming, she barely heard a croaking noise from elsewhere in the flat. It sounded like her name being pronounced by a distant raven.
She crossed to Hope’s bedroom door and peered in. “Hope? Are you there?” she said.
A body stirred in the bed, and Briar entered, to find her flatmate lying with a damp cloth over her forehead.
“Darling, what happened?” asked Briar, hurrying to her bedside.
“Curse backlash,” said Hope faintly. “Then fell and hit my head.”
“Oh, no!” said Briar. “When was this?”
“Night before last. Where were you yesterday?”
“Gnome Adv
ancement League meeting with Bucket. Remember?” Hope shook her head, and winced.
“Is there anything I can do? Can I get you anything?” said Briar.
“Glass of water would be wonderful. Don’t turn on the light.” Briar’s hand had gone automatically towards the bedside lamp.
“Sorry. Back in a moment.”
When she returned, she noticed the book beside the bed. “You’re reading Mistress Audacity?” she said, surprised and amused.
It was hard to tell, in the darkened bedroom, but she thought her friend turned her head away in embarrassment. “All I can manage, the way I feel. Thanks,” she said, taking the water and sipping.
“About time you expanded your reading beyond technical reports. Have you seen a healer?”
“Yes, Patient took me to the healing house down in Gulfport. How’s the bruise look?”
“Terrible,” said Briar, with her usual frankness. “Like someone took a club to you. Shouldn’t you see someone here?”
“I suppose,” said her friend with a sigh. “I haven’t felt up to it, though. And what energy I did have I’ve used up on…” She trailed off.
“On what?”
“Oh, a woman wants to work for us at the lab. Rich girl. One of the investors. You remember the one with the glasses and the little round hat, asked that question about power loss?”
“I don’t remember the question, but I think I remember the woman. Late twenties, mad hair?”
“That’s her. Her granny was an inventor, and she wants to follow in the grand-maternal tradition. Dignified likes her, oddly enough, so I have to write to her and say yes, much against my better judgement.”
“Dignified likes her? I didn’t know he liked people. No, that’s harsh, I’m sorry.” Briar felt ashamed of herself. She pitied the skinny inventor for his lack of social skills, but he was a harmless little man, good-hearted. Hope had told her that he refused to invent weapons because his uncle, a revolutionary in the much-resented reign of the previous Realmgold, had killed himself and Dignified’s father with poorly-judged explosives.
“He likes people, he just doesn’t know how to talk to them,” said Hope. “And then the Master-Mage wanted to see me.”
“What for?”
“Oh, the Council of Mages want me to teach Dignified’s mathematical methods, and write them up in a book.”
“Sounds… time-consuming.”
“Yes. The worm on the hook is that they’ll make me a Senior Mage. Or consider it, anyway. I suppose I’ll have to go through the whole you-cursed-your-lover, why-should-we-trust-you thing again.”
“Senior Mage at your age? That’s outstanding, Hope!” Briar glowed with pride in her friend.
“It is. It’s amazing. I just wish I felt well enough to appreciate it properly.”
“You could be Master-Mage when we’re old together.”
“No I couldn’t. I’m no good at teaching.”
“Hope, you’re the most intelligent person I know. Well, except Dignified. You’re the most intelligent person I know who’s capable of an everyday conversation. Teaching is a skill. You can learn it, if anyone can.” Briar leaned forward, giving Hope her most earnest courtroom delivery.
“I suppose. It’s a bit hard to be enthusiastic when my head feels like this.”
“Amulets not working?”
“Not very well, no.”
Briar frowned. She didn’t put her hands on her hips, but it was a close thing.
“Hope at Merrybourne,” she said, “you are going to put on some clothes, and we are going down the street to the healer. Now.”
“Oh, all right,” said Hope, and hauled herself out of bed. The lack of argument confirmed, for Briar, that she was not herself at all.
“So… night before last?” Briar said, as they descended the stairs from their upstairs flat. “This happened on your big night out with Patient?”
Hope sighed. “Yes, and he’s upset because when he tried to catch me his leg gave way. Never mind that he took excellent care of me the whole rest of the night. He even drove us back here on the airhorse.”
“He drove the airhorse? He hates that thing.”
“I know.”
“Don’t let him get away,” said Briar. “You should oathbind that man at the earliest opportunity.”
“I’d oathbind him tomorrow if it wasn’t for this curse,” said Hope.
Amiable, as a member of the Realmgolds’ Inner Council, possessed a farviewer, and he rather liked it. Saved a lot of delay while one waited for messages to be answered, and one could also tell a lot from tone of voice and (if the person on the other end also had a farviewer and not just a farspeaker) facial expression. Additionally, thanks to his able assistant Joy, he had a substantial list of codes, and one of them was for the Clever Man’s Works. He called on Threeday morning, the last working day of the four-day shift-round, to see if he could get hold of Hope. She had not answered her personal device.
Young Bucket answered, of course (nothing got done without Bucket), and confirmed that she was back at work, though she was taking things slowly and probably would not be there the whole day. The words “if I have anything to say about it” were unspoken, but clearly implied.
“Oh, excellent,” said the Master-Mage cheerfully. “I wonder, could I come round briefly and see her? I need to talk to her about an offer I made her on Oneday. Do you think that would be possible?”
He smiled. In Amiable’s experience, being polite and cheerful to people produced much better results than frowning and blustering. Most people find it difficult to turn down a polite request from someone they like, even if it will put them to trouble, and especially if one acknowledges the trouble it will put them to.
“Oh, yes, um, I suppose that would be all right,” said Bucket. “I’ll just ask her.”
He left the farviewer, and Amiable could hear his voice, and then Hope’s, though with the distortion with which the devices were still troubled, he couldn’t make out the words. Really, though, it was a wonder the things could be made to work at all. He was well aware that the idea was Hope’s, even if she had been unable to execute it without the clever man’s help, because it had been her senior project to work out the spells. He had had to approve it personally, as head of school, since she acknowledged from the beginning that she didn’t know how to create two objects sufficiently similar to make the requisite sympathy possible, and it would only be a theoretical exercise. The clever man’s family background as a printer had supplied the missing piece of the puzzle.
Hope came to the farviewer, looking less pale, though the bruise on her face was now reaching the most colourful stage. “Master-Mage,” she said. “How nice to hear from you.”
He detected some insincerity in her tone, but pretended he hadn’t. “Hope,” he said. “Might I, I wonder, come round and see you this morning, or early this afternoon if it’s more convenient? I’m in the final stages, you see, of some planning for the Institute, and I want to talk to you some more about our proposal for that lecture series.”
“Of course, Master-Mage,” she said. “You can come now, if you want. Or I can…?”
“No, no, I’ll come there. I want to see your laboratory,” he said. “I’ve never had the chance, and the work you’re doing there is rather exciting.” He rubbed his hands together in unfeigned enthusiasm. “I should be there within half an hour.”
Amiable was briefly taken aback by the chaos of the lab. He worked with mages and academics, and both groups contained more than their share of the untidy and the absent-minded (though there were some extremely neat ones, he had to admit). This, though, was at a scale he was unused to. Partially-completed devices, tools of what seemed like sixteen different trades, an astonishing variety of supplies and piles of outright junk mingled without any order that he could make out. He covered his startlement with his usual beaming smile.
“Dignified, my dear fellow, how pleasant to see you again,” he said, having met the inventor when he
had turned up at the university looking for a place to belong. “And Mister Bucket. Where is our young mage?”
“She’s in the manufactory,” said Bucket. “Had something she needed to ask Mister Wheel. I’ll take you through.”
“Thank you so much,” said Amiable.
Bucket showed him through to the main part of the manufactory, a clean, well-ordered contrast to the chaotic lab. As Bucket led him to the planning office, the Master-Mage admired the calm, orderly way in which the gnomes went about their work.
“She’s just left,” said Mister Wheel, the senior planner, when they put their heads into the planning office and asked for Hope. “Gone to see Uncle Gizmo.”
“I didn’t know Gizmo and Wheel were related,” Amiable remarked to Bucket as they backtracked, headed for the administrative office opposite.
“They’re not, or not closely,” said the clever man’s assistant. “Everyone calls him Uncle Gizmo. Well, all us gnomes.”
Hope rose as they entered the office, apologising, but Amiable waved her back down. “No, no, you finish your business.”
“I think we’d finished, hadn’t we?” she asked Gizmo. Seated behind his tidy desk, the gnome nodded, and greeted the Master-Mage.
“Mister Gizmo,” Amiable said in acknowledgement. “I must say, this is a very impressive operation you run here. Very efficient. I happen to be looking for an experienced manager to put over the operational side of my new research institute, should you be interested.”
“Master-Mage,” said Hope, with affection, “you can’t just come in here and take our gnomes.”
The mood of the room changed, like the sudden storms that blew up in the Gulf out of a clear sky sometimes. Hope picked it up, appeared to think for a moment, then visibly paled. It was less than a year since Victory had clarified the law to state that the gnomes and their service could not be treated as property, a development in which Bucket had been closely involved.
“Oh, Mister Gizmo,” she said, stumbling over her words, “I hope you don’t think… I didn’t mean… of course you don’t belong to us, you’re free to take what work you like, I… I’m terribly sorry.”