by CJ Brightley
“It’s, uh, mine.”
Wheel turned slowly and looked her up and down. “Hmm,” he said, and turned back to the boards, perusing them again carefully.
“The Master explained this to you for you to illustrate?” he said.
“No,” she said, irritated. “It’s my design.”
Wheel gave her a long, sceptical look. She was used to that, but from the friendly gnome she hadn’t expected it.
“Well,” he said, “humans are different, I suppose. Let me copy this down and I’ll get one of the lads to draw it up properly. I’ll have the Master check it for accuracy and then we can try making one. I have to say, I can’t see why it wouldn’t work.” He sounded unconvinced.
Rosie flushed again. Her nickname didn’t just come from a shortening of her surname. Her skin, unusually pale brown for a human (though not, of course, as pale as a gnome’s), showed her blushes readily. One of her school friends had named her “Rosy Dawn”, and the first part had stuck.
“Very well,” she said, attempting dignity and probably, she thought, achieving only stiffness. “Your book is on the table here. Thank you for the loan.” She marched out of the area towards where Dignified and the mage were still scribbling advanced mathematics and talking technical Dwarvish to one another.
Hope shot her an irritated look as she entered, and she cringed. She really doesn’t like me, Rosie thought. She had Dignified to herself, and now I’m an interloper. She stepped back and stayed quiet.
5
Voices from Home
Bucket still seemed a touch stiff towards Hope when he called her to the back of the lab.
“What is it, Bucket?” she asked. She had decided to act the same as always to the gnomes in the hope that they would eventually forgive her.
“Someone on the farviewer for you,” he said. “Says he’s your father.”
“Father?” She ran to the corner where they kept the farviewers, and pulled up a stool in front of the active one. Sure enough, her father Vigorous at Merrybourne, a tall man with a heavily wrinkled forehead, smiled out at her.
“Hope!” he said, his familiar voice rendered crackly and deprived of some of its overtones by the still-imperfect sympathy between the devices.
“Hello, Father,” she said, smiling back at him.
“What’s happened?” he said. “Your eye…”
“Oh. I had a fall. Nothing to worry about,” she said.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m fine.” That was, at best, a polite fiction. She felt fuzzy, and her head ached almost constantly, but she didn’t want to worry him. “I see that the distribution of farviewers has reached the Western Isles. That’s quicker than I expected.” She recognised the bookshelf behind him. It had stood in his office next to the Countygold’s office as long as she could remember.
“Well, apparently we’re considered strategic, out here at the end of the Gulf. This is a clever device you invented.”
“Thanks, but I didn’t do it alone. Dignified, my boss, worked out the practicalities and improved it no end. But it is based on my graduation project, yes.” Even through her overall ill feeling, she felt a glow of pride that her father, who had always supported her, was impressed with something she’d done.
“It’s like a magic mirror from those stories I used to read you.”
“That’s where I got the idea, in fact.” She smiled at him affectionately.
“Very clever,” he repeated. “Are you busy? Do you have time to talk?”
“Yes, of course I do,” she said. “We make our own hours here. As long as the work gets done.” In truth, she didn’t feel she’d been contributing much. Rosie was being more useful than she was. “Is there anything in particular?”
“No, I just called to try the device out, and chat with my daughter. If that’s all right?”
“Of course, Father. How is everyone? The Countygold, and Sincerity, and, um, Mother?”
“Much as ever,” said her father, his forehead pulling into its habitual wrinkles at the mention of her mother. “Sincerity wanted to speak to you later, by the way.”
They had a pleasant chat, if a superficial one. Hope wondered if fathers and adult daughters who had been away from home for years could have in-depth conversations.
“I’m working on something new,” she said. “The Master-Mage wants me to give some lectures and write a book. They’re considering me for Senior Mage.”
“Senior Mage? Really? Don’t you usually have to be, um, more… senior?”
“Yes, if it comes off I’ll be the youngest in more than three hundred years.”
“Congratulations. You’ve been leaving a lot out of your letters.”
“Oh, this is recent, Father. I’ll write to you about it, I promise.”
“And have you met any nice young men?” he asked. “Speaking of things you haven’t mentioned in letters.”
“Well, there is a fellow, but we’re… At the moment, we’re friends. Seeing where it goes. Nothing serious at all, not yet, anyway.”
“Blind boy, is he?” said her father, and laughed awkwardly.
“No, it’s just… I’m always working, and there’s not really time…”
“You have to live, Hope,” he said. “Success is important, of course, and I’m very proud of what you’ve achieved. These devices, a Realmgold’s Honour… I couldn’t be more proud. But I want you to be happy too.”
“I know, Father. Thank you.”
“Well,” her father said after a pause, “I’ve the week’s figures to compile and add up for the Countygold, so I must get on. Shall I see if Sincerity’s free?”
“Oh, yes, please.”
Her father stood up from in front of the farviewer and vanished for a short time. The mage’s office wasn’t far from his. He returned with the straight-backed woman in her sixties who had been Hope’s first mentor. Sincerity and Hope’s father picked up the farspeaker and carried it down the corridor between them, giving Hope a lurching view of the walls. She looked away. She had had problems with nausea since her fall. When the farspeaker had been set up in the mage’s office, Hope’s father bid his daughter a fond farewell and returned to his own work.
Splashback from Sincerity’s healing work had kept her in good health and vigorous, despite her advancing age, but she had greyed suddenly since Hope went off to university. Her small office was as neat as it always was, the scrolls proclaiming her as a full mage in mindmagic and lifemagic and as a licensed healer side by side in matching frames, and the tools of her healing trade carefully set in their places. Hope wasn’t a naturally tidy person herself, but Sincerity had made her keep her workspace clean and relatively ordered. She smiled to herself as she imagined how Sincerity would react to Dignified and his lab.
They talked a little shop, Hope describing the Master-Mage’s new Institute and mentioning some of the work she’d been doing with Dignified. Her old mentor congratulated her warmly on her proposed elevation to Senior Mage.
“So,” said Sincerity at length, “what’s this?” She touched her own face in the spot corresponding to Hope’s bruise. It was characteristic that she had taken time to talk on other topics first. She had probably been assessing Hope’s speech.
“I had a fall. Hit my head. I’ve had it looked at, there was some internal bleeding, but they’ve relieved the pressure and they say I’ll make a full recovery.”
“But in the meantime, what symptoms are you dealing with?” said Sincerity in her crisp healer’s manner.
Hope smiled to herself and listed them off.
“Hmph. And what are you taking?”
“Just willow tea for the headaches, and I have these.” She pulled the amulets into view above her collar.
“Hmph,” said Sincerity again. “Well, seems like you’re getting decent care. Why did you fall?”
Hope had been hoping that she wouldn’t ask that, but expecting that she would. She had never been able to conceal anything from Sincerity, who h
ad spent years as a healer and occasional mindhealer. Those same years of practice had given Sincerity a reflex of confidentiality, and she would never pass on to anyone what someone else had told her unless they specifically asked her to. She also had no time for Hope’s mother, or, oddly, for her father either, and wouldn’t speak to them at all if she could help it, Hope knew — let alone tell them something like this.
“Well,” said Hope, “there’s a story behind that.”
The older woman nodded. Hope recognised the silence that Sincerity used to draw people out. Realmgold Victory also practiced it, at an expert level.
“When I was at the university, back when I was about eighteen or nineteen, I… I had a lover.” Despite everything, that was hard to admit to Sincerity, who despite her spinster status and her unsentimental demeanour had been, in many ways, more of a mother to Hope than had the woman who had borne her. Sincerity’s professionally neutral expression didn’t change at the news, but she nodded.
“His name was Faithful, but he wasn’t faithful. I caught him with someone else.”
Sincerity nodded again.
“I cursed him, Sincerity. I put a geis on him so that he wouldn’t be able to perform unless he was with someone he’d always been faithful to. And it took.”
Sincerity’s eyebrows rose fractionally. “How did you achieve that?” she asked.
“You remember Merrybourne Four, that spell I found for seeing and manipulating bloodflow?”
“Of course. I use it all the time. You… ah, I see. Clever.”
“I bound it into the geis.”
“How long did it last?”
“I had to take it off. See, he complained, and it was a breach of university regulations.”
“Of course it was. I should have thought of that. No magic on someone else without their permission.”
“Exactly. So I got into a lot of trouble. Lost my scholarship over it, actually.” Hope’s voice cracked at this, remembering all the hours of hard work she’d had to do in Honey’s tavern to earn enough to stay at the university.
“You never mentioned that.”
“Well, I didn’t want you and the Countygold and, and Father to know that I’d let you all down. Or Mother to know that…”
“That you’d fulfilled her prediction?”
“Yes. She said before I left that I’d just get tangled up with a boy and lose everything.”
“I know. I heard.” The mage’s voice held a rare note of disapproval. “Well, you didn’t, did you? Obviously you managed somehow to stay there and graduate, and you’ve been doing very well, by all accounts.”
“I worked hard. All I could do.”
“Often that’s the case, in my experience. Some problems, only hard work will solve. But what does all this have to do with your fall?”
“Splashback.”
“Ah. From the geis?”
“Yes. See, I’m seeing this fellow, sort of as a friend only we hope it might become more in time, I mean, he’s kind and… and I like him a lot, but… but I don’t feel anything for him, um, you know.” Hope gestured in a vague and noncommittal way in the general direction of her female organs.
“I do know, though you may not think it. And you fell why?”
“Turns out that when I’ve had too much to drink, the inhibition part of the geis gets lost, but I still get the part where if I do experience desire it gives me an oathconflict-type reaction.”
Sincerity’s eyebrows asked her to elaborate further.
“I got drunk, kissed him, and fell down in a fit. Hit my head.” She gestured at her bruise.
“I see. Well, what are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. I can’t think straight.”
“All the more reason to do something. Talk to someone. Over there on the mainland, there are mindhealers that go far beyond my poor efforts. Find one, and look for a solution.”
“It may not be that simple.”
“Probably not. But if you don’t try, you won’t find out, will you?”
“I suppose not.”
They shared a silence for a few heartbeats, then Hope asked, “Sincerity?”
“Yes?”
“I’ve been wondering for years. What is my mother’s problem?”
Sincerity’s face shut like a door. “I can’t discuss that,” she said.
“You know something?”
“Hope, you’re aware of the professional ethics that bind a healer.”
“Of course. It’s just that… Well, I’d really like to know. I’ve got a sense, somehow, that it’s tied in.”
Sincerity sighed. “Your sense is… accurate,” she said carefully. “But that is Verity’s story to tell, and I can’t tell it to you. I might be able to get your father to tell you his side, though I warn you, it… well, it doesn’t reflect well on him, and he’s likely to soften it.”
“Father? But Father is…”
“You don’t know what your father is,” said Sincerity, then pursed her lips. “And that’s not mine to tell either,” she said. “I’ll talk to him. He’ll do anything for you, perhaps even that.”
“Thank you. I just want to understand.”
“This I can tell you,” said the mage. “It’s nothing you’re to blame for. Don’t let yourself think that. Oh, come on, old woman,” she said aloud to herself, “you know better than that. Of course the girl blames herself, though she oughtn’t. Try not to, all right?” she said, meeting Hope’s eyes.
“I… I will,” said Hope, confused.
“All right,” said Sincerity, “I’m sure we’ve kept you from your work long enough.”
“Truthfully,” said Hope, “I’m not thinking well enough to do much work. But I am very tired. I don’t think I can talk any more.”
“You go home and take care of yourself,” said Sincerity. “Do you have anyone living with you?”
“My friend Briar.”
“Go home and sleep. Get her to make you something for dinner that has fish in it. Good for the brain.”
“All right,” said Hope.
As she rose to go, the old lady said, “It’s good to see you again, Hope.”
“It’s good to see you too, Mage. You know what I always appreciated about you?”
“No, what?”
“You never treated me as a child, even when I was one.”
Sincerity laughed. “There’s a simple reason for that.”
“What?”
“I’m not really comfortable with children.”
“So you pretended I wasn’t one?”
“Exactly.”
“Well, it worked. Thank you.”
“My pleasure,” said the mage.
6
Adding Machine
Rosie spent the next day with some of her own books of mathematics and engineering, which she had one of the footmen pack up and carry to a cab for her. Bucket helped her carry them into the lab and set up temporary shelves for them. These he constructed out of empty lubricant cans weighted with a little sand, supporting thick planks. The books spent very little time on the shelves, though, as Rosie sketched and erased, trying to find a way to perform multiplication calculations with a feasible number of mechanical linkages.
Late in the day, Mister Wheel entered the circle of boards she had laid claim to and cleared his throat. She gave a start, and tore her frustrated gaze from the latest unsatisfactory solution.
“Yes, Mister Wheel?” she said.
“Ah, Mistress, do you have a moment to come with me? We’ve built your first prototype.”
“That was quick. Yes, please, do lead on.”
He led her silently into the office part of the manufactory, and to Mister Gizmo’s desk, where the senior gnome was manipulating a machine that Rosie instantly recognised as a realisation of her design. He alternated between cranking the wheels of the device and scribbling down numbers with a pencil, but when they entered he cast the pencil down and rose to greet her.
“Mistress Indu
stry,” he said, “this device is a marvel.”
“Thank you,” she said, at a loss for what else she could say.
“I have to do the figures every shift-cycle, see, and give them to the factor,” he went on. “Wages, how much we spend on spares, how much on raw materials, how many of each item produced, it never ends. Fortunately, we’re not expected to make a profit simply as such, because we don’t sell directly, or that would be another clamp on my head. Takes me days to do all the adding up, it does.”
“And my device can help, you think?”
“Help! It’s a wonder, and no mistake. I’m fast with a pencil, mind, but I have to add everything up twice to check, and I do make errors and then I have to do it a third time, and half the time that gives a different number again. This is a machine. It doesn’t get things wrong. We’ve only made it with four columns, just to start with, and I do want to talk to you about a way to reset it automatically back to zero, because that’s just a touch annoying, but I can see already that this will save me all manner of time and effort. And is it really true that you came up with it all yourself?”
“It’s really true,” she said, thinking, he had to go and spoil it. “You see, among human women being interested in machines is quite… permitted.” She had been going to say “usual”, but that wouldn’t have been accurate.
“Marvellous,” said Mister Gizmo, and she wasn’t sure if she meant the machine again or her remark. “Do you want to have a try?” He gestured at the device, which was smaller than she had expected. She remarked on this.
“Is it?” said Mister Wheel. “You didn’t say how big you wanted it, so I made it with some gears we had in stores. I suppose they are rather fine-toothed ones. I assumed you wanted it made with the best parts.”
“Yes, yes, it’s wonderful,” she said hastily. “I just didn’t realise quite what good artificers you are.” The box in which the works were encased was hard-to-break dwarf glass, fitted with precision into a finely-finished wooden frame. Many people would have made a prototype roughly, but apparently the Clever Man’s Works did not operate in such a manner. “You made it so one can see the clockwork?”