by Karen Miller
With a snap of her fingers Lord Traint’s clock sounded the hour, and even the most unfriendly artisan in the workroom smiled to hear the lilting carillon of notes. Watching Arndel from beneath her lowered lashes, Barl saw a spasm of jealousy clench his face for a heartbeat, then let go.
“Yes, that will do,” he said, as though she’d presented him with a correctly salted boiled egg. “Step back, Mage Lindin.”
So she stepped back and waited for him to master ward the new clock between ticks. That was his right, as Master of the artisanry. The balance of the clock’s purchase price bought the sigil that would unward it. Assuming Lord Traint accepted his finished commission, and he would, she had no doubt of that, she’d receive a token payment on top of her weekly artisan’s wage.
But for all her work it was Arndel who’d emerge the richer, in both purse and reputation.
Which is theft, pure and simple.
The injustice of it burned.
As soon as he’d departed, taking Lord Traint’s warded clock and the inked design with him, Barl began the methodical task of clearing her workbench.
First, the emptying of the sand trays. Since Dorana had no fine sand fields of its own, sand for crystal alchemy was imported at great expense from Feen and Brantone and Iringa. With the unused sand returned to its stone jars in the storeroom, next she had to collect the unused gold in its nuggets, shavings and dust, for there again was Dorana a pauper. One gold mine only within its jealously guarded borders, and that did not yield the finest red gold found beyond them. Silver and copper of its own Dorana possessed, and in plenty, but every remaining skerrick of those elements she also had to collect for later use. Artisan Master Arndel treated all his supplies as though they were sand and gold. Next she took the gemstones not used for the clock’s inner workings, rubies and emeralds and topaz, and saw them stowed safe in the artisanry gem drawers. Last of all she purged the workbench with a cleansing incant. That made sure no lingering memory of Lord Traint’s journey clock could catch in the next working she undertook and spoil its unique design.
By that time the work day had drawn to a close and the artisanry’s other clock mages were leaving. With her own piece still only three-quarters completed, Ibbitha warded her bench.
“Barl, are you coming?”
She opened her mouth to say yes, then abruptly changed her mind. I shouldn’t. It’s madness. If I’m found out I’ll be dismissed. But even as her heart leapt at the terrible thought, she knew she was about to be reckless.
“I can’t,” she said, pretending irritation. “The cleansing incant hasn’t taken properly. Finishing Lord Traint’s clock tired me more than I realised.”
“It’s beautiful work, Barl,” said Ibbitha. For all her prosy scoldings, she could be generous. “You should be proud.”
In moments like this she felt sick with the need to pretend that her caging didn’t chafe. “I am. You were right, I’m lucky to be shown such trust by Artisan Master Arndel.”
A small, pleased smile softened Ibbitha’s habitually disapproving face. “I’m glad you see it. Can I help you with a stronger cleansing incant?”
“No, I’ll manage. I’d not keep you from Arno’s eager embrace.”
A faint blush. Newly wed Ibbitha was so terribly proper. “Well, if you’re sure, I’ll see you on the morrow, Barl.”
Barl watched the workroom door shut behind her, then pretended to fuss over her bench as the last three artisan mages departed, bidding her a disinterested farewell. As soon as she was alone she leapt back from her bench. Excellent. Now she could play.
Although, to be clever, she should wait a little while to make certain Arndel didn’t return. To pass the time, she gave Ibbitha’s work in progress a cursory inspection. A betrothal clock for Lady Isolte’s eldest daughter. Ho hum. Oh, the actual design was pretty enough, but as a clock mage Ibbitha was hardly inspired. There were so many ways she could stamp herself onto this clock, lift it from pretty enough into the realm of magnificent, and she’d not taken advantage of even one. Ibbitha’s problem was that she had no vision. She never looked past the confines of an inked design to the hinted possibilities that lay between and beyond the lines.
I don’t think it would even occur to her to try. I could make Lady Isolte’s girl a glorious betrothal clock. Given the chance, I could make it sing.
Instead she was lumbered with journey clocks, shackled to the parched imagination of patrons like Artur Traint. What she was doing now was barely a step up from where she’d started in the artisanry, making the cheaper, less fastidious trade clocks that were sold throughout Dorana and into its neighbouring lands.
Arndel is a nubbin. Why won’t he admit my true worth? He has to know it would only enhance his reputation.
There was still no sign of the Artisan Master. Surely she’d be safe now. Heart skittishly thudding, she withdrew to the storeroom. Just this once she would craft a clock worthy of her gifts.
A trickle of nervous sweat tickled her spine. Hurrying, she tipped the raw ingredients for her dream clock onto the floor. Three types of rare sand, pink and silver and blue, gemstones for weight and counterweight, gold and silver and copper for pendulum and cradles. She didn’t need Lord Traint’s inked parchment to guide her, the journey clock’s design was etched in her memory. Squat and uninspired, functional, plain. And all the incants needed was a little tweak here, a twist there, a subtle realignment in this note and that one. So simple. So elegant. How could Traint not see?
Sigil by sigil, breath by breath, the journey clock she’d longed to create grew beneath her sure, steady fingers. Not a slow process this time, since she’d created it once already. But now the clock’s sheer crystal housing glowed, alive with a pearlescent sheen. It rose swiftly before her, slender and strong, not squat, not merely functional, but a tender, eloquent expression of hope. Journey clocks were made for travelling, and here was a clock to travel full of dreams and possibilities. Created to echo the dreams of the traveller who carried it.
When the clock was finished she knelt gasping, close to tears. If only she could show this piece to Lord Traint, instead of the spiritless lump of crystal Arndel had taken away with him. That clock was correct in all its particulars, scrupulously accurate, possessing no soul. But this clock?
This is the clock that deserves my beautiful chiming. This is the clock that should sing with my voice.
And no mage could ever see it.
She sketched a warding sigil, then uttered a harsh unmaking incant to collapse the reimagined clock into sand and gold and gemstones. Did weep, just a little, seeing it destroyed. And then she returned each individual component to its proper place so that Artisan Master Arndel would be none the wiser for her meddling.
She nearly ran into him as she came out of the storeroom.
“Mage Lindin!” he said, surprised and not pleased. “Why do you tarry here? Your fellow artisan mages are long departed.”
“I know, Artisan Master,” she murmured. “I’m sorry. I had some little difficulty cleansing my bench.”
His eyes slitted, as though he were reluctant to believe her. “You did? That seems… out of character.”
“I was weary,” she said, holding his suspicious stare without flinching. “But the bench is cleansed now. Would you care to inspect it?”
His gaze shifted to her empty workbench then back again. “No. Such matters are your responsibility, Mage Lindin. If your cleansing incant was inadequate, your next commission will tell the tale.”
“Has the commission been decided upon, Artisan Master?”
Now he looked her up and down, his resentment of her gifts, that added coin to his treasury, clear in his face.
“You are impertinent. It is for me to broach such matters, not you. Be gone.”
“Artisan Master,” she said, bowing her head, and escaped the workroom before he did something disastrous like banish her back to the making of ordinary clocks.
The late summer light was fading, but that did
n’t matter. There was glimfire to guide her way, should she need to conjure it. Or she could do what every other artisan mage did and translocate herself home. Only she didn’t care for travelling magics. She rarely admitted it but they made her feel weak and unsteady. Besides, they denied her the pleasure of the sweetly scented fresh air. Arndel’s artisanry sat on the greenly grassy outskirts of Batava hamlet, where she and Remmie lived, at least for the moment. Her solitary walks to and from work each day helped clear her mind of leftover clock maging and gave her precious time to herself for dreams.
Not that there’s much use in dreaming. Dreams won’t change what’s wrong in Dorana. Only the Council of Mages can change the rules and it won’t. Not until it’s made to, anyway.
And there was wickedly little hope of that. The General Council was too busy with day-to-day concerns, collecting taxes and enforcing the mundane rules and dealing with Dorana’s neighbours and the complicated trading arrangements they made with the outside world. Its members seemed perfectly happy to leave the intricate laws of magework to their sister council. Sometimes she thought she was the only mage breathing who cared for what was right and just. Everyone else she knew was like Ibbitha, content to settle for the crumbs dropped careless at her feet by Dorana’s supremely selfish First Families.
Even Remmie.
I love him to pieces, I do, but sometimes I can’t believe we’re related.
The laneways she walked were bordered each side by flower-straggled hedgerows. Fireflies danced above them, glimmering brightly in the lowering dusk. Tonight, though, not even their whimsical beauty soothed her. Rankled still by the loss of that other clock, the clock Arndel should have let her create, that he’d as good as stolen from her, she stamped the damp grass underfoot and with each step imagined Lord Traint’s inferior clock smashed to shards beneath her heels.
I’m glad no-one will ever know I made it. Let every mage who sees it think Traint’s journey clock is Arndel’s monstrosity. He deserves to be tarred with that brush. My day will come. In time the whole world will know my name. It will see what I’ve created and be dumbstruck with awe.
It was almost properly dark by the time she reached home. Stars pricked overhead, and glimfire lamps burned in the unshuttered windows of the hamlet schoolmaster’s cottage.
“There you are!” said Remmie, turning from the sink as she entered the kitchen. “I was about to do a searching for you.”
Though she was tired and disgruntled, she couldn’t not smile at her brother as she sniffed the fragrant air. “Yes, here I am, you fussy old mother hen.”
“Hen yourself,” he said, shoulders hunching. He didn’t much care for that kind of teasing. “Do you think I don’t have enough to contend with, that I need fears for you rattling round in my head?”
The mood she was in, it would be far too easy to strike sparks with him. She took a deep breath and after a heart-thumping moment let go of her peppery temper, along with all her bitter thoughts. Remmie was the soft, kindly one, and always had been. The boy in him still felt the too-soon loss of their parents, was quick to dark imaginings and leaping to the worst conclusions. With her own scars from that wounding long since healed, she found it easy to forget.
“I tarried at the artisanry,” she said, her voice deliberately gentle. “Not thinking. I’m sorry. Is that mutton-and-barley stew on the hob?”
“Not that you deserve any,” he said. “Why did you tarry? There’s no trouble at Arndel’s, I hope.”
His question stung, but it wasn’t entirely unfair. They were each other’s only family and he had picked up and moved with her every time her restless impatience caused her to fall foul of an employer, or abandon one position in search of the next. And if she fell foul of Artisan Master Arndel, or lost patience entirely with working in his artisanry, her brother would follow her again.
Which was why she strove so hard to stay sweet with Arndel, to not care so much that she wasn’t properly appreciated. Remmie wanted to stay in Batava. Teaching in its little school pleased him, deeply. He never would listen when she wailed that he wasted himself on other people’s offspring.
“Not the kind of trouble you’re imagining,” she said, sliding into one of the two chairs at the small kitchen’s table. “My work for Arndel is well-prized. He knows he’ll suffer if he dismisses me.”
“Good,” Remmie said, turning to face her, and not even trying to hide his relief. “But still, since I’m neither blind nor doltish, I know something’s fretting you. What’s wrong?”
Chapter Two
He always knew. Even when she did her best to hide her feelings, even when any other person in the world would never suspect she was churned on the inside, where it didn’t show, Remmie could tell.
Sometimes it was irritating, having a twin.
Remmie was staring at her, his blue eyes alight now with a rueful, affectionate resignation. She looked away from him.
He sighed. “Barl…”
By rights she should be setting the table for supper. He liked to cook and she didn’t, so he cooked and she set the table and helped clean up after. But instead of doing her part she sat where she was, thoughts tumbling like leaves in an autumn bluster.
Abandoning the sink, leaving his stew to simmer fragrantly on the hob, her brother crossed to the table and slid into its other chair.
“Come on, Barl. You know I’ll have the problem out of you in the end.”
She shrugged, one-shouldered. “It’s nothing.”
“It’s not. It never is,” he said kindly. He was so patient, little wonder he made a good schoolteacher. “Is it Arndel again? Has he done or said something to tweak your nose?”
“I’d like to tweak his nose,” she muttered. “His and Lord Traint’s.”
Remmie laughed, but there was a groan inside it. “Why? What have they done now?”
Since she’d get no peace until she answered, she told him how she’d been tasked to create Traint’s tedious journey clock. Her brother listened carefully, like always, no interruptions, and when she’d finished her tale of woe he sat back in his chair, his arms folded and his chin sunk to his chest.
“Well, you know what they say, Barl. He who pays the piper calls the tune.”
“Perhaps they do, but I don’t need you to say it. I need you to say I’m right and that old snicket Arndel is wrong!”
“Oh, Barl.” Remmie’s fingers tightened. “What difference would that make? For better or worse, Arndel pays your wage which means you’re beholden to his wishes. I know you don’t want to be, but that’s the way it is.”
What a pity she hadn’t laid the table. If she had, she could throw a spoon at him. “You’re supposed to be on my side.”
“And so I am! You know I am. Always. I don’t mean to nag or sound unsympathetic. I just hate to see you fretted.”
“You’d be fretted too, if you’d been forced to make such a clodhopping clock.” She blinked hard against a sudden sting of tears. “I wish you could’ve seen the one I made after. Remmie, it was beautiful.”
“Yes, I’m sure it was,” he said, his face shadowing. “Only…”
“Only it was a foolish risk,” she said, impatiently contrite. “Yes. I know. I won’t do it again.” She pulled a face. “At least I’ll try not to. But Remmie—”
His lips tugged into a wry smile. “It was make the clock your way, just once, or burst.”
She’d feel less guilty if he didn’t understand. If he blustered and railed at her she wouldn’t feel so selfish. If once, just once, he’d properly lose his temper with her, scold her for being high-handed and thoughtless, then she’d not have to feel so mean. But he never did. It just wasn’t Remmie.
As she frowned at him, vexed by his unnatural niceness, he shoved his chair back. “Any measure, what’s done is done and no harm done. This time. Now do set the table, would you? Supper’s ready.”
So she set the table and he filled two stoneware bowls with the rich mutton and barley he’d cooked. Fresh
, cool cider and thickly buttered bread rounded out the meal. Halfway through his tale of the day’s classroom antics he interrupted himself, his expression comical.
“Oh, I nearly forgot! Word came from Elvado this morning. The Council of Mages has ratified four new incants, and there’s to be a public demonstration of them to mark the occasion. I’m asked to take my pupils to see it. Will you come?”
Belly griping, Barl bit her lip. Doubtless it was petty, the urge to refuse her brother because she resented those unknown mages whom the Council had decided to honour. But she felt what she felt. There was no point denying it.
“I can’t go if it’s a working day,” she said, poking her spoon through her stew, pretending interest in food so Remmie might not see what raged beneath her indifferent surface. “Arndel would never give me leave.”
“There’s no need to ask, for it’s not,” Remmie said, cheerful. Either she’d fooled him, for once, or he was choosing to ignore her rewoken ill temper. “The demonstration’s to be held next Winsun. In the plaza outside Elvado’s Hall of Knowledge, no less.”
The Hall, yes. Of course. That fabled place of breathtaking beauty, where Dorana’s vastly powerful Council of Mages laid down the rules of magework by which everyone else had to live.
Still, it could be worse. They could hold the ceremony at the College. I don’t think I could bear that.
“There’ll be a terrible crowd,” she said, hunting for a cloud to dim Remmie’s smile. “We’ll not see a thing.”
“Ah, but we will,” he said, unclouded. “On account of being with the children. The Council made sure to mention there’d be a special place reserved for all attending students and their teachers.”
Well, didn’t he just have an answer for everything?
“Elvado’s too far from here to ride in carriages. We’ll have to translocate.”
“You can chew on some runip berries before we leave. They’ll settle your stomach well enough.” Remmie pushed his emptied bowl away, the faintest hint of irritation shading his voice. “Or you could not come.”