by Andrew Rowe
“What’s the point? Making a permanent item like that would mean spending a significant amount of money on a service that’s inexpensive or free. It’s not worth saving a few minutes.”
I shook my head. “That’s not the point of the device — it’s just the first part. We have it measure the user’s mana at rest and store that number, and then make it visible on a surface. Then, we have it actively monitor the user’s mana, tracking how their current mana compares to the first number. We show a second number — the amount of remaining mana the wearer can still spend safely — next to the maximum value.”
Vellum lifted a hand to her chin, twisting her lips. “It could be done. You’d want to display it as a fraction — something like ten mana left out of twenty — to make it useful. But I don’t know if I like it. It could make the wearer rely on the device, rather than their own judgment.”
I shrugged at that. “If nothing else, it might help keep someone cognizant of the small mana uses that they aren’t aware of from day-to-day activities. I still have no idea how rapidly using my attunement drains my mana, for example. How long can I use it safely? I have no idea — none of my books talk about it.”
“That’s something they should have explained in your first weeks of class. You probably just weren’t paying attention.”
“Maybe, but I doubt I’m the only one. And when someone knows dozens of spells, and they’re in the middle of the tower, can you honestly say they’re tracking their mana usage accurately?”
She shook her head. “No, they’re probably not, but I’m not certain taking the time to check a device would be beneficial. You’d have to press it against whichever section of the body you want to measure, then look at wherever you’re displaying the numbers — not necessarily practical in a fight.”
“I was thinking something wearable, like a pocket watch on a chain. You could just grab it out of the pocket, press it to your hand or forehead or whatever, and then look at the number. I agree that might still be too dangerous in the middle of a fight, but maybe between two rooms? I don’t know about you, but I think I’d find that information valuable.”
“Perhaps. But you must understand that people develop a degree of pride about being able to keep track of their own mana. I’m not sure adults would value a device that makes them look incapable. I don’t know how you’d market it.”
Pride. I hadn’t thought about that.
But it actually made this even easier.
“I don’t know why I didn’t think of that earlier. But, you’re absolutely right, Professor. Checking a pocket watch every room would make you look paranoid. That’s why we don’t put it in a pocket. If mana management makes people proud?”
I made a sweeping gesture with my hands. “Why not tell the whole world how powerful you are? We don’t tuck the device away. We make it a necklace, or a wrist watch. Something that shows openly and visibly, so you can show off how much mana you have. It could be a status symbol, like how some people like to show off their strongest attunement.”
Vellum wrinkled her nose. “That’s precisely the opposite of what some people would want. You know that traditionally nobles wear a glove to cover their attunements and hide their strength. Weren’t you wearing a glove yourself when we first met?”
I nodded. “And that’s precisely how we’ll make a profit on it. Pride. We can tell the younger generation that, rather than hide their power out of fear, they should flaunt it.”
Her eyes narrowed. “And if you make it competitive...”
“Even older attuned might feel compelled to do the same, to prove that they’re stronger than these upstart children.”
Professor Vellum nodded contemplatively. “It’s a clever idea. Most clever ideas never go anywhere, but I can see some potential here. So, before you sell any, you’re going to patent it.”
I blinked. “What?”
“This is, perhaps, the most important lesson that you’re going to learn from me. Anything of sufficient value — and I do mean anything — provokes greed. If you think you could sell more than a handful of these, you need to protect yourself. Patenting a design can be intimidating, and the paperwork is awful, but you need to do it.”
I frowned. “And if there’s already a patent out there?”
“Then you have the dubious honor of coming up with a brilliant idea that someone else already thought of. You’ll find that’s far more common than developing anything truly unique.”
“But if it is unique, and I do get a patent?”
“Then we, young Corin Cadence, are going to make a great deal of money.”
***
I spent the next two weeks working on my first model of the device.
And my second, when the first one failed. I’d misunderstood how to use one of the runes, which made the calculation always evaluate to zero. Oops.
Professor Vellum was surprisingly enthusiastic about helping. I’d never seen her take any serious interest in one of my projects, but she had me check in every few days with a status update, and even made me some of the crystals that I needed.
I didn’t have anywhere near enough mental mana to make the analysis runes myself — and I couldn’t afford them — but she handled that personally.
And after all that effort?
It worked.
I had a silvery disc the size of my palm attached to a chain with a fraction displayed on it: 31/31.
The last thing it had measured was my own mental mana. It had gone up a bit in the last few weeks as a result of my practice.
That puts me at Rank A in Quartz. Finally. I’m still a long way from Carnelian, but I’m making some real progress.
I wasn’t going to celebrate prematurely. I went to the Divinatory and had them run the standard tests to confirm my results.
They told me my safe mana usage would be 32.
Close enough. Probably a rounding error.
I hadn’t quite figured out how to get the device to round yet, so fractions of a mana point were simply ignored.
After confirming that it worked for my mental mana, I checked the rest of my body...
...and those were all wrong.
That didn’t keep me stuck for very long. After asking a few questions, I realized my problem. I was always running the same formula, which I’d found in a book about evaluating safe mana usage for the mind specifically.
Every body part had a different “safe” tolerance. That was a set value plus a percentage of your maximum amount. Apparently, as your mana pool got bigger, your body used more and more on routine bodily functions. It made a sort of sense.
So, if I wanted this to work properly, I needed it to run a different formula depending on what body part I was checking.
That was considerably more difficult. I needed to add an extra stage where it detected the type of mana, then branched out to running different equations based on the type. The device’s complexity, and thus its cost, went up considerably.
The beloved profit margins that I’d been harboring in my imagination shrank.
Still, after another few days, I managed to get it working with every part of my body. That made me beam with pride, even if I couldn’t expect as much profit.
At the end of the week, I’d finished a second functional device, which I gave to Vellum.
When she used it for a cursory test, I got a glimpse at one of the measurements she ran on her hand: 2565/2565.
And, for the first time, I understood just how far I had to grow.
She grinned when she saw me gawking, set the device down, and said, “Well, dear, now that the easy part is over. It’s time for the paperwork.”
She was right, of course. Headaches from using my attunement? I could deal with them. Existential terror at the possibility of destroying my own mind? Pretty much routine at this point.
Doing paperwork for the government?
Now that was brutal.
***
All told, I spent more than four weeks on what
I was calling my “mana watch” project. I started wearing it around the campus. Fortunately, basic jewelry wasn’t explicitly disallowed in our uniform guidelines. I got a lot of odd stares and a handful of questions.
Sera was one of the first to comment, of course. “I know you’ve never been one for fashion, Corin, but that thing is such an affront to the concept that I’m a little worried for you. I could see fashion manifesting itself in anger just to extract vengeance for the crime you’ve perpetrated.”
I chuckled. “You’re just jealous that you don’t have a masterpiece of modern art like this. But, for the low price of — how much did you say you made in that arena, like two hundred silver? — you could have one that’s almost as amazing as mine.”
She rolled her eyes. “I’ve always liked to donate to the needy, but I think you’re beyond my help.”
“Don’t worry, Sera. Your affection is all I’ve ever needed.”
I knew it’d be a while before the patent paperwork went through — months, probably — so I wasn’t going to start selling them yet.
Instead, I just made use of my own. I’d activate it with a flare of mana, set it to check the mana in my head, and then set it down while I began to work.
I still had 24/31 mana remaining when I started getting my headache. I’d been stopping far before I was at any risk.
Even with that knowledge, my terror at the idea of causing myself harm meant that I wasn’t willing to risk spending anywhere close to the maximum that the device was telling me.
Sure, it was irrational. I knew that the values that the formula gave us were already designed to give us wiggle room for safety before we caused ourselves any permanent harm. Unfortunately, when I contemplated the consequences of pushing myself, it put me into a state of panic that no degree of conscious knowledge could counter.
The mana watch served a valuable purpose, though. With it, I managed to steel myself sufficiently to go down to half what the device told me would be safe. And that meant spending almost more than three times as much mental mana than I ever had before.
Regularly. Several times a day. After all, my mental mana recovered fast. Any mana directly connected to an attunement would recover much more quickly than normal mana would.
Within another week, I’d upped my maximum from 31 to 40. I was still behind where I should have been roughly seventeen weeks into the year, but finally, I had some chance of eventually catching up.
***
I was in the middle of trying to form a mana crystal without a quartz case when I heard a knock on the door.
A conundrum.
If I got up to answer, I’d lose all my progress. The mana I was channeling into my palm would evaporate almost immediately when I stopped concentrating on maintaining the crude mana shell around it.
I settled for a middle ground. “Who’s there?”
“Corin! It’s Patrick!”
I groaned, watching the half-formed crystal in my palm flake and disintegrate as I released my focus. “Be right there.”
I pushed myself to my feet, still mourning the loss of the closest thing to a success I’d managed so far. I had a pretty good store of crystals I’d built inside quartz molds at this point, but the molds — while cheap — were almost as valuable as the crystals I was making.
Rather than selling the crystals directly, I’d been making simple practice items with the crystals, but none of them were Carnelian-level, and thus they weren’t likely to sell.
I opened the door, offering Patrick a wave. He must have seen the exhaustion on my face, because he frowned when he looked at me. “Everything okay?”
I nodded wearily. “Yeah. Just been stressed with one of my projects.”
“Making another mana necklace thing?”
I shook my head. “Trying to figure out how to make mana crystals without a mold.”
“What for?”
It hadn’t occurred to me that the answer might not be completely obvious. “So I can make us better magic stuff.”
“Oh! Yeah, that makes sense. Uh, here, your sister wanted me to give this to you.” He reached into a bag on his hip, pulling out a smaller pouch and offering it to me.
I accepted the bag, lifting it curiously and hearing the clink of metal. “Running Sera’s errands now?”
Patrick chuckled. “Uh, not exactly. Can I come in?”
“Yeah, of course.” I gestured to my room magnanimously. “My home is your home.”
Patrick chuckled weakly in reply, coming in and planting himself on my bed. “Uh, about that, actually. Sort of.”
I closed the door behind him, raising an eyebrow. “What, you looking to move in? I know having a room near Roland must be grating, but—”
“Not that. I mean, you’re not wrong,” he grinned, continuing, “but that’s not why I’m here. First, check out the goods in there.”
I opened the pouch, pouring it out. A few coins dropped into my hand.
Gold coins.
“What the—”
“Sera finally got paid for that whole stage thing she did. I guess they told her to set a big chunk aside for taxes, but she still got more money than I’ve ever seen out of it. That’s about half of it, I think. Sixty or so silver worth in gold coins. She wants you to make her something. Should be a note in there, too.”
Ah, her first hint of wealth and she’s already sending people to do her bidding. Oh, Sera. Mad from power at such a young age.
Or, maybe there was another explanation.
I felt like a bit of a jerk for not checking on her more frequently. “Is she feeling okay? That Survival Match took a lot out of her.”
Patrick glanced from side-to-side nervously. “Oh, yeah, she’s fine. Got a bit of a cough, but the Mender said she’s recovering. I volunteered to bring the coin coins for her because, uh, I wanted to ask you something. And to do something nice for her.”
I still wasn’t seeing where this was going. “Okay?”
“I could kind of use your advice. You aren’t, um, seeing Sera, are you?”
I blinked. Rapidly. “...no? I mean, I know it’s recent, but she’s supposed to be my family now, right?”
“Ah, um, that’s good. I mean, you two were always close when you were younger, and I thought maybe there was something, like, romantic...”
I waved a hand to cut him off. “It was never like that. At least, not for me. She was supposed to be trained to be one of my retainers. We were close friends. We still are. Kind of like my friendship with you, actually.”
I still wasn’t clear where this line of questioning was leading. Why would my feelings for Sera be relevant?
“Oh, great. That’s... well, you see, I’ve been thinking about asking Sera to the winter ball.”
Oh.
Oh!
I laughed, to which Patrick’s expression turned to utter horror.
“You... oh... I don’t have a chance, do I? Is it really that funny?” His cheeks flared crimson.
I waved both hands. “Oh, no! Sorry, Patrick. I was laughing at myself for completely missing what you were getting at until you hit me over the head with it. I never realized you had any interest in Sera!” I paused, scratching my chin.
I never really asked either of them about how they’d been getting along in the years I was away. Honestly, I didn’t really ask either of them about how they’ve been doing in general. I need to be better about that.
Either way, I can’t see how Sera would have a problem with Patrick just asking.
Having reached my conclusion, I continued, “You’re fine. I don’t see any problem with you asking her.”
Patrick turned his head to the side. “Yeah, except that I’m not good enough.”
Okay, definitely not seeing what’s going on here again.
I folded my arms. “How so? You’re athletic; you’re doing fine in class...”
He chuckled. “I’m a nobody, Corin. That might have been fine when we were kids. She was a retainer for a noble house, but
that’s only one rung above a commoner. Not insurmountable. Now, she’s like you. A full-on noble.”
“You really think that still matters these days?”
He gave me a solemn nod. “Yeah. It really does. It’s great that you don’t care about that sort of thing. It’s something I like about you. Lots of people our age don’t care about it. But think about your dad, Corin. Would he approve of Sera Cadence going to the winter ball with the son of a carpenter?”
I frowned. “No, not really, but I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t approve of her going to a dance with anyone. My plan would be to not tell him.”
“Would that be Sera’s plan, though? She cares about face a little more than you do. She’s proud to finally be a noble. And it’s not just ‘a dance’. The winter ball is a big event. It’s not just for our school; it’s a city-wide event. All sorts of nobles are going to be there, and she’d probably want to be dancing with one of them.”
I hadn’t really considered that. Maybe the title meant more to her because she hadn’t been born with it?
Would she really care enough about status to turn down a friend for some kind of stupid school dance?
Probably not, I decided, but she might be disappointed that she was going with a friend instead of someone she considered to be a worthy suitor.
I scratched my chin. “Did you want me to ask her on your behalf or something?”
“Oh, goddess, no.” He held his hands over his eyes. “I have something bigger to ask for, actually. Something I’d been meaning to ask you anyway, outside of this.”
I waggled my eyebrows at him. “What, you want to take me to the ball instead?”
He let out a weak laugh in reply. “No, but I do have a serious request.”
He stood from the bed, straightened himself to his full height, and then knelt down in front of me. “Corin Cadence, will you accept me into your service?”
What.
I blinked. “Uh, what are you doing?”
I mean, I knew, but—
“I’m asking for you to formally make me one of your retainers. I know that’s not a simple request. I...uh, brought a copy of the oath, if you’re willing.”
I laughed, putting a hand to my head.