“Helping you investigate.” Kadka grinned. “He pays you too much. We can share.”
“What? No. Look, I’m sorry about what happened, but Indree wasn’t wrong. Associating with me isn’t good for the reputation. I’ll only get you in more trouble.”
“Trouble can be fun,” Kadka said, still showing her teeth.
“Kadka, I can’t—”
“You don’t tell them about case you found,” she said. “You think I don’t notice? I say nothing then, but maybe now I tell someone.”
“So that’s how it’s going to be? I pay you off or you tell Indree I’m hiding something?”
“No,” said Kadka, and she looked genuinely perplexed by the anger in his voice. “You pay me to help you, and I don’t tell. Don’t want money for nothing. Why not? Without me, you would be crushed under shelf already.”
Tane sighed and spread his hands. “Fine. I suppose I don’t have much choice.”
She nodded, as if confirming something she’d known all along. “So. Where is case?”
They were in the stairwell now, hidden from sight on a landing between floors. Tane leaned out to check above and below, satisfying himself that no one was coming, and then he pulled the scroll case from his belt.
It was a brass tube about a foot long, with a cap at one end. Just below the cap were a series of five rotating copper bands, with a matching set at the far end of the tube. Both sets of bands were engraved with glyphs of the lingua magica, and a pair of small arrows showed where the glyphs were meant to line up. In the center of the tube, a green peridot gemstone was held in a copper setting, joined by inlaid copper lines to the bands on either side. Tane tested one band and it rotated with a click, putting a new symbol forward. He popped open the cap and looked inside. Empty.
“What is it?” Kadka asked.
“It’s called a scrollcaster, or sometimes a forger’s case,” said Tane. “They’re used to send or duplicate documents. You roll up some paper and put it inside, then turn these dials”—he indicated the glyphed copper bands near the cap—“to the glyphs of the caster you’re sending to. Whatever is written on your papers is copied onto the ones at the other end. They’re mostly owned by very important people sending things like state secrets—it’s illegal to own one without a license, and they all have a set receiving address.” Now he tapped the bands at the opposite end. “These bands mean it’s black market. The glyphs at this end are meant to be engraved, impossible to alter without wrecking the caster. If you flip to a new set of glyphs after sending or receiving something, it breaks the Astral link. Makes it impossible for a diviner to trace.”
Understanding lit Kadka’s eyes. “You think he used this to copy some spell from workshop.”
“Probably. It might be as simple as someone trying to steal privileged spell diagrams to sell on the black market. It’s empty, which either means our mage had time to copy what he came to copy and put it back in the drawer, or we stopped him before he found what he was looking for.”
“So what is plan? Can it tell us something?”
“If he sent something, he’ll have changed the glyphs, so we probably can’t trace where it went. But if we find the maker, they might be able to tell us who bought it. And if we’re very lucky, they might be able to divine what was sent, if not where. That’s why I didn’t tell Indree. She’d have taken it away, and no black market artificer is going to talk to a bluecap.”
“But they will talk to you?”
“I know someone I can ask. I don’t know how much he’ll want to say.”
A wide grin stretched across Kadka’s jutting orcish jaw, and there was a rather menacing twinkle in her eye. “Maybe I will find way to convince him.” She nodded decisively. “Come.” She started down the stairs.
Tane hastily stowed the scroll case in his belt and hurried after her. “Come where?”
“I will get my things, give back uniform. Then, we find your criminal.”
Chapter Six
_____
IT WAS STRANGE, seeing Kadka out of her uniform.
When she’d been wearing it, there had been a certain air of University prestige about her—when Tane had taken her badge, he’d felt the little rush of satisfaction that always came with defying authority. Now, absent the sword and pistol and dressed in rough-spun trousers and a threadbare shirt with tattered suspenders over top, she looked like a girl from some country village visiting the capital for the first time.
Except that there weren’t a great many orcs living in country villages in the Protectorate.
Her wide-eyed awe didn’t do anything to dispel the impression, either. As they descended from the street into the crowded disc-tunnels, she craned her neck eagerly to catch a glimpse of the floating ancryst platforms approaching the station.
“You must have ridden the discs before,” Tane said, nudging his way through the current of departing passengers. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but you’ve lived in Thaless for more than a day, haven’t you?” The question came out sharper than he’d intended. He was still annoyed at the way she’d forced his hand earlier, and the discs made him nervous at the best of times.
“Yes,” said Kadka. “But is always exciting, no? To ride floating stones in underground tunnels? This is kind of magic I come here to see.”
Spellfire, how am I supposed to stay angry if she’s going to be so… enthusiastic? The discs probably were impressive, he had to admit, if one weren’t accustomed to them: a series of linked ancryst platforms suspended in mid-air in a copper-lined tunnel, metal and translucent green stone glimmering under silver-blue magelight. Atop each disc was a wood-and-iron passenger carriage, large enough to hold perhaps thirty people if they were packed very closely together—and they always were. Tane hated it, but he could see how it might appeal to someone else.
They squeezed into a carriage full of humans and elves and gnomes and kobolds and more: miners and dockworkers and laborers in clothes much like Kadka’s, students in so-called “scholar’s uniforms”—topcoats of University silver-on-blue over much cheaper trousers and waistcoats—and well-to-do merchants dressed in colored silks and velvets. There were no seats inside, just a number of metal poles to grip and a tight space filled with every sort of person that called Thaless home—and in the Protectorate’s capital, that meant every sort of person there was. Too many people, and not enough room. Tane shuffled aside as a foot-tall sprite fluttered by on iridescent butterfly wings to land on the narrow ledge along the wall where others of its kind perched.
The ancryst platform lurched into motion underfoot, and Tane’s stomach lurched along a second behind. Sweat beaded on his brow, and his fingers compulsively rubbed the watch casing in his pocket. Magelights set into the tunnel flashed by outside the windows, making the shadows inside shift rapidly from front to back as if the passage of time had accelerated along with the discs.
Kadka was forced in close by the crowd, standing near enough that those sharp wolf-teeth could have easily taken off his nose if she’d felt the urge. She wasn’t looking at him, though, electing instead to peer around with sheer wonder in her yellow-gold eyes. More than a few people looked back, suspicious or curious or both. For all the Protectorate’s diversity, orcs and half-orcs were still a rarity. She didn’t seem to notice the attention, though, or didn’t show it if she did.
After a short while, Kadka turned back to him. “You know about magic,” she said, loud enough to be heard over the surrounding chatter. Loud enough to be heard a disc down in either direction, by Tane’s estimation. “I wonder sometimes, how does this work? Is there spell to make it fly?”
“Not exactly,” said Tane, swallowing his nerves so that she wouldn’t hear his voice shake. “The discs are ancryst. I assume you’ve heard of it?” She hadn’t seemed well-versed in the stone’s properties when she’d discharged her ancryst pistol at an open portal.
“It moves by magic, yes?”
“It moves away from magic, more accurately. The tunnel is
lined with copper conducting a magical field, which repels the ancryst from all sides. As long as the field is balanced, the discs hover in the middle.” It made him feel a little bit better, somehow, to explain how the magic worked—as if talking about it aloud could keep the spells from going wrong. “There are artifacts in the front and back that project their own adjustable fields, pushing us in the direction we want to go or slowing us to a stop. It’s more efficient than a levitation spell—magic with a specific purpose takes far more power to maintain than a simple field that doesn’t have to do anything but exist. I’d bet a mid-sized topaz array could power a section of tunnels for a year.”
“Why only here? I travelled through other places to come here. They have nothing like this.”
Tane shrugged. “Practicality. It’s expensive to dig tunnels all over a city and line them with copper. If it was done today, they’d probably use an ancryst-powered rail-car above ground instead. The discs were really just an experiment, from before we had ancryst engines. Actually, they were what inspired the development of the ancryst engine—an ancryst piston moves in its cylinder in a very similar way to how the discs move through these tunnels.”
Kadka nodded slowly. “I can understand this, I think.” She grinned, showing her teeth. An elven woman standing beside Tane flinched noticeably at the sight. “But maybe more fun when I only think it is floating.”
“Magic always seems less magical when you learn how it works,” said Tane. “Once you know how all the pieces fit together, it’s easier to see where a little mistake could lead to disaster. But it’s better to know. At least then you’re ready for it when the worst happens.”
“Makes you nervous, travelling this way?”
“Like I said, there are a lot of things that could go wrong. But it takes hours to walk anywhere in Thaless, so… I’ve gotten used to it.”
“Not so used to it.” She eyed the sweat on his brow with a slight smirk.
“I manage,” Tane said, a little defensively. “Anyway, it’s my turn for a question. There’s something I wanted to ask you about.”
“So you ask to ask?” She laughed. “Such manners in big city. Just ask. No danger in question.”
“I’ve heard about orcs being hard to detect with divinations, but I’d never seen it before. I didn't think it would be so absolute. You didn’t trigger that mage’s detection spell, and the wraith didn’t seem to care about you at all. Is that something you have to do, or is it just natural?”
“I do nothing,” said Kadka. “In Sverna, we say orcs are too strong for magic to touch, but how can I know for myself when there is no magic there? And after I leave, mostly no one casts spells on me. At University when I talk to mages they say is hard to find me with some magic, but is all kind you call divination. I never see it. Wraith is first time I know there is truth there. But… I still hurt myself on ward.” She rubbed the tip of her nose. “And mage’s spell still throws me. Why is this?”
“I assumed you would know more than I do,” said Tane. “I can only tell you what I’ve read. I’ve seen it written in a few places that orcs have a faint link to the Astra. Every living thing has an Astral connection, but it’s apparently weaker for the orcish, or maybe naturally masked somehow. That would make it hard for divinations to find you—they seek people out through Astral channels. But it wouldn’t stop anything physical. Like you say, we know that you can still be tossed around, or blocked by a ward.”
“What if we find mage, then? Spells stopped me before. I want better fight next time.”
“Good question.” Tane hadn’t ever had to fight a mage before, and neither he nor Kadka had any magic of their own. It was worth musing on. “In our favor, it’s hard to put together a spell quickly, and most mages are academics, not fighters. I don’t think our man was combat trained, or he might have managed more than a simple force wave. That’s the best you’ll see from most mages in a fight. Things like spellfire take focus and power and precise wording—harder to cast and easier to stop. The best way to fight him would be to silence him somehow. He can’t cast if he can’t speak, unless he’s very quick at writing glyphs. Distraction works too. Get him to lose concentration and his entire spell could fail, or go off very differently than intended. Or… Orcs can see in the dark, can’t they?”
“Yes. Is this useful?”
“Maybe,” Tane said. “If you can get him in the dark, or maybe blind him somehow… He could still cast, but every spell is a request of the Astra, and it needs instruction. Not being able to just point and say ‘that person there’ makes it much harder to specify a target. He’d have to aim by guessing a direction. It would make us harder to hit, at least.”
“Useful, then,” Kadka said with a grin that fell abruptly into a thoughtful frown. “I am hard to see with spells, you say, but this mage is no orc. Why does the University not cast spell to find him?”
“It isn’t that easy. To cast any targeted divination you need to either know the target fairly well or have a divination focus—something from their body, like blood or hair or a fingernail. Which there are laws about, for privacy’s sake. We’d need a constable with a warrant. But we don’t even have a face or a name, let alone a focus.”
“What about case you found? That was his.”
“A diviner might be able to get some impression of past owners off of it,” Tane admitted, reaching back to touch the scroll case in his belt and reassure himself it was still there. Pickpockets weren’t unheard of on the discs. “But it’s black market, so it will be masked—purposely passed between enough people and magical signatures to throw off any object reading. And anyway, divining anything outside the present is unreliable. Most of the time it just gives some vague vision, and the interpretation is as much about the diviner’s bias as any real information. It’s an option if we run out of others, but I’d rather not rely on it.”
Kadka cocked her head. “For man who knows so much about magic, you don’t like very much. Why?”
“I don’t dislike it. I just don’t trust it. And neither should you. Magic can be useful, but don’t forget to look for the flaws. Better to trust yourself than a spell.”
“Is good to trust in self. But good to use what is useful, too.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” said Tane. “Right now, though, the most useful thing is going to be finding whoever made the scrollcaster.” He staggered against Kadka as the discs began to slow. “And on that note, it looks like we’re here.” Thank the Astra.
The familiar smells of salt and fish greeted Tane’s nostrils as they climbed the stairs into daylight. The cawing of gulls rang from above. The disc-tunnels emerged near the Porthaven fish market, and the waters of the Audish Channel stretched out ahead, late afternoon sun shining off murky water between the hulls of dozens of anchored ancryst ships. It wasn’t exactly beautiful, but it was always a welcome sight coming out of the tunnels.
Across the harbor, the towering scaffold around the airship’s rigid envelope monopolized the shipyards, and the view. The outer skin—some artificer-made cloth with a shimmering finish—reflected the sunlight so that Tane had to squint to look at it. Over the months, he’d watched the envelope progress from a skeletal frame to a long, smooth ovoid, nearly finished now with only two days until its first flight. Below, the body of the ship rested in drydock, a lightweight wooden hull with a skeleton of steel, mounted with a pair of gleaming brass ancryst engines. Tiny figures crawled over the scaffolding and the body of the ship, making final adjustments, and Tane knew there were more that he couldn’t see—at this distance, the diminutive sprites were entirely invisible, but dozens of them would be flitting about the higher parts of the scaffolding, their wings allowing them to work in relative safety.
“Hard to believe it will fly.” The awe was back in Kadka’s voice. “Something so big, how does even magic lift it?”
Tane only vaguely understood himself—the specifics were a fairly guarded secret. “Not all of it is magic,” he said. “It
’s a little bit like a hot air balloon. They’ll heat the air in the envelope with spell glyphs, but the lift that creates isn’t magical. I’m not sure, but I’d guess there must be some levitation spells on the body too, or it would still be too heavy to fly—but nothing too strong, or they’d take too much power. That’s where ancryst engines are useful. If you had to steer a ship that big with spells, they’d be so complex it would drain the gemstones in a day. It’s a balance artificers have been trying to solve for a long time. Whether they got it right remains to be seen.”
“You think it won’t work?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t looked at the diagrams. It’s going to be something to see if it does, but you won’t catch me on board.” Tane clasped Kadka’s shoulder and steered her in the opposite direction, towards the fish market. “It isn’t going to fly today, in any case. Come on.”
Stalls filled all four sides of the little square, and gulls wheeled overhead, descending now and again to fight over discarded guts and fish-heads. People of all kinds and all sizes—save for a notable lack of elves, who for the most part kept to the better districts of the city—wandered up and down the market looking over the day’s catch and haggling with the fishmongers. Most wore plain clothes, not far different from Kadka’s, and Tane’s frayed waistcoat made him feel almost overdressed. These were the residents of the Porthaven district itself, or perhaps Greenstone near the southern ancryst quarries, shopping for their dinner. Tane’s class of people. His own cramped home—or rather the office that he happened to sleep in—wasn’t far away. The wealthy citizens of the Gryphon’s Roost didn’t come to places like this. They had servants for that.
“This is black market?” Kadka asked, glancing over her shoulder one last time at the airship.
“This?” Tane had to laugh, looking over the run-down stalls. “No.”
“What is funny?” Kadka half-grinned at his laughter, a picture of amiable confusion.
The Flaw in All Magic (Magebreakers Book 1) Page 6