by Ben Rovik
“Next in the spell? So, okay. You invoke magical power; you speak exactly what you want to happen, and what you don’t want to happen; and then comes the Enunciation. You name your target.”
“Just like that? ‘Horace Lundin,’ and I’m done?”
Lundin shrugged. “This is the part I’m confused by. It sounds like it should be one line, right? But somehow the Enunciation phase still takes a wizard hours. It’s almost as long as the Illustration, even in spells that succeed.”
“How can it take four hours to say somebody’s name?”
“Well, they say it again and again, and they’ll say the name in different ways, and play around with it…”
Samanthi snapped her fingers, her eyes wide. “Remember that ratty little wizard who couldn’t save LaMontina? He called the Viscount all sorts of stupid things… ‘Graceful One.’ ‘Man of the Rearing Bull.’ It was like he was trying new names on for size.”
Lundin put his arms on his hips, thinking back to that dark tent. “Maybe he was still thinking in Mabinanto, or at least in that mindset. So, in the Enunciation, wizards might not say just a person’s real name, but speak dozens or hundreds of permutations on it? Different titles and identities the person might have?”
“But why?”
“No idea. Absolutely none. But what I do know is that here’s where having the personal artifacts comes into play. The blood from the leeches, in the Viscount’s case. There’s something about having that material on hand during the Enunciation that makes a wizard more connected to his target. However it works, from all accounts, it really makes a difference.”
“Just ask LaMontina,” Samanthi said, scratching her jawline. She looked at Lundin for a long time, her round face thoughtful and still. Lundin flexed the fingers on his still-hurting hand and watched her back, unsure what to say.
Finally, she raised a fist to the height of her shoulder, and extended her index finger. “First, a wizard speaks a rote Invocation,” she said, in a tone that was half statement and half question. She extended another finger. “Then she talks through an Illustration, which is just a long, spooky program that makes people’s hair fall out.” Her thumb joined the other two. “Finally, she speaks the name of her target until the spell works, and they call it an Enunciation. It helps if there are leeches involved.
“You’re telling me that that’s magic?”
“That’s my theory.” Lundin nodded.
She let that hang for a moment. “What’s your proof?”
“Well, nothing yet. I’ll probably, uh, keep reading. Interview wizards. Observe them in action, see if it holds up.”
“Awfully soft, junior tech,” Samanthi murmured, her eyes narrowing. She got the predatory look she developed any time she was facing an especially intricate problem. “That’s a recipe for squishy data. You’ll get a lot of confounding variables if you jump right into the real world with real wizards.”
“Sure, but it’s not like I can do magic in the lab.”
Samanthi nodded. Suddenly, she was on the move. “Walk with me,” she called out, without looking backwards. Lundin trotted after her, startled. She was already answering his question before he could get his mouth open. “We’re going to see Dame Miri and those other showboating lightweights in the Parade squad, and we’re going to ransack their equipment.”
“What? Why?” Lundin frowned, trying to keep up. “I’m not ransacking anybody without a good reason,” he said.
“Ulraexi Pillok Mentatum Est, Horace. The Mind is the Key to All Things; but the right tool for the job helps too. And your job,” she said, stopping sharply and turning to him, her eyes flashing with that predatory zeal, “you strange, bumbling, brilliant savant of a man—”
Samanthi slapped him in the chest with a resounding thump, and grinned broadly. “Your job is to build me a wizard.”
"Ow," Lundin said.
Chapter Five
The Squawk Box
“Don’t you two have a job to do?”
Sir Mathias leaned forward, both palms on the surface of the workbench, his brawny arms in evidence through the light fabric of his shirt. Dame Miri Draker leaned forward as well, resting one hand elegantly on the table and tilting her head just so to make her blue-black locks of hair frame her face in the most striking way possible. The Parade squad was always composed of young, brilliant, ogle-worthy recruits who were the appropriate mix of showman and scholar. Every feastday or ceremonial event, they would be front and center with tricks and stunts, representing the promise of Petronaut technology to the masses. This made their ‘nauts de facto ambassadors for the entire community, and meant that their technicians were constantly called upon to make devices for ever-grander spectacle. Consequently, members of the Parade squad were as hardened as battlefield ‘nauts, and their technicians even more prolific and risk-taking inventors. Dame Miri was just about to finish her three-year stint as the squad’s senior ‘naut, and was looking forward to retiring into the Shock Troops.
“When you said you wanted to borrow a squawk box,” she said, piggybacking off of Sir Mathias, “I thought you said you were going to treat it gently.”
Lundin frowned. “I hope we didn’t say ‘gently,’” he said, tapping Samanthi on the shoulder with his index finger.
“I didn’t say ‘gently,’” she said, inspecting the teeth of a gear with a gloved finger.
“If we said ‘gently,’ then that was an error and I take full responsibility.”
“Horace! Pliers!”
The two ‘nauts looked at each other as Lundin, after giving them a ‘wait here’ gesture, turned back to Samanthi and the boxy, skeletal mess of a machine they had created. “Whatever they’re doing, they’re certainly excited by it,” Dame Miri said.
“My father always said that the more excited his technicians got in the workshop, the farther away he’d stand,” Sir Mathias told her under his breath.
“So, again, what are you doing with my equipment?” Dame Miri called out, her trained voice projecting effortlessly across the three meters she and Mathias had just put between themselves and the hard-working pair.
“Your spare equipment,” Lundin corrected, hesitantly. “You did say this squawk box was defunct, didn’t you, Dame Miri?”
“Pretty much. It didn’t need anything too complicated, but they’re so little in demand we never made the time to do it.”
“Well, we fixed it!” Samanthi said, brushing her hair out of her face and flashing a grin across the room. She gestured proudly to the deconstructed cylinder next to her, its gears open to the air and a pile of pins and belts heaped around its base. "You’re welcome," she said.
“Am I?” Miri said, watching the tech’s face and hands disappear back inside the cupboard-sized contraption.
“It’ll make music again, as per its original function,” Lundin clarified. “But, uh. We’re also in the progress of adapting it for, as I believe we explained earlier, arcane research.”
Sir Mathias wrinkled his nose. “You can’t be serious about making that into a wizard.”
“It doesn’t smell nearly bad enough,” Dame Miri said.
“We’ll add some dirt and sweat in the next upgrade,” Lundin said with a tentative grin. “As far as I can tell, verbal commands are the primary mode of delivery for magic. Spells are spoken in the arcane language Mabinanto, which is like Old Harutian; which is one of the many languages the squawk box can sing in.”
Dame Miri frowned. The Melodimax, or squawk box, was an ingenious upgrade to the music boxes inventors had perfected decades earlier. The squawk box began with great discs of perforated metal, whose downward-pointing pins would pluck against the tuned teeth of a metal comb as they rotated by. The sound would travel through an intricate network of resonators to an articulated mouthpiece, complete with wooden teeth, a pliable leather tongue, and mobile ‘lips’ made of sea sponge. The entire mouth apparatus was fiendish to look at, and was consequently kept hidden within a wide, ornate funnel on top of
the machine, like the bell of a trumpet. A second metal disc, spinning at the same rate as the first, would translate its perforated code into minute adjustments to the configuration of the mouth, shaping the aperture as pitched sound passed through. The second disc also actuated a miniature bellows deep in the box, which would send rhythmic pneumatic bursts to the mouth to create sibilant sounds. The Melodimax was the first mechanical singer, capable of singing intelligible songs in any language a designer cared to code into its metal disks.
However, singing intelligibly is not the same as singing well, and the nickname ‘squawk box’ quickly caught on, for reasons anyone who had heard the Melodimax perform would readily understand. The exhausted Petronauts responsible for the invention found that once the novelty of the device had worn off, nobles and commoners alike would never choose to hear it sing over a regular songsmith, a griot, or an entertaining drunk. So back the machine had gone into the Parade squad’s storeroom at the warehouse; a specimen of stunning mechanical ingenuity designed to serve a need that didn’t exist.
“Have you ever heard one of these things sing?” Sir Mathias said. “I’ve heard dogs that sound better. Why don’t you have a dog try to speak your magic?”
“For starters, I’m more of a ‘bird’ person,” Lundin began.
“A squawk box would speak a spell the same way every time,” Dame Miri said, stepping closer to the technicians, her curiosity getting the best of her. “You’d need that consistency between trials to know if you were making any progress.”
“Exactly. Exactly! If we worked with human wizards right off the bat, like Samanthi said, we’d never have a prayer of isolating any variables.”
“That’s why I’m a senior tech,” Samanthi called out from inside the Melodimax.
“But what makes you think a machine making some sounds will turn into magic?” Dame Miri asked, her pale face thoughtful. “It doesn’t really speak. It doesn’t understand anything it sings. Even assuming that you punch in the right words for it to say, isn’t there more to magic than that?”
“Maybe,” Lundin admitted. “But if there isn’t, wouldn’t that be nice to know?”
Miri looked at him for a moment, then broke into a brilliant, wicked smile. “You might want to stand back, Sir Mathias,” she said over her shoulder to the wavy-haired giant across the room. “I think your technicians just got me excited too. Ms. Elena!” She swept past Lundin to crouch next to the visible portion of Samanthi’s body. “Do you know how to work the plate press for a squawk box?”
“No, Dame Miri,” Samanthi said, emerging with beads of sweat on her tanned forehead. “One of your techs—the tall one?—told me it just was a noisier version of the fibercard presses we use, but I think she was humoring me.”
“She was. Let me show you how it’s done.”
Lundin felt a hand on his shoulder and nearly jumped out of his boots. He turned to look up into Sir Mathias’ face, the big man’s features lined with concern. “When did you get over here?” Lundin asked.
“I’m fast,” Sir Mathias said simply. “Here’s the thing, Horace. You two have an interesting theory here, but there’s a feastday in two weeks and we have more than enough Recon squad work to do between now and then.”
“Samanthi and I are up-to-schedule on our preparations for the feastday, Sir Mathias,” Lundin said. He’d already prepared what to say for this part. “Any hours we put in on the mechanized wizardry project are on our own time.”
“You mean, like quarter to eleven on a night like this, when normal men and women are already three drinks deep.”
“After we finish this project, Sir Mathias, I promise we’ll have more than three drinks.”
Mathias grinned, despite himself. “I’m just saying, you two already had a bad workload before you decided to learn how to tame the raw energy of chaos in your spare time. So if I hear a single syllable of complaint about how busy you are, I’ll fill your throat with foam from the fire douser. That is, if you’ve fixed it yet.”
“The repair’s ready for testing,” Lundin said in a very small voice, nodding.
“Two more points,” he said calmly, with one hand on the technician’s shoulder and a thick finger in his face. “Promise me you’ll sleep between now and the feastday.”
“Yes, Sir Mathias.”
“Two.” Here, the big man’s voice went low and grave. “Tell Sir Kelley what you’re doing.”
Lundin swallowed. Kelley had been extremely displeased with how their visit to Tymon and Archimedia had turned out. He’d wanted to see Lundin discouraged and humiliated, and instead the technician had come away with stacks of books and scrolls on loan from Archimedia, and a head full of exciting new theories on the nature of magic. Since then, the squad leader had been throwing himself into coordination efforts with the Palace Guard, and had been nowhere in sight at the warehouse or anywhere in Workshop Row. Thank the Spheres for small favors.
“He’s the squad leader. What you two do in this workshop is his business—regardless of whether or not it’s in your spare time. And if you don’t tell him, someone else will.”
Lundin nodded, crestfallen. Somehow, he’d hoped that Sir Mathias would help keep the secret; but, of course, the junior Petronaut’s duty to his squad leader came first. “Understood, Sir Mathias,” he said quietly.
Mathias blinked. “Wait… you don’t think I’ll tell him, do you? No! I was talking about some blabbermouth in the Parade squad leaking the news. Spheres! He’d flay me alive if he thought I knew anything about this and didn’t put a stop to it immediately. No, Mr. Lundin; deniability is my only way out of this brewing fiasco. And to that end,” he said, clapping the shoulder of a very perplexed Horace Lundin, “I’m off to have three drinks. Dame Miri!”
“Sir Mathias?”
“Will you accompany me to the pub like a civilized creature, or have you caught the work madness too?”
“Nothing about you at a pub is civilized,” she said. “I’m just going to stay until we get the first disk punched.”
“Well, since I won’t see you before then, happy feastday. None of you saw me here.” Sir Mathias nodded to each of them and was gone, stooping his head to fit through the door into the starlit night.
“Come on, techs,” Dame Miri told them gleefully, pulling up her sleeves. “There’s work to be done.”
Chapter Six
A Journey Of Ten Thousand Paces
Ruched red drapery flowed across the ceiling in Princess Naomi’s chamber, the billowy fabric gathered up every two meters only to spill downwards again in a series of elegant waves. The room felt lower than it was, as a result, and adult visitors found their heads naturally inclining downwards once they stepped inside. It was as if they were bowing to the child princess before they even saw her; a shamelessly premeditated trick of interior design Lady Ceres Mitrono and the other Regents had approved when setting up the heir’s apartments after Queen Tess’ passing. Also, the gilded furniture, in dark wood and velvet cushions, had been made child-sized to let Naomi receive supplicants in comfort. Let the visitors adjust themselves to her. The poor girl needs every advantage she can get, Lady Ceres thought, watching her young charge from the doorway.
The furniture was gone now, except for a single, severe black cabinet. Gone were the tapestries, the music boxes, the sumptuous chaise, and the soft, sculpted animals the princess had loved as a girl. Everything decorative, comforting, and familiar had been removed from Princess Naomi’s chambers when the First Ordeals began. Had it been only six days? Ceres shook her head slowly. It seemed like it had been years since the ceremonial shears had removed Naomi’s long braid, not quite blond and not quite brown; “Like a fine stein of lager,” Mortimer had described it with irreverent bombast, she remembered with a smile. Now the beautiful hair was gone, safely installed in the Haberstorm family vault, and the spiky-headed youth sitting on the floor in silent isolation was no longer the girl she had been. Whether she would emerge from the Ordeals as a successful
midling, that sober stage between girl and woman, remained to be seen. And whether she would navigate the Second Ordeals, six years later, to become an adult and claim the crown was so far on the horizon as to be beyond consideration. Not worth worrying about, Ceres thought, her square face creased with anxiety. Not when there’s so much in the here-and-now to fret over.
“Her color seems good,” Ouste said at her shoulder, with an air of accentuating the positive.
Lady Ceres looked down at the court sorcerer, her sturdy arms crossed over her chest. Ouste was older than she by a few years, a woman of willowy build—though, in Ceres’s experience, a heavyset wizard was as rare as a two-headed goat—whose silver robe clung tightly to her body. Ouste’s head was shaved to the skin, and her ears were bejeweled from lobe to auricle with an array of glimmering stones, some black, some clear and prismatic. She looked up at the regent with pale blue eyes.
Ceres exhaled through her teeth. “Her current pallor becomes her, I suppose. Whether I would call that good is another matter,” she said, gazing again at the Princess across the room.
“She bears the fast well, for a child of her constitution,” Ouste revised her comment evenly.
“Eight more days.” The regent tapped one finger against her arm, keeping her face calm.
The two women watched the heir in silence for a moment. A servant’s footsteps on a lower floor echoed faintly in the air. Finally, Ouste said in a quiet voice, “I would not wish it on my child.”
“Yes, well,” Lady Ceres said, clearing her throat, “what we wish and what we must do are distant cousins, at best.”
“We’re only enforcing a tradition from a darker time. It is Naomi who bears the cost.”
“As I am perfectly aware,” Lady Ceres said, her temper mounting. “Generations of Haberstorm children have undergone the Ordeals. An heir cannot ascend to the Throne without enduring them.”