by Kate Milford
“Certainly,” Amalgam said, wondering, as he had the night before, what the young woman was up to with her little manipulations. “Sorcha, am I right in saying a reckoning is basically a calculation?”
Sorcha nodded. “But more than that. A reckoning is a calculation of the impossible. Not divination, which is either a foretelling or the finding of an answer that cannot otherwise be brought to light, but a true working out of deeply complicated factors to arrive at . . . well, any number of things. Truth, sometimes; but more often potential truth, for there’s often more than one kind.”
She frowned, trying to work out how best to explain, and as she considered, one of her hands, apparently of its own volition and without Sorcha even particularly noticing, reached into the glowing cinders at the edge of the fire. Her fingers trailed through the embers the way a person might trail fingers through the fur of a sleeping cat, and apparently without a shred of pain. But her hand was blocked from the sight of most everyone in the room by the castle of cards that towered before the hearth, and only three people saw. Mrs. Haypotten, who had come to the hearth to take Sorcha’s place tending the toasted cheese, clucked her tongue quietly, but she had seen plenty of stranger things where the maid and fire were concerned and knew she needn’t really worry. Negret Colophon, who had seen and felt the marks of old, long-healed burns on Sorcha’s hands when they danced the night before, now understood how they’d come to be there. Last of all, there was Maisie, whose eyes grew wide with shock but who thought it might be rude to interrupt Sorcha by pointing out that her fingers were about to catch fire. Then, of course, she realized she had noticed those scars too, and yet another secret dropped into Maisie’s lap like a treasure.
Sorcha, meanwhile, had found the words she was looking for. “Probabilities?” she said experimentally. “The likely outcome of otherwise unmappable and incomparable factors that can’t be combined and evaluated by any other means. These are wildly difficult calculations, and there are consequences to the mere act of attempting them. That is a reckoning.”
The guests—half of them, anyway—listened to this in surprise. It was the most Sorcha had spoken at any time, for one thing, and for a second, as she spoke, her voice took on an authority that seemed at odds with the housemaid’s usual deference. A few in the room, however, were not surprised at all. Negret, of course; and the Haypottens, to whom Sorcha was nearly like a daughter, exchanged glances of pride. Jessamy Butcher, who was not in the habit of underestimating anyone, had suspected Sorcha of having something wondrous in her background that she was keeping carefully hidden, concealed under a veneer of ordinariness like hot banked coals tucked away under cold ash. And Phineas Amalgam had known Sorcha for years and, steeped as he was in old, strange lore, had guessed long ago that she came from a line of conflagrationeers. Just then, however, he was more interested in Petra’s ongoing maneuverings.
“And there’s a way to do that sort of calculation using fire?” Petra inquired.
“There is,” Sorcha replied. She thought for a minute more, then realized she had a hand in the fire and withdrew it quickly, wiping her sooty fingers surreptitiously on her apron. She glanced up to find Negret watching the subterfuge with amusement. Ah, well. What’s seen is seen. She risked flashing a rapid wink at him. Our secret? His smile stretched wider, and Sorcha’s heart fluttered. “You asked for a tale with fire, Mr. Colophon,” she said. “Would a fire-kenning do? A story of one,” she clarified quickly.
“You mean you can’t just up and calculate the impossible for us right now?” Antony Masseter asked, amused, as he lifted one of his cigars to his mouth and reached into his pocket for a match.
“No smoking in here, please, sir,” Mrs. Haypotten said in a tone of faint reproach that nobody really thought was about the cigar.
“Apologies,” Masseter replied smoothly, pocketing his smokes again and dropping into the chair at the little table between the sideboard and the window.
Sorcha leaned her chin on the hand that had been in the fire. “What impossible question have you got, Mr. Masseter?”
“I have a few,” he said, his green eye glittering. “But I apologize. You weren’t asking me, and I can manage my own calculations. For the most part.”
He gestured to Negret, who said simply, “Yes, please.”
“Very well, then.” Sorcha leaned back against the side of the fireplace. “Let me just remember.”
THIRTEEN
The Reckoning
The Firekeeper’s Tale
So.
There are any number of ways to do a fierekenia, as many ways as there are sorts of fires. And just as you might use geometry for solving one problem and the calculus for another, different types of fire work best for solving different sorts of reckonings. Some fires are for unriddling and computing; some are for when you want to do more than simply know. Some fires, some reckonings, can be used to manipulate results. And, since reckonings of this sort have repercussions, as I have said, manipulating results means—sometimes—manipulating reality.
Yes.
Some years ago, there was a maker of devices in Nagspeake, an inventor and engineer called John Ustion. He mostly dealt in navigational tools, but he also made calculating machines. And he was fire-savvy. He himself could do fire-kennings of all sorts, and other kinds of reckonings besides, and he dreamed of building engines just for those: small, portable things that could make reckoning easy. Or if not easy, easier, because again, no true reckoning can be done without consequences, and the inventor understood that not everyone could be trusted with the responsibility.
Still, to amuse himself, he went on trying to build a fierekenia mechanism, even though he knew he could likely never sell it.
Then, one day, a man came to see him. “I have been referred to you by Mr. Alphonsus Lung,” said the man—
Oh, now, what an interesting coincidence that is, Mr. Reever! Though of course it can’t be the same person, since your story was meant to have taken place in the faraway past, and mine must have been more recent. But I’m certain the name was the same. What a small world the city is. Or perhaps it’s just that these old stories do always seem to connect.
Anyhow, the customer said, “I have been referred to you by Mr. Alphonsus Lung, whom I went to see about a calculating device. I’m sorry to say we had a disagreement about the specifics and cannot work together. But he was good enough to give me a few names of other craftsmen here in town who might be able to provide what I need, and yours was among them.”
John Ustion knew Lung well, and the customer’s story surprised him. It was hard to imagine anyone angering Lung to the point where he’d refuse a sale, but if someone did accomplish that, it was hard to imagine Lung still bothering to offer referrals.
“May I ask what the nature of the disagreement was?” Ustion asked.
“Certainly,” the customer said easily. “I believe he doesn’t trust me to have what I want to buy.”
Well, that was interesting. I imagine some part of the engineer’s mind must’ve warned him right then that he ought to refuse, too. If Lung didn’t trust this man to the degree that he had declined to do business with him, then such a man simply wasn’t to be trusted. And Lung’s primary specialty was clockwork. What had this man wanted that a clockmaker couldn’t trust him with? A clockmaker dealt in many things, of course, but chief among them was time, and after all, time was one of the few things in life that people, trustworthy or not, had some level of access to simply by existing. They might squander it, waste it, lose it, ignore it, or even kill it, but everyone did that to some extent. It was hardly for a clockmaker to refuse to sell someone the means to mark their time simply because . . .
Oh.
A different interpretation occurred to Ustion. The customer waited expectantly, watching the pieces come together.
“You went to him for a timepiece?” Ustion asked casually, when he thought he had it figured out.
“Yes.”
“But not for kee
ping time. You could buy a chronometer anyplace.”
The stranger inclined his head in assent. “Not for keeping time, no, not as such. The device I want must be able to measure it, yes, but it must also do much, much more.”
Captivated against his better judgment, Ustion showed the customer to a small table with a chair on either side. The two of them sat down opposite each other, and the inventor took pencil and paper from a drawer. “Tell me.”
And Ustion proceeded to listen, fascinated, and take occasional notes as the customer described a mechanism he had once owned but that had somehow been lost or destroyed. When this stranger had completed a complicated array of figuring, calculating, and solving, he had been able to take his results and, using the mechanism, perform a second set of reckonings. This second set was of the sort that was purely manipulative, meant to alter the reality of time and space and probability, to carry the bearer not simply to a particular place and moment—though it could do that—but to carry him to the right place and moment for accomplishing a specific thing.
So that’s why Lung wouldn’t sell to you, Ustion thought. He didn’t trust you to be able to wield reality like that.
“Correct,” the customer said softly, as if Ustion had spoken out loud. “The question is, can you trust me? And if not . . . do you care?”
Ustion thought about this for a moment. “If Lung didn’t trust you, I can’t either,” he said honestly.
The second part of the question hung between them.
The customer watched Ustion look down at the notes he’d made. Finally, reluctantly, Ustion said, “You will have to commission your mechanism from someone else.”
The customer considered him for a long moment. “But you could do it,” he said softly, “if you wanted to.” It was not a question, and Ustion didn’t bother to answer. He’d already said he wouldn’t sell to the customer, so to answer truthfully would be an unnecessary boast. But Ustion’s mind was already occupied with working out the details, and not only did he think he could do it, he knew that as soon as the door had shut behind this strange customer, he would try.
“I’m very sorry,” the inventor said, getting to his feet. “The city has plenty of artificiers in it. I’m sure you will find the right person.”
The customer rose and bowed. “Thank you for your time,” he said. “I’m sure I will.” He left, and John Ustion went to work.
. . . Just as the customer had known he would. Because this was not the first time he’d had this conversation since leaving Alphonsus Lung’s shop, and in his wake he’d left a handful of fascinated, inspired craftsmen, all with different specialties and different interests and all of whom had refused to sell to him but all of whom he also knew were presently occupied with fashioning impossible devices exactly to his specifications. John Ustion was a jack of many trades, but he was fire-savvy and had been thinking for a long time about a fierekenia mechanism. So he instinctively turned to flame to solve this challenge.
The key to working with fire is knowing what kind to use. Any craftsman will tell you the same. Ask a baker. Ask a blacksmith. So the first thing John Ustion did was think of all the sorts of fire he knew.
There is lyke-fire, among the most powerful sorts, but also the most painful, and the most difficult to control. There is belluine, more powerful and more difficult still and sometimes needlessly destructive, and cald-fire, easier to manage but perhaps too playful for anything with stakes as high as time-working. Bone-fire requires too much fuel at too great a cost to build into any kind of machinery; seel-fire is easier to kindle but is better for obscuring than for revealing; hnappian is a lulling-fire; and to use either wax-fire or wane-fire requires using both, which would’ve meant a physically bigger device and seemed inelegant to Ustion’s engineer’s mind.
Tangle-fire, now . . . tangle-fire has interesting physics underpinning it that might do well when working with space and time. Fleugana is persnickety, but not impossibly so, and can be used to enable flight. Heed-fire and hodijana he considered, along with brumire and bruweiry and welking-fire. All had potential, but none seemed precisely right.
Then there is wheat-fire, which has nothing to do with grain but whose name comes instead from old names for whetting and honing, and a still older word that means behold. Sharpen and witness, that is what wheat-fire does . . . and what it demands. It is a good fire for reckoning, but it is also heartless. Some fires are gentler and paint the things they reveal in kinder light, or arrange the skirts of their shadows strategically, but wheat-fire is brutal in its honesty. It is also shockingly simple to conjure for anyone with even a little fire-savvy; ask to be shown a thing, and wheat-fire obliges, come what may. The aftermath can sometimes be harder to reckon with. That is the fire John Ustion chose for his fierekenia mechanism: a fire for revelations, but a fire that has consequences and that demands its users face them.
Next he built a small calculating device composed of a line of brass dials set over a group of rods made of bone. All of them, dials and rods, were engraved with numbers and letters and symbols. Together, they allowed for thousands upon thousands of combinations that would identify a destination in time and space, and each turn of dial and rod would tighten by increments a spring. That spring would, in turn, regulate a pressure valve that would, when opened by a stopcock, release the precise concentration of wheat-fire required to illuminate a passage to the looked-for destination. If the calculations were done correctly, the smaller reckonings would combine into a bigger one to guide the device and control the fire. And then, somehow—I don’t know precisely how, but somehow—the fire would show the way into some other there-and-then.
It was a beautiful and terrifying device. Each time he turned a dial or twitched one of the rods into place, John Ustion understood why Alphonsus Lung had turned the customer away, and he knew he had been right to do the same.
But the contraption didn’t work.
Ustion tried for weeks to get his device to do what he thought—what he knew—it ought to be able to do. He made notes, made adjustments, swapped out parts, tore it to pieces, and started fresh. Each time, he came back to the same design and the same fire. It ought to have worked—he knew it ought to work, but the mechanism just wouldn’t do what he wanted. Something was missing. Still, he had a strong sense that, little by little, he was getting closer to figuring out what that something was. The mechanism persisted in not working, but Ustion became more and more convinced that it was just a matter of time before he solved its riddles.
A strange thing happened as he worked, though: he also began to feel more and more reluctant. He would set the parts aside for longer and longer between attempts. He would get new ideas but put off trying them. He would delay building pieces he suspected he needed, if he didn’t already have them to hand. It wasn’t that he’d lost interest—he longed to finish the device. But the closer he got to finishing it, the more he felt he simply . . . shouldn’t.
And yet at the same time, he couldn’t just walk away. A part of him—a part so strong, it seemed some days that it had a heartbeat of its own—needed to see the thing to completion. So his need and his conscience fought with each other as the weeks became months. Now and then he thought of the strange customer, and occasionally he considered visiting Alphonsus Lung and some of the others he suspected the customer might’ve gone to after Lung had turned him away. He wondered if they had been just as unable to let go of the beautiful, terrifying idea the stranger had put before them all. But he didn’t seek them out.
Ten years passed, which seems like a long time but isn’t really—not to someone working on the problem of manipulating time, anyway. At last John Ustion figured out what was missing from his design. Not something, but several somethings were still wanted to complete his time-working fierekenia mechanism. On the list he had compiled over the long years of testing and trial, there were four items: a spring with very specific properties that would convert the turns of the rods and dials into the right kinds of power
and regulation; a key capable of tightening that spring and all that was to be wound up with it; a keyway that would allow the wheat-fire to not simply reveal a destination in time and space, but also open a door to it; and a box—or coffret; I hadn’t heard that word before, but I like it quite a bit—to hold the lot.
That night, John Ustion slept badly. His dreams were all nightmares, each one a cautionary tale warning him to go no further with his fierekenia mechanism. In every nightmare, a different type of fire appeared and appealed to him not to finish the device, and when, each time, Ustion’s pride and fascination drove him to declare that he would build it come hell or high water, whatever fire was there with him in the dream became a comet that consumed him with flame when it hit, so that over and over he woke up screaming in pain and panic, sure that he was being immolated in his own bed.
When at last, just before dawn, the wheat-fire came to him, it made no entreaties or threats. It said simply, I will do it if you make me. And then, without waiting for Ustion’s defiant dream-reply, the wheat-fire consumed him with a touch. And, because what is revealed by wheat-fire can be so much more painful than its actual burn, the fire did not immolate him but merely showed him flashes of possibility, probability, and consequence. There were grim prospects, but also, surprisingly—or perhaps not; wheat-fire, after all, reveals nothing but the truth—there was the potential for great good as well.
It was the last dream of the night, and when he woke from it, Ustion went straight to his workshop. He took the pieces of the unfinished mechanism and the list of missing bits, and he locked them in a cabinet.
As I told you before, John Ustion was fire-savvy, and he was an artificier of the highest magnitude. He continued to perform reckonings himself when he needed them, and he built many, many wondrous machines. But he never opened that cabinet again.