Pathfinder Tales--Gears of Faith

by Gabrielle Harbowy

  That surprised Keren. Omari laughed at her expression. “It’s true, it’s true. While I have little interest in magic, I’ve attended nearly every major school or academy in Absalom at one time or another, even if only briefly. I serve Irori, god of perfection, who considers it important to be proficient in a range of important skills.”

  “Meaning he stays until he feels he knows enough, and then he moves on,” Renwick said. Omari bowed his head, not denying it.

  Gears turned between Zae’s ears. Keren could almost hear them spinning up. “You’re really trying to become a god? That’s fascinating! Do you get to choose what you want to be a god of, or is it picked for you?”

  Omari’s laugh was as smooth as the whisper of feathers. “I don’t actually know,” he said. “I’ll be going in with a few choices just in case, and I’ll just have to hope that the Starstone finds me worthy of one of them.”

  “Do you worry that your god might be upset with you if you ascend? Would that be like saying that he’s not enough for you?” Keren asked.

  “Of course not. My ascension will be a testament to the god of perfection. When I ascend, it will be an honor to him that I have purified and trained myself in his image, in his path. I like to imagine he’ll greet me as a brother.”

  Keren looked for a hint of irony or humor, but there was none. Omari’s deep violet eyes were wide and shining. He truly believed that he was his deity’s equal, and that everyone else just didn’t realize it yet.

  “What are you doing to prepare?” Zae asked.

  Omari considered the question like he was rolling it around on his tongue, deciding whether it was worth answering. “I keep myself to a very specific diet, of course. I’ve gone to fortune-tellers, real ones with the gift for sight, for advice. And I’ve studied other aspirants. When most people make preparations, it’s out of pure superstition. Mine, on the other hand, are the product of enlightenment. I eat no flesh, I drink nothing impure, I fight without weapons, I wear no metal, and I avoid the arcane. These things are all tools of mortality, and no one can transcend mortality with mortal tools.”

  Keren recalled the legends saying that Cayden Cailean, god of wine and freedom, had taken the test so drunk that even he couldn’t remember how he passed it. Omari’s rigid purity was nothing more than the same superstition that he took his superior stance against. Not in the mood for debate, she kept her silence.

  “When will you take the test?” Zae asked.

  “We could walk down to the chasm right now and you could watch me cross it,” he asserted, then held up a single finger. “But I’m waiting for a number of specific factors to align. I’ll go to my test when fortune shines brightest on my attempt. I hope you’ll all come and witness it.”

  Carefully trying to match Omari’s water-over-rocks smoothness, Keren said, “That would be quite the inspiring sight.”

  The monk stood and bowed deeply to Keren. “You honor me. I’m already looking forward to our next chat, should I see you again before I ascend.” He drifted off toward the bar. She kept watching until she saw that he received water and simple bread. He seemed to be known to the servers, and was now chatting pleasantly with the thin young man who had brought the ale.

  “What did he mean before, about your eyes?” Keren asked Pendris.

  “Oh, that? We have the same shade of violet eyes. It’s a rare color in humans, and some people think it signals Azlanti heritage, especially when it’s paired with dark hair and a certain skin tone. Azlant was an ancient human empire, and some people treat it as sort of a status thing.” She tilted her head pointedly toward the bar.

  “So he thinks he’s part Azlanti?”

  “Oh, yes. He’s convinced of it. And he thinks I am, as well. It’s why he imagines some kind of rapport between us. At least he doesn’t think we’re related or something. Then he’d think he had a far bigger claim on my time.”

  “But at least he’d flirt with you less,” Rowan muttered.

  Keren sought the bard’s eyes. They were not dark brown, as she’d first assumed, but deep purple, like an overripe grape. “Do you think Omari could succeed?”

  “To be sure, it does take a certain demeanor to want to be a god, and very seldom is that demeanor humble and meek. Seldom are they quite that confident either, though.” Pendris shook her head. “I think if they understood what immortality really means, fewer would aspire to it. The old songs are full of mortals who weren’t careful what they wished for. I don’t know if Omari could succeed. I just hope for his sake that he loves himself as much as he thinks he does.”

  Keren lifted her mug to toast to that sentiment. “And I hope for our sake that the Starstone doesn’t.”

  Though she’d only intended to stay long enough to be friendly, Keren was surprised when she heard the bells for last call and realized how much time had passed in good company. She could hold her alcohol particularly well—an attribute she had always credited to her upbringing among soldiers—so the end of the night found her happy, sober, and alert enough to escort her tipsy gnome along the darkened streets. She spotted no followers; perhaps their shadows had retreated for the night.

  16

  THE BANDAGE BRIGADE

  ZAE

  Zae arrived at the tea shop shortly after dawn the next morning, eager to assist with weaving the enhanced net before class. Renwick, Rowan, and an older, bald-headed human named Andan were there before her, and more students straggled in soon after. Renwick demonstrated the knots and the pattern, starting them out, and they took turns at it. One worked the shuttle and gauge to construct the net itself, while the others braided wire three strands thick, trying to keep well ahead of the person doing the weaving so that they wouldn’t run out of material. Renwick retreated to a seat near the samovar and hummed under his breath, in time with the planing and whittling of a wooden curve for a project of his own.

  As they had the previous morning, they all marched over to the Clockwork Cathedral together once the cognate had assembled.

  In the long workroom with the large saws and stationary crank-driven drills, Zae’s supplies were just as she’d left them the previous day. Glivia and Ruby hunched over the prototype glove, discussing what had worked and what hadn’t when they’d brought the wire back over in a single awkward brick with the net-in-progress draped around it. Zae and Rowan took turns braiding and weaving. Renwick wandered by a few times to examine their work.

  Things went by in a haze, until Renwick called out a warning about an hour before the gear was due to close. A couple of students slipped out—presumably to find a privy while they still could.

  Round by round, the net grew. The tripled strands weren’t too stiff to weave, but they were strong. Soon enough, the diameter eclipsed Zae’s height. Instead of clamping the center of the net and revolving it around a fixed point, they had to fix it to the floor and walk around it to weave each new row.

  The weighted border provided an interesting challenge, but that was where the glove came into play. Glivia tried it on, adjusted the resizing straps, and modeled it. “It fits either hand, and you adjust the sizes with these sliding buckles here. There’s a plate of the skymetal alloy in the palm, on the back of the hand because that’ll be the palm if you wear it on the opposite hand, and in smaller plates in the fingertips, all connected through the material so that they recognize each other. When the glove detects another piece of the same alloy that isn’t connected, it triggers a spell on the wearer that lets them carry three times what they could normally carry. Eventually it’ll reset more than twice a day, and it’ll let you trigger it without the alloy, but it’s a functional start. Want to try?”

  Rowan held his hand out. Glivia slipped the glove off her hand and fit it onto Rowan’s. “Okay, now pick up one of the weights.”

  The halfling grinned, rubbed his hands together, and reached out toward the stack of lead shot. Each ball had been painted with some of the noqual alloy, a cheaper solution than making weights out of the expensive stu
ff.

  His hand made contact and his expression changed to one of wonder. “This works! Here, someone hold the net steady. I’ll have these clipped on in no time.”

  Zae returned to her drawings; she would still have to make the simple and fancy nets she’d drafted the day before, but now that the main project was done she was free to do so with cheaper metals and on a much more demonstration-friendly scale. She lifted her desktop and removed the cover from her perpetual light jar.

  Without warning, the entire workroom listed hard to the left.

  Or at least, it felt like it had. The tremor came before the sound, but when the sound came it filled her ears and overflowed, leaving her unable to hear anything else. She couldn’t be sure what was real. There was smoke, and Rowan had thrown himself over her. They were under her desk, and bits of metal were pelting the table with a percussive rain that Zae could feel more than hear. She lifted her head, grateful to still be wearing her goggles. The great sawing machine looked like a massive tree that had been struck by lightning. All that was left of it was its stump, surrounded by a debris field of singed and scattered things. Rowan got up gingerly, brushed himself off, and offered his hand to help Zae to her feet. All around the room, groaning and cursing students were taking stock of the damage. Thankfully, none of it seemed too serious.

  “You all right?” Zae asked him.

  He nodded. “You?”

  “Intact, I think. Thank you for squishing me. That was fast thinking.”

  “Don’t mention it.” Rowan looked a little glazed from shock, but so did everyone else. Zae grabbed her satchel and staggered out to the corridor, then the main hall, where she saw smoke billowing out from several other corridors, too. A few early stragglers like herself were also making their way to the main thoroughfare. “Do you need healing?” Zae called. Her voice still sounded tinny and distant in her own ears.

  She ducked back into the workroom. “It wasn’t just us! Anybody we can spare, please help the other wings.” Contented to see a few others starting toward her, she left and made her way carefully on shaking legs toward the next corridor down.

  The wing with the locked door and the giant construct. She had gone there without thinking. Most of the laboratories were open and empty, but one door was shut and had a wedge pried under it to keep it that way. After only a moment’s hesitation at the reception she’d gotten from them the day before, she pulled at the rough block of damp wood, but it had been hammered in too well, and because it was wet, it had expanded once in place. It wouldn’t budge.

  A sinking feeling settled like a counterweight in the pit of Zae’s stomach. She sat down in the doorway and set both feet against the wedge, her back braced by the doorframe, and pushed her whole weight against it, but she wasn’t enough to move it. If there’d been an explosion and people were still alive inside, there might not be time for her to go and find help; she’d have to make do with what she had.

  What she had was a half bottle of acid, which she sometimes used to etch designs in metal. She uncorked it, holding her breath, and dribbled a bit on the wedge. Smoke trickled upward, dispersing into the air, while the liquid ate through the wood. Zae corked the bottle carefully and put it back. Then she pulled at the door and kept tugging until the wedge gave way.

  She opened the door a crack, using it to shield herself from the room.

  Thick smoke trickled out of the opening, bearing the charred scent of burnt wiring and crisped flesh. Zae pulled the door open fully and slipped inside.

  While Alive and Ticking seemed to have suffered no actual casualties, the same was not true of whoever this cognate was. There were eight bodies in the room, all crumpled into individual little heaps and covered with debris. She turned over the nearest one, but it was too late for him. A large explosion in a small confined room, magically muffled and isolated, had created a concussive force and given it nowhere to go. In her head, something clicked into place. Whoever had rigged all the machines had to have done so to cover their actions here.

  She checked over all the bodies, in hopes that one of them had survived. They all disappointed her in that regard, so instead she picked the most intact of the bunch. Kneeling beside him, she brushed away the debris and dust to rest her palm against his cheek. “Lady Brigh, one more whisper of life, I beg you.” She closed her eyes to concentrate and pushed magic into the corpse, a golden heat like sun-warmed bronze. When she felt the face shift, she opened her eyes. He was still dead, but now his lips moved soundlessly.

  “Hello?” she whispered to him, “I’m sorry I couldn’t save you. Please, let me help your death be a testament to your work. Tell me, were you slain by a person?”

  His lips were turning a fascinating shade of pastel blue, and in the midst of their random movements they formed a word and put sound behind it. “Yessss…”

  “Were you slain by someone you knew?”

  “No…”

  “Was anything taken from your workroom?”

  The lips worked for a moment, as if the corpse was thinking, or winding up its gears enough to push more air past dead vocal cords. “Tuuuris.”

  “Turis.” Zae sounded the word out for herself, tasting it. It tasted like burnt metal, and ash, and blood. It wasn’t from any language she knew, but she’d have been the first to admit that she didn’t know them all. Yet. She hadn’t thought to cast any sort of language comprehension on herself first.

  The dead lips were stilling. She raced to think of something else to ask, but couldn’t come up with anything useful. “Thank you, friend. Rest well.”

  * * *

  Zae rejoined her cognate. The fraternity of healers had taken stock of their own, then spread throughout the Clockwork Cathedral to help heal the others. Sometimes it was as simple a matter as providing water or rudimentary bandages. Ruby insisted on leading the large-scale effort; since one of her witch’s hexes allowed her to heal the small wounds of as many people as needed healing, she could cure the minor injuries and then send the severely wounded to anyone available to help them further, allowing the priests among them to save their spells and potions for the people who needed them most.

  “It only works once per day on any given person, but it works on an unlimited number of people in a day,” she explained to Zae. The gnome created water in a large jug and Ruby helped her pour it out into small drinking vessels—improvised from clean, empty salve jars. The jars had the benefit of sealing tight so they could be carried without spills. They loaded up as many of the water jars as would fit on a rolling cart and started down the corridors, calling out for survivors. In each wing there were some lightly wounded tinkers who limped out, dazed from shock, to take water and healing and beg help for their worse-injured colleagues inside. At each stop, Zae asked them which cognate they were part of, with the idea that they might need to provide some sort of accounting to the mysterious, unseen administrators of the academy.

  Down one corridor, they found a few stragglers who emerged in complex goggles and with air-filtering masks over their noses and mouths.

  “We’re from Alive and Ticking. Is anyone badly injured in your workshop?”

  “We’ll be fine,” one of them said. “Only three of us here, and we weren’t near the machine when it blew, just updating our notes. You should check on the Steel Singers down the way.” He gestured toward the far end of the corridor with a tilt of his head. “A few of them stumbled past us, but there might be more inside.”

  Ruby thanked them, gave them water, and pushed the cart on down the corridor, following the tinker’s advice. A burnt electrical scent now dominated the cathedral.

  The Steel Singers had fared poorly. Musical constructs had been connected to their machine—a central generator—and now the cognate’s hard work lay in mangled scraps of charred metal, some still giving off steam. A low moan was still coming from one of the automatons, as if it had been caught mid-note by the blast and was still waiting for the rest of the quartet to rejoin it in song.

&nbs
p; In the rubble, one engineer in goggles sat holding the stump of her arm. Another, bare-faced, wailed while he prodded gingerly around a thick curl of wire spring embedded in his eye.

  “Oh, gods. Don’t touch it!” Ruby called, rushing toward the student with the injured eye. Zae left her to it and made for the handless woman, already pulling a sturdy length of stretchy rope from her satchel to serve as a tourniquet.

  “It’s all right,” she said, covering the woman’s remaining hand with hers. “We’ve got you now. Do you know where it went?”

  The woman shook her head, eyes downcast. It didn’t mean no, but instead signaled a particular sort of hopelessness that Zae had seen in patients before. Then she lifted her gaze, wincing, toward the generator.

  “Was it crushed in the machine?”

  A shallow nod answered her. “All right. You’re in the best place for it, you know. There’s got to be a group in here making artificial limbs. They’ll give you tools built right into your fingers, and different attachments for different tasks…” Part of Zae’s banter was a proven way of distracting patients from their injuries by keeping their attention on her voice while she worked the worst of a wound. But the more she spoke, the more Zae almost wanted the enhancements she described for herself. She thought of the metal bar embedded in her pinky, for the kindly dwarf’s side project, and envisioned replacing her whole littlest finger with a multitool covered in realistic flesh.

  But now wasn’t the time to draw schematics in her mind’s eye, now was the time to heal a traumatized student. A bottle of potion from Zae’s satchel, scented of orange peel and colored to match, served to clean the wound so that she could see it clearly, while numbing the area.

  By now the blood had slowed and the analgesic had taken effect. Zae drew in a breath to pray, but a hand on her shoulder halted her.

  It was Ruby. “Please, you’ve got limited resources. Allow me.”

  Zae’s first instinct was to argue. She’d started this patient, and she would see her through. But when she did a quick mental tally of the spells she had left for the day, she relented. “Thank you. Anything I can do for…”