by C J Timms
Swan paused again. ‘The damage?’
‘All fixed up my little anvil, pay no mind, we’ve cleaned up the debt. Just focus on topping your class. The family is so proud of you.’
‘Thanks, dad.’ Swan cut the line.
Larc quirked her head. If a metallic beak could smile, Swan would swear it did.
‘What do you know about that.’ Swan said.
Larc shook her head. Larc lapsed into silence again and gestured at her wing.
Swan gathered her tools. She rolled out her shoulders, the old pain flaring again under the new.
Gale - Paged to action
Difficult to pin and frakking deceptive, never take your eyes off a septik.
Spur’s primer for fracturesmiths 2nd edition.
‘No, no, no Master Knott, that simply won’t do,’ said Professor Wrank. Gale smiled, clenched his jaw tightly and rotated the artificers claw counterclockwise. Gale knew where he would rather shove the claw.
Artificing was a compulsory weekly duty for first years. Every week they were allocated to a construction list with one of the Professors. That meant spending half the day assisting them in building their devices. Somehow, every week Gale would end up rostered on Professor Wrank’s list. He was sure the fact that Alisdair was in charge of rostering had nothing to do with it.
The House Laurels first years got rostered to spend their days on high demand, high pay projects. They got lists making world-crackers with Ilmark or making coronal circuit boards with Arancina. Some even hit the jackpot and got to work on Salt-drives for airships with Helios.
This was all mere speculation for Gale. He had to speculate about something during the hours he spent staring at the black drape of Wrank’s assembly field, building glorified magical messaging boxes. Gale’s eyes followed along on the monitor showing the internal progress of Wrank’s assembly.
Like a bulbous spider, Professor Wrank loomed over the sterile drape. Wrank manipulated a series of retractable claws and cameras in a contained reality pocket. Within the reality pocket he assembled communicators that, unlike standard electronics, worked around Script sometimes. His communication augmenters were supposed to transmit information in places where the Penumbra was too thick. They were supposed to sidestep the Penumbra which mucked with electronics and all but the most basic guns. It had taken seven days to get a message to Ashley when he’d tried out the augmenter on his phone.
Watching Wrank assemble them was painstakingly tedious. Gale’s primary job was to manipulate a handle attached to the communicator. His work should have been simple. He was meant to push and pull the communicator or rotate it. The problem was, pushing up made it go down, rotating left turned the communicator right, and everything was reversed. Then there was Wrank’s helpful nature.
‘No master Knott…the other clockwise.’ Wrank snapped and rapped him on the hands. Gale kept a smile locked on his face and slowly turned the communicator the other way. Gale manipulated the internal scissors next. Wrank tied off another wire.
‘Not enough length with that cut Mr Knott.’
‘Too much length with that cut Mr Knott.’
‘Right length but not quick enough, Mr Knott...huh...I thought you would be better at this with a name like that.’ Wrank guffawed and shared a conspiratorial look with his long-suffering assistant Patrice. Patrice, who passed the various tools over during the procedure, croaked out a laugh.
‘Yes, an excellent joke Professor,’ said Patrice.
‘What’s that sound,’ Wrank said and scanned the assembly room. ‘Gale why are you making that sound?’
Gale paused. ‘You mean breathing, Professor?’
Wrank nodded. ‘Yes, less of that, I’m trying to work here for goodness sake.’
Less aggravating then Wrank’s lists, but still terrifying, were the rounds with Bursar Gibraltar. Not only was Gibraltar in charge of their debt, he had not forgiven Gale for the entrance exam. During his rounds, they would travel from fracture site to fracture site observing different techniques.
Gibraltar was a specialised type of fracturesmith known as a Sawbones who could open new fractures. Only one in ten smiths had this ability. If you didn't have a Sawbones on your team, you had to travel via growth plates to go between the realms.
‘Cullen, What hrrrmmmm….fixation nail would you use on a comminuted fracture on Celesta Firma.’ Gibraltar said.
‘Ummm… a pointy one.’ Cullen said and laughed.
Gibraltar laughed along with him. ‘Yes very good…hrrrrmmmm….every second you laugh I am adding ten gold to your debt.’
Cullen shut his mouth.
‘Swan,’ Bursar Gibraltar said. ‘How many layers…hrmm…would you apply to a cast in Locomotyr?’
‘Three and a half sir, four if it's near a growth plate.’
‘Yes, very good.’ Gibraltar rumbled.
‘Look, boys, the dainty swan can count,’ Alisdair whispered, loud enough for most students to hear. Swan reddened, but Gibraltar had already moved on to Gale.
‘Gale, what are the four recommended techniques for pinning a fathomless in Spur’s Primer for fracturesmiths.’
Gale paused. ‘The Park Kim…the…uh…the…’
‘The Park Kim, the Anglesly, the Ordovain Reverse and the Open Wilhelm.’ Yip burst out beside him.
Gibraltar frowned at both of them. ‘Ten gold debt to the lighthouse for interrupting, master Yip. Twenty gold debt to the Lighthouse for Knott’s gross incompetence. I’d fine you more but your laziness….hrmmmmm….but you will probably get your teammates killed anyway.’
For every wrong answer, Gibraltar lumped Gale with extra work after class. Unpaid work. Adam had yet to fail to answer a question correctly, and neither had Yip. Both of them were what Gale thought of as ‘gunners’. People who would ruthlessly get ahead at all costs. At least Yip was on their side. Well, probably.
Any opportunity, as Yip kept saying.
Gale went to bed exhausted most nights. He tried to chant his mantra before bed every night. He would make a ragged attempt to thumb through Ironchurch’s book ‘Lifting Great Weight.’
‘Find the university…become a fracturesmith…stop the W…zzzzzzzz.’
An enlarged Shackleton floated over Gale. It was a hell of a way to wake up.
‘Look how ripped he is Gale.’ Titus said, holding Shackleton in the air. ‘His workout sessions with me are really paying off.’ Titus ducked out the door to burst into Yip’s room. Gale saw a crossbow bolt fly into the hallway.
‘You shot him, he’s just a poor debt golem.’ Titus said from next door.
Gale ran a hand through his hair. It was too early in the morning for Titus’s enthusiasm. Gale rolled out of bed, threw on some clothes and headed downstairs. Gale sat down in the kitchen and Swan poured him a coffee. The coffee came from their bean-brewing drip plant, a plant from Wyldfell that produced a warm coffee like nectar that dripped down into cup-like leaves.
‘This is the best coffee Swan.’ Gale said as he inhaled the fumes.
‘Everyone makes drip coffee Gale,’ Swan rolled her eyes.
‘But its what you do with it.’ He said and sipped the black coffee, the reference to The Castle lost on his companions.
‘Put it in a cup?’ Titus asked, and Gale punched him in the arm. Swan had started brewing coffee for them every morning, for that Gale put her up there with most saints.
Gale pulled up a copy of the paper which for some reason every house got for free. On the cover of the paper, an artists rendering of a red armoured knight stared out at them. ‘Police seek reward for capture. Two more found drained of blood in Tideline.’
Tearing his eyes away from the paper, Gale nodded to the sizeable Shackleton, who now had an arrowhead sized dent in the centre of his chest. Fight the battles that you could.
‘We’ve got a debt problem.’ Gale sighed.
‘He’s right’ sai
d Yip as he entered the kitchen at precisely seven o clock. He ignored the cup of coffee Swan had poured for him and started to make his own. Titus put himself between Shackleton and Yip, staring daggers at Yip.
‘Sure, but where do we get extra money?’ Swan asked.
‘Get jobs?’ Gale suggested.
‘I already have two jobs.’ Titus said.
‘You do?’ Swan said.
Titus flexed his right biceps. ‘Job one,’ he held up his left biceps, ‘…and job two. I work them every day.’
Swan threw a spoon at Titus who ducked under the table. The spoon clanged off Shackleton who went flying across the room and collided with the wall. Gale forgot how strong Swan was sometimes.
The pager on Gale’s belt went off, numbers lighting up the screen. ‘
‘Gale is that a…’ Swan said.
‘A pager’ Yip said. One of his journals zoomed over it, projecting a faint green light. ‘It's an on-call pager, for fracture sites. We aren’t supposed to get those until second year. First years don’t get on-call shifts.’
‘Rule twenty-two, a man respects the law. You are breaking the law Gale.’ Titus said.
‘Am I though?’ Gale asked.
Yip pulled a copy of the Universities bylaws out of his floating library and leafed through it. Yip held up the book and pointed to a specific clause. ‘The rules say we’re not allowed to have a pager, but they don’t say we can’t respond to a call out in an emergency.’
Gale placed the flashing call out pager onto the table. ‘I’ve been looking into this. The payments are automated based on what calls you accept. Money is dropped in a lockbox that the pager opens. Its automated, golems transfer the money. We’d never have to deal with a living person. Think about it, this is our chance to do some good as fracturesmiths and get in some extra training for exams. We get every Saturday off, and we could probably pick up some extra jobs at night. A bit of extra work will be good for the soul. Character building.’
‘Well, if it's not against the law…a man should do good,’ Titus said. ‘I’m in.’
‘I don’t know Gale.’ Swan said, she eyed the pager like it was a viper. ‘Do you really want to work extra on call?’
‘Come on Swan its a nice easy cat four.’
Pager call-outs were triaged from one to five. One being a full-blown invasion and four being a skyfish or a fracture too small for anything to get through.
‘Swan look.’ Titus roared as he shoved Shackleton in Swan’s face. ‘Shackleton can hold his own coffee mug now.’ The rapid movement spilled the coffee out of the mug onto Swan’s bright green activewear. Swans eye twitched, and she reached for another spoon. Titus took cover behind the couch.
‘Bloody bogan, I’m in as long as we get paid.’ She said.
‘Right.’ Gale said. ‘Now, how does this work.’
Yip sighed, rolling his eyes. ‘When you click the accept button, the pager will teleport us to the fracture site. They can only travel to fracture sites right, because they are weaknesses in reality. Once we fix the fracture site, we’ve got a window of about thirty seconds to teleport back before the connection severs. If we miss that window, we’ll be walking home, and we’ll be getting a lot of questions. None of us are Sawbones.
Now click accept before someone else does.’
Gale nodded, he imagined on-call shifts were fought over, what a privilege, what an opportunity. They all gathered shuffling in around the pager. The text glowed,
Then reality broke around them.
Gale/Swan - First pager
‘I have quorum…for we are many’
Words muttered by a dying sailor found in Oreheim, sole survivor of the Airship Volaris.
Gale fell on his butt on a white marble sidewalk. He rubbed his bruised backside and his second-hand suit pants, fresh from the op shop. Not a skerrick of dirt had gotten on his pants, and the sidewalk was polished to within an inch of its life.
‘You sure this is it Gale?’ Swan asked.
The sidewalk, which was frakking marble, butted onto the walls of a palace. The walls were cloudrock, solid to the touch but partially transparent with shifting swirls of clouds in motion. Cloudrock was robust, light and would repair itself if damaged given enough time. Through shifting cloud patterns, he glimpsed a palace inside the walls.
Floating islands dotted the sky above. Orbiting islands parted the clouds like ships through a white sea, and the islands ranged from small as a dinghy to large as a city. Small flying craft flitted between the islands, the craft adorned with shimmering paint and effervescent hulls.
One large island, only a few hundred metres distant, listed through the sky. Gale summoned a hydrolens and zoomed in on it. The listing island was covered with mining scaffolding and creatures scrabbled over its surface, goblins and komodo’s. Paramourans stood over them with whips.
‘Do we knock?’ Swan said, poking him.
Gale pulled his attention back to the golden gates in front of them. Yip picked at his cheap suit sleeves. Swan smoothed her clinical blouse under a power jacket. Titus was crammed into a suit that strained at the shoulders and belly. Gale wore his cheapest, finest suit with a bright red tie. Put on a show, he thought. The threads made you seem like a real fracturesmith after all.
Blue smoke and cracks in reality receded behind Gale. The blue tendrils of Penumbra sucked back after depositing them here. Their way back healed itself over, callous forming. Without a sawbones on their team, they couldn’t just travel via private fracture at will. Their way back was reliant on the pager and completing the job.
Gale checked they had everything, short nails, long nails and a bucket of griprock plaster. Swan was holding the griprock at arms length as it swirled inside a white bucket. The stuff set hard, very fast.
‘Have to move forwards.’ Gale said and banged his fist on the cloudrock gates. They resonated like a set of wind chimes, the tone ringing out through the palace wall.
‘What do you think it’ll be?’ Titus asked, stretching out his arms. ‘A fathomless? A groanmonger from Wyldfell? Ooooohhhh maybe if we’re really lucky it’ll be caucors from Tangentius.’
‘Shut up Titus.’ Swan said, fretting with her clinical blouse.
‘Maybe a dragon, we could take a dragon.’
‘Dragons aren’t real Titus.’ Swan said, punching him in the arm.
Titus rubbed his shoulder. ‘But you agree we could take one right?’
A Paramouran answered the door. She was beyond middle age but striving for youth with paint, perfume and an upturned nose. Despite the makeup however the Paramouran wore dressing robe and slippers. Paramourans lived longer than humans, but Gale would have put her around sixty.
‘Are you the fracturesmiths I sent for, you’re all so young.’ The Paramouran said, wrinkling her nose.
‘Maybe you’re just old,’ Swan muttered under her breath. Gale elbowed her.
‘Yes ma’am here to provide an excellent service. How should we address you?’ Gale asked.
The Paramouran narrowed her eyes. She harumphed, ‘You should recognise the Lady Crivenwix.’
‘Oh, of course, ma'am, comes right to mind now. Can I ask what the problem is?’ Gale said.
The Paramouran stared at Gale then sighed. She looked down the street both ways and ushered them in. ‘I have two problems, a small one around the back and a big one around the front. Two of you go round the back and deal with the small one, and the other two follow me to fix the reality fracture.’
‘Shotgun back,’ said Swan and dragged Titus towards the back of the house.
‘But Swan, the big one’s round the front. Swan….Swan…’
Swan and Titus did work well together. They’d gotten good during the entrance exam. Swan never seemed to want to partner up with Yip and only worked with Gale in
a pinch. He’d have to work on that. A team needed clarity, after all. Perhaps a good team rumble was needed Gale thought and touched the copy of Brene Brown’s 'Dare to lead’ in his pocket today.
Crivenwix lead them into an immaculate garden. Cloudrock sculptures blended with flowing streams and water features. Giant bamboo-like plants with thin gossamer sails billowed in the wind. Gale stepped up to one and could see it pull the moisture from the air and fed it down into the stems. Crivenwix halted in the middle of the rock garden and spread her arms wide.
‘Behold, the vile spread of Corrosyv.’
The tranquil water garden stretched all around them, disturbed only by the gentle patter of water.
Yip coughed. ‘Errrr…’
Crivenwix threw her hands down at a large rock in the water garden. Gale leaned over. There was a crack in one of the stones lining her garden pond. About three centimetres across.
‘This cracked three days ago, I want it fixed before one of those…brutes from the Deep comes out.’ Crivenwix said, stamping her foot.
Gale dutifully took a knee and looked at the rock. He relaxed his focus and assessed the Vibe. Traces of Celesta Firma Script swirled around the cloudrock, but nothing else jumped out at him. Yip also lent over, and his ledger circled the rock, numbers flashed.
‘Analysis,’ Gale whispered to Yip.
‘Its a rock with a crack in it.’ Yip whispered back. They both looked up at the Paramouran and back to each other.
Gale turned back to Crivenwix. ‘Ma’am just checking here, probably a silly question, but was this rock dropped recently?’
‘Oh I had people in three days ago working on the garden. Lazy workers from Locomotyr can’t get good labour anywhere these days. They wanted overtime pay too. Probably brought the reality crack with them. Tracked it in with their dirty boots.’
Gale looked at Yip, down to the dropped rock and back up at the Paramouran. Gale plucked at his cheap suit and thought of Bondi Big Burger. He touched his copy of Ironchurch’s ‘Lifting Great Weight’ in his other pocket. The customer was always right, people judge on appearances, and it’s all about putting on a show.