The Gadgeteer Box Set

by Gin Hollan

  "Where are you?" Arabeth said.

  'I'll be leaving as soon as we're done talking. I'll head for that little house.'

  "What's going on?" Sam asked, standing nearer.

  Arabeth shook her head. "It's coincidence, right? Marble dropped the crystal and suddenly Gregor is violently angry, raving about things that no one can hear and making threats."

  "Like when Melanie had that thing in her head...," Sam said softly, as though to himself.

  "I wonder if other Seers were impacted, and how long the effect lasts. This could be very bad," Andun said.

  "It's a good thing there aren't many Seers," Arabeth commented.

  "True, true. Until we understand what's happening. Arabeth, tell her we need to test something. Tell her to stay where she can watch Gregor, but safely."

  Arabeth relayed the request.

  'Uh ... all right, I'll stay in the booth. Please hurry.'

  "Arabeth, did you see which colour Marble grabbed?" he asked.

  "Green, I think. She was fast about it."

  "Then I'll try red, like the one you have," he said, handing her the saddlebag. "Or rather, you will."

  "I'll do it." Sam lifted the flap and pulled out a yellow and a red. "May as well be thorough."

  "Sam, don't." Arabeth grabbed his arm. "I think this is something I need to do."

  "Really?" Andun's eyebrows neatly met as his brow furrowed.

  "I'm no coward," she snapped, setting Marble on the ground.

  "No one is suggesting you are." Sam kept his grip on the saddlebag.

  "It's not a matter of courage. Ladies aren't suited to adventure, by sensibility, not pre-disposition," Andun said with such conviction that Arabeth had to cover a smile.

  "By that definition, you're more of a lady than I am." Arabeth opened the flap and pulled out the two colours he suggested.

  Andun didn't seem to know how to respond to that. Arabeth walked over and ruffled his hair. "I'm joking. Don't listen to me."

  "And then you mess my hair." Andun ran his fingers through to sort it back out. "Whatever. Go." He shrugged.

  Marble sat with her tail curled around Arabeth's neck as she walked toward the clearing again. "Why didn't you wait until I'd made my mind up?" Arabeth said to her. The fox licked her cheek.

  She slowed at the tree line and leaned in. It looked the same as it had before. Arabeth had a plan. This time she thought about the man who was chasing Andun, trying to steal his throne. As she did, a ghostly visage resembling him appeared. He was bent over a table. As Arabeth looked, the image of the table became clearer. There was a small, lidded wooden box. Suddenly the man looked her way, causing her to recoil and close her mind.

  He disappeared, but the table remained. Arabeth tucked the stones into her pocket and walked gingerly forward. As she neared, the box started to move away, then was gone. She had wanted a look inside, so she let her mind follow the box. It didn't seem dangerous at first, but suddenly her heart started to scramble around in her chest and she felt weak.

  She forced herself to forget the table, to forget the box, reaching up to focus on Marble instead. Petting Marble, she felt herself calm down. Did the people she saw also see her? That would at least be fair.

  She withdrew the yellow stone from her pocket and hurried to the edge of the clearing closest to the exit. Raising her arms, she aimed for the centre of the Lyar. She only hesitated a moment, then threw it, turned, and ran to what she hoped was a safe distance.

  This time there was no sparking or fireworks. Arabeth took one step forward at a time, until she was close enough to see the crystal clearly. It hovered at about eye level in middle. But, what was it doing?

  Arabeth, not willing to risk the other people she had met so far, thought again about the king's advisor. She tried to imagine him in front of her, near the crystal.

  He appeared again, agitated. He didn't take notice of her this time. Arabeth walked forward, seeing that he clutched the box to himself as though it was priceless. How close could she get before she was spotted this time? Her heart was pounding in her chest, the memory of what happened the first time screaming from the back of her mind. She was safe, though. She told herself this was safe. He hadn't seen her.

  If the yellow stone obscured his ability to see her, she thought, she'd be unstoppable. Who in this day and age knew how to prevent this form of spying? Still, she shouldn't take chances when every interaction she was having with the crystals was an uneducated guess.

  The advisor slipped his hand into the box and pulled out a long, stubby shape. As he turned it, Arabeth realized it was a metal stamp, like the kind used to seal wax on the back of letters. This one had a coat of arms. Was it his, or was it the royal family's seal? Judging by the way he acted with it, it couldn't be his. Arabeth focused on the design so that she could describe it to Andun. Two lions, a horse, and a chalice.

  What else could she find out by following him?

  Suddenly she felt heat on her arm. Turning, she blinked to refocus her eyes and saw Sam.

  "What do you want?" she whispered, then looked back to see if her voice carried to the advisor. She couldn't tell if he reacted or not. Not wanting to take a chance, she cleared her mind.

  "I just came to check on you. Did I see what I thought I saw? You were watching someone?"

  "Yes, and I need to speak with Andun immediately." She reached out and took the yellow crystal, slipping it into her pocket.

  // Chapter 34 //

  "DOES A COAT of arms with two lions, a horse, and a chalice mean anything to you? He seemed exceptionally cautious while handling it," Arabeth asked.

  Andun nodded slowly, frowning.

  “I was using the yellow crystal and looking in on your advisor. I saw that image on a large metal stamp,” Arabeth added.

  "Could you tell what he was planning to do?" Andun asked.

  "No, but he acted like someone had only just brought it to him. It's weird, but when I watched him without the yellow crystal, it seemed like he could see me, too. When I put the yellow crystal into the fire, he couldn't. He didn't do anything interesting. Or maybe he was being cautious."

  "I'd rather he thought you were a ghost. Did you find out what the blue crystal does?" Sam asked.

  Arabeth shook her head. "They do seem to follow an order, though. If red is pyrotechnics, it would symbolize fire. Yellow obscures things, symbolizing airborne particles or fog. My guess is that blue is going to do something fairly wet. I need to test green, orange, and purple. There's a gorgeous sage green one, too. I don't think we have time to test them all, but we should know what the base colours do."

  "I can't see blue being useful ... unless we need to drop somebody into the ocean." Andun sounded like he was kidding, but his face was serious.

  "Or are dying of thirst." Arabeth was thinking about her lack of long-term provisioning, and how Sam seemed to have left his backpack behind somewhere.

  "Do we want to take the time to test it, or should we stop for now?" Sam asked.

  "If we need to do it at all, let's get it done. I don't want to waste time if it's simple chronicling," Arabeth said. "There are other copses, other opportunities."

  "At least my assembly instructions make more sense now." Andun went to the small container with his trinkets inside. "I'm supposed to use one particular copse."

  "Which one?" Sam asked.

  He shook his head slowly. "I didn't see one in the spot I was told."

  Frowning, Arabeth went to her satchel and pulled out the maps Clare had given them. "Would these help?"

  "Maybe." He took one and started unfolding it. "I'm good with maps, but I didn't get out much. Places look really different once you're there."

  "Wait, you've never travelled before this?" Sam asked, surprised.

  "To quote my guardians, 'It's too much to risk, after what happened to your parents,' and so forth." He didn't look up from his current map. “I think they just didn't want people to be able to recognize me and confirm my ident
ity."

  "OK, that may be pushing it," Sam sneered.

  Andun's face had flushed beet red. "No one asked you to believe me." Standing, he grabbed the bag of parts and stalked toward the copse.

  Arabeth went to the saddlebag, pulled out crystals in the colours she hadn't tested yet, and wrapped them in a cloth before putting them in her satchel. About this, she had more trust in Andun. "Are you coming?" she asked Sam.

  Hearing the cue, Marble ran at Sam and used him as a tree again, vaulting herself up to Arabeth's shoulder.

  "I wonder what would happen if you imagined home," Sam said.

  Arabeth shook her head. "I ... wasn't going to risk anyone there while testing."

  "Not the people. Your house. If the advisor could see and hear you, can you touch things on the other side?"

  "That would be an assassin’s dream come true," Arabeth said.

  "Wait ... that went dark fast. I meant, can we just go home, and let the politics here proceed as it would have? Why do you need to get involved?"

  "You don't sound like the Sam I know." She turned and walked after Andun.

  "Think about it. There is no formal policing system out here. Even if we catch someone betraying the crown, who is there to punish them, or even lock them away? The guards will be loyal to the one paying their wages, and right now that is not Andun,” he said, following.

  "You may not have noticed, but there are a lot of old-fashioned ideals out here. People still love the idea of a monarchy. There are monuments to the king and queen in every city."

  "That's nostalgia. That won't save a life," Sam replied.

  "It'll save his, and that makes it the right thing to do." This conversation was over if he was going to be myopic about this. Marble nudged her cheek. "You're right." She reached up to pet Marble's head. "We should go."

  She walked away, trying to focus on Andun's problem, not Sam's. He seemed to use law and rules to keep things easy, clearer, for him. Meanwhile, Arabeth followed a moral code, and that didn't always mesh with local laws. She was at peace with that.

  She heard him following and sighed. He'd been out of sorts since the chat he'd had with the local constabulary. Finding out there was no rule of law here, aside from regional leadership, made him nervous. Arabeth wanted to know how the king stayed in power with such an arrangement.

  Did Sam have an alcohol problem? The question popped into her head, startling her. If he had been drinking as often as Melanie said he was while Arabeth was married to that schmuck, he may have developed a habit, even if it wasn't a predisposition. This trip was drying him out, if that was the case.

  Maybe that was why he being a bear right now. She shook her head again. There was no good excuse for bad behaviour. She would give him his distance and let them work it out. She glanced back at him, noting his steady walk, calm demeanour and focus. If this was an alcoholic drying out, she didn't see it. There had to be a hundred other reasons he was being like this. And she wasn't curious about any of them. Sam had been burning a number of bridges recently, though. No longer a licensed police detective, he'd been following Arabeth around acting as a bodyguard and assistant with her own work. That was fine, because they got on well, but it wouldn't pay his bills. And then she’d found out he'd been working for her parents in precisely that capacity. They had hired him without telling her. No one had thought to tell her. They would have to talk this out soon.

  "You know, I used to wake up every day with the thought that if I put in an honest daily effort, life would improve incrementally, and eventually things would function like a well-oiled machine," Sam said. “But it's not like that at all.”

  Arabeth nodded. What he said reflected her inner world as well.

  "I think we can make a difference here, by helping Andun and ... even though this goes against our goal of getting back home, I want to help him start a national policing service. I just have to train a few people and make sure they have a plan in place to carry it forward,” Sam said. "But would you be okay with that? I'd be gone for at least six months. Maybe a year.”

  "Justice delayed is justice denied,” Arabeth said. She didn't want to admit it, but she hated the idea of leaving him behind. “As long as you'll be safe, I think it's worth it. I hate what I've been seeing here. No one trusts each other. I think the Lyar system is to blame, which makes it our ancestors’ fault. I've begun to think we have an obligation to help."

  "No one wants the change, but they need it."

  "One more good reason to help Andun, right?" She sighed.

  Sam fell silent, thoughtful.

  The Lyar opened up before them and it was time for Arabeth to get to work. Andun stood waiting already.

  "I'm not sure I should be in here while you do this, but curiosity is a weakness of mine." Andun wiped a hand down each of his arms, presumably smoothing down his nerves.

  "Curiosity is hardly a weakness." Arabeth smiled. A nervous twinge hit her gut. "You both stand in the trees. The effect has been limited to the dirt, so far."

  As they both receded from sight, Arabeth pulled out her next stone. The blue one. Time to find out what that meant. She stopped and pulled out her journal. Hopefully it would outlive her, she chuckled to herself as she tucked it back in her satchel.

  "Marble, you might want to go into the trees." She reached up to pull Marble down but the fox’s claws suddenly dug in. Her refusal wouldn't be much consolation if things went badly and she was hurt, but if this was her attitude, she'd be underfoot anyway. Arabeth rubbed Marble's head and sighed. "You never did follow wisdom."

  She leaned forward with the blue crystal extended, then remembered she needed to have someone or somewhere in mind. Gregor. She recalled his lanky frame as he instructed Melanie. As she did, she saw him sitting at a desk, writing.

  Would she be safe walking over to see what he wrote? And wasn't blue supposed to be something related to water? Apparently that was all wrong.

  "There's a lot you don't know, watcher," he said, not looking up.

  Startled, Arabeth took a step back.

  "I thought there were none who could use Lyars, so my thought is that you're Melanie's friend. I'm also guessing that you have a blue stone in place, since I can't shut up and am speaking my mind, as honestly as I know how. Of course, I want to talk to you, so that helps."

  Arabeth smiled. "I appreciate your candour. How are things where you are? Is the king's advisor still around?"

  "Mardell? Not for days now. When he lost control of our future king, he went into damage-control mode. He's even drafted an accidental death announcement and is watching to see if he needs it."

  "Tell me what you know about these Lyars." What better source than a middle-aged Seer?

  "You must be working out what the colours do." He stood up and went to one of his many well-stocked shelves and pulled a book out. "Take this. I hope you remember who it was that first took your side."

  He held out a short hardcover book, as thick as her hand was wide. "It'll give you more than enough information, I think."

  Arabeth reached out and was startled to see she could touch it. "Thank you, but what is it?"

  "You'll find out soon enough. What is your name, crystal mage? I recognize you as Melanie's friend," Gregor said.

  "Arabeth." She took the book, wincing when her cut rubbed its edges. The book's light weight surprised her. "Is there anything we should know as we advance King Andun's cause?"

  "I only know what you have no doubt figured out—that this treason has been long in the making. I wouldn't be surprised if Mardell was behind the royal deaths, but of course, that's best not spoken."

  "I appreciate that."

  "Don't offer me gratitude when you use a blue crystal. I'm going to let it slide this time because I suspect you didn't know it's a truth diviner, but if you use it on me again, I shall be very put out."

  His oddly old-fashioned phrase was endearing, as was his fealty. "I will make sure King Andun knows you remain loyal."

  "
Now you have my gratitude. Can I get back to work?"

  "Yes, thank you. Give my regards to Melanie." She reached out and took the blue crystal back from the centre spot where it hovered.

  "That could have gone a lot worse," Sam said, stepping forward from the trees. "If it was someone's whose true intent was murder...." He let the thought hang.

  Arabeth clutched the book to her chest, grateful Gregor was true to the rule that Seers were faithful to the king.

  "He is loyal to Andun." She defended her choice.

  "Many cultures believe there is a divine connection between the land and the king or queen," Sam reminded her.

  "And crystals are of the land," Arabeth agreed.

  "So, Seers from another country will be loyal to wherever they were when they turned, even if they leave it?" Sam asked.

  "How would I know?" Arabeth chuckled. "Maybe. It makes a certain kind of sense," she said, drawing the logic out.

  "I hadn't thought of that," Andun said, grinning as he walked up. "I need to open these fields up to anyone who wants to test themselves, then. Back at the Battle of Skaldarrow they were called Lyar witches. I think you're going to want to go by something less threatening. Maybe call yourself a Lyar mage … or a Lyar technician. It’s semantics, but there’s no point in getting skewered over a marketing mistake."

  "A Lyar operator?" Arabeth shrugged. "None of it really rolls off the tongue. I like ‘crystal smith’, but doubt that is an accurate use of the term. Crystal mage sounds too ... mystical."

  "I question the ethics of opening the fields to everyone." Sam stood with his hands on his hips. "The prejudice we've encountered here is something I wouldn't wish on anyone."

  "I won't be invading anyone's country, if that's your concern. I would simply put myself in the enviable position of knowing when others have ill intent toward me, and toward this country."

  Arabeth suddenly laughed.

  "What?" Sam asked.

  "I just had a thought—can two stones be used at the same time? Like, yellow to obscure me, and blue to bring out the truth? A person would speak the truth, thinking they were talking to themselves, right?"