Sneaking out of the palace tonight wasn’t easy, but I got out, through the Sunrise, and down to the river without being seen. Argent was at the riverbank with a boat and a flask of hot tea. He was trying very hard to be noble about waiting in the rain.
Poor Argent; he does not know what to make of Conn. He sat uncomfortably on a pile of bricks while we talked, and then he grumbled all the way home about Conn’s terrible manners. It bothers him that Conn does not call me Lady Rowan. Then Magister Nevery’s manservant cooked up potatoes and bacon in a pan, and Conn fell on it like a pack of ravening dogs, eating with his fingers because the servant, Benet, hadn’t brought a fork. Argent has a point about the manners.
While Argent sat scowling, Conn and Magister Nevery and I talked about the Wellmet magic and the threat of Arhionvar. Conn told us about the strange behavior of the magic at the Dusk House pit. Magister Nevery said he did not know what it meant, and Conn said maybe Nevery should go and try to get the magic to talk to him. After that, they argued about magic and talked about magical spells in great technical detail. Conn seems wound very tightly. I think he is more worried about Arhionvar than he lets on. He’s always been quiet. I expect that’s because he spent so much of his childhood alone, on the streets of the Twilight, so he’s not used to telling people how he feels. But when he’s worried about something, he gets even quieter.
Conn asked about my mother. She isn’t any better. I’m afraid she is worse. She sits in her chair, so still and silent, like a pale marble statue. When I kiss her cheek, her skin is like cold stone. Magister Trammel says it is the wound given her by the Shadows that pains her. He works healing spells, but they don’t seem to make a difference.
This morning at breakfast I tried to tell her about the magic in the Dusk House pit, but she wouldn’t listen. Instead, she told me to cancel my swordcraft lesson so I could attend a meeting with the factory owners, then another meeting with her council, and then yet another meeting with the leaders of the city’s chimney swifts.
While she is ill she is asking me to take over more and more of her duties. I’m glad she trusts me, but I’m afraid it means she is not going to recover from her wound.
* * *
* * *
Connwaer,
As discussed, we must do finding spell right away, get your locus magicalicus, then continue with preparations to defend city from Arhionvar.
For finding spell will need following materials:
Magnetic rust (very little amount) (difficult material to work with; store in folded paper sealed with wax)
Rock salt (crushed, one small sackful)
Ingredients for blackpowder (ratio 15:4:3)
Atriomated water (several cups full) (must be boiled before distilling, note)
Viperic acid (one small-ish bottle)
Mineral spirits (one small bottle sealed with wax) (do not open bottle, boy!)
Copper wire
Cannot buy materials myself in Sunrise; magisters, palace guard watching, will be seen as suspicious activity. However, will prepare abandoned workroom in Academicos for our purposes.
—Nevery
* * *
* * *
Nevery,
Can you send Benet with more money? I can meet him in the morning at Sark Square.
I got the rock salt and the blackpowder ingredients and the copper wire from Embre. He wants two more silver faces to pay the man who makes the atriomated water, and he says he can’t get that much viperic acid for any price.
Nevery, are you sure you should do this if the guards are watching you? I want to find my locus stone, but I don’t want you to get into trouble. If you tell me what the words mean, I can do it myself.
—Conn
* * *
* * *
Boy, I can adjust the stoichiometrics, so we can do with less acid. Get as much as you can. What about the mineral spirits and the rust?
—N
* * *
* * *
Nevery, I’m going to need more money. Embre says the man who makes the atriomated water wants four silvers now. Sparks says the rust has to be scraped from a lightning-struck rock a day’s walk outside the city, so she’s going to fetch it tomorrow, unless it’s too rainy. I’m not having any luck with the mineral spirits.
Nevery, what is stoichiometry?
—Conn
* * *
* * *
Dear Nevery,
Even though it was raining, Sparks got the rust and she is trying to dry it, but it keeps sticking to things. Embre is making the viperic acid himself but he says he needs more snakes, so I have been hunting them by the river. Thank you for the money.
Is stoichiometry something about the mixing?
—C
* * *
* * *
Boy, stoichiometric control has to do with the meticulous measurement of materials needed for the spell. It also has to do with patience, which you don’t seem to have developed yet. This pyrotechnic finding spell calls for exactly 495 grains of blackpowder at that ratio, and 53 flakes of magnetic rust, and so on. Also, the timing and order in which the materials are combined must be precisely controlled, hence need for dock pendulum, carefully calibrated.
My preparations here are almost complete.
Write when you are ready.
—Nevery
* * *
* * *
N—
I’m ready.
—C
* * *
CHAPTER 6
Benet came to Sparks’s house to fetch the materials for Nevery. That night he came back for me, rowing me across to the academicos. I scrambled out of the boat and waited for Benet to climb out onto the dock.
“Not staying for this part,” Benet said.
I didn’t blame him; the last time I’d done pyrotechnics, Benet had gotten his skull cracked open.
“Be careful, you,” he said gruffly.
“I’ll try,” I said. But if I was too careful, I’d never find my locus magicalicus.
With an oar, Benet pushed off from the dock and floated into the darkness.
I turned to look at the academicos. It was a shadow against the lighter night, a big central building with four square, spired towers at its corners, and four-story wings flanking a slate-paved courtyard. Only a few wizards and magisters had rooms here, so it was mostly dark; two lights shone from windows on the ground floor, where the school’s master, Brumbee, lived.
I headed across the courtyard toward one of the side entrances. Then I stopped. Strange shadows like dark lumps were clustered on the windowsills and on the wide stairs leading up to the double front doors. The shadows shifted and rustled like leaves blowing in the wind.
Not leaves. They were black birds, the magic’s watchers. Waiting to see what would happen when I did the spell, maybe. One of them swooped down from a windowsill, circled ’round my head, and flapped back to perch with the other birds.
I went on across the courtyard, picked a lock to get in a side door, and went cat-footed up the dark stairs to the room Nevery’d told me to go to. Not his own room, just in case, but the workroom of a wizard who’d died a long time ago.
I knocked softly on the door. After a few moments, it cracked open and Nevery peered out. Without speaking, he opened the door wider to let me in, then closed the door.
“Were you seen?” he asked.
I shook my head.
“You have the rust?”
I pulled the paper packet out of my pocket to show him. My hands were shaking just a little.
Nevery studied me. “You’re very quiet, boy, even for you. Nervous?”
I nodded. I had a lump of worry stuck in my throat, stopping my voice. What if this didn’t work? What would we do then?
“Hmph. I need some time before we begin.” Turning away, Nevery went to the table and peered down at his grimoire, muttering. He’d recopied the finding spell and the directions and had to read it over again before we started.
I
looked around the room. It was more like a study than a workroom. Werelight glowed from lanterns set on the table. Books and papers were piled against a wood-paneled wall, and some more furniture was pushed into a corner and covered with bedsheets. Dusty velvet curtains were pulled across the windows. Nevery’d nailed up rugs and blankets on the walls, to muffle any sounds, I figured.
On the table were the things we needed to work the finding spell. At one end stood a polished dock pendulum, gleaming in the werelight; next to it was a saucer of sparking blackpowder emulsion, a couple of glass stirring rods, some clean rags, two mortars with crystal pestles, a metal bowl full of crushed rock salt, a brass trivet, a fat candle with three wicks, and stoppered vials of measured atriomated water, viperic acid, and mineral spirits.
“You’ve read over the notes I sent you, boy?” Nevery asked, glancing up from his grimoire.
I cleared my throat. “Yes, Nevery.”
“Getting the timing right is absolutely crucial in a stoichiometric spell,” he said.
Yes, I knew that. Nevery’s notes, written on one long, narrow roll of paper and sent with one of the black birds, had listed everything we had to do, step by step, before I said the finding spell. One thing I was good at was reading something once and then remembering it. I wasn’t going to forget anything.
Nevery nodded toward the door. “Put that on.”
My ragged, scorch-marked, gray-wool apprentice robe hung on a hook beside the door. I put the robe on over my black sweater, then went back to the table. My breath fizzed a little as it went down into my chest. If this worked, I would find my locus magicalicus tonight.
“Fifty-three flakes of the magnetic rust, Connwaer,” Nevery said, still looking at his grimoire. “In a mortar. Wipe it out first.”
I rolled up the sleeves of my robe, then cracked open the wax-sealed paper. The rust was greeny-black, the tiny flakes clinging together in a crease of the paper. I pulled over a mortar and wiped it out with one of the clean rags, then fished in the collar of my shirt for a lockpick wire.
The rust stuck itself to everything. With an end of the wire I teased out a greenish flake, then tapped it from the wire into the mortar. One.
Nevery closed his grimoire. He came to the table and used his locus stone to light the three wicks of the candle, then he moved the trivet over the flames and set his mortar on it. “Almost ready, boy?” he asked.
I nodded. Forty-nine, fifty…
“Good,” Nevery said. He leaned across the table and drew the dock pendulum up to its calibration. He glanced at me and raised his eyebrows.
Fifty-three. “Ready,” I said, and my voice cracked.
“Begin,” he said, and let the pendulum fall.
While Nevery measured and mixed the aqueous solution, I dissolved the magnetic rust in a threefold concentration of viperic acid, mixing with a glass rod. While it bubbled, I took out the rod and cleaned it off and waited.
“Count two,” Nevery said, watching the pendulum. It ticked over twice. “Now.”
Quickly I added a fizzing drop of mineral spirit. A puff of blue smoke swirled from the surface of the mixture in my mortar.
Nevery stirred his mortar, watching the pendulum. “The atriomated water should be boiled off in five,” Nevery said. “Be careful, boy; the smoke is poisonous.”
I nodded, watching the pendulum. Ten more counts and my mixture would turn to metal jelly.
“Has it turned blue?” Nevery asked.
I leaned over to peer at my mixture. Yes, it was turning blue-green around the edges, and starting to bubble.
“Stir it,” Nevery said.
Right. I cleaned off a pestle and poked the jelly; it bubbled up, and I poked it down again. Bubble-poke, bubble-poke.
Nevery lifted his mortar off the trivet, set it into the bowl of rock salt, and started to stir it. “Is your solution ready?” he asked, watching the pendulum.
Almost. The jelly crackled; in a few swing-tocks of the pendulum it would dissolve into a red powder in the bottom of the mortar.
But it didn’t. Instead, the pestle cracked in my hand and a thick cloud of choke-black smoke billowed up from the mortar. It went into my lungs like a breath full of feathers; I backed away from the table, coughing. More smoke billowed up and spread out over the ceiling like a thick layer of clouds on a rainy day. Nevery, coughing and holding his arm over his face, jerked aside the curtain and flung the window open.
As a damp breeze blew in from outside, the smoke swirled around below the ceiling and grew thicker, then clumps of sizzling black soot started falling like black snowflakes. A soot-flake landed on my hand, and it burned like a hot ember. More soot-flakes drifted down.
Still coughing, I scrambled under the table. Nevery crawled in after me.
“You all right, boy?” Nevery asked.
I caught my breath. “Yes”—I coughed again—“Nevery.” I coughed the last of the black feathers out of my lungs, then we sat watching the soot-flakes pile up on the slate floor, sizzle, and then cool.
“One of your reagents must have been tainted,” Nevery said, frowning. “The rust, perhaps, though that doesn’t seem likely. Perhaps one of the stirring rods.”
Tainted? Oh. How could I have been so stupid? “Nevery, I counted out the magnetic rust with a lockpick wire.” And I hadn’t cleaned it first.
“Curse it,” Nevery muttered.
“Can we try again?” I asked.
“Strict stoichiometric control, boy,” Nevery said. Brushing soot-flakes out of the way, he crawled out from under the table and got to his feet. “It means exact measurements, exact timing, and absolutely pure materials.”
Coughing up the smoke, I’d coughed up the knot of worry in my throat. “And stoichiometry means patience, right?” I said. That’s what he’d told me, anyway. I crawled out and stood up. The soot covered everything in the room like a fall of new snow, except black.
“Yes, boy,” Nevery said, looking at me and pulling at the end of his beard. “Patience. Something I never needed until you became my apprentice.” He turned to survey the room. “Well, it’s not too late, and we have enough materials. We can clean everything and try again.”
CHAPTER 7
By we can clean everything Nevery meant that I could clean everything. I was the one who’d made the stupid mistake, he said. Then he pulled a sheet off a comfortable chair, got a book from the pile of books by the wall, and sat down to read. While he did that, I closed the window, brushed the soot-snow off the table, set out the materials again, and carefully cleaned every speck of soot from the mortars and the stirring rods. When I was almost finished, Nevery put his book aside and came to the table to take the dock pendulum apart and recalibrate it.
We prepared the spell again. This time, when I stirred the metal jelly, it dissolved into a pile of red powder so fine, it swirled like blood in the bottom of the mortar.
Nevery’s aqueous solution had turned to powder, too. Now we had to wait fifty counts for it to cool. The dock pendulum ticked over, tock, tock, tock.
According to the description in the book, the finding spell would manifest and point the precise location of the stone, so that the wizard must be prepared to pursue, and thus discover it. “Nevery?” I said. I wasn’t sure what manifest meant, exactly.
“What, boy?” He picked up a length of copper wire and held it to the candle flame.
“How will the spell, um, manifest?”
Nevery glanced at me, then back at the wire. “You only think to ask this now?”
Stupid, I knew. “Well, Nevery—”
“Yes, yes, I know, boy,” he said. “We’re at twenty-five counts.” Without taking his eyes off the candle flame, he went on. “The spell should manifest as a beam of light, which will extend from this room to the place in the city where your locus stone can be found. You know to be ready?”
“I’m ready,” I said.
“Count of five,” Nevery said. “Four, three, two—”
I picked up my
mortar—it was heavy—and dumped my red powder into Nevery’s mortar full of blue powder. Even without mixing, the two powders swirled together, repelling each other. Setting the mortar down, I gripped the edge of the table, suddenly nervous again.
“Steady, Connwaer,” Nevery said. The end of his copper wire glowed.
I waited.
“Now,” Nevery said, and thrust the hot wire into the mingled powders. Hot filament ignition.
The book had called what would happen a glowing red wave front, but I knew a pyrotechnic explosion when I saw one. The mortar filled with ember-gold light. I started the spell. “Alasanliellielalas—”
“Louder, boy!” Nevery said.
The light burst out from the mortar. I shouted more spellwords—“eventiensilaollentinumintia—” The room filled with white-bright fizzing stars.
Nevery, holding up his hand to shade his eyes, went to the window and pulled aside the curtain. “Finish it!” he shouted.
The end of the spell was my name. “Connwaer!”
The finding spell gathered itself into a crackling, spinning flower of light just below the ceiling. Vials and the dock pendulum and the mortars were swept off the table and shattered against the walls. Faster and faster the light-flower spun, flinging off sparks; then it slowed, finding its way. Slower, slower…
“Be ready, boy,” Nevery whispered.
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