by Ian Irvine
‘I fell into mech-magic during the war. The lyrinx were destroying us, Wilm – they were much bigger, three times as strong, and just as clever. Few people ever fought a lyrinx in single combat and survived. And if that wasn’t a big enough advantage, some of them, those who could use the Secret Art strongly enough, could fly.
‘One night in the pub, more than thirty years ago, when we’d all had too much to drink and were tossing mad ideas around, I said, “What if we could construct an armoped – a mechanical wagon that walked on iron legs and was powered by the fields?” I got quite excited about it.’
M’Lainte wiped her brow with a flowery bandanna and took a sip from a round silver water bottle. ‘My drinking companions laughed me down and I thought no more about it, but late that night there was a knock on my door and a small, skinny and rather ugly man stood there. He’d been in the bar earlier, and at first I thought he wanted to go to bed with me.’
She cast an assessing glance at Wilm. Not knowing what to say, he looked straight ahead.
‘Which he did,’ she continued. ‘I wasn’t unattractive in those days,’ she said self-deprecatingly, ‘and the war had taken us far from home and loved ones … And, viewed through enough glasses of ale, when you can die any day …’
She smiled at some private memory.
‘He was clever, charming, and very good at it. A memorable night. Afterwards we talked for hours about my idea, and I made sketches of the most important components of an armoped – the plate armour, the leg mechanisms and how they were powered, the controller. My lover wasn’t a mechanical man, but he had a quick intellect and a strategic outlook, and he talked about how such devices, if they could be made to work, might turn the war our way.
‘In the morning he was gone, and so were my sketches. I was annoyed, but I didn’t know his name, and in the light of day armopeds seemed ridiculous. I thought no more about them.
‘I spent the next few years repairing and improving baggage train wagons, javelards and other devices used in the war, learning to make small devices powered by the field, and generally trying to master my craft and make every new design better and more useful than the one before.
‘Then I was posted on a day’s notice to a cold, wet, dismal place called Thisp, at the eastern end of the Great Mountains. It’s inland from the coastal city of Tiksi, if you know it.’
Wilm shook his head.
‘A large building was being built there, for metal-working, and there were mines and foundries nearby. I had no idea what was wanted of me until I entered the place, which they called a manufactory – the manufactory, in fact, because it was the first – and my lover from three years ago gave me my orders. I expect you can guess his name.’
‘Xervish Flydd?’ said Wilm.
‘The same. He’d had a chequered history during the war – hence the scars and broken bones – but he’d spent the past years arguing the strategic importance of armopeds, and he had finally gained the consent of the Council of Scrutators, and the gold, for a small manufactory to build an armoped. And he wanted me to be the chief designer.’
‘And the rest was history!’ said Wilm.
‘Far from it. The Council was sceptical, and some scrutators were actively hostile. Flydd was only a junior scrutator and he had to fight for every copper grint. They doled them out grudgingly, only a month in advance of need, and he was under constant threat of having the manufactory closed.
‘It took four months to design the armoped, or clanker as they came to be called, and another six months for a team of eighty artisans and artificers to build the first one. We knew quite a bit about drawing power from fields by then – the great mancer Nunar, whom you might have known as Ifoli –’
‘I wondered what became of her,’ said Wilm. ‘After we finished with the summon stone, she went off with Shand on some mysterious project.’
‘With his help, long before my time, she worked out the Laws of Power, and how to power small mech-magical devices. But there’s tons of iron in a clanker, and to drive its multiple pairs of mechanical legs we needed mechanisms far stronger than anything hitherto imagined.’
They continued up, scanning the terrain to either side.
‘Finally the first clanker was complete,’ she said, going misty-eyed. ‘Nothing remotely like it had even been seen on Santhenar, and with its ten mechanical legs it could go places that would baffle any wheeled contrivance. I felt sure, and Flydd did too, that it was going to win the war for us.’
‘And it did!’ cried Wilm. ‘You must –’
‘Sadly,’ said M’Lainte, ‘it didn’t work.’
‘But … What? Why not?’
‘It was far too heavy for the power we could draw from the field with any controlling device we could make. The clanker took three steps, ground to a halt and could not be made to go again. Flydd’s enemies – and mine, for I’d made quite a few by this time – wet themselves with joy.’
‘What did you do?’
‘Went back to my drawings. I had to make every part lighter, without sacrificing the armour needed to protect the troops inside from marauding lyrinx. If the clanker was too light it would have been useless. There was only one solution …’
She plodded up the slope, panting. Wilm sensed that she was waiting for him to speak.
‘Um,’ he said, ‘you had to make a controller that could draw much more power?’
‘Precisely! The core of a controller was a crystal called a hedron, and only certain kinds of crystals would do, but few people could tell which ones were good and which were useless. Many thousands of gifted people were tested before we identified the necessary traits. But that was the easiest part.’
‘What was the hardest?’
‘The crystals we used weren’t remotely strong enough. We had to find better ones, and that took years, because we had to test tens of thousands of samples of every conceivable kind of crystal, until we finally discovered ones that would do the job. They were rare, too.’
‘But when you found them,’ said Wilm, ‘it transformed the war.’
‘Not immediately. Our first clanker had broken down too many times and the Council wouldn’t give Flydd the coin to build more until it had proved itself against the lyrinx. Which it could never so, since they refused to allow it anywhere near a battlefield in case it fell into enemy hands.’
‘Stupid fools!’
‘The long defeat had made them defensive, limited. But after the disastrous loss of another army, Flydd disobeyed orders and took the clanker out himself, as captain, with myself as its artificer to fix anything that went wrong, and a volunteer crew. He drove into the middle of a squad of lyrinx and killed the lot of them. That’s how he got the gold to complete the manufactory and build many more. And make the thousands of clankers that eventually helped to win the war for us.’
‘That must have been a wonderful day,’ said Wilm.
She stared back down the years. ‘Oh, it was, though it took another thirteen desperate and bloody years to defeat the lyrinx. And it was only in the final months that we began to hope for victory …’
‘And now we have to do it again.’
‘With hardly any power from the fields. And no army … and not a single clanker.’
12
What A Little Mouse You Are
‘Just you and me,’ said Maigraith, entering Aviel’s workshop late on the day that the sky galleon had carried Wilm away.
Aviel did not turn around. She had not met Maigraith, though Aviel had heard her voice as she’d hunted Karan, Llian and Sulien up the tallest tower of Shazmak. From them Aviel knew all about Maigraith, and none of it good, and wanted nothing to do with her.
She scooped a dipper-full of hot water out of the cast iron cauldron perched atop a seven-sided brass brazier, carried it to one of the marble basins, her personal sink of despair, and began scrubbing her stained and crusted glassware.
Thurkad was an ugly place, and even as a girl in the backwater town of Ca
syme she had known of the city’s dark reputation. But Flydd had ordered her to make a double batch of nivol and Maigraith was here to make sure she did.
He had hired two local guards to protect her, but they were cold and contemptuous. They thought Aviel was a stupid little girl, playing with toys while the world was being torn apart. She read them as being like her father – cowards who would run away in a crisis.
She groped for the green glass bead strung on a cord around her neck. It had a little white star inside and had once been part of a necklace, and it was her only memento of the mother who had fled when she was one. The sole reminder of her old life and her family, dead and gone two centuries ago.
She plunged a cleaned flask into the hot water in the rinsing sink, put it upside-down on a cloth to drain, and glanced sideways at Maigraith. She was the most intimidating person Aviel had ever met. Compared to her, Aviel’s brutal former master in alchymy, the ill-fated Grand Master Torsion Tule, had been a frolicking puppy.
Had he deserved to die? He had knocked Aviel down and was about to stamp on her face when she’d flicked some Essence of Ague, a mild, disabling scent potion, at him. She had just been defending herself, but a massive dose had gone up his nose and the old man had died a few weeks later. It wasn’t clear whether she had killed him, or his own choler had, but she still felt the guilt.
‘You don’t say much, do you?’ said Maigraith.
‘No.’ Aviel’s naturally high voice went squeaky.
‘Turn around. How old are you, girl?’
Aviel turned, her wet hands dripping. ‘Sixteen.’
‘What a little mouse you are.’ Maigraith’s eyes scoured Aviel. ‘You yearn to be loved but, because your family abused and betrayed you, you believe no one could ever care for you. That’s why you push people away and immerse yourself in your work. And I dare say your disability makes these feelings worse.’
She walked around Aviel, studying her closely. Aviel flushed and turned to face her, always keeping her lumpy right ankle behind the left.
‘Show me,’ said Maigraith.
Aviel’s cheeks felt scalded. ‘Mind your own business!’
‘It’s not a request.’
Maigraith went down on her knees and drew Aviel’s twisted foot forward. Aviel wanted to kick her but that would be pointless; Maigraith had total power over her life. What could not be prevented must be endured, as she had been forced to endure so many ordeals during her brief and mostly unhappy life. She was so fed up with always being at the mercy of others, always being used. She had to take control of her life.
‘I won’t always be powerless!’ Aviel snapped.
‘You’re threatening me?’ Maigraith laughed until she choked.
Aviel stood there, burning with mortification, as Maigraith studied her right foot and ankle, compared them to her other, normal foot, then probed the lumpy bones with pointy fingertips. What did she hope to find?
Maigraith, Aviel knew, had been bred to be a triune by Faelamor, one of the towering figures in the Histories. Bred for some wicked purpose, and taught the Secret Art. Later, Maigraith had briefly been lover to Rulke, who had gifted her part of his own incomparable talent for the Art. She was now a mighty mancer, one of the greatest on Santhenar, with powers unimaginable to a little scent potion maker.
Maigraith looked up at Aviel, questioningly.
Fixing the ankle would be small magic to her, and Aviel allowed herself to imagine a life when she could walk, even run, free from pain. But Maigraith did nothing without a purpose, nor gave a gift free of obligation. Though Aviel had been mocked for her disability since before she could walk and longed to have two normal feet like everyone else, enduring and adapting to it had made her what she was today.
‘No thanks,’ she said.
Maigraith shrugged and stood up. ‘Where does the water come from?’
‘A well in the basement.’
‘You have to carry it all that way? That must be painful.’
Not as painful as being forced to live and work with you!
‘The first time I made nivol, I did the final steps in a tent, at … Rogues Render.’ The skin on the back of Aviel’s neck crept. ‘I don’t have to go back there, do I?’
‘No.’ Maigraith shivered.
It was good to know she was afraid of something. ‘But the method requires the Archeus from a ghost vampire.’
‘There are other methods, and ingredients that can be substituted.’
‘Have you ever made nivol?’
‘I never had the need.’
Aviel took a deep breath. She had to make a stand or forever be in Maigraith’s thrall. ‘If anything goes wrong, it’s my life at risk. You will explain every change in the method and justify every substitution.’
Maigraith’s unreadable eyes met Aviel’s. Was she taken aback at her temerity, or amused at the notion that a mere girl could ever challenge her?
‘Very well,’ she said, with a small smile.
‘What does Flydd want it for, anyway? It didn’t work on the summon stone last time.’
‘It has to be used from the inside.’
‘The inside? How is that even possible?’
‘You don’t need to know.’
Maigraith went out but a hint of her perfume remained, and that hint was hoopis. Aviel put the little ebony box away, sadly. Klarm’s gift was tainted now.
Aviel lay on her narrow bed. The timbers were half eaten away by woodworms and every time she moved, streamers of pale wood dust rained down, outlining the shape of the bed on the dark floorboards. The sheets were threadbare and grey, the thin mattress smelled like soldiers’ socks and the stained blankets had holes in them. Not even her most cheerful perfumes could conceal the smell.
But Aviel knew all about hovels, because she was a seventh sister and that meant appallingly bad luck for her and everyone around her. After her mother ran away, her father had turned to drink and dicing, and lost all his money. One night when Aviel was eight he had staggered home in drunken despair, dropped his lantern in the hall and most of the house had burned down.
Her six older sisters had been lazy, bullying slatterns, and if not for Aviel’s hard work and gift for gardening the family would have starved. She often wondered what had happened to them. Casyme had suffered badly in Cumulus Snoat’s war and when Aviel returned the ruined house had been empty. No one had known if her father or sisters were still alive.
Her thoughts turned to the present, and her work. Making another batch of the deadly alchymical fluid did not unduly bother her. It was tricky and dangerous work, but she had done it twice before. And she still had the diamond phial, the only substance that could contain nivol – after Llian used it on the summon stone he had returned the phial, cut from a priceless plum-sized diamond, to her, and no one had asked for it back.
But nivol was an evil substance, and she already gone a troubling distance down the dark path. Why did she yearn for it so? She was a good person, wasn’t she? Or had her past deeds corrupted her? Was she sliding down into the pit from which she could never escape?
How Lilis had laughed when Aviel mentioned this fear. ‘In the Register of Wickedness, which I’ve read three times,’ Lilis had said with a wistful sigh, ‘your deeds wouldn’t rate a mention.’
It hadn’t helped then and it did not help now. Seeking comfort, Aviel took out her books and, as always, felt a little thrill. She might be small and crippled, put upon and without a coin to her name, but she owned three books! Few people on Santhenar had any.
The one she was most fond of was a little volume on the making of perfumes, which she had copied from a great tome, The Art of Perfumery. Three years ago, forty-eight pages had seemed enough for a lifetime, but she had quickly filled them with methods and recipes, notes on various scents she had extracted from flowers, herbs, roots and scented timbers, and little sketches of plants that grew in Casyme.
Her second book was a blank journal Lilis had given her. It had two hundred a
nd fifty-six pages and she had counted them lovingly, imagining how much she could write about scent potions in the coming years.
The third book was even more precious, though it scared her. Wrapped in canvas, and inside that in layers of waxed paper, it was thick and square and heavy, for its covers were made of polished rosewood inlaid with camphor laurel and other scented timbers. The leaves had once been cream-coloured parchment, though many of the pages were age-spotted and stained, and some smelled bad.
Scent Potions had been the grimoire of the great master, Radizer, until he blew himself to bits trying to make the Afflatus Effluvium, one of the seven Forbidden Potions in the final section. Shand, who had been Radizer’s apprentice hundreds of years before, had taken the unique and terrible book for safekeeping, and had given it to Aviel after she kept borrowing it.
She had made three scent potions from it now – the Eureka Graveolence, one of the Great Potions (all dark and deadly), which she had used to locate the summon stone, next An Essence of Ague, and finally the Balsam of Hereafter, another of the Great Potions, which had allowed Karan to see the way to the future.
Three very dark scent potions. And Aviel had an uncomfortable feeling that Maigraith wanted an even worse one.
13
You’ll Spill Your Guts
Karan’s despair grew with every mile they flew south from Stibnibb. Llian a prisoner and likely killed already. Sulien abandoned to heartless strangers. Aviel and Wilm perhaps never to be seen again.
And today was the anniversary that made everything worse. Though it had happened long ago, whenever she closed her eyes she began to relive that awful scene –
She blocked it and tried to focus on what Flydd was saying, something about ‘the fightback.’ As if that was possible!
‘Fightback with what?’ she snapped. On her left, beyond the mountains, the sun passed below the horizon of the endless ocean. As far as she knew, no one had a clue about what was on the other side.
