The Censor's Hand: Book One of the Thrice~Crossed Swords Trilogy

by A. M. Steiner

  A fountain of crackling energy erupted continuously from the dark lake at the centre of the cavern, looping back upon itself in a torus and being absorbed by the lintels of the standing stones. The energy was invisible except for where it touched the world, and at those points, nothing was as it should be. Time and space were broken.

  She began to notice the shadows of men swaying against the ethereal flame and the strangeness of it all overwhelmed her. Against all reason, she ripped her goggles from her face and saw the world renewed. The chamber was undamaged. Technicians continued to work undisturbed. The demi-masters stood uninjured at her side. Some were cowering. Others seemed unaffected by the vision. She wondered if they could not discern it. She flipped the goggles back over her eyes and the maelstrom returned to view as shocking as before.

  No explosion then, she thought, just an irresistible revelation. Miranda looked more closely, began to see details in the chaos: flares, coronas and delicate tendrils that escaped the tumult and wended into the walls of the chamber.

  Master Somney led the shaken demi-masters closer towards the lake.

  “Observe the exchange of offerings.”

  Miranda tracked the silhouette of a technician against the dazzling spectacle. He knelt at the water’s edge, held aloft a sword bent double and set it to sink into the murk. It reminded her of the offerings that the ancient people of the Unity had made in groves and swamps in the days when they had worshipped the trees and the sky.

  A shower of icy sparks flurried from the water’s surface, as if a fire had been stoked. They whirled overhead and were absorbed into the spinning torus.

  “An enormous amount of magic passes through this space. The liquidity is immense and we add to it continuously.”

  As they entered the ring of standing stones, the eye of the storm, the glare of the magic seemed to diminish. Miranda followed the others down a shallow flight of steps to the very lip of the basin. Chairman Gleame, Riven Gahst, Talon Turon and the birdman awaited, and they chatted as casually as if they were having tea.

  Not one of them was wearing a protective outfit. Gleame was dressed in his white robes. Miranda was amazed by Gahst’s corset; no lady at court had achieved so severe a constriction of the waist. Talon hung suspended from a web of cables strung across a steel frame. Cocooned in his rags he looked like the unfortunate victim of a giant spider. Geoffrey the birdman stood by his side, balanced on one leg and arms spread.

  As awful as they were, Miranda thought, there was something magnificent about these men in their element. She had seen more than her fair share of barons and kings. The power that these men wielded was different: not ephemeral or dependent on the acquiescence of others, but a simple fact indivisible from their being.

  Somney spoke again. “At this point you may be wondering why we do not require protection from the magic. The answer is simple – we have no need of it. As a master grows in cunning, magic becomes increasingly visible to him, and is held in check by his power-presence.”

  “The magic becomes afraid,” Gahst said.

  “That is a spurious conjecture, and not a view shared by our more profitable masters,” Gleame said. “A better analogy would be the repulsion of iron by a magnet.”

  Gahst turned away with a bitter look.

  “We are the shadow of the fisherman falling across a river. Swim into my net, little fishes,” Talon clucked. Geoffrey jabbed his head forwards like a heron.

  “Master Somney, please continue,” Gleame said.

  “Cunning will profit you greatly, but it requires aptitude and comes at a price. In the end, it is up to you to prove whether your presence at the Convergence is worthwhile. We will begin with a demonstration by Master Talon.”

  The demi-masters turned to face the suspended master as he began to recite a mantra of numinous vowels. He wobbled in his web as he chanted and its twisted cables seemed to amplify his voice. His breath became visible, addling the air like a heatwave, and stretched out across the water.

  A square of faint, bright lines appeared as if being drawn by an invisible mathematician. New angles branched and turned and soon the ghostly outline of a ziggurat hovered before them. Talon’s intonation shifted and the shape began to drift towards the geyser of magical energy. It dipped into the vortex and quickly filled with crackling motes. Talon fell silent and the shape, now alive with energy, drifted back towards them.

  Miranda led the demi-masters in applause. The process had not seemed effortless, maybe the opposite, but Talon’s artistry had been flawless. Tears of wonder softened her eyes. Then she remembered what Talon had said to her, about the incapable minds of women, and she blinked them away, ashamed.

  A pair of technicians rushed to the side of the lake clutching a taxidermic marvel, a stuffed ape-child with cartoonishly wide eyes. Talon’s construct twisted and shrank as he guided it through the air into a small opening in the curiosity’s back. The technicians screwed tight a panel in its head and depressed the creature’s eyes. It waggled its feet and they stood the creature upright, walked it away, head bowed, dull eyes fixed unseeing upon the ground.

  “An excellent display, Master Turon,” Gleame said.

  “That device might just be a toy, but it was commissioned for no less than fifty pounds,” Somney noted.

  “Now that you have seen what we’re cooking, who wishes to place his hands inside the cauldron?” Talon cackled and the web-frame buzzed with his excitement.

  “Find out if you like the taste?” Gahst added sullenly.

  Miranda held back. She knew that Talon’s display had made the process look deceptively easy, and while he would not recognise her in the yellow uniform, she did not want to give him the satisfaction if she made the first attempt and failed.

  A demi-master stepped forward.

  “What should I do?” a muffled voice asked.

  “Go home,” Talon said.

  “Maybe you could say something a little more helpful,” Somney retorted.

  Talon rolled his eyes. “There is no correct method; what matters is your intent. I use my voice – others wave their arms or dance like idiots. You must do whatever best suits the occasion and your mood.”

  “Observe the magic. Focus on how it reacts to your will,” Somney added.

  “Some see the act as sub-creation – akin to a god imagining a world,” Gleame said.

  “An idea attractive to the ego, but dangerous,” Gahst said.

  The brave demi-master faced the lake, motionless and silent. Miranda stared at the back of his yellow hood. For a minute, precious little happened and she began to shuffle her feet impatiently. Then a line appeared in mid-air, like water freezing slowly to ice. A box began to form, though its edges grew unevenly and the angles were incorrect, like a drawing made in the dark, Miranda thought. A corona blazed out from the torus to lash the incomplete shape and the novice jumped back, startled, yelped in frustration as his clumsy lines faded out of sight. Miranda thought she heard something like laughter, the distant mirth of a thousand invisible children.

  “Not bad for a first attempt,” Talon said, an eyelid drooping oddly.

  Emboldened by the conspicuous failure, other demi-masters volunteered. The masters worked through the queue of yellow uniforms. As always, Miranda waited to be last. She wanted to see what she was up against.

  The first formed a small cube. Although it only captured a few specks, he punched the air as if he had won a tourney, and was applauded roundly. Somney instructed him to dismiss the construct and its delicate lines scattered on the winds of magic.

  The next tried a complicated structure that faded into nothingness as it collapsed under its own ambition, half completed. The next two failed to produce any effect at all. Miranda tried to discern which one was Edmund by the way they retreated from their failure. Oddly, those who had held to the back of queue had more success. They conjured simpl
e shapes. One created a construct shaped like a bottle whose neck folded back into itself. It was confusing to look at, and it didn’t capture any magic, but it made the masters laugh and Gleame patted the demi-master on the back as he stepped aside.

  Then there were two.

  The demi-master ahead of Miranda stepped forward and created a pyramid. Its lines appeared immediately and with the certainty of a fact. The masters glanced at each other in approval. It was impressive, in a traditional kind of way.

  “What is your name?” Gleam asked.

  “Lavety,” the uniform replied, and the pyramid blinked out of sight. Of course, it would be him, Miranda thought, and prepared to do better. She stepped to the edge of the lake, closed her eyes and put her palms together as if praying.

  “Work at your own pace,” Somney advised.

  Miranda reached for the creation in her mind. Her eyes flashed open and she faced the swirling storm, grabbed a fleck of magic with her will. She felt it tug against her, and was filled with a sense that she had chosen wrongly, that of all the thousands of tiny specks swirling before her she had chosen exactly the one that did not belong to her, that it would not work, that she was being irresponsible, meddling with something beyond her comprehension.

  It was an obvious ruse on the part of the magic and she ignored the emotions.

  She began to turn and sway, dancing with her hands. She drew the speck of magic into the centre of her vision and wrapped it in a tiny sphere, from which several lines grew, like the spines of a sea urchin. Another speck was drawn to each of these and encircled in turn, and so the structure grew. She began to see patterns in the swirling clouds of magic, to be able to predict where it would move next, and how it would try to evade her.

  Her construct took on layers of complexity, grew ceaselessly. She became aware of a noise in the background, a voice urging her to stop. Another ruse of the magic, she thought, and ignored it. The work overcame her, absorbed her, obsessed her, and then suddenly it was done. Complete. A magnificent, lucent shape like a natural crystal filled the centre of the henge. It was exactly as she had imagined it.

  “…stop, stop,” Gahst was shouting.

  “It’s done,” Miranda said quietly. The cavern was silent. The eyes of every technician and master were fixed on her construct, or on her.

  “Dismantle it immediately,” Gahst ordered.

  “Under no circumstances,” Somney countermanded. “That construct could power a warship. It is worth at least ten thousand pounds.”

  Gleame addressed the cavern confidently. “Everyone back to work. Technicians, fetch a suitable container.” He stepped to the edge of the lake to examine Miranda’s creation more closely. “Fascinating. What is it?”

  “My relationship with my governess.”

  “Explain,” Talon said.

  “A diagrammatic abstraction. Like an alchemical formula, or a family tree.”

  “The girl made it,” Somney said to Talon, laughing.

  “I can hear that from here,” Talon replied. “I knew it was dangerous, allowing a woman into the Convergence.”

  “Then maybe you’ll agree to forgo your share of the profit that this construct will bring?”

  “Gentlemen, please,” Gleame said. “Miranda, from which tome did you copy this idea? I am not familiar with it.”

  “It is based on Master Talon’s theory of ritual, of creating complexity in the abstract. Human relationships are the most unnecessarily complicated things that I can imagine.”

  “You claim this idea as your own?” Talon scoffed.

  A squad of technicians arrived carrying a large copper box on their shoulders. It was covered in levers, dials and strange symbols. They set it down and flipped open a lid in its top.

  “We have not trained you for this. To transport the construct, you must reimagine its location,” Somney said nervously. Miranda understood, gently willed her construct towards the aperture.

  “What do I do now?”

  “Release the construct,” Somney said.

  “How?”

  “To invest a construct into a device you must forget it, forever.”

  Miranda’s whole body trembled with the effort of concentration. The construct began to flicker. A few motes of magic escaped from it, and the torus sucked them back in. She tried to focus, to keep her creation stable. “What do you mean ‘forget’? I can’t just forget her.”

  “Yes, you can. Your ideas are entwined with the magic now. It will happen if you let it. All you need to do is let the construct go.” Somney gestured at the device. He was telling the truth. Miranda could feel the magic tugging at her memories.

  “I don’t know.”

  “This is just one conception of her; you can have others, make a new one.”

  Tears wetted Miranda’s face.

  She had so many happy memories of her governess, shared fantasies and hopes. She had used all of them in her construct, turned soft sentiments to hard angles. Calculated her love. If only she had been given more warning, more time to prepare.

  The needles on the dials on the side of the copper box began to edge into the red. It started to hum violently.

  “It’s falling apart,” Somney shouted. “The construct cannot hold. If you mean to continue, do it now.”

  “I can’t,” she sighed.

  Talon was right, she realised. She was weak. Soft. The metal of the copper box began to squeal. The technicians around it turned to run.

  Then Miranda saw that Talon was grinning absurdly in the middle of his metal spider’s web, saw the eyes of Lavety standing beside him. All of them were laughing at her, on the inside. She knew it.

  Damn you all.

  She let a lifetime of affection fly free from her mind like doves uncaged. An ecstatic rush of power filled her veins. For an instant, she felt that she was a giant, the size of the moon, saw the masters and demi-masters as little things, toy people, to be crushed in her palm or stomped underfoot.

  Then she heard a noise like cannon shot and the sound of men screaming.

  Her world turned to blackness and she knew no more.

  Complicity

  Laila led the way through the tunnels, her box lanthorn held low so that Jon and Kareem could see their feet. The way was branching, featureless, earthen and too low for upright walking. Jon strained to control the strongbox that swung between them. His back and fingers hurt. He wondered how he would explain the route to the censors, once he was free.

  “How do you remember the way?”

  “I wander the tunnels, when I want to be alone,” Laila muttered.

  “Who made them?”

  Kareem chuckled with derision. “They are the workings of the Devourer, according to that idiot godsworn. He calls these tunnels the belly of the beast. I guess that makes us its shits.”

  Jon would have made a sign if his hands were free. Instead, he said a little prayer and wondered what kind of folk might have trod the depths in the time before Bromwich existed.

  They came to a ladder that accessed the basement of a derelict house, wrestled the strongbox up it and crept to the frontage, wary of absent floorboards and the rodents that scurried about. They crouched by a glassless window. It was the dead of night and no souls troubled the street. Colemore Street! Jon could see the silhouette of his mill tower less than two hundred yards away. He breathed deeply. Laila vaulted the sill, dashed across the road and signalled for the men to follow.

  “Let’s go, and make it pistol quick,” Kareem said.

  Jon needed no encouragement. The open air of the city had never tasted fresher to him. They jogged towards the mill, the cumbersome trunk swinging awkwardly between them. Only within sight of the loading-bay door did they slow to rest.

  “Seems to me I spend my life carrying things for you,” Kareem puffed jovially. Laila hushed him and crouche
d, her eyes alert. They set the trunk down beside her. Jon squeezed blood into his sore fingers and imagined being safely back in his home.

  “Wait here,” he said. “It opens from the inside.”

  He was halfway to his front door when it banged open and the street briefly flooded with a soft light. The face of the man who emerged from his mill was shadowed by a hooded cape, but his bronze badge was clear to see against the midnight blue of his uniform.

  “I thought I heard something.” The censor spoke with a hard, calm voice that Jon immediately recognised from the canals. He approached in a way that warned against sudden movement, but he didn’t look vexed.

  “I wasn’t expecting a visit – is there a problem?” Jon raised a hand in greeting and stepped forwards to hold the censor back, to keep him away from Kareem and Laila.

  “No problem. I brought Daniel’s possessions from the seminary. There wasn’t much: some clothes, an old leather ball, a book. I thought he might want them when he returns.”

  “That was good of you.”

  Jon heard movement behind the corner of the mill, and imagined Kareem and Laila readying their weapons. His small hairs stood on end and his legs stiffened.

  The censor continued, seemingly oblivious, “Daniel was a good boy, a magnificent warrior. He wanted to join the Brotherhood so badly. He should have trained for another year.”

  “That’s what Anna thought,” Jon said. A bead of sweat ran down the side of his face. Why couldn’t the censor tell that something was wrong? For some reason Jon felt like giggling.

  “Your wife seems a fine woman. Loyal.” The censor lowered his voice. “She asked me to talk with you, said you might need help with a private matter.”

  “Let’s talk inside.” Jon moved to guide the censor towards the door, but as his foot crunched on the cobbles, he heard the scrabbling again. This time the censor moved his hand to the hilt his cutlass.

  “Wait!” Jon warned as the man bounded past to the corner of the mill and then stopped sharply. Jon couldn’t see what had made him halt, but even in profile, he noticed how the man’s eyes steeled.