“No talent for making friends? What am I, wyvern bait?” She slapped his forehead. “So you have rarefied standards. They fly on the wingtips of the wyverns. That's not necessarily a bad thing. And no cause for shame. Fie on those horrible children and wretched apprentices.”
“They kept casting me as the dragon over and over. An excuse to keep beating me up, I suppose. The knights always won, the heroes of the day. The dragon always fought valiantly and then lost. After awhile I fell in love with the large, scaly beasts. I volunteered to play the dragon. My mother smuggled a copy of Cornelius's guide to magic creatures and I would spend hours reading about dragons. Imagining I was a dragon. A terrible, magic monster.” Father looked at his hands. “Now I am a terrible, magic monster.”
“So what happened?” Abigail slapped his head. “There's something you're not telling me.”
“Several somethings.” Father smiled, wiggling his fingers. “Secret somethings. But I will tell you one: all the other apprentices used to call me Dragon Boy. And by the wrath of the five gods, I lived up to that name.”
As Abigail grew closer to my father, a knot formed inside my heartwood: a strange, itching, crawling sensation I had never felt before, like poison ivy spreading under my bark. I looked away for a moment and the knot unraveled and then tightened again as I turned to face my father. I grabbed a cobble in my steel fist and clenched until until the ivy settled and grit poured through my fingers. I could look at them together if I held a rock in my hand. It wasn't until years later I understood why.
“So the boy who did all that is growing up into a fine, young man is scared of a little sorcery, now? I don't believe it,” Abigail said. “I thought you were supposed to be an artificer What is magic but just another tool?”
“I'm not an artificer anymore,” Father yelled. “They kicked me out of the guild.”
Abigail slapped Father's head again. “You've got it backwards, Dragon Boy. Belonging to the guild doesn't make you an artificer. The skills are yours; the passion is yours. You were an artificer before the guild grabbed you and you're still an artificer now they've let you go. Well, their loss.”
“My magic is too wild, too powerful. Did you not see the destruction it wrought? My actions had dire consequences.” Father waved at the bits of little dragon carcass draped across the trees on the edge of the clearing as a flock of crows plucked at the branches.
“Why yes, I did see the destruction you wrought, Dumb and Dire.” She put one hand on her hip and stroked her chin with the other. “Everything has consequences. Getting out of bed in the morning can have dire consequences. You are not only an artificer, but a young mage coming into your powers, Devin. It's probably a lot like learning to walk. You're going to stumble. Eventually, you'll stand tall.” Abigail shoved my father off her lap and as his head clonked on the ground, she rose to dust off her clothes and then reached down and pulled my father to his feet. “Is this the same man who fought a pack of imps to save my honor?”
Father blushed. “Styx told you about that, did he?”
“It was very sweet. Now close your eyes. I've got your hero's reward.” Abigail's hand dipped into her pocket to retrieve the brass watch as Father leaned forward, lips pursed. She opened the case, held it like a metal clam, and touched it to his lips. Then she nipped him.
“Ow.” Father's eyes opened and he glared at the watch as Abby pressed it to his chest.
“You thought I was going to kiss you?” She chuckled and pushed him away. “Win the fight next time and we'll see.”
Father clutched the watch and rubbed his lips with the back of his hand, the chain dangling below his fingers. “What happened to all that talk about desecrating your mother's memory?”
She patted the watch case. “It's in good hands. And you will use this to destroy Captain Vice and his Black Guards?”
Father nodded. “I swear I will bury them in a cairn stacked from the rubble of the empire.”
“That sounds lovely.” Abby nodded and smiled. “I think Ma' would have liked you.”
“Enough about tearing things down,” Father said, gesturing to the piles of rocks. “Time to build something instead. But I don't know what Cornelius wants.”
Abigail shrugged. “The Professor always got this dreamy, faraway look when he talked about his cottage in the mountains. Let me describe it for you. Then we can build it . . . together.” Abigail rolled up her sleeves. “My muscle and your magic.”
With cobbles for the foundation and stone plaster chinking for the cracks, my father and Abigail started building the professor's dream cottage. Abigail supplied the plans and the brawn while father moved the stones and began stacking several heavy, fallen trees. Father had to take frequent breaks. He wheezed and admitted he wasn't good at moving things with his magic yet, but just wait until nightfall and he would light a gigantic bonfire in his circle of stones.
I hopped between my father and Abigail, waving my wizard hat, begging them to let me help. “Father. Please? Over here, Father. I can be so useful. Please let me help you? Abby, tell him.”
“Waving my hand. Moving a tree.” My father smiled ruefully as he wrestled another log into place and started pruning the branches. “And to cap my crazy life, I have a gangly wooden construct person claiming to be my son.”
“His love for you is the only normal thing about him,” Abigail said. “Styx self identifies as your son. He believes it with all his heart. Who else, what else, could he be?”
“What heart?” Father scoffed. “I said he was a person. I never said he had a heart.”
Abigail pulled my cloak back, revealing the blackened handprint burned deep into my chest. She took Father's hand and placed it over my heartwood. “You put it there, Dumb and Dorky. The day you created him.”
While Father stood gaping, Abigail chuckled and gave me permission to help build the cottage. I said the little prayer my father taught me to the five gods to honor the dead as I helped prepare my fallen, wooden comrades for their new afterlives as frames, floors, siding, a large front porch, and little roof shingles. I thought Grandfather was going to love his new cottage. But when he arrived two days later, he was livid.
“Swore to never use magic again, eh, Devin?” Grandfather hissed, swatting branches aside with a staff as he emerged from the forest. “Your oaths are worthless. Or are you going to tell me you built this structure without the aide of sorcery? How long did it take before your will broke? An evening? A day? Did you even try to find your inner tiger?”
“Professor, it's fine,” Abigail said, placing herself between my father and my grandfather. “We talked and . . . ”
“It is not fine, Abigail.” Grandfather waved her away. “This mage is dangerous. His magic is reckless and unnatural. I had such hopes you would hold to your oath, Devin. But you can't stop, can you? The power tastes too sweet and you don't follow the rules.”
“I'm a mage and 'mages use magic,' Cornelius, remember?” Father's hands fluttered like a pair of confused, little birds, not knowing whether to perch on his hips to retort, scratch at his hair to inquire, or launch from his chest to attack. “You're starting to sound like that nosy wizard, Azumel. Or worse, Captain Vice. Why are you turning this wyrm hole into a wyvern pit, old man?”
I reached out to try and stop them, console them, to heal this break I had widened, but Abigail held me and dragged me back as the fight escalated. My father and my grandfather circled around each other like two hawks eying the same golden prize.
Grandfather gestured to the small pile of rubble left after we built the house. “I investigated all my records regarding your magic with fresh eyes after that gaudy fiasco. A disturbing pattern emerged in the data, Devin, and I deduced the rest. I know how your magic works. You scoff at my tiger, boy? You've been riding the tiger all your life. You just can't see it.”
“There's no damn magic tiger, Cornelius. Why can't you accept that my magic is different?”
“Oh, it is very different indeed. I was a
fool not to see it sooner.” Grandfather coughed. “Your magic is unique and utterly perverse, Devin. You access a small, thin well. You drink warm, salty water. The well seals itself after every breach. You pump hot-blooded emotions to widen the breach. And you never saw the tiger.” Grandfather smacked his forehead. “All the clues were there. Was I blinded by hope? By pity? By the dazzling mystery?”
Father spat. “My magic is within me. I am the source. It's my mystical energy, old man, not some mangy, hocus pocus cat.”
“Your ego has no limit, does it Devin? You are the source of magic? You? Magic is everywhere, connected to everything. Magic is not some amorphous wellspring within our souls. It is a power as old as the hills: an ancient, wild beast of pure energy. There are rules. There are procedures. There are obeisances and balances to maintain. You bypass them all. You're like a mosquito. You skewer hide and muscle. You plunge between the ribs and drink straight from its pulsating heart.”
“That's my heart,” Father retorted, clutching his chest. “The magic beats within my heart and no old fraud is going to tell me different.”
“The magic beats within your heart because you steal it. You can't see the tiger because you are a speck on his back. You are clinging to the outside of something you will never truly understand because to you, this magnificent wild creature is not a source of wonder, but food. I once named you a prodigy. You're no prodigy. You're not special. You are an abomination.”
Father stood silent, quivering, fists held at his sides, clenching and unclenching. I could see the words building in his throat like a rumbling volcano. My father was a man on the verge. I wanted to hug him. Abigail held me close and gripped me tighter.
“The cottage looks nice.” Grandfather patted the walls. “How much blood did you spill to build it, boy?”
My father erupted.
17. THE MAGISTRATE, YEAR 494
Sascha's ghost followed his father through the house like a wet mist clinging to every surface. Sights and smells and sounds all filtered through the mist and condensed into memories, then hard, little icicles of pain, and then melted away as hot, salty tears. The magistrate, with nothing left in his emotional reservoir, took refuge in the kitchen. He sat on the floor cradling the little yarn doll and an empty bottle of Dragon Spleen Rum.
The magistrate huddled against the silent, mechanized spit, surrounded by a nest of empty bottles. The gears stood moribund in their axles. A dry, rusty stench was slowly covering the slick scent of old grease. The only meals prepared on the metal slab came from the industrious, little spiders spinning webs across the machine. The magistrate struck steel as he smacked the webs with the bottle. Instead of vibrant sloshing water or sounds of warm, chuffing steam, a deep, quivering echo resounded through the room. The magistrate sighed. Like its master and his bottle, the machine was hollow and drained.
The magistrate ran his fingers across the smooth, cool marble hearth and stared down the length of his arm at one empty bottle rolling away from his fingertips only to clink against another empty bottle. He draped the little yarn doll across his lap as though waiting for his son to careen around the corner, screaming to retrieve his toy, and pitch headfirst into his father's waiting arms. Thoughts of Sascha screaming nudged his hazy thoughts down darker paths and he sat up and kicked the bottles away. This dislodged Lil' Sascha.
A wordless cry rose from his lips as he grasped for the fallen doll. The magistrate set the simple yarn figurine on the marble slab next to his hip. He gently braced the doll against the spit in a rough posture matching his own. “Do you see that . . . big lever . . . there, Lil' Sascha?” The magistrate coughed and licked his lips. Days of disuse had turned his tongue to velvet and his lips to cracked leather. He had run out of words long before his wife. She seemed to find the screaming cathartic while the magistrate found solace diving deeper within himself and observing the world through the peaceful, shimmering distortions of his mind.
The magistrate observed everything now from those quiet depths. He didn't think. Thoughts were too painful. Thoughts led to memories.
The doll did not reply, but at least it showed polite interest. He tapped the fuzzy head with his finger, making the doll nod.
“That lever operates the sluice gate. It connects the boiler to the turbines. Can you reach the lever?” He extended the doll's limp, fragile arms. “Open it all the way. There we go. We're cooking with steam now, Lil' Sascha. That's the power of the empire coursing through that pipe. That's . . . the power . . . of empire.”
He fell silent as his wife entered the room, hands on her hips. “Are you going to fire it up today or just go through the motions, again? You can't keep doing this to yourself, dear. Please, toss that ratty yarn doll in the garbage and throw those bottles away. Come back to me.” She beckoned to the silent heap of a man spilled across the floor.
The magistrate began erecting a wall of bottles between him and his wife. He could not meet her eyes as she stepped around the bottles and placed a fresh stack of papers atop the growing pile on the kitchen table.
Elena pulled out a chair and sat backwards, bracing her arms on the chair's back. The woman talked to her husband like a man and not a shattered wreck of human being playing with dolls and bottles. “Sergeant Jemmy came by again this morning to visit with me and deliver more paperwork. He delivers less these days and visits more. I told him you were indisposed again, dear. He's getting quite good at forging your signature.”
The magistrate ignored her. The wall of bottles was growing into a little fort.
“This has gone on long enough. That poor man is making decisions in your name. He is running the office, the city, and damn near running the province. Thank the five gods for bureaucracy; the province mostly runs itself as you well know. That marvelous man,” she wiped a tear from her eye. “He is fulfilling all the promise you saw in him. Didn't you once tell me your Black Guards would assault the alabaster tower if he but led the charge? Well, he's leading the charge now, and the gods tremble.” She smiled and reached down to stroke her husband's arm. “They tremble in the capitol, too. Nobody dares remove him. The men cleave to him like children . . . to a parent.”
The magistrate cried: a long, low wail of heartache. He jerked his arm out of his wife's reach and retreated back to his bottle fort.
“You would be proud of all that Jemmy has accomplished, dear, if you could only drag yourself back to the office and see it. I know you've been shepherding his career. Well, as much as you could and still follow your moral code. Dear Jemmy's been like a second son to you, hasn't he?”
The magistrate stared at her, stricken. He looked like a wounded animal caught in a trap. He tried to scamper away. He couldn't. His wife smiled as the jaws snapped closed.
“Lucius Judicar, your second son needs you! If not as a father, than as a mentor. The poor man is swimming among the sharks, his head barely above water. He needs your guidance. He needs you to put the weight of your authority behind him, to support his decisions, to help him make the right calls. He's a good natural leader, but he needs your experience to temper those talents. You failed Sascha. Don't you dare fail Jemmy, too.”
Anger buoyed the magistrate up from the depths. His head breached the surface, screaming. Bottles flew everywhere as he rose to his feet. “Cruel, Elena,” he sputtered. “That's too cruel. Of course I like the sergeant and have watched his career with . . . great interest but . . . I don't . . . he isn't . . .” The man's arms flailed and his voice wavered as he ran out of words . . . again.
His wife crossed her arms and quirked an eyebrow. “Don't you? Isn't he? I've been chatting with the unmarried women down at the market about our good, eligible sergeant. They've also been watching the man with great interest, too. Great interest, indeed. Now get thee to the wharf, husband.”
“The wharf?” he asked as he began pushing the bottles into a pile with his foot. A swelter of suppressed thoughts began to trickle unbidden back into his mind. I neglected hauling the garbage outside
. The wharf. The trash always returns with the tides, no matter how many fines I levy. A wonder we do not have rats in the walls.
“Sorry, no, not the wharf.” Elena wrinkled her nose. “Oh, that stench. The baths. Get to the bath house. You smell like a ripe pile of fish. And walk to work via South District today.”
“To see the rows of broken buildings?” He grunted, kicking the line of bottles and hopping over them. “Admire the gaping holes? Dance in the rubble?”
“You always get so snippy when you know I'm right. Well, I will take a fiery husband over a cold hearth.” She glanced at the pile of bottles. “Not everyone spent the last half season moping, dear. Go relax in the baths, have the attendants mow down that stubble, tease those muscles, and then get back to work. Take the bag by the door. I've packed your clean black robes and a fresh-powdered wig. But go through the South District.” She shooed him from the kitchen.
The magistrate went to hug his wife, but his movements were still awkward and his hands shook as he patted her on the back. “I think I would be lost without you.”
“Go, love,” Elena said, pressing the brass watch into his hands. Her fingers caressed the small indentations in the metal. “I will clean up your mess here while you tidy the office. Don't forget the paperwork on the kitchen table. You will have to buy lunch at the market stalls today. I can't do everything.”
The Artifice Mage Saga Boxed Set: Books 1-3 Page 37
