by Gail Dayton
“So then.” Harry sat up straight and slapped his hands on his knees. “Since there’s hours to fill between now an’ time for the meeting to start, I think we should all go see what the lads ‘ave learned about the machines after workin’ all night—’cause you know they did—an’ what the new Mrs. Greyson’s magic thinks about it.”
When they arrived at the conclave’s laboratory, proof of the all-night labors showed in the unshaven faces, disheveled clothing, and abandoned coffee cups scattered about the room. The machine lay cracked in two, its intestines rusting green and orange and black in the daylight glaring down from the skylights overhead. Other bits of the machine lay on nearby tables. Amanusa couldn’t tell whether the separate pieces had been broken off, or had simply fallen off in the process of opening the thing up.
“Matteo Alvaro.” A lanky black-haired man with a beaky nose and pale skin under dark-bristled cheeks shook Amanusa’s hand. “Alchemist. Portugal. Met yesterday, but I’m sure you don’t remember.”
He didn’t give her time to respond before he turned away to drag her closer to the table with the machine. “What do you see?”
Amanusa blinked. “A machine. Broken open. Rust and corrosion and copper patina.” She copied his abrupt speech pattern without intending to.
“Yes, yes, but what else? Look With your magic.”
How ? She looked a question at Jax, who shrugged, seeming as bewildered as she. “I am a sorcerer,” she said. “My magic doesn’t work very well with things that don’t bleed. What do you see?”
“But machines do bleed.” That came from one of the very young men, an apprentice. “The machines that we make do. They bleed oil.”
“Oil is alchemy.” Alvaro poked at the machine’s insides with a metal rod, frowning. “I will tell you what I do not see. I do not see any nuts or bolts or screws. Not performing their usual tasks, that is.”
“Then, what’s holding it together?” Amanusa leaned over the table and peered into the machine’s depths.
A jumble of metal bits and pieces formed a busy-looking tangle. She had no idea what purpose they might serve, but she had no doubt they worked toward a purpose of some sort. It looked like they did. She recognized small tools—pliers and hammerheads and half a scissor—turned from their original purpose and stuck together by some glue, some force she didn’t know. A long bolt seemed to serve as a support, but it wasn’t threaded through or screwed down to anything. Just stuck on.
“Is that a stone?” She scraped away a flake of rust to expose a gray rock with shiny bits. Why would anyone put a rock in a machine?
“Quartz crystals,” Alvaro said. “Rather large ones, if you’ll look on that side of it.” He pointed with his metal stick at a number of square clear crystals protruding into a nest of coppery-green wire.
“What does it all mean?” She looked up at him, bewildered. “How are all of those things stuck together? How do they work? What do they do?”
“We do not know how they work or what their purpose is.” Alvaro tapped his pointer in the open palm of his other hand. “We have only guesses. Theories. These will, however, give us a place to begin in sorting out what it all means. We surmise—”
“Not all of us,” someone called from the back of the room. “Some of us think you’re cracked in the head.”
“Be quiet, Hansen. We’re tired of you.” Someone else Amanusa couldn’t see.
“The machine was not built by human hands,” Alvaro said in a rush, as if to get it out before any more interruptions.
That didn’t make sense. Amanusa frowned, looking from the machine to the alchemist and back again. “Who else could have?”
“The machine itself, perhaps.” Alvaro tugged her toward the other half of the machine. “Look there. A tiny bit of a thing. A few wires and a nail, a wheel from a child’s toy. I think that is the beginning, and these other pieces were added on as it grew.”
“Added on how? Why do you think someone didn’t make it?” The idea seemed extremely farfetched to Amanusa.
“Don’t you see?” Pyotr Strelitsky, seeming mostly recovered from yesterday’s trauma, chimed in. “It is precisely because we cannot define, describe, or duplicate the process that makes it unlikely to be human built. We do not have the ability to fasten things so securely together. Not like this.”
“Welding.” Hansen, the debater, was a stocky wizard with a thick shock of wheat-colored hair.
“Welds don’t hold like this,” Alvaro retorted. “It’s stronger than welds.”
“Besides, we cannot tell what this machine’s purpose is.” Strelitsky had a long ivory letter opener to poke at the jumbled insides. “Humans construct machines to do something, for a specific purpose. The machines have an efficiency about them, an order. They are not so higgledy-piggledy inside. Things are used for their proper purposes, not stuck on any old way. Our machines are bolted together, because it’s easier. More efficient.”
“But—” Hansen began.
Alvaro overrode him. “How could a man build it? The machines cannot live outside the dead zones, and men cannot live inside them.”
“We don’t know that for certain, and men can survive for a time in the zones.”
“It is easily tested and proved, and it is reasonable to assume, given their behavior as we have observed them, and the condition of this specimen,” Alvaro said. “Magic damages them. And there is a limit to the amount of time even a head-blind man can spend in the dead zones. No one could remain long enough to build something so sophisticated as this.”
“He could go in and out. He wouldn’t have to remain in the dead zone from beginning to end of the construction.” Hansen glowered just as fiercely at Alvaro as Alvaro glared back at him. “And as for why—a man could use these machines to do things for him in the dead zones. Loot the buildings of abandoned valuables.”
“Apart from the fact that this machine has no discernable purpose, no human-built machine will work without the operator controlling it,” Alvaro retorted, then waved his hands to forestall the other man. “We have been arguing these same theories all night. You bring nothing new to the table.”
“I simply wish to ensure that our sorceress—” Hansen tipped his head in a weary bow “—is fully aware of all possibilities and not simply given the opinion of the majority.”
“Is it the majority opinion?” Amanusa asked. “That the machines… built themselves?”
“By a very small majority.” Alvaro shrugged. “We were hoping that sorcery would be able to tip our information one way or the other.”
“What does your magic show?”
“Conjury detects no human aura,” one of the conjurers said.
“Hasn’t been touched by humans since this lady put it in her box,” Strelitsky added. “Alchemy can read the materials that were used in its construction, but the deterioration has made most other information impossible to read.”
“What about wizardry?” Amanusa looked to the wizard Hansen.
He shrugged. “Wizardry does not work very well on nonliving things.”
“Are you sure there is no sorcery you can perform to determine whether this machine was built or, or birthed?” Alvaro asked. “Whether human hands constructed it, or it constructed itself?”
“There might be something in the spellbooks in Yvaine’s tower.” She wanted to help. She just didn’t know how. “But I would think this’ machine is too damaged for me to learn anything now.”
“We could get another one.” Harry spoke for the first time since they arrived. “You’ll need to run more tests anyway. A fresh machine’ll give fresh information.”
No one spoke when he paused, so he went on. “Besides, I’ve been wanting to see what Mrs. Greyson’s magic can do with the dead zones. Her first working of major sorcery knocked the borders back across most of Europe. Maybe she can do more.”
A babble of voices responded, excited by the idea, which made Amanusa nervous. She did not want the pressure of attempting brand
new, never-done-before-by-anyone magic with an audience. She feared her look to Jax was close to desperate.
Harry must have seen it. “You lads ‘ave been workin’ all night. Mrs. Greyson don’t need a bunch o’ rubber-neckers spyin’ over ‘er shoulder. We’ll give a full report at the conclave session this evenin’. And we’ll see wot we can do about gettin’ you another machine to work on. They’re gettin’ more aggressive about folk goin’ into the zones, so maybe it won’t be hard to grab one.”
He paused, his mind obviously ticking something over. “That’s why I think they built themselves. They’re startin’ to act like, like ants protecting their nest. I don’t know any machine that’ll do that. I don’t know any man smart enough to build somethin’ that’ll do that.”
. The babble started up again and escalated quickly as old arguments arose. Harry seemed to take this as farewell, for he tipped his head toward the door in signal, and the English party filed out.
Just before the door shut on the noise, Amanusa heard a deep voice cry, “Data! We need more data before any hypothesis.”
The cab ride to the dead zone near the Chambre de Conseil was long enough Amanusa fell into a doze. When they arrived, she looked around her with great curiosity. Though they had passed through the magical vacuum of a dead zone, Amanusa had been on a train at the time, traveling at great speed. She wasn’t able to inspect it closely. Now, holding tight to Jax’s hand, she ventured past the line of demarcation into the barren section of the street, watching him closely for any sign of distress.
She stretched all her senses, especially the one that detected magic. Jax was a blazing bonfire of magic, but other than his bright glow, she could sense nothing at all. The vacuum sucked at their magic, trying to break the loop that fed it from Amanusa to Jax and back again, endlessly. It wasn’t a vicious, purposeful attack. More like the magic had died and the land—the stones and air and plants—everything in the zone needed magic so desperately to replenish what was lost that it tried to steal it from those who had it.
“Oi!” Harry called from halfway down the block, beyond the magic’s boundary. “You all right?”
Amanusa looked the question up at Jax.
“I’m fine.” He took in a deep breath to demonstrate. “Where do you suppose we might find a machine for the lads in the laboratory?”
A buzzing, clicking sound made Amanusa turn around. On the steps of one of the doorless, derelict houses stood a mechanical creature. The body was vaguely cylindrical, for it was made of a series of once-hollow tubes—pipes or stove flues, perhaps—sealed together in a bunch about the length of her forearm in diameter. It was about twice that in length. Down the sides of this body ran a series of scalloped wheels that appeared to be made of spoon handles welded together like flower petals. Amanusa didn’t know where the bowls of the spoons might be.
The thing seemed to Amanusa more a curiosity than a threat. Until it rattled forward and pitched down the steps of the abandoned house in a controlled tumble to the street. A metallic clatter behind them had Jax jerking her around to see another machine—this one squat and flat, apparently made of tea trays with insectlike legs of narrow pipe—scuttling down another set of stairs.
“No need to search, I see.” He pushed her behind him, toward the zone’s boundary. “Seems the machines have come to find us.”
“Maybe they’ll follow and we can capture one at our leisure.” Amanusa dragged Jax with her toward the boundary, entirely certain she did not want to be outnumbered by them. The first two machines had been joined by half a dozen comrades, all apparently armed in some fashion. They gave chase, some faster than others. The ones with wheels seemed to have more trouble with the round cobbles than the ones with legs.
“They’re rather like soldier ants, don’t you think?” Amanusa walked backward, watching the creatures. “Designated and equipped to protect the nest. I wonder if there’s a queen machine, like a queen ant.”
“Stop observing them and run.” Jax shoved her ahead of him with his grip on her upper arm.
The tea tray creature caught up to him and sliced at his ankles with whirling blades.
“Run.” Jax let go of Amanusa to dance out of its range.
She ran. A few more paces put her safely across the magic line. She turned back to shout at Jax, and her heart nearly stopped to see him dart back in, snatch the tea tray thing by its edges, and fling it over the heads of the watching magicians to clatter on the street beyond.
“There,” he said, when he was safely on the living side of the line, not even breathing hard. “You’ve got a local machine to study.”
Amanusa snatched up his hands to examine them. As expected, white blisters formed where he’d grabbed the machine. “You could have waited for help.”
“I saw the opportunity,” Jax said, white-lipped. “And I took it. I was afraid it would get at you.”
Harry and Grey stood a few paces away, observing and guarding the machine Jax had tossed. It crawled feebly toward the dead zone boundary, pipestem legs collapsing at every step. It flung its whirling blades out at the men to keep them back.
Elinor joined Amanusa in examining Jax’s injuries.
“I have an ointment for blisters like this, but it’s in my room.”
Amanusa reached in Jax’s inner coat pocket for his silver flask. “Pour this over his hands. It will sting, but it was spelled just last night. It’s still potent.”
As Elinor poured, Amanusa cast a glance toward the machine again, just as Grey lashed out with a foot and flipped the thing onto its broad, shiny back, where its legs twitched in midair and its sharp blades clattered against the cobblestones.
“Do you know how galling it is,” Grey said, voice bored and elegant as always, “to have to stand aside when someone is in danger because any attempt to assist would only make things worse?”
“I do indeed.” Harry nodded. “I never make it past that first set of steps there without collapsin’. If I’d gone in, I’d have to be dragged out by my heels.”
“Quite. Doubt if the ladies could drag our unconscious carcasses to safety without slicing away large chunks to lighten the load.” Grey sighed as he prodded the dying machine with a toe. “Still, it is extremely galling.”
Amanusa turned her attention back to Jax’s palms, healing rapidly under their coating of bespelled liquor. She slipped into the magic of her blood inside him to ease the pain and hasten the healing more.
When she returned from the magic, Harry and Grey had joined them, leaving the machine lying dead in the gutter. Harry was the most obvious in his staring, but Elinor and Grey stared too.
“How are you feeling?” Elinor took her hands, studied Amanusa’s face.
“Fine.” She looked at each of the others in turn.
“Why?” Harry said. “Why do the dead zones bother a sorcerer less than they bother us?”
“Because Amanusa carries the source of her magic within herself,” Jax said. “Sorcery is blood magic. Internal and self-contained.”
“There was magic in the room when I was stitching Amanusa,” Elinor said. “I could sense it, but I couldn’t manipulate it. I don’t have the right tools. Blood magic, wasn’t it? From all the blood that was spilled.”
“Yes.” Amanusa wondered how much Elinor had deduced, and if any of what she’d deduced were sorcerer’s guild secrets.
“Jax said to give it to him, because sorcery must be stored in blood and bone and flesh, not in plants or rocks or spirits. So by holding onto Jax, you are holding onto a store of your magic.”
“Alchemy’s in the rocks and air and water—but there’s no magic in those things inside the dead zones,” Harry mused. “Maybe if I carried something with me—a stone I powered up, maybe—”
“I could wrap a spirit round my head.” Grey leaned on his cane, his expression of ennui a thinning mask over intense interest. “Like a magic tank, instead of a fish tank for transporting fishes through air.” He paused. “Hate to put the poor
things through that. They’re already dead. The dead zones make them more so.”
“Why would you want to?” Amanusa asked. “What would be the purpose of wrapping a spirit around yourself or powering up a stone and going in? Just to prove that you could?”
“To learn what the zones are so we can learn how to stop ‘em,” Harry retorted. “You can’t cure a disease until you know what disease you’re treating. We got to know what this is.”
“It’s a dead zone. It’s a place where the magic has died.” Was that what she’d felt? “Or maybe—the magic has been all used up. When we were in there, I felt something sucking—no, that’s not right—” She worked her way through, thinking out loud.
“There was a vacuum. No magic. And the magic we had—it wanted to spread out and fill up the vacuum, but we didn’t have enough to refill what was empty. It would have taken all the magic we had until we had nothing left, and we would have been empty, and the dead zone still wouldn’t have enough magic to fill itself up again—and the magic it took would die too.”
“The earth,” Harry said. “The earth and the stones are empty. Earth is the most basic of magics, an’ the most vulnerable, because it don’t move. Air, water, fire—they move. They change and change back, but the earth, it just sits there. Other things pull magic from it. Plants grow in it. Spirits rise from it. People live on it. But maybe when it’s empty, it reaches out to pull magic back, enough to stay alive. As alive as earth can be.”
“And when the magic isn’t enough,” Elinor said. “It pulls more and more and more, making the dead zones grow larger.”
“But why is it in spots?” Grey demanded. “If that is what is happening, why isn’t the level of magic shrinking uniformly worldwide? Or even continent-wide?”
Amanusa shook her head. She had no idea, and she was sure no one else did. “Perhaps we should concentrate first on a way to keep the zones from growing any larger,” she said tentatively. “And let the men in the laboratory try to find answers to the machines and all the other questions.”
