The Conjuring Man, page 17
She paused. “The real problem is that, in some ways, we have more craftsmen than we can use and, in others, not enough. Too many craftsmen want to take up arms and fight.”
Adam winced. On one hand, they needed the trained and experienced craftsmen to stay in the workshops and churn out newer and better weapons; on the other, the craftsmen wouldn’t have much of a chance to gain glory for themselves. They’d be teased and taunted, if he was any judge; they’d be asked, nastily, just what they’d been doing during the war, then be mocked for cowards because they hadn’t fought in the front line. His heart sank as he considered the problem. There was no way to prevent the taunting – he’d been taunted himself, when he hadn’t rushed to join the militia the moment it had been announced – and it would gnaw on the craftsmen, no matter how vital it was they remained behind the lines. He didn’t know what to do about it.
Perhaps have the Levellers push to get the craftsmen recognised for their work, he thought, slowly. The Levellers actually listened to him. Betty would understand, perhaps. They can break down the stigma if they try ...
“We could rotate the craftsmen through the front lines,” Master Dagon suggested. “It would give them a chance to fight, without forcing them to stay there.”
“It takes weeks to train a new craftsman apprentice,” Yvonne said. “Months, really, for the newcomer to gain the experience he needs to work alone. The craftsmen working down below are amongst the most experienced in the world and replacing even a handful of them will be tricky. I’d need to pull craftsmen off the production line to train new apprentices, and that would reduce production ...”
“They don’t need magic,” Master Dagon said, icily. “They are interchangeable.”
“They are not,” Yvonne met his gaze firmly. “They may not need magic to do their work, but they need training and experience and a certain degree of talent. Yeah, in theory we can train up hundreds of new craftsmen without being restricted by a shortage of candidates; in practice, we need time as well as willing candidates. A man with no talent will not proceed past journeyman ...”
“He’ll be a brewer, rather than an innovator,” Mistress Irene put in.
Adam nodded, slowly. Matt had been a brewer. Capable enough, when it came to brewing potions someone else had devised years ago, but largely incapable of making any improvements to the mix, let alone coming up with anything new on his own. He was surprised Master Dagon didn’t understand the problem, yet it made a certain degree of sense. The vast majority of mundane jobs – certainly the ones seen by magicians who lived in magical communities – didn’t require skilled labour. He supposed it was harder for the magician to wrap his head around mundane jobs that did.
Maybe that’s why he’s so irked about Lilith and me being an item, he thought, with a flicker of cold amusement. He knew how his mother would have reacted, if one of his sisters had walked out with a lowly docksman or street cleaner or someone else who could be replaced in a heartbeat if he pissed off his bosses. The man might be a good and decent man, not driven to drink or domestic abuse, yet he might not be able to support a wife and family. He thinks I can’t keep her in the style to which she is accustomed.
The thought made him smile. There was no shortage of jokes and stories about lower-class men who married far – far – above their station, although he’d never seen it in real life. The idea of a swineherd marrying the local duchess, or even a merchant’s daughter, was as absurd as the king marrying the lass who ate the dung. The upper-class family would put a stop to all talk of marriage, no matter what it took, just to preserve their name. He felt an odd flicker of understanding, married to an awareness the older man was being an idiot. It wasn’t as if he was just a fisherman’s son any longer. He’d birthed a whole new field of magic.
Lilith poked him, hard. “Adam?”
Adam flushed, realising his mind had wandered. “Yes?”
Yvonne cleared her throat. “I was asking, how close are you to coming up with a portable magic detector?”
“Close,” Adam said. Technically, the detector they had was already portable, but he understood her meaning. They needed a detector that could be taken out of the university and used in the field, operated by a craftsman or – perhaps – by someone who didn’t have to understand the theory to put it to use. “We were very close to a final design before we took flight and I think we can finish it off shortly, as well as a few other experimental concepts.”
“Good,” Yvonne said. There was a hint of sympathy in her tone. “And make sure you test it thoroughly.”
Adam nodded. The Levellers had been surprisingly good at weeding out police informers – and they’d captured records during the uprising, allowing them to identify a handful of agents who’d remained undetected until all hell had broken loose – but it was only a matter of time before spell-controlled spies started to make their appearance. King Ephialtes had had no qualms about having his promised bride turned into an unwilling spy and sabotager – the broadsheets had had a field day with that, making all kinds of nasty suggestions about the king’s sexual proclivities – and if he was prepared to go that far he wouldn’t hesitate to do the same to his enemies. The Levellers would have real problems dealing with it, if the detectors didn’t work. One moment, someone would be so trustworthy they’d be above suspicion; the next, they’d be a de facto enemy agent reporting back to the king. And once it got out of hand ...
“We’ll test it,” he promised. He wasn’t looking forward to that, but ... it had to be done. “I won’t let you down.”
Master Dagon snorted but said nothing.
Adam put his irritation aside as the discussion raged on, covering issues from establishing a portal link between Heart’s Eye and Farrakhan to producing more airships, hot air balloons, charged wands and other weapons and tools to support the war. He wasn’t sure why the staff council saw the need to keep him, let alone Lilith, Taffy and the rest of their juniors in the chamber, unless they wanted to make sure they were fully informed. It was hard, sometimes, to determine how many of the planned ideas were actually workable, when they were taken into the real world. The nexus point gave the university a monumental source of power, and opened whole new vistas of possibilities, but it couldn’t be moved. Anything that depended on it couldn’t be moved either ...
Unless my idea works, he thought. His fingers itched, yearning to go to the lab and try the idea even though he knew it was impossible. He’d need help from Taffy and her crew just to get the concept into a testable state, let alone the neater version they’d need if they wanted to take it into the field. If it does, we might be able to change everything. Again.
“There is one final matter to discuss,” Praxis said. A ripple of something – Adam thought it was relief – ran through the chamber. “Yvonne and I have proposed a rather special apprenticeship for Lady Lilith, and she has accepted.”
Master Dagon flushed. The anger in his voice was almost palpable. “And you have not raised the issue with me?”
Mistress Irene raised a hand. “What do you have in mind?”
Praxis smiled. “Magitech,” he said, simply. “We are exploring a whole new field of magic, one in which older spells and magical techniques are combined with mundane technology to produce something stronger than the sum of their parts. Since Adam” – he nodded towards Adam – “discovered how to infuse magic into a storage medium, we have been working on ways to use it. Yvonne and I have already made progress on our own, to the point we are confident we can take an apprentice, someone who will use what we have done and improve upon it. Lilith has accepted our offer.”
“And you have accepted this?” Mistress Irene met Lilith’s eyes. “You understand the implications, both good and bad? And you accept them?”
Lilith didn’t look at her father. “Yes. I do.”
“This apprenticeship might lead to nothing,” Master Dagon protested. “You might find it useless ...”
“But it isn’t useless,” Lilith snapped. Adam felt a surge of pride. “A year ago, that might have been true, but now ...? Now, we know about infused blood and magic windmills and everything else that proves we have discovered a whole new field of magic, one that opens up whole new possibilities ...”
“So I keep hearing,” Master Dagon said. “But if you’re wrong ...”
Lilith stood straighter. “I am old enough to make these decisions for myself,” she said, firmly. “You wanted me to have an apprenticeship that required me to remain at Heart’s Eye, even though that was clearly problematic. I have found one. Are you not happy?”
“The choice is yours,” Mistress Irene said. “I see no reason not to approve.”
Beside her, Master Dagon reddened. “It is inappropriate to have two masters ...”
“But not unprecedented,” Praxis said. “There are several examples of apprentices undergoing a dual mastery or working with two masters on related topics.”
Adams lips twitched. And are you going to object on the grounds Praxis is a man, even though you had no problems with her apprenticing under Master Landis?
“Good,” Mistress Irene said. She shot Master Dagon a look that made him snap his mouth shut before he could give vent to his feelings. “And now, if there are no further matters, it is time for us to return to work.”
Lilith nodded. “Thank you.”
Adam sighed, inwardly. Lilith’s father looked angry. Intentionally or not, Praxis had created a situation where Mistress Irene had to override Master Dagon’s parental rights, a hard thing for any father to deal with even when he was unquestionably in the wrong. A particular patriarchal father might dig his heels in and refuse to budge, even when it was clearly hurting him more than anyone else. It might have been better to have the discussion in private, but ... Adam wondered, suddenly, whose idea it had really been? Yvonne’s? Or Lilith’s?
Too late now, he thought, as he followed the girls out of the chamber. We’ll just have to wait and see how it goes.
Chapter Eighteen
Lilith glowed.
Adam thought she’d never been so beautiful, as she stepped into the workroom. An apprenticeship was supposed to be hard, with even the most agreeable master pushing their new apprentice to the limits to determine their strengths and weaknesses before the real training began ... and yet, Lilith looked as if she was enjoying herself. She’d tied her red hair back into a long ponytail when she’d donned her apprenticeship robes, something she’d never done for Master Landis, and walked around as if she were floating on air. Adam hoped she’d remain as happy during the rest of her apprenticeship.
His heart melted as he looked at her. “You look great.”
“Thanks.” Lilith’s smile grew wider. “You wouldn’t think dismantling old spells would be so much fun, but it is!”
Adam smiled back. “And what are you doing with them?”
“Putting them back together again!” Lilith laughed, then took a notebook from her belt and held it out to him. “And adapting the spells so they can be cast with spell circuits.”
“Good, I think.” Adam wasn’t sure how he felt about that. He’d already moved on to more complex spells, and his current project was still being put together by the craftsmen, but he felt a twinge of unease at someone else working with spell circuits. He took a breath, mentally kicking himself. There was no reason someone else couldn’t do the work and besides, Lilith had helped him right from the start. “Do they work right?”
“Mostly.” Lilith frowned. “Some don’t, for reasons we have been unable to determine. Others ...”
Adam nodded as he flicked through the notebook. It wasn’t that easy to adjust a spell so the spell circuits could cast it. A regular spell was a three-dimensional matrix, put together in a magician’s mind and held in place by power and imagination, the latter often compensating for any deficiencies in the spellwork. The spell circuits and runic tiles demanded a two-dimensional pattern and had no tolerance at all for mistakes, even something as minor as a single line out of place. Lilith had done a good job, with no visible mistakes, and yet some of the spells simply refused to work. Adam had no idea why.
We’re probably missing something during the adaptation, he thought, as he passed the notebook back to her. But what?
“And then we started work on small magics,” Lilith said. “They’re very small, and very low-power, but they have to be very – very – precise. You can’t have a single teeny tiny piece of magic out of place. I had to try time and time again to get even a single spell component into place and then ... it was like putting together a watch with nothing but thick stubby fingers. I would have thought it impossible if I hadn’t watched Praxis do it ...”
Adam felt his smile widen. “Are they good teachers?”
“Very good,” Lilith said. “They play off each other and ...”
She hesitated, suddenly. “They’re like you and me, only far more advanced.”
Adam flushed. That was high praise. “Do you think they didn’t get on at first?”
Lilith had the grace to look embarrassed. “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t think so. They were both mature when they met, rather than ...”
“We were both immature,” Adam said. “But we got better.”
“So we did,” Lilith agreed. “Did you and Taffy get your special tiles into place?”
“Not yet,” Adam said. “She’s still forging them.”
“You and she have been spending a lot of time together,” Lilith teased. “Should I be jealous?”
Adam flushed. “No,” he said. “She was talking a lot about Dalia. The Leveller.”
Lilith shrugged. “I suppose Dalia really is quite striking,” she said. “Something brewing there, do you think?”
“I don’t know,” Adam said. Taffy had made it clear it would be a long time before she was interested in dating anyone. Adam didn’t blame her. Everyone at Heart’s Eye knew about her relationship with Arnold, and how it had ended. “I think she doesn’t know herself.”
“We’ll be there for her, if she needs us,” Lilith said. She sat on the bench, her legs dangling in the air. “Are you ready to test the healing tiles?”
“Yeah,” Adam said. He indicated the tiles on the neighbouring workbench. “Can you check my work?”
Lilith hopped off the bench and hurried over to the collection of runic tiles. Adam braced himself, expecting bad news. Healing spells, even the simplest, were incredibly complex and easy to get wrong. The books cautioned him that a miscast spell could easily do more harm than whatever it was trying to heal if it was put in the wrong place or simply overpowered. And the more complex spells were never shared with anyone who didn’t take the oaths ... Adam had asked the local healers for their advice, and he’d been told, after they got over the horror, that advanced spells needed a guiding mind and no amount of rote casting, however performed, could compensate for it. He suspected they were right.
Although most of their explanations were confusing and contradictory, he thought. An arm knows it shouldn’t be broken and guides the magic to heal it? A body knows it shouldn’t be ill and fights the disease, if it has the power to draw on ... yet it can’t fix short-sightedness without a mind guiding the magic ...?
He frowned. He wasn’t any sort of medical expert. The healers had poured scorn on the chirurgeons and insisted, rather nastily, that an injured man would be better off in the hands of the king’s official torturers rather than the local chirurgeon. At least, they’d sneered, the torturer wanted to hurt and maim his charges. And yet, it struck him as odd. An arm wanted to be repaired, to be intact once again, but a pair of eyes didn’t? He wondered, idly, why there were so few chirurgeons in the university. Surely, they could learn something just by watching the healers at work ...
“It looks right,” Lilith said. “But we need to test it.”
“I know.” Adam swallowed as he reached for a small, sterile blade. It wasn’t the only thing they needed to test and, perversely, it wasn’t even the worst. “Keep an eye on me.”
He pressed the blade against his palm and cut himself. The pain was sharp, surprisingly intense for something so minor. He’d had worse injuries that had been less painful. Lilith sucked in her breath, sharply, as Adam reached for the tiles with his spare hand and pressed the collection against his cut palm. They grew warm, too warm. He realised his mistake a fraction of a second too late – he had magic running through his blood – and yanked his hand away. His palm felt burnt, but the cut was gone. The skin felt weirdly new.
“You’d be better off testing the tiles on someone else,” Lilith said, darkly. “You don’t know how the tiles will react to your blood.”
“No, but you were able to heal me earlier,” Adam reminded her. “The spell should still work.”
He peered down at his palm. It looked as if he’d burnt his hand days ago and it had only just healed. The skin felt both new and very old ... he shook his head slowly, opening and closing his hand to make sure there was no permanent damage. There shouldn’t have been any, but Lilith had a point. There was no way to be sure the two magics wouldn’t interact and produce something unpredictable. The last time he’d been healed, Lilith had done it personally. She’d provided the guidance the magic had lacked.
“It works,” he said. “And if the spells work as advertised...”
“You are not breaking your own arm just to see if you can repair it,” Lilith said, firmly. “If you do, I’m carting you off to the Halfway House personally.”
Adam had to smile. “I thought we’d take them down to the infirmary and see if there’s anyone waiting to be healed,” he said. “Coming?”
He picked up the two spare spell circuits, then led the way out of the room. The corridors outside were largely empty, a sign that most of the refugees – and the university’s students – had headed back to Heart’s Ease or Farrakhan. Adam wondered, idly, how many of the latter would return to the university if they found places with Queen Violet or the Levellers? He knew he didn’t have time to attend to all his duties, but others ... he shook his head wryly. The Levellers were understanding. They knew he was needed elsewhere. And yet, they weren’t granting that freedom to everyone.
