Ex Magica, page 22
“‘Of course, we couldn’t very well blame the Dikaió Chorus because they found Jacob and Dillon’s bodies near where the fire sprite was activated. They did not even have time to back up before the sprite turned on them, and the Dikaió Chorus was in his house when it burned, as were several other people on Manuel Avenue.’ He turned and looked at my father with tears in his eyes. ‘I’ve never shared this story with anyone, son. Not my parents. Not even your mother.’
“My father looked away from him; his lip curled in disgust. ‘Why are you telling me now? Have I made a mistake throwing in my lot with you and your plans for the city?’
“My grandfather stood up and began to pace with his hands folded behind his back. ‘No, son. That’s why I’m telling you all of this. What we did that day wasn’t wrong; it was just ill-conceived in the ignorance of youth. That day has haunted me, and I had almost convinced myself that it had all been a mistake. Nearly forty years have gone by. I was ready to retire and live my life out in the peaceful tranquility of a city without want or need, where nothing ever went wrong like I used to think it would. Even my grandfather’s choice to ban reading for all but the Triad didn’t seem to make anything worse in the city, though I thought an ignorant populace would almost certainly bring destruction on us all. Everything seemed to support the utopian vision, but then that witch’s curse proved my youthful foresight was correct all along. The city did need a backup plan. We were ill-prepared for this disaster—but mostly the Triad was unwilling to prepare.
“‘I have been calling for a solution to the Mallory-Knenne issue ever since her witch of a grandmother cursed her to be a Chorus . . . and then to find out she used a book to trick an heir to the Administration into bringing about that catastrophe? It sounded so much like my own childhood mistakes. I see myself in Alex so much. There is something unnatural in the magic of the Choruses.’
“‘Yes, I see your point,’ my father allowed. ‘Alex wasn’t responsible for her actions, and I agree she should not be punished. Perhaps the Chorus did the same to you all those years ago?’
“‘Exactly! I fear that Alex may find herself drawn back into the Triad, so we should move quickly to initiate our plans.’”
Alex sighed and looked at her friends. “We don’t have much time now—the magistrates will make their move soon.”
Mallory jumped off her stool. “Well, let’s not sit around telling stories then. We’re going to need that book if we’re going to build these things.”
Alex deflated, “But I don’t have the key, Mallory!”
Caleb was trying to pull himself off the floor while patting at one of his legs, which must have fallen asleep. He nearly toppled back down when Alex said she did not have the key. “What do you mean you don’t have the key?”
Mallory stepped between them holding a bottle of black ink and a piece of paper. “Actually, you do have the key, Alex. It left its shape on you. If we apply some ink to the scar and press this paper to it, I can make an outline that we can use to carve a wooden replica.”
Alex’s eyes got wide as she asked, “Do you really think that will work?”
“It has to—all we can do is try, right?”
Alex unbuttoned the top two buttons of her magistrate’s uniform, and Mallory began to carefully paint black ink on the key-shaped scar. Caleb was hunting through the piles of parts looking for a piece of wood around the right size for a key, and respectfully trying not to look toward the girls. He found a piece that might work under a pile of wooden handles for the Chorus carts. “How about this one?” he said turning slightly to show it to Mallory.
The wood was plucked out of his hand before he had finished turning.
“Thank you!” Mallory giggled on her way to the work bench. She pressed the paper to the wood and made the imprint of a key on the block. She worked fast with an awl and chisel, splintering out pieces of wood and used a sharp knife to whittle down other parts. Alex and Caleb watched her progress in amazement, and within thirty minutes she had a fairly decent approximation of the key to Book Club.
“What do you think?” she asked holding it up so her friends could inspect her work.
“Amazing,” Caleb said taking the key. “Do you think it will work?”
“There’s only one way to find out,” Alex was already moving toward the door. “My family is out meeting with the Captains of the magistrates until lunch. If we hurry, we can be in and out before they even notice.”
The trio were running together again, though their expressions no longer bore the careless joy of youth like they once did. Now their expressions were weighed down with the experience of pain and responsibility. The streets in the Governor’s District were empty. Before the city lost the Dikaió and City Hall, they would have been bustling at this time of the day with business owners and bureaucrats bantering about policies and taxes, but now the silence was an uncomfortable reminder of how much had changed. Today, it was a reminder of the urgency of their quest as well. This silence could be filled with sounds that would be so much worse if they were unsuccessful and the Administrator actually managed to start a one-sided war in his coup d’état against the Triad government.
They reached the Administrator’s house quickly and piled up the stairwell to Book Club. Caleb handed the wooden key to Alex, and she slowly inserted it into the keyhole. She turned the key.
The door remained closed.
“Let me try,” Caleb pushed past the girls and took back the key. He tried to turn the wooden key in the lock. It still did not move, so he applied some muscle. The extra torque did not unlock the door, but it did cause a loud crack. Caleb carefully pulled the key from the keyhole, brushing wooden splinters off what was left as it came out in pieces.
“Oh, man, there goes that idea,” he sighed.
The trio walked morosely back down the stairs. They exited into the hall of the Administrator portraits, and Mallory felt their heavy gaze staring down at her again. How were they going to stop this current Administrator from undoing all their work? How could they save the city without the book? And how could they get the book without the key?
“Maybe we could break down the door?” she thought out loud.
“We won’t have to,” Alex chirped. “Look!”
Mallory and Caleb followed the direction of her pointing finger and saw a gleam of bronze on top the mantel of the fireplace: It was Alex’s key.
Alex rushed across the sitting room and grabbed the key. “I was so caught up in all the drama since I got home, I just never noticed it.”
Caleb turned back toward the stairs. “Quickly, let’s get the book and get out of here.”
The trio bounded back up the stairs. Alex inserted the bronze key into the keyhole and turned it, and the door to Book Club swung open.
16
Alex and Caleb set out into the forest with Chorus carts to bring back as many of the remaining fire sprites as they could, and Mallory set to work repairing the old fire sprite she and Caleb had already collected as soon as she got back to the workshop. She bit her lip, studied the diagrams in the book, and then looked over the fire sprite, mentally labeling each part she found that corresponded with the diagram in the book. While the hulking exteriors of the fire sprites had no equivalent in the city, the innards of the ancient dark-forest sprites were surprisingly made of nearly identical parts as those listed in Birthing Sprites—the very parts that Caleb had filled her workshop with could form the base of either a culture sprite to water plants, or a defensive fire sprite.
When Alex had said that her grandfather had worked with the heirs to the Sprite Master and the Smith guild so that they could gather materials and make the parts needed, Mallory had worried that she might need specialized parts that were unavailable—but so far, it seemed that the only component that was forged from scratch would have been the shell—and those they had in spades, even if they were somewhat rusted from years of exposure in the forest. The size of the fire sprite was a bit challenging as well: At twelve-feet tall fully extended, they would have been too tall to stand in the shed, but Mallory found that the legs were triple-jointed so that they could fold over themselves. Once folded, she could lower the sprite down to about seven-feet tall, which was low enough to work on the topmost parts with just a small stool to provide a boost.
As she studied the book, Mallory found it amusing that over the hundreds of years that separated the history of the city erecting the light, the printing of the book, and the current birthing of the city sprites, nothing about the make-up of a sprite had changed. The parts were just assembled in a different order, depending on the function of the sprite, but there was some aesthetic variation in the inner parts, if not the design.
As she scrubbed and oiled down the rust, she noticed that the ancient sprites had strange markings stamped into them that were different than the ones marking the city’s sprite parts. The marking looked like a crescent moon inside a large star and four smaller stars that were symmetrical to the curve of the moon, whereas the familiar city marking used the shape of a heater shield with a solid W-shaped top and stripes at the pointed bottom. Mallory knew that the symbols were probably family crests because of the portraits of the line of Administrators in Alex’s grandfather’s house. The earliest Administrators in the portraits were wearing family crests, but that practice had been discarded generations ago as the families of the city mixed, and lineage became cloudy. Since that practice was no longer used in the houses of the Triad, she found it intriguing that Reddy LaMarr was still using a family crest on new sprites as the current Sprite Master—and even more interesting that these older symbols suggested Reddy’s family may not have always been Sprite Masters. She wondered to which of the city’s families this ancient crest belonged. Knowing that Reddy LaMarr was not a direct descendant of the oldest guild families in the city made Mallory feel joyful despite her station now.
While she worked, she began to whistle old hymns her parents had sung when she was small. When Mallory was nearly three-quarters of the way through repairing the sprite, she took a break and went inside to grab a bite to eat. She scrubbed her greasy hands in the sink with soap and water and marveled at how long it took to get the grease off. She never could quite get it out from under her fingernails. She grabbed a plate and cut off a hunk of bread and then grabbed an apple.
While she chewed her food, she thought about the work she had completed so far. If the book was accurate—even with what she had managed so far—she was pretty sure the Dikaió command in the book could birth the sprite into working order. The most interesting part was the way the fire sprite ignited its stream of fuel. The sound of metal scraping on metal that their grandparents had told them about was made by two large metal discs inside the sprite with a layer of rough coating on them. One would spin one way, and the other would spin opposite, and the rough coating of the discs grinding against each other created sparks. The propulsion system for the fuel operated almost exactly like the hydrant sprites, and Mallory wished she had been able to read the book when Caleb had asked for ideas about redirecting the water; seeing how the sprites worked would have made that a much easier task. Perhaps when this business with the Administrator and the magistrates was finished, she could return to that problem. As far as the fire sprite went, she figured the remaining work was mostly cosmetic, patching up the rusted holes in the shell. She was sure that she could finish the next one even faster; they really were not that hard to put together.
“Mallory?” Caleb’s voice called into the house.
She swallowed a hunk of apple before she had fully chewed it, and it moved slowly and painfully down her esophagus. There was a moment when she was worried it would not go down all the way, and she grabbed her glass of water to wash it along, which sent her into a fit of sputtering. Finally, the apple cleared, and she yelled back, “I’m in the kitchen, having a bite to eat.”
Alex and Caleb came in dirty, covered with sweat, and smelling of manual labor. “You have food?” Caleb asked. “Is it okay if we have some?”
Mallory waved toward the nearly bare pantry. “Tomorrow’s market day. We should finish off what’s there, so it doesn’t go bad. Help yourselves.” The pair accepted her invitation. Alex pulled off her long gloves to wash her hands, and Caleb started to open the pantry.
“Ahem,” Mallory huffed.
Caleb turned, confused, and Mallory pointed toward Alex. “We may be going through hard times Caleb Aiworth, but we’re not riffraff. Wash your hands, please.”
Caleb laughed heartily. “You do a great impression of my mother, Mallory Knenne.”
Alex laughed at them both and moved over so Caleb could get in and wash his hands too, but she moved quickly to pull her glove over her scarred hand before the others could see it. Then they rummaged in the pantry looking for something to eat. Alex came back with an over-ripe pear and some crackers. Caleb found some dried bananas, the rest of the bread, and a bottle of honey. He proceeded to pour honey over the bread and nibble at it, savoring every crumb. Mallory laughed. “Not long ago, Caleb would have eaten that loaf in two bites.”
Caleb looked up, licking the honey on his lips like a bear after dipping into a beehive. “Not long ago, there were six loaves three times the size of this one in your pantry.”
Mallory’s mirth faded. “I think I’ve got the fire sprite ready except for a few minor cosmetic issues.”
Alex’s eyebrows raised. “Already?” she asked before nibbling a bit of cracker.
“Yeah, sprites are not that complicated once you see how they fit together—well, at least not mechanically anyway. The parts that the Dikaió controls are hard to understand, though. They’re like these tiny boxes with tendrils that plug into different parts.” Mallory made tendrils by squiggling her fingers on one hand. She used her other hand to make a fist then plugged one of her finger tendrils into the hole created by her thumb and forefinger. She looked up at Caleb. “Do you think the Sprite Master would know much about them?”
Caleb shrugged. “I doubt it. She told me she just says the words to birth the sprites. The Dikaió of the Rookery does all the work assembling them. Why do you think I came to you for help with the hydrant sprites?”
Mallory blushed but shot back, “So, even in fixing problems, I’m your second choice.”
Caleb smiled, his lips covered with honey again, “First, second, you’re the only one who actually seems to be able to do anything without the Dikaió, so that makes you number one in the city, right?”
Alex huffed, “Well, my grandfather seems to be doing alright without the Dikaió, which is why we’re here, right?”
Caleb licked his lips some more. “Right! I think we’ve got a whole other fire sprite in our carts, Mal. The process is moving a lot faster now that we’ve done one, and I know how to pull them apart.”
“And?” Alex prodded.
“And . . . Alex had the idea of pulling the parts out, loading the hull, and then piling the parts back into the hull. The load is a lot harder to push, a lot harder,” Caleb whined rubbing the muscles of his arm, “but we managed a whole sprite in one trip instead of two. I think we can get another one back here before dusk if we hurry.”
Mallory’s head spun. “I don’t know why, but I thought putting these together would have taken us days, if not weeks.”
Alex shrugged, “It’s just as well. We have that long before my grandfather takes action.”
“How long do we have?” Mallory asked.
Caleb stood up and began to pace. “The City Council is meeting this morning at my house. My father has been using our entryway as a temporary City Hall until they can find a more permanent location.”
Alex chimed in, “We think my grandfather will say something there that will put his plan into motion.”
“What do you think he’ll say?” Mallory bit her lip, wondering if she really wanted to know the answer.
Caleb and Alex looked at each other and shrugged. Caleb mused, “Probably something about the Matriarchy being unnecessary, you needing justice—who knows? Maybe he’ll call for the immediate surrender of the city.”
Alex stood up and shoved the last bit of cracker into her mouth. The dryness of the cracker made her cough, and she stammered, “Whatever it is, we should go get what we can and let Mallory get back to work. We want to be ready for him, not trying to play catch up.”
The three parted ways with fresh focus, and Mallory walked quickly back to her workshop. She grabbed hold of the handle and yanked. Sharp pain spread up her tricep and shoulder as her arm moved, but the door was stuck again. She pulled hard again at a different angle. Still no luck. She stepped out from behind the hedge, hoping Caleb was still within shouting range, but she could see his and Alex’s forms disappearing down the hill pushing their Dikaió carts in diagonal zig-zags like Mallory had shown them. There was no way they would hear her call. Mallory huffed and walked back toward the door of the workshop. She planted her feet in line with her shoulders, bent her knees, and grabbed hold of the handle with both hands. Then, using her whole body, she pulled on the door.
With that technique, the workshop’s door swung open much easier than she thought it would, and she stumbled backward into the grass, which had grown longer than she ever remembered it being. She lay there for a moment looking up at the tall grass that had sprouted. Several gnats and mosquitos had been disturbed by her fall and were swarming above her in the warm afternoon air. Suddenly, several dragonflies entered the mix, darting this way and that, eating their way through the swarm. Mallory watched them in curious amazement. When the dragonflies were sitting still, their translucent wings were an intricate maze of windowpanes; in motion, their wings were just a blur, pounding the air to keep their living fuselage airborne. Mallory imagined what it would take to make a sprite that could fly like that. The book had some flying sprites in it, but they all hovered with propulsion units or propellors, but adding wings that could move like these dragonflies would add speed and height to the sprites’ movements. She added the thought to the mental list of things she’d like to explore after the business with the Administrator was finished.
