All The Turns of Light (24 page)

Nameless and Faceless, again in crow form, shifted from foot to foot on her desk.

‘
Tis unlike any spellwork we know,
said a crow, probably Nameless.

Aye,
said the other.
A work of supreme darkness. We were nearly caught up ourselves.

“Was it aware of your presence?” asked Meralda.

Yes,
said Nameless.

No,
said Faceless. The crows faced off and ruffled their wings at each other.

“This is pointless,” Mug said. “We might as well send real chickens next time.”

Have a care, construct,
said one crow.

Our powers are boundless,
added the other.

“Piffle,” observed Mug, before turning his cage away from the birds.

“Maintain your patrol. I’m far more concerned now with
where
the black death is, than what it is,” Meralda requested.

As ye wish,
chorused the crows, before flapping and vanishing.

“Our powers are boundless,” Mug said, his tone mocking. “Bah.”

Meralda sighed. “You shouldn’t bait them so. One might strike at you before I could stop it.”

“Why didn’t you ask them about your eyes? You don’t trust them either, do you?”

Meralda sat and lowered her glasses, regarding her reflection in Goboy’s Glass. Her eyes still glowed, though the light was more golden than red, and it was faint enough that Meralda could see her own brown eyes just behind the radiance.

“It’s not so much that I don’t trust them, but they are very much Otrinvion’s staves. Admitting I can’t control my own body isn’t likely to enhance my influence over them, is it?”

“Try for a nice sky blue,” Mug said. “I believe you can do it.”

“I might also wind up blind,” Meralda said wearily. She tapped the mirrored face of the Glass, and called for Tower as Mug settled into the spot vacated by the crows.

“I am here,” said Tower, his voice broken and garbled. A loud hiss, like a heavy rain falling onto a pond, filled Meralda’s cabin.

“I can barely hear you.” She briefly described the sighting of the black death. “So it’s time to open the crate,” she concluded. “Have you devised a means of lifting the lid?”

“Indeed,” said Tower, through the hiss and roar. “Observe.”

The Glass flashed, and an image of the Laboratory appeared. The image wavered and shimmered, but Meralda could make out the crate’s shape, centered over the old burn where her first flying coil exploded in a shower of molten metal and hissing sparks.

“Not much of an image at our end,” Mug said, hovering close to the glass.

Meralda saw a hint of movement, a shadow fell over the crate, and then the image vanished altogether.

Words appeared on the mirror’s black surface.

“Contact is proving too difficult. We may have only hours left.”

“Can you hear me?” Meralda asked.

“Yes,” wrote Tower. “I have moved Ringot’s Deft Automaton into place, and equipped it with Hewton’s Clever Levers. Lifting the top now.”

A clatter sounded from behind Meralda as a silver bucket filled with ice fell to the deck.

“Success,” wrote Tower. “The crate is open. It appears to be filled with debris.”

“Debris?” asked Meralda. “Describe it, please.”

Words filled the black glass. “One spool of number 18 copper wire, half gone. Two antique Potter-variant holdstones. A sheaf of drawing paper, loose, bound with twine. Four latching wands. A stained coffee mug with a broken handle. A burlap bag of what appears to be cracked glassware. Five threaded iron rods, of varying lengths. A single wool glove, right hand.”

“That’s it?” Mug said, when the words stopped appearing. “Junk?”

“So it appears,” wrote Tower.

“Inspect the crate,” Meralda suggested, trying to hide her growing desperation. “Check for a false bottom or something hidden in the top.” The moments crept by.

“The crate lacks any hidden storage,” wrote Tower.

Meralda’s heart fell. What if Amorp and Tim and the rest were merely wisps of a fevered unmagic dream?

“No,” she said aloud. “There must be something there, something we aren’t seeing. Tower. Please describe each object again in as much detail as possible.”

Mug groaned. “Mistress, that could take all night.”

Meralda shrugged. “It will take what it takes. Tower. Start with the papers. Make sure they’re all really blank.”

“As you wish,” wrote Tower.

Kervis knocked softly at Meralda’s door. “Mage. Word from the bridge. They’ve determined the object’s heading and speed.”

Meralda motioned, and Goboy’s Glass once again returned a simple reflection. “Come in.”

Ben, the elevator man Meralda met during her first day aboard, stuck his head inside her cabin. “The Captain said you’d want to know, Mage. The black airship is now one hundred and two miles off our tail. We’re running with your coils at full plus twenty percent, about one hundred and forty-nine miles per hour, and the Vonat airship is keeping pace.” The young man lowered his voice. “The Captain stressed that last bit. About it keeping pace.”

Meralda rose. “Please tell the Captain I am working to establish an alternative defense other than speed. I will keep him apprised of my progress.”

“Yes ma’am.” He closed the door behind him.

“Secondary defense, is it?” asked Mug. “Mistress, what did you expect to find in that old crate?”

Meralda waved her hand over her reflection.

“The papers are all blank,” wrote Tower. “I have Morton’s Seeing Eye inspecting them for invisible writing. I shall now examine the five iron rods.”

Meralda sat, frowning at the words in the dark glass.

It wasn’t just a dream. Amorp hid something in that crate, something he believes could help us.

“What would Amorp hide, and how would Amorp hide it?” whispered Meralda.

“Amorp? What’s he got to do with this?”

“He filled and sealed the crate,” Meralda said. “Don’t ask,” she added quickly. “There isn’t time. Assume I am correct. What do we know about Amorp?”

“He was Mage to Tirlin from 587 until 609,” Mug said. “Revolutionized the practice of serial latching. Quantified the measurement of thaumic leakage during interstitial bonding. Invented the rolling desk chair. What makes you think he hid things in crates for you to find?”

Meralda rose again, hands clasped behind her back, and began pacing across her tiny cabin.

Mug flew to her side, bobbing as he matched her pace.

“Amorp’s Strident Horn has continued to function without measurable arcane decay for over fourteen hundred years,” Meralda said. “The man knew how to create stable, elegant spellworks.”

“No argument there,” Mug said. “You’ve read his personal notebooks. What were they like?”

Meralda thought back, picturing the man’s faded, rambling handwriting and his neat, intricate diagrams. His notebooks, all three hundred and six of them, were marvels of invention and description. He’d been fascinated by nature, finding inspiration in everything from spider webs to ripples in ponds. In Shadow, thought Meralda, he warned me not to take up Otrinvion’s vortex. He warned me that everyone who walked in Shadow was stained by it.

Stained I spoke, and stained I meant,
he’d said.
Shadow is not a game of riddles.

Meralda realized she was holding a cup of hot coffee to her lips.

Mug’s eyes held her in an unblinking stare.

“That one just appeared in your hand,” Mug said. “Nicely done.”

Meralda put the cup down.

“Tower,” she said. “The cup you found. Is it clean or dirty?”

“It is stained with dried fluid,” wrote Tower. “The bottom is covered with a thick crust of it.”

“Never met a wizard who liked washing dishes,” Mug said. “My present and admirably fastidious company excluded, of course.”

“Clean the cup,” Meralda said. “Do so gently. Then inspect it again.”

“That will take some time,” said Tower. “I shall make every effort at haste.”

“Thank you,” Meralda said. “I’m heading for the bridge. Mug, stay here. Bring word when Tower is done.”

“Certainly, Mistress. Once he’s done with the dishes, should he start sweeping the Laboratory floor?”

The
Intrepid
lurched. Her decks tilted forward, nearly tossing Meralda against the deck and sending Mug buzzing into the ceiling.

“Mistress!”

Meralda steadied herself, closed her eyes, and extended her Sight.

The
Intrepid
was enveloped in a ragged, tumbling spellwork composed of pale grey filaments tangled in a single massive knot. While Mug shouted and the
Intrepid
shook, Meralda pushed her Sight down further, expanding it to reveal details of the structure underlying each fiber.

There,
she thought.
And there.

“It’s a single massive unlatching device, fixed to a volume of air, propelled by a simple electrostatic process.” She frowned. “It can’t possibly unlatch any of the
Intrepid’s
major spellworks, nor interfere with the flying coils. What is it after then?”

It took her a moment to figure it out. “The spark arrestors! It has to be. They’ve snuffed out our spark arrestors, leaving us aloft with seven million cubic feet of explosive lifting gas.”

“Your eyes,” Mug said.

Meralda pushed further. “The spellwork was clearly designed with the original spark arrestors in mind. But does it affect the new ones?”

Meralda swept the
Intrepid
with her Sight, not having time to appreciate the ease with which she did so. She quickly located a dozen of the new spark arrestor assemblies, and turned her Sight full upon them.

All were still operating.

Meralda let out her breath, but kept her Sight fixed.

“They tried to ruin the spark arrestors,” she said. “Spellwork latched to a volume of fast-moving air. It failed. Staves, to me.”

A pair of shadows appeared, inky black against the sparkling of her Sight.

More of those spellworks are on the way,
said Nameless.

“How many?” asked Meralda.

Twenty
.
More every moment.

Meralda fought back a rising wave of panic, and looked again at the fading spellwork that remained.

“How did it find us?” She caressed the grey filaments with her Sight, observing their weave and turns. “Show me,” she commanded. “Show me how you work.”

Her world spun as her Sight dove down into the tiny spaces that separated the filaments. Meralda saw movements that had no name, constructions she could not describe. One moment, they were strange. The next, so simple, so…obvious.

Meralda released the filaments. “The same forces that drive the air mass forward seek out the trail of ionized air left by our flying coils,” she said aloud.

“Wonderful, Mistress,” Mug said. “And what does one plan to
do
about that?”

“The tiny spaces,” Meralda noted, “contain even tinier spaces, folded in directions I never considered possible.”

“Ahem,” Mug said. “Mistress? Weaponized masses of air, twenty of them, heading our way? Hello?”

“Silence, construct,” Meralda said.

Mug’s sudden silence hung heavy in the air.

“What did you call me, Mistress?”

Meralda blinked, and her Sight fell away. A searing bolt of sheer agony settled between her eyes, and she sank to her knees on the deck.

She heard Mug’s cage buzz, darting near.

“Can you hear me? What’s wrong?”

Meralda ripped away her dark glasses and put the heels of both palms to her eyes, pushing as hard as she could. The pain was dimmed, somewhat, but only for a moment.

Silence, construct,
she heard herself say.

“Oh, Mug,” she said. “What have I become?”

“Not sure, Mistress, but think of the money we’ll save not buying lamps,” he said.

“My eyes are glowing?” She felt the gentle caress of a vine on her cheek.

“I wish we’d stayed home,” Mug said. “We’re mages and houseplants. All this air-pirate nonsense doesn’t agree with us at all.”

“I’m sorry for calling you that,” Meralda said. “I didn’t mean it.”

“Yes, you did,” Mug said. “But right now we’ve got bigger problems. The wonder chickens claim there are twenty or more of those things on the way.” Mug turned his cage. “You there, Brainless or Gutless or whichever one you are. How long until the next impact?”