Liquid Fire (29 page)

I stared at the tiny spark in the fountain, mesmerized. Even through dark lenses, it hurt your eyes—it burned as fierce as a welding arc, as bright as a glint from the sun. But the sparks that came off it were not straight: they curved and twisted, branched and forked like the tracks in a particle chamber—or drawings in one of Jinx’s graphomantic designs. The brightness dimmed rapidly, and I took my glasses off in unison with Devenger; then we both stepped forward.

The assistant stepped up with a thick-walled test tube, reaching for a glass panel that allowed access to the inside of the fountain. Then she—he? It?—touched his or her forehead. “Let me get the key,” s/he said in an androgynous voice, handing the test tube to Devenger.

“No, I got it,” Devenger said, slipping something that looked like a bulky pen out of his pocket. He pointed it at the lock on the fountain, and the tiny glass access panel popped open in a flicker of red, grainy laser light. My tattoos prickled as Devenger shone the device again, pinioning the blazing sparkler of mana in a gritty, shimmering beam, and maneuvering it out of the tube, like using a pair of tongs made of light to grab a glowing coal made of magic.

As it hovered between us, I could now see that the dying spark wasn’t a spark at all, but a tiny droplet, glowing with a brightness that still stung the eye. Devenger let it hang there in the air between us, staring at it, then he turned off the device, letting the droplet fall into the tube.

“
Aqua incendia:
liquid fire,” Devenger said, raising the tube between us, his kindly Santa face lit amber by the glow—and transformed thereby from something genial to something a little more sinister. “At least, a synthetic variant. Half-life, two weeks.”

“Half-life,” I said, taking the tube when it was offered. “Like . . . radioactivity?”

“The magical kind,” Devenger said. “Magic is life, and life is fire—chemical reactions, whose logic tweaks the rules of the universe. But liquid fire is something more, magic all the way down to the core of its atoms, active with nuclear reactions that produce magical effects. The liquid form of the Philosopher’s Stone—the goal of all alchemy.”

“A magical version of a radioactive substance,” I said, struggling to form my thoughts. “Oh my God. Like the Philosopher’s Stone, but real.” My brow furrowed as I looked at the tube. “But . . . nuclear reactions are thousands of times more powerful than chemical ones.”

Devenger’s eyes gleamed. “You’re starting to see,” he said. “With liquid fire, you can do spells that are impossible by any other means—life extension spells, for example, delivering to every cell powerful magical effects beyond the reach of the best magical generators.”

My mouth hung open. I had been a chemist before I was a magician; I could see that, see the power of a compound delivering a targeted magical effect right where it was needed, when the same flux of magic flowing in from the outside would kill a man.

“The fountain of youth in a bottle,” I said. “And you can synthesize it—”

“No. From your tattoos, I take it you know about the colors of magic—”

“Colors are an approximation,” I said, shimmying my shoulders, making my tattoos spark with the magical “spectrum” of black, white, red, green, and blue. “It’s just different fractions of magic, broken down by the ‘colors’ the human eye can perceive.”

“But complex magical effects need complex combinations of magic,” Devenger said. “Whether it’s a tattoo on your skin, a spell in my mind, or a circuit in a necromancer’s dagger, each new color of magic you try to combine makes the mana you need shoot up quickly, like Fermat numbers—all possible combinations of all possible combinations, save one for entropy. Just transforming
one
kind of magic requires a five-to-one gearing of power—”

“And two, seventeen,” I said. I
did
know this—it was an obscure trick of the graphomantic arts, something that never normally came up in practice—because combining even three kinds of magic took a gearing of almost two hundred sixty to one, nearly impossible. “And liquid fire?”

“At
least
Fermat number five,” Devenger said. “Something like four billion to one.”

“Jesus,” I said. “You . . . you could do
anything
with that. And you make it,
here
—”

“Nothing over F4. And synthetics are short-lived. The fountain’s infinity lens focuses more magic than the Georgia Tech array, but its gearing tops out at thirteen-to-one—there’s only so much magic we can concentrate into each atom. Already, the high-fraction manatopes in that sample are gone,” Devenger said, pointing at the test tube; the spark was visibly fading. “In a couple of months, that will decay to mundanity. But true liquid fire can burn for
centuries.
”

“That’s why they’re after Jewel,” I said. “She’s got liquid fire.
Real
liquid fire.”

“Yes,” Devenger said. “That performance at the Crucible gave her away. For her finale, she spun poi for
seventeen minutes
without refueling—I’ve seen the YouTube video. Almost certainly, she doped her fuel with liquid fire. The fire warriors who attacked Union Square did too.”

“You saw her performance,” I said. “
And
the Battle at Union Square?”

“Yes,” Devenger said, tugging at his ear. “That was . . . quite spectacular.”

“I’m guessing you’re not talking about Jewel’s performance,” I said, and Devenger nodded. A thousand questions ran through my mind. “Professor, did you see the aftermath? The giant symbol plastered all over Macy’s? My daughter thinks it’s some kind of code—”

“Almost certainly, but it’s not the standard alchemical Zodiac cipher. I’m guessing it’s a secret alphabet used by the Order of the Woven Flame—you probably know them better as the Fireweavers. That’s just the stage name of performers in a Kanaka Maoli magician’s guild—Hawai`ian nativists, historically secretive. Most of their communications are encoded.”

“Secret fireweaving codes,” I said. “So we just need to find the mapping—”

“It won’t be that easy,” Devenger said. “There wasn’t any obvious pattern in the repeated symbols. Could be polyalphabetic, or perhaps a transposition cipher, scrambling the letters based on the rules of fireweaving magic—but I haven’t cracked it yet. Too many possibilities—”

“That’s what Cinnamon said.” I scowled. “She says it’s a code because the magic that lights the tag doesn’t connect to the words of the message. I love my baby girl, she’s a genius, but I don’t believe someone would create a symbol of that size just to send a message.”

“Yet people do,” Devenger said. “Billboards. And they don’t have to be corporate logos—Osama Bin Laden would take out a full page ad in the
New York Times
if they’d let him. A magical sign plastered over the façade of Macy’s? Hell of a calling card for a terrorist.”

“Fuck me,” I said. Of course. An attack on a crowd, followed by a huge symbol slapped over Macy’s,
would
look like the act of a magical terrorist. “Let’s avoid the t-word. They haven’t blown anything up to make a point, though it’d be nice if it was as benign as a calling card—”

“A terrorist calling card, benign? You think it’s something
darker?
”

“Jewel thinks,” I said tightly, “it’s a curse.”

Devenger frowned. “Cinnamon’s right about the tag—it’s hermetic magic. The logic of the sign isn’t connected to the logic of the message—but that doesn’t mean
the message itself isn’t a spell
. It could be vicious magic, bottled up—and ready to spring on whomever decodes it.”

I squirmed uncomfortably as my Dragon shifted on my skin.

“So it
could
be a curse,” I said. “In her performances, Jewel is burning up a substance that can be used to extend human life, and I can see that explains the attacks on her. But you said that the wizards wanted a piece of me, too. Why? I don’t have a supply of liquid fire.”

Devenger just looked at me. Finally he smiled.

———

“You may not know it, but you do,” he said. “It’s inked into all of your tattoos.”

30. You’re All Over the Internets

“The legendary source of liquid fire was the blood of dragons,” Devenger said, settling back into his office chair. It creaked a little. “As best as we can determine, while manactive compounds were in their blood, the pure form was an extract from their flame glands.”

“Their fire extended our life,” I said. “No wonder we hunted them to extinction.”

“We thought that once,” Devenger said. “Now we know dragons were dying out before humans came along. I once hypothesized they needed some trace element—liquid fire contains elements not common on Earth since the Hadean era—but experiments like the one you just saw refuted that. They could have synthesized the elements of liquid fire in their own bodies, like magical versions of breeder reactors. So why dragons died out . . . is a mystery.”

“Dragons . . .
synthesized
 . . . liquid fire,” I said. “Well, obviously, if it ran in their blood and powered their fire . . . but, somehow, it makes you think, if they could synthesize it—”

“That’s the point of all those big, sciency,
precise
words,” Devenger said. “You were a chemist before you were a magician, so I’m certain you realize the universe isn’t made of secret substances available only at mystical times or places.” His voice deepened, sounding like a true wizard. “That which can be made can be unmade—or made another way.”

“Devenger,” I said. “You can’t be serious. Liquid fire is totally unlike tattoo ink, and I don’t just mean that it’s impractical to ink human skin with stuff that’s
on fire
. Most inks have a shelf life of years, but you said that liquid fire has a half life of
months
—”

“
Synthetics
have a half-life of months—like the nasty synthetic elements that come out of nuclear reactors,” Devenger said. “But the reactors themselves are powered by uranium. It has a half-life of millions of years. So too with dragon’s blood—”

“I don’t use dragon’s blood as ink,” I said. “You have to know that. It’s too expensive, even if you buy it in the five-gallon drums to get the wholesale discount—”

“What?” Devenger looked at me sharply. He squinted. “Are you pulling my leg?”

“
Moi?
” I said. “Yes. I’ve never
heard
of anyone who had a supply of dragon’s blood before today. But you clearly suspect I’ve got another source of the same compounds.”

“I love talking to you, Ms. Frost. You don’t just keep up, you try to pull ahead.”

“I’ve had to,” I said. “And I have good science advisors. I should introduce you to Doug Suleiman at Georgia Tech. He’s got an apparatus similar to what you’ve got here—”

“Suleiman . . . sounds familiar,” Devenger said, cocking his head. “Maybe we met at that manadynamics conference in Hawaii—oh, of course. Your graphomancer’s new husband. He works at that Tech mana facility, yes? I’d love an introduction to Doctor Suleiman.”

“Mister, currently,” I said. I didn’t like how much Devenger seemed to know about me and my companions. “He’s working on the doctor bit.”

“Yes, yes,” Devenger said. “Supplies of liquid fire are the most carefully guarded secrets in the wizarding world, but it’s no secret supplies are running out. Unlike dragonsbreath, human uses of liquid fire are not self-regenerating. The spell used by the Warlock, the Commissioner, and I, for example, binds you to the spirit of an age; periodically, it must be renewed.”

“It’s not just the fountain of youth in a bottle,” I said. “The bottles are running out. And all your efforts to attempt to synthesize it have just taught you it’s effectively impossible—unless you had a source that you could study and replicate, and even then, it would
still
run out.”

“Making liquid fire the most valuable substance in the world,” Devenger said. “Almost certainly the real reason behind the assaults on your friend are a fireweaver’s dispute over the use of liquid fire. And the reason for the Archmage’s interest, and ours, are your tattoos.”

“I am
not
the only magical tattooist,” I said, and it was true. “There are easily hundreds of us who ink in the open, maybe half a dozen in the Bay Area alone. I even hope to meet some while I’m here. Why can’t you get this information from someone else?”

“There may be hundreds of magical tattooists, but few known for inking tattoos of such extraordinary color,” Devenger said—and it was true. “That’s the source of interest—or, more precisely, our interest is in your source for the compounds you used to ink your tattoos.”

I tensed subtly in my chair. That hadn’t precisely been the Archmage’s intent, but I had no intention of correcting Devenger—he knew entirely too much about me. I started to worry that I’d come across a stalker. His next actions seemed to confirm it.

Devenger leaned forward in his chair. “I don’t mean to seem forward, but . . . can I see one of your tattoos? The butterfly—ah, you gave that one to your daughter, didn’t you? Then an asp, or, if you’re comfortable, the tail of the Dragon—”

Let me out, let me out,
whispered a voice, silky as my own skin . . . and I complied. I released the mana that I’d pent up, bent my head forward, and the head of the Dragon slid smoothly out of the back of my collar and over my head. “Will that do you?”

Devenger looked up and cooed. “Wonderful,” he said. “But actually, what I want to show you is on your skin. May I?” he asked, reaching for my hand.

I let him take it, and his grip wasn’t soft or grabby like a creepy old uncle; it was firm, gentle, even clinical; like a kindly old doctor. “Many of these pigments,” he said, drawing his finger over the surface of my skin without touching it, “are magically active. But the mana lines—the magically conducting circuits—are too effective for how colorful they are.”

He glanced at me for permission, then pressed his finger into my skin and drew it along the surface of the asp. Little tingles of mana flickered through the design in his finger’s wake, like a dozen little ants made of light.

“It’s almost impossible to get that much visible color and that much magical activity in the same ink without using manactive compounds. Even in a mix. The fractions just aren’t there. Almost certainly your inks have trace amounts . . . of true liquid fire.”

“Every magical tattoo artist in the South does marks this colorful,” I said.

“
Every
magical tattoo artist,” Devenger asked, “or just the ones from your clan?”

“Well,” I began, but most of the really spectacular inkers
were
in my clan. “Well, it’s a regional specialty,” I said lamely. Devenger raised an eyebrow, but I shook my head. “People make fun of it at tattooing conferences—but no one ever suggested that we use liquid fire!”

“Maybe the tattoo
artists
don’t know,” Devenger said quietly. “You don’t do your own graphomancy; the aforementioned blind witch analyzes your designs. I’ll bet you don’t make your own pigments, either.” His eyes gleamed. “Clan inks? Who’s your stonegrinder?”