The Mask And The Master (Mechanized Wizardry Book 2) (10 page)

He nodded to Martext.  The tall man brushed his black hair out of his eyes with both hands, flicking a lightning-fast glance over to his boss.  Martext’s tight smile was as inscrutable as always; if there was any outward content to it at all, it was ‘you owe me one.’  Ever since asking Martext to do this demonstration, Lundin had been feeling the exact same thing. It was as odd as it was illogical, since it was his role as senior tech to give orders, not ask his squad to do him favors he should feel grateful (or guilty) for.  But there were orders, and then there were
orders
, and Lundin recognized that what Martext was being asked to do was far outside the daily norm.  All the danger and risk of the entire presentation was concentrated on him, at this moment. 
And all the glory, too, when the spell works
, an optimistic counterpoint piped up in the back of his head. 

Lundin blinked, smiling at the unexpected positive voice. 
Where have you been all my life?

The Civics exchanged sidelong glances as their man stepped forward to the cage.  Lundin laced his fingers behind his back where the audience couldn’t see him fidgeting as Martext gingerly unlocked the clasps on front of the cage.  Cort’s filmy eyes opened at the noise, but the dog barely stirred.  All eyes were on the lean, dark-skinned technician as he crouched down in front of the cage and slowly extended his hand.

Cort sniffed Martext’s long fingers for a moment.  Lundin was holding his breath; silly, he knew, but he was pretty sure he wasn’t alone.  Martext raised his hand a little higher and began to scratch Cort behind one gray, grizzled ear.  From across the stage, Lundin caught sight of Dame Miri, her violet eyes bright with pride.  And then—

A snarl.  A shout from Martext.  The thump of his body against the stage as he recoiled, landing heavily on his back.  The clatter of the metal cage as Cort flung himself forward onto the prone man with a mouth full of dirty fangs.  A sharp gasp from every throat in the room.  The scuffing of chairs and boots as the audience leapt to their feet.

In a room full of noise and motion, the eye is drawn most to what’s staying still.  In that brief, terrible moment before his shocked body could react, Lundin’s attention flashed, as if by magnetic attraction, to the one person in the whole room who wasn’t moving: the royal Herald, in gleaming white at the end of her row.  Her eyes were locked right on his.  She was utterly still except for her stylus, which, as he was watching, wrote and underlined a single word.  Lundin would see that silent scribe in his dreams for years afterwards.

“Spheres, get it off him,” Elia wailed, casting around from side to side for an appropriate tool, her eyes rolling in her head like a horse.  To his credit, Willl with three L’s had already leapt into action, racing from upstage and sliding on his knees towards the chaotic pile of limbs.  His sleeves slid up his wrists as he wrapped his arms around the hound’s belly.  He yanked backwards, eyes closed behind his glasses, and swung the dog around with a mighty heave.  Cort flailed his paws madly, leaving thin white scratches in the golden stage.  The dog twisted awkwardly in an effort to bite his assailant, snarling, but he only got his mouth around the tips of the man’s blond bangs. 

Then Dame Miri rushed forward and shoved a leather muzzle onto the dog’s snout.  She knelt in front of Cort, clamping her injured hands down onto the dog’s jaws.  “Tie him.  Tie him,” she yelled to Elia, who was hovering over the melee uncertainly with a leash in her hands.  Elia nodded, dropping the leash and leaning down to tie off the muzzle where Dame Miri was indicating.  Willl with three L’s was still hugging the dog around the midsection gamely as the old hound writhed and struggled.

Only then did Lundin master himself enough to dash forward to Martext.  The lean technician was propping himself up unsteadily as Lundin knelt down next to him.  His trapezoidal glasses were askew and he was breathing heavily.  Martext pressed his left hand to the stage to lift himself up further and his face contorted with pain.  Lundin looked down and saw the nasty punctures on Martext’s hand smearing blood on the stage.

“Don’t move, Martext; you stay put, and we’ll get the master of physic.  Are you all right?  Did he get you anywhere than your hand?”

“I’m all right,” he said, waving Lundin away with his head.  Lundin ignored him, hands on the other man’s shoulders, looking him up and down.

“Lie back if you need to.  I want to be sure he didn’t get you anywhere else—”

“Horace, leave it.  Don’t worry about me,” Martext hissed, his face very close to Lundin’s.  “You worry about
them
.”

Lundin turned his head.  Their audience of two dozen looked like a horde of two thousand, with every soul in the place on their feet.  A wave of sound came crashing against him, and he felt himself shrink as he took stock of the room, recoiling from the horror, fear, disgust, contempt, and outrage he saw burning out of every face.  Of the mob, Tymon was the only one not looking at the stage.  The bald wizard had his hands raised to the vaulted ceilings, his nasty little skull pendant beating against his chest as he laughed.  White teeth gleaming in the sun, Kelley’s grandfather laughed and laughed and laughed.  The Herald was nowhere to been seen; most likely, she was already headed back to the Palace with her one-word review of Horace Lundin’s most spectacular failure to date.

Come on, optimistic side,
Lundin said to his own brain as he started to lift himself to his feet. 
Feel like helping me turn this around?

Sorry, Horace,
the cheery voice replied. 
You’re skunked.

Chapter Eight

The Golden Caravan

Columbine Fletcher clutched her sister tight as the noise grew louder.  There was a branch jabbing into her back, but she didn’t dare start shifting or the whole bush might move.  If the carriage heading their way through the Tarmic Woods spotted them, there was no telling what would happen, but it was bound to be bad.  Besides, Ariell got mad at her if she moved too much.  She could tell from a quick glance up at her sister’s scowling face that Ariell was already close to clocking her for hugging too tight. 
I can’t help it
, the protest rose up in her throat automatically. 
Well, you’d better
, Ariell’s surly response came back, so routine Columbine could hear it in her head word for word,
because if you don’t grow up fast, you never will
.

The noise on the forest path was getting even louder.  She could hear the noisy squeak of wheels, but not the sound of horses; just an ever-increasing roar.  “What is it, Ariell?” she whispered into her sister’s back, unable to stop herself.

“Shut it,” Ariell hissed, thumping her on the thigh with the butt of her knife.  Columbine fought down a yelp, biting her lip as tears filled her eyes.  Ariell exhaled sharply, turning her head for a better look through the dense bush.  As she turned, her head recoiled and her hand flew up, covering her eye.  She’d bumped into a pokey little twig, eyeball-first.

“Spheres, flames, burn everything,” she swore, lashing out at the bush with the chipped knife.  Scraps of bark and a few pea-sized leaves drifted to the ground.  Ariell grimaced, massaging her eye with her hand.

“Are you okay?” Columbine asked, relaxing her grip.  She peered around to look into her sister’s face.

“Give me a flaming minute.  You’re small; you look out there and see if you can see anything.”

Columbine nodded vigorously.  Very carefully, she turned around on her hands and knees, brushing a branch at face level aside.  It was good to move, and have that prickly branch out of her back.  But she was scared, facing the forest path like this.  It was better to just keep her face buried in Ariell’s body, where there was nothing to see and nothing to focus on except staying still until the sound was gone.  But Ariell needed her to grow up fast, and part of growing up fast was ignoring the fact that you were scared and doing something anyway.  So Columbine Fletcher crawled half a meter more to the far side of the bush, where only a thin, jagged screen of leafy wood concealed her from the forest path beyond.  She opened her eyes wide and scanned the woods.

“Come out.”

Columbine shrieked at the sound of a man’s voice. 
Ariell’s gonna hit me again
, she thought instantly, covering her mouth with both hands.  But she couldn’t help it.  The quiet words had been so close by—

“It’s all right.  Come out.”

“Run, Columbine!” Ariell shouted, her voice shrill and cracked.  Her sister backed out of the bush awkwardly and stood, scraping her arms on the twiggy branches and sending a cascade of tiny green leaves to the ground.  All Columbine could see was her thin legs as she took a kind of fighting stance.  Then Columbine turned away, crawling forward on her belly and banging her elbow as she extricated herself from the bush.  The sky was cloudy overhead, and the tall trees cast no shadows on the beaten-down grass of the path.  Columbine sobbed for breath as she scrambled to her feet, ready to run.

But there was the man in front of her, a warrior in red and dark brown leather.  He was tall, with a close-cropped beard and a thick body and a great big sword at his side.  He stood in her way with his hands on his hips.  He had a strange, flat brown hat like an oval on top of his head, fastened around the back of his skull with a thin cord.   Columbine wheeled around and saw her sister on the other side of the wide bush, knife held high in both hands, one eye red and watering.  There were two adults standing by her, a man and a woman in the same oily leather with the same brown hats.  Their hands were at their sides, and their fingers were resting on their great big swords.  There was nowhere to run.

“Back off, you bastards,” Ariell screeched, jabbing the knife towards the grown-ups.  The thin blond man just tilted his head a little bit.  The short-haired woman didn’t move at all.

“Why were you hiding?” she asked in a really low voice.

“I said back off!”

“Just let us go,” Columbine said.  All three adults looked at her.  Ariell did too, her eyes red and wild.  Columbine felt her throat getting tight like she wanted to cry, so she spoke quickly to get through it all.  “We didn’t do anything bad, we were just hiding.  Just please let us go and we’ll never make trouble anywhere.”

Her sister’s jaw dropped open, too dumbfounded and enraged to speak.  Columbine felt her cheeks heating up, and she looked down into the dirt.  But then the man next to her spoke again, and he sounded like he was smiling.  “Do you make a lot of trouble?”

“No,” Columbine said, looking up.  “Just enough to get by.”

The bearded man and the woman looked at each other.  Their faces were soft.  “Where will you go?” the woman asked.

“Don’t tell them anything, Columbine,” Ariell warned, holding the knife in a white-knuckled grip.

“Where there’s food,” Columbine said, honestly.

“No home?”

“No.”

The bearded man nodded.  “Stay here,” he said, turning away.  Columbine could barely hear him over the roaring noise.  She turned to look down the path, and saw a carriage made of solid gold.

It can’t have been solid gold.  There wasn’t enough gold in the world for something that size, she was pretty sure.  But it was huge, and it was beautiful.  The golden carriage was as long as a farmer’s cart with a four-horse team besides; a great long body, covered in curved golden metal sheets.  Its front was a big snubby triangle like a wide, proud nose held high in the air, down to the two thin hatches that looked like nostrils just below the peak.  The body of the machine was a long, gleaming box that tapered down into a triangular tail the same size and shape as the nose.  There were pipes dotting the machine’s back, and a dome like a turtle shell in the middle of the roof.  It didn’t have any wheels.  Instead, there were a big belts that wrapped longways around either edge of the machine, made of thin rectangular plates strung together.  As the belts spun, the vehicle trundled forward, rolling easily over the bumps and rocks in the forest floor.  It ground to a halt as the tall warrior walked towards it, raising a hand.  That roaring noise they’d been hearing seemed to come from inside the machine, somewhere around where the tail began.  Smoke was coming out of a pipe on top of the machine; thin gray smoke you could hardly see. 

Columbine had heard of rich farmers down in Delia who had machines like this they rode around their fields, so the machine did all the plowing while they sat inside on cushions.  But never in a million years did she think she’d see such a fancy vehicle herself; especially not driving through the Tarmic Woods as easy as on a fresh cobblestone street.

“Now, Columbine!  Run!”

Columbine’s attention turned to Ariell as her sister lurched towards her, leaping over the bush.  She almost cleared it, catching her bare feet on the outer branches.  She stumbled, flailing dangerously with her knife hand to keep her balance, but managed to stay upright.  Columbine watched her dumbly, still dazzled by the sight of the golden thing a hundred meters away.  Ariell grabbed her roughly by the shoulder, yanking Columbine closer.  As they turned to run, though, the thin blond man was in their path, his face very calm and his hand still on his sword.  Columbine looked over her shoulder and saw the woman walking closer to them too.

“There’s no need to run,” she said.  “We’re going to help you.”

“Burn you,” Ariell spat.  “Nobody in these woods helps anybody but themselves.”

“Sometimes, they do.”

“You really think Dame Hanah would authorize this?” the blond man spoke for the first time, looking at the woman.  His mouth was twisted and sour, and Columbine took an instant dislike to him.

“She said ‘everyone we meet,’ yeoman,” the woman said, her voice a low warning.  “I think she would
insist
we do this.”

“What are they going to do, Ariell?”  Columbine whispered.

“They’re gonna kill us or make us servants, which is why you always run and you never talk,” Ariell growled back.  The older sister rubbed at her eye furiously as another particle of bark made its presence felt.  “You’re really burned things up, Columbine.  When are you gonna learn that nothing good happens when—”