The Mask And The Master (Mechanized Wizardry Book 2) (33 page)

She started scraping at the farmer’s chest, only half-aware of what she was doing.  He looked down at her, confusion on his bearded face.  “Up.  Up.  Pick me up,” she said, something bubbling up in her throat.  He lifted her effortlessly and put her on his shoulders.  Columbine Fletcher twisted herself around to face the crowd of farmers.

“No!” she shrieked.

The spheric stopped singing, behind her.  The villagers stopped too, looking up at the brown-eyed girl two meters in the air.  Even the people turning to leave looked back.  Columbine pressed her hands against the man’s head and leaned forward.

“No!” she wailed again.  Her voice got stronger.  “Don’t sing.  Are you stupid?”

“Hey, Columbine,” the farmer said, starting to crouch.  She dug her fingers into his shoulders and he stopped.

“My sister’s dead!  We lost our home and our family.  Now I lost her.”  She ground her teeth, trying not to cry.  “I made her stay and fight, and the Delians killed her.  They shot her in the back.”

The crowd murmured.  She saw a woman curl up to her husband and a man cross his arms over his chest.  “I made her stay and fight.  I was wrong.” Columbine said.  She turned her head to look at the spheric.  “Is it my fault that she died?”

“It’s nobody’s fault,” he stammered.

“No!”  Her voice was raw.  “It’s
Delia’s
fault!” 

“Yeah!” someone said.

“Delia sent Petronauts here.  Six people!  Six people made the whole town run away!  They hit us!  They shot Ariell in the back!  And then what? 
They left. 
They didn’t even want the town!  Didn’t even care!”

“Bastards!”

“So don’t be stupid!” she raged.  “Don’t
sing
.  Don’t
forgive
them.  Or guess what?  They’ll just do it again!”

“Burn them!”

“Flaming Delians!”

“Listen to me!” the spheric bellowed, his voice cutting through the noise.  “We can choose to look behind, to lose ourselves in pain; or we can choose to look forward—”

“My sister’s dead!” Columbine said, her eyes flashing.  “And I hate Delia!”

There was a ragged roar from parts of the crowd.  Columbine saw enough to notice several worried faces, too; adults in whispered conference with each other, looking at her with pity in their eyes.  Then she was sinking down to the ground, the farmer’s big hands around her waist.  She started to squirm, her tattered shoes scraping against the dirt.  There was a shadow over her and the clop of hooves.

“Put her down, I said,” Pauma was hissing, jabbing her finger into the tall farmer’s face.  “What do you think you’re doing, letting—”

“She said pick her up.  Girl can talk if she wants,” he said sullenly.

“Have a kid or two, then tell me it’s good to let ‘em yell whenever they want.  With me,” Pauma said, taking Columbine by the hand.  She hoisted the girl up into the air with one iron-strong arm.  Columbine cried, involuntarily reaching out for the saddle.  Pauma swung her in position and trotted away from the increasingly messy knot of villagers, shouting for people to clear the way.

“You can’t be shooting your mouth off like that, little Miss Columbine,” Pauma called over her shoulder.  Columbine bumped her chin against the farmer woman’s back as they bounced through the town square.  She rubbed her jaw, blinking angry tears out of her eyes.

“I can talk if I want.”

“You think before you talk,” Pauma said.  “You’re not the only one hurting.  Some of us are trying to think bigger than ourselves, though.  Get this town healing.  Next time trash like that comes into your head, you keep it to yourself.  Hear me?”

“I lost my sister,” Columbine said, unable to keep her voice steady.

“You’re the one who made her stay and fight.  ‘I was wrong,’ you told me.  Think she’d want you to throw yourself away fighting too?  Think that makes anything right?”

She was weeping now, tired and frustrated and sore.  She leaned her head against Pauma’s back, despite herself.  “I don’t know what else to do.”

She felt the woman’s back expand as she sighed.  “I don’t know what to do with you either.  Just promise me one thing, you bull-headed girl.  And I mean promise.”

She stopped the horse and turned.  Her long ponytail flicked around her head, the braid as thick as a carriage rope.  “You live longer than your sister did,” Pauma demanded.

Columbine looked up to the woman’s hard face.  She nodded.

“Let’s find you a bed,” Pauma said, snapping the reins.

Chapter Seven

Post

It was slow flying among the treetops, but the pigeon preferred going slowly to getting eaten.  Flying above the trees, where the air was clear and its wings could stretch out, had its appeal; but being in the open meant catching the eyes of every kestrel and pigeon hawk for days around.  Better to descend below the canopy and wend through the branches and the leaves. 

Tiredness was never an issue for the pigeon.  It never ate anything except the fat stored up in its belly.  It dropped down to the forest floor for a drink whenever it sniffed out water, but leapt up into the skies again as quickly as it landed.  Why rest?  Why eat?  There would be plenty of time for that in the cage at the other end of the trip, where the hands were waiting.  There always was.

A little squirrel with webbed arms was sitting in a leafy nest just below the treetop.  It chittered a warning at the pigeon as it flew by.  The pigeon paid absolutely no attention as it sailed below the squirrel’s branch.  These animals who obsessed about territory were a little pathetic.  The pigeon didn’t need to whine about a few dozen wingspans of tree space to feel good about itself, it thought smugly.  It had a
job
.

Time was passing, there was no doubt of that.  It was dark in the forest now, with just enough moonlight to navigate the branches.  Usually the pigeon would sleep at times like this, it remembered.  Yes, there was a faint urge to find a cozy limb, draw its head down low between its shoulders, and close its eyes for a few hours.  But for whatever reason, the pigeon just kept flying.  There was an odd memory of being back in the cage, in the starting place, and becoming very agitated as a voice chanted for hours and hours on end.  The smell of strange smoke had been there too.  On and on the voice had gone, no matter how much the pigeon beat its wings against the domed cage.  But then the chanting had ended, and now, the pigeon didn’t need to sleep.  These two thoughts floated through its head in sequence, not connecting to each other.  It was much more important to focus on not hitting trees.

It had been light again for many hours when the pigeon wanted to stop.  The treetops dropped away and the forest opened up into a clear space.  Thick brown walls were below, now, and a tower ahead, but not quite as tall as the tower back home.  The pigeon flew to the tower and perched on its boxy top.  There were window slits on the walls below, and it could hear footsteps and voices inside the little room at the top of the tower.  The pigeon did not want to go to them.  It waited on top of the room, tilting its head this way and that to get a clear view of the grounds below.  A pair of turtledoves already perched on the other side of the spire ruffled their feathers indignantly and snubbed the pigeon as it walked along the tower’s edge.  The pigeon scratched its belly absently with one leg, mindful of the weight of the message case.

Something below.  The pigeon looked, and sniffed.  There was a smaller building near this tower, an oddly-shaped place with a sloping roof and a colored circular window.  And at the outside corner of that building, barely visible between a row of bushes and the wall, there was food on the ground. 

The pigeon launched itself earthward.  It fluttered awkwardly as it neared the slopey building, shedding some momentum. There was a shallow bowl of seed hidden behind the decorative bushes—the exact same seed it loved back home.  A young chipmunk was stuffing its cheeks when the pigeon landed.  The mammal gasped and most of a mouthful fell from its jaws before it scurried away.  The pigeon pecked at the lip of the bowl a few times, then lowered its head and began gulping down the wonderful shelled seed as fast as it could.

There were footsteps nearby not too long after that.  The pigeon looked up quickly, and relaxed to see a glove on one of the hands.  This was an old routine by now.  The glove scooped it up, the hand flicked open the clasp on its message case and pulled out a roll of paper, and the glove set the pigeon down again.  It returned to eating.  The feet stayed there for a time, though the glove came off and the paper crinkled open and shut again.  Then the feet moved away.

The pigeon turned to watch them go.  It felt the heavy seed in its gizzard and looked up through the twiggy branches of the bush.  There didn’t seem to be any cages here.  It was glad the hands had taken the message so quickly.  There was nothing worth staying for in this place.

Another few bites, and then home
, it thought.  It set one claw against the bowl and dunked its head back into the seeds.

Have I mentioned that I wish you were here?
Lundin wrote for about the fourth time in his three-page letter.  He leaned back in his chair, looking up at the vaulted ceiling of Haberstorm Hall.  Inking his stylus again, he dove back into the message home.

So straightening things out with the
barendoon
is priority number one.  We changed our language so we’re not asking for length but time now—exactly the sort of amateurish mistake you would’ve helped us avoid, Mister Consultant— but we haven’t given the new code a spin yet.  We’ll be testing it out tonight (Spheres save us) on Colonel Yough.  In fact, her whole coterie should be walking through the door soon. 
He shuddered. 
I should be grateful that she’s so supportive.  I
am
grateful, amazingly grateful.  It’s an incredibly good sign that she’s willing to take the risk herself, so fast.  (Not that there is much risk, as far as we can tell.  I’ve gone through Greatsight twice and came out of it a little giddy, maybe a little hungry each time.  Nothing worse.)

It’s just that this project really has moved into the territory where, if things go wrong, we get executed.  And that makes me trepidatious.

“Dust got in the star wheel, and I can’t find the booze dropper,” Willl with three L’s said, leaning against Lundin’s desk.

“Should be in the black valise.”

“Can I just use water?”

“No no, no water in the spell box.  Look for the alcohol first.  If you can’t find it, just wipe it down with a dry cloth, nice and slow.  Okay?”

Willl with three L’s nodded and was gone.  Lundin hunched over the table again.

As long as Yough doesn’t die, I’ll be delighted.  If the spell works, and she’s happy, I’ll be ecstatic.  And if it works so she doesn’t have to walk around Campos three times to get her eyes back to normal, I will be singing among the Spheres.

Lundin tapped the bottom of the stylus against the tabletop, smiling.
Who am I kidding
, he thought. 
I’m already flying high
.  There was still plenty of time for everything to go south in a thousand different ways.  But it was damn good to feel like a success for once, after a very long, very stormy month.

He settled back into the letter. 
Question number two, a bit bigger and slightly less immediate: how do we get more
ojing
?  I don’t mean I’m asking you to loan us a few.  I mean how do we make them?  Get them?  If we pull this through, and the spell boxes catch on in the Army, Delia is going to need hundreds.  Thousands, maybe.  So please tell me that they come from cows, and that your average tanner can whip them up.  That would really make my day.

Corollary question, even bigger and even less immediate:  (I apologize for this jumbled letter, by the way.  If I sound this way in person, I’m surprised more people don’t slap my face.)  Is enchantment possible?

I understood that spells only worked on things with minds.  Elia brought up the idea of imbuing a piece of leather with a spell to make it an
ojing,
though, and it was intriguing.  Is enchanting just a delusion from the myths?  Some other process at work that we understand better now that civilization is so civilized?

“Yough should be here in ten,” Martext called out.

“Have we double-checked her Enunciation?”  Lundin said.

“It sounded like her name to me,” Dame Miri said, drumming her nails on the spell box lid.

I need to finish this off so Elia can get it to the post cart this evening.  I feel like I’ve given you a solid thousand words of questions without asking about you once, Ronk. 
Lundin pulled the chair closer to the desk. 
As long as you tell me that the other wizards aren’t giving you grief, I’ll be happy.  You’re a huge help.  You’re our secret weapon.  And I’ll never understand why you took an interest in this nonsense.  All I can hope is that it pays off for you some day.

He signed his name in jagged, blocky strokes and set the stylus down.  An equally meandering letter to Dame Dionne was by his left hand, ready to be folded, stuffed, and sent.  And there was enough blank paper for one more letter.

Ten minutes
, he thought, biting his lip.  There was only one other person he wanted to get in touch with, and there was no way to say everything he wanted to say in ten minutes.

So instead he put his hands on his knees and, honoring a sudden impulse, closed his eyes. 
I wish you could be here today, because this wouldn’t have been possible without you
, he thought, broadcasting the message the best way he knew how. 
And wherever you are, Samanthi, I hope you’re safe.

Chapter Eight

Borne By The Current

“Careful.  Careful!”  Samanthi said as they passed the stretcher to the waiting men on the raft.  Iggy looked like a corpse, her skin waxy in the gray, overcast light.  Her chest still rose and fell, though, and it wasn’t just the rocking of the raft on the water.  The two logsmen took either end of the stretcher and carried her—
not carefully enough
—towards the eight-by-eight shelter that would be her little box of convalescence for the next four days.  Samanthi dusted her hands on her thighs, squinting in the daylight, and looked over at Zig.  The other tech was massaging his palm where a red imprint from the wooden handles of the stretcher was burning brightly.