The Mask And The Master (Mechanized Wizardry Book 2) (56 page)

“A whole squad?”  Lundin’s jaw dropped.  “With a seat on the Board, and everything?”

“If this is the wave of the future, nobody wants Delia to get blindsided.”

“But the Board has always hated the idea of adding new squads.”

“Well… so maybe they’d just fold whatever squad was
currently
the smallest squad into the new project, you know?  Especially if the squad that was
currently
the smallest had a kind of huge, broad, impossibly vague mission?”

Lundin’s heart started beating a little faster.  “Something the other squads did anyway,” he agreed.  “Something like ‘Reconnaissance?’”

“Something like that,” Samanthi said idly.  She looked sidelong at him. 

“What do you think, senior tech?” she said.  “Do you think there’s room in your project for a few more hands?”

 Lundin looked at Samanthi.  His face started to glow.

“You two are ridiculous,” Mathias said.

They both wheeled on him.  He grinned up at the techs, his long wavy hair flowing down his shoulders as he stood on top of the repair scaffolding.

“You’ve got to come to Haberstorm Hall,” he said.  “Dame Miri’s going to kiss Sir Kelley on the lips if he can juggle five scarves at once.”

The techs looked at each other.

“He can’t,” Samanthi said.

“She won’t,” Lundin said.

“But can you take that chance?” Sir Mathias said, his brown eyes pleading.

“You’re the burning ridiculous one,” Samanthi said, shooing him away.  “We’ll be right there.”  The big ‘naut slid down the scaffolding and took off across the courtyard at a run.

“I think—” Lundin began.

“Senior tech?”

“Spheres, Martext!”  he said, pressing his hand to his chest.  The bespectacled tech tilted his head, perched on top of the scaffolding.  “You people know that there is a staircase up here, right?”

“Sir Mathias said this was more fun,” Martext shrugged.  “Anyway, I just wanted to let you know I finished cataloguing the scrolls and notes we brought back from the keep.  You know, all the documents about Enchanting.  And.”

“...uh-huh?”

“They’re pretty comprehensive,” he said.  Martext took a long time to get the next words out.  “They’re an incredible resource, Horace.  You were right to want to stop for them.”

The two men looked at each other.  “That’s it,” Martext said, starting down the scaffolding.

“Hey, Martext?”

He froze.  Lundin looked over the wall at him, sorting out what he wanted to say.

“You know how Dame Dionne assigned you to make life easy for me?”

The other man nodded.

“Well, you’ve been terrible at that.  So bad, in fact,” he said, putting his hands in his belt loops, “that I would be happy to send a letter to Dame Dionne and get you reassigned.  I’ll suggest you get your own department, or some other punishment befitting the severity of your failure.  What do you say?”

A quiet, bright smile crept over Martext’s face.  “My own department?  That’s pretty cruel, senior tech.”

“Well, that’s me.  Pretty cruel.”  Lundin looked down.  “Should I write that letter in the morning?”

He drummed his hands against the scaffolding, lost in thought.  “Burn me,” he sighed at last.  “Let me sleep on it.”

“Fine,” Lundin said.  “It’s only right that the offender should have time to fully contemplate and appreciate the depth of his shortcomings, and the cosmic rightness of the punishment—”

“Overdoing it,” Samanthi whispered, poking him in the shoulder.

“Sleep on it,” Lundin said.  “And, uh, Martext?  Thank you.”

Martext flicked a finger away from his head in salute and sank out of sight, shaking his head.

“I’m waiting for the next one to pop up,” Lundin said, peering down.

“Bunch of burning prarie dogs,” Samanthi said, her eyes flashing with amusement.

They both stared down at the flagstones.

“We should go down—” he said.

“Whatever happens, Lundin,” she whispered at last.  “I want you to know that the next time you get kidnapped?  I want to be right there with you.”

He frowned.  “I don’t want to get kidnapped again,” he said.

Samanthi opened her mouth, then closed it.  She nodded several times, clenching her jaw.

“Right.  Absolutely,” she said.  “Just as I would much rather work with you than be kidnapped with you.”

“Right.  Me too,” he said, smiling.

“Right.”

They looked at each other.

“Will you just go down the burning ladder?” Samanthi burst out.  “If I miss seeing Sir Kelley catching squares of silk I’ll never forgive myself.”

Lundin let her go down first instead.  He sighed as he looked out into the sunset past the trees.  Muffled cheering rang out behind him, as the Petronauts and the soldiers celebrated inside the fort.  There was plenty to celebrate, of course.  The Golden Caravan was on the run.  Prince Torvald was in their custody. 
And I brought my team home safely. 
His throat tightened up. 
Spheres.  I promised to lead them home, and I actually did it. 
All his pride and relief was concentrated in a little ball just above his lungs.  It caused him physical pain with each breath.  He wiped his eyes hastily with the back of his hand, so Samanthi wouldn’t see.

A nightbird shrieked in the treetops.  Lundin looked up at the trees, realizing anew just how small even a place like Campos was amid the looming wooden hulks on all sides.  The feeling in his chest subsided as he felt the rough stonework under his hands.  The shadows in the Tarmic were visibly lengthening.  Soon, it would be impossible to see anything in motion out there; impossible to know what was coming their way until it was knocking at the fortress gates.

He shuddered, unexpectedly cold in the late summer wind.  With one last look out into the darkening forest, Horace Lundin climbed down to the ground below.

About The Author

“In [The Wizard That Wasn’t], Rovik demonstrates his skill... convincing and realistic multidimensional characters... rich drama and intrigue... the dialogue is witty and fast-paced.

I truly enjoyed Rovik’s work.”

—Indie Book Blog Database

“It's always a pleasure to discover a new indie author who knows how to tell a good story... If you want to see what it looks like when dieselpunk-fantasy is done well, get a hold of this one.”

— Mike Reeves-McMillan, author of
City of Masks

*****

Ben Rovik is the author of the
Mechanized Wizardry
series and the related short story collection
Petronaut Tales
.  Ben is also a published, award-winning playwright (writing as Ben Kingsland), and spent many years as an actor before finally deciding to settle down into a sensible career: steampunk novelist.  He’s one of ten people who graduated from Johns Hopkins University with no intention of becoming a doctor.  He lives in Maryland with his wife, daughter, two cats, and a great deal of wine.

Email:  [email protected]

Facebook: 
http://www.facebook.com/BenRovikBooks

Blog: 
http://benrovik.wordpress.com/

Twitter: @benrovik, #MechWiz

Other Petronaut Tales

Arm’s Length

Sir Roland of the Bulwark squad has a suit built to take enormous punishment so his comrades don’t have to.  When the Delian schooner
Granite
comes under attack from two corsair clippers, Roland and his tech are duty-bound to defend the sailors and civilians on board.  But keeping the pirates at arm’s length is going to take some unorthodox measures…

Ebook for $2.99

*****

Aloft

Junior technician Ensie Thalanquin is the odd girl out in the Aerial squad.  When she falls for a civilian machinist, can they keep a relationship afloat despite the differences in their backgrounds, the meddling of their superiors, and the pressure of a dangerous flight test a few short weeks away?

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Sample from
The Fate Of The Faithful

Book Three of Mechanized Wizardry

War is coming to the city of Delia.  Traitors from the kingdom's past have joined forces with the armies of Svargath, the sprawling theocracy across the mountains, to bring the battle to Delia's streets.

As the war's first skirmishes begin across the Anthic Thrust, Horace Lundin and the Petronauts race desperately to keep Delia's edge in the newly developed discipline of Mechanized Wizardry.  Delia's spellcasting machines just might let them stave off the massive offensive; but only if the other side doesn't master the new technology first.

Lundin, Samanthi, Sir Mathias and Sir Kelley leave the city on a quest for the building blocks of magic.  Their success might keep the war from spiraling out of control, but their failure might mean the end of the Crown they serve.

*****

Seven hundred years ago, a man and a woman climbed into heaven.  No one in Svargath had been happy ever since.

Homst had never asked for happiness. He rubbed a hand up and down his arm, thinking the motion might distract him from the cold.  It didn't warm him, but the coarse linen did abrade his skin in a diverting manner. That was the best he could hope for, for the rest of his life: that one pain or another would distract him from the greatest pain of all, the one that would never heal.

The pain of being ordinary.

Water lapped against the side of the barge as its great waterwheels churned through Lake Vaal.  None of the eighty men and women packed shoulder to shoulder in the depths of the boat had anything to say.  The raspy cough from a woman astern was the only human sound.

Homst looked around the hold at his countrymen.  He caught the eyes of another man whose eyes were shockingly blue against his ruddy face and black beard.  The man returned his stare with weary disinterest.  He had no reason to welcome Homst’s attention, or to defy it.

Once, there was such a fire inside us
, Homst remembered, studying the man’s features. 
Inside each of us.  We were all so sure that we were walking in the footsteps of the Vanished; that we, personally, would find the trail they’d left behind; that we would be the first to leave this world and join them at the Zenith.

He ran a hand over his face.  They all knew differently now.

Homst rubbed his pigskin shoes against the floor.  The vessel was as marbled with grime inside as it was out.  He remembered the gray spatter of frost and dirt on the metal hull as they’d led him up the gangplank.  The beams above him were also filthy, rusting at the seams and sticky with soot from the coal boilers. The boilers were a rumble just at the edge of his hearing, though he could feel the monotonous reverberations they sent coursing through the hull.

Boots on the ship’s ladder caught his attention.  One of their handlers was descending into the hold, the wicked tendrils of her flail leading the way.  There was no need for her to have the weapon drawn; the human cargo had long since abandoned the impulse to resist. 
It was a different story two years ago, when a barge like this was taking us in the other direction,
Homst thought.  But could you riot against the passage of time?  The change of the seasons?  Would even the mightiest rage keep an apple from rotting in the sun?  The answer was always no.  They understood that now.

As the woman glared at them, her eyes narrow in her wrinkled face, he understood her too.  Each of them had a role to play.  He might be playing her role in fifteen years, as his next stage began.  He’d be ensuring that the generation to come understood the part they had to play, and accepted the lifepath marked out for them.  And he’d be making sure—just as the old woman was doing—that anyone who tried to rebel against the strictures of their own destiny was brought back to reality with a firm hand.  What seemed stern at first was kinder in the end.  Better to yoke people to the right path than let them act out destructive delusions and upset everyone around them.