Kindling

T HE ATTACKS WEREN’T PARTICULARLY frequent, but they came with no warning.

On the fifth day after we started searching for the schema, when Ambrose must have been feeling particularly cussed or bored, there were eight of them: one as I was waking up in Wilem’s room, two during lunch, two while I was studying physiognomy in the Medica, then three in quick succession while I was coldsmithing iron in the Fishery.

The next day there were no attacks at all. In some ways that was worse. Nothing but hours of waiting for the other shoe to drop.

So I learned to maintain an iron-hard Alar as I ate and bathed, as I attended class and had conversations with my teachers and friends. I even maintained it while dueling in Adept Sympathy. On the seventh day of our search, this distraction and my general exhaustion led to my first defeat at the hands of two of my classmates, ending my perfect string of undefeated duels.

I could say that I was too weary to care, but that wouldn’t be entirely true.

* * *

On the ninth day of our search Wilem, Simmon, and I were combing through books in our reading hole when the door opened and Fela slipped inside. She was carrying a single book instead of her usual armload. She was breathing heavily.

“I’ve got it,” she said, her eyes bright. Her voice so excited it was almost fierce. “I found a copy.” She thrust the book out at us so we could read the gold leaf on the thick leather spine: Facci-Moen ve Scrivani .

We had learned about the Scrivani early in our search. It was an extensive collection of schemata by a long-dead Artificer named Surthur. Twelve thick volumes of detailed diagrams and descriptions. When we found the index, we had thought our search was nearly finished, as it listed “Diagrames Detaling the Construction of a Marvelous Five-Gramme, proven most Effectatious in the Preventing of Maleficent Sympathe.” Location: volume nine, page eighty-two.

We tracked down eight versions of the Scrivani in the Archives, but we never found the whole set. Volumes seven, nine, and eleven were always missing, no doubt tucked away in Kilvin’s private library.

We’d spent two entire days searching before finally giving up on the Scrivani . But now Fela had found it, not just a piece to the puzzle, but the whole thing.

“Is it the right one?” Simmon asked, his voice a mixture of excitement and disbelief.

Fela slowly removed her hand from the lower binding, revealing in bright gold: 9 .

I scrambled up out of my chair, almost knocking it over in my rush to get to her. But she smiled and held the book high over her head. “First you have to promise me dinner,” she said.

I laughed and reached for the book. “Once this is over, I’ll take everyone to dinner.”

She sighed. “And you have to tell me I’m the best scriv ever.”

“You’re the best scriv ever,” I said. “You’re twice as good as Wil could ever be, even if he had a dozen hands and a hundred extra eyes.”

“Ick.” She handed me the book. “Here you go.”

I hurried to the table and cracked the book open.

“The pages will be missing, or something like that,” Simmon said in a low voice to Wil. “It can’t be this easy after all this time. I know something’s going to spike our wheel.”

I stopped turning pages and rubbed my eyes. I squinted at the writing.

“I knew it,” Sim said, he leaned his chair back on two legs, covering his tired eyes with his hands. “Let me guess, it’s got the grey rot. Or bookworm, or both.”

Fela stepped close and looked over my shoulder.“Oh no!” she said mournfully. “I didn’t even look. I was so excited.” She looked up at us. “Do any of you read Eld Vintic?”

“I read the chittering gibberish you people call Aturan,” Wilem said sourly. “I consider myself sufficiently multilingual.”

“Only a smattering,” I said. “A few dozen words.”

“I can,” Sim said.

“Really?” I felt hope rising in my chest again. “When did you pick that up?”

Sim scooted his chair across the floor until he could look at the book. “My first term as an E’lir I heard some Eld Vintic poetry. I studied it for three terms with the Chancellor.”

“I’ve never cared for poetry,” I said.

“Your loss,” Sim said absently as he turned a few pages. “Eld Vintic poetry is thunderous. It pounds at you.”

“What’s the meter like?” I asked, curious despite myself.

“I don’t know anything about meter,” Simmon said distractedly as he ran a finger down the page in front of him. “It’s like this:

Sought we the Scrivani word-work of Surthur

Long-lost in ledger all hope forgotten.

Yet fast-found for friendship fair the book-bringer

Hot comes the huntress Fela, flushed with finding

Breathless her breast her high blood rising

To ripen the red-cheek rouge-bloom of beauty.

“That sort of thing,” Simmon said absently, his eyes still scanning the pages in front of him.

I saw Fela turn her head to look at Simmon, almost as if she were surprised to see him sitting there.

No, it was almost as if up until that point, he’d just been occupying space around her, like a piece of furniture. But this time when she looked at him, she took all of him in. His sandy hair, the line of his jaw, the span of his shoulders beneath his shirt. This time when she looked, she actually saw him.

Let me say this. It was worth the whole awful, irritating time spent searching the Archives just to watch that moment happen. It was worth blood and the fear of death to see her fall in love with him. Just a little. Just the first faint breath of love, so light she probably didn’t notice it herself. It wasn’t dramatic, like some bolt of lightning with a crack of thunder following. It was more like when flint strikes steel and the spark fades almost too fast for you to see. But still, you know it’s there, down where you can’t see, kindling.

“Who read you Eld Vintic poetry?” Wil asked. Fela blinked and turned back to the book.

“Puppet,” Sim said. “The first time I met him.”

“Puppet!” Wil looked as if he would tear out his own hair. “God pound me, why haven’t we gone to him about this? If there’s an Aturan translation of this book he’ll know where it is!”

“I’ve thought the same thing a hundred times these last few days,” Simmon said. “But he hasn’t been doing well lately. He wouldn’t be much help.”

“And Puppet knows what’s on the restricted list,” Fela said. “I doubt he’d just hand something like that over.”

“Does everyone know this Puppet person except for me?” I asked.

“Scrivs do,” Wilem said.

“I think I can piece most of this together,” Simmon said, turning to look in my direction. “Does this diagram make any sense to you? It’s perfect nonsense to me.”

“Those are the runes.” I pointed. “Clear as day. And those are metallurgical symbols.” I looked closer. “The rest . . . I don’t know. Maybe abbreviations. We can probably work them out as we go along.”

I smiled and turned to Fela. “Congratulations, you’re still the best scriv ever.”

* * *

With Simmon’s help, it took me two days to decipher the diagrams in the Scrivani . Rather, it took us one day to decipher and one day to double and triple check our work.

Once I knew how to construct my gram, I began to play a strange sort of hide-and-seek with Ambrose. I needed the entirety of my concentration free while I worked on the sygaldry for the gram. That meant letting my guard down. So I could only work on the gram when I was certain Ambrose was otherwise occupied.

The gram was delicate work, small engraving with no margin for error. And it didn’t help that I was forced to steal the time in bits and pieces. Half an hour while Ambrose was drinking coffee with a young woman in a public café. Forty minutes when he was attending a symbolic logic lecture. A full hour and a half while he was working at the front desk in the Archives.

When I couldn’t work on my gram, I labored on my pet project. In some ways I was fortunate Kilvin had charged me with making something worthy of a Re’lar. It gave me the perfect excuse for all the time I spent in the Fishery.

The rest of the time I spent lounging in the common room of the Golden Pony. I needed to establish myself as a regular customer there. Things would seem less suspicious that way.

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 616