Frank Tuttle - All the Paths of Shadow

Mug’s leaves went utterly still.

“You’ve got to go back?” Mug asked, incredulous. “Inside the Tower?”

Meralda nodded. “Yvin wants me to proceed. I talked to him this afternoon, just before we dined,” she said. “I am to move the Tower’s shadow, and use my efforts to do so as a means to investigate the masses about the flat.”

Mug brought all his eyes upon her.

“Mistress. That’s insane.”

“No,” said Meralda, rising. “That’s my job. I’m the thaumaturge. I’ve seen evidence that the Tower or something within it is casting or directing spellworks.” Meralda bit her lip, considering. Might as well say it out loud , she thought. “And consider this, Mug. What if my latch damaged the Tower spell as much as the Tower damaged my latch?”

Mug’s eyes all opened at once.

“Exactly,” said Meralda. “What if I’ve unknowingly meddled with a hidden Tower maintenance spell?”

Mug shook his leaves. “Hold on a moment, mistress. How do you know some passing Vonat didn’t cast a spell on the Tower last week?”

Meralda shook her head. “If the Vonats could cast spells on the Tower, Mug,” she said, “we’d all be speaking Vonat and hauling rocks right now, and you know it.”

“Have you told Yvin?”

“I told him I saw what might be an original Tower spellwork, about the flat,” she said. “I told him my latch might have interfered with its function.”

Mug whistled. “Now that must have taken the steam out of the we-found-the-Tears victory feast.”

“He didn’t even curse.” Meralda yawned. “He just looked tired. Told me to deal with it as a threat to Tirlin, and use the shadow moving project as an excuse to study the Tower.”

“Meddling with the likes of Otrinvion represents a threat to Tirlin,” said Mug. “Not to mention the threat to the meddler, who certainly isn’t that fat-headed king.”

Meralda stretched, and her eyes sought out Mug’s bed sheet, which lay wadded on the floor a few steps away from her desk.

“Enough,” she said. “Let’s go home.”

Mug fell silent, and turned most of his eyes away. “You really don’t have a choice, do you?” he said.

“Not in this,” she said. “It’s take off the robe, or go back to the Tower.”

“I don’t suppose a career with the guilds holds any appeal, does it?”

Meralda pushed back her chair, covered Mug’s cage, and made wearily for home.

Meralda’s next four days passed in a blur. The Vonats arrived, to little fanfare, and were stationed in the vacant north wing. The Hang held a feast of their own, complete with Hang delicacies prepared aboard the Hang flagship, served with Hang eating utensils consisting of a pair of plain wooden sticks. Meralda was told that Yvin made a great show of using the chopsticks, until Que-long relented and handed Yvin a fork.

Were it not for the papers, the Bellringers, and Mug, Meralda would have heard nothing. She saw no Vonats, dined on cold sandwiches, went nowhere save the laboratory and, twice, the park.

She sent Donchen a letter, begging pardon for her absence at his table, and other court functions since. She had given as explanation only “pressing business for the king,” and she hoped that was sufficient.

Well, it’s absolutely true, thought Meralda, with a frown. Even so, she had very nearly dropped her work and gone to the feast aboard the flagship. Only the thought of losing yet more sleep, and the sight of her bloodshot eyes and wild hair in the mirror, had kept Meralda in the lab and working.

And work she did. Dreading a return to the flat, but deeply troubled by the sight of the flying masses about the top of the Tower, Meralda fetched her weak spell detector, gathered her notes, gritted her teeth, and took it apart.

New spells replaced the old, a fourth glass disk was added, and, much to Mug’s delight, the worn broom handle was replaced with a straight length of polished cherry wood.

“Now it looks like a wizard’s gadget,” said Mug, as Meralda wrapped fine silver wire around the handle. “Got nice heft, too. Just the thing for bopping heads, if need be.”

Meralda sighed, put the detector aside, and called for the Bellringers. By then, night had fallen, but there were no lights in the flat. Nor had there been, since Meralda’s latch had failed and fallen.

Meralda ordered coffee and began to design a new latch for the Tower. This latch, Meralda decided, would extend no higher than the halfway point of the Tower’s bulk. “That will put Yvin’s platform in the light,” she told Mug, as she began to sketch. “Though the back rows of the seating stands may catch a bit of shade.”

Building the new latch for the Tower’s lower half took all of two days. Meralda struggled to cast fifteen refractors a day. With the Accords and Yvin’s commencement speech only nine days away, Meralda didn’t bother with a scaled down latch. This one was, if it worked, intended to be a full-scale version of the Commencement Day spell.

As such, it required more refractors than the first latch. Meralda cast thirty-five in one grueling day, working from well before sunrise until late into the night.

Through it all, Mug remained at her side, basking in the uncertain light of Goboy’s scrying mirror, which had quickly returned to its former habit of spying out bathhouses and dress shop dressing rooms. “Mirror, mirror,” Mug would mutter, when the sunlight failed. “Sun and sky, looking-glass, or I’ll have the Bellringers clean you with a hammer.”

And the sun would return, for a time.

The king sent word, at odd intervals, inquiring as to Meralda’s progress. She would scrawl hasty replies in return, often suppressing the impulse to add notes such as “Abandoning spellwork to continue this fascinating correspondence,” or “Slept late, long breakfast, taking the day off for a stroll in the park.”

“As if I have nothing better to do,” grumbled Meralda, late in the evening of a long day of refractor calculations. She planned to cast the new latch early the next day, which left her to finalize refractor spacing, charge all the holdstones, and load her staff with the framework of the latch.

Cast the latch, and dare the Tower. She thought of the long climb in the dark, of the echoes and the way her magelamp shone bright, but was soon swallowed whole by the wide and hungry dark. And she saw the face in the park again, heard the words, saw Tervis and Kervis cast back, spilling down the stair…

There came a knock, loud at the door, and Meralda started and dropped her pen.

“A missive from His Highness, no doubt,” said Mug. And indeed here was yet another nervous young guardsman at the door, with yet another note. She took it from his hand, exchanged an exasperated roll of the eyes with Kervis, and stomped back into the lab as the Bellringers shut the doors.

“You would think the man’s hand would get all cramped, badgering you with letters every quarter hour,” said Mug.

Meralda halted at her desk and unfolded the thick royal paper.

Thaumaturge , it read, in an unfamiliar hand. I do hope you’re hungry.

Meralda creased her brow.

“What is it?” asked Mug.

There came a knock at the door.

“Oh, no,” said Meralda. “It can’t be.”

“Can’t be who?” asked Mug. He brought twenty eyes to bear upon Meralda. “Mistress?”

From beyond the door, Kervis spoke. “Thaumaturge?” he said. “There’s a gentleman here to see you.”

“A gentleman?” piped Mug. “Oh, a gentleman!”

“Quiet,” said Meralda. She pushed back a lock of hair and made for the door, note still in her hand.

I could beg off again, she thought. I could explain I’m in the midst of a complicated spellwork, one that requires more time, one dangerous to onlookers. I’d even be telling a good portion of the truth.