‘Nubbin,’ Wicktwister replies with a laugh.
Shipwright lifts Nubbin gently onto her lap, where she settles down in short order, nose under tail. She shifts her legs gently, before she looks back to Wicktwister.
‘Spinner magic’s about two things. Stasis and speed. Increasing one at the expense of the other, usually. Sometimes, on rare occasions, creating stasis for speed to work within.’
She strokes the cat, fends off its rough little tongue.
‘Where I come from, it’s not common, but it’s known. We’re told about it as children. The brass magic, the magic that pins the world.’
Wicktwister raises a set of tongs, examines them critically. ‘Pins?’
She nods. ‘My people. And me, I suppose, we believe that the world exists in layers.’ She moves her hands until they’re atop one another, palms flat.
‘Spinner magic,’ she interlocks her fingers. ‘Spinner magic holds the layers of the world together.’
Wicktwister retrieves the quill and writes softly. ‘Continue.’
‘The top layer’ – she wiggles her hands – ‘above the sky, that’sgods, or where the gods used to be. Flux. Momentum. Good change. The middle, that’s us. The real world. Earth and sea and stone. Below that’ – she lowers her hands – ‘Death. Destruction. Chaos. Dissolution.’
Wicktwister raises an eyebrow. ‘You believe this?’
She shrugs. ‘I was raised with it. It’s more complicated than that though. Above us, that’s also like … the future. Below us, that’s the past. And everything gets associated with everything else. The past is death. The sky is momentum.’
She strokes Nubbin and rubs her eyes. ‘It sounds a bit mad when you explain it all at once.’
Wicktwister shakes his head. ‘Hesper does not believe in mad. Only the unknown not yet comprehended. Continue.’
Slightly surprised, she does. ‘So, if you believe all that, change is the natural state of things. Onwards or downwards. Spinner magic either arrests that, or speeds it up.’
Wicktwister’s pen dots a line, stops. ‘It sounds fearsome. How are we not all your humble slaves? You could rule worlds with this.’
Nubbin stretches, yawns pinkly. Shipwright waits before she continues. ‘No. See, it can do a lot. It can shield you from other magics, so long as the spinner lasts. It can keep things going, machines. Ships.’ She smiles. ‘Even people, though that last is dangerous.’
‘But it’s all localised. One spinner only stretches so far. A room. A body. An object. I don’t know how anyone could ever make one big enough to affect more than that.’
Wicktwister looks sceptical, ‘No one has ever tried?’
She rolls a hammer over her palm. ‘Of course. We have stories about those people. Rooms, bodies torn apart by a mistuned vibration. Buildings lost, people disappeared. We’ve found shards of things that might have been spinners once. Old, ragged, long as your arm.’ She points the hammer. ‘Anything larger than an orange, and things get weird. It’s hard to regulate the vibrations.’
Wicktwister glances up at her. ‘And a broken spinner? What cost?’
Shipwright thinks. ‘Small stresses can be repaired, if they’re caught quick enough. After that, damage can mess with the balance. With time, with the substance of things. Fray away at objects, bodies.’
Wicktwister makes a few more notes, draws a graph and annotates it. ‘You said localised? How localised?’ He crosses to the other side of a room. ‘I am a spinner, here. Can I affect you?’
She smiles. ‘Yes, most likely, but it depends on your position. Are you held in a hand? Are you hung from the ceiling? Atop a mast? A tower?’
He nods. ‘Understood. I am now atop a Thriftglow apartment. Can I affect you? The district?’
She shakes her head. ‘The room, most likely.’
He turns to a work bench, jiggers open a can with sharp, swift movements, decants some oily fish into a bowl. ‘I begin to understand.’
He sets the food down. Nubbin stirs herself, and hirples slowly to the bowl.
‘Here the limitations, then.’ He checks them off. ‘Materials, size, position, duration and task. Correct?’
She nods. ‘Seems about right. We could add in location, speed, interference.’
