A wide smile crossed the human woman’s face. “Thank you, headmaster. I truly think it could be revolutionary. There are surely many other applications I haven’t considered. I’ll make it worth your while, I promise.”
“I’ll hold you to it,” Adrissu chuckled, pulling out the paperwork to fill.
He mainly let Alana work in peace, although she approached him a few times to brainstorm new ideas as she progressed. But for the most part, he remained unaware of how the project was coming along for several months until the middle of the next term, when Alana presented him with a miniature model of the horseless cart. The model hissed as steam built up within it, then it moved in a long, lazy circle across Adrissu’s desk.
“Fascinating,” Adrissu said, watching the model rattle over the various papers that were strewn in its path. “You’re sure it’s scalable? How large do you think you could get it?”
“Absolutely,” she answered, her smile radiating confidence. “I don’t think there would be a limit. As long as the generator can produce enough steam, it could move anything: twenty, fifty, a hundred people, even. And I could definitely adjust the enchantment to get it large enough.”
Her work continued, and within a year, the Academy was the first to present the world with a horseless carriage—driven through a magically powered steam engine with no need for a person to feed magic into the cart to make it move, which was the only method by which existing horseless carts functioned. They were quite rare because of this requirement; but one day, Alana’s invention very well could become as commonplace as a mundane cart, given enough time and resources.
The new cart was lauded often and by many at that year’s Lord Council meeting in Gennemont; Adrissu did not attend, but Alana herself had been invited by Polimnos’ Lord Representative, and she told him all about it upon her return. Less than a month later, Adrissu was receiving correspondence from various mages he knew in Gennemont who wanted to replicate it. He passed them all to Alana, telling her it was entirely her prerogative if she wanted to reply at all, though he was pleased when she kept the nature of her work within Polimnos. If anyone in Gennemont wanted to create such a thing for themselves, they would have to do it unaided.
By the time he heard any news about Gennemont creating its own steam-powered model, several mages in Polimnos had already expanded on Alana’s initial discovery. Steam power was used to bring flowing water into Polimnos homes more efficiently than the pre-existing magical sewer system, so construction was underway to augment the system with steam pipes to improve the existing infrastructure. The magically enhanced steam could power simple lights, an easier method of procuring light than enchanted candles.
The world around him seemed to transform overnight.
Alana’s wild success brought only more attention to the Academy, so enrollment at both the original academy and the academy in Feld Heslyn exploded with growth. This was, of course, a source of great pride for Ned, so he often had Alana visit the second campus for lectures and demonstrations; afterward, a group of students at the second academy trained under her to expand on the uses of steam.
Then, several years after her initial discovery, the Lord Representative of Polimnos died, and Gennemont itself asked Alana if she would consider being the next. Her invention had changed the shape of the world so profoundly that they could not imagine offering the position to anyone else, or so they said. This was highly unprecedented, as typically the former Lord Representative’s advisors chose the next Representative; in this case, they were skipped over entirely. It was an unsettling precedent, giving such overt power to Gennemont, when Adrissu himself could remember the bloody struggle that had won Polimnos its relative autonomy centuries ago. At the same time, Alana did seem an excellent choice as Lord Representative, far more suitable than anyone the two advisors, who were family members of the previous representative, might have picked out. The world continued to change, he supposed.
Alana Pughes accepted Gennemont’s proposal, and she left the Academy at the end of that term to officially take on the title of Lord Representative of Polimnos. It had been a long time since Adrissu had personally known the Lord Representative as well as he knew Alana, so he paid a little more attention to the civic activity of Polimnos after she was sworn in. She seemed well-liked by the general populace—how could she not, with how revolutionary her inventions were? Everyone wanted to be on her good side, but from the beginning, Adrissu could tell she wasn’t entirely cut out for the politics of a major city like Polimnos.
She dropped by the school to visit him one afternoon, about two months after becoming Lord Representative, and they had dinner together to chat and catch up. For the most part, they discussed her ideas for her next developments, and what some of her students had been working on. After a lull in the conversation, she gave a quiet, bitter laugh.
“To be honest, I sort of hate this job already. Suddenly all these people want to be my friend, but they really don’t,” she sighed, leaning back and looking away from him. “I’m going to do my best to just keep my head down, and do what I can to improve the city, and keep developing my ideas, but... It’s all much more of a distraction than I anticipated it being, headmaster. I don’t know how I’ll get anything done that isn’t part of my Lord Representative duties now.”
“I can only give you this advice,” Adrissu replied. “Find the people you know you can trust and delegate as much as you can to them. That’s the only reason we could open the second campus. I’ve dedicated my life to the academy, as my father before me, so it was... difficult to see it grow beyond what I can manage as one person. But Nethendriel is a trustworthy man, and I’m glad he’s leading the second school. You just need to surround yourself with people like that in your own life, who you know are capable and aren’t trying to take advantage of you, and give them as many tasks as you can so you can focus on your own work.”
“Someone like you?” she laughed wryly.
“Unfortunately for you, I’m already busy enough with my work,” Adrissu laughed, shaking his head. “My sincerest apologies.”
“Do you think it will get easier?” she asked, her tone shifting abruptly. When he looked up, she was peering over at him with a profoundly tired expression. He considered for a moment.
“I don’t know,” he finally said. “I hope it does. Ideally, it gets more manageable, and you excel. If it remains this difficult, you’ll either suffer through it as long as you can bear, or you’ll step down when you realize it’s not getting easier. Those are the only options I see.”
Her nose wrinkled in a frown, but she let out another harsh laugh. “Very encouraging.”
“Not what you wanted to hear?”
“No, but you’re not wrong, either.” She sighed, leaning back heavily in her chair. With her pensive expression, she looked like a sullen, tired student, and Adrissu was struck with the thought that she had attended the Academy around the same time as Kian; he would have only been a year or two younger than her at the most. The thought made his chest ache. Could his mate have accomplished something as world-changing as this, too, if he’d only had the time?
“You have an incredible opportunity here, Alana,” Adrissu said softly, and her eyes flickered back up to him. “You’re the youngest Lord Representative in living memory. Gennemont chose you specifically, which is all but unheard of. Your discoveries and inventions have already changed the trajectory of the world, and I’m sure you’ll only continue to develop more revolutionary applications for what you’ve already discovered. Your name is already going down in the history books, regardless of what happens, but think of how much more you can still do with the time you have. This is difficult, yes, but if you didn’t believe you were capable of it, you wouldn’t have accepted. Don’t squander this chance you’ve been given.”
Her smile wavered, and he realized she was on the verge of tears. He looked away uncomfortably, clearing his throat. “That is to say, busy as I am, I’ll try to help however I can. Even if it’s just helping you find other people you can delegate to.”
“I’ll do my best, headmaster,” she replied, her voice rough. “Thank you.”
In hindsight, it should not have surprised him as much as it did, but in less than a year after Alana Pughes became Lord Representative of Polimnos, a student at the second academy of magic, who had been studying under her, applied the use of steam power to weaponry.
For all Adrissu’s reservations, it was true that Autreth as a whole had been largely peaceful since the Federation was formed. While small-scale conflict was inevitable any time mortals were gathered together—or any beings, really, when he considered how much he hated being around other dragons—no major war had gripped Autreth in centuries. Its neighbors could not say the same; the pendulum of war and peace had been swinging wildly in Aefraya as of late, as elves struggled to maintain unity and keep their hold over what had once been orc territories. As for Robruolor, the dwarves were so intensely insular that no one could say what they might have been up to; but Adrissu expected they faced some in-fighting of their own, just by the very nature of their sheltered existence.
But Autreth was the center of the world—the site of countless struggles, as the continent was claimed first by one neighbor, then another—and though the bloody process of independence had led to the equally fraught wars that led to the Federation, its existence had by and large given its people centuries of peace. Adrissu thought that the residents of Autreth would thus have no reason to spend what precious little time they had developing weapons of war. Apparently, though, his assumption was incorrect.
“I don’t like this,” he muttered, shaking his head, as Ned showed him the diagrams the student had submitted. The weapon in question was, essentially, a crossbow that used steam to shoot the bolt, rather than tension: a small engine behind the trigger built up pressure rapidly, so that the bolt shot out with enough force to punch through metal armor as if it were cloth. The bolts that the student proposed using would need to be reinforced, of course; and the engine did cause the crossbow to be unevenly weighted, making it difficult to handle. But it was an initial pass, Ned had explained, and the student was eager to complete his first working model, so that he might have a better idea of how to fix the problems that he’d already identified. “Why should the Academy facilitate the creation of weapons?”
“I agree, headmaster,” Alana interjected, before Ned could reply. “The steam engine was created to help people, to make difficult tasks more convenient, to help connect people to the rest of the world. To use it to strengthen weapons is... Well, it’s entirely against everything I had envisioned, and it’smyinvention.”
