Page 4 of Engines of Reason

Sendra was very aware of the others watching. Emissaries from neighbouring principalities and cantrevs, come to see just what sort of a problem this new bandit leader was going to be. And, amongst them, her. He’d picked her from the crowd instantly. Not entirely sure who she was, but plainly not some provincial busybody. Say what you like about the Regent of Lannesite—every state’s big sister in these parts—but she was smart. She’d not miss the chance to send a spy to observe the man trying to tweak her nose. So Sendra sought out the woman he’d pegged as Lannesite’s agent, met her eye for a moment as he thrust his hands out towards Edmen’s walls.

For a second nothing happened, and that would have been awkward. Then the keening wail came to him, like a chorus of agonised souls. He watched the ripple of disquiet go through them—his own people, too. But not her, not Lannesite’s woman.

His monster lifted off from the woodlands a mile distant, to come shrieking towards them fast as the wind. A great tarnished shell split with a snaggle of mismatched legs dangling below it. Its voice came from eight round throats set into its body, roaring with furnace breath so that the air rose off it in a shimmer.

The Headman fled back to his people. The monster had no time for them, though. Sendra gestured, hands and fingers, as he’d learned to do. A language of instruction entirely without words, that the thing’s keen glass eyes could perceive in the dark from the horizon.

He grinned. In that moment he was not just the brigand warlord. He was Sendroth Sorcerer.

It reached the walls. He imagined the panic there amongst the soldiers. The smart ones would be jumping down and risking a broken leg. The idiots would be levelling their spears or loosing their gutbows. Maybe there was even some artillery up there. A few big rocks or javelins they could launch.

The monster hovered over the walls for a moment. He saw it rock, so someone had good aim at least.

“These walls you’ve built,” he told the Headman. “I see why you’d want them to protect yourself from the ambitions of a neighbour like Lannesite. But we are here now and, under our aegis, no other shall trouble you. You’ll not be needing your walls, therefore.”

A crook of his index finger and the monster dropped. They all heard the shrieking as its jaws tore into the stone. A great cloud of white dust rose up. It looked like smoke, and maybe that’s what the others thought, but Sendra knew it was pulverised rock.

Only the light of the monster’s eyes pierced through it. Sendra lifted the middle fingers of his right hand. Stop, monster. He let the wind take the dust away so that they could see the wall was entirely breached, a strip torn from battlements to ground, the edges hanging drunkenly, loose blocks dropping. And he’d come here, close to Edmen’s bounds, as the Headman had asked. Close enough to be captured by a sudden strike from the defenders, as the man had thought. Close enough for a good demonstration, as Sendra had known.

The Headman made a choking, spitting noise, words deserting him.

Sendra lifted his other hand and two more screaming machines rose from the far wood and howled overhead.

“I will let you think it over, Shon Headman. The tribute, and what other gifts you think proper, to make things right between us. Perhaps Edmen, in its wisdom, will have me as its speaker; join Minian and Brackish Way in my confederation. Under my protection. For I will protect you from Lannesite, but who would protect you from me?” The fresh clamour, as the monsters set to work. Plain that, long before nightfall, there wouldn’t be two stones of Edmen’s walls still standing. Well, it would give the place a chance to expand. He was doing them a favour.

He looked to the other emissaries, who were seeing the future of their own little cantrevs and polities in Edmen’s spectacular dismantling. Sendra smiled at their ashen looks. Great women, haughty men, officials backed by powerful states, scions of noble lines. And here he was, Sendreth Exile, outcast and fugitive, who’d fled most of their borders at one time or another with their laws hounding his heels.

There were going to be some changes. The smart ones would be thinking how they could woo him. The foolish ones would go home and raise soldiers and build more walls, and he would look forward to adding their states to his growing coalition. The leaders routed, the populace would fall over themselves to sign up.

Lannesite’s woman stared back at him. Not outraged, not fearful, just thoughtful. And she let the others go first—a handful who would deign to kneel before his makeshift throne and at least speak polite words to him; a handful who reckoned they were far enough, or strong enough, that they could stand before him and make threats. Sendra did his best impersonation of gracious with the former, stared down the latter with contempt. We will come for you, his look told them. Nobody is too far; nobody is that strong.

And then it was her, striding over just as evening came. The walls of Edmen were rubble, by then, and the Headman and his escort had fled back to their utter lack of protection. The other emissaries had dispersed. It was just Sendroth Sorcerer, his monsters hunkered down nearby with their throats still glowing. Sendroth, facing down Lannesite’s woman. He was about to have his first proper conference with a representative of Daimlesse Regent.

Threats, probably. Demands. He looked her over and wasn’t sure. If someone had come to wave a stick at him, he’d expect a retinue, pomp and ceremony, better clothes. Fancier clothes. She was wearing a good approximation of the sort of thing a regular traveller might wear, but the fabrics used were … he couldn’t identify them. Nothing quite as he’d expect but everything exactingly made, not a stitch out of place. The copper gorget wasn’t at her throat, to denote a formal agent of the crown, but his eyes found it looped through her belt. What did that make her? At last he met her quizzical, challenging expression. A woman a few years his senior, a noble’s self-assured demeanour. Someone close to the throne.

“Sendroth Sorcerer,” she addressed him. “Call me Alint Crown-Mark.” The latter a catch-all for someone on royal business; the former patently false, a storybook character name, Alint and Alarno, generic protagonists of a hundred folk tales.

“Well then,” he said. “I take it you’re not here to surrender the country to my magical prowess.”

She looked at him for a moment, and he had the decided impression of being read. Her lips quirked. “If that’s what you’re waiting for, nobody has given me that sort of authority. I’m not exactly here with letters from the Regent. Just satisfying my curiosity.”

“Let me guess. You didn’t believe in the sorcery. It’s sad how everyone gets taught reason and politics these days, instead of the old stories.”

“Nine times out of ten it’s more useful,” she observed.

“Welcome to the tenth time,” he said. Another good line. Very ominous. And he fancied he saw a similar thought behind her face, as though they were playing a game with common rules.

She reached into a scrip and produced something small. A message, a gift? It looked like a little glass eye, the sort a very skilled chirurgeon might set in a socket. Then it lit up, from a candle’s luminance to a campfire’s, just in that tiny ball, and he understood. Magic.

“This isn’t my first tenth time,” she told him calmly. Sendra was acutely aware of how all his people had a hand to a hilt right now. He wanted to wave them down, but the light had transfixed him and he didn’t want to call the monsters by mistake.

She threw it at him. Because his reflexes were good, he caught it. There was a frozen moment when he thought he’d been utterly out-sorcered and was about to die. But the little crystal eye flickered and went out. He examined it. Just a globe of crystal.

“Light it,” she said, but he could find no button or switch, none of the usual accoutrements of magic, and it would not talk to him.

“My magic does more than yours,” he noted, because this was no time to be slack. “Will you go to your Regent and tell her about the walls of Edmen, perhaps? Are the walls of Lannesite Urban stronger, if it comes to it?”

“That’s not why I’m here.”