Page 7 of Engines of Reason

I reckon about two score people camped outside the town, hardly an army, save for the monsters. Hard to miss half a dozen colonial-era construction automata, battered old things that they are. Considerably bigger and clunkier than my own people’s machines, of which there are still a few feral examples around, plus plenty mothballed back at the tower. Bigger, clunkier and far less capable, and let’s give thanks for that.

I stride in, and I am marked. I’m wearing clothes of a decent local cut, but made in the tower from augmented fabrics. And the height. And the horns. And honestly, if you’re going to set yourself up as a sorcerer in these parts, surely you expect a visit from Nyrgoth Elder.

All eyes on me, therefore, when I reach the edge of their camp. And I’m not saying I’ve been working on my wizardly walk, but there’s a trick to it, to tell people you mean magic business. Honestly, between the old friends and the fresh air and the opportunity to be inscrutable, I’m building up quite the head of positive emotions, so that I let down the DCS and glow a bit with my own august importance. Always a mistake.

I peg the lad in the fancy chair as sorcerer material, mostly because of the signals and channels open in the wearables he has on. I’m just about to let him have my arcane opinion when I see, in the midst of his people, Lyn.

Lyn

ONCE SHE WAS LYNESSE Fourth Daughter, least regarded of the royal children of Lannesite. Then Lynesse Third Sister, on the death of their mother, and Lynesse Apprentice, who had learned some of the secrets of an elder age. And then, as the world had tilted inexorably into trouble, Lynesse Second Sister, a spouse, war, shame, and in the end her own part in all of it had become too much. She’d fled sisters and court and, especially, her teacher.

Seeing him there, Lyn knew she’d been hoping he wouldn’t come. That Daimlesse Regent would be slower to credit the rumours; that he’d be more mulish when asked. That Lyn would find only some thug with an old monstrous worker—robot, Nyr would say—that she could use her own skills to neutralise. So she could send back, Job done. And not have Nyr turn up.

She locked that away. Avoided it, as she always did her problems. Because Nyr was about to stroll into a trap, in that way he had of not reading a situation.

Lynesse Second Sister, roving agent of Lannesite: the identity she’d fabricated for herself when she’d left. Too many judging eyes at court, too many wagging tongues, and Nyr. The scorn of a great wizard whose sage warnings had been ignored. Leaving had been easier.

There was a time when life was simple. And of course it never had been, but somehow she’d gone through it as though it had, and life had indulged her. She had been the storybook warrior-princess, when Daimlesse and her other sisters had been learning statecraft. She had awoken the wizard in his tower and taken him to fight a demon, and it had all worked out.

Life, though, had been patient. Just when she’d thought she’d mastered it, there’d been a series of poor decisions on her part, and then … humiliation. The understanding that, this time, all those dull and sober cautions she’d received from her sisters and Nyr had been right. She’d reached the end of the storybook and the statecraft was all that was left.

And here she was, with a pack of bandits fencing her in. What was Nyr to think?

The peculiar prickling came at her collar. Magic. Except the first lesson in Nyr’s curriculum of sorcery was There is no magic. Usually as a preface to some patently magicianly feat. So this was an electromagnetic signal, the precise modulations of which carried encoded information. A signal originating in the horns Nyr bore, received and decrypted by her own shirt, that had been woven by spirits within the wizard’s tower.

So it was that a faint whisper of Nyrgoth Elder’s voice issued from the vibrations of threads in her collar, and he said, Are you in trouble?

She murmured back. “There is a second sorcerer. A woman. Calls herself Elder. Beware.” Almost a relief, to have a whole bandit camp and a couple of hostile sorcerers. Her and Nyr against the world. Almost like old times and no room for all that had come later.

Sendroth was warily greeting Nyrgoth Elder. Lyn could detect the man’s gauntlets sending their own signals to the great battered robots, readying them to act. She envied the fluid ease of his control system, the way some internal intelligence of the gauntlets translated flicks of his fingers into the painstakingly complex details that the robots required. A true wonder of the ancient world.

“You are the one who calls yourself Sorcerer,” Nyr stated.

Lyn saw Sendroth bite at his lip, just slightly. A child’s nervous habit, up before their elders. Nyr was everyone’s elder, by default. He had a reputation.

“Did Lannesite think it had a monopoly on magic?” Sendroth called. Every brigand there was staring at Nyr, waiting for him to explode in arcana. Some fingered their gutbows, the translucent strings taut, metal shot loaded. There were ways to shoot a wizard, she knew, but if Nyr had dressed in the appropriate vestments, he’d be a harder target than they thought. Since coming to live amongst regular people he had worked out a variety of ingenious defences.

She thought Nyr was going to fly off the handle, as he did if he’d been letting his feelings out of the box too much. She thought he might put on some grand spectacle because she was there to see—meaning her presence would have made everything worse again. Instead, he sagged a bit, possibly at the whole magic business which she knew he hated.

“I am not Lannesite,” he said. “Lannesite’s Regent would wish me constantly to use my powers for her civic ambitions. I am not moved.” She heard the weirdly formal way his words still sounded, in any normal language. She’s always after me to do magic, and I won’t, but in Lans Vulgar it came out very wizardly indeed. “However,” he added, “I cannot allow this.” A gesture at the robots, whose many throats shimmered with heat buildup. “It is the sole part of my oath that I have kept. That I shall intervene, when the things of the Elder age are raised to life. I’m sorry. You’re plainly very gifted to have managed it. There must be some other sphere that you can apply your talents to.” Not understanding how patronising he sounded. And she wondered if he had spoken to the warlord Ulmoth that way, back in her great-grandmother’s day. Faced down the man and his monsters, simultaneously self-effacing and superior.

Sendroth opened his mouth to speak, and the robots went silent, all of them. Not even a gesture, from Nyr. No need for magic gauntlets. Just as Lyn had done, all half-dozen monsters at once, still and dead as stones.

She saw Sendroth’s face, then. Bitter, frustrated, a man with no traction on the world. He moved his gauntlets, but there was nothing to hear the signals they sent out.

“Well, that is all there is,” said Nyr. “I understand you are people with a grievance against Lannesite. I … do not want to become embroiled in such matters, but if you have some message for the Regent, I will carry it. Otherwise…” And he looked at Lyn, obviously not sure what to do with her, or even if her identity was known to her captors. “Perhaps you would … allow this young woman to leave with me?”

She almost laughed at the awkward gallantry of it, because she was not young anymore, save to Nyr to whom she always would be. Let her go grey and lose her teeth and bear a score of children and he’d still think her a child. Which was part of the problem.

“No,” Sendroth said. Not entirely clear what it was in response to, initially. “You are privileged to walk in here cloaked in magic. To take what we have, that lets us pit ourselves against the might of your Regent. And why? Because you decide that such as we do not deserve these things.”

“I would do the same if the Regent had them,” Nyr said blandly. “As the Regent knows.”

“The Regent,” Sendroth said, “does not need them to enforce her will.” He had his fists clenched, sending who knew what signal to the dead robots.

Nyr sagged a little, the entirety of Sendroth’s thwarted rage just one minor matter to him. A small thing he really hadn’t wanted to get into. “You are brigands, are you not?” Slightly incredulous at the moral high ground the sorcerer was claiming.

“We were brigands, when brigandage was all that was left to us.” Sendroth advanced a step, fists half-raised as though he would just punch the Elder’s long nose. “Now we are more than that.”