“Wrong. It takes a little more effort, but a well-trained Geomancer can manipulate steel. Other alloys even further removed from natural metals are harder, with Simian-steel amongst the most difficult. Unfortunately, our own legendary metal is still within the reach of a well-trained Geomancer. Twisting Simian-steel is even the last rite of passage for green mages wishing to graduate from the Academy.
“But you’re trying to make one that’s stronger than Simian-steel? One that even the best Geomancers cannot touch?”
“Yes,” said Nicole with a sigh. “Argyll feels convinced that this war cannot be won otherwise. Even with a thousand Simians carrying firearms, we’d be quickly overwhelmed by handful of Geomancers.”
“How goes the progress?” asked Farris, eying a particularly strange mass of steel upon the tabletop. It glimmered green and blue, with red veins streaking throughout. It certainly seemed far from natural.
“Not well,” she said. “I must have tried a hundred combinations by now. I’ve tested some with a master Geomancer, and while many are indeed more difficult to grasp than Simian-steel, it seems like making one that’s invulnerable from Geomantic interference is… impossible.”
“How so?” asked Farris, careful to put only a little sincerity in his voice. Nicole seemed like the type who wouldn’t appreciate sympathy from strangers.
The engineer paused, as if carefully considering the words. Eventually she shook her head. “It would be impossible to describe,” she said. “There’s a mathematical equation that dictates the relationship between a Geomancer’s capacity to manipulate an alloy, but without a way of understanding those terms, you’d never comprehend it.”
“Can’t it be described in words?” chanced Farris.
Nicole wrinkled her nose, deep in thought. A slight hint of a smile appeared at the corner of her lips, as if she was enjoying the challenge. When she spoke, it was with greater enthusiasm than before.
“Consider a plank of wood,” she said, raising her hands to indicate its length. “Let’s pretend it’s four foot long. If you were to cut it in half, how much would you be left with?”
“Two,” said Farris, without hesitation. The last thing he needed was to appear slow when it came to basic arithmetic.
“Okay,” she said, bringing her hands closer together, at a distance that seemed like two feet apart. “And what if you were to do the same again?”
“I’d be left with one,” said Farris. He was half-tempted grab her hands and embrace her, there and then, but decided against it. She was speaking to him like an equal now, and it seemed wise to let her continue uninterrupted.
“Correct,” she said. “We are left with one foot, or twelve inches. Now, what would happen if we were to cut this in half three more times?”
Farris thought about it for a moment. “We’d have six inches, then three inches, then one and a half.”
Nicole brought her hands together until they were barely touching.
“And if we were to continue with this pattern,” she said, “we’d end up with three-quarters, then three-eights, then three-sixteenths, and so forth.”
“Until we end up with nothing?” asked Farris.
“Incorrect,” said Nicole, sternly. “What remains would get smaller and smaller, but it will never reach zero. As I said, this relationship can be described with a mathematical equation, and it too describes the relationship I’ve found between Geomancy and Simian-steel. I can produce compounds that eventually become more and more difficult to manipulate, but it never becomes impossible.”
“I see,” said Farris. Nicole began walking again, and Farris followed, deep in thought.
Could it really be impossible?There must be a way. Although he truly knew little about the sciences of which Nicole spoke, something did stir at the back of his head. Something he had seen before, recently, even. Something that didn’t abide by the laws Nicole had described.
Farris barely noticed that he walked through the shadow of something hanging on the ceiling, blocking out the little light that entered the chamber. When he looked up to examine it, he gasped with awe.
Skies above and below. How did I miss this?
Held up by thick cables and wooden beams was something shaped like an airship, but much smaller than the one that had carried Farris to Penance. It had just a single ballonet about the size of a mountain sloth, though it was painted black and almost invisible against the dark ceiling. A single engine almost as large as the gondola itself hung at its back, with thick propellers extending outwards.
“Ah,” said Nicole, appearing at Farris’s side. “That’s Skirmisher. I helped my father build it when I was a girl. He claimed it could travel from Elís Point to Cruachan and back within a day, but he never had the chance to test it.”
“It’s never been flown?” asked Farris. It was such a strange sight, an airship only capable of carrying a handful of supplies. “That’s certainly a shame.”
“My father didn’t think so,” she said. “Once King Diarmuid commissioned him to build that damned railway tunnel, nothing else mattered to my father. Not even his family.”
“I’m sorry. It’s said that Santos was one of our age’s great minds.”
“He was,” said Nicole. “Until King Diarmuid killed him down in the tunnels they built together, and framed Argyll for it.”
Farris frowned. “That’s what you believe happened down there?”
“That’s what I know happened!” snapped Nicole. “If Argyll had been planning anything of the sort, I would have found out about it. And what would the Movement possibly have to gain by killing someone like Santos?”
“Perhaps you’re right,” said Farris. It seemed as if Nicole didn’t know, or chose not to mention, that the King’s Royal Simian Guard was also killed in the supposed attack. If what Nicole believed was true, King Diarmuid would have had to kill the six Simians himself. The Silverback lying to Nicole and the other dissidents seemed a more likely explanation than that.
They continued in silence. Farris’s mind returned to the events that followed the death of Santos. The King’s attempt to destroy the Skyfleet of Sin. The other spies aboard the airship. The smell of the flowers of the Glenn.
I’ll have to tell Garth about my own experiences with beadhbhs once he gets back, he realised, fighting back a smile.
Of course, Farris had seen first-hand that mages could hold their own against the predators of the Glenn. Sláine the White with her healing powers. Fionn the Red with his fires. And—
“Nicole!” cried Farris. “I’ve got it!”
“What are you talking about?”
Farris paced quickly towards one of the tables, gathering some scattered papers and notes that lay upon them.
“Are these important?” he asked. As soon as Nicole shook her head, he tossed them on the floor.
“Farris, what’s going on?” She watched as Farris took out his flask of thainol and poured the liquid onto the papers. He knelt down and pulled a line of flint from his pocket.
“There’s none of that black powder here, is there?”
“No, but – what are you doing? she yelled, stepping forward. She paused as Farris produced sparks from the line of flint, which fell onto the damp paper, immediately producing a bright, blue flame.
“We called these beggar’s flames back in the Dustworks,” said Farris, ignoring the fright in Nicole’s eyes. “Thainol is flammable, and often the best way to keep warm at night.”
“You better start making sense soon.”
“I travelled with a Pyromancer on my way here,” continued Farris. “When I created a beggar’s flame, he claimed that he was unable to touch it with his magic.
Nicole looked away from the flames, into Farris’s eyes. It was as if she had forgotten for just a moment that there was a fire raging at her feet.
“No,” she said. “It can’t be. He must have been a novice, or untrained in red magic.”
“I didn’t know him very well. But I think he was graduated from the Academy. His name was Fionn the Red. Does that title imply he was better than a novice?”
“It means he earned his red-cloak at least,” she said. “And lower only than a Firemaster, in the eyes of the Church.”
“Then it stands to reason, that if there is a type of flame untouchable by a well-trained Pyromancer, the same could be said with steel and Geomancy?”
