Page 3 of Engines of Reason

When they are working out the equation problems I have set them—displayed on the wall with the little projector I set up—I have another visitor. My heart sinks. I have retreated to this meagre role, as royal tutor. The bare minimum of engagement with the culture I find myself immersed in. Because the problem with turning up and claiming to be a court wizard is that the court starts expecting you to do wizardry to order.

It is not, of course, the Regent herself, come to call at my classroom. She has better things to do with her time, and one skill that the royal families of these kingdoms tend to be good at is familial delegation. Regents hope for three or four daughters, forming a tight-knit clique to govern under the aegis of the eldest. It didn’t quite work out that way for Lannesite, but the current Regent has at least one very capable sister left to act as majordomo, steward, chancellor and spymistress, and that’s who’s come calling. So, they want something from me. Something I will not, I suspect, be willing to provide.

“Cantiresse First Sister,” I address her. “What can I do for you today?” My most polite smile. Polite smiles come across a little differently, if you’re a head taller than most, with a long, melancholy face of a caste not seen amongst any of Sophos IV’s ethnic groups, a man entirely outside the regular composition of the world. And the horns. Cantiresse is, honestly, too composed and well mannered for her eyes to flick up towards them, but even people who have known me for years still stare. An affectation, certainly, but also the broadcast and reception hub of my implants, for when I still need to examine the world or speak to my tower.

I inform the children that I must talk with their aunt. They will have meandered from their work when I come back, each on their own path. Osteg will set himself addition problems, Allenesse will draw, Erinesse will probably have left to find her sycophants. And ingenious Sara? I guess she will be at my books again. The ones I had the tower print. The advanced study. The real magic. Not that magic is real, but just knowing some physics equations won’t let you pull the sort of stunts that I, as the Elder, am supposed to be capable of. For that you need the sufficiently advanced technology, and the magic words to make it do what you want.

Cantiresse and I retire to a nearby chamber where a servant has set out some chilled drinks and a jug of brittle rolled straws, made from hybrid grain flour and spices. A favourite of mine, as it happens, which Cantiresse knows. I am being wooed for some magicianly service.

“What would the Regent?” I ask her. I’ve lived amongst this family for long enough that they don’t all just remind me of Lyn, who in turn reminds me of their great-grandmother, who was the first of their line to trouble me at my tower and draw me into their world.

She regards me, face like a porcelain mask, hair pulled back tight into a bun. Cantiresse, alone of her sisters, has not married. Borne no child, professed no ambition for a dynasty of her own. Instead, she devotes her life to being the cushioning layer between the regent’s ambitions and the world, the oil that lets the machine work without too much friction.

Her look is cool. I’d say no love lost, except Cantiresse is a machine which wastes no energy in dislike or feuds. You’re useful to her—to her sister and the state—or you’re not. “The Regent beseeches the aid of the Elder,” Cantiresse says precisely. And what Daimlesse Regent probably did was demand. An Elder, however, is not swayed by demands. Hence the Regent sends her more diplomatic sister to beseech. Honestly, the traditions of court diplomacy in this region are complex enough even before you introduce a wild card like me.

“Your sister knows I will not lend my gifts in the matter of Lannesite’s territorial ambitions.” Because when Daimlesse was crowned, she had thought that her youngest sister’s friend the wizard would be hers to throw at every neighbour, a stick to be brandished to keep them all in line. My name was much used in diplomatic circles. There were, indeed, demands. And Lyn was still here, then, to fend them off, and help me establish a status quo where I would teach, and sometimes advise, but only on matters related to my being a wizard. A thing that I am not but have grown tired of trying to explain. Better a wizard than a second-class anthropologist, surely.

Lyn’s intervention put an end to the demands but not the beseeching. I have been asked to appear at various borders—not even do anything, just swan about looking magical. I have been asked to make threats—not even to anyone, just mutter dire and arcane imprecations in earshot of ambassadors. I have been asked, occasionally, to deploy the dread powers of my art and my tower and my monstrous servants—robots, drones, that sort of nonsense—against the enemies of Lannesite. I have, to my credit, refused to do these things, but it doesn’t stop them asking, and here we go again.

“Lannesite is under threat,” Cantiresse says, true to form, and through the deadening of my Dissociative Cognition System I feel my heart sink. Or at least, my heart schedule a descent for a later time.

I draw my wizardly self up to restate my position, re: getting involved, which is something Cantiresse well knows. I assume, then, she’s just going through the form of it so she can tell her sister she tried. But she raises a slender finger, and honestly, I might be the magician here, but she has so much more quiet authority than I ever did, so she silences me.

“There have been raids,” she says. “Several of the border protectorates have been attacked. The forces of our allies have been defeated, from behind walls and in the field. And our own, when we marched to aid them.”

This, in my opinion, is not worth the raised finger. I open my mouth to explain that none of this justifies the deployment of my dread magics, and she says, “This new brigand warlord calls himself Sendroth.”

I permit myself a raised eyebrow. “Calls himself,” I echo. The suffix tells a tale. Sendroth. Like Nyrgoth. A slight variation, because of how the language of Lans Vulgar likes to order its consonants, but still …

“Witnesses say he commands monsters,” Cantiresse tells me tightly. And I could still refuse, of course. I could demand such witnesses be brought to me, that I might cross-examine them before I credit any such business. Any rogue can claim to be a sorcerer. But then Cantiresse says, “This is Minian, Storisite and Edmen way. Lyn’s out there.” Her eyes on my face to make sure the dart lands. It does.

And if there is some wizardry involved with this bandit, that is my responsibility. Meaning, some local thug has somehow managed to get an old piece of machinery working, and is using it to terrorise the other locals. Exactly the sort of thing these women’s great-grandmother needed me for, a century and change ago. That is why I magnanimously say I will go take a look at this Sendroth Sorcerer, to see if there’s anything more than flummery backing him. Only for that reason. Not because it has been a year since I saw Lyn. Since I drove her away.

Sendra

THREE TYPES OF PEOPLE became Headman of a cantrev town like Edmen, Sendra reckoned. The fiercely committed who were asses because they constantly made trouble with their neighbours; the pawn of some local clique of families, not asses so much as the thin layer of breeches-cloth covering one; and then someone like the Headman of Edmen, who were the slavish pawns of other rulers, fit only to mouth their writ. That sort was the worst of asses and Sendra was out of patience.

Sendra had played by the rules the regents and nobles used between themselves. He’d brought a delegation, set his tent outside the walls of Edmen. Stone walls, solid; the immutable product of an earlier age that the township was squeezed in between, stacked two storeys too high with no elbow room. Plenty of Edmen soldiers were under arms on those walls right now, in case Sendra and his score of followers decided to storm the place on their own. Or in case the Headman decided that this wasn’t actually a meeting under diplomatic aegis, just some bandits it was fine to take and hang. The Headman had arrived with that course in mind, Sendra reckoned, and no amount of talk was going to steer him away.

Right now the man had puffed himself to say, “Edmen has never paid brigands to go away. Those that have tried us have regretted it. I am doing you the honour of meeting with you under formal flag, since you—”

“What I am asking of you is no more than you give already to the throne of Lannesite, in order that they remain a good neighbour,” Sendra said patiently. “I, too, wish to be a good neighbour. I can be a good enough neighbour that you’ll not need to give those chisellers in Lannesite a bushel.”

“Because we’ll have given the same to you,” the Headman spat.

“I am glad we understand each other.” For a moment Sendra thought the Headman would have some sort of attack—the medical kind—but the man’s purplish hue was just anger.

“Then let me tell you our word,” the Headman said. “Our word is that if you or your followers are seen within our curtilage henceforth then—”

“Before you make any difficult promises to keep,” Sendra broke in, “you heard word from Minian? Of what transpired there before the people welcomed us and gave us the best of their bounty? Or the Headman of Brackish Way’s proud pledge before he took to the river against us. Or—”

“You’d not be the first villain to ride a steed made of rumour,” Shon Headman said. It was a good turn of phrase. Sendra filed it away for later use.

He stood. He’d been slouched in the big wooden chair his people carried about to lend him some much-needed grandeur. Sendra wasn’t the most imposing of men, he knew. Lean enough, tall enough, his youth still clinging to him. But when people pictured a bandit warlord it was some superhumanly muscled monster, not Sendra’s lean physique. A great mane rather than his unruly sand-coloured mop. He couldn’t even grow a beard properly. So they’d got him up in hides and a red cloak and those sculpted bronze shoulder guards with spikes they’d found in Minian. The cloak always got caught underneath him when he tried to stand up; he’d nearly garroted himself. The spikes had written a whole weird alphabet of scratches on the back of the chair. It was hard being a warlord.

He had the gauntlets, though: articulated so finely he barely knew he was wearing them, made of something hard and coloured like leaded glass, each section fluted and elegant. He raised them, and a current of anticipation ran through his twenty. Kaille, Irkon, Blennardt, all the new recruits who’d been keen to wave his banner once they’d seen him in action. A fraction of those he had left at Minian and Brackish Way. The rabble who were his horde, but might one day be his army. Villains, murderers, thieves and renegades, but his.

He lifted his hands. The Headman watched, narrow-eyed, sneering a little at the theatre. The afternoon sun glinted on all the gauntlets’ beautiful lines.