Scion of Cyador

CXIV

Once in his dwelling study, Lorn sets the box from his father on his desk and leafs through the stack of papers, his fingers fumbling as he scans the sheets, looking for a section he has read several times, hoping that the section says what he has recalled.

“What are you doing?” asks Ryalth from the doorway, juggling Kerial on her shoulder. “You didn’t even try to find me. I was bathing Kerial. He’d spit up and made a mess.”

Lorn lowers the papers. “I’m sorry. I’ve been thinking about this all afternoon. We had a meeting today. Maybe I have an answer. These papers. You remember we talked about the engines-the iron chaos-heat-transfer steam engines-they talked about it…” Lorn finds his words trying to tumble out faster than he can think about them.

Ryalth laughs. “Wait…the papers will be there in a moment. I’ve never seen you trying to talk so fast.”

Lorn takes a deep breath. “You remember we talked about why no one had tried to build the chaos-fired steamships? Why no one ever talked about them? At the meeting today, Commander Shykt asked a strange question. The others thought it was strange. He asked whether the Magi’i could use chaos to build a better warship or weapons. He wasn’t that direct, but that was what he was hinting at…”

“Do you think he knows?”

“No. He knows something else. What he understands is that the Magi’i don’t want to do things that might limit their power.”

“That’s hardly strange. No one does. Traders don’t do trades that will cost them more than they make.”

“There’s a difference,” Lorn points out. “Cyador will become far poorer, perhaps even fall to the barbarians, if the Magi’i do not use their powers. Shykt was suggesting that they would rather see Cyador fall than use their powers in a new way.”

Ryalth laughs, still patting Kerial on the back, but the sound is ironic. “You are remarkable. You were thrown out of the Magi’i because you would not put their ways above everything. You are surprised that they will not change?”

Lorn shakes his head. “I had hoped for better.”

“Your father tried to make things better in his own way, and he was powerful. He could not even keep you in the Magi’i.”

“Not safely,” Lorn admits. “When you put it that way…Still, it is hard to believe that they would let the land die.” He crooks his lips. “I should know better. It took the First Magus years, from all accounts, to get the Magi’i to agree to his plan for the Accursed Forest, and they only agreed to that when it was clear that nothing else would work and that they would lose those towers anyway.”

“What did your father say?”

“That was what I was looking for.”

“You look, and I’ll tell Kysia to ready dinner. Then you can tell me. I think Kerial is going to go to sleep.”

“I hope so.” Lorn smiles.

The redhead shakes her head again, ruefully and lovingly.

As Ryalth leaves the small upstairs study, Lorn returns to paging through the sheets in the old carved wooden box, slowly and more methodically, forcing himself to read at least enough of each page to ensure that it does not deal with the material he seeks.

Roughly a third of the way through the material he stops.

As it is described on the pages which follow, once the chaos-towers fail, all is not lost. Those senior in the Magi’i will claim that no other devices, such as chaos-steam transfer engines, can be constructed, because iron and chaos are not compatible. Too great a closeness between iron, order, and Magi’i is not desirable, but it is not necessary….

…to fabricate such a device requires the extraction of order from the natural world, and its infusion into the iron as it is being forged. When I was young, I worked with a smith. He is long since dead, and he knew little beyond what his forebears had taught him, and yet we did indeed forge a blade out of iron-darker than most, and of inordinate strength.

I could not touch the blade, not without suffering ferric poisoning, but there was no need to do so…

Lorn continues to read, nodding as he does.

The First Magus-the one two before Chyenfel-did not wish to consider such a means of finding an alternative to the chaos-towers, for none of the chaos-towers had failed, and there was seen no need to do such. He was also concerned about use of such a method when it could be used to forge blades and shields that might well prove a useful shield against chaos-bolts. Once the method was used, he said, all the barbarians would learn, and then Cyador would have defenses far less effective against the northerners.

Now…the towers are failing, and so am I. Perhaps worse, because I once looked into the matter, the reference material was removed from the archives of the Quarter and burned. Most of it I had copied previously, and that is what follows this explanation…

The Mirror Lancer majer shakes his head. “The idiots….”

…do not attempt to bring this to light directly, but find one among the Magi’i who will see it for the salvation of the Magi’i, and not as a threat. For, if the Magi’i retain this as a secret, then they will retain a manner of power that they would not otherwise do…

A voice calls from below. “Lorn…dinner is almost ready.”

“I’ll be down.” Lorn looks at the notes, half smiling.

He has some copying to do…a great deal…because he cannot let the originals into anyone else’s hands. Not when they are all that remain.

Copying his father’s “memoirs” will be time-consuming, but certainly less risky than using a chaos-glass, for anyone who uses a glass to observe him will but see him writing, and that is certainly expected of a junior majer.

He shakes his head once more as he thinks of Muyro and the First Magus his father had confronted. Then he closes the box and stands.