Stonecast

Twelve

Alexandra

It took almost a week to convince Marshall to let me borrow the back room of his store for a meeting with Caleb. In the meantime, I kept feeding a steady diet of misdirection to Desmond Locke and his Libra Concordia. He seemed happy to see many of the private notes on the carved angels in Alexander’s repertoire, but nothing I gave him had a thing to do with the Spellmasonry that went into making Stanis.

The rest of that week was spent focusing on two things: poring through the records on Alexander Belarus at the Libra Concordia and spending some alone time continuing to craft the gargoyle form I had started in the destroyed studio back at the Belarus Building.

The former left me with more questions about the Spellmasons, and the latter helped calm my mind and made me feel like I was actually making some kind of progress. Now, here in Marshall’s store, it was time to see if any of the research Caleb and I had been doing was going to pay off.

The back room of Roll for Initiative was just as strange as it should be, stranger still with Marshall, Rory, and two alchemists in it. The surrounding shelves were full of games I had never heard of, rows of tiny, painted figurines, and an odd assortment of nerd-world stuff that I thought maybe I had seen on one or another of Marshall’s rotating array of geek shirts.

As odd as all that was, it still felt more odd that I had invited the man who had stolen from me and nearly head-traumaed Rory in the process to be there. She, at least, seemed to be handling it civilly enough. Her pole arm was put away, broken down into its component pieces in the art tube across her back, but more than anything I still worried about the look of mistrust in her eyes toward my fellow alchemist. I only hoped the pole arm stayed put away.

Marshall stood next to her, nervously wringing his hands together, while Caleb and I both watched with mutual concern.

“You sure this isn’t a problem?” Caleb asked, looking from Marshall back to me.

“Don’t mind Marshall,” I said. “He’s just worried about his toys.”

Marshall looked like I had just slapped him—but I met his look with a steady gaze, and the offended wind went out of his sails.

“Just try not to destroy anything or set my store on fire,” he said quietly.

“Relax,” Caleb said, slapping him on the shoulder reassuringly. His eyes sparkled with a charm and confidence that none of us seemed to find fully convincing. The alchemist pulled a few glass vials from within his long brown coat, holding them up to the light, checking the colors within. “This is a science . . . sort of. And it’s all in control. Mostly.”

Marshall’s face when white, and Rory clapped her roommate on the other shoulder. “Comforting, right, pal?” she asked.

“We need to test the version of Kimiya Caleb reverse engineered on his own,” I said. “This is only going to be a small-scale experiment, okay? Just to see if it works so we have some jumping-in point if we’re going to re-create it.”

“And you’re sure it’s not explosive?” Marshall asked, still looking unconvinced.

“It’s just my home brew,” Caleb said. “My prototype version of the ever-dwindling concoction that Alexander Belarus mastered centuries ago.”

“Your store’s going to be fine,” I said. “We’re just going to test his version to snap an arcane connection all Spellmason like. It’s not explosive.”

“Probably not,” Caleb added. “Never say never.”

I shot him a look but resisted the urge to bark at him. If he was half as punchy as I was from poring over the notes in the Libra Concordia, it was best to let it lie.

Marshall turned to me, grabbed my arm, and dragged me out through the heavy curtain that blocked the door into the customer side of the store. “You are taking responsibility for him, right?”

“He’s not a pet,” I said, easily pulling free from his nervous grasp.

“Just say it, then,” he said. “If only to give me a little reassurance. Humor me.”

“Fine,” I said. “Caleb breaks it, I buy it. Fair enough?”

Marshall’s face calmed a bit, but there was still worry in his eyes. “You couldn’t do this at either one of your alchemy labs?” he asked.

I shook my head. “I’ve got the same trust issues that you and Rory both do,” I said. “I didn’t want us working at the Libra Concordia. Not the way Desmond Locke is pursuing his interest in Stanis. And until I have the feeling that I can trust this Caleb, I don’t want him near either of my great-great-grandfather’s workspaces.”

Marshall sighed and gave a glance toward the small crowd gathered at the front of the store. “I just don’t want any damage while I’m trying to run our Magic: The Gathering tournament.”

I nodded even though I had zero idea what the last part of his sentence meant. From the group of people chattering away at the front of the store, it apparently involved consuming bucketloads of soda and a variety of snack foods while arranging colorful playing cards on tables.

“You go have fun,” I said, pushing him off toward his people. “Go. Mingle. Get your nerd on.”

Marshall started to protest just as Rory poked her head out of the back room through the curtain.

“Everything okay out here?” she asked.

“Do me a favor,” I said, grabbing her arm and pulling her out from behind the curtain. “Go up front with Marshall, will you? Make sure he enjoys himself.”

Rory shook her head and looked toward the back room. “And leave you alone with the guy who nearly gave me a concussion?” she said. “No way. What if he concusses you? I won’t have you getting concussed on my watch.”

“I’ll be fine with Caleb Kennedy,” I said, mustering as convincing a tone as I could. “I can handle myself.”

Both of my friends met me with blank stares and raised eyebrows.

“Okay, fine, sometimes I can handle myself.” I lowered my voice and pulled the two of them farther away from the curtain. “Listen. I need to work with this guy. He knows things I don’t about Alexander and the arcane, and I have to access that knowledge. I’ll be safe. Besides, do you really think he’s going to start something here?”

“Yeah,” they said in unison, which I couldn’t help laughing at.

“I’ll be fine,” I said. “At the tiniest hint of trouble, I’ll scream. All right?”

Marshall still didn’t look entirely convinced, but Rory grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him toward the front of the store.

“Fine,” she said, pushing him along. “I can hear the stubborn in your voice about this. Come on, Marsh. We’ll wait for her scream while you play with your little nerdlings. We’ll hear her, don’t worry. I know she’s good at it ever since our sixth-grade trip to Six Flags.”

“Thank you, Rory,” I said, singsonging, relaxing a bit as relief filled me. “Yes, I can still scream, even if it’s not motivated by roller-coaster panic. And for your information, I’m much better about heights now, thanks to our winged friend.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she called out over her shoulder, as Marshall finally gave in and walked with her on his own toward the crowd at the front of the store. “Hopefully, some of what you learn from blondie there will help you make our winged friend actually friendly again.”

I hope so, too, I thought to myself, as they walked away.

The throng of alpha geek males and a few of the females turned their heads to check out Rory as she came down the center aisle of the store toward them. I turned away, going back through the curtain into the storeroom once more.

Caleb was squatting now by a long, low coffee table surrounded by an assortment of mismatched couches and chairs. A miniature stone maze lay on the table, and Caleb lifted a tiny metal figure out of it and rolled it around the palm of his hand. At my approach, he stood and turned to me.

“Sorry about that,” I said. “I thought we might concentrate better if Rory and Marshall weren’t watching over my shoulder.”

His face shifted, his eyes narrowing at me with what I thought looked like an annoyed suspicion.

“What?” I asked.

Caleb stepped past me and ran his hand over the curtain across the doorway. “This is cloth, you know,” he said, talking to me like I was a child. “And given its physical properties, it doesn’t really block out sound all that well. I heard just about, oh, everything.”

I quickly went over what my friends and I had been discussing on the other side of it, and my face went crimson. After all, every last word had been about him.

“My friends are just concerned,” I explained, trying not to sound overly defensive. “You did give Rory a good reason to be.” I rubbed the spot on my head where Rory had hit the floor after his sleeping-dust trick.

Caleb started to protest, but his face fell into a crooked smile instead.

“I can’t argue that,” he said, then gave a nervous look around the back room. “Let’s get to work shall, we? So . . . you want to regain control of your gargoyle, yes? Where do you want to start?”

“We’ll get to that soon enough,” I said, gesturing for him to slow down, “but first, I have some questions.” My eyes met his, my own steady and unwavering.

How much control Desmond Locke did or didn’t have over him remained to be seen, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to be offering up too much on Stanis right out of the gate. And I knew that someone as clever as Caleb was wasn’t going to be too willing to just hand over certain aspects of his arcane knowledge, but if we were going to establish any kind of trust, I needed him first to cooperate with the tone I was trying to set between us.

Uncertainty filled Caleb’s face for a moment, but then he gave a reluctant nod. “Sure,” he said. “Shoot. Although I do charge by the hour.”

I stared at him, my eyes darkening. “Really, now?”

Nervous laughter escaped his lips, and he held up his hands in surrender. “Just a little freelancer humor,” he said. “Consider this round a freebie.”

His confidence and flip manner made me want to shake him, but I reined it in. I needed knowledge, and if I had to endure a little attitude in the process, so be it.

“So how did you come to know about my great-great-grandfather?” I asked, forcing myself back to the business at hand.

Caleb shifted from foot to foot as he thought for a moment before answering.

“I didn’t really know about him,” he said, “but this city is full of dark and mystical rumors. The legend of Alexander Belarus just turned out to be one of them.” He looked down at his feet, his face reddening. “But once I was on the trail, I might have gone a bit stalkery concerning him.”

“Way to keep it creepy,” I said. “Define ‘stalkery.’”

“I might have bartered and traded a few of my alchemical mixes for more and more of those tales,” he said, “ones further involving Alexander. And they didn’t come cheap, either. Talk of the lost secrets of the Spellmasons has always been a bit of a Holy Grail out there.”

I turned to him, unable to hide the surprise on my face. “Wait,” I said. “I thought what my great-great-grandfather did was a lost and secret art. There are people who talk of Spellmasonry?”

Caleb nodded. “Not just people,” he said. “Whole arcane communities.”

“Jesus,” I said, sitting along the edge of one of the upright tables. “There’s a whole community?”

Caleb laughed and looked at me with sincere curiosity on his face. “You really don’t know, do you?” he asked. “Alexandra, there’s a whole magical world out there. Just because Alexander Belarus chose to hide away the arcane art he knew doesn’t mean there wasn’t a world out there looking for them. The secrets that you hold are just the tip of a very large iceberg.”

“Really?” My mind reeled at the idea. With the secrets at my family’s disposal, I had always thought of this knowledge as ours, and all of a sudden to hear that there was a much larger world that sought those out . . .

“Really,” he said. “I told you I was a freelancer, didn’t I? That implies there’s other magic out there to be had. Do you think I could make an arcane living without a client base? Much of arcana’s written off by your average nonmagical person as quackery or old wives’ tales, but arcana is a much bigger world out there than you know. And for me, it definitely pays the rent.”

“Speaking of rent . . . where do you live?” I asked, curiosity getting the better of me. “Clearly you know where I live, breaking and entering aside.”

Caleb held his hands up again, this time sounding a bit more defensive. “Baby steps, Miss Belarus, baby steps.”

I backed down, letting a short silence fall between us as Caleb placed the tiny figure back on the table before he stepped away from it.

“There are lots of books on alchemy,” Caleb continued, taking off his coat. He turned it inside out before hanging it on the back of one of the chairs around the table. The lining was stuffed with sewn-in bandoliers that held all sorts of vials, tubes, and metal flasks. I had a newfound respect for the man, if only for his sewing and organizational skills. He set about picking through the contents. “Not that there’s any all-encompassing tome written on alchemy, mind you.”

“Why not?” I asked. “Surely, there’s been research. My family has hundreds of volumes dedicated to everything my great-great-grandfather ever learned.”

He stopped picking through the collection and looked up at me, his face curious. “More than the Libra Concordia has?”

“It’s all secure, don’t worry,” I said, in hindsight fearing I might have offered up too much in mentioning it. “If you know of Alexander’s practices, it’s heavily coded and cross-referenced, so it’s not like anyone could just read it and know everything. Frankly, it’s as much a pain in the ass as it is a boon.”

Caleb’s grin went wide. “I’d like to see this boon.”

It was my turn to hold my hands up. “Baby steps there, Caleb. To borrow your words.”

“As you wish,” he said, and turned back to his coat, picking through it.

As you wish. The words Stanis always used when put to task. I nearly fell over hearing the phrase. The sting of them was as fresh as if Stanis himself—the kind one I knew, anyway—had uttered them. As I tried to process my emotional reaction to them, I stayed silent and simply watched Caleb as he continued selecting several of the items from his coat, mixing them.

“Much of the magical world operates a bit differently from Alexander’s version of it,” he said.

“How so?” I asked.

“Your great-great-grandfather was organized in way that most magic I deal with isn’t,” he said. “He wrote it all down in books, kept a library. He was smart enough to code them, to hide that powerful information away. But the rest of arcane knowledge isn’t conveniently gathered together like that.”

“Why not?” I asked. “If it’s a science, as you’ve said, why wouldn’t it be accumulated in the same manner?”

Caleb shrugged. “It’s a science to a point,” he said. “It’s still arcana, after all, and the people who practice it get freaky proprietary over their secrets.”

“What about all that stuff the Libra Concordia has gathered? That’s more than enough to fill a library. It’s enough to fill that church downtown, at least.”

Caleb shook his head. “The information caged off there looks like a lot, yes,” he said. “But it’s nothing comprehensive. All bits and pieces, really, accumulated over centuries, only a fraction of the secret knowledge of the unknown world. It’s an impressive collection, sure, but consider the mission of the Libra Concordia. They’re trying to keep that knowledge secret from the world. It’s not like they have enough knowledge to do anything with it. Unless, say, there was an industrious freelancer willing to piece it all together for themselves.”

“And here I thought you were going to that church just to do some community service for the Lord,” I said.

Caleb gave me a get-real look, then set back to mixing the contents of his vials. “There’s a reason the magical world wants to stay hidden, Alexandra,” he said, “and it’s done a fair job of it, if you ask me. Think about it. It took the Libra Concordia centuries to accumulate the small amount of knowledge they do have, and that’s only a tiny percentage from around the planet.”

“You’ve given this a lot of thought,” I said, impressed. “I’ve spent most of my time just trying to wrap my mind around my family’s legacy, which to you is just a small piece of a grander puzzle, isn’t it?”

Caleb nodded.

“Before I knew about the Libra Concordia,” he said, “I studied up on what I could find out about your great-great-grandfather, his work back in the old country.

“Several centuries ago, the world was a much bigger place, and it was easier to be hidden away in it. Scattered towns and villages, kingdoms that only talked to each other at wartime. And arcana was hidden then because religious zealotry would have condemned it. But reputations could be earned over time, especially if those arcane powers were put to good use for the sake of a village and its safety. Alexander Belarus was such a figure, and, yes, it did indeed earn him a reputation.”

“Sadly, it also earned him the attention of a local lord mad for power,” I said. “Kejetan the Accursed.”

“Did it, now?” Caleb asked, a surprised smile on his face. “I hadn’t read of that actual name.”

I nodded.

“And Accursed?” he continued, his smile widening. He gave a pleasant laugh. “I mean, with a title like that, I guess you have to go into the mad lord business, right?”

“Don’t be so flip,” I said, anger suddenly rising in me. “Enslaving my great-great-grandfather ended up costing the lord his only son. Stanis is all that remains of him, and he is not cut from the same cloth as his father, believe me.” I calmed myself for a moment before pointing to his hands. “Maybe we should get back to work.”

“Oh, right,” he said, and went back to the vials in his hands, mixing a drop here to a drop there, and every so often holding it up to the light once again to check its color.

Marshall had reorganized since last I had been here. When I couldn’t find what I was looking for, I searched around the rest of the back room, checking shelf after shelf of painted miniature figures. Most looked to be about an inch or two high, either plastic or metal, but along one section of wall I finally found several of the troll-like creatures I had spied a while back that seemed to actually be carved from stone. I pulled one down.

“Only at a hard-core game store can you find everything for your wizarding and witching ways,” I said.

Caleb resealed all but one of the vials before returning the rest to their slots inside his coat on the chair. He pulled another vial from the bandolier there, holding it out in front of me.

“Recognize it?” he asked.

Seeing the dark red liquid swirling around in the clear plastic tube, I raised my eyebrows and gave a tight-lipped smile. “Of course I do,” I said. “I should, anyway. It probably came from my family’s private stock.”

“Kimiya,” he said. “But no, you are incorrect. This isn’t stolen. This is my attempt at the reverse-engineered home brew.” He held up the other mixture. “And this—this is a bit of a transformative binding solution. Not all that much by itself, but . . .”

He pulled the stopper from the Kimiya, tipped it to the other vial, and let a single drop from it fall into the other. Caleb stoppered it back up, slipped it into his coat, then swirled the new mixture in the remaining vial. He held his hand out to me, and I passed the stone troll over to him.

Caleb laid the tiny stone monster on the empty chair his coat hung over and poured the concoction over the figure until it was saturated, the ritual beginning to look a bit like what I had gone through in creating Bricksley.

“I believe I know this part,” I said, picking up the figure and lowering it into the maze spread out on Marshall’s gaming table.

I raised my hand and stared down my arm at the wet figure standing there among the walls of what looked to be a fairly realistic miniature dungeon. I had no idea if sighting the figure between the pointer and pinky finger of my raised hand actually helped, but at the very least it gave me a focal point as I reached out with my will for control of the figure.

The connection snapped to—like holding the object in an invisible version of my hand—and I tried to will it to move through the maze on the table.

The tiny figure shot forward, slamming into the dungeon walls, knocking them so hard that one section fell from the table, and another flew into the air across the room before hitting the wall. The alchemical mix threw great power into even the simplest of my actions, the figure responding to the smallest amount of pressure I put on it, making it hard to use finesse in managing my control over it.

I forced the troll to stop near one of the metal figures in the maze, a short, bearded character with a stocky build carrying what looked like a giant hammer. A dwarf. I had to see if I could brew a little combat there.

My creature lifted its arms high over its head to smash the other one, and I brought them down on it. Rather than simply knocking the bearded figure over, my troll crushed the metal of it down into the faux stone floor of the maze, but the force of my will didn’t end there. The sharp crack of wood came from beneath the dungeon. The coffee table split in two, the figures and stone maze collapsing in on themselves as its contents slid to the floor at the center of the break.

“Shit,” I said, losing total control of the little figure, and it rampaged off through the rubble, crashing and smashing its way through the pile.

“I got this,” Caleb said, sliding another vial from the coat. He dropped to his knees and held it over the still-swinging troll before pouring the contents onto it, then drank from the vial himself. His face drew up in concentration as he extended his hand out in front of the tiny stone troll. It continued on along its violent path, but it slowed as the stone of it seized up, toppling over inert into his palm.

Caleb got up off his knees, his eyes staying on the figure, and presented it to me.

I marveled at it. “You’ve got control of it now?”

“For the moment,” he said.

I reached for the figure, but before I could take it from Caleb, its form began to shake and twist in his hand. It exploded as I was pulling my hand back from it, bits of stone shooting against my knuckles, but thankfully not breaking the skin.

Caleb clutched his hand with his other one.

“You said you had control of it!” I said, prying his fingers open to look at the damage. Luckily, Caleb had pulled away in time, and his hand remained in one piece.

“Controlling things are a bit more of a Spellmason thing than alchemy,” he said.

I looked up at him. “What do you mean?”

Caleb pulled his hands away, dusting them off against each other. “With alchemy, I can affect the world by transforming things on an arcane level,” he said, “but they’re all momentary modifications.”

“Like when you were turned to stone in my great-great-grandfather’s guild hall,” I offered.

“Exactly,” he said. “Or I can transform other materials, but it’s nothing more than chemicals, magic, and science. And much of it isn’t permanent. I don’t make or control things. But from what little I’ve been able to read from the notes the Libra Concordia have found from Alexander, I have been able to try my hand at what you’d probably call a rough version of Spellmasonry.”

“That’s still pretty impressive,” I said. “I mean, given my resources and an entire library of books, the only stable creature I’ve been able to make is a glorified brick. You’re a natural.”

Caleb shook his head.

“I don’t think so,” he said. “I have a real handle on mixing and alchemy, but this? I don’t have the finesse for it. It’s like the stone is constantly fighting me with a will of its own.”

“I know, right?” I exclaimed, way more excited than I expected myself to be finally talking shop with someone. “It happens to me all the time.”

“If I had to guess,” Caleb said, “Spellmasonry seems to be more of a contest of will over matter more so than the recipes and formulas of the magic-in-a-bottle of alchemy. It’s why I have trouble dealing with the will of the stone.”

I nodded. “I don’t think it’s a will all its own, though.”

“No?”

I pulled out my notebook, flipping through to a section of research I’d been compiling.

“I’ve been having the worst time getting anything I try to control to stay living, anything that’s larger than a brick, anyway. I can’t seem to fill my creations with my will, and they stop working. There’s a suggestion in Alexander’s notes that there are lingering spirits in this world that want a body to occupy, and they don’t care what form it is in. Again, my one success with it is brick-sized, so it’s not like I’m a master of anything.”

“You’re one up on me,” he said. “I haven’t tried animating much of anything, just because the few times I have, it’s been such a struggle to keep control, and I’m only dealing with a finite amount of time that I can keep it going before one of my concoctions run out. Besides, if it did actually work in any sustained way, I’m afraid of what might happen. Like if I left a construct active with something else ‘steering the ship,’ you know?”

I smiled, a wave of relief filling me just hearing I wasn’t alone in my own struggles with this. “I absolutely know.”

“Probably why I stick to alchemy,” he said with a grim smile, looking down at the broken table between us.

The curtain across the door leading into the store flew open, and Marshall stormed into the back room. His eyes went immediately to the two pieces of the caved-in table on the floor, and he shook his head.

“I thought I heard a crash, followed by an explosion,” he said, dropping to the ground by what remained of his gaming table. He scooped up tiny pieces of wall and figures from the pile there. “What the hell? Do you know how long it took me to build that dungeon?”

I gave a pained smile. “Sorry, Marsh.”

Rory came through the curtain next and saw Marshall kneeling there. She turned to Caleb and me, her face annoyed, and she started a slow, measured clap.

“That didn’t take long,” she said. “Good thing I had bet on chaos ensuing in under half an hour.”

“Things just . . . got out of control.”

Caleb laughed. “You can say that again. So much for my reverse engineering of the Kimiya. If I had used it on myself, maybe I would have exploded, too.”

“It’s progress,” I said.

“We’ll figure it out,” he said.

“Not just that,” I said. “I’ve still got the issue of how to make and control an army of stone men to deal with Kejetan.”

“We’ll figure that out, too,” he said, taking my hands in his, giving them a comforting squeeze. “Together.”

It felt terribly reassuring coming from him. I wanted to believe him and was slowly convincing myself of it when Marshall ahemed loudly next to us.

I turned to him. “I’m really sorry,” I said, snapping out of my moment of hopefulness, once more taking in the destruction Caleb and I had caused. “I’ll cover the damage.”

“I’ll hold you to it,” he said, looking up at me, upset. “That was our deal, remember? Not even twenty minutes old! The ink would still be wet!” His eyes fell back to the pile in front of him and ran his hand along the wood sticking out from beneath the maze and figures.

“I said I’ll cover it,” I repeated.

“That’s not the point,” he said, snapping. “This was my original gaming table. I’ve had it since I was seven. My precious.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, but when no answer came from Marshall, I turned to Caleb. “Maybe this isn’t the best place for this.”

I hesitated for a moment as I pondered an alternative, walking over to the coat over the chair, grabbing it, and handing it to him.

“Maybe we should go somewhere a little more practical,” I continued, looking down at Marshall still picking through the mess on the floor. “Can I help you clean up?” I asked.

“Just go,” Marshall muttered. I didn’t feel I could argue.

Caleb took his coat and slipped it on. Rory looked at the two of us in silence as I headed for the curtained door, grabbing my fellow alchemist by his hand and dragging him along behind me despite the reluctance I felt in him.

“Come on,” I said to him. “I think Marshall may need a little time to mourn.”