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Authors: Matthew Sturges

Tags: #General, #Fiction, #Epic, #Fantasy, #Fantasy fiction, #Traitors, #Prisoners

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The readings came in from across the site, and Ironfoot meticulously added them as points of data, using a ruler to draw perfectly straight lines of
radiance from one point to the next. A pattern was beginning to emerge, but
it still wasn't enough.

He slammed the table with his fist. Years as a scholar had never tempered
the wild part of his nature. He knew it and it infuriated him.

He rubbed his eyes and took a long sip of coffee. His mug had been
holding down the lower left corner of the map, and now it tried to roll up a
bit. He absently smoothed it with his hands. He reached for the next slip of
paper and there were none left.

He stood, feeling the ache in his shoulders and back, feeling the fatigue
that flowed through him. He could have himself spellrested by the on-site
medic, but that false rest affected only the body and not the mind. He needed
sleep. Real sleep.

He opened the flap of the tent and was assaulted by the dusty wind that
assailed the site day and night. The dust got into everything: clothes, boots,
instruments. Some of it was blown south from the Unseelie steppes, but some
of it-and this he tried carefully not to think about-was the incinerated
remains of Fae men, women, and children. The descendants of the founders
of the oldest Elvish city.

"Armin," he called out to his assistant, who stood at the edge of the
crater, sipping water from a metal cup. Armin was young, still a student, but
already teaching classes of his own at the university and almost certain to be
made full professor once they returned to the City Emerald.

"Over here, Master Falores," Armin said, still looking down into the
crater. Ironfoot joined him.

"I wish you'd call me Ironfoot like everyone else does."

"I'm sorry; my mother wouldn't approve," said Armin. He was a careful,
dutiful student. It was fine if he wanted to be a bit old-fashioned.

Below, the team of students walked the remaining sections of the site,
testing each bit of rubble, bone, and metal. Each student carried an intensity
gauge, and every few moments would lean down and carefully take a reading,
noting the result on a slip of paper that would go to feed Ironfoot's map. The
students had caviled at the assignment at first, having not really understood
what it was they were volunteering for, but they quickly got over their reser vations. The promise of free food and even the smallest of stipends would,
Ironfoot was sure, convince any common student to freely give up a limb.

"Shall we have a look?" asked Armin. "See how things are progressing?"

Ironfoot nodded. "It won't be long now. Another day or two and we'll
have all we can get."

They had both unconsciously begun breathing through their mouths;
they started down into the crater that had, a year ago, been the Seelie city of
Selafae.

There was a peculiar smell down in the crater, one that nobody could quite
recognize, though it had components upon which everyone could agree.
There was a hint of cinnamon to it, a bit of roasted pork, almost pleasant but
undercut with an ugly ratlike stink that lingered in the nose. They'd been
here for six weeks and no one had yet gotten used to it. Some of the students
wore cloths tied around their faces, but these didn't seem to help much. A
visiting professor of Elements had offered to remove the odor with a simple
transmutation, but Ironfoot had refused, not wanting to contaminate the site.

The students and researchers knew better. At Ironfoot's insistence, not a
single breath of re was to be expended at the site. No little luck charms, no
cantrips to sing the pain out of aching muscles.

Walking among the ruins, the smell crept into Ironfoot's senses and he
flinched away from it. There was something about it that he couldn't quite
put his finger on, something that might be important. It was a memory, an
experience from long ago; he could sense it in the way that any unique smell
might recall a memory of younger days, but he couldn't place it and it was
driving him crazy.

"How goes it, Mister Beman?" Armin said to one of the students, a tall
pale boy who looked as if he hadn't had a decent meal since his schooling had
begun, and was only now beginning to fill out under Ironfoot's auspices.

"Coming along, Professor. I hope to have my section finished by
lunchtime." He beamed, patting his intensity gauge.

Ironfoot scowled and took the gauge from him. "You're not holding it quite right," he said, demonstrating. "It needs to be held as far from the body
as possible, so your own re doesn't affect the readings. See?"

The intensity gauge was something Ironfoot had developed in his own
student days, working under the Master Elementalist Luane, who had almost
single-handedly invented the field of inductive thaumatology. The instrument consisted of a brass tube, about the height of Ironfoot's waist, with a
silver tip on one end and a series of graded markings lining the outside of the
tube. Inside was a silver plate, opposite a plate of cold iron. In the absence of
re, the silver and iron plates nearly touched, their natural repulsion negligible. But when the tip was applied to an object or creature that was imbued
with the magical essence, the silver plate repelled the iron plate in proportion to the strength of the field, moving a needle along the graded markings.
Ironfoot was more than a little proud of it.

He handed the gauge back to the student, who seemed relieved when he
and Armin continued on their way. He knelt to inspect a few of Beman's
readings: Each item, from the tiniest pebble to the largest section of wall, had
been marked with runes designating the direction and intensity of re
embedded in it. All food for the map.

Once everything had been marked, all the data cross-checked and analyzed for errors, and the artifacts corrected for the many interlocking auras of
re that permeated any Fae city, then Ironfoot's work could begin in earnest.
Fortunately for him (though clearly not for the citizens of Selafae), the blast
that had destroyed the city was massive, its reitic force so potent that it had
nearly annihilated any background essence that existed in the city before its
impact.

Ironfoot was eager to have this done. Eager to solve the problem and
move on. Solving problems was what Ironfoot did. The specific problem
didn't usually matter to him, so long as it was interesting and got him out of
the city. But this one was different. This one would linger.

Once the map was complete, then, he would return to Queensbridge,
and would perform what he sincerely hoped would be the greatest feat of
investigative thaumatology to date: He would reverse-engineer the monstrous magic that had destroyed an entire city in an instant. He would recreate the Einswrath weapon using only its aftermath as a guide.

And after that? Then what? Would anything seem as important after
this? That part of him that was the source of his anger and impatience was
singing to him again lately, as it had more and more often over the last few
years: time to move on.

He and Armin continued their walk, listening to the sounds of the
instruments clinking against the rubble, and the light conversation of the
students at their work. Someone was singing an old, sad Arcadian hymn:

The tune was haunting and lovely, and it struck Ironfoot that what he
was strolling through was not simply a project, not merely a research site. It
was a massive graveyard, a charnel house of unprecedented proportions.
Those white bits of debris scattered among the torn-up cobblestones were not
pebbles-they were fragments of bone.

He left Armin with one of the students who had a question about an
anomalous reading and continued walking, careful not to tread on anything
other than dirt.

Ironfoot was a scholar, but he had at one time been a soldier as well, and
these echoes of violence stirred thoughts of revenge and aggression that he
liked to believe belonged to his younger self. The drive to win that had never
quite left him. And there was no good that could come of thinking about
that.

So he pushed it away, all of it. There was work to be done, and he had no
time for his old regrets.

When Ironfoot returned to his tent an hour later, there was a middle-aged
nobleman waiting for him, holding a cloth over his face against the smell.
Armin was nervously preparing tea over the small camp stove.

"A Lord Everess to see you, Master Falores," said Armin.

Everess bowed slightly toward Ironfoot. "A pleasure to meet you,
Falores. A genuine pleasure."

He wasn't the first noble to come sniffing around the site. Most wanted
a tour of the wreckage and a brief talk with Ironfoot regarding his theories
about the weapon. Some of them appeared to have genuine concerns about
the Einswrath weapon, though some others seemed to have come out of
nothing more than ghoulish curiosity. He couldn't tell from looking at him
which one Everess was.

"The pleasure is mine, Lord Everess," said Ironfoot, with the requisite
deeper bow. "How can I be of service?"

Everess smiled. "Ah," he said. "That's the question, isn't it?"

"It's certainly the one I just asked," said Ironfoot.

"A scholar, and a wit as well." Everess smiled. If he was insulted by Ironfoot's somewhat insolent comment, it didn't show. "I can see that you're a
busy man, so I'll be as direct as possible. Come walk with me, won't you?"
He picked up a walking stick that had been leaning against his leg and
pointed outside.

Ironfoot took Everess through the camp to the edge of the crater, and
waved him forward. "This is the best place to go down," he said.

"Oh, I don't need to go down there," said Everess. "I've been here once
before, the week after it happened. Once was enough for me, I can assure you."

Ironfoot was stymied. "Sorry, Lord Everess, but if you're not here to tour
the site, what is it you're here for?"

"You," said Everess. "I'm here about you, Master Falores."

"Please, call me Ironfoot, sir. Most everyone does."

"Indeed," said Everess. "Well, where can we walk where it doesn't smell
like a tannery and we may speak in private?"

"In the mornings the wind comes from the north; it smells nice down by
the river."

"Lead the way," said Everess. "Ironfoot."

They walked down the path toward the river, to the spot where the team
did their laundry. The river snaked around the wreckage of the city to the
north, and Ironfoot headed in that direction.

"You're a very interesting fellow, you know," said Everess. "A study in
contradiction, as they say."

"Thank you, sir," said Ironfoot. "I like to think myself unique."

"A shepherd's son from a tiny village who managed to parlay a single
tour in the Gnomic War into an admission to Queensbridge. And now here
you are years later, a respected thaumaturge, and a tenured professor at the
most prestigious university in all of Faerie. That's beyond interesting. That's
damnably impressive."

"Thank you," said Ironfoot. "Though fortune played a large part in it."

BOOK: The Office of Shadow
5.08Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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