Chapter 44: Looking Forward
It wasn’t the most considerate thing he could have done, but Wil disappeared for a few hours. The time to think and breathe was more important than Bram or Darlene in that moment, and he promised himself he would apologize later. For now, he needed to fly.
It started out as an excuse to go fast around the edges of farms, jumping the occasional fence or wall. Isom caught up to him part of the way and ran alongside the Thunderhawk, though he kept mercifully silent. As sadistic as he could be, he could literally feel Wil’s pain.
By the time he got to the edge of town and saw the deputies in front of the cottage where Ferrovani’s men were, the anger had mostly faded, but the hurt had not. People always told him that he was naive and thought too highly of people. Maybe they were right. Hadn’t the last year proved how alone he was?
He continued on east until he came to the border with Gallard Springs. Wil stopped and pulled out his map of the basin. He never did finish it. Well, now was as good a time as any. It was simple work, and things could brew on the backburner while he lost himself in the repetition. He wouldn’t do all of the basin, just map around the edges and explore a theory.
So on he flew, marking down each leyline he came across. Gallard Springs was rockier and less good for farming. Little outcrops of houses sprouted from the ground while simple roads wound their way around rock and stone. Even on the outskirts, there were hot springs along the mountains. The leylines were especially potent there.
The east side of town sloped upwards to that mountain range, an eastern twin to Skalet’s Peak. As he and Isom went up, Wil wondered if that was a dragon’s home as well. Exactly as he suspected, the very top of the mountain had a leyline. And so on and so forth, through the eastern foothills and the wide open range south, leading to Appleton, he marked them down.
Once he was satisfied, he flew home at sunset, where Bram and Darlene waited on the porch.
“Where the hell were you?” Darlene barked, though Wil knew her anger wasn’t really at him.
“I needed to clear my head,” said Wil as he went over to his rocking chair. Even if she had been mad at him, Darlene had his pipe ready for him. He packed a bowl as he said, “Are you two okay? How about you, Bram?”
Bram took up an entire bench on his own, and he currently sat slumped over, with his elbows on his knees, and his head in his hands. “I’m not happy,” he said, chuckling at the understatement. “I know things were a little rough at first, but we’d started getting along. By the end, he stopped being surprised when I knew stuff.”
How much had Thomas’ casual derision of Bram’s efforts added to his self esteem problems? Wil puffed deeply on his pipe. Maybe the anger wasn’t entirely gone.
“I don’t think getting along now changed anything,” said Darlene. She wore her irritation openly. “He wasn’t going to change just for us. We were useful idiots.”
Wil sighed. “He told me that he was going to call it off, before this happened.”
“Sure,” said Darlene. “Easy for him to say after he got caught.”
“What if he meant it?” Bram asked, eyes darting between the two of them. “People can change. I did.”
“What, you want to give him another chance?” Darlene asked.
Bram stiffened. “I don’t know,” he said after a few seconds of silence. “I want to say yes, but…He had a lot of time to talk about this. We’re so close to the end. We could’ve kept him on a short leash.”
“And what could we have possibly done to make sure he wasn’t still betraying us?”
Wil sighed and let his friends argue. He didn’t know what was right, so he could hardly expect them to. The fact was, he made the decision, and it was over. And he didn’t regret it. Not much, anyway.
“Wil, what do you think?” Bram asked.
“Like I told him, I would’ve accepted his apology if he hadn’t made weapons. Now I don’t know what to do, but I know I can’t do it with him around. I think there’s not much time left, so we might as well focus on our last few projects. The Time-stretcher, the car, and maybe seeing if we can charge the batteries with more than just the leyline.”
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Bram nodded. “Right back to work, then. I can agree with that.”
“I can’t,” said Darlene. “Aside from the fact I’m tired, cranky, my feet hurt, and I’m mad, we need to deal with this. We can’t go ‘oh well’ and act like nothing’s happened. It’s not healthy.”
“What more is there to say?” Wil took the final puff of his pipe before cleaning it out. “Our friend wasn’t really our friend, and now he’s going to have plenty to present on his own as well as with us. He’s going to be the star of the show.”
“And why does that matter?” Bram asked. “Don’t we have enough to keep you out of trouble? Who cares if he ends up having more to show off. Isn’t it more important to do good works and make them readily available to the world?”
That sounded nice, and Wil didn’t disagree, but…
“Screw that,” said Darlene. “He doesn’t get to come out on top of this. You’re right. We’ll go back to work tomorrow, and tonight, we’ll sharpen our claws and come up with more.”
That sounded good. It sounded right. “He used to tell me that his biggest regret was always standing in the shadow of bigger men. Well, he’s going to have to get used to it. No double-dealing or spying is going to keep us from the top!” Wil jumped out of his chair, and so did Bram. Darlene struggled.
“So I propose dinner, discussions, and detoxing from the day. Who’s with me?”
They were not the type to turn down dinner, especially Darlene.
The next day, they went back to work in Bram’s cellar, and…nothing went wrong, per se. They showed up, fiddled with their inventions, made notes of more, and the day ended. Something was missing. Everyone knew it, but no one wanted to be the one to voice it.
So the day after, Wil took a break and went flying again. He mapped out the rest of the Le Guin Basin’s leylines in Gallard Springs, and collapsed at night, with his project almost complete. When he woke up, he gathered his friends to show his findings.
“I don’t see anything,” said Darlene from her chair. He had hung the map up on the wall after copying it, and they looked at a ridiculous amount of marks all across the basin. “Are they in a shape or something I can’t see?”
Bram stood by the map, stroking his chin. “No real pattern to it other than all over. What is it we’re supposed to see?”
Wil tapped his finger on the map, then swirled it around the edge of the map in a slow, lazy spiral moving inward. He stopped on a beanstalk marked ‘Mr. Carrey’. “The highest concentration of leylines are around the edges, but the strongest ones are around the center. And then here in the center of the basin, there’s nothing. Except for my house and the road going north, but no leylines.”
Darlene made eye contact with Wil and then did the most exaggerated shrug imaginable, but Bram understood.
“Marlowe Manor!” Bram gasped.
“Marlowe Manor,” Wil confirmed.
It was a testament to Darlene’s patience that she took a deep breath and said, “you two enjoy doing that to me, don’t you?”
“Yes,” said Bram.
“It’s less that I like keeping you out of the loop and more that I like being dramatic, and Bram gets me.” Wil spread his hands with a sheepish grin.
Darlene motioned with her hands for them to get on with it. Bram jumped on the chance.
“Marlowe Manor is in the center of a bunch of leylines,” said Bram. “The location was chosen for its density, right outside the capital. The manor is enchanted down to its foundation and known for slow decay of the magic and strong ambient magical energy in the area. They don’t fully understand why, but scholars believe that its location is responsible for it.”
Like usual, Bram recited it like he was reading it from a book. Darlene nodded in understanding, then had a question. “So if that’s the case and you’re in the middle of an entire basin full of leylines, why do you have trouble making spells stick to our house?”
Wil pointed at her. “That’s the big question, isn’t it? There’s probably something I could do about that, if I tried. I’m not entirely sure how. I suppose I could try to make that the focus of the next two weeks. You’ve got your Life Stretcher, I could have this, and Darlene could have the car.”
“Just one problem with that,” said Darlene. “I’m far along and I can’t easily get under the car or do anything with it without Thomas.”
That punctured their good mood. No one wanted a reminder of what they’d worked so hard to avoid talking or thinking about. Darlene sighed and fixed it.
“It’s fine,” she said. “What we have works, and I have a lot of other work I can be doing. Despite the brewery and apothecary part of the business being closed half the time, we still have employees to pay and people to reach out to. I’ll handle that, while you two get to do the fun stuff.”
“You could come with me,” said Wil.
“No no, don’t worry about me,” said Darlene in a long-suffering voice. “I’m only eight months pregnant and have trouble getting around.”
Bram cracked first, laughing at the look on Wil’s face, followed by Darlene’s pleased smirk. Wil shook his head with fondness.
This was more like it. They didn’t need Thomas. It had been the three of them long before it had been the four of them, and they had this. Two weeks to go, and Wil intended on making good use of every single second.