Afternoon, First of One, Harvest, 236 CR

Kelly was waiting for me outside of the guardhouse-and-gatehouse building by the time I left. We fell into step together, making wordlessly good time towards our shared workshop and home as I mournfully passed her the notes I’d made about the ceramic deposition technique. I put a hand on the small of her back as she read them, adjusting her trajectory with gentle pressure as she drifted left out of the roadway, and she flipped through page after page in quick succession.

I tried not to mope while we did so. Even if I had other ideas that were just as cool, I’d been drawn to that one, drawn to this specific idea that would have me use tools, talent, and training to let me take up two disciplines my incapacity with mana would otherwise bar me from.

In a day, I’d be over it, I knew. The project Kelly had latched onto was just as exciting and was, if anything, of broader utility to me—it’d give me a certain amount of independence in the workshop that I didn’t have, if it worked out like we thought it would. But that one didn’t use supercritical carbon dioxide, and I couldn’t help but feel the lack of that rather keenly.

“We’re not going to do this,” I told her once she looked up from reading. “Not yet. Too flashy, Meredith says.” Too flashy for the plan, I thought to myself dourly, and she didn’t answer whose plan it was, and I forgot to follow up. “We’ll do the pen thing instead. Shame about the false start, with the phase diagrams and all.”

“This,” she said, smiling faintly and tapping absent-mindedly on the last page with her forefinger, “is going to go to the Crown Option when we do it next year. No question about that.”

No reaction to my calling it the pen thing, huh. She must be more into this than I thought. “That’s the thing where the Queen buys exclusive rights to the patent for some amount of time?”

Kelly nodded, every inch the business partner and almost-Clerk. “If this were only a major business disruption to enchanting and runework, it might go for three months so that Writ and Craft could put together a Mitigation Plan.”

“I am not the slightest bit surprised there’s a capital-letters version of that here.”

“But!” She turned her face up and towards me just a little to indicate she was actively ignoring what I’d said, while still acknowledging that I’d said something droll. “This is that, and it’s also a disruption to every other business, because it’s going to change the way people make things!”

“Wait, wait,” I protested, “why? You just apply the ceramic after it’s—”

“Do you know how many layers of work goes into making something out of clay?”

I threw my hands up in surrender at her glare. “Nope! Not an idea. But—oh, fuck. Of course, you do a layer between every layer of whatever you’re making, and if the ceramic can bind to ferrometals, ferrometals can bind to the ceramics. Which means suddenly instead of being in a position where thin, distinct layers are a possible impediment, they’re the way you densely embed enchantments and runes, and you probably already have this but you have to do it by hand, because of course you have it, so it’s all known art—”

“—but this would let us do it easily and accessibly and in a variety of media without Skills!” Kelly’s hands clapped together, and then she huffed out a breath, grinning. “Okay. Good thing this is written down and nobody would ever read it, because that would be totally impolite!”

She glanced over at the Library as she said that, and we both giggled. “It’s not like anyone can actually understand it other than you,” I pointed out. “It’s all shorthand and jargon; you’d have to have worked with me, been privy to the brainstorming conversation, and know everything about not just the behavior but the process behind the mana storage crystals.”

“That’s ridiculous.” She waved a hand dismissively, grinning wider. “Zqar can probably just reach into some kind of magical knowledge-space and pull the representation of the complete mental construct that the notes represent out of the memory of its passage on the road!”

I gawked at her, blinking in shock. “Then…”

“Don’t worry,” the source of my worries reassured me, “he wouldn’t do that. It would be really rude, and also extremely criminal. So we’re perfectly fine! This’ll be a great finisher, our swan song. Recognition, a lot of money, the notoriety of a twenty-year Crown Option, and partnerships with anyone you want for future research; we’ll do it in Festival.”

“Wait, in Festival?” I stared at her, belatedly realizing we’d both stopped—ah, we were in front of our door, that explained the stopping. “I thought that Festival is an intercalary holiday period? Ease, but more days and stitching together the years to keep the seasons sync’d, which means we wouldn’t be able to do this because it’s work?”

“A more common mistake for newcomers than most people think!” Kelly grinned at me, impish and dimpling, as we headed inside and started walking down towards the workshop. “See, Festival the event is between Planting and Growth. You only missed it by a fortnight and a bit, it’s a fun time, we feast on the bounty of the fast-harvest. Festival the time is the third of the times in the season of Renewal—after Rebirth, which is High Renewal, and before Planting, which is the first time in Striving and which we also call Striving Sunwards.”

I stopped, leaning on the wall right next to the piece of paper with Divine Corner written on it. “Shem,” I said sternly, “has the dumbest, most absurd calendrical metrology I’ve ever heard of. I refuse to get sidetracked further by it and for now am going to pretend that you didn’t say anything, because we have work to do.”

“Yes, ma’am!”

I squinted at her skeptically. “Fine,” I said after a moment, turning reluctantly away from her smirk and towards the circle. “You want to play it that way, go get the stuff we need—you’re doing all the setup. I’ll do the cross-check at the end.”

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“Yes, ma’am!”

I grinned as she turned away. Leaning against the wall, I let myself relax and put any worries aside—and watched, smirking, as she bent to grab something from a lower shelf and swayed her hips.

We’re going to have to have a talk about this, I thought to myself. I’ll be functionally independent long before I’m formally independent. The ethics and practicalities alike will need to be consciously navigated… but it’ll be this status quo for another season, minimum.

I pushed that thought aside, too—even if only for a moment, I was determined that the moment itself should be enough. And then, that moment having passed, I grabbed the forms Kelly had put on the table and started perusing them.

“Everything—”

“Aaah, shit!”

I windmilled as I lost my balance, startled all the more because she’d walked right up next to me without my noticing. She steadied me with one hand and deftly snatched the papers with her other hand just as I started to lose my grip on them, and when I looked over to gare at her she was smirking at me.

“Everything to specifications?”

I shoved the first three or so responses that came to mind to the side. It wasn’t fast enough to avoid them showing on my face, judging by the way her smirk widened and a flush started to work its way up from her neck, and I stepped away a bit deliberately.

To her credit, she’d started opening up a bit of distance herself, a half-heartbeat slower than I did. One assistant, to specifications—not something to say out loud.

“Now that I see the forms,” I said, “the logic makes sense.” I blinked with a sudden realization. “You talked to James about every detail of this. Of course. Was it you or him who made the call that none of them get named unless all of them do?”

“Mine,” my assistant said primly. Then, relenting, “James was the one who pointed out that we hadn’t promised any of them to be named specifically, and that we could reference them by epithet—but I brought it up first because of what you said about Tricksters and names. And then I made the call about treating them all the same.”

“Makes sense.” I stretched out of long habit, the physical memory of my old joints failing to match up to the lack of pops and cracks from doing so. The implications of what James had said to me in his office, and the implications of what was written in these forms, was frankly terrifying. “You’re taking the formal side, and I’m taking the colloquial?”

“… yes, Sophie.” Kelly almost visibly didn’t roll her eyes, planting her hands on her hips. “I’m taking the formal side of the conversation, and you’re taking the colloquial.”

“Hey.” I put a hand on her shoulder, doing my best to convey my seriousness. “This is just as important as wearing the goggles. Probably more; I doubt Rafa would be hard-pressed to heal even the most perforated retina. And this… this is going to not just ripple, it’ll be waves. We need to get it right, right?”

She paused, biting back whatever initial reply she’d been tempted to say. “True,” she conceded. “Anything else?”

“Still reading, but I think I’ll take a different tack from the formalistic one. I’ll still do the chorus with you, but for my own part? Mix it up, lean more into some stuff from the stories.”

“That,” she said smugly, “is also in the forms.”

Snickering, I finished the forms and did a second pass, this time also going through the—separate, excellent call, no reason for the Gods to read these—notes that Kelly had made. Everything was perfectly in order, including the fact that neither of them had seen fit to dictate to me what I should be doing in the ritual. By the time I’d convinced myself that there wasn’t a problem to find, Kelly was sitting in the center of the circle.

“Spark,” I murmured, “you want in on this?”

The addition of a third pole benefits not the flow. The thought was tagged as regretful. To validate, and find no errors; to examine the apparatus and see that all is well; to bridge the gap between desire and the invocation of a Skill; this, too, is to assist.

“And we appreciate that.” I grinned. “Three sets of—well, not eyes, three attentions to detail? Eh. We’ll workshop it.”

For once, both of them had enough tact to ignore me, and I was grateful for it. I turned to the setup, despite Kelly’s burgeoning impatience, and she sat on her hands and did her best to look like she was endorsing my due caution.

She didn’t have to wait long, at least. The Gods-circle was a simple thing, which made it nice and easy to make sure it was in good working order—all that needed checking was making sure all three of the circles were unmarred and weren’t showing any signs of wear. Outer ring in relief, middle ring in chalk, inner ring engraved, and within all of those a ring of essence orbs; I stepped inside and sat down, my back against Kelly’s back, both of us in the exact same cross-legged position with our hands on our knees.

For a moment, my body went soft with memory—for a moment, I allowed my mind to wander to the previous night.

Only for a moment, though. It was… more than somewhat inappropriate, given the circumstances.

The actual form itself—the patent remediation form, to update an existing filing—was a mild conundrum. There was exactly one of it, and that wasn’t something we could change; there would be copies of it, but only after the signatures were made and attested. So that went in front of me, and it broke the symmetry and whatnot of the ritual, and that would just have to be fine.

There was, after all, only this one form that had Authorized—James Morei, Clerk Administrator written on it in a beautifully legible hand, with all the immensity of consequence that implied.

My first deep breath was ill-matched with Kelly’s. On my second one, we were at least overlapping, and on the third we breathed in for three together, held it together for three, and then out for three.

“I call upon those Gods who bargained with me,” I began in the formal mein I knew I’d abandon soon enough, “and who lent their aid to me in my work. To you, I bear an obligation—may today find that obligation discharged.”

“I call upon the Ascenders who smiled upon me.” Kelly picked up the thread from me without a dropped beat. “You who were once mortals, who once walked Yelemi soil, and who saw fit to grant us the boons which permitted our success—may these words reach your ears, and may your due attention be granted to us in audience.”

I could feel Spark’s graceful touch weave into something that was, but also wasn’t, my mind, whispering a reification of the semiotic [Divine Communion], an abstract concept of communication made concrete reality. The pressure began to form around us, subtler than I’d expected. It was… well, their attention, I supposed, rather than a mass manifestation. Which was proper; we were just asking them to bear witness, not to do anything.

Not yet.

“This form is that bargain fulfilled, to the letter.” I smiled into the distance that separated us from the listening Gods, so close and yet so impossibly far. “Credit is granted where credit is due—to the fires of the workshop and to the seal that withstands the flame, for every piece of your aid and every blessing you gave me and us. Let this be one more token of our recognition.”

“May it be in your sight,” Kelly prayed, “that the fulfillment of that bargain, and our grace returned, is within that simple paper—and within the mechanisms of Clerks that it will move. May the role be known thus to all of Shem, and all of Alqar, that your Cycle of Nations was given to us and preserved by your hands—you of the Crossroads, of connection; you who strives; you who rejoices; you of decay, who consumes from within; you who annihilates, who makes of all things a desolation; and you of the Overtaking Wilds and of new growth.”

“I said that I’d credit you all publicly, that I’d designate a quarter-share of the revenue to what you want—and this gives you that. A quarter-share held in trust, and you’re all credited. Credited the same amount, every one of you, by epithet and deed. Long form, too, the full ones I’ve thanked you by before, but for here and now? You who laughs still, you who is shapestrong, the turner of tables, the snarer of the sun, you who brought water, and the one who poured the stream of stars? This is me, delivering what I promised.”

And now, I thought to myself dryly, the tricky part.

In time with Kelly, I breathed in, breathed out. Like we were one body with two sets of lungs, we inhaled together once more, feeling every inch of where our backs were joined.

The anger of thwarted Gods built around us. And then, in unison, we spoke again.