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--DRAMATIS PERSONAE—
Cortland Finiron, Hammer Master of the 12th Renown, Kingdom of Infinzel, sweating
Carina Goldstone, Logician of the 2nd Renown, Kingdom of Infinzel, has a tale to tell
King Cizco Salvado, Quill of Infinzel, Kingdom of Infinzel, hears a ticking clock
Vitt Secondson-Salvado, Hunter of the 9th Renown, Kingdom of Infinzel, should keep his mouth shut
Henry Blacksalve, Healer of the 8th Renown, Kingdom of Infinzel, wishing he had a drink
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20 New Summer, 61 AW
The pyramidal city of Infinzel, North Continent
280 days until the next Granting
Cortland felt glad that he’d rushed straight to the Battle Library from training. He would’ve hated for Vitt to see how the girl’s proclamation made him sweat.
There was something about this Carina Goldstone. Plain-looking and small-boned, with a way of speaking that brought Cortland back to his school days. She reminded him of the children who had sat in the front row and proudly gotten every questions right, while Cortland and his rockhead friends snickered in the background. Carina had the look of someone who waded into arguments armed with indisputable facts and strong opinions, and had been smacked around a few times as a result. He’d met know-it-alls before and he’d met strivers and he didn’t particularly mind them. In his experience, all that ambition usually hid a fragile person underneath. He found that he even liked Carina and the easy way she had soothed Henry and put Vitt in his place, not at all cowed by the moment.
But yet, there was something about her that made Cortland want to reach for his hammer.
Maybe it was her strange version of the Ink, with the crimson flecks floating through it. The gods had not only chosen her, but they’d rewarded her with abilities beyond her renown. That shouldn’t have been possible.
Her attitude, her Ink, her grand entrance. All that made her prediction about the king feel somehow plausible.
Next to Cortland, King Cizco sat up a bit straighter. Initially, the king had looked at Carina like a new puppy that had popped out a turd on the best rug. Now, that twinkle of wry amusement had faded from his eyes.
“Am I to die?” King Cizco asked quietly. “I was unaware.”
“Surely, you’ve considered the worst case scenario,” Carina said. “There must be a succession plan in place.”
“Of course there is,” Vitt drawled. “There’s Herman Firstson-Salvado and you’re in the presence of the Secondson.”
Carina waved a hand. “I’m not talking about who gets to wear the jewelry and live on the top floor,” she said, then extended her arms as if to encompass the entirety of Infinzel. “I’m talking about who keeps the city running.”
“He’s the immortal king,” Cortland said. “What are we talking about?”
“The ageless king.” Carina flashed Cortland a look like he should know better. “There’s a difference, isn’t there? How does your yearly wish go?”
“I am sure you will tell us,” King Cizco said flatly.
“Another year of undiminished life for King Cizco Salvado,” Carina recited the wish that Cortland had heard proclaimed at each of his ten Grantings. “You could wish yourself immortal but then you wouldn’t have anything for the arcane bargain, right? Life comes cheap for an immortal. I’ve seen the condition of the archmages of the Magelab. The price is high for the amount of magic you work. You depend upon the wishes for replenishment.”
Cortland found himself picturing the elementalist Arris Stonetender and the thick grooves of scar tissue that covered her arms. He peered at Cizco, wondering for the first time the costs his king paid so that Infinzel could thrive. He noted again the fresh grays at the man’s temples.
“It’s a tremendous burden you carry,” Carina said, meeting the king’s eyes.
“It can’t be that complicated,” Vitt mumbled.
“Tens of thousands live under the protection of Infinzel,” Carina replied, pacing a half-circle on the other side of the table. “Complex engineering and rune-work run the lights and the lifts. Alchemical magic churns the mineral garden. Ward-work guards against the creatures of the Underneath. Who, besides the king, understands the sorcery and symbols? Who knows which walls are indispensable and which might be allowed to crumble? Who else has mastered the craft that makes the pyramidal city possible?”
“None,” Cizco said coolly. “It’s as you said, girl. I keep Infinzel running.”
“Yes,” Carina agreed. “And I intend to fight for your life with all the power at my disposal, my king. But the gods? They believe that the city needs a back-up plan.”
Henry Blacksalve rubbed his hands over his face. “I’m too sober for this.”
“She’s mad,” Cortland muttered, turning to check Cizco’s reaction. The king stared hard-eyed at the girl who claimed herself ready to replace him, but Cortland detected something else in the way Cizco’s throat bobbed and his jaw tightened.
Belief.
Meanwhile, Vitt affected a yawn. “The trolkin of the north know how to handle situations like these. Any of their tribe can challenge a champion for their spot. They must constantly prove themselves worthy of the Ink. I say we put the word out to the Garrison, see who might test our little savior here.”
Cortland’s lips curled back. “There’s a precedent you don’t want set, Vitt.”
“She’s talking treason, isn’t she?” Vitt said. “Or is it regicide?”
“Before the first Granting, the Orvesians turned their back on a champion selected by the gods,” King Cizco said distantly. “I knew of her power. We might have lost if she’d been alive to fight.”
“Losing some mouthy second renown logician is hardly going to usher in an Orvesian calamity,” Vitt replied. “Maybe the gods thought you needed a laugh, father. Let’s be done with her.”
“I’ll have no more of that cursed talk!” Cizco snapped, practically tipping out of his chair to round on Vitt. The force of his shout made the stone table creak and sent the books Cortland had been consulting sliding onto the floor. The king’s voice was imbued with power. “Spare us your further commentaries on matters you don’t understand, you foppish fuck! How are you my Secondson? You should’ve been crust on a bedspread!”
Cortland hadn’t seen King Cizco lose control like that in years. The sight of a rattled Cizco made it impossible for Cortland to enjoy what were otherwise delightful insults directed at Vitt.
“All right, Cizco,” Cortland said quietly. He put a hand on the king’s shoulder. Heat radiated through his shirt. “You know the boy’s mouth runs off ahead of him.”
Cizco took in a deep breath through his nose, looked away from Vitt, and waved his hand. “Get out, Secondson. Your presence here is unnecessary.”
To his credit, Vitt didn’t make the scene worse by protesting. He stood up and bowed deeply to Carina.
“I look forward to working with you, logician.”
“Likewise, hunter,” Carina replied.
As the door shut behind Vitt, King Cizco returned to examining Carina. “Is this introduction going as you imagined?”
“Somewhat,” she replied with a shrug. “I thought I would get to talk more. I did expect that I might face a challenge, but I’d hoped it wouldn’t come to that.”
Cortland snorted. “Planned it all out, did you?”
“I am a logician,” Carina said with a half-smile.
“Go on, then. Tell us exactly who you are and where you’ve been, so I might judge if you’re fit to take my place when I’m killed,” Cizco said dryly.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
Carina took a deep breath. “I was born on Infinzel's second level. My mother was an accountant for a merchant firm and my father worked in the mineral garden. We had a modest apartment with a view facing south. My childhood was ordinary, except that I grew up fascinated with this place. The architecture, the engineering, the magical energies. The pyramidal city was like a toy puzzle box that I was determined to unlock. I explored, got lost, wandered into places that I probably shouldn't have. I asked my parents questions that they couldn't possibly know the answers to, and they interpreted this as a gift. They enrolled me in extra classes and I think I would've been quite happy growing up to be a mason or an inspector.”
“Those jobs are still available to you,” Henry said. “Better than this one. Safer.”
“Are you familiar with the Gadgeteers of Beacon?” Carina asked.
Cortland had encountered the Gadgeteers contingent at a few different Grantings. They were perpetually under the protection of the Ministry of Sulk and avoided declaring wishes that would get them killed. “Friendly oddities,” he said. “Like to blow things up on occasion.”
King Cizco better understood what Carina was getting at. “Are you implying you had some Vis-Prog, like a Gadgeteer?”
“Visions of Progress,” Carina said, for Cortland and Henry’s benefit. “The Gadgeteers share dreams of inventions. They call them Vis-Prog because they insist on abbreviating everything. The dreams unite them. It’s how they earn their wheel…” Carina touched her throat, where the Gadgeteers’ gear symbol would go.
“The ge’nezza,” Cizco said. “Gods of progress. Unproven deities.”
“With material results, if you’ve ever seen Beacon,” Carina said. “But no. I’m no Gadgeteer. My visions were only for this place. Never for something new, only for the maintenance and improvement of what’s here. By age nine, I’d mastered enough rune-work to light our apartments.”
King Cizco shook his head. “I would’ve heard if there was a prodigy…”
“My father died the next year,” Carina continued. “An accident in the mineral garden. My mother couldn't afford the dues on our apartments and tried to make up the difference by stealing from her employer. She was killed.”
“Killed? By some merchant?” Cortland asked.
“Someone she crossed. I don't really know. The details never seemed as important as the loss, if that makes sense.”
Cortland rubbed his knuckles, thinking of Ben Tuarez and the monkey-masked assassin who’d killed him. The details of that still mattered to him. They mattered very much.
“Within the year, I was evicted from our apartments and sent outside the walls entirely,” Carina continued. “I spent the next four years living in Soldier's Rest.”
“That's… regrettable,” Cizco said. “We must maintain certain efficiencies with who lives within the walls, but there are meant to be safeguards for children…”
“Oh, I don't begrudge the policy,” Carina said. “The pyramidal city is a system that requires careful maintenance. They were kind to me in the Rest. I was able to continue my education, after a fashion, and although I yearned to be back within the walls, there was a lot to be gleaned from an outsider’s perspective. I’m sure Henry understands what I’m saying.”
Cizco and Cortland both turned to glance at Blacksalve, who attempted to slouch lower in his seat. “Ah, sure,” he said reluctantly. “The Rest is its own education.”
“At sixteen, I applied for admission to the Garrison,” Carina continued. “I was rejected.”
“Who conducted your trial?” Cortland asked.
“You, actually.”
Cortland raised his eyebrows. That would’ve been almost ten years ago. The faces of the many Garrison applicants he’d tested and rejected over the years blurred in his memory.
“You see hundreds every season, I imagine,” Carina said, letting him off the hook. “And I was young and impetuous. Perhaps not ready.”
“Unlike now,” Cizco said.
“Yes, unlike now,” Carina agreed, ignoring the bite in the king’s tone. “Did you know, King Cizco, that there are agents from Penchenne at work in the outer districts?”
“What kind of agents?” King Cizco asked.
“Recruiters in service to the Exile Queen Deidre. They target talent who don’t make the cut for the Garrison and offer scholarships funded by the exile queen for continued training in Penchenne. They siphon off the talented and disillusioned.”
Cortland held his breath for a moment. He half-expected another blow-up from the king. Generally, it was accepted wisdom not to bring up the Exile Queen Deidre Salvado-Aracia around her ex-husband. While the king had been through what, to Cortland, felt like an astonishing number of wives and consorts over the years, fathering an endless brood of children with his ageless balls, most of those relationships had ended amicably enough when Cizco set the woman aside with a dues-free apartment and a generous stipend. Queen Deidre had been the only one to leave Cizco. Even twenty years after her departure, the relationship was still the subject of gossip and a number of illicit plays and novels. Deidre had fled Infinzel with her four young children, the Salvado name, and no formal divorce. Penchenne had an elected governor, but the rumor was that the Exile Queen Deidre and her now grown children secretly ruled the city from her estate in the hills.
“Interesting,” was all King Cizco had to say, though there was a flicker of something in his eyes that would’ve made Cortland stand back if he were in Carina’s place.
Instead, she pressed on. “I accepted one of these scholarships and spent the next three years studying in Penchenne. The exile queen has a great interest in how Infinzel works.”
“I’m sure she does,” Cizco said.
“Penchenne was eager to sponsor my research, which was all geared toward reproducing what you’ve created here. By the third year, however, when my Ink still showed me as loyal to Infinzel, they began to lose patience and I decided to move on.”
“Where did you go next?” Henry asked. Cortland hadn’t noticed the healer maneuver toward the edge of his seat.
“I applied for membership at the Magelab,” Carina said. “But, as we’ve established, they don’t accept those who don’t bare their mark. I don’t have a natural talent for the arcane, so I needed to take other measures.”
“Chanic,” Cizco said.
“Eventually,” Carina replied. “First, I traveled across the sea to Beacon, to act as an apprentice amongst the Gadgeteers.”
“Penchenne, Magelab, Beacon,” Henry rattled off the cities. “You’re better traveled than me.”
“I have never been to Armistice.”
Henry snorted. “Skip it.”
“Beacon is where I first heard of chanic,” Carina continued. “It’s something of a sensation on the southern continent. While working with the Gadgeteers, I also founded a trading company as a front to infiltrate Crucifalia. From there, it wasn’t much challenge to make a shipment of chanic disappear and return with it to the Magelab.”
Cortland barked a laugh. He’d met some Crucifalians at the Grantings and while none had ever given him any offense, he wouldn’t have lamented swinging his hammer through one of their blonde heads. They were fanatical and cruel, with their fairy tale religion and obsession with using wishes to improve upon their women. And yet, Carina spoke of ripping them off like it was swiping a cookie from a bakery.
“You’ve got some stone in that blood, don’t you?” Cortland remarked. “If those bastards had caught you, they’d have transformed you into a wife.”
“In all my years of training, I never learned to churn butter,” Carina said.
Even the king allowed a smirk at that. “I assume that at last brings us to the present.”
“More or less,” Carina said. “The Magelab allowed me a provisionary membership as their chanic suppler. I joined the trials and soon discovered I was one of the few capable of resisting the substance’s more problematic side effects.”
Cortland eyed Carina’s torso where her shirt had been open before. Only the pyramid symbol of Infinzel and the uppermost whorls of her red-flecked Ink were visible now. The blood of gods, apparently pulled from beneath the sands of an inhospitable desert, and this girl and her fellows were painting themselves with the stuff. That seemed like madness to the hammer master.
“Why were you not susceptible to its effects?” Cizco asked. “Another blessing from the gods who plucked you from obscurity?”
“More like discipline and precision,” Carina replied. “Just like Ink, the chanic fades when it’s overused. For a while, the apprentices in the trials believed they could simply apply another coat and keep going. I only took what power the chanic gave me, then waited for my markings to restore themselves. Impatient apprentices who layered their runes were amongst the first to melt down.”
“Do you mean literally?” Cizco asked.
“Sometimes,” replied Carina. She rounded the table and picked up the book of symbols that Cizco had knocked aside during his spat with Vitt. “Then, there was the matter of precision. The Magelab has extensive documentation on the language of the gods, but we found they weren’t always completely accurate. The slightest variation in a rune could result in disastrous consequences.”
Squinting, Cortland watched Carina shelve the book. Much of this discussion was flying over his head. His hand twitched for his hammer. Training in the Garrison he understood–sweating and sparring –with the occasional trip to the Underneath mixed in to raise the stakes. The skills imbued by his twelve levels of renown came to him naturally. The process Carina described sounded like cheating the system.
“Participating in the chanic trials gave me access to the Magelab’s libraries,” Carina continued as she peered up at the Battle Library’s collection. “I continued my studies of ward-work, crafting, and creation. Specifically, I attempted to master your skills, King Cizco. The Magelab has three dozen thesis papers attempting to unpack what you’ve managed here. They also have detailed records of your time as a champion. You were twentieth renown. A vast collection of Ink…”
“Indeed, I know my own biography,” Cizco said.
“And you took the wash, went back to the old ways…” Carina turned to face Cizco, but her eyes flicked briefly to Henry. “I’ve only had my Ink for a few weeks and played with the chanic for months before that. Even now, I can’t imagine the stress of being without it.”
Cortland sensed the intent of this exchange and was pleased when Cizco picked up on it. “The wash nearly killed me,” he said. “I spent decades recovering and Infinzel suffered as a result.”
Henry sank back in his chair, his brow creased. The logician had been with them for less than an hour and already she was steering the healer toward staying on. Cortland appreciated the help.
“I suppose that brings us to the present,” Carina said. “Of course, I thought I’d spend many more years preparing in the Magelab. But the gods saw fit to mark me now. That, my king, suggests our need is urgent. Something comes to threaten Infinzel.”
Cortland rubbed his hand across his scalp. The crimson tint of her Ink nagged at him. “What did the symbologist say when you showed up in its realm with your false Ink?”
Carina blinked, as if she hadn’t quite expected the question. “He did not seem pleased, exactly. But he honored the choices I made.”
“So, if we paint runes upon ourselves with this chanic, we can cheat all the symbologist’s rules about renown and class?” Cortland asked.
“In my experience, at least? Yes,” Carina replied.
“Did the archmages learn of this advantage?” Cizco asked.
“I hid my Ink from them, but I fear they suspected,” Carina said. “I expect this won’t stay secret knowledge for long. The world is changing, sirs. Here in Infinzel and beyond.”
Silence hung in the room again. But not the stunned skepticism that had greeted Carina’s first pronouncement of impending doom. Cortland glanced at his companions and realized that, like him, they were nearly convinced.
“You understand that I will be verifying this origin story of yours,” Cizco said.
“Of course,” Carina replied. “My closest adviser at the Magelab was Ahmed Roh. You could write to him.”
The king nodded and stood. “You’re to train her, Cortland. And you too, Henry. She’s not to work with anyone outside this room. I won’t allow the possibility for any accidents. I expect her raised to at least fourth renown by the Granting. Understood?”
“Understood,” Cortland said.
“I’m in no condition to—” Henry began.
“Understood?” Cizco repeated.
“Yes,” Henry replied, a tremor going through his hands. “Understood.”
Once the king was gone, Carina flopped into the nearest chair and blew out a lengthy sigh that displaced a curl of hair from in front of her face. She suddenly looked very young again.
“Well, gentlemen,” she said. “How do we begin?”
“With a nap,” Henry muttered.
Before he could respond, a hint of movement caught Cortland’s attention. There was a crack in the stone wall near the book cases. A fist-sized opening between two bookshelves.
A rat watched them from the crevice. Its beady eyes met Cortland’s for a moment, and then it scurried back into the innards of Infinzel.
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