Council of Blades (7 page)

"Young man, you have my permission to continue with your duties-but pray, do not be long. The young lady has research of the utmost importance to attend to. The secu-rity of Sumbria itself may one day rest upon her work."

The door closed with a titanic slam, leaving Miliana and Lorenzo to slump against the bookshelves in relief. The girl finally managed to peel herself away from the marble and wearily opened her speaking box; the sound of her own voice dragging its way through chapter seven-ty one, paragraph six: "Charges dovetail and counter dovetail and their acute relevance to social graces…" masked their conversation from eavesdroppers in the cor-ridor.

Lorenzo half crouched, searching the wainscoting for signs of errant green furry things.

"What's a hogfish?"

"It doesn't matter." Miliana collapsed into a chair, remembered the charcoal mark on her backside, and decided that she didn't care. The girl wearily rubbed beneath her spectacles and massaged her eyes. "Now look-Lothario-"

"Lorenzo! Lorenzo Utrelli…"

"… Da tiddly-pom and tiddly-dee. Yes…" Miliana sud-denly sat bolt upright in her chair. "You picked that lock! You're not supposed to be in here."

The young man-a handsome creature in an ink-stained sort of way-skittered aside like a nervous stick bug.

"Yes I am! I'm a guest! I just… just… just didn't have a key…"

"So you're a guest, are you?" Miliana vaguely remem-bered seeing the man before, but for the life of her she couldn't remember just quite where. "Well what do you want the library for?"

"Study!" Lorenzo left a trail of soot behind him as he crossed the polished marble floor. "Sumbria has some of the best books there are. It must be terribly interesting living here."

"That all depends on what you're allowed to do with your time." Miliana scowled, fixed her gaze on the intrud-er, and crinkled up her speckled nose. "Now, look-I'm not so sure you should be allowed in here."

The young man never even heard her. He crouched forward to inspect Miliana's magical speaking box, his face glowing with rapturous fascination.

"Oh-oh, this is wonderful! Superb!" Lorenzo turned to stare at Miliana with awe and excitement shining in his eyes. "Are you a sorceress?"

Miliana almost said "no"-and then the tone of respect in the young man's voice brought her up short.

She drew erect, preened like a heron, and attempted to act terribly, terribly wise.

"Yes. Yes, I am, actually."

"And so they actually make you study!" Lorenzo sat himself down in a cloud of cinders and dust. "Back at home, they've banned me from every library in town. They say I'm disruptive." The Lomatran avidly examined Miliana's arrangement of the box and speaking trumpet. "This is fascinating. Now, you see, this has bearing on some of my own studies. I am exploring the possibility that sound can be translated into peaks and waves."

Miliana raised one eyebrow and peered at her com-panion through her pretty freckles.

"How would that be useful?"

"Ah-but perhaps it might be!" Lorenzo spread the drawing of a machine out across the table. "Here, you see? This machine uses a membrane to pick up sound, vibrat-ing as noise contacts the membrane. The vibrations make this needle jump and change the score written on this parchment scroll, which is dragged slowly past the needle by these little springs! Now all I need to do is somehow reverse the process, find a way of reading the jump marks on the parchment, and we can make a re-playable mechan-ical recording of any sound we desire." The young man puffed out his chest in pride. "You see? The job's half done!"

Miliana leaned back in her chair and fixed her com-panion with a droll, sarcastic stare.

"You must be from the country."

Lorenzo instantly turned upon her a pair of eyes utter-ly alive with passion-a face so filled with fire that it welded the girl hard into her seat.

"Not from the country… of the country!" The boy slapped his hands onto the table and leaned toward Miliana, who leaned backward in her chair in blank sur-prise. "It's time to liberate the people from the tyranny of magic! Don't you see that a system of mechanics is the only means of ever freeing the world from mere autocracy?"

"You're right. I don't." Miliana speared forward, sharp light glinting from her lenses. "Magic is the one thing that anyone can have. The one thing that can free us from-from being ordinary!"

"Aha! Aha!" Lorenzo stuck a finger up into the air, dis-lodging a shower of grime into his cuff. "And how is this achieved? Through hard study. Through long, arduous learning and dedication! It's repression through and through!"

Moving from scorn to absolute irritation, Miliana fold-ed up her arms.

"Look, I fail to see how my sitting on my noble backside reading books on magic represses a bunch of people that I've never even met."

"Well, that's my point, you see." Lorenzo threw open his arms, frightening the green furry thing sleeping on the mantelpiece. "Sorcery is only learned through long years of very intensive, very expensive study.

Only the nobility can afford it-placing magic squarely in the hands of the autocratic classes. If there's ever going to be any real equality, we have to place a means of power into the hands of the masses!"

The girl stared at him in absolute bewilderment.

"What do you want to go around giving power to the masses for?"

"So that they can take part in the process of their own political rule!"

"Political rule?" Miliana blinked in amazement. "Have you sat back and watched what these palace dwellers do to each other all day? It's daggers in the back and internecine warfare twenty-four hours a day!

If you go around getting everyone to carry on like that, we'll all be dead within a week!"

"Well, I don't mean that everyone should kill each other." Lorenzo ran fingers through his hair, disturbing a sooty spider which absailed quickly down to the floor. "I mean that we can break people away from the current tyranny of study!"

Miliana bridled.

"What have you got against study?"

"It is class prejudicial!"

"But you study!" Miliana pointed a finger straight at Lorenzo's nose. "You already admitted that you study things!"

"Um…" Lorenzo blinked, then hit upon an explana-tion. "Ah, yes, but only to serve a noble end!"

"So you're saying you're against knowledge?" Miliana angrily shoved a book across the table to crash against Lorenzo's arms. "That's what you're saying, isn't it? We should all drag ourselves down into the mire!"

"No! Look… you've made me forget everything I want-ed to say." Lorenzo floundered about in a bog of frustra-tion. "Study is what I want to spread! Everyone should be able to do it. It should be a basic right for every man, woman and child."

"All right then-so they can all study magic, and then everyone will be happy." Miliana gave a sarcastic, joyous wave. "What's your problem now?"

"Yes, but… but not everyone can do magic! I mean-the talent might not be there." Lorenzo paced back and forth like a caged animal, albeit a rather scrawny one. "What we need is an equalizer, something that can be a bit like magic for people who can't actually do magic, either because of poverty or inability."

Miliana heaved a sharp, irritated sigh.

"A unique power."

"Yes!"

"For everybody."

"Absolutely!"

The girl felt it best to let the conversation drop and lie like a dead thing on the ground.

"You're a loony."

"I'm only thinking of the masses."

"Yes." Miliana reached for a textbook and primly opened the cover. "Obviously you haven't tried smelling the masses lately."

She tried to dismiss him with her pose, but it seemed Lorenzo Utrelli Da thingamajig was made of sterner, dumber stuff; the man regarded her with a look of unfeigned amazement and tried to catch her eye.

"Um… Miss? Milady?"

"It's Miliana."

"Oh-Miliana!" Lorenzo let the name brand itself in great steaming letters on the inside of his skull, entirely failing to connect it with royal blood and wedding bells. "I just wanted to tell you how much I've appreciated talking with you. Intellectually, mind-to-mind, I mean. It's-it's utterly amazing!"

"What?" Miliana speared her companion with one stab of her eye. "Because I'm a mage, or because I'm a girl?"

"Well it's not as if you're actually a girl!" Lorenzo dug his own grave with cheerful, brainless enthusiasm.

"I mean-you're a scholar."

Miliana shot the man a baleful glance. Lorenzo took it as a sign of approval and heaved a great sigh of satisfac-tion.

"Well this has been fascinating. Utterly fascinating! Do you live somewhere nearby?"

"I live in the palace. In the west tower. The one with all the plaster falling off the walls." Miliana adjusted her spectacles so that she might gaze down her nose at Lorenzo. "Lady Ulia is my mother-do you understand?" Lorenzo had rarely understood anything less; even so, he nodded his head and attempted to look learned, cos-mopolitan, and wise.

"Well, then, I can see you again! I mean-would you mind if, from time to time, I use you as an aid for my studies?"

"Yes, yes, whatever you like!" Miliana opened the door to usher out her unwanted guest. "Now, please do run along and leave me to my reading. There's only another hour of heraldry left in my speaking box."

The girl slammed the door, then suddenly frowned, tugged it open once again, and relieved the startled Lorenzo of his lockpicks. Sealing herself safely back inside once more, Miliana leaned against the shelves and gave a great, frustrated sigh.

A Lomatran loose inside the palace? For a moment, the concept rang vague alarm bells, and Miliana searched for a reason.

Ah! Last night, Ulia had mentioned a Lomatran suitor. But suitors came in carriages with bouquets and min-strels singing serenades, not in scruffy hats, picking locks on library doors.

Miliana's magic noise box had now reached up to chap-ter eighty-eight: The Improper Use of Propers.

Trying to regain her previous peace of mind, Miliana Mannicci perched herself on the table and began to read her sooty scrolls.

Lorenzo catapulted into the apartments he shared with his boyhood friend. He looked like a pixie which had spent too long buzzing around a candle flame; scorched, dumb, and dazed. The boy collided with a wall, looked wildly about the room with its easels, paintings, and half-built perpetual-motion machines, and then fought his way through a connecting door. He discovered Luccio sit-ting on the balcony, hard at work marking the backs of a deck of playing cards.

"Luccio-the most amazing thing's just happened!"

"Amazing?" Luccio, still suffering from the effects of a rather dodgy neutralize poison spell that didn't quite seem to quite recognize wine as a poison, peered at his friend through startling purple eyes. "Whatever do you mean, my cherub?"

"I've just met the most amazing person. Well-girl." Lorenzo blinked. "Woman. I mean-she's sort of a woman, but a person too!"

"Do tell?"

"Well, I mean, she's a girl but she's…" The scholar groped his hands blindly through the air searching for adequate words. "She's not like a girl at all! I mean-she only talked about real things-magic and mechanics and sociopolitical infrastructures-you know what I mean."

"Real things." Luccio shuffled cards briskly between his palms, keeping an amused eye on his sooty friend. "Do say on! You admire her for her mind. Was this paragon of politics also, perhaps, just a touch pretty?"

"No!" Lorenzo seemed utterly offended at the infer-ence-then immediately leapt to the defense of his new-found colleague. "Well, yes, she was. But not… not so you'd notice. Sort of… sort of profoundly pretty. Not just beautiful."

"But she has the appropriate dimensions, accessories-all that sort of thing?"

"Um… I think so." Lorenzo screwed up his brow in an attempt to recall more than Miliana's striking, intelligent eyes. "I forgot to look."

"Ah, dear." Luccio tossed aside his cards and sorrowful-ly folded his fingers across his breast. "That, my little chuck, is not the best of signs. It is indicative-if you will forgive me-of love."

Lorenzo Utrelli Da Lomatra drew himself up as prim-ly as a nesting hen.

"I beg your pardon, but it is nothing of the sort! This is an intellectual challenge; a meeting of opposed philoso-phies and complementary minds." Lorenzo sniffed, affect-ing a superior air. "She has offered to assist me in my research."

"Oh, yes, of course." Luccio made a motherly expression of pouting solicitude. "I had forgotten that the pure torch of reason leaves no space for other lights within your soul."

Tall and gangly as a starving troll, Luccio reclined atop the dangerous balcony rails.

"The arrow shot, sweet triumph strikes she home "Into the breast of heroes, who no more shall roam.

"To the winds fly wits – ambition o'er leaps the stars!

"Our court we pay to Lliira – not to Shar."

Luccio held aloft a single finger to the sky. "Who is she, what's her name, and what color were her eyes?"

"Um-well… well, no color! Not that I could see."

"Alas-you have the affliction. Never matter-let us pursue it like a wild young hart and revel in the chase!" Luccio sprang along railings, balanced carelessly beside a drop at least three stories high. Swooping up the deck of cards, he casually flipped two upon the table: "the lovers" and "the fool." Accepting the omens, he fished beneath the couch for a half-full bottle of wine. "But did you not for-get, heart, that your father has his mind set upon you wedding a princess?"

"I'll tell him she refused me. A marriage would inter-fere with my intellectual life-particularly marriage to some stuck-up princess." Lorenzo dusted off his fingers, ridding himself of his father's plans. "I shall pursue spir-itual and scholarly growth."

"Aaah… spiritual growth!" Luccio walked a silver coin across the back of his hand. "With your friend with the sparkling eyes?"

"Look, Luccio-we only talked about systems of politi-cal economy."

"Aaaah! Then here's to political economy!" Luccio flung himself into a corner and delighted himself with roman-tic plans. "So, what shall we do? We must construct our-selves a grand campaign. How shall we bring this flower to your lips-this treasure to your heart?"

"I thought maybe I might send her a letter… some-thing nice…?"

"A letter?" Luccio rose slowly, as though facing down a horror in the night. "A letter? Are you mad, my boy? Are you addled? Are you drunken? Are you sick?" Luccio shot up and clamped a struggling Lorenzo under his arm. "Never! I shall show you how the deed is done. I shall lead you to the fields of Elysium, and toss away the plaque which reads, 'tread not upon the grass'!"

"You're a very strange man, Luccio."

"Silence! There are but a few dozen gods of love, and Luccio is their prophet!" Luccio produced another card, "the sun," and placed it in Lorenzo's pocket. "My credentials."

Lorenzo removed a large orange feather from a chair and wearily sat down; his eyes were only half focused upon the mortal world. In one corner of the room, there loomed a giant canvas-an ornate thing showing a sea goddess rising from the waves. It was to be presented to the Mannicci household at the Festival of Blades in one week's time. Lorenzo stirred himself, picked up a brush and corrected a tiny error in the painted foam.

Irritated and frustrated, he suddenly thrust paints and brush away. The boy threw himself at the balcony rails and stared in exasperation at the sky.

"I've been so tired of it! Trying to be creative, but with-out…"

"Brains?" Luccio tried to be helpful by sitting on the balcony paring his nails.

"Not brains-inspiration." Lorenzo took up his paint-brush and pallet; with fast swipes of a brush he sketched Miliana's face across a wooden board. "There's been no impetus. No ideas to rebound myself from. But now, now at last, I feel…"

"Distended? Bilious?"

"No! I feel…" Lorenzo flapped about like a fish look-ing for an appropriate hook. "I feel alive!"

Four more brush strokes constructed Miliana's specta-cles and her eyes.

"This has been the most perfect day of my entire life! It's been… It's been…" Words obviously failed to describe it. "Sumbria! Aaaaah, Sumbria. I feel like I'm finally born into a brilliant new world."

Luccio suavely dodged beneath a waving brush that might have given him a blue mustache.

"So there'll be no serenades, then?"

"What? Oh, heavens, no." Lorenzo made a tut-tutting motion with his most disreputable pallet knife.

"This is a meeting of minds."

"Still…" Luccio leaned forward to inspect the gaudy painting of the sea goddess at play. "You must examine all the possibilities. A romantic attachment is not impossible and, theretofore, you must be cautious.

For instance-does she please your mind's eye?"

"Oh, absolutely!"

"Ah." Lorenzo's friend leaned himself waggishly against one wall. "In which case, my best advice is for you to think upon the mother. After all, that shows you how your own girl shall look in years to come."

Luccio tapped thought-fully at his pointed chin. "How does her mother look?"

A vision of Lady Ulia boiled unbidden into Lorenzo's mind; the boy instantly turned pale.

Luccio's lips made a silent O of understanding, and he went back to the balcony rails. Lorenzo paced back and forth for a while, and then tapped his chin in thought.

"I believe I must dispute your theory. The bone struc-tures of mother and daughter would seem to be some-what different."

"Ah, but perhaps the daughter might transmute in time?"

"It's a question of anatomy then." Lorenzo sat himself down and tucked his heels in hard against his rear.

His face took on an air of intellectual puzzlement. "I don't believe there are any books covering the subject."

"Well, I should make study of it, if I were you, old chap." Luccio perched himself back on his accustomed railings, peeling a piece of fruit. "Top priority!"

"Yes. Yes-absolutely!" Lorenzo shot upright, his face rapt in absolute enthusiasm. "Well, she said she didn't mind. This is perfect. Perfect!" Lorenzo avidly shook Luccio's hand. "I'll get onto the task right away!"

Luccio gave a sigh and tried to recapture the golden peace of the afternoon. Behind him, Lorenzo busied him-self with mirrors, old lenses, and bits of copper tube; just below, a rat crossing the courtyard halted, hiccuped, assumed a puzzled expression, and exploded with an almighty bang.

Young Luccio let slip another sigh and concentrated on fruit knife and orange peel; clearly the airs of Sumbria did strange things to the soul.