Explosions, Part I

Jason went down for another bucket of water as soon as he woke up. By the time he made it up the stairs – barely even sweating now, thanks to day after day of exercise, especially with his little mistress watching to be sure he didn't slack off! – Louise was awake and dressing herself. She brushed her own hair that morning, and didn't say anything about the previous night before heading down for breakfast.

The problem is, we can't really tell how she's reacting to last night. She could be freaked out and feeling shy, be freaked out and feeling disgusted, or be annoyed at the situation and planning something. Can't even begin to blame her, but it'd be nice if we could get some sign of how she's dealing.

If it's the first – and please let her not be disgusted with us – our commoner status almost has to be a sticking point. She's made it clear that she doesn't want to throw us out, at least. Best not to push right now, give her time to settle her own mind.

"So what happened?" Siesta asked at breakfast, bright-eyed.

"I'm sorry?" he replied cautiously.

"They say Miss Zerbst looked upset when she and Dame Tabitha went flying together this morning, and you came down for an extra bucket of water this morning, and Miss Zerbst's door was exploded."

"Um." Yeah, that last one isn't something that can be hand-waved, is it? Not after Louise did that demonstration the first week that her explosions can match Kirche's Fireball. "Well, when two mages hate each other very, very much-"

"And does it have anything to do with the students who're grumbling in the dining hall about her cancelling their trysts?"

Jason flushed.

Siesta's eyes opened wide, and she squealed gleefully. "It did! What happened? Have you begun carrying on with Miss Zerbst? And she was so impressed that she dismissed her other suitors?!"

"What? No!" Geez, if we didn't know better we'd guess Siesta's a soap-opera junkie. Or maybe a reader of trashy romance novels. Although that just might be . . . naw, Louise's texts look handwritten, so that pretty much rules out the printing press. No books for commoners, far too expensive. "And don't go linking my name with Kirche. I'm a commoner, her suitors are mages, that would get me killed."

"Oh, they'd need Miss Vallière's permission to call you out," the maid assured him. "And dueling's forbidden at the Academy, too."

He rolled his eyes. "Like that stops anyone." Then he eyed her eager expression and sighed. "And I have not taken up with Kirche, but last night she was recruiting, as it were."

"So you were in her room, I knew it!" Siesta squealed again. "Was she wearing that trick gown that exposes her bosom when she flexes the right way?"

"Uh-" Actually, that does explain how she was already tits-out when we fell over on top of her. "I don't know. It's not like I was there voluntarily, and anyway Louise wasn't about to let Kirche abscond with her familiar."

"Oooh, maybe Miss Zerbst was jealous that Miss Vallière can openly have a man sleep in her room!"

Jason looked down at his belly, then back up at the maid with a dubious expression. "I doubt that. And for the record, I do not share a bed with Louise." He rolled his eyes once more. "I'd feel flattered that Kirche went to the lengths that she did, except it's pretty obvious that the whole thing was about their feud. I was just a trophy piece, last night."

"You're probably right," Siesta agreed after thinking it over for a few moments. "That Germanian witch ignores commoners even more than the other nobles, and we're happy for it. At least she isn't constantly trying to drag any of us to her bedroom, unlike some of the boys enrolled here."

He winced. "Yeah. I've tried not to think about that too hard, since I don't have a way to make them stop." Not that we've heard her complain about it yet, but given human nature a lot of the students here have to see skirt-chasing the servants as a perq of nobility.

Her gleeful expression faded as she shrugged. "It's not too bad. We make sure that the newcomers know who and where to avoid. And . . . has anyone told you how to escape a familiar?"

Jason blinked. There's a way to . . . "Besides running?"

Siesta nodded. "You have to run, yes, because if you hurt them you'll be in trouble. First, though, you need to stun them. If you hit them on the head, it confuses them so you've got time to disappear." She giggled. "Just like kicking a boy between the legs."

"Really." Does it work when a mage is possessing her familiar? That would have been so useful last night!

"Uh-huh. It works like this!" She reached across the table and bonked him good between the eyes.

"Ow." He rubbed his now-slightly-aching forehead. "Did I do something to offend you? Because I'm not convinced that it worked."

Her eyes widened. "Does that really hurt?"

He nodded. "But only a little."

"Oh, I'm sorry! The other familiars don't seem hurt when we do that." Siesta hurried out the room before he could repeat that he wasn't that hurt . . . and returned a few moments later with a wet cloth.

"The other familiars borrow their masters' minds to think," he noted. It seemed pointless to try to fend her off as she applied the cold cloth to his face, so Jason closed his eyes to give her more room for her ministrations. "Rattling their brains probably scrambles that for a moment or two. Since my mind is all my own, well, it didn't do anything."

One thing he hadn't anticipated, letting her play nurse, was how aware of her he suddenly was, and beneath her uniform she was fairly curvy. Must be a lingering aftereffect from last night. Ignore it. She's not interested in us. Hell, she was scared that we might take an interest in her. Probably has a sweetheart back home or something. "Thank you for the tip, though. I don't know if Kirche is the type to move on or to try again."

"What will you do if she does?" Siesta wanted to know.

"Eh, Louise and I are already working out contingencies. Enough exploded doors and Kirche should get the hint, I don't care what kind of rivalry their families have."

The cloth may or may not have worked to keep a bruise from forming, but at least his little mistress didn't comment on his face during morning classes. Just as fortunately, Kirche stuck by her admirers and ignored them entirely.

That afternoon, just after lunch, Louise glared at the candle on her desk, gripped her wand tight, and cast Ignite. There was a tiny pop as the wick was hit with the smallest explosion that Jason had ever witnessed, leaving behind a tiny glowing ember at the very tip. A moment later, a small tongue of fire rose up and began dancing merrily.

Her eyes went wide, and a moment later she raised her wand into the air.

Mr. Colbert approached, eyebrows rising when he notice the lit candle. Jason reached over and pinched it out – a trick that had taken nerve to attempt when he was younger, but had proven handy for impressing friends and younger kids – then looked at Louise expectantly.

She cast a second time, and the ember flickered into its fiery dance a second time.

"One more time," the professor said, gesturing with his staff.

Louise complied.

Mr. Colbert frowned. "You were able to mimic the results of Ignite, Miss Vallière, but I am afraid that you still created an explosion rather than truly cast Ignite. On the other hand," he quickly continued as she drooped in disappointment, "the fine control that you have developed over the strength of your magic is remarkable."

He sighed heavily, then continued. "The books I have lent you are not the entirety of my private library. There are . . . some I had hoped to withhold, as they are singularly focused on the use of Fire as a weapon. But perhaps that is where your talents lie."

Not like his reluctance to train for war is any surprise, Jason thought to himself. He pretty much outed himself as a veteran the very first week. And while we haven't been writing down what everyone else works on, he does like to focus on the non-combat uses for fire. Forging, cooking, that disturbing afternoon that was all about how to cauterize a wound before someone bled out . . .

But explosions don't parlay into any of that, do they? You need the internal combustion engine before explosions have peaceful uses . . . well, there's dynamite, but elemental magic means that moving earth around has to be a solved problem. Explosions are pretty firmly Industrial Age, tech-wise.

Still, it couldn't hurt to offer the war-weary professor some consolation. "Explosions aren't just for war, sir. My people use special machines called 'engines' that convert back-and-forth movement into rotating movement, and the best way to get that is a series of tiny explosions."

For the first time since he'd copied the runes off the back of Jason's hand (and that must have run into a dead end, since nothing had ever come of it), Mr. Colbert really looked at him. "Miss Vallière," he said after a moment of thought. "May I borrow your familiar for a little while after class? Perhaps during supper?"

She nodded silently, and waited until the professor was helping another student to hiss at Jason. "What did you do? I make him waste too much of his time on me already!"

"I don't know," he whispered back. "I was just . . . you know what? Never mind. I'll let you know what he wants tonight."

But Louise chose to accompany Jason to his appointment with Mr. Colbert. First, though, they stopped by the kitchen to intercept dinner before the meals could be delivered. Whereupon hearing the situation, Chef Marteau sent Siesta with them along with enough food for four.

Which was a bit much for one girl to carry, but after hauling buckets up water up stairs every night helping her out was no trouble at all. (Although his little mistress frowned a bit when he divided up the load. She didn't say anything, though.)

The professor's suite proved to have a tiny room where he slept and ate, off of a much larger area where he kept projects that he was working on. "When I showed him the machina I was tinkering with, Headmaster Osmond gave me four full-sized suites," Mr. Colbert explained while they ate, "and had the walls removed so that I had a large area to work in." He paused, and gave a self-deprecating smile. "I suspect that was merely an indulgence on his part, so that I'd be less inclined to leave."

He and Jason finished first, so while Louise(who was too well-trained to cram everything down as quickly as possible) lingered and Siesta cleaned up, the two men went out to examine the latest project.

"What do you make of this?" Mr. Colbert asked. What he indicated was a moderately complicated mess of gears, but some parts stood out.

"Hmm. Is that a water tank?" Jason asked back, and got a confirming nod in reply. "It looks like it's leading to a steam piston, but I don't see a heater underneath. Do you just boil the water with magic?"

"For now. It's not the best way, since I eventually exhaust my vis, but once I perfect the design I can add a place for fuel. Would you like to see what it does?"

Jason nodded back, and the professor set the water in the tank to boiling. The piston started moving back and forth, accompanied by the whistle of escaping steam. Gears turned, and a few moments later a little snake puppet emerged from the mass of machinery, opened its mouth to hiss via some more steam, and retreated back into hiding.

"Interesting. Proof of the concept before you try to, er, invent something to use the engine for?" he asked, a bit hesitantly.

Mr. Colbert gave him an ironic look. "I don't consider the conventional means of operating machina to be . . . effective."

Well, no, before high-pressure steam about all you had for reliable power was water-wheel technology. Probably can't compete with magic, at that.

"So yes," the professor went on after a moment, "I've found this a very interesting line of experimentation. Unfortunately, the steam escapes so quickly, and it would use up a great deal of fuel to keep it boiling without. You said your people use explosions? I considered that, but couldn't come up with what seemed a safe approach."

Jason shrugged. "Steam will work, if you get the pressure high enough. Uh, the first engines that I know about were made maybe two thousand years ago, in the time of the Roman Empire. They . . . didn't do very much with them, I think mostly fountains, because the pressure they could get wasn't very high. Then about two, maybe three hundred years ago, someone came up with a way to safely use steam with a lot more pressure.

"We built massive carriages that were nothing but engine, with a carriage for fuel and water behind them, and used those to pull other carriages in a long line. They ended up being so heavy that we built short steel rails on the ground to support their weight. We called the lines of carriages 'trains' and the rails that they could travel on 'railroads'. The trains could only travel along the railroads, but . . . a courier can travel," the Pony Express managed almost two hundred miles a day, but they were optimized as hell, "what, a hundred miles a day if he has remounts stationed along the way?"

Mr. Colbert nodded again. "The best couriers fly – Wind Dragons like Miss Tabitha's familiar are preferred, when they can be gotten – but you're correct about horse-based couriers."

"Well, even the early trains could cover two hundred miles a day or more, and they could carry hundreds of passengers or tons of supplies."

"Hundreds of passengers," the professor breathed, eyes shining. Siesta looked equally amazed, over by the door where she had begun listening in at some point.

And we should probably mention the war impact. "Of course, during wartime, you could disrupt an enemy's movements by sending a raid to destroy segments of their railroads."

Mr. Colbert nodded and sighed. "The truths of warfare remain what they are, I see. But what do you know of using explosions to drive an engine?"

"Not as much as you'd like to hear, I'm afraid," Jason admitted. "But hopefully this will be enough to help. Instead of steam, you use a series of tiny explosions to drive the pistons. Obviously, the pistons have to be built a little differently. Anyway, you spray in a mix of fuel and air, because that explodes really well-"

He broke off as the professor flinched, just a bit, and raised an eyebrow. "-which you may already know if you've ever seen a grain silo explode."

The older man nodded nodded. "I have," he admitted in a clipped voice that warned not to press for details. "Should I try grain-dust, then?"

"I don't think so." Jason shook his head. "You want the fuel to be controlled until you're ready to light it, and dust would fly everywhere. We use something called 'gasoline', but-"

"Oil? You mean like the lamp oil commoners use? I could get some of that."

"Damn. No. It is a kind of oil, I guess that's why my translation auxilum used the word, but it's a specific type of oil. Um . . . okay: Ever hear of ponds or swamps or marshes where black oil bubbles to the surface? People may collect it to use as medicine, I think my people did at one time."

"Black oil?" Mr. Colbert repeated. "That sounds like something an alchemist would be interested in, but alchemy is more Earth and Water than Fire. I can ask some of the other instructors about it."

"Sounds like a plan," Jason agreed. "Anyway, what you do is distill black oil, and the most volatile parts evaporate first. The two fuel oils that I know of that are distilled from black oil are called 'kerosene' and 'gasoline'. Did you get those words this time?"

"'Kerosene' and 'gasoline'?"

"Yes, that's it. Kerosene is sometimes a gas, I think. Pretty sure it's the most volatile, anyway. I know gasoline is always a liquid, so it's easier to handle. You spray a tiny bit of gasoline into the explosion chamber of your piston, and cause a spark. The gasoline explodes and drives the piston."

The professor made some notes on a sheet of rough-looking paper. "And this gasoline is the best substance?"

Jason nodded. "It has a lot of power. We've been using it for a hundred years now, because we can't find anything even more powerful that's safe to use." Probably best not to complicate this with discussions of nuclear power just yet.

"So I should inquire if there are any of these ponds you mentioned roundabout."

"Well," he hesitated, "gasoline isn't entirely safe itself. Experimenting with lamp oil while you figure out how to get pistons to work with explosions rather than steam might be a good idea."

Mr. Colbert rubbed his chin, considering. "A working model would be even better, if I could procure one. Where are you from, if I may ask? I have never heard of 'steam engines', 'trains', or 'railroads' before."

Well, let's see. Do we claim to be from another world and get dismissed as crazy? Let's not. So Jason offered a wry grin and dissembled. "I'm from over sea and under stone, beyond weird and haunted shores."

The professor only gave him a flat look in response.

"Sorry, sir, but I honestly can't tell you. I've never heard of Halkeginia or Tristain myself, so I have no idea where I am in relation to where I was born."

Mr. Colbert blinked."You're from beyond Rub' al Khali?"

"Uh, haven't heard of that either."

"Oh. You must be from far beyond the lands beyond the elves. I have heard that they possess machina fabulous beyond imagining."

Jason was saved from trying to comfort the disappointed man when Louise emerged, having finally finished eating, and was ready to go back to her room. Fortunately, the professor seemed to have heard enough to draw inspiration from, and was already rummaging around for more paper and quill as the student, familiar, and servant all left together.

Siesta had an awed expression as they left Mr. Colbert to his brainstorming. "Two hundred miles a day, and hundreds of people per train! They could . . . they could let commoners ride in them!"

Jason nodded. "They did. Anyone who could pay the fee could ride on a train, and the fee wasn't that high."

"You could cross all of Halkeginia in just a few weeks!"

Hell, the Pony express managed ten days. And you can manage two or three days across the US in a modern car, but maybe it's best not to strain her credulity. Give her time to get used to the paradigm of 19th century tech before we bring up the advances of the 20th century. "As long as someone else has built the railroad, sure."

Louise kept silent, letting Siesta do the chattering until the maid peeled off to head for the servant dorms while they went up to their bedroom. His little mistress remained silent, looking thoughtful, as Jason detoured to get his nightly water buckets a little early.

Finally, when the two were back in her room, she spoke up: "Was all that real? All that talk about 'trains' and steam and oil?"

He nodded. "Yes."

"And anyone can use them?"

"For a fee, but yes."

"You can go anywhere, and you train clockwork minds to do all the work. No wonder you don't think like a commoner."

Jason chuckled. "I suppose. Although speaking of thinking, I have an idea for practicing with our familiar bond."

She looked grumpy. "What is it? I'm not sure it's been worth the time, even if you were able to alert me last night."

He flushed. Yeah, the aftermath was . . . "Okay, the point of the universal auxilia is so that the familiar knows what the master wants, and the master can find out what she needs to know. Since we can't do that directly, I want to develop a series of codes – maybe based on short and long pushes – so that we can send messages to each other. We might have avoided the, uh . . . if I could have sent you a code that meant 'Kirche has kidnapped me and taken me to her room, please please please save me!'"

Louise snorted. But then a stunned look came over her. "We could do that," she said in a slightly awed voice. "Like signalling to an army. Why didn't I ever think of that?"

Jason shrugged. "I didn't either. Someone in my homeland came up with the basic idea back when trains and railroads were getting invented. Although he was using tame lightning rather than malfunctioning auxilia."

She gave him a sharp look. "If you already planned this, why didn't you say anything about it before?"

He shrugged again. "I wasn't going to until we had a bit more practice, since I wanted us to be able to wake each other up fairly easily with a push, first. But if Kirche gets it in her head to send Flame after me again, I want to be able to call for help before she's able to kiss me."

Louise frowned. "You shouldn't take my laundry down tonight, just in case she thinks to try again. Do it in the morning, so I can go down with you."

Jason rubbed his head, flushing once more. Because if his little mistress's rival did plan another ambush, surely she'd try to patch up the weaknesses of her first attempt. And he couldn't help but feel a bit of regret at not giving the lush redhead another chance. "Yeah. Pity I don't have a Ring of Free Action or something."

"A what?"

"Um . . . it's from a game that I haven't had time to play for . . . wow, almost 5 years. A group of friends pretend to be heroic warriors and mages. One of us makes up a ruined castle or something filled with traps to avoid, evil creatures to slay, and treasures to claim. Then we tell stories about exploring the castle and what we find. A Ring of Free Action makes sure you can't be chained up, or stuck in spider webs, or grabbed by a monster, or paralyzed with a spell . . ."

Louise was staring at him, open-mouthed, as he trailed off and blushed.

"Hey, it could be a lot of fun if the friend who made up the ruined castle did a good job of describing everything."

She shook her head. "I stopped playing make-believe when I was 10."

"This wasn't quite make-believe. Um . . . you know how servants will get together and dice away their salaries?"

His little mistress nodded. "I sometimes snuck out of bed at night, and I saw them doing that a few times. Why?"

"Well, instead of rolling dice to see who wins the pot, we rolled dice to see if we managed to kill the ogres before they killed us."

"Oh," Louise replied in a tone of enlightenment, and nodded once more, this time approvingly. "You were practicing. That's different from make-believe."

He blinked. ". . . Wait, what?"

"Well, that's one kind of place where orcs like to hide, right? The basements of ruined buildings."

A shiver ran down his spine. We already knew they have dragons here. Dungeons too? "Orcs. As in, human-sized or a bit bigger, really strong, like to fight, really nasty and cruel?"

"Exactly!" his little mistress agreed with alarming enthusiasm. "Oh, I should write to Father about this! He's always going on about how the younger generation don't care enough to hunt down hidden dens of orcs and ogres, or are too afraid, or . . . if he makes a game out it he can teach the rising generation how to do it right before he's too old to go hunting himself!"

"You're saying orcs and ogres are real? Not just servant superstition?"

Louise nodded, and Jason had to fight the urge to smack himself. Check your assumptions, idiot. Don't assume you know better when magic's involved. Because, oh shit, orcs and ogres are real!

A/N: In canon, Mr. Colbert had a simple internal combustion engine going at this point. Which, because you need a spark plug, is late 19th century technology. In fact, in canon a lot of his inventions are drawn from late 19th or early 20th century Terran technology. The problem is, because mages are nobles, research efforts should have magic, and Halkagenia's mundane technological development should arguably be stunted, compared to the 1600s Europe it draws from. I'm letting him come up with the steam engine as a compromise.

New Terms: Machina is Latin for 'machine'. No, it didn't change very much as it passed through French and on down to English. (Which is why Jason didn't comment.) During the Renaissance, the people building the cathedrals and other impressive buildings often had to design their own construction equipment before they could build the buildings themselves. In Halkagenia, the mighty have Levitate. So the development of machine-related technology has lagged somewhat behind the actual historical development.