Chapter 7
It was at the weekend when everyone was interested in Quidditch tryouts that Hazel Spikenard disappeared. Nobody realised for a while; the Gryffindors were down a few players too and busy seeing what talent they had amongst their new weevils.
Ravenclaw was taking an interest in their first years too because of the newly instituted custom of playing a second seven; and Sextus was pleased to be on the second team; as was Simi Patil. And if there were those who were less than happy that Leontius Bradley was not in the same class as his cousin – and would not even TRY to play – he avoided too much censure by saying that it didn't always follow in families, like being deatheaters and he could always sick Lilith Snape onto them.
The story of McLaggan's nose HAD got about.
And Gorbrin was busy rejoicing that their second seven actually looked like being better than the Ravenclaw second seven, giving Slytherin a chance at the cup!
When Hazel was not in her dormitory at bedtime things got suddenly very hectic in Gryffindor house; and Madam Spikenard was called in to use dowsing to find her, and promptly asked Albert MacMillan to help as, she said, the best dowser she knew.
Albert would do anything for the first teacher who had been so kind to him; as well as to find a poor lost kiddy.
He dowsed her to be somewhere in the border country, and with his notes, Sirius Black apparated to find her.
Hazel was loath to return, howling tears that her family home was either burned down or was about to burn down because she had seen it in a crystal ball.
"I never thought the silly kid would actually run away!" said Lavender "I'm sorry Gran! It's because I wanted to take her down a peg or two; I thought she'd send an owl to mum and dad and then look silly because she's such a pain over her visions!"
Madam Spikenard sighed.
"Oh Lavender! And I hear the guilt in your voice because you DID think she might do something silly; you've enough of the seer in you to know that! Well, no reasonable person would expect her to take off without telling anyone; so I shall do no more than tell you to reflect on all the signs that it was a bad idea to choose this way to rag her. And don't worry" she added grimly "She won't get off without a thorough scolding from me for being a very silly little girl."
Lavender suffered more from her conscience than from any formal punishment; as Madam Spikenard had expected; and Hazel, far from being petted for being brave was ticked off for being a naughty and tiresome child.
She had a temper tantrum which did NOT impress her grandmother who sent her to the sickbay with a dose of glumbumble juice.
And on the next day, Madam Spikenard had a frank talk about children who put on airs about talents and made themselves obnoxious until this sort of thing happened to them. She refused to say who had organised the rag; but made it quite clear it had been a rag. And that the only way a reliable diviner developed their powers was with as much hard work as any other subject.
Hazel was unwontedly squashed!
Jayashree meanwhile had decided she would be a part of Lilith's group of would-be marauders and Lilith let it be known to her sister Lydia that SHE had a group encompassing ALL the houses; which as Lydia pointed out to the rest of the Mad Marauders had to be taken into consideration as the first time THAT had happened.
Nathan too was planning for his group to be accepted; and was rather annoyed by such troublesome elements of the second who made any trouble from the second likely to be leaped upon. This was the likes of Hazel Spikenard; and the quarrelsome Kettleburn and Ogden and the object of their affections who did NOTHING to assuage the quarrels – indeed it pleased that little madam's sense of vanity to encourage the mayhem – and, in Nathan's opinion too the interference of Walter Trimmer in his own house. Trimmer was academic and half muggle and seemed to have the idea that he had to prove himself worthy by poking his nose into the business of everyone else and reacting to mischief with what Nathan described as the elephantine officiousness and tact of a new Hufflepuff prefect. That this may have been partly to ingratiate himself with Madam Hardboom, since his potions ranged between loathsome concatenations and unspeakable effluvia – in the description of Severus Snape fans – was not the point. And did NOT endear him to Connie in any case. Connie might be inclined to listen to tales from those she considered reliable – most of whom would drop a hint only if they thought dangerous mischief was under way – but had no patience with those who could not put in the effort to produce even a mediocre potion. Connie held that so long as one was methodical, anyone bar a muggle or a true squib could brew a potion even if it was not very good; and she would go to infinite pains for those who asked for help. Which Trimmer did NOT, feeling that he should overcome his problem without troubling his teacher. As he did not scruple to trouble her about mischief he knew of or suspected, however, Connie put him down as slapdash and lazy, which whilst maybe not wholly fair was only Trimmer' fault for taking more notice of the peccadilloes of others than of his own work.
Since the boy was quite capable of picking up if Isambard and Nathan were more excited than usual and pretending to go to sleep whilst pinching himself periodically to stay awake until they sneaked out, the second's would-be marauders had been more than once caught by Connie who could not, in conscience, ignore the fact of two of her boys – and one of her girls when she checked, U-may being part of the group – being out of their beds.
And Charis Rawlins and Tobala Gan Torlo in Gryffindor held forth about the irritation of having Madam McGonagall permanently waxy over the four troublesome Gryffindors aforementioned.
Jingjie Chang and Wanda Waffling had slightly less trouble in Ravenclaw; the one prig in Jingjie's dormitory was much impressed by Jingjie's prominent wizarding family and preferred not to know what the boy might get up to.
"If we were only proper Marauders we'd have access to the sleep gas to keep Wally Trimmer shut up" said Nathan irritably, glaring at the grey and miserable sky as they huddled under the dolmen to meet, from whence they might readily see the approach of the offensive Trimmer. "What are we going to do?"
"Trick the little blighter into blowing it and good with Auntie Connie" said Tobala.
"Any suggestions?" said Nathan.
"Yes; it's obvious" said Tobala. "Giggle lots and go to bed early; wait for the egregious little tick to pretend to go to sleep, and sneak out. Wait until he's out of sight haring after Connie and go back to bed. He won't half get a wigging for being the only one that IS out of bed, even if she suspects; you can always say, if she asks direct, that you had to go to the loo to chuck up, and use one of the Weasleys Wizard Wheezes skiving sweeties to make it true, that puts all the bad on Trimmer."
"Nice" said Nathan.
They tossed for who was going to throw up and Isambard lost; but it would be, as he said, well worth it.
Isambard, being Isambard, stuffed himself at supper to make sure it was a worthwhile puke; it seemed a shame to waste it in a small amount after all!
Madam Hardbroom was scrupulous in checking the veracity of any informer and the other boys of the dormitory started as her bright wand came into the room.
Nathan sat up.
"Oh Trimmer, you didn't have to get Madam Hardbroom up, he's much better now he's been sick!" he said.
Trimmer stared.
"You were going off what you call marauding, I know you were!" he said.
Connie came over to Isambard who was still rather pale.
"You've been sick?" she said sharply "Have you any idea why?"
"I think it was something I ate" said Isambard weakly; and truthfully "Or possibly the several things I ate in, er, unwholesome concatenation."
"I guess I shouldn't have bet him he wouldn't eat sardines with carrot cake" said Nathan innocently. He HAD bet Isambard that he would not each this odd combination; and Isambard had turned it down, but there was no need to fill Madam Hardbroom in on THAT piece of information.
"Sardines with carrot cake? That's enough to upset anyone's stomach! What horrid creatures little boys are to be sure!" cried Connie. "Very well, Isambard; try to sleep and if you don't feel better in the morning, Nathan had better see you up to Madam Pomfrey for the day. I'll bring you a dose of stomach settler in a moment, Walter stop pulling faces and get back into bed or we'll have you ill too with a chill. Which, whilst it might be a lesson to you not to be quite so busy about the affairs of others would be inconvenient for the rest of us."
Connie's stomach settler was a very pleasant concoction and Isambard told her that she was a gem.
"Well now!" laughed Connie "I hope you feel better tomorrow."
Walter Trimmer's expression of baffled fury was as sweet as the fact that he had got short shrift from Connie!
U-may spoke to Lilith.
"We're blood-joined already you and I" she said "And of one blood more than most for both being snakes in our spare time; could we apparate to the marauders' secret headquarters? Nathan says they have a book of things like useful potions."
"It's not quite honourable" said Lilith "We're blood joined to protect ourselves and we shouldn't use that advantage to maraud, because it takes away the efforts and achievements of those who marauded without blood bond. I thought about using it to feel where the big ones were to help map out and find secret passages, but I reckoned that would be unfair. But I don't see why your group and ours shouldn't join forces to pull some kind of stunt that'll make the big ones notice us."
"Any idea what?"
"Not offhand; but if your lot put their heads together and so do we, we'll meet on Sunday in the shrieking shack; you know how to wriggle into the whomping willow and press the knothole that stops it whomping, don't you, to get to the shack? The marauders don't really use it so it's okay for us to."
"I didn't but I guess I'll figure it out" said U-may, who was a self possessed little person. "I'm not about to have our fun blocked by a silly fool like Trimmer."
Lilith was feeling particularly happy because she was to be allowed to sit the Arithmancy OWL as well as transfigurations and had also been given a fascinating problem of seeing what she might find out about the potential arithmantic number twenty-three factorial. Madam Vector had told her it would be as well if she checked the calculations of the slightly dodgy proposer of the hypothesis in 'Cursebreaker's Monthly' where the witch who had written in mentioned that even muggles acknowledged the power of twenty three since it appeared in a religion called Discordianism. Lilith recalled her mother writing in to point out that Discordianism was a fictional religion in a work of fiction and had promptly ignored the problem; and pointed this out to Madam Vector.
"Is that so? Well that does make a slight alteration of one's perceptions" said Madam Vector, disconcerted "After all, one tends to assume many religious rituals based on numerology are based on half understood wizarding knowledge that muggles have happened upon. But it may be equally possible the writer of fiction has stumbled on something that as a muggle he is unable to exploit. It does NO harm to check it out; and frankly, my dear, you are a good enough arithmancer whilst being able to have the time to, well, waste, on something that might be utterly spurious. If you don't mind?"
Lilith grinned.
"Oh I'm as happy to debunk it as to prove it!" she said "It's nice to have something to really get my teeth into!"
Twenty-three, multiplied by each of the preceding factors to produce Twenty-three factorial came out to 25,852,016,738,884,976,640,000. In which there were twenty-three digits. That was a possible significance and Lilith noted that. Every numeral also appeared in the number, though with a number that big that was perhaps less significant.
Lilith also wrote down the frequency with which each single digit appeared; and found that the frequencies also added up to twenty-three. She pulled a face. They would do. However she did some more multiplying and found out that it was the first factorial number in which all the digits appeared at least once.
That was starting to look interesting.
Something Lilith also happened to know, because of Uncle Vladimir's scientific background, was that twenty-three pairs of chromosomes determined the human genetic code; and that humans have twenty-three discs in the spine. There was some constant about molecules too that was raised to 1023
She asked Ross Tuthill and found out it was called Avogadro's Constant and was 6.02x 1023 and was the number of molecules in a mole. There was enough assimilative correlation by nomenclature in that to consider that this was as much air as needed to be hardened into a diffusion grid to defeat Avada Kadavra; and THAT was worth working on if one massaged the name to the Avada Kadavra constant. Ross exlained that it was also the mass of the stable isotope of sodium – one that didn't fall apart in a hurry, he explained - which was the main component of salt which was in blood and actually sodium was a – here he broke off, thought a moment, and told Lilith that nerves needed sodium to shift messages like pain, feeling and how to tell muscles to move.
Lilith was fascinated. That had implications in blocking the cruciatus curse. She checked her factorial calculations and found that the number was the first time all the digits appeared; which was interesting. Twenty-three was also a prime number and goblins certainly were interested in that; so she investigated prime numbers. Goblins had the same number of chromosomes as humans after all. Twenty-three could be made by adding up two sets of prime numbers; 5+7+11 and 3+7+13.
She added up the digits in the factorial number; but that seemed less significant. If the zeros were treated as zero the result was ninety-nine; and no precise relation to twenty-three. If the zeros were counted as ten, the result was one hundred and forty-nine, and that was no precise relation to twenty-three either. Ninety-nine and one hundred and forty nine had some arithmantic interest in themselves but of no very great significance. The number ninety nine however reduced to nine if one added all the digits up and kept reducing according to standard numerological method; a significant enough number, reducing from ninety nine. One hundred and forty nine reduced via fourteen to five. both five and nine were good numbers but it was not earth shattering.
This was going to take a lot of work; and Lilith was thrilled that Madam Vector trusted her with it!
Madam Vector heaved a sigh of relief to have Lilith working away in her class without any trouble; even if half the huge pile of books the child had collected seemed to be muggle works!
Sextus Scarpin was fascinated by the problem too.
Especially when Lilith explained what chromosomes were and how her Uncle Vladimir had used Scarpin's Revellaspell to show by coloured lines laid onto parchment the precise nature of any potion, or being; and suggested investigating twenty-three with relation to Malfoy lines.
There were distinct correlations.
The digits of the factorial number corresponded quite well to the gaps between the significant groups of definitive lines.
"NOW we're cooking with bluebell flames" said Lilith in satisfaction "I was wondering how the devil to understand how genes worked to see if there was anything in that; but a magical solution is far better. You're brilliant, Sec!" she gave him a hug and a kiss.
Sextus flushed and looked pleased.
"Aw, nuts, half-pint" he said "Such exuberance over a simple suggestion any mug might have made!"
Lilith ignored that foolishness.
Sextus was still pushing her away; but she had no intention of letting him do so!
This did not solve the problem of what grand scheme to impress the older marauders with, but school work was important too, and Madam Vector wanted to know what a fresh eye made of this problem and so Lilith had a responsibility to help her!
Before the marauders might meet, there was another chanting class.
Professor Queach said that he hoped they had all done their homework and breathed every day; because otherwise today's lesson was going to be painful.
They were going to, he explained, enchant a doorway to turn anyone who passed through it blue. It was a steal from the Belle Marauders, only less stripy; but Tony thought it would amuse his chanters.
Accordingly they worked out a chant; the doorway being seven feet high by three feet wide – good arithmantic numbers – they were to make a chant of three lines long each of seven syllables that Tony murmured, having been introduced to David Eddings by Jade, might be called Ode to Blue.
They made it simple by just using every word that could come up with meaning 'blue' that Tony wrote on the board to rearrange into a harmonious chant. It was his skill more than that of the class that gave it any magical meaning; but it would give them success in a practical application.
"Remember it is in the intent as well as anything else" said Tony.
The chant began:
"Cerulean azure blue
sapphire sky celestial
cyan azure indigo".
That the chant appeared to be a competition between two warts was annoying, each one raising his voice in turn to be heard above the other; and their sense of rhythm entirely out of synchronisation with everyone else.
Tony absently dropped a wandless, wordless langlock on both boys and continued the chant; and when he felt they had reached a good crescendo locked it to the doorway with a loud clap of the hands.
"Well that went well despite the efforts of two of you to sabotage it" he said "You warts! Come here!" Edward Kettleburn and Orlando Ogden came there and Tony cancelled the spell.
"Sir, some rotter put a spell on me that locked my tongue to the roof of my mouth!" declared Kettleburn.
"Me too!" said Ogden.
"Yes; it was me" said Tony calmly "I did not see why the efforts of others should be spoilt by your disgraceful behaviour! Now, would you care to tell me WHY you tried to spoil the chant?"
Both stared at him in open mouthed incomprehension.
"We weren't trying to spoil it sir!" said Kettleburn in indignation "At least I wasn't; but he was getting louder to make like it was him doing all the work so Genevieve would be impressed, and I had to let her know I was working as hard, didn't I?"
Tony stared.
"It was so trivial as to impress a GIRL?" he said in disgust "And at your age? Well I have to say if you think you were working hard you are both sorely mistaken! You have no sense of timing and rhythm; and you also have not been breathing during the week that your voices had not control! Are you here only to impress this wretched female? Yes, I read it in your eyes! Well, you two are BANNED from this class; and if I ever see either of you again it will be too soon! Now get out you lamentable Lotharios, you vacuous valentines, you calamitous Casanovas!"
"He's been taking lessons from daddy" murmured Lilith to Sextus who was listening with admiration.
"I LIKE your dad" said Sextus.
The wretched female, Genevieve Harris, was not best pleased at being, as she saw it, made a fool of by her swains and it was plain from the scowl on her face that they were both likely to be given their marching orders by their inamorata.
And Oliver Harris, Genevieve's brother in the fourth, who had joined the classes because he had seen what the Belle Marauders managed, had the sort of look on his face that promised his little sister a good talking to for encouraging such shenanigans!
Everyone else enjoyed being turned blue by their gateway; and there was much giggling.
Naturally Tony cast finite incantatem to return them to normal!
The two groups of Marauders successfully negotiated the whomping willow; each having a snake animagus attached to them to slide inside to deactivate the whomping so the rest could easily negotiate the hole at the base of the tree and scuttle along to the shrieking shack.
Walter Trimmer, following Nathan and Isambard so he could report them for breaking bounds as he was certain they were about to do, was filled with frustrated despair when they disappeared utterly somewhere near that horrid flailing tree; he dared not approach too closely to the tree as it thrashed towards his stealthy movements.
He went instead to Professor Dumbledore – being afraid to approach Madam Hardbroom again – to report that the naughtiest boys in his year and their friends had been leading weevils into danger near the whomping willow and he was afraid for the safety of the little ones.
"Hm" said Professor Dumbledore "You're obviously a very clever boy and hard working Walter."
Walter glowed.
"I do try very hard sir!" he said.
"Yes; very impressive that you have finished all your weekend homework so well that you are able to be busy about the affairs of others" said Dumbledore "I look forward to seeing 'O' grades on all your homework when the staff pass their marks to me."
Walter went scarlet. He had not yet completed his weekend homework; and he had skimped some for watching the Marauders!
He muttered something and fled to put in some work hurriedly!
"The trouble is, all the best wheezes have already been pulled" said Nathan "Mostly by previous marauders. Now I know finding secret passages is a part of it; and we've found a few."
"And I found a few when I was little, before we went to Prince Peak" said Lilith "And we got one to the roof from Argus's cupboard too; do you oiks know enough to do marauding maps? 'cos I don't."
"'Fraid not" said Nathan.
"Reckon I might" said Jingjie "We can give it a go, and see if inspiration strikes about wheezes while we're mapping. It's more important anyway to work together and come up with something really good than it is to rush it and be disappointing."
"I have red hair; it makes me impatient" said Lilith.
"Then slip into something scalier and indifferent" said Nathan unsympathetically. "D'you think I DON'T want to do something? And by the way, are we going to hit the marauders or the whole school?"
"How are we going to hit the whole school?" said Charis.
"Well lots of us are potioneers" said Nathan.
"What about some gas with amusing side effects?" said Sextus "A laughing gas seems a little trite….."
"Hey, I know!" said Lilith "What was that gas called that mum was muttering about being safer than hydrogen in the dirigible fart curse, 'cept it being easy to change farts to hydrogen because hydrogen is in methane."
"You mean Helium?" said Nathan intelligently. "What, elevate everyone?"
"Helium's that one that makes people talk like Donald Duck; is THAT what you were thinking of?" said Charis, whose family kept in touch with things muggle.
"Who's Donald Duck?" asked Wanda Waffling.
"An anthropomorphised duck on muggle children's entertainment" said Charis "He has a silly high pitched quacky sort of voice; and this gas is used by divers to stop them getting some trouble or other."
"If you have pure oxygen compressed by being deep under the sea you get like you're drunk; we watched a TV program – muggles had wireless vision before Lucius invented it for magical people – and so they have helium in it" said Lilith "That's JUST what I was thinking of, Charis!"
"Will it hurt anyone?" asked Venus.
"Muggles aren't going to breathe it in deep diving if it did, would they?" said Lilith in scorn.
"Well I don't know; do muggles care what happens to each other?" said Venus.
"Venus, you poor prune, muggles are people like everyone else!" said Lilith "And some do and some don't – like everyone else. And they CHOOSE to use this as part of their jobs or hobbies to dive deep in the sea. Because they can't do bubble head charms and y'know I don't actually know how well a bubblehead charm would work that deep anyway and it might not. There are muggle laws about safety at work so it's gotta be safe even if people doing it for fun might take more risks."
"The great thing is" said Jingjie " – If we can make it that is – that as it's a gas it can't be cancelled even with finite incantatem because it's made."
"I fancy I might have stuff to look up about it" said Lilith "'Cos I'm researching an arithmantic problem Madam Vector asked me to check out to either prove or debunk and I've borrowed Ross Tuthill's muggle science books."
Naturally the others wanted to know what problem she was researching and a lively and noisy debate ensued over whether twenty-three was arithmantically significant or whether it really was a hoary old chestnut.
They were impressed by Lilith's findings to date, however; and fell to discussing whether using twenty three syllables in a chant would enhance the strength of any transfiguration of the human, goblin or elf form because of tying the change to the genetic material.
"Especially if you did it in Finnish and used naming magic" said Lilith. "I reckon it could be more usefuller than that with a betterer result because if you tied it to the genes you could maybe stop things that run in families like club foot and raised shoulder."
"Or cure red hair!" said Isambard.
There was a brief altercation following this, Isambard having forgotten that Nathan's mother had red hair as well as Lilith.
Isambard absently undid himself from the purple ball with ginger-haired spider legs and orange bats.
"Pax" he said "Sorry; couldn't resist."
"You could also tie a spell to go off when people passed a certain point that only worked on, say, a particular family" said Jingjie "If you were good enough. That could be awfully dangerous; because equally it could be tied to something awful happening to, say, all goblins."
"Then that ought to remain a marauder secret" said Lilith "And I say, don't you think if we pulled that apart together, that might be as impressive to the big ones as a massive trick?"
"Probably; but it seems a shame to waste a lovely jape too" said Nathan.
There was that and Lilith conceded the point.
The wannabee marauders reconvened to the prep room – that Lilith pointed out would have been out of bounds on Sunday at Prince Peak except during prep periods – and Lilith lectured on such things as atomic weights and numbers.
"All very well but how do we do it?" said Nathan.
"Well we need to collect a lot of farts to turn into hydrogen first using the dirigible fart curse, or at least portions of it, and then use transfiguration to stick loads of hydrogen atoms together to make helium" said Lilith.
"Sounds good; it's going to take for flipping ever for us to fart THAT much though" said Nathan.
"But if we put this spell on the loos and collect the bubbles with our wands we can get heaps!" said Jingjie "Especially if we go and hint to the elves in the kitchen that we'd like beans on toast for tea; gas city!"
"I like" said Nathan "Lilith, what are you reading up?"
"I was just looking at the twenty third element; it's a toxic metallic substance called Vanadium used in some steel alloys" she said "I wondered if Gorbrin might find that useful to include with his Goblin Silver and Goblin Steel in his big knife; because of the twenty-three thing. I'll go talk to him."
"No you won't you snaky little charmer" said Nathan "Not until you've taught us the dirigible fart curse and we've figured out how to stick it on the loos instead and do so."
"Oh well I expect he's necking with Meliandra now anyhow" said Lilith cheerfully. "It goes like this…." She told them the incantation, casting it on Nathan, and showed them the form of the spell with Scarpin's Revellaspell.
"Oh simple enough to twist into a containment sac hung inside the pan" said Jingjie "It's got to have the bum actually push into it but otherwise there's no problem. Seven girls and five boys; we'll sort it by teatime."
There was a concerted scurry round various toilets once the younger marauders, who had less experience of twisting spells – except Lilith of course – than the second years had got the idea. Venus and Jayashree elected to work together to make sure they got it right; and they were off.
"What are the wart and weevil Marauders up to, anyone know?" asked Mortimer Bane of his group "They appear to have an obsession with toilets."
"Oh dear, reversed flow jinxes I suppose" sighed Mei "I guess I ought to check; some things just aren't done."
"You do the girls; I'll check the boys" said Mortimer.
They met outside the first set of loos and exchanged perplexed glances.
"Collecting and changing it to hydrogen? Are they planning on floating something big?" said Mortimer.
"Dunno" said Mei "I hope they're aware that hydrogen's explosive. I'll have a quiet word with Jingjie."
Mei's cousin beamed at her.
"Oh yes we know hydrogen's explosive" he said "We aren't leaving it as hydrogen though, we need that as a starting point."
"PLEASE be careful about not having any naked flame anywhere near it" said Mei "Otherwise you've got enough collecting to take the whole school clear across the country to the East Neuk of Fife."
"Gosh!" said Jingjie, impressed. "THAT's something to consider doing to Odessa, put the dirigible fart curse on their loos and a delayed bluebell flames."
Mei grinned.
"Certainly one to hold in reserve!" she said.
Lilith did have a chat to Gorbrin and showed him her calculations; and found him much interested.
"Better yet" said Gorbrin "To tie it to the twenty three pairs of chromosomes and use a touch of blood magic in it too; in the quenching. I'll start collecting my blood with an anticoagulant and knock up a blood replenishing potion to be able to leak enough. Thanks young Snapeling; appreciated."
Lilith grinned at him.
"You really are a pioneer in combining the metalworking with other things, Gorbrin; I think that ought to be encouraged" she said "And besides, if you use the blood quenching, can't you tie it so that only one of your blood can summon the sword to hand and do a Hawk the Slayer? You might want to talk some human Malfoys into giving some blood too."
"Thanks; I will. That's a cool idea" said Gorbrin. "I like Voltan better than Hawk actually; he has a dark sense of humour rather like dad."
Lilith giggled.
"Or my dad" she said "Baddies are always more fun than heroes; they're usually deeper characters. That's what makes stories more interesting than real life; Voldemort had no saving graces and was a pretty predictable type and Gerhardt's just a Junker-type bully with a fat arse."
Gorbrin laughed.
It was hard to feel awe and fear over that sort of dismissive description!
"Well don't you go underestimating him young Lilith because there's a lot more to the git than that" he warned.
"Oh! Yes; but my sister's on his case" said Lilith airily "Now she's gone all wolfy, she's the Jade Wolf; and who but the Young Siegfried is the Golden Son?"
Gorbrin nodded.
"Yes; we were in the join-share, remember?" he said. "Lydia promulgated the theory. Did you come to it independently?"
Lilith nodded.
"I thought it was a bit obvious; but then I know what she's up to" she said. "anyway, have fun with your vanadium!"
"Oh I shall" said Gorbrin, planning on talking to Jorbal about it first.
As it happened Jorbal was excited; as much for the aspect of prime number magic as anything else, and he demanded that Gorbrin make the sword to have three sizes that corresponded in proportion to one of the sets of prime numbers that added up to twenty three.
Gobrin nodded readily.
It made good arithmantic sense.