CHAPTER 4
Joshua began to protest, but gave up almost immediately. His shoulders
sagged with the weight of his disappointment.
"I get it's annoyin'. I swear I didn't make this, though. I woulda told you
if it was me."
Was it Craib's refusal to answer any more questions that filled Lecia's
father with disappointment right now? She didn't feel as if that was quite
right. Instead, it must have been because Joshua was worried Craib wouldn't
tell him even if he had created something like this. Even though they were
brothers, Joshua could be pretty stern with Craib sometimes. Craib would
usually tease him when he did so. Their relationship was a complicated one,
to say the least, but if there was one thing Lecia knew for sure, it was that
they didn't dislike each other. If they did, there was no way Joshua would
permit Craib to show up at the estate without warning, and they wouldn't call
on each other to discuss certain things as they did. If they couldn't stand each
other, they wouldn't meet so often. They would be openly hostile with each
other. Despite their history, they shared a special bond. That was why Joshua
got so upset when Craib—his brother— wouldn't say anything.
But it was Arcus who made this device, and Craib was trying to hide that
fact from Joshua.
Joshua put the tool away again and Craib put a bag on top of the table.
Taking something out of it, he handed it towards Lecia.
"This one's for you."
"For me?"
"That's right."
It was another device just like the one Joshua put away.
Joshua's eyebrows leaped up in surprise. "Are you quite sure?"
"This is what the inventor wanted. Take care of it, yeah? You can't be
lettin' other people use it, and whatever you do, don't lose it."
"Yes, yes, we know."
"And don't you pinch it."
"I wouldn't dream of it!"
"Good. And don't forget that the king's got his eye on this, yeah? That's
all I can really tell you, though."
"We shall bear it in mind," Joshua said, and left it at that.
If the crown was involved, there wasn't anything he would dare do to
interfere. Lecia was sure that, if her father really put the thought into it, he
would realize who created it. But it seemed he wasn't going to. Lecia wondered why.
Then she realized: he didn't want to accept it. That was why he was so
desperate to discover that its inventor was somebody else. He wanted to keep
believing that the boy he disinherited was as talentless as he always claimed.
Despite his magical skills, despite what he had created, Joshua didn't want to
accept the truth.
Craib must have understood and was using that stubbornness against him
now. Joshua would only believe the truth when he was forced to confront it
head-on. That was why Craib never answered his question directly: because
there was no point. Maybe it was the inventor himself who foresaw this
happening. Maybe he knew that people preferred to believe what they wanted
to believe. He came out with similar ideas when he spoke about the situation
with the marquess, too, and about the mercenary he fought that day. Once
Arcus convinced that mercenary that he was talentless, his enemy clung to
that perception until the very end. What was happening in front of Lecia now
was the exact same thing. Even now, Joshua would continue to call her
brother useless. As far as he was concerned, Arcus had to stay that way.
Lecia fully expected her magic training to become much tougher from
that day on. She welcomed it. If she didn't start upping her game now, she
would only be left behind.
Months had passed since the aethometer's unveiling. It was the greatest
invention to hit the kingdom in recent years, but there was relatively little
excitement. The Guild had maintained its promised veil of secrecy and
exclusivity; even in the least scrupulous corners of Lainur, not even rumors
of the device's existence had entered circulation.
Arcus found this atmosphere exciting and briefly considered giving the
aethometer a code name at one point, but that never came to fruition. He
made the decision not to come out as the tool's inventor until he was a self-
reliant adult; any earlier, and he would be unlikely to reap the full rewards of
his achievement. At the moment, its general unveiling was being delayed to
serve the crown's interests; for the time being, that suited Arcus's plans
nicely.
For now, he was just happy that his invention was being funded and that,
as things stood, he could probably get away with asking a favor of the crown
if he needed to. Nothing would come of being greedy or impatient, Arcus
reasoned, and it was always best to act in clear-sighted accord with one's situation.
There was a certain idiom in the man's world: "Tall trees catch much
wind." In those terms, Arcus was already tall enough as it was; he'd resolved
to conduct himself with the utmost caution from now on.
As promised at the meeting, the aethometer began making its way into
the military the very next day, and the state magicians had already put the
invention to work in their training. Since there had been nothing like it
before, it would take a few months before Arcus could assess its effects
objectively. Apparently it was already proving invaluable in the medical
field. Unlike in military efforts, where it was used for a whole unit, in
hospitals it could be used for one person at a time. All signs on the medical
front pointed towards the aethometer's effectiveness both in leveling the
playing field for healers and accelerating their training, improving both the
quality and accessibility of magical care. Arcus was surprised to find that a
letter of thanks had found its way to him.
He even heard that various enterprises overseen by the royal family,
including soda- and paper-making, were seeing vast improvements thanks to
the aethometer. Mismanagement of aether caused accidents on an almost
daily basis in those industries; the introduction of the aethometer had made a
marked difference.
Arcus even heard that they wanted to introduce aethometers into lectures
at the Royal Institute, but that they were waiting for the right time to do so.
Finally, there was the matter of producing more aethometers. Requests had
begun to come from the royal family itself through the Magician's Guild.
They left Arcus at an impasse; expanding the parameters of manufacture
would call for him to disclose the secret of tempered aether, and just as with
the aethometer itself, he preferred to guard that secret until the moment it
would be most profitable to publicize.
Today, Arcus was at work in the garden at the Abend estate, dabbling
with brewing again, as he did whenever he had a moment to spare now. He
was, of course, not without the help of Klin Botter on these occasions. He'd
only recently managed to cultivate a live specimen of the herbal ingredient he
needed. Usually it thrived on the plains in the northern reaches of Lainur, but
fortunately one of the state magicians—Muller "Welcome Rain" Quint, the
medic-magician who had been driven nearly to tears by the aethometer's
unveiling—was growing some of her own and proved more than happy to
share. When she'd received Arcus to hand off the plant, she made it clear that he needed only to say the word, and she would make the time to assist with
his work in whatever way she could.
Arcus had started growing the specimen in Craib's garden, magically
guiding its growth according to the book's instructions. The end goal was to
transform it into the "soma" described in the book—and now it sat right in
front of him.
Arcus found himself at a loss for words. As it turned out, soma was more
than just a plant. It was a tree, and a prodigiously sized tree at that. To think
that such a tiny plant could transform into an entire tree purely by magical
means. It had started to grow from the very first time Arcus cast magic on it,
and he'd kept it growing for months. It had grown so quickly that Arcus was
afraid he might have accidentally caused a kind of freakish genetic mutation.
He gave the trunk an experimental knock. It was as sturdy and thick as
any tree.
"If you ever wanted to take up carpentry, you now have the materials to
do so," Noah remarked when he had seen it.
"Hey, Arcus," said Craib, knocking Arcus out of his recollective fugue.
"Yeah?"
"I gave you the all clear to practice your magic in my garden. I never said
you could start your own forest in my backyard."
"It'd be too dangerous to do at my house, though," Arcus objected.
"Joshua and Celine would kill me."
"What, so my garden's fine? How d'you even get a tree to grow so big in
a few months, anyway?"
"Er... I don't actually know myself."
"Are you kidding me?"
"Aaaah! Ow! Ow! Stop it!" Arcus squirmed as his uncle ground his fist
lightly against his head. He really didn't like this habit of Craib's. He was
worried it would stunt his growth.
Arcus had created a tap-like device similar to the one used to harvest sap
from maple trees. When he fixed it into the bark, sap came out. Taking some
on his finger, he licked it.
"Huh. It's sweet."
The flavor was subtle, but there was a note of rich sweetness to it.
Craib followed his nephew's example. "What's your plan for this then,
Arcus?"
"What? Oh, um... Not telling!"
"Ah, right, so it's still a secret, huh? Well, I'll look forward to when you
can tell me, then," Craib said, heading back inside the house.
Arcus couldn't bring himself to admit that he was planning to brew
alcohol with it, though he didn't think Craib would be mad at him or
anything.
It's just...
For some reason, he felt like making the admission might spark some sort
of trouble, even though he knew he couldn't keep it a secret forever. Half of
him was tempted to give up on the whole thing.
"The next step is to put this stuff in a barrel with some yeast..."
Arcus wouldn't know which would work best until he tried it, but he was
hoping there was a winner among the varieties Noah already procured. In
terms of preservation, all he needed was the right seals on the barrels. There
were already seals in the cellar to keep it at a constant temperature. It took a
year for it to get to this point, but it now functioned as a mini distillery. It was
Craib who very kindly gave Arcus that space to work with, and, thanks to the
seals taking the place of electrical appliances, it was fit for a brewery's
purpose in the man's world. Aside from temperature regulation, Arcus could
manipulate the seals to freeze his products and ingredients as well.
"You know, maybe if seals really can do the same stuff as electronics,
our worlds don't need to be so different after all."
Without incantations or aether, seals weren't nearly as versatile as
ordinary spells. Regardless of their limitations, however, Arcus was prepared
to give this little hobby his best shot.