115
After a quick scrub, Milo sat in the Security Room with Fedwina on his lap. The small golem was wearing only her white knee-length coat and some lacy underwear she told him Mila had selected for her.
“She said you’d like it,” Fedwina said. “Do you?”
How could he say no?
Especially when his body betrayed him.
She hummed to herself as she whipped through her pad’s function, waiting until everything was ready.
As she did, Milo watched a recording of a dwarf ranting.
He still enjoyed watching them because it helped him understand the language more. He didn’t feel comfortable enough to have a proper conversation, and he was still slow while reading.
But he felt more positive about his ability.
He chuckled at the dwarf as he went off on a tangent. He was showing off the silicon seat, which the dwarf called a chip board. The chip board, the dwarf was saying, had flaws which could, in certain rare situations, cause fatal feedback loops.
This had to be fixed.
His idea was to create an alloy with the silicon to ensure it wasn’t so brittle.
This constant perfectionism was a source of amusement and awe to Milo. As a clocker, he could understand the need for perfection. If one gear was slightly unaligned, it could be catastrophic to a clock’s mechanism. So, he was used to thinking about precision and perfection.
But some of the things the dwarves complained about seemed very small.
And their passion for it bordered on the psychopathic as they raged at each other over the best way to do something.
The dwarf went off again, saying something like he thought one of the biggest problems with the current chip boards was they had a specific resonance.
He believed if they could change that resonance, they might be able to solve some other problem they had while at the same time preventing the feedback loop.
It sounded like no one else believed him.
At the end of his rant, the dwarf took a deep breath. He put the wafer of silicon down. Stared right ahead.
He looked tired.
Defeated.
It wasn’t often that Milo saw a dwarf wearing that expression.
He felt a chilling sense of sadness from the dwarf as he watched him wipe the sweat and the grime of his day off his glistening face before muttering softly and turning off the recording.
Not quite catching his words, Milo rewound them.
It sounded like the dwarf was wishing he was a woman.
Or was he wanting to be a better man? Or was it that he wanted to be with a woman?
The sentence was odd.
“He’s in, Milo,” Fedwina said, stealing his attention with a gentle wiggle in his lap. “Are you ready?”
“Sure,” he said. “Can you put it on the big screen?”
“Of course.” She put her pad down and flicked her hands in front of herself.
She was touching an invisible menu.
According to her, she had an extensive series of tabs and menus in her head. She could bring them up in front of her eyes and sift through everything for him using a mix of gestures and thoughts.
As she worked, he found himself feeling more odd.
It felt like his previous year was more personal. That he was completely involved with everything. He’d been the one to shoot Fergus, after all.
But this year, he felt his focus shift. He was becoming more like a master, he thought. The apprentice was stepping back. He was directing his golems rather than needing to go with them to do everything.
Last year, he was sure he would have gone with Tania and Mila to take care of Harry Jellickson. He’d have personally faced the corrupt investigator and maybe taken some form of revenge.
But he hadn’t felt the need to do that.
With Fedwina now showing him more of the Fortress and its capabilities, he was learning the scope of what he might one day achieve with it. And that scope wasn’t small. He needed to look at big pictures now.
Not little ones.
In the books he’d read, a leader was always at the front of the battle.
But in reality, that never happened. A leader was always hidden. Directing strategies and initiating plots.
Treating everything under him like a mess of gears.
A mess which, if combined correctly and working in coordination, would form a clock.
The screen burst into life in front of him, showing a level Milo distantly remembered. He smiled, remembering it. The zombie wave.
So many zombies.
He watched as Padrick Paddstone and the other two members of his team started to set themselves up. They weren’t doing too badly, he thought.
They had the idea a lot of students had.
Make a small kill box using one of the crypts before funneling the zombies through it. That way you only had to deal with them one or two at a time.
“We’ve got about twenty minutes,” Fedwina reminded him.
She seemed fairly eager to go out with the team. And to meet Cerena and her team. He’d expected her to prefer to stay in the Workshop, but instead she’d nodded eagerly and asked him what she would wear.
Her clothes were laid out on a workbench.
A Clack suddenly dropped from the vents and chittered to Fedwina, who smiled and petted its back before taking its crystal and offering another.
“Good job,” Milo told it as it gave him a low purr of gears and raced away again.
He wasn’t sure if it had done a good job or if the recordings it had just delivered would be more recordings of some of the students engaging in their own private times with each other.
But he gave the little golem the benefit of the doubt.
Fedwina opened a small gap in her hand and dropped the crystal into it. Her eyes went blank while Milo kept watching Paddstone do his thing.
“The Mage Court agents have arrived,” she told him. “Three are staying at a nearby inn. Two are meeting with the Headmaster.”
“Anything interesting?”
“Not very. They’re asking about the special investigator. They’ve admitted they’ve lost contact with him.”
“Well. They’ll find the bodies soon.”
Padrick’s group were starting their play. They picked off a few zombies while keeping close to their crypt.
She drifted off again, searching through the crystal’s contents in a way which was much more efficient than he could. He’d begun to rely on her for even more filtering of recordings.
Sometimes Tania had sent him some just to mess with him.
Fedwina seemed to understand when he was too busy for that sort of thing.
Having a Personal Assistant was kind of nice, he decided. No wonder the dwarves had worked so hard to make them perfect.
She wriggled around in his lap, making him groan.
Maybe a bit too perfect.
“We don’t have time for that,” he murmured to her.
“Time for what?” She glanced at him with an innocent look. “It’s not my fault if you’re being unprofessional.”
“I’m fairly sure it’s not professional to sit in my lap.”
“Where else should I sit?”
“In a chair?”
“Where’s the fun in that?”
“See? Unprofessional yourself.”
“Nonsense.” Fedwina pursed her lips. “Miss Farringham sent a message to her father. A Click managed to get a good view of the contents. They were coded.”
“Blast.”
“The code is simple, though,” she said. Her lips moved softly. “She’s advising dealing with you carefully and honestly. Isn’t that sweet?”
“Sure,” he mumbled. “I’m overwhelmed.”
She looked down, her bottom pressing hard against him. “Is that a euphemism?”
“No, it’s not one of those.”
“Oh.” She sniffed. “That’s a shame. Her letter also has personal observations of other students.
A list of some who are subordinate to her family who may have switched sides to the Paddstones.
She says one has approached her to say they were offered lands that are currently owned by the Farringhams. She speculates the Paddstones will want to strip their lands. ”
Listening to that, Milo sighed.
All the talk of war was frightening. He’d never seen a war. But he’d read about them. Mages would destroy towns and villages without caring who was in them. Hundreds of thousands would die.
All because one rich old man couldn’t get a seat on the Mage Court.
“How do I speak?”
“Hmm? To the boy?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll arrange it,” she said. Her green eyes suddenly lit up. “Go ahead. He’ll hear you now.”
Milo nodded.
He took another deep breath.
“Hi there, Padrick.”
On the screen, Padrick froze. And was almost snatched by a zombie.
He had to work hard to get loose. Shouting at his team that something was wrong, they ducked back into the crypt. And closed up the doorway with a heavy stone block. They were panicked.
Screaming at each other.
Milo watched, not really feeling any sense of satisfaction.
He’d had very minimal dealings with him. He didn’t like Padrick. But he couldn’t bring himself to hate him. Dislike was about as strong as he could manage.
“I said hello,” Milo said. “Aren’t you going to say hello back?”
“Milo?” Padrick’s face was now white. “Is that you?”
“It is. I’m flattered that you remember me.”
“How are you doing this?”
“Does it matter?”
“The Headmaster was helping you, then!”
“No,” Milo said. “No one knows I’m talking to you right now except my team.”
“What do you want? You want to use me to get to my father? I warn you, he won’t trade me for anything.”
“I know. I figured that much.”
“Then what?” Padrick paused, then looked up. “You’re gonna kill me?”
Milo saw no reason to lie. “Yes.”
The other two started shouting. Demanding to be let free.
Milo didn’t listen to them.
He had no reason to let them go.
What interested him was that Padrick didn’t say anything. He just stood there, with his hands at his sides. Fists clenched. “My father will come for you,” he said.
“I know.” Milo started sliding the options on the large screen.
“But I think if you die now, inside a dungeon, he’ll think it’s a Mage Court conspiracy.
Especially when he compares it to what happened to Fergus.
He might still think I had something to do with it, but I’m guessing you already confirmed I’m a normie and that I have crappy gear and a terrible wand. ”
Padrick’s face stiffened.
“That won’t change anything!”
“It’ll change enough that he’ll focus on the Court,” Milo said. “And if he can’t find me, he won’t look very hard. I might even be able to convince him that I’m dead if I’m lucky.”
“He’s not that stupid!”
“But he’ll be angry,” Milo said. “When he hears how you died, he’ll be so mad that he’ll be too emotional. Losing two sons? Both to the Academy. Both under strange circumstances? I think he’ll lose his mind. You told Jellickson he was already angry.”
Padrick gulped. “How do you know that?”
“It doesn’t matter. I just wanted to tell you. For me, this isn’t really very personal. I didn’t want to kill you. But if I let you go, you’ll come back anyway. This way, I can at least give him someone else to be mad at.”
“You can’t do this,” Padrick growled. “I’m a Paddstone. I’m his favorite right now, too. Milo, I’m worth more to you alive.”
“You’re really not.”
“Milo.” The other man’s voice rose in pitch. “Please.”
“I’m sorry, Padrick. But I did warn you that if you came after me, I’d kill you like I did your brother. And you went after Mila.” Milo let his voice go hard and cold, his finger hovering over the screen. “Goodbye.”
He turned off the audio, not wanting to hear anything more.
As he slid the options, Padrick shouted.
Ranted.
Screamed.
And then scrambled to the back of the crypt as the heavy stone block which formed the door suddenly cracked as zombies, their strength and stats raised to maximum, began punching their way through a barrier they shouldn’t have been able to.
There was no need to watch.
Milo patted Fedwina on the bottom and smiled. “Let’s go.”
“Already?” She wiggled on him again. “Are you sure?”
He nodded, looking away from the screen as zombies poured into the room.
“I’m sure this time,” he said softly. “I’ll make it up to you later, though.”
“Alright.” She hopped off his lap, turned quickly, and adjusted his collar. “You did good. You did right.”
“I hope so.”
As Milo walked away, Padrick fell. Zombies raced to carve his flesh. On the screen, Padrick’s silent screams played until the end.
But no one was watching.