Thirty-Four #2
Ky sits back in her chair, a wheeled contraption that rolls easily across the smooth floor of the workshop. She takes advantage of this by spinning herself slowly round and round, chewing on her lower lip.
“Let’s take this from the top,” she says eventually. “Bitey has BIND sigils in its paws.”
“Right.” I’m sitting at a desk, staring at a paper covered with messy wiring diagrams.
“It uses those to get ahold of someone and then bite them while they can’t evade.”
“Right.”
“And its core is in its belly, so once you’re caught it’s hard to strike back effectively.”
“Probably.” I yawn. “That’s how I’d build it, anyway, and Niami knows what she’s doing.”
“You don’t think Star can just avoid getting hit?”
“Star?”
[Analysis: unlikely. In order to deal damaging blows, I will need to engage at close range, where taking at least glancing attacks in return is unavoidable.]
“Star says no,” I translate. “Not if he has to get in close enough for a solid strike.”
Ky sends herself around another few spins.
I’m impressed at how quickly she’s grown used to including Star as a participant in these conversations; from her point of view, it’s as if I insisted on consulting my sword on battle tactics.
That’s mostly down to Star’s body language, I figure; spend time with him and he’ll make it clear he can understand you, even if you can’t hear his voice.
I have to admit it’s a profound relief to have someone else who knows all about him and doesn’t think I’m insane.
“So we need some way to get out of a BIND. Star’s not strong enough to just tear free?”
“Not if she’s reinforced it properly.”
“What about some kind of ablative piece?” She gets an excited look. “Like a lizard’s tail.”
“Sorry? What about a lizard’s tail?”
“Some lizards can purge their own tails,” Ky explains. “Like Star can do with his legs when they get damaged. So when something catches them by the tail, it falls off and they get away.”
“Wait, really? Lizards can do that?”
“That’s what I read, anyway,” Ky says a little defensively. “I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a real lizard.”
“You see them at the edges of the Heap sometimes. I caught one once.” I smile at the memory; I’d been no more than six. “Tasted like pork, but less fatty.”
Ky laughs out loud. “Sometimes I forget I’m dealing with a barbarian.”
“Excuse me for being hungry!” But I’m laughing, too. It’s easy to laugh with her.
“Anyway. What if Star had outer plates that he could purge when Bitey gets ahold? Then he could get away.”
“That… might work. But only once. Then we’d just be back where we started.” I shake my head. “What we really need is the opposite of BIND. A REPEL, something that pushes things away.”
“But?”
“But there’s no such thing. At least, I’ve never seen it.”
“So make one.”
I laugh. “That’s not how it works.”
“Why not? You made the sigil for BLAST, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, but that was just a modification of EXPLODE. A little tweak.”
“This wouldn’t be all that different. Here.” She vaults to her feet, sending her chair sailing backward, and bends over the worktable beside me. “The BIND sigil looks like this, right?”
She draws the character on the paper. I nod.
“It looks pretty close to the way we still write bind, right?” She jots down the common version of the word. The characters used in sigils are supposed to be from an older form of writing, more intricate and decorative but still often recognizable as precursors of the way we write today.
“So?” Stray hairs from her ponytail are tickling my neck, and when she leans forward her breast presses against my shoulder. I’m trying very hard not to be distracted.
“So we write repel like this, don’t we?” She scribbles it. “Same lower part, but the top is reversed. In that case, wouldn’t REPEL look like this?”
She writes another decorative character, BIND with the top half flipped horizontally. It certainly looks like the kind of thing you’d see on a sigil, and if I didn’t know what it meant I might even assume it was REPEL. But…
“I’m telling you, that’s not how it works. You can’t just guess the character. It has to be right.”
“How much do you know about making sigils?”
“Almost nothing!”
“Me neither,” she says, like it proves her point.
“And?”
“Nobody knows anything about it,” she says. “Down on Malkuth the workhouses crank out thousands of copies of a few basic characters”—she speaks hurriedly, eager to skip over that subject—“and otherwise we only use parts shipped down from Above.”
I frown. “I always assumed there was someone on Hod who knew how it all worked.”
Ky shakes her head. “We have sigworkers, obviously, but they just wire things together the same as you do. So who says this isn’t how it works? Maybe it’s just that nobody has tried it.”
“That seems unlikely. Anyone with a knife and a sigil blank can try—”
“Try, then,” she says. “We’ve got plenty of sigil blanks. What harm can it do?”
“Other than to my lifespan?” I mutter. But my fingertips are tingling, already anticipating the feel of the sigil in my hand. I sigh. “I guess we’re not making progress otherwise…”
I feel the tug on my spirit, and the sigils activate.
REPEL, linked to STRONG, FAST, and EXPLODE. A specialized sigwork built into the underside of Star’s shield that shoves anything in close proximity away, very hard and very fast, specifically negating the force of a BIND.
We’d tested it as best we could, but I didn’t know exactly what sigwork Niami used in Bitey’s paws. The results are even more spectacular than I’d imagined.
The blast radiates out as a visible blue-green shock wave, a translucent expanding bubble that pries Bitey’s paws off Star, then picks the huge tiger up and hurls it backward hard enough that its impact cracks the nearest wall.
An instant later I feel the wave of wind wash past us, and Niami throws her arm over her eyes against flying dust. At the center of it all, untouched, sits Star.
His shield emits wild ringing tones like a distorted bell.
He moves before anybody else can react. Bitey is on its back, all four legs in the air, clearly not a position it was ever designed to occupy—unlike a real cat, it’s not flexible enough to easily right itself.
Star lands on its belly, anchoring himself with four legs while the other four prepare to lance down into the tiger’s underside, seeking the knot of sigils at its core.
Beside me, Niami screams, a high keening sound. “Don’t!”
Star, stop!
[Query?!]
Because I understand. All Bitey’s complicated mannerisms—what a sentimental person might call its personality—are bound up in the geometry of its core. If Star tears that to shreds—
“Yield.” I grab Niami by the shoulder and turn her toward me. Her eyes are thick with tears. “Yield now.” Bitey is starting to recover; in another second Star will have no choice.
“Y-yield,” she says, as understanding dawns in her eyes. She raises her shaky voice to carry to the judge’s stand. “I yield!” And then she subvocalizes a command to the tiger, who instantly goes still.
“Niami has yielded,” Alzimyth snaps, his amplified voice buzzing and harsh. I look up to find him on his feet, standing at the edge of the platform as though to get as close to the action as possible. “Taj and Star are the victors.”
Without another word he turns and stalks away, like he’s discovered urgent business elsewhere. Hisham is left alone, gaping like a fish, as the sound of the crowd reaches new heights.
Once again I’m nearly knocked off my feet; this time Niami is hugging me, and she’s a lot bigger than Ky.
“Thank you,” she says. “Thank you thank you thank you. I don’t know what you did, but thank you for not hurting her.”
Her, I note. I endure the embrace for a few moments, holding my arms out uncertainly.
“I know you spent a long time on her core,” I say quietly. “It’s a work of art. I wouldn’t want to wreck it.”
“It’s stupid.” Niami sniffles. “I know she’s just a construct, I made her. But…”
“I get it. Sometimes I feel like Star hears every word I say.”
Niami nods miserably, then pulls back. Her face is wet with tears. “You know what this means, don’t you?”
“What?”
“You’re going to have to beat Quech for me.” She sniffs again. “Because fuck if we’re letting that bastard win. And you have to promise to at least send me a letter from Above.”