4 #2
“Why? Because it lets the rabble play at your game?”
Felix flicked a spark of arcana at Diana’s nose, and she poked him with a screwdriver.
“Precisely,” he said. “Power to the plebeians. Whenever did that end well?”
“Close your trap and test your aim,” she shot back, shoving him to face the far wall.
He leveled his hand at the target pinned there, then pressed his middle and index fingers together. The magnets engaged, and a bolt of arcana shot out—straight at the roof.
“Damn!” he exclaimed, flinching back. Diana snorted.
“It comes out of the fingertips, not the palms,” she said, angling his hand downward. “Try again.”
He did. The bolt struck the target, leaving a faint scorch on the inner rings.
“See? Effortless.”
“Precisely,” he murmured. The gauntlets did everything for him. Get rid of him, and they’d keep on doing it.
“That’s the sixth science for you,” Diana said, gesturing about the laboratory. “It’s the future, you know. You could always retrain.”
“And spend the rest of my days trying to make magic talk to machines? Heresy.”
“Say that the next time your privy won’t flush,” Diana muttered, moving back to her workbench. Felix unbuckled the gauntlets and followed.
They stood in the therical laboratory at the heights of Elysius Tower. Even Felix could tell that the place was state of the art. Everything gleamed in glass, brass and emberyn, ticking and whirring in perfect harmony.
A man could labor all his life for that vista, too.
The city’s heart gleamed white and gold around them.
A waterway enclosed it in a shimmering ring, and five great rivers spread like sunrays from the circle.
Highways ran above the waters, where phaetons sped and trade ships glided underneath.
Half a mile north, the Praetorium shone in marble splendor underneath a spring-blue sky.
“I’ll grant, your office has a better view than mine,” he said.
“Prima Gloriana found me a place here. She could do the same for you,” Diana pressed, taking back the gauntlets.
“I’ve a fine position in the prefecture.”
“Which bores you half to death,” she said, fixing him with a serious green stare.
“It’s a chance to be of service.”
“And having your powers smashed like pottery wasn’t service enough?” Diana exclaimed, smacking down the gauntlets on her desk. “It’s a miracle you got out when you did! Stop chewing that old bone, before it chokes you!”
Felix said nothing. There wasn’t really anything to say, except that even the worst of the prefecture paperwork was unlikely to choke him.
Diana leaned back against her workbench and shook her head, dragging her fingers through her glossy brown-gold hair.
“I’m sorry,” she said flatly. “I don’t mean to be harsh, Felix, but that wound just hastened the inevitable.
Think of the weavers. The mechanized loom rolled in, and within five years, handweaving was a dead art.
Therical devices can’t wield power better than a trained arcani, but they can wield a lot more of it, and they don’t have to stop for lunch. ”
“I never stopped for lunch.”
“That’s because you’re a complete splitwit.”
He raised an eyebrow at her, then betrayed a reluctant half-smile. He ruffled her hair, and she gave him a boisterous shove. At nineteen, she might be grown in the eyes of the law, but she hadn’t changed that much from the tomboyish ten-year-old he’d left behind.
“Speaking of lunch, my hour’s almost up,” he said, glancing to the clock.
“Very well. I’ll make some last adjustments to the gauntlets, and you can pick them up tomorrow,” Diana finished. “Off you go. Save Carintheum.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said.
Too late.
Felix crossed the skyborne rail exchange as high noon warmed the city.
It was a glorious day, with a crisp breeze carrying the blossoms of spring across Carintheum.
Glass spheres glided in and out of the station.
He took the next and cranked the lever for Patrium Hall, then settled into the velvet bench that ringed the carriage.
Two pretty ladies stepped in after him, dressed all in white.
He tipped his hat and made room for them.
Carintheum’s changed since you left, he thought. When he’d been brought to the imperial city as a boy, an unwed lady would never have joined a carriage with a young man unaccompanied.
Then again, he must’ve looked quite the gentleman these days.
His blue uniform shone back at him from the glass, with its golden braid and medals at the epaulets.
He still wore the seraph wings of valor, the Seventh Company crest and his phoenix token.
The silver spire, though, he’d learned to leave in its case.
It was the sign of an honorable wounded discharge, but he could no longer endure the stares—all those people eyeing him up for some sign of injury, too civil to ask what it was.
The carriage shuddered out onto the rails. He fought not to flinch as the world dropped away beneath him. For a man who’d once been able to fly, he now found himself curiously intolerant of heights.
It was a nuisance, since Carintheum was full of them.
With the river on three sides and the mountains behind, they’d run out of land half a century ago, so they’d invaded the skies instead.
What had sprung from necessity had soon become a game of one-upmanship, until thickets of thousand-foot towers speared into the sky like titans.
Bridges ran between the upper levels, and airships hovered at their tethers on the spires.
Not to be conquered, Felix forced himself to look down. The rivers of Carintheum spread out beneath him, cutting the city into its five ancient districts—military, mercantile, ceremonial, civil and residential.