Chapter 7
“Ah, try whatever that was again? And then perhaps explain what you’re doing in terms I might understand?
” Claudio heard Alexander’s voice from behind his shoulder.
Claudio snorted, then repeated the combination of incantation and a certain amount of bloody-mindedness learned from spending plenty of time with Orion, with a slight change to his stance, to see if that made the flow better.
This time, he raised a more visible light and heard three murmurs of approval from behind him.
“See, that’s why I wanted you here today.” Gabe just sounded delighted, the particular sound he got when the world had given him some new insight or inspiration he hadn’t expected. Also, perhaps, a bit smug.
Gabe had asked Claudio to join him, Alexander, and Orion for a particular problem they’d been trying to explore at the Council keep.
On a Sunday, so the chances of running into anyone else were at least a fair bit lower.
These days, one or two people might be around on a Sunday, but the consulting hours were on Saturdays.
Mother was not at home, Claudio thought, but she was certainly not here.
If she’d been in Wales, he’d have begged off and found somewhere else to be.
Or, well, she might be in Trellech, but that was a hundred and six miles as the crow flew.
If she came through the portal here, there’d be some warning.
Gabe was reliably kind about that. Mostly kind to Claudio, Gabe was clear on the priorities there.
Mother’s comfort came rather further down Gabe’s personal list.
Now Claudio turned around to find the three men watching him.
Alexander was leaning back against one table, not quite sitting on it.
Gabe was, in fact, perched on it, his feet swinging.
Orion was leaning against the bit of wall by the window, both hands behind him, making it clear he was having trouble containing himself a bit.
Claudio spread his hands out. “Applied alchemical theory, filtered through at least six arguments with Orion over the last decade?”
His friend and brother chortled at that. Gabe waved a hand. “See, that’s why we needed you. You know how I am about alchemy.”
“Grand, if you want things to explode or not explode, depending on the situation. Everything in the middle, much more shaky.” Claudio could and would tease right back.
His apprenticeship with Gabe had taught him many things.
Near the top of the list was how much Gabe loved having people tease and push a particular set of limits.
He argued it produced vastly better problem-solving, which was the entire reason the Penelopes existed.
Claudio had to admit Gabe was right, or at least that it was a mode that any Penelope should be able to apply as easily as the more logical and painstaking sort of working through a solution.
Gabe made a slight mock bow, which completely lacked any sense of dignity since he was sitting like a schoolboy. Alexander waved a hand. “Explain it, then?”
What they’d given him— with no context— was a pitcher of water.
It was a silver pitcher, rather than ceramic or glass.
From that, he had taken the hint that he could try things that might not be entirely a sensible idea with more fragile materials.
Alexander had simply said, “What do you make of that, in terms of resonance?” and let him get to it.
“Well, one complication is that the container’s silver.
Treated magically to be inert, obviously.
” That much he’d figured out instantly. “But the metal still reacts. Really, Gabe, you want to ask Rathna and Rowena about this? This is all about the mineral content.” There must be some reason Gabe hadn’t.
Now, Gabe just shrugged agreeably. “I presume you’re about to say that gold and copper wouldn’t have helped. We were fairly sure there was less silver in the mix.”
“Silver’s in all the lead bearing deposits, in at least trace amounts.
And in with the gold, too,” Claudio pointed out.
He knew Gabe knew this, even if it wasn’t particularly Alexander's or Orion’s usual stomping grounds.
Gabe waved a hand again, and Claudio sighed and went on.
“I’d need to isolate it to get further, but at least copper, gold, hornblende, epidote, tourmaline, and a fair bit of quartz.
But I’d expect quartz from anywhere near here.
” He tilted his head. “A bit of anatase, I think. Not heavily iron-bearing.”
Alexander leaned forward slightly, letting it show that he was on the hunt for something. “What do you make of the total composition? Or anything else about it.”
Claudio considered, then tried one more charm, something he hadn’t done yet. This time, the pitcher glowed brown-green. “Organic.” He frowned. “Not wood, though. Hair. No.” He considered and closed his eyes. “There was something Mother mentioned six months ago. But that’s not quite it.”
The others left him to it, not hurrying him.
He just could not call the specifics to mind, so he’d have to do it the other way round.
He took a breath, thinking about magic like a living thing, veins threading through.
Sap, he preferred to think of sap more than blood.
Here, he could sense the pitcher— or rather the water in the pitcher— as a distinct thing.
Something that, with a little work, could be precisely identified magically.
Alexander had a knack for that once he was given the specifics.
The grammar of thaumaturgical definition got easier if one had more working languages in your head to draw on.
Before he had time to think about it, he followed the impulse.
He trusted all three of the others to have his back.
And it wasn’t like he hadn’t done this sort of experimentation before.
They all knew that. It was a little like picking up his sense of himself and hurling it through the air.
This time, he came down into chilling water, but the sort of chill that was entirely refreshing and bracing.
He could feel it then, the way the magic was everywhere in the water.
Not some small piece of it. Magic, and something more than magic.
Claudio sucked in a breath, then said, “Dragons.” He knew then where it had come from. “The water below us.”
Before he could say anything more, there was the sound of feet on the floor, and Gabe’s hand on his back, between his shoulders. “Take a breath. Chair?” Claudio shook his head. He’d braced as he’d been trained. Isembard had never let him slack on that bit of preparation. He just needed a minute.
The hand stayed there, but he could hear Orion now moving to go and pour something, then come back.
He could always tell when it was Orion. There was a core of a banked fire, just waiting to expand.
Not dangerously, not most of the time, but that fierceness was always just under the surface.
When Claudio opened his eyes, Orion was holding out a mug of tea in one hand and Claudio’s satchel in the other.
Claudio shook his head. “All right. Let me sit. Why is a pitcher of water from below this castle sitting on the table, and what did you think I could do with it that you three couldn’t?”
Gabe, behind him, nudged him toward the table, pulling out a chair and then sliding into the one next to him.
Orion and Alexander went around to the ones on the other side.
“We use the water for the ordinary needs of the building. Not directly from the pool, but from the stream outside. But what if we were more deliberate about that? Using it as a source to, what’s the word, lubricate?
Specific kinds of magical work, or the goodwill of the Council. ”
Claudio sucked in a breath, but he cupped his hands around the mug and took a sip before speaking.
He kept not quite focusing on the tapestry on the wall opposite, the way the shades and colours didn’t quite stay fixed in his vision.
His thoughts were whirling. “There are limits on what you can do without telling people. You especially.”
“And with good reason. But is it worth exploring the options? That’s the question.
” Gabe leaned back, and then it was a good half hour of wrangling through the options.
The question of consent, of course, was early.
But Claudio himself pointed out that the mineral content suggested a base that would take certain kinds of blessing or other ritual enchantments particularly well.
Quartz had a long use for protection, epidote for amplification.
Tourmaline was a frequent choice for protective talismans, but also for healing and health.
And hornblende was entirely relevant to illusion, so it might do particularly well to supplement the protective illusions around magical spaces.
Or as a component in some potion or fertiliser to support fields still damaged by the war or flooding, a rebalancing that was desperately needed in too many places.
The debate was well-balanced, too. Orion had obviously been giving some serious thought to the strategic and tactical considerations— including how much they might reasonably draw from the pool without causing harm.
No one had an entirely good answer to what the addition of dragon scales might do to any of it.
The dragons that had been pinned down here for some centuries, until Merlin Ambrosius had released them, had not been custos dragons.
There were studies about the materials of their scales.
But almost certainly, that’s where some of the concentration of copper and gold came from.
That part would take more research from someone.