Della opens the doorway to the trophy room, nodding to the two bloodkin standing guard. They regard her disinterestedly; along with the stables and the dojo, the trophy room has become part of her nightly routine.
She
walks through the windowless tangle of climate-controlled halls, housing all
manner of trinkets that look like they belong in a museum. Here is a painting, here a sword; there a
book, there a pendant; a scroll under glass, made delicate by age; a device of
unknown purpose, corroded almost to dust.
Unlike a museum, there are no explanatory placards declaring the name
and origin of each item to all passersby – Della can only guess at what was
acquired when, to say nothing of the how of the matter. That would have to wait for another
conversation with Thomas, some other night.
Her
first time in the trophy room, just a few nights ago, Thomas had walked her
through to the central chamber without a word.
Her senses had sharpened – yes, sharpened
was the word, as though ground against a whetstone until keen and raw. Her reflexes had quickened, not smoothly and
all at once, but in fits and starts, a macabre echo of puberty. One night in the dojo, it came to a
head: Della was restless, anxious, itching
for some action as she had been just a few nights earlier, but not even an “advanced”
lesson from Jamie could calm her down. Jamie
saw it, then, in Della’s eyes – Della had been feeling it all night, but Jamie already
had a name for it:
“Ahh,”
she’d said, “You need to hunt.”
“Hmph. You should ask Thomas about magic one night,”
Jamie replied. “This is just biology.”
And
so she had, when the Elder had had a free moment to spare. He had brought her up to the trophy room, the
very top floor of the building, silent the whole way. He walked her briskly through the tangled
halls, heedless of the wonders that raced off from every intersection, arriving
at last at a large and vaguely cross-shaped chamber at the center of the floor.
There
were but three items on display in this room, each upon its own pedestal
beneath a skylight that let the waning crescent moon shine meekly in. At Della’s left, there was a simple
sword: a longsword, simple in its
construction but showing the telltale signs of much use. The steel cross-guard was battered, the
pommel ‘s decoration worn nearly smooth, the blade stained and chipped from
forte to foible in a testament to battles beyond counting. The leather grip, worn and aged, matched the
scabbard displayed beneath.
To
the right was a medium-sized wooden box, not quite a chest, covered with
intricate carvings worn nearly smooth from age and handling. The carvings were a pattern, not a picture,
but Della felt as though she could trace those knots for hours without coming
back to where she’d started.
The
center pedestal held an hourglass in a simple three-legged stand. It alone in this room was under glass, and
Della saw many keyholes recessed into the pedestal beneath. She stooped to examine the hourglass at its
own level, careful not to smudge her nose upon the glass but otherwise getting
as close as she could. White grains of
sand fell like snow from the top, while black grains rose like ash from the
bottom, twisting and billowing among each other as they passed. Now it was a cloud, now a tornado, now a
wave; the endless swirling of the sands was hypnotic.
“So
you want to know about magic,” Thomas asked.
“There you can see a fair bit of it on display.” He let her gawk a few moments more before
continuing. “Can you see what is magical
about it?”
“Well,”
Della said, wanting to state the obvious but fearing she was missing something,
“For one thing, the black sand goes up.
That seems magical. For another
thing, the sand never piles up anywhere – it just keeps going from one end to the
other.”
“Look
closer.”
“Ah,
there’s a – a mirror at the bottom. One
at the top, too. So they – hmm…” Della squinted, focused all her attention,
tried to watch the individual grains as they ran into the – no, it couldn’t be. And yet, there it was – disbelief held her
rapt for a long moment, then she found her words again. “So a white grain falls down, it touches the
mirror, then it turns into a black grain and starts floating up. And then – yeah, at the top, the reverse
happens.” She stood, looked back at
Thomas, screwed up her face in confusion.
“How does it do that?”
“How
should I know,” Thomas asked with a shrug. “You
wanted to see magic. There it is. Now you ask me for an explanation? Explanations must invoke mechanisms. Mechanisms imply replicable results. Replicable results are the stuff of science.” The condescending tone in his voice was
unmistakable, but there was a challenge beneath it.
“But
it has to work somehow,” Della
protested.
“Does
it, now?” Thomas arched an eyebrow.
“Well,
yeah,” Della exclaimed, grasping at straws.
“Otherwise – if it worked a different way, it wouldn’t work this way, and if it worked no particular way, then it wouldn’t be
so – so – so regular about it all!”
Della looked back at the hourglass, then back at Thomas. “It is
always like this, right?”
Thomas
nodded. “For at least the last several
hundred years. Every moment we’ve cared
to look at it.”
Della
looked back at the hourglass, trying to divine some new insight. After some seconds, Thomas sighed.
“You
have the long and the short of it,” he said at last, “It has to work somehow.
It works one way, and not any other way. Yet it does so by mechanisms we cannot
comprehend. And so we call it ‘magic.’ But this is really a misnomer, isn’t it? For it was made, and it was made by someone
who clearly did comprehend the
mechanisms behind its function. And so,
for this unnamed maker, it was no magic, but technology: a known
principle, exploited to some purpose.”
“And
what purpose would that be,” Della asked, her eyes fixed on the mirrors at the
hourglass’ bulbs.
“As
far as we can tell,” Thomas said with a sigh, “To look pretty.”
The
conversation had wound down from there, with talk of Clarke’s third law and the
naturalization of the supernatural. “Magic,”
on Thomas’ view, was simply a covert way of saying, “I give up trying to
understand this.” Della would not give
up, and so she came to the trophy room every night since, trying to divine some
hidden truth that had previously eluded her.
She took a different route each time, taking a different approach
through the various oddments collected throughout the ages, but always wound up
staring at the Sandstorm Hourglass.
Tonight,
the moon is a waxing crescent, the same thin sliver it was just four nights
ago, but mirrored like the grains in the hourglass. The gentle spotlights from the winding halls
are blocked out by the doors at the end of the four halls leading out of this
central chamber; Della’s vision, keen as it is, is reduced almost to black and
white. The sky is clear, though, and the
stark contrast accentuates the glint of the blade, the shadows on the box, the grains
of sand in the hourglass, the shadow passing above her –
Della
instinctively darts for the shadow of the hallway. She can feel her heart pounding in her chest –
she can hear it, coursing through her
ears – there it is again, in her
abdomen, the rhythmic thump-thump
threatening to burst through her skin.
She looks up at the skylight: no,
her eyes were not playing tricks on
her – there’s someone there. Someone
feeling at the glass. Della can see the
tiny detectors near the corners of the skylight panes, even from a dozen-odd
yards below.
The
intruder – female, shoulder-length black hair, white blouse – reaches for the
detector on her pane. Something in her
hand arcs – no, in the split-second before she is flash-blinded, Della can see
there was nothing in the intruder’s hand.
The smell of burnt circuitry descends from on high. Della watches as the intruder lays her hands
over the glass, pushes, and – her fingertips reach through the glass. She pulls
at it, molding it; the moonlight distorts into ripples through the now-pliant
glass, and Della can smell the warm city air wafting in from the expanding hole
in the skylight. A knotted rope, not
much thicker than Della’s thumb, drops down through the hole; the intruder soon
follows, in jeans with a black bag over one shoulder. Della can smell her: dust, roses, something citrus-y that Della
can’t quite place.
She
can’t hear her heartbeat, though.
It’s
something that Della had grown used to:
being able to hear a cacophony of heartbeats underscoring a roiling din
of conversation. Now, in the
near-silence, the only heartbeat Della hears is her own. Jamie said something about being able to
quiet one’s heartbeat, though – a nifty trick, though she hadn’t taught it to
Della yet. Now the intruder is pawing at
the casing over the Sandstorm Hourglass, pulling it back in ripples and
gobs. If she doesn’t do something –
“I
can’t let you take that.” Della steps
out from the shadows, summoning all the presence she can muster. The intruder turns on her heel, her athletic
shoes making a slight squeak on the
polished hardwood floor. In the second
she takes to size Della up, Della sees her face clearly: a young face, but worn; her skin is pale and
waxy in the moonlight; her cheeks are hollow, but not with hunger. There’s a placid emptiness behind her
startled eyes; then, recognition.
“You
again,” the intruder says after a moment.
Now Della takes another turn at being startled.
“I’ve
never seen you before in my life.”
“Ah,
but I have most certainly seen you,” the intruder replies, now at ease. “And now I am seeing double.” She glances pointedly over Della’s
shoulder. Della turns, quickly; nothing
is there – she turns back, and the intruder is reaching for the hourglass again.
“Hey!” Della reaches for her left shoulder – the intruder
swings her arm around in a circle, breaking Della’s grasp, but takes a step
back anyway, to Della’s right. “I said,
I can’t let you take that.”
“Then
it seems we are at an impasse.” The
intruder shrugs. They regard each other
for a moment. Della is positively itching for a fight, but she can’t read
anything from the intruder’s stance. She’s
just… standing there, just out of reach. “You can run and fetch your dogs, but I will
be gone. Or I could try again for your
trinket, but you would strike. So. Here we are.”
Yes, Della thinks, Here we are. She drops into
a combat stance. The intruder takes
another half-step back, tosses her empty bag at the foot of the hourglass’
pedestal. Della circles to her right,
around toward the wooden box, trying to pin her quarry between pedestals. The intruder stands, fecklessly upright, only
her eyes following Della. Della keeps
her distance, hoping she can out-bluff her opponent’s nonchalance –
It
doesn’t work. Right as Della would
achieve a position of advantage, the intruder smoothly steps wide away from
her, arcing toward the sword. Uh-oh.
But she makes no move to grab it.
She just – stands there,
looking imperious and unassailable. Her heartbeat. Of course.
Gotta minimize that activity. Can’t
give away a heartbeat. Della
focuses, formulates a plan of attack. “No
plan survives contact with the enemy,” Jamie told her a few nights ago in the
dojo. Nevertheless, any plan was better
than no plan at all – Della thinks three moves deep, then moves in: a right feint to the jaw.
As
expected, the intruder dodges ever so slightly – a half-step to her right, a
drop of her center of gravity. Della
follows up with a left jab, again at her opponent’s jaw – the intruder shifts
her weight, brings her own left hand up to deflect the blow. But she is slow, slower than Jamie during
practice – Della easily slips her right hand back in, her fingertips aligned to
deliver a pinpoint strike in the hollow of her opponent’s armpit.
She
doesn’t see it coming at all – Della connects, the intruder staggers – Della lunges
past her, grabs the longsword from its stand.
She has no formal training with weapons, but she imagines it as an
extension of her arm, swings it around to get a sense of its weight, then
balances it as she would her own fist, had it been extended a yard. Her stance is dropped comfortably back,
though her opponent has recovered and now faces her.
The
intruder gives nothing away, though: a
smile, a nod, a half-heard “hmph.”
Still, Della is satisfied – not first blood, but maybe first
contact. And now she has the advantage
of a weapon.
Three steps ahead worked last time, let’s
try five this time. Della bobs
about, watches her opponent’s gaze, then moves in – a feint with the tip of the
blade toward the intruder’s eyes. She
peels away to Della’s right, away from the hourglass; good. Withdrawing the blade, Della telegraphs a
haymaker with her left hand; as the intruder raises her right for the obvious
block, Della withdraws again, a left roundhouse kick already on its way. The intruder’s left forearm comes up to
block, even as her right elbow comes down – Della pulls back once more,
twisting just a bit out of stance to deliver a final feint with her left –
No –
no good. The intruder has seen through
the ruse, slams her left palm into Della’s sword arm. The blow connects, sending Della
off-balance. She shakes her head,
readies for another round – but the intruder is upon her, right fist leading
toward Della’s face. A swift, straight
punch – but Della sees it coming, dodges to her own right while she lifts the
tip of her blade toward the intruder’s heart.
No
deflection. It connects.
Della
plants her right foot, raises her center of gravity, and drives the blade
home. A cry – “Augh!” – a heartbeat – thump-thump – There it is! The intruder’s heart beats erratically,
fades, and goes silent once more as she falls to the floor. Della draws out the longsword, flicks the
blade to empty the fuller, wipes it on her own jeans and replaces it in its
stand.
“I
told you,” she says in triumph. “I can’t
let you take that.”
She
walks out of the room to fetch the guardsmen.
The halls wind before her; she traverses them with easy confidence.
“Hey,”
she says. The guards look up at
her. “Someone tried to break in.” The men look at each other in disbelief, look
back at Della. “Don’t worry, I got
her. C’mon.” The men gather themselves and follow her to
the central chamber of the trophy room.
But
the intruder is no longer there.
“No,
no, no,” Della says, “I stabbed her with that fucking sword. She was just here.”
The intruder isn’t all that’s
gone.
No comments:
Post a Comment