Chapter 16

“You don’t know the boy all that well,” Pesden said. “He wouldn’t be here if he didn’t have the stones. He means to put the bitch in the dirt.”

I winced.

“What? It’s the gods’ own truth, boy. He’s leaving out the promise he made when last he left.”

“Which promise would that be?” Kaze asked.

“Tell her, boy.”

There was no getting around it.

“I promised that when I came back, it would be to right my wrongs,” I said. “The last time I was here was right after Flir took the Crown’s pardon to set up her barony. The old man was sure it was only a matter of time before she broke bad again and told me to go kill her. I refused. So, he beat my ass, kicked me off his mountain, and told me not to come back until I was ready to pull my head out of my ass.”

“And here you are. Took you long enough.”

“How long ago was this?” Kaze asked.

“Oh, 200 years, give or take a decade or so. The fool’s been using the same musket all that time,” he said.

“Why fix what isn’t broken? Sure, it’s a little outdated, being smoothbore and all, but it’s enchanted to hell and back to make up for it.”

“‘A little outdated’, he said. Boy, that thing’s as much of an antique as I am. You’ll not leave this mountain until you take a new one.”

“I don’t want a new one,” I scoffed. “And I don’t have time to make one.”

“Who said anything about you making it? I’ve been preparing for this exact moment for 200 years. There’s one for the lass too, if she wants.”

“I’m not an ignimancer, sir,” Kaze said.

“Sure you are, you just don’t know it yet. You’ll see.”

“Bah. We don’t have time for this,” I said. “I came to ask you about the ley lines. We think Flir is trying to set up-”

“A resonance cascade that will blow the prime keystone, aye. I built the damn things. I know what she’s after,” the old man said. “Better yet, I can tell you exactly which ones she needs to take to do it. You can stop her cold.”

“But?”

“You want my help, you know my price. Three days, boy. That’s three days to train the lass and fit the stock. That’s all that’s left.”

I glanced at Kaze. After so long on the road, I knew she was curious about ingimancy. And if anyone was going to teach her, Pesden was the best. It was his art, and he knew it better than anyone.

“I’m willing to try,” she said. “Three days won’t make that much of a difference.”

“Good. Boy, show her how to pick a musket and meet me outside once she’s ready.”

He left with no small amount of groaning and bellyaching about his old joints.

“Don’t let him fool you,” I said. “He’s as limber as they come when abusing trainees.”

“He can’t be any harsher than Lady Flir.”

“Where do you think she learned it from?”

For the first time since I’d known her, something like panic flashed across her face.

I took Kaze on a brief tour around the cottage. There wasn’t much to see, other than a startling array of firelocks. Most of them I’d recognized. There wasn’t a speck of dust on any of them, but they’d been here for as long as I could remember, and would probably stay until long after I was dead.

“What’s this one?” she asked, pointing to a thin musket with a slender barrel and fat, round stock.

“Experimental air gun,” I said. “Rather than powder, it uses compressed air from a tank in the stock. It’s as quiet as a bow, and you can fire as fast as you can chamber a round, but it’s only good for twenty shots or so. After that, you’re pumping on the bellows for the next half hour.”

“Less than ideal,” she said. “And this?”

The next musket had an oversized shroud around the barrel, capped at the end. Its bore was tiny in comparison to mine, only thirteen centimeters.

“That shroud is called a muffler. Holes drilled in the end of the barrel allow gasses to escape into the shroud, where they expand more slowly. That muffles the sound. It’s not that much quieter, but it changes the report to something that’s hard to recognize as a gunshot.”

“Downsides?”

“Weight,” I said. “The muffler adds another kilogram to the musket, and at the worst possible part for the sake of balance. It’s also a pain to clean. There are about a dozen baffles that have to be fished out, scrubbed spotless, and screwed back into place.”

“I see. What would you pick if you were me?”

“Nothing on this rack. It’s all old tech,” I said. “Follow me.”

I led her up the stairs to the attic. There was an ancient bed in the corner, the mattress long since salvaged for gods knew what, and a shelf that used to be filled with books.

“My room,” I said. “He makes a point of storing the new stuff up here, just to needle me.”

“How thoughtful of him.”

“He cares, in his own way. He’s just not good at showing it.”

“I can see why you left.”

“There were reasons beyond Flir. He was furious when I wouldn’t let him experiment on me after getting cursed. The old man lives for magic. Ignimancy is just one side of his obsession.”

“Could he break the curse?”

“If anyone could, it’s him. Except, he’d break me in the process, and without it, I wouldn’t heal. Useful for the next fellow. Not so much for me. That’s not how he sees it, mind. He once cut off his own pecker to see if he could reattach it.”

“Did it work?”

“Oh, sure. He’ll show you the scar if you ask. That’s just how he is. Magic is a wonder to be understood, no matter the cost.”

“Suddenly Flir makes a lot more sense.”

“Don’t let him fool you,” I said. “She picked up a lot of her bad habits from him, and he encouraged it. He didn’t always think she was rotten.”

“So, why isn’t he running around with an army?”

“Outside of his research, the man doesn’t have a gram of ambition. He’s directly responsible for a dozen major breakthroughs in magical theory and application. The keystones alone could have made him wealthy beyond reason. Instead, he sold them at cost, just like every damn thing else. That’s what we argued about, by the by. I wanted him to jack the prices up on something frivolous so he could give them away to anyone who needed one. It would have worked. He’s just too stubborn to use a good idea that isn’t his.”

“That sounds like an incredibly lonely way to go through life.”

“You’d think, but he’s happy like this. He gets to play with his magic, and every few decades, an old apprentice drops by, so he has an excuse to show off.”

As I spoke, Kaze knelt down in front of a musket. Only, it didn’t seem right to call it a musket. It was much shorter, with a rifled bore and an octagonal outer barrel profile. The caliber was tiny, maybe ten millimeters. There was no obvious lock. Instead, there was a lever under the trigger, and a hammer at the rear of the brass receiver. There was no room for a flint or frizzen inside the brass housing.

“What the hell?”

I picked it up and, after a moment’s experimentation, pushed the lever down and forward. A heavy breech block shot rearward, a protrusion on the end cocking the hammer. There was what I presumed to be a feed ramp in the bottom of the receiver that lifted up. If there was a cartridge in the gun, it would have been positioned directly behind the chamber, ready to be rammed home from behind.

“Son of a two copper whore,” I breathed. “The old man really did it.”

“Did what? I don’t understand.”

“It’s a repeater,” I said. “He mentioned working on the technology, but it requires self contained cartridges. We never could figure out how to reliably strike a flint inside the chamber. Maybe he figured out a way to prime it without a flint.”

“May I?”

I passed her the little firelock. She gave it an experimental heft, then lifted it to her shoulder like I showed her. Unlike my musket, which was poorly balanced for her shorter frame, this one fit her like a glove.

“I think this is it,” she said. “It’s perfect.”

“It sure looks like it,” I said. “Go show the old man. I’m sure he’ll be insufferable.”