"Your teeth? You chewed through your bonds with your teeth?"
"Yep."
"But... surely your hands were tied behind your back!"
"Yeah, but drones tend to be flexible."
I pondered that for a minute. "Fine, but there is no way you could have chewed through mage restraints."
"I had all night."
"But there are shards of glass embedded in them."
"Well I can spit acid."
"How does that help you chew through glass?"
"It's more around than through," Skids said with an air of authority. "So then I had to get out of a locked storeroom. The door and walls were all quite secure, so I didn't even waste my time on them. But the floorboards weren't too hard to pry up. I thought there might be some crawlspace under the building, but instead I found a cellar."
"That is the first part I actually believe," I said, letting Skids know I was onto dro's lies.
"You don't believe about the acid spit?" Skids asked, affronted.
"I do not know what to think about that part. But you definitely did not chew through the restraints."
"Because of the glass?"
"Because if you had, you would know that there was no glass."
Skids shifted dro's posture on the spinnerbike. "Ohhhh. Well played, you got me."
"I sure did," I said, succeeding with some effort not to sound too relieved. In truth, I had no idea how mages were restrained, so my false detail had been a complete guess. If Skids had stuck to dro's story and accused me of lying, my trick would not have worked. But I did not want to let drome know that, or it might not work again. "Now, what really happened?"
I both saw and felt Skids shrug. "Fine, I'll tell you, but keep this between us. I keep a selection of small tools in my gloves, for convenience. Luckily the lock was fairly simple to pick."
"You can pick locks?" That was not a skill I had expected Skids to have. "Is that something you practice a lot?"
"Nah, mages don't use locks like that at all."
"Then how?"
It took a while for Skids to answer. "Necessity," Dro said with a note of resignation.
"It took you a few hours," I realised.
Skids sighed. "Yeah. But it wasn't that hard once I figured it out. Remember, I couldn't see what I was doing. It's a good thing for me that the lock only had a few moving parts. But it seems like rather poor security. I can't imagine a lock like that keeping a determined person in or out for long."
"I suppose not. None of the Pure would dare try to pick a lock. Most locks we have only need to keep children from wandering in, or deter raiders who might try running in."
"Ah," Skids said knowingly. "No need to improve something that's good enough at what it's used for."
I had always found such sentiments frustrating. "I suppose, but that seems rather limiting. If everyone thought that way, we would never have any faster trains, stronger wagons, or better mirror layouts for hotter boilers. Not unless the Great Maker himself came down and told us directly."
"You sound like the seers when a carer tells sheem to stick with administration and resource allocation instead of making... I dunno... a lighter aetherbottle so winjeels can lift more. 'If we needed to know, the Over Seer would tell us,' rall say."
"The Over Seer? Is that a chief seer in charge of all the other seers?"
"No, the Over Seer. The one who gave humanity the gift of magic?" Skids prompted, sounding confused that I did not know about this person I had never heard of.
"You mean Mortlock? The one who tempted... I mean offered magic to humanity, creating the first fallen ones... sorry, I mean mages?"
"What? Mortlock is what mages call..."
I waited for Skids to finish that, but dro did not. "The mages call who?" I prompted, intrigued by the potential information.
"You wouldn't understand," Skids said eventually.
"Only if you fail to explain it properly," I said, confident dro was wrong about that. "Try me."
"I mean, you're not ready to accept the truth."
"I think I have been rather accepting. Just look at where I am and what I am doing!"
"If saving your city from a spinnerbike explosion was enough to erase any trouble from the clerics and you could go home with your 'family' tonight, would you?"
"Of course! They are my family! I belong there, and they need me. Magic is interesting and convenient and maybe not as... evil as the clerics teach, but... I belong with my people."
"Your people, who will destroy anything they do not understand, because they've been taught to fear unseen forces?"
"Unseen forces are not meant for mortals! When we manipulate the unseen, we trespass on the Great Maker's domain. Your magic may seem harmless, but in the end it will only bring devastation and regret. Even if it is not actually evil, that does not make it safe."
"And who is this 'Great Maker' you keep talking about?"
"The Great Maker made all. Sky and land, water and metal, plants and beasts. The Great Maker told us how to live in harmony with his world and with one another, and gifted us with knowledge of the holy makings of glass."
"Have you ever met or even seen this 'Great Maker'?"
"Not personally. He usually only visits Empyreal, and only a few times in a generation. But I have seen his messengers a few times. Have... have you seen the 'Over Seer'?"
Skids chuckled awkwardly, or so it seemed to me. "Almost."
"Almost?"
"I was... asleep at the time. But practically everyone I know did see him."
"Oh." I thought over everything Skids had said. "When you said that the Over Seer gave humanity the gift of magic, did you mean all humanity?"
Skids took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. I knew what the answer would be before dro spoke. "Yeah. According to what the carers teach, there was a time when there was magic across all the world."
"But... Mortlock?" I guessed.
"Mortlock convinced a bunch of people that magic was evil and... everything was destroyed. Almost everything. That's why mages hide underground."
"Oh."
"I guess I misjudged you. You're surprisingly accepting of this," Skids said.
"I comprehend it," I clarified. "I understand the logic, the patterns. That does not imply I believe any of it."
It was Skids' turn to say, "Oh."
We continued on without speaking for a few minutes. I very carefully looked around. I had never seen any of this landscape before, having only been on this stretch of track once before, the previous night. It did not look much different than any other part of the landscape though. Just endless hills and plains. Trees, shrubs, and grasses. Grazing animals in various herds, flocks, and mobs. No structures, of course. No one bothered trying to build anything past the edges of the safe zone. Everyone knew they would soon attract the demons, and all their work would be undone. Consumed.
Skids broke the silence. "They can't both be right."
"Hmm?"
"The histories. Either everyone used magic and then some rejected it, or else originally no one had it and just some were given it. It can't be both."
"The Great Maker does not lie."
"I thought you said that magic might not actually be as 'evil' as you were told."
"Technically the Codex of Purity says magic is dangerous and corrupting. 'Evil' is an interpretation of that."
"Well from what I've heard, the Over Seer has no reason to lie about..." Skids stopped, as if to think about what dro had been saying.
"About...?"
"Now that I think about it, no one says magic is inherently 'safe'. It's powerful and should be handled with care. Aether doubly so."
"Maybe this is a difference of interpretation?" I suggested.
"That doesn't help with the history problem. Either Mortlock tricked the first mages into accepting magic, or else she tricked the first 'pure' into rejecting it."
"She," I repeated. "As in, Mortlock is a seer, in mage history?"
"A lying seer who removed knowledge instead of seeking it out, and who rejected and overturned the system of roles, but yes, a seer."
"Curious. In our legends, Mortlock was a woman."
"Our Mortlock wished to birth a child, and when she could not, stole the Over Seer's apprentice as a 'daughter'."
"This is just getting weirder by the minute," I said. "We have a whole big thing about magic being responsible for the Great Maker's daughter being destroyed, and Mortlock preventing her from being restored. The clerics argue a lot over the interpretation of that."
"Yeah. I've heard that the seers and carers argue a lot over that sort of thing too. If it's not that, it's whether the idea of an ancient magical world is real or instructional."
"Mmhmm," I agreed. "Sounds like prehistorians."
"The what now?"
"Clerics who say the existence of relics proves that the tales of the dreamtime are not just metaphors for how the Great Maker created the world, but are hints at a prior history. They claim that there was a real physical existence before recorded history, which could potentially be known through study. They... are not well respected."
"You know far too many details about all this boring stuff," Skids said. "Do yall top-dwellers have any sports?"
"Sports?"
"Organised competitive games?"
"Oh, you mean board games? Black and white pieces on squares?" Sometimes the clerics engaged in such things as a test of mental prowess. It could get quite competitive, but I had been taught that such pursuits were quite impractical.
"No, no, physical games. Kicking or throwing a ball into a goal on a field?"
"Fields are for growing food in. We do not have space to spare for games."
"Wow, you have no idea what you're missing out on! Let me tell you about chroma, the greatest sport of all time..."
Five hours later — actually it was only a fraction of that, but it felt longer — Skids had run out of increasingly bizarre rules and regulations to list for the so-called 'greatest sport'. The main thing I had managed to gather about 'chroma' was that it got its name from the team composition: six players, one of each of the roles. Also, it seemed incredibly violent. I had not had any choice besides 'letting' Skids talk on, as I had no idea how to stop the voice-throwing magic in our helmets. Actually, Skids might not have actually run out of things to say about the sport, but had stopped because Deepbloom was growing large on the horizon.
"Alright everyone, we're getting near to the city. If we're lucky, a patrol won't spot us in time to turn us into, um..."
"Pincushions?" I suggested.
"Sure, whatever that is. Feels right though. Anyhow, Charity needs to send a message as a backup to stop all the inflammable air from doing very bad things to the city she's from. That means very briefly stopping at the station. It's a risk, but it's worth it to ensure we prevent a lot of people from dying."
"I think we know the real reason why you want that," said Cards rather nastily. It came as a shock to hear the caster's voice after all this time, even though ra's spinnerbike had been ahead of ours the whole time, and I knew Skids was addressing more than just me now.
"Yeah, have to keep the daycrawlers happy if you want to find—" Spire's words cut off with a painful crackling sound.
"No interruptions," Skids said curtly. "Here's the plan..."
"That went well."
"Very well!"
"Thall's sun-cooked patrol never saw us coming."
"But they sure saw us leave!"
"Hush, both of you," Skids said to the casters. "That was the easy part. We still have to get through Exaltation. And they'll probably know we're coming."
"They will," I said. "The heliograph is active."
"How can you tell?" Skids asked.
"I saw the flag on the tower we just passed. That is a signal that a message is in progress."
"I thought you said they signalled using sunlight," Cards said.
"Yeah, if they have sun signals, why use flags?" Spire added.
"They put a flag up at a station to show the next station that they have a message to send. The next station signals back with another flag when they're ready to receive the message. It saves a lot of unnecessary flashing while waiting for the other tower to notice and respond."
"Why use sunlight at all?"
"Yeah, if the flags work, why not just use those?"
I tried not to groan. "We are the sun people, not the flag people. Besides, flashing a mirror is a lot less work than waving flags around for hours."
"Fair enough."
"Yeah, that sounds like a lot of work."
This time, Skids had something to add. "Why not have some sort of steam-powered contraption with gears and levers to wave the flags for yall?"
I saw that the idea had potential, but it would never catch on. "That is not a bad idea... but the answer is probably, 'Why waste steam on something a trainee cleric can do?'"
"At least the contraption won't accidentally drop a flag or a mirror in the middle of sending an important message," Cards said.
"Good point, wouldn't want some vital communication to be fumbled and blown away by the wind," Spire added pointedly.
I could feel my cheeks turning a shade darker, and was glad that no one could see my face. "Uh, thanks for catching my paper, Spire. I owe you."
"You sure do," Spire said.
"That she does," Cards added.
I blinked, feeling unbalanced by the fact that Spire had answered first. "Sorry about that. I'm... clumsy."
"You sure—" Cards' voice cut off mid-sentence.
"Give Charity a break, sall."
"Charity nearly gave you a break!"
"You're lucky she hit you in the helmet, not the goggles!"
As mean as they were, they were also correct. I had badly fumbled my vital message, and I had flailed madly and hit Skids rather hard in the side of the head. My hand would be sore for a while longer. At least it was the right hand hurting for a change. Actually, I had recently hurt it knocking too hard on Timothy's door. Why did I keep hurting my hands? Maybe I should get some gloves, like Skids. Especially since I was on a bike moving faster than a train.
"Listen, the message was delivered and we all contributed. I don't want to hear any more about it," Skids said with authority. "Maybe it's already being relayed to Exaltation."
"Most likely they are telling the Exaltation patrols to expect us," I said, stating the bleak truth. "But if they are already sending on my message too, that would be ideal."
"If they're sending your message, why do we all need to go ourselves?" Cards asked.
"Yeah, what are we risking our lives and freedom for?" Spire added.
"There is no guaranteed that they will believe and follow my warning," I said. "And Skids needs to get the spinnerbike back, remember? Or have you already forgotten why you said you were following Skids?"
"Right, but do you need to be here?"
"Perhaps you and Skids should wait while the combat ready people — that's us — go after the bike. Just tell us where to find it, and we'll get it done far more safely than if we have to keep the two of you safe too," Spire suggested to me.
"Thank you, but I need to see that my people are safe."
"You mean you don't trust us."
"Why would she trust us?"
"Why should we trust her?"
"Why does Skids trust her?"
"You know how it is with Skids, dro will trust anyone who might help with dro's quest for answ—"
"Enough!" Skids cut in. "I'll make the first pass with Charity, to check whether the spinnerbike is about to be 'purified'. If so, I'll ventril yall to follow behind us to grab it. Spire can ride it out... Wait, no, the fork's still bent. I forgot I never got a chance to fix that. Uh..."
"How bad is it?" Cards asked.
"Is it ridable?" Spire added.
"Technically... I suppose if you stayed in a straight line and kept your weight far back... Yeah I think it's just ridable enough to get away with it. It's a risk, but it would be far safer than walking it away from an angry mob."
"Does it have to be me on the damaged explosive bike?" Spire asked.
"Yeah," Cards answered.
Spire had evidently been hoping for a longer response. "Yeah what?"
"Nothing, just 'yeah'."
"Hey, wait just a minute! You owe me for that dangerope!"
"Oh really? You owe me a lot more for—" The voice cut out again.
"So sall will be arguing over that for a while. Want to hear more about chroma?"
Oh no. "I don't really get the point of—"
"Great, I'll explain it to you!"
Ohh noo.
"They've spotted us! Hold on tight, this part's going to get technical!" Skids yelled with mixed terror and glee.
I held on, remembering to grip my wrists to keep my arms locked together, rather than squeezing Skids' ribs.
Ahead of us, the casters' bike hopped the rails to switch onto riding the down line. Skids copied the action, avoiding the massive obstacle on the track we had been following. Unlike Deepbloom, Exaltation's station was occupied by a train, which was stopped at the platform as if to drop off passengers just arrived from Deepbloom. But that could not be right. The morning passenger train through Exaltation should be long gone. There shouldn't be anything from Empyreal for a while yet, and there shouldn't be any trains to or from Yuffin today at all.
This was not a passenger train. These were freight cars. A lot of them, extending well beyond the platform, blocking off one side of the tunnel for as far as I could see around the gentle curve. There was ony one reason why these obstacles were here now.
"It's a—"
A piercing steam whistle drowned out my warning while rendering it redundant.
My mind was already racing ahead, sorting through the potential escape options. There had to be more going on than just the wagons blocking one track and an oncoming train on the other. There had to be patrolmen waiting for us to stop, or to try riding slowly in the very narrow gap between the two trains.
Doors on the wagons slid open, revealing the expected patrolmen. Passengers on the platform raised crossbows, revealing that they too were patrolmen.
I was not seeing any potential escape options. The only way forward was too narrow to allow any dodging or speed, and any attempt at going back would require us to stop and turn around.
The casters' spinnerbike took flight. No, it bounded off the ground, landing on the platform while still moving forward at speed. Landing on the platform amid the waiting patrolmen.
"Brace!" Skids practically shrieked, a moment before our spinnerbike sprang up and onto the platform.
The patrolmen were already responding. To our great benefit, they had all reacted by springing out of the way of the roaring spinnerbikes. They had all trained for shooting things at a distance. None of them had trained for shooting a loud and swift magical vehicle right amongst them. Their only instinct was to get out of the way. As far as I was concerned, it was the correct instinct.
"The ramp to street level is to your right," I shouted, hoping I was heard. I was relieved and thankful that we were not in Empyreal, which boasted elevators as the primary connection between the station level and the streets above. The spinnerbikes probably would have fit inside, but even if we'd made it in alive, the clerics could easily cut the steam power and leave us motionless, or even trapped inside. A ramp could not be so easily deactivated.
Cards either heard me or spotted the ramp, and Skids was close behind.
Another reason to be glad we were not in Empyreal was that it was home to a lot more people and patrolmen than my hometown. Exaltation's population was only three quarters of that of Forrester's Crossing. Given the number of patrolmen I had seen in the station, I calculated we would be entirely clear of them very soon. Once we were up the ramp we could follow the street to the edge of the city and should be able to join back up with the rail line to Forrester's Crossing fairly easy.
It was not that easy. As soon as we were at street level, I was reminded of another fact about Exaltation which had been screaming in the back of my brain to be noticed, but had been ignored in favour of more imminent threats to my life. Exaltation was best known as the centre of weapons manufacture, especially crossbows. The number of men officially in the patrol was low, but just about everyone else was armed and crazy about marksmanship. Also some were actually crazy enough to try firing at an unknown moving vehicle in the middle of a city.
A few wild minutes later, I thought we were clear. A trio of armed citizens popped up from behind a hedge ahead of us, proving otherwise. Spire began throwing something at them, and two leapt for safety. The third was steadier, and proved to be a good aim as well. Not quite good enough to hit a person, but he clearly hit the lead spinnerbike. Now barely under Cards' control, it began weaving even more wildly, more like a fish swimming than a vehicle rolling. But despite that, sa kept it moving roughly forwards, away from the city and the crossbowman. As Skids passed him closely enough that I could guess at the length of his long grey beard, dro did something to send up an especially large plume of dust from the back tire, obscuring our retreat.
Cards stopped the damaged spinnerbike what I hoped was a safe distance from the city. Spire sprang off the seat, flopped down in the grass, and began kissing the ground with what I hoped was exaggerated relief. I could understand the sentiment though. My heart was pumping hard enough to water all our crops for a week, or so it felt.
"How bad is it?" Skids asked, staying seated on our bike. I stayed too, as this was not a scheduled stop.
"I lost my lunch!" Spire exclaimed.
"You haven't eaten your lunch yet," Cards argued.
"Never mind that, what did you throw at those people?" I demanded. "Was it anything dangerous?" While I was very glad that we had all escaped harm, I did not want anyone else hurt either. The armed bystanders were just protecting their home from what they thought was a threat. I did not wish harm or exile on anyone for being defensive without malice.
"Not unless they have food allergies," Spire said, sounding disappointed. "That was my lunch!"
"Oh, sorry."
Skids made an impatient cough. "The damage?"
"Just the back tire, nothing else that matters now. I think I can have us back up and going in six minutes."
"Five," Spire amended.
"We'll go ahead, you try to catch up," Skids said. Dro consulted a tiny scryer which was mounted on the spinnerbike's handlebars, and seemed to be magically linked with the larger scryer in dro's backpack. It only showed limited information — mainly the current time — but it was far more convenient than retrieving the scryer from the backpack, which was lashed onto the bike behind me. "We're still on schedule to arrive in Forrester's Crossing by 11:45. Well, 11:46 now. Don't push it too hard though, or you won't have enough aether to get clear."
"Or we could switch bikes and you try to catch up," Cards said.
"It shouldn't matter. Our first aetherbottles had more left than we'd allowed for when we switched over, so we can afford to push it a bit. Our calculations of power savings from daytime running were on the conservative side," Spire argued.
"We're going ahead," Skids said in a tone that left no room for argument. "My bike, her people, our responsibility. But please do catch up, or Charity will have to wheel the bike out while I resort to stunning people."
"I have spare weapons," Spire suggested, reaching for one of the objects on ra's belt.
"No," was all Skids said, and then we were off.
"Are you sure we can make it before noon?" I asked, feeling rather anxious, and having difficulty at judging the lengths of shadows while we were moving at high speed.
"Definitely. Maybe only twelve minutes before, but that should be enough time to interrupt a purifying."
"Purification, but yes, it's plenty of time. And there's still the chance that no one found your bike yet." I really hoped that was the case, but it was a desperate hope with no real belief to it. I had both caused and avoided too many disasters in the past few days for this to go right.
"That would simplify matters a lot. How easily can we tell if that's the case?"
"If there's a crowd around the blacksmith and tables of food like yesterday, then they found it. It should be easy to tell." Unless there was a ceremony on for some other reason. Though we'd just had a ceremony yesterday, so that seemed unlikely to me. In fact, if the spinnerbike had been found, today's purification might be kept very low key, with only the directly involved parties present. But on the other hand, everyone welcomed an extra excuse for a social event. And given the cancellation of Forty Thousand Day...
"Hello, Charity? Can you hear this?"
"Huh? Oh, sorry, I wasn't listening."
"I was just saying that's good. Were you worrying over the details?"
"...Maybe."
"Then I'll try to keep your mind off it for a while. Since you don't have any sports, what do you do for fun? Board games, did you say?"
"I much prefer to read. Learning in general, actually. Understanding how things work."
"Learning, for fun?" Skids did not seem to believe me.
"Yes, really! It's all about spotting patterns and understanding what relates to what. There's something... beautiful, about understanding how the world fits together, and how everything affects everything else..."
The casters caught up with us a few minutes after Forrester's Crossing was clearly visible ahead of us. Skids filled them in on the details I had shared, and we clarified our plans in response to the various possibilities, including what to do if my warning had been heeded and the bike had been moved elsewhere for safety. In that case, we would have to find out where that was so we could retrieve it. Fortunately, both Cards and Spire had some nonlethal weapon options, which greatly increased their usefulness.
"So we're all clear? No more questions? Good. We're just a couple of minutes out, and it's about to hit 11:45, so we're fine for time.
"Thanks," I said. This was my chance to say a few encouraging words before the action started. "Thank you all. Whatever happens, we are trying to save lives — my people's lives — and that is a n—" My speech was cut off by the explosion.