It was mid-morning by the time Astrid finally got her head around the capacitor circuit. The heating sphere, though, simply refused to cooperate. Inside its adamantine-wired depths, the source gem simply sputtered, flickered, sparked on and then, with an abrupt snap, sparked off. Astrid muttered soft curses and rose from the worktable. She wiped her hands on an oil-stained kitchen towel. The burnt oil still lay thick on her fingers, so she ran her palms against the fabric of her breeches and slumped back on the kitchen counter. It was going to be a long day. She fumbled for the handle of the ice-cabinet and took out a bottle of rose syrup sherbert. The ruby-red syrup had sunk to the bottom of the bottle, the thick layer of spiced milk sloshing noisily on top of it. Astrid shook the bottle until the contents went bright pink and took an indulgent sip. A long day indeed. Her shirt was a mess, she decided, but, when working with Fire-Elemental devices, it was inevitable. Soot went everywhere.
Astrid scowled and heard her home-made mechanical clock, crystal-bodied so one could admire the mechanism inside, chime. Time oozed on. She replaced the bottle in the ice-cabinet. It would be safe from Shesayne, at least. Shesayne seemed to have inherited almost everything from her Elven mother, including, Astrid thought smugly, extreme lactose intolerance.
Footsteps approached the door. Astrid instinctively reached for the hidden compartment under the kitchen counter. Her alchemical pistol was there. In that neighbourhood, there was no telling what would happen.
“Astrid!” Shesayne called excitedly, throwing the door open.
Astrid relaxed her shoulders. “Aren’t you supposed to be at work?”
“Yeah, yeah, in a minute – first, though, y’know how you’re always complaining how hard it is to do all that mechanical, alchemical or whatever stuff alone? Well, I brought you an assistant.” Shesayne closed the door behind her and ushered Fia into the kitchen.
“What?” Astrid was in no mood for jokes. Her mind was still fixed on the godsforsaken capacitor circuit.
Shesayne beamed a smile, “This, my dear Astrid, is Fia.”
Astrid blinked once. Perhaps she was still sleeping and this was a surreal dream. Before her stood a girl – a fire genasi. Astrid leaned forward. The girl smiled shyly, her long fingers fidgeting nervously. She stood a head taller than Shesayne, long-limbed, thin, but wiry. Shesayne had insisted that Fia arranger her hair in a typical fire genasi fashion. The effect, Astrid had to admit, was striking: short, golden, ember-red and copper-brown tresses all melded together and swept upwards, like a licking tongue of fire. “Pleasure, I’m Astrid…” the human mage replied, not quite sure where to begin. “Shesayne…maybe you and I should…”
“Have a word?” Shesayne teased. “Nope, no way, I’ll be late for work. She’s into the dark and apt with all that arcane stuff, so she’ll definitely help you out.” With that, Shesayne slipped out and closed the door soundlessly behind her.
Fia fidgeted, but looked Astrid straight in the eye. Her gaze was like molten gold. Astrid approached, almost fearfully. The girl was odd, to be sure. She wore a thin, loose, sleeveless white blouse and matching, but decidedly unflattering, red shorts. Not Shesayne’s provocative cutoffs, Astrid noted, but simple, airy things, designed for comfort rather than titillation. The odd thing of course, though, was that it was absolutely freezing outside. Astrid said so, “Aren’t you cold, dressed like that?”
Fia shrugged. “No.”
“What did Shesayne tell you?” Astrid said wearily. She stepped back to the worktable and privately thought of changing her Red Steel tuning pin for a mithril alloy one a size bigger.
“That you repair artifacts for a living.”
“I do.”
“And that I can help you.” Fia stood at the entrance, still too sceptical to step inside. The house looked like a mess, but it was certainly infinitely better than the doorway she had been sleeping in. After a long soak in bubbling-hot water, though, Fia felt that it was time to come down to common sense: nothing wagered, nothing gained. “I’m good with magic,” she clarified.
“Are you now?” Astrid arched an eyebrow. “A nice, bold statement. I like that, especially because you’re going to find it damn hard to bluff your way around this if you don’t know what you’re doing.”
Fia nodded. “You can try me. And if I’m unsuccessful, you can toss me back on the street. I’ve survived so far, so I’ll survive again.” Her tone had a certain, understated confidence to it. Not cocky, but quietly observant.
Astrid patted the disassembled heating sphere. “Try your hand at this and we’ll see. Come on, come in, I don’t want to spend all morning on this.”
Fia carefully stepped out of her simple, functional sandals and set them by the doorway. Astrid watched her move. The girl had a certain proud grace about her. As Fia stepped in front of the window, Astrid noted the play of light on her skin. The reddish-copper tint of her skin was otherworldly – not demonic, like a tiefling, but more pure, almost metallic.
Fia ignored Astrid’s perceptive gaze. She approached the sphere. It sat, forlorn, on the worktable, surrounded by a myriad of rune-engraved tools. Drills, picks, tuning pins, pliers, tweezers. Fia knelt on the floor, leaning her head and arms on the table, her pointed ear close against the wood, as if she were daydreaming. She inhaled and thought. She contemplated the surface, the metal and crystal. She scrutinised the mechanisms, the intricate adamantine circuitry. Then, she felt for the pulse of the source gem – a red agate, embedded deep in the device. Fia drew her fingers over the surface of the sphere and traced the internal circuitry, one segment at the time.
Astrid watched, bewildered. It was almost as if Fia were playing. The girl toyed with the sphere, never once shifting her gaze from the mechanism.
The fire genasi’s thoughts were fuzzy at first, but then, after a little reflection she began to make out the contours of the device. Little by little, the pieces fell into place. It was all a logic puzzle – a little game where there had to be a solution. One merely had to have the patience and the insight to find it.
Very carefully, Fia rose and knelt in the chair to lean over the sphere. Instinctively, she sought out a mithril tuning pin from the worktable. She cast a quick cantrip spell to block off three feed circuits and used the pin to widen two feed circuits from the source gem into the capacitor. Satisfied with that first step, Fia mentally sealed all the circuits emanating from the gem and rotated the red stone a half-revolution in its containment sphere. With a triumphant smile, she released the circuit blocks and activated the artifact.
Astrid felt a shiver run down her spine. The sphere snapped shut, blazed to life and levitated off the table, shrouded in a read nimbus of heat and light. Astrid stepped forward tentatively, eyes riveted on the sphere almost as if she expected it to break down again. “How did you…?”
“Simple. I thought about it,” Fia said, quite sincerely as if it were no big deal.
“No, really, what did you do?” Astrid was curious because she would never have dreamed of repairing the sphere with such deft ease.
“There was…uhm, an outer circuit that wasn’t feeding correctly to and from the gem. But to adjust it, you’ve got to follow the sequence of the circuit and it gets a bit tricky the closer you get to the gem…”
“You mean the feed circuit wasn’t properly calibrated to the capacitor?”
“Yeah, I guess…” Fia was embarrassed at her ignorance of the appropriate terminology. That was precisely why she was so eager to work under Astrid. She wanted books, diagrams and names: models to put words to things she knew but could not name.
“That was extraordinary.”
“Oh no, I’ll probably have a harder time with other things. This was a Fire-Elemental infused circuit, so those are the easiest ones for me to do, but I’ll work really hard on brushing up on everything else, if you’re willing to teach me…”
“Of course.” Astrid nodded, suppressing a soft, ironic chuckle. Sigil never failed to surprise her. “Provided you don’t mind the couch.”
“It’s a step up from a doorway.”
“Good…”
“And,” Fia added, “if I’m going to stay here, it’s not going to be charity. I want to work.”
“I can tell,” Astrid said warmly. “I’m sorry if I was a little rude, I was just a little…taken by surprise. Do you want something to drink?”
“Tea?”
“Sure.” Astrid rinsed out a mug in the washbasin and filled it with steaming, herbal tisane.
Fia stretched languidly, quite satisfied with her first impression. Astrid would be a good teacher, she sensed it. “I can do some shopping later, if you want,” she volunteered, almost as an afterthought. The conviction that Fia held dearest was that kindness should be repaid with even greater kindness.
Astrid laughed softly. Shesayne had to be forced to go grocery shopping and when she did, she always overspent. She turned and offered Fia the mug of fragrant tea. “You’re not too far short of making my day. I’ll make a list and give you some money this evening.”
Fia drank and Astrid let her gaze float over the fire genasi. Small, conical breasts pressed against the cotton of the blouse, so that Astrid could see the outline of a big, dark nipples underneath. Then the white fabric pooled around Fia’s waist, slack around the flatness of the girl’s belly. She had thin hips, like a runner or gymnast. Then the red fabric gave way to long, coppery thighs.
“You’re looking,” Fia observed.
“Yes, you’re a fire genasi, right?”
Fia cradled the burning hot mug in her hands. “Yeah…”
“I’ve never spoken to one of you before,” Astrid mused. She heard that fire genasi had a reputation for lively intelligence and Fia had certainly not disappointed.
“It’s fine – you looking, I mean. I know you’re a good soul – what I am doesn’t matter to you. Your lover’s a half-elf and she adores you, so I needn’t protect myself.”
“Hmm?”
“On the street,” Fia said, her voice soft, low and strangely entrancing, “if they look too long, you have to be wary. Sometimes, they wanted what I didn’t want to give them.”
Astrid tensed. She did not want to hit a sore spot. “It…it can be difficult out there, I guess…” she said, feeling very stupid.
Fia’s eyes lit up. Burgundy-dark lips stretched into a sardonic little smile. “Look.” She took a long, silvery tuning pin from the worktable between her thumb and forefinger. Astrid felt and immediate rush of warm air fill the room. A nimbus of fluid, burning energy surrounded Fia’s hand. The pin glowed, steamed and, with a simple flick of Fia’s finger, bent into half.
Astrid stared, wide-eyed, her heart thundering in her chest. “It’s that easy for you?”
Fia nodded. “I can project a fireball if you want…”
“No!” Astrid interjected. “I mean, I’ll take your word for it.”
“So, you see, this is why I don’t accept charity. I have all that I need to survive, here inside of me.”
“And…you’re positive that if you have no problem controlling fire?” Another thing that was said about fire genasi was that many vere pyromaniacs.
“This is my fire. It does what I tell it to do. But I would never, ever hurt you. Not even if you hurt me.”
“What?”
“I hear it is important to be disciplined and listen to your teacher. Inattentive students ought to be punished.” Fia recited.
Astrid sighed with relief. For a minute, she had that Fia was seriously unbalanced. “It’s nothing like that, Fia, we’re all friends here – I will teach you what I know and you can teach me what you think. The way your mind moves, because that’s just as wonderful as magic itself.”
“Really?” Fia beamed. Her teeth had an iridescent, almost metallic whiteness to them.
“Yes, now come on, shift,” Astrid ordered and Fia pounced off the seat to make room for her new teacher, “we still have plenty of work to do and you still have quite a lot to learn…which reminds me, you should probably get the bases of Water-Elemental magic straight before we proceed any further. A surprising number of circuits are empowered with undines nowadays, so it’s very important that you know your way around them…”
“Hot water?” Fia inquired expectantly.
“Nice try,” Astrid smirked, “try glacial.”
Fia made a face. She had expected that. “I suppose you can’t always learn what you like.”
“Tell me about it,” Astrid said – she was warming to Fia with each passing moment. “Now look,” she threw open a simple, leather-bound volume from the multitude of artifact manuals scattered over her worktable. “This is just for basics, but it shows you a sapphire Water-Elemental source gem in a pentagonal empowering field. These are the easiest ones to do, so pay attention now and you’ll get all of them right.”
Fia knelt eagerly by Astrid’s side, propping her elbows on the table and staring intently at the diagram in front of her.
“Right,” Astrid began, “if I tell you that three of these sector gates, the first, third and fifth are exclusive and the other three are binary, what does that mean for the output and feed circuits, assuming the source gem is working at full capacity?” It was a difficult question for a beginner, but there was no point in insulting Fia’s intelligence.
Fia grimaced and concentrated, shifting closer against the worktable. Astrid felt Fia’s hair brush against her forearm. The girl smelled of a faint, sandalwood shampoo. “Potential feed,” Fia began cautiously, silently tracing an unseen diagram with her forefingers, “exceeds actual output, so the gem is at full capacity, but output is lower than normal function, so it’s…uhm, waiting.”
“Now that is impressive.” Astrid said, not quite believing what she was hearing, “but in the business, we call waiting ‘standby’.”
“Standby,” Fia repeated carefully.
Astrid decided that it was time to skip the books entirely. Fia was exactly like Astrid had been when she, too, was learning artifact magic. Precocious, curious, and more inclined to practical rather than book-learning. Astrid decided that they would make a good team.
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