Rotten Magic (The Artifice Mage Saga 0.5) Read online

  Black, hairy pigs. Devin glared as he skirted wide around the walled block containing the city administration building. Black Guards lounged by the gate in burnished, mechanical armor and behind the wall, sounds of martial vigor and . . . screaming? You saw the guards everywhere in the city, but they were concentrated here, in their nest. Or is it their hog wallow?

  Devin felt a tight lurch in his chest this close to a cluster of guards. It reminded him of the time he stole a russet pear in the marketplace under the watchful eyes of the patrol. He could feel the glare of the Black Guards burning holes through the back of his tunic. Any time one of them so much as turned his direction, his heart skipped. Devin fished around for the long eaten sweet, red fruit; he could almost feel the weight of it, see the bulge. But he carried something heavier than a mere piece of fruit today. He had carried it with him every day this last half season as the leaves curled and blackened and fell off the trees.

  Do they suspect? Devin thought, stealing furtive glances at the Black Guards. Do they know? Are they waiting, lurking, gathering evidence against me? The Black Guards kept the streets safe. His mother had always told him and his sister that. If you're ever in any trouble, find a guard. They will shelter you and punish the wicked. They protect us against killers, against thieves, against those whose crimes are too horrible to name, and most of all, they protect us from the mages.

  Black Guards hunting us everywhere, the mage growled. It is the magic users who need protection from them.

  The guards are merely the sweepers of the city machine, the artificer smiled, cleaning garbage off the streets.

  Garbage? the mage cried.

  Just like every other criminal, the artificer said, crossing his arms.

  Devin looked at the calluses on his hands. But I'm not a criminal. I'm an artificer.

  Neither voice replied as the youth looked up at the glorious symbol of the city's artifice princes. The ancient Guild Hall of Artificers rose above adjacent more recent buildings like a quiet old man kneeling amongst a crowd of garish babies. There was an unassuming grandeur to those time-stained, smooth granite walls. The masters took pains to preserve the aesthetics of the outside even as they implemented every new gadget and technology inside, but always with restraint and style. As Master Huron always said: “It is not just our duty to build, but to inspire. Why can't a machine be beautiful as well as functional?”

  Drusilla was waiting by the gates of the Guild Hall as she did every morning. His steadfast best friend slung a welding apron over one shoulder. The scent of the wild forest lingered on the leather. How a gal from the heart of the city managed to smell like moss and elderberries, Devin never knew. The girl teased a stick from her hair and smiled as he approached.

  “Hear about the new Mark 3 Drake Armor?” Drusilla asked, walking alongside him.

  New mechanical armor? Since when? “No,” Devin said.

  “There was a demonstration in the market yesterday. I tried to find you, but you went and vanished again.” Drusilla laughed. “Still working on that secret project, eh?”

  “Every chance I get.” Devin smiled. “It's going to be good enough to be my journeyman's piece. It's going to change the world.”

  “Not like this new armor,” Drusilla shook her head, eyes flashing. “It was awesome, Dev. The tiny gears and servos in the fingers are top rate. The precision. The sheer artistry. They had a man dressed in the suit knitting a little scarf with tiny, little needles. Knitting with a suit of mechanical armor. Those gauntlets are the size of your head. Fantastic!”

  “Knitting? Really?” Devin chuckled. “Are they going to chase down thieves with tiny, hand knit handcuffs, now?”

  She clucked. “Even you have to admit it's impressive. Any mech gauntlets we create can barely grasp a cheap, wooden sword.”

  Devin smiled. “Feh, swords. I prefer claws, myself.”

  “Well, you're special like that, Dev.” She shielded her lips with one hand and whispered with a conspirator's flair. “Benson the Barbarian has been smashing things in the dorms and looking for you all morning. He's about to start breaking the other apprentices. Shouldn't have put that stuff in his soup yesterday. All the boys left the privy giggling over that bastard's hot pink piss. What did you give the poor brute?”

  Devin shrugged. Benson deserved whatever ribbing he got from the other apprentices and more. “Nothing harmful or painful, unfortunately. Just enough to you know . . .” he bent down and whispered, “take the piss out of him.”

  “Didn't work.” She snickered and held out her hand. “You'll have to give him something else, Dragon Boy.”

  Dragon Boy, Devin mused, taking her hand as Drusilla escorted him into the building and down the wide stone and timber hallway. The pair glanced over their shoulders and down side halls, ever vigilant for Benson on the rampage. The nickname had started as a taunt and eventually stuck. Devin still made a show of hating his epithet, mostly to appease the brutish Benson, but he had grown to like it after awhile. Dragons had many admirable qualities which most of these city-bred children never even considered or appreciated. Easier to merely fear the dragon.

  Journeyman Druge's metallurgy class was in sight. Drusilla grabbed Devin's arm and dragged him towards to door.

  Benson rounded the corner. “Why there you are, Dragon Boy.” He punched his fist. “What's your flaming hurry?”

  Devin closed his eyes. It would be so much easier to evade Benson if the lout was stupid as well as thuggish. Sadly, there was nothing wrong with Benson's agile mind; it was just wasted on his oafish personality. Benson didn't have bulging muscles and he wasn't large, but his ego was the size of a house. The brute loomed without even trying just by crossing his arms.

  “Good morning, Benny,” Devin said, pushing Drusilla through the door ahead of him. “Heard you had a spot of trouble in the privy this morning? Who knew you had so much pink inside you it's leaking out your little peepee?”

  Benson ground his teeth and then smiled. “Enjoy your prank, prat. I've got some friends joining us for the competition this afternoon, Dragon Boy. We'll see what colors leak out of you then. Red, green, brown, yellow. You're always so colorful.” He waved his arms and bowed, allowing Devin to enter the classroom. As Devin walked ahead, the brute clapped a hand on the youth’s shoulder and kicked the back of his knees, driving him to the floor. “Remember: the dragon always loses.”

  “Not today,” Devin gasped as he fell. Drusilla helped him to his feet and glared at the bully.

  “Would you three enter the classroom already? You are interrupting my lecture on the intricacies of steel joint welding,” the journeyman called from across the room, not seeing or caring about the cause of the ruckus so long as it ceased. To Druge, classes were merely a waste of time that kept him from his proper station in life: the laboratory. He wasn't shy about telling his apprentices how lucky they were he had sacrificed so much valuable time to further their education. After one of his dull lectures, most of his students fantasized about locking the man away in his lab and flushed the key.

  Devin spent the morning fantasizing about the retribution he would pound into Benson's hide that afternoon. Then the afternoon arrived and the apprentices were given an hour of freedom before the machine shop required their services. Devin crept around the back of the Guild Hall. The large field walled off from the outside world was where the artificers came to test their inventions. Apprentices proved their mettle by designing and fighting in suits of powered armor.

  Devin's suit was . . . unique. He hid behind the old oak tree and began his transformation. The youth noticed the squirrels had been storing their nuts in the hollow crevice again and he left them undisturbed as he pulled several odd shaped metal objects from his stash. Nuts covered what he was doing quite nicely.

  Where a young artificer ducked around the tree, a metal dragon emerged from behind it. The horns curving around his head were pure affectation. The loricate steel chest armor looked approximately like the overlapping scaly
bands on a dragon's belly. The blunted claws he strapped to his shoes acted like racer's cleats. But his prize joy were the pair of taloned, mechanized gauntlets: those dulled metal claws increased his grip strength five times and the things just looked so sleek.

  The masters and journeymen all refused to reveal what actually powered real mechanical armor, so the apprentices had to get creative and the weight penalty for their designs was absurd. Devin formed a clawed fist and the gears whirred as his fingers clenched. I could do so much more with a proper alchemical battery. Sometimes I think the guild just exists to keep secrets. He flexed his claws. You work with what you have: knowledge or materials. For all I know, they're encouraging us to innovate on purpose. Time to play the game.

  The apprentices' game of knights-and-dragon stretched back to the days of yore when a noble knight could trace his lineage from master to squire all the way back to the courts of old before empire supplanted the monarchy. When knighthood represented something of the grandeur and chivalry lacking in their sad, wayside contemporaries.

  These days any common beggar off the street could join the academy to become a knight and many did. The academy churned out knights like a factory producing cheap, metal trinkets and flinging them across the empire. In modern times a 'knight' was either bashing heads inside the empire as a guard lackey or outside the empire as an army flunky. No more tournaments, no more heraldry, no more parades, and no more dragons.

  Some traditions are too ingrained to die, Devin reflected. They used to just divide into teams and play knights vs knights. But then one day Devin made a suit of dragon armor and Benson got creative.

  The rules of the game were simple: 1) No edged weapons, 2) No broken bones, 3) Don't involve the masters, and 4) The dragon always loses.

  Devin spotted the first pair of pot belly rejects sauntering with their tin helmets. They were beating the bushes with their little, wooden swords.

  “Damn dragon's around here somewhere.” One of the knights grunted, fidgeting in his ill fitting, tin plate shoulder pads.

  “Benson's gonna piss himself if that horned loser almost wins the fight again.” The second one smiled. “We'll have a pink flood.”

  The first smacked his sword against his palm. “So we find Dragon Boy and we soften him up a bit first.”

  Devin grinned. You would be scrap metal if you tried. Benson usually sent a small, isolated vanguard of knights to probe the dragon's defenses, always the newest or most stupid of his lackeys. He'd seen these fellows before.

  The dragon flew around the bushes and ambushed the two unwary knights, throwing them to the ground. The knights twitched and lay still even as he collected their swords. It was an implicit, but never openly stated, rule that when a combatant was knocked down, he or she was “dead” and out of the game. After all, why state the obvious?

  Benson had added the fourth official rule, codifying another implicit tradition after drafting Devin to join the game. The dragon wasn't supposed to try and win; he was supposed to put up a valiant, mock battle and then die with dignity. Devin preferred to thrash knights. That's what dragons did. A pox on Benson and his imaginary rule.

  The dragon smiled, baring his fangs and flexing his metal claws. Three more knights down. But where is the main force lurking? Where is Benson?

  Devin saw Drusilla leading a group of armored female apprentices flanking around the side of the field and shied away from them. It always pained him to see that girl in the enemy's armor. But she always backed away when the fighting got heavy, kept her wooden sword sheathed, and never struck the final blow to slay the evil dragon. His friend a knight while he was stuck as the dragon.

  The youth snarled. If only they were playing a different game, Drusilla could be a princess and he could kidnap and carry her away. He never suggested such a game, not because Drusilla would protest, but because Benson would invariably cast himself as the knight errant or worse as the king and that could not be borne.

  But most of all, the artificer reminded him, you keep at this game because you like playing the dragon with all the knights of the world arrayed against you. It is the challenge that thrills you.

  It is nothing but a craving for the sweet taste of victory, the mage muttered.

  Devin admired the bundle of trophy swords he had amassed. He was always tempted to break the things, but some small part of the dragon's heart identified with those chivalrous knights of old. The youth peered around the side of the building. Benson's group had joined Drusilla's group and they had spread out in a line, working their way around the building to cordon him.

  The knights surrounded him and Devin laughed as the circle closed. Now comes the showdown between the brute knight and the mighty dragon. The mirth died in his throat as Benson stepped aside and pushed Drusilla forward. The girl's face paled.

  “T'would be churlish of me to kill this beast without recognizing the role of your Woman's Army, Milady. Honor the sacrifices of our fallen knights. Take my sword. Slay the monster.”

  I am a secret mage and a dragon at heart, Devin thought. Maybe I deserve execution.

  “Nay, Sirrah,” Drusilla stumbled over the words as she held up her hands. “Whatever his flaws, whatever his crimes, this beast hath an innocent soul. What wrongs hath this dragon committed, what harmless villagers slaughtered, to deserve such a fate?”

  “It matters not,” Benson smiled. “He is a loathsome dragon who stains the earth with his touch and fouls the air with his breath. He is guilty by his mere existence. Do thy duty, Milady. Slay this beast in my name.” He thrust his sword into her hands.

  Devin clenched his teeth, preparing for the blow. Those wooden swords hurt.

  Drusilla clenched the brute's wooden blade in her hands, running her fingers along the delicate oaken hilt and smelling the cherry blade, admiring the leather wrapped hilt and smooth pommel. The girl looked the bully in the eye, stuck her tongue out at Benson, and threw his sword on Devin's pile of trophies.

  Benson sucked the air between his teeth. “Then thou art a traitor. Surrender your sword.”

  Drusilla sighed as she fumbled with the sheathe and held out her blade. In that unguarded moment, Benson's arm whipped forward, took her sword, and smacked the flat of the blade into the girl's midriff below the padded edge of her breast plate.

  The girl gasped as the breath was audibly driven from her lungs, clutched her stomach, and collapsed. She huddled on the ground and forced herself to lay rigid. Benson lightly placed her sword on the twitching, fallen corpse of the knight Drusilla.

  Devin did not scream or rant or gnash his fangs, though deep inside a part of him wanted to do these things. Instead, Devin braced Benson's beautiful wooden sword against a tree, raised his steel cleats, and stomped. The blade shattered and Devin tossed the wooden shards at Benson's feet.

  “Can't use that sword anymore can you, Benny?” Devin taunted. “Ha! It's an edged weapon, now.”

  For a moment, Benson looked as though he might. The brute cradled the hilt in his arms and kept touching the points protruding from the half blade. “Kill the dragon. Stomp him into the ground. We want to make sure that beast is deceased.”

  “Kitchen knights,” Devin crowed, surrounded by pan shields and soup spoon daggers. A foot kicked his shin. “You had to raid the pantry for those costumes. Oh, Benny. Did you strip your momma's cupboard bare and ruin your daddy's firewood to whittle that stupid sword? You don't have a pink pot to piss in anymore.”

  Benson's cheeks flushed. The bully reversed his splintered, broken blade. He raised the hilt over his head and slammed the pommel into Devin's head. The crack of two solid surfaces connecting and the lesser one yielding vanished into silence as everyone backed away.

  Not an edged weapon, Devin thought hazily as he crashed into the ground. Darkness crept over him. Clever, clever Benny. Why couldn't you be stupid or overconfident, like the villains in the fairy tales?

  When he awoke, Drusilla was cradling his head and singing an ancient song of hop
eless quests and glorious battles. She had removed her helmet and long, brown hair spilled over her shoulders and tickled his nose. The girl had neglected to remove the rest of the knight costume and her armor jabbed his neck. Devin sat up and glared. He picked up her helmet, holding the thing pinched between his fingers like a foul, skunky cabbage.

  Drusilla shrugged. “I may be your best friend, Devi, but I'm still a knight.” She patted his head and smiled. He winced and she retracted her fingers. “Oh, sorry.” She rapped the breastplate with her knuckles and it gave a tinny, hollow ring as she gently detached his horns and placed them on his chest. “Knights are common as dirt, but there's only one Dragon Boy.”

  DEVIN, YEAR 491

  Devin's afternoon in the cavernous machine shop was a whirlwind of soldered patches, close deadlines, and desperately needed parts, none of them his. Devin raced up and down the hall, a lowly grease monkey with slick, black face and finger stains to prove it, assisting the silver-capped journeymen with their own stupid contraptions. His advice and ideas for improving these devices mostly went unheeded; they all just gave him more work.

  Devin paused in his rounds when he realized that some of the older journeyman were implementing his previous, diffident suggestions as their own modifications. The pricks.

  Some of the younger journeymen were finally starting to ask his advice on particularly knotty problems, but enough was enough. His endless errands were completed.

  The youth found a corner workshop and huddled over his own project. It was a long abandoned lab. Before Devin made it his own, the only thing in the room was the large brass puzzle box squatting low and lonely in the corner. Nobody dug it up and dusted it for this year's evals yet. Devin glanced around the lab at all his scattered tools before his eyes returned to the large, gold-colored box.

  It looked something like a dragon clock. Rich dandies had them in their mansions in the East and West districts and when the things broke, as all machines are wont to do, they called in the guild to fix their mess of springs and sprockets.