Against The World

Chapter 73: A Light in the Workshop

The first applicant for the artificers’ workshop was older than Alistair.

The second had never attended a lesson in her life.

The third asked whether the position included lunch.

Tilda approved of the third question.

“Practical,” she said.

Mary looked down at the applications.

“We did specify that meals were included.”

“Then he can’t read,” Tilda replied. “Good thing he asked.”

I stood beside the workshop’s newly finished benches, watching people gather in the service court.

I had expected a handful.

There were twenty-seven.

A mason with one clouded eye. Two sisters who worked in the laundry. A young man whose coat had clearly been borrowed for the occasion.

Someone had brought a baby.

Someone else had brought three references and a small wooden box.

I leaned toward Mary.

“What’s in the box?”

“He says it demonstrates his aptitude.”

“For what?”

“We are about to find out.”

The box contained a beetle.

A wooden beetle, fortunately.

When its owner wound a key beneath it, the little creature crossed the table, reached the edge, and fell into my hand.

I turned it over.

Its legs continued moving.

“That’s very good.”

The young man brightened.

“Thank you, Your Majesty.”

“Any magic?”

“No.”

“Then why—”

Tilda stepped closer.

“How did you get the legs to alternate?”

He began explaining.

Within moments, she had taken the box from him and was asking about the gears.

Mary drew a line on her page.

I looked at her.

“A different apprenticeship?”

“Possibly.”

The young man had come hoping we could discover something in him.

We had.

It simply wasn’t what he expected.

The magical tests were much less entertaining.

A narrow groove.

A piece of prepared metal.

A thread of power held steady long enough to travel from one end to the other.

I demonstrated.

The line brightened.

Then faded when I lifted my finger.

“That is all we’re asking today,” I said.

One of the laundry sisters raised her hand.

“What if it changes color?”

I glanced toward the Castellan’s bronze plate.

“Acceptable variation,” he said.

“What if it makes a noise?”

“Describe the noise.”

“A sort of squeak.”

Tilda pulled her stool closer.

The testing began.

Several applicants produced nothing at all. A few managed brief sparks. One man lit the whole groove beautifully and then admitted he had no idea how he had done it.

The older applicant held a thin blue line for nearly half a minute.

His name was Oswin.

He repaired kettles.

“Have you done that before?” I asked.

“Only to find cracks.”

“How?”

“Warm the metal a little. Let the feeling catch where it shouldn’t.”

He sounded apologetic.

I looked at the steady light.

“How long have you been doing it?”

“Forty years.”

Behind me, Aldren sat down.

I understood the impulse.

By the end of the afternoon, we had four candidates for the first magical lessons.

Oswin.

A young stoneworker named Neri.

One of the laundry sisters, Della.

And a quiet woman called Brin who had spent most of the morning watching other people before asking to try.

Her light barely showed.

It did not waver.

The wooden-beetle maker, whose name was Perrin, left with an invitation to return to Tilda’s bench.

The others received explanations, their travel expenses, and information about other work if they wanted it.

Nobody was told they had failed at having a future.

Still, disappointment lingered in the courtyard after the crowd thinned.

I stood beside the door.

A boy in the borrowed coat waited while his father finished speaking to Mary.

“You can try again later,” I told him.

He shrugged.

“I thought I might be good at it.”

“What else are you good at?”

“Don’t know yet.”

His father called him.

Before he left, the boy looked back at the workshop.

I remembered that expression long after supper.

Evelyn found me moving the practice pieces around on the desk.

She lowered herself into the chair beside mine.

“Did something go wrong?”

“No.”

“That was not a convincing no.”

I told her about the boy.

She listened, one hand resting against the curve of her stomach.

“Did you promise him he would become an artificer?”

“No.”

“Did you tell him he was useless?”

“Of course not.”

“Then you allowed him to be disappointed.”

I looked at the metal pieces.

“It felt unpleasant.”

“Yes.”

I leaned back.

“What if one of our children wants something we can’t give them?”

Evelyn was quiet for a moment.

Then she said, “I expect we’ll sit with them while they’re unhappy.”

“That’s all?”

“What else would you want someone to have done for you?”

I thought about it.

She took one of the practice disks and turned it between her fingers.

“We have months before they arrive. Years before they come to that workshop in a borrowed coat.”

“They won’t need to borrow a coat.”

“No,” she said softly. “But they may still be frightened to try.”

I reached for her hand.

She let me have it.

The first lesson began with a bucket.

Aldren set it on the bench.

Perrin placed a little wooden float inside.

Oswin frowned.

“I thought this was magic.”

“It will be,” I said.

“Then why the float?”

“Because we need to know when to use the magic.”

He considered that.

Then nodded.

The warning device had three parts: something to detect the rising water, a small stored charge, and a light where a person could see it.

We worked on them separately.

Perrin adjusted the float.

Tilda checked the metalwork.

I sat with the four learners and attempted to explain how to close a circuit without putting more power into it than it could hold.

“Like tying a knot,” I suggested.

Neri stared at the groove.

“What sort of knot?”

I paused.

“A small one.”

Della looked at Oswin.

Oswin looked at Brin.

The Castellan spoke from the wall.

“Demonstration may be more effective.”

Teaching, I discovered, exposed how much of my knowledge consisted of things my hands understood before my mouth did.

Three days later, the workshop produced its first argument.

It concerned the warning light.

Aldren wanted it bright.

Tilda wanted it protected.

Perrin wanted to mount it in a little hinged housing.

Brin, who had said almost nothing during the first two lessons, asked where it would be fitted.

“The lower granary service passage,” Aldren replied.

“Who walks through there?”

“The inspection staff.”

“How often?”

That slowed the discussion.

We checked.

The passage was visited regularly.

The door between it and the grain floor was usually closed.

Brin looked at the proposed light.

“Then someone could walk past the other side without seeing it.”

Nobody answered immediately.

I looked at the drawing.

The device had been beautifully arranged to warn an empty corridor.

“Can we bring the light through the wall?”

“Ordinary mounting change,” Tilda said.

“And a bell?” Oswin asked.

Aldren rubbed his chin.

Perrin had already reached for his little gear box.

By the end of the day, the design had become less elegant and much more useful.

Brin stayed after the others left.

“I didn’t mean to question the plan in front of everyone.”

“I wish you’d questioned it sooner.”

She studied my face.

Then smiled.

Only a little.

It was enough.

While we argued about a bell, Evelyn settled a grain-storage dispute that had resisted three previous meetings.

I learned about it when Joren found me outside the foundry.

“Her Majesty has a way of asking whether you actually want an answer.”

“What happened?”

“The east district wanted every cart unloaded first. The river district wanted the scales moved nearer the road. The storekeepers wanted both groups to go away.”

“And Evelyn?”

“Asked which carts were carrying grain that couldn’t safely wait.”

I looked at him.

He nodded.

“We had been arguing about neighborhoods.”

He handed me the revised schedule.

“We should have been arguing about damp sacks.”

That evening, I brought Evelyn a small bowl of late raspberries.

She eyed it.

“What have you done?”

“Nothing.”

“Then why do you look pleased?”

“Joren told me about the storage meeting.”

She took a berry.

“He helped.”

“So he said.”

“He did.”

I sat beside her.

She ate another berry, then offered me one.

We shared the bowl while she explained the parts Joren had left out.

It was not a dramatic story.

I liked listening to her tell it.

Helena came through the gate the following morning carrying a folded shawl.

This was modest by her recent standards.

Evelyn noticed.

“Only one?”

“Only one visible.”

Her mother sat beside her in the nursery.

I had come to collect a book and found myself invited to stay.

For a while, Helena examined the little garments arranged in the cupboard.

Then she shut the door.

“Your father asked me to tell you he has stopped carving things.”

Evelyn looked suspicious.

“Why?”

“He has begun making a chest to put them in.”

I laughed.

Helena smiled, but when she turned back to her daughter, her expression gentled.

“How are you sleeping?”

“Well enough.”

“That usually means badly enough to complain.”

Evelyn shifted in her chair.

“It’s finding a comfortable position.”

They discussed pillows.

Then meals.

Then the approaching months.

Helena described feeling Evelyn move so vigorously during a formal dinner that she had lost track of a visiting lord’s entire speech.

“What did you do?” I asked.

“Agreed with Garrick.”

“Was that wise?”

“Fortunately, he was disagreeing with the visitor.”

Evelyn laughed.

Then became quiet.

“Were you frightened?”

Helena reached for her hand.

“Yes.”

“Did it stop?”

“Sometimes. Then I had you, and found new reasons.”

I watched their hands.

Helena’s thumb moved over her daughter’s knuckles.

“But I also had help,” she said. “You will too.”

Evelyn glanced toward me.

I nodded.

This time, I did not feel the need to promise that I could manage everything.

I was glad Helena had said help.

The warning device rang its bell for the first time on a rainy afternoon.

It was an appalling noise.

Everyone flinched.

Perrin looked delighted.

Tilda put a hand over the bell.

“Less of that.”

“You asked for audible.”

“Not in Stoneford.”

We adjusted it.

Then tested again.

Water rose in the bucket.

The float lifted.

A little amber light appeared.

The bell gave three firm notes.

Brin laughed.

Neri clapped once and looked embarrassed.

Oswin leaned close to inspect the circuit he had helped charge.

It still held.

I looked at the four learners.

None of them had touched the Crown mark.

None had needed me to finish their part.

For a moment, I could not stop smiling.

Aldren emptied the bucket.

“Again.”

This time, he jammed the float deliberately.

No light.

No bell.

The room quieted.

Eleanor, who had arrived for the tests, nodded.

“Now tell me how the inspector notices that.”

We spent the next hour adding a way to lift the float by hand during each check.

The device became easier to trust once we knew how to question it.

Installation took place two days later.

The warning light sat beside the granary’s inner door.

The bell hung above it.

A small plate explained the test in plain words, with a drawing beneath.

I held the ladder while Perrin secured the last screw.

He climbed down and stood back.

“Looks small from here.”

“It is small,” I said.

We tested it.

Three notes sounded through the room.

A storekeeper looked up from her ledger.

“That I’ll hear.”

Oswin let out a breath.

The whole team had come to see it fitted.

They lingered after the tools were packed, each finding some reason to look at it one more time.

I understood.

Before we left, Brin touched the little plate beside the door.

Her name was on it with the others.

She traced the first letter with one finger.

Then followed us outside.

That evening, Evelyn asked to see what we had made.

We walked to the granary before supper.

The rain had stopped, leaving the courtyard stones dark and shining.

Inside, the storekeeper demonstrated the test.

The light glowed.

The bell sounded.

Evelyn looked at me.

“That’s it?”

I nodded.

“No lightning?”

“Very little room for it.”

She smiled and turned to Brin, who had stayed to help record the inspection.

“Will you show me how it works?”

Brin looked briefly startled.

Then she began.

I stood aside while the two of them bent over the small drawing.

When Brin finished, Evelyn thanked her.

She did not call it a miracle.

She asked whether the next one would take less time.

Brin smiled.

“I think so.”

On the way back, I asked Evelyn whether she had liked it.

“Very much.”

“It doesn’t look like a great deal.”

She slipped her arm through mine.

“You have been talking about that little bell for a week.”

“I have?”

“Yes.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be. I like hearing you excited about something.”

We walked a little farther.

Then she stopped.

I turned at once.

She caught my hand before I could ask.

“There.”

A firm little movement pressed beneath my palm.

Then another, farther to the side.

I looked down.

“Both?”

“I think so.”

I laughed softly.

“They’ve been busy.”

“So have you.”

We stood beneath the arch while people passed around us carrying baskets, tools, and the last errands of the day.

Eventually, Evelyn tugged my sleeve.

“Supper?”

“Yes.”

We went upstairs together.

Before bed, I opened the blue book and wrote the names of the people who had made the warning device.

Below them, I added that Evelyn had felt both children moving while we walked home.

She read it over my shoulder.

“You’ve made a very odd history.”

I set down the pen.

“It’s what I want to remember.”

She kissed my cheek.

“Then it’s right.”

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