Sixteen Feet of Steel Chapter 24

*Before…

My people loved my father and mother and they loved my eldest brother Justin as well. I grew up thinking that we were good folks and had few real enemies and we did well for our folk in our lands.

And that was one of those things that I was going to inherit third son or not. I was going to do things, do whatever I could to help the people in Lyonnes.

And that’s gone; well it’s gone for as long as it’ll take me to find things out and to get strong enough to maybe do something.

But here’s Nicole who has actually done it here today and I know that she’s done more and that she’s already held in high esteem with Lady Tatiana and very much by her folk here.

I’m in that mixture of both awed and wistful and jealous of it all.

But I’m still very, very proud of her too.

With everyone helping it took less than an hour to clean it and to retune and check things over and the rest of the hour to get it on the wagon throne and headed outside of the arena and headed through the streets as a group until we arrive at Nicole’s home of House McKinnon and there’s this large set of walls in the city that surrounds the place made of cut pinkish granite mixed with accents of grey bricks at the corners and edges and there’d two huge sets of doors thrown wide and there’s a small watchtower there that has some youngster ringing a set of bells like those some temples have.

I can’t help but to have a happy smile come to my face as she’s getting such a welcome and that’s made all so much better as Taylor has a fiddle out while someone else is driving the wagon and he starts to play as we’re driving in.

*And Now…

It’s still a steading and the first sort of city steading that I’ve ever seen.

I suppose you could call it a walled estate but it’s definitely not with most of the buildings inside of the walls being plain but good red clay fired bricks. Most of the buildings that I’m seeing are tenant styled multi floored buildings close to the walls and the front here and are all four stories high with glassed windows and I can see in the far front corner that there looks to be a set of stables with bairns by the sheer design and size of them and the shapes and the further in we ride the buildings change to workshops.

There’s a definite dwarven influence here though with city room being a premium I can see battleknight wide ramps going actually down into the ground so that there’s enough height for them to be towed or even walked through without the above ground buildings seeming too huge or taking up too much space.

The whole place has this smell to it as well like coal and metal under the scent of burning hardwoods and while this seems like a busy place the shops have groups of people outside of them that have smiles and some cheer and most of them are definitely clapping.

The mix of folk definitely says that these are workers and I can still sort of feel things from them too.

There’s a sense of pride with here and this place and pride in Nicole but there’s also a sense of relief as well.

There really was something that really mattered riding on her fight.

We stop at a shop like building that has Nicole’s squirely insignia on it with the doors and the placard.

She has her own building for her Squire’sknight and by the size of it for her own rig in the future there’s even a full sized throne already there and waiting for her along with full sets of tools for keeping a rig and even a set of stairs along one side that leads to her own space with windows on the inside like an office or a loft.

I’m both once more in awe and jealous.

“This, this is amazing Nicole.”

She’s beaming. “Yes, I put a lot of work into this.”

“You paid and not your family?”

“I paid and mostly for the materials my family built most of it out of love and pride.”

“You get paid well.” I’m looking around and she nods.

“Some challenges, some from Goblin bounties others from extra pay out in the field it all adds up plus I really don’t have to pay for room and board and I limit my spending by sending funds off to other things before I can even draw it from the paymaster.”

I’m nodding. “This is a lot of everything I’m jealous.”

Nicole looks at me. “I’m sorry.”

I shake my head. “No, don’t be. I wasn’t going to be the head of my family anyways. I’m just realizing how much is here that we didn’t have home. I mean we had in at my home but in my lands…nothing like what is here in the north-west.”

She’s looking at me. “And yet your house was attacked by rigs and an army with siege gear, serious siege gear.”

I’m looking at her and she’s looking at me.

I sigh looking to the giant throne for her future battleknight. “I have no idea Nicole, I really don’t.”

She’s looking there too but she’s saying. “And the Goblins and them tracking you. Someone has both arms and sorcery.”

“Magic but I’ve never heard of such things.”

“Not until you came here but there are those with power, there’s been none as famous as your mother for certain but there are other powers out there.”

I look at her. “You’re certain about the magic?”

“Or relics, they got ahead of us somehow Christiana, they were looking for us, for you I think.”

“I thought that was just…just something that happened?”

“Lady Tatiana doesn’t think so.”

“What does she think?”

“That it smells rotten but she doesn’t know enough to put the pieces together to find out what happened at Lyonnes.”

I exhale. “I have no idea either but I need to get better and I need to make plans while I’m here and I need to make coin.”

She looks at me nodding. “All of that and more you’re going to need people and people that will follow you all the way to Lyonnes and maybe even further.”

“Further?”

She shrugs. “Just a feeling.”

We’re there until things are unloaded and then we’re off to the main house and the doors are open and the servants are out some what she’s being greeted a little bit officially and she’s good with the names and I’m doing my memory trick to remember them and what they do and then Nicole’s parents are there her father Nicholas and mother Reba and both look much more like working class folks than upper classed merchants and her father looks recently washed up.

He’s smiling though at Nicole who he embraces in the same ways my father used to embrace my brother Justin.

And the rest of us are greeted in kind though Jessa gets lots of special attention from Reba when she produces a canvas roll filled with pockets with many dried herbs and things that makes her beam with happiness.

Most seem like for cooking or tisanes but it’s a goodly bundle that would cost several silvers in a good market and she’s passing it over as a gift.

Taylor has his violin/fiddle and it looks like he brought drink as well.

I look at them. “I’m sorry I just brought myself.”

Nicole’s father just grins and gives me a comradely hug. “And a good appetite hopefully. I heard you stood fast out there with my daughter. That’s more than a gift; it’s an honor to have you at my table.”

I’m blushing because I had no idea and I’m not used to the sort of greetings that my brothers would have gotten.

We’re led inside and the home is nice, very nice. Brick works for sure but very well made and very nice floors here too and there’s fine windows in place and even some electric here and there and I see the oddest things in places on the walls that look like large bronze knights shields connected to pipes.

Jessa says when I’m staring. “Hot water heat.”

“Hot water heat?”

She’s nodding. “They have a sealed tight tank that they heat up and when it’s hot and boiling they have some machine that presses the boiling water and steam out of the tank and it only have the pipes to go and everything gets heated up fast.”

I’m smiling as I’m shaking my head. “We could have used that home, on a hill in the middle of the plains our castle was warm and sheltered but it wasn’t that warm and sheltered and we spent more money that we should have heating things.”

Jessa says. “It’s not cheap that’s a lot of brass and then the other things.”

I nod. “I’m still going to keep it in mind.”

Well that and about a thousand other things.

We’re taken into her house’s parlor and there’s a small party there going on with friends and workers and family like cousin after cousin that are this whole mixture of happy and relieved at her winning and I’m introduced and I’m apparently known as the sorceresses daughter who stood fast with Nicole against the Goblins and Wargs and bested them.

I am unused to being known and being social outside of court and things. I wasn’t really in the age group to mingle with the adults and folks that praise my brothers.

And there’s food of course.

They serve it up on wall benches carved and sorted and ready for folks to take some of whatever they want.

It’s very basic food even for as wealthy as these folks are. Fried potato wedges and baked ones with the insides fluffed and buttered and cooked balls of ground meats in several sauces that we could eat with skewers and there’s ham and bacon wrapped around fruits that have been baked and spiced and then there’s platters of small sausages and pickles.

I eat, I eat and I drink and we talk.

It’s largely about how I’m finding things here and how I got here and these are good people. All save for my transformation I tell them what happened.

Which gets me a little more in the mood to drink in a mourning way but Nicole and Jessa keep close and actually distract me from slipping into brooding too hard over my loss by talking about Palfrey’s corner and bragging me up with all of the things that I did there.

I try to downplay it all and talking about how my magic protects me by burning the sick out of me but it really doesn’t seem to matter as Nicole points out. “But you didn’t know that at the time did you?”

“No…”

And I’m getting really embarrassed as some of the older folks are talking about my mother, not Deidre but aurora and that she was like that and that helping a village full of common folk was just as important to her as helping anyone noble or rich.

And then there’s some of the children who ask to see my magic and I do a few tricks with moving metal and making my lights for them who oooh and aaaaw over it until they’re told to stop pestering me.

Which leaves room for Nicholas who’s talking to me about my powers and my light and more to the point about moving metal and how much I can move and how skilled I am which leads into him and I talking about things like welding and the thoughts of me weaving mail together with my power in ways that would be maybe finer or maybe faster than a smith or an armorer.

Which leads to a tour of the shops and that’s amazing as most of the parts here are made one by one in a shop of their own or assembled in shops. I figure to make one battleknight it employs sixty men seventy if you count the enamellers and that’s not even the spin off from all the things the shops need.

And then there’s all the steel and all the coal and all of the work needed to arm a battleknight.

I’m in dreamland more than a little and I’m learning more by watching and seeing and committing it all to magical memory.

And Nickolas lends me books on welding and making mail and wire and cables as well as samples to play with.

It’s overwhelming in a lot of ways but at the same time I’m not going to refuse and say no.

Besides being extremely unmannerly it’s literally a huge opportunity to learn even more things than I really ever would have back home.

I even get to see their generators and the huge boiler assembly that’s with it and that it’s actually heated by coal but not only does this thing have all of the water used by the steading to heat it and to have running hot water but it uses that pressure to spin baffles that turn wheels and cogs that turn battleknight transfer pulleys that make the wheels for their electric turn.

I get a little lost watching that wheel spin and I can feel the power and the hum and the magnet force working to not create but actually gather the lightning together from the air like rain and this was making water.

There’s more things ticking away in my brain.

It’s really distracting too it’s like trying to sneeze and you can’t. I can feel the ideas for things there almost like an instinct, or something that I know I should be able to figure out like a hard maths problem but for now it’s just staying out of reach.

Even after all of the books and the talking and everything else when we head back at the end of the evening I’m still sitting on the back of the wagon with Nicole’s repaired and refitted Squire’sknight. While we were supping and talking people replaced worn parts and took it apart with a whole crew and not just fixed the damage but gave everything a deep cleaning and then a hard polishing.

It shines in the electric lights of the streets drawing eyes and my imagination.

Even the smell of it with the oils and grease and polish conjures things to my mind.

It’s really chivalrous and greatly appreciated when Nicole and Jessa walk me back to the pages wings where I’m staying and stay long enough for a tea with my floormates and talk a little bit about the matches today.

And the next day life charges on.

Well not so much a charge but just carries forth or whatever and it’s morning chores and then classes and the chores are hard but expected. More time in the kitchens and then a day in the storerooms and I’m good at that and I’m even no stranger to the stables either as I’ve grown up around horses so I’m good like that only the differences in both these times is that I’m a girl.

And I’m smaller than I used to be and then there’s that egalitarian thing they have here.

There’s no burly laborer or builder lads to carry sacks of things for me, there’s just whoever’s on this detail with me.

Oh I’m strong enough I guess but it’s nothing my sisters would have done really, noble women didn’t work like this home at all.

There’s little difference shown.

The biggest problem so far really is my body mass. I’m small and skinny and I never was really big before that but I’ve still lost a good deal of height at weight and my balance is much different when it comes to doing hard work.

My one consolation is that not everyone was used to this at all and not all of the other students did even my former amount of hard work.

There’s a good fair deal of folks huffing and puffing more than I am out of the other pages including Crandell and company.

Who get even more work and punishments as they lose their temperaments and they complain and complain and even quit or refuse some tasks.

The things that I am really unused to is working in the laundry which has never been as an involved operation as I’ve seen here.

We have machines…big washtubs that have paddles inside and with that there is a set of pedals that are levers that you step on and push your weight down that makes things go back and forth and they use a liquefied soap to the wash and then there’s another machine with pedals but on a cog that spins wheels that move these large rollers that have springs that squeeze all the water out.

There’s even a machine for drying clothes that has another cogged pedal wheel that turns a large drum that is heated from being encased in a frame of brass hot water pipes that heat the drum and then there’s a fan inside that blows the air around as the clothes tumble.

And there’s pressing with steel polished irons that have boiling water inside of them from hoses in the walls of your workstations and we press everything from linens for the baths and beds to napkins.

All except for the cloth for the hospital wing of the fortress and that has its own laundry that infuses chemicals that fight off the things in things like germs and viruses that cause colds and sicknesses.

As things turn out I like all of the jobs that I’m asked to do as part of my duties that both train me and pay for training me.

My classes are challenging with so much more to learn and aside from that there’s the other training with the physical things like the exercise and drill yards and then armed and unarmed training as well.

That’s getting better and better.

From talking and training with Lady Tatiana after the dancing and the evening meal.

It started after the first day back after Godsday.

I came into her large office and she made tea as I changed from the fancy gown and corsetry into my simpler training tunic for exercising and drawstring pants and slippers and she had done something similar but better made and fitting and she had a lot of book waiting for me.

“We should start to meditate and then lessons.”

“I felt the crowd today.”

She looks at me and she raises an eyebrow. “Felt the crowd?”

I take the tea and sip it gratefully feeling the ping of the other herbs she’s added to it chasing a good amount of the day away.

“It’s the only way I can describe it, I felt what they were feeling.”

She nods. “You mother told me of this, she didn’t have this herself but your grandfather did.”

“Oh…” I know who he was...supposed to be and just honestly I’ve never thought about it.
She nods. “Magic is like most things with folks it comes through bloodlines and generations.”

“I don’t know much of him but stories.”

“Even your mother only knew some of the man.”

“How she was his daughter?”

“And not the only person there, Aurora said she was born and then ignored for the most part.”

“But she had power.”

“She taught herself, powerful in her being unnoticed.”

“I don’t understand?” I don’t women are pretty much the only ones that can use power.

She looks at me. “Blackhand’s fortress was vast and deadly and filled with many beings that came to his call.”

I have this feeling or she’s giving it off. “He hated women didn’t he?”

“Yes...you felt that from me?”

I nod. “I’m sorry but yes, strong feelings come through.”

Lady Tatiana nods. “It’s not a problem; it’s another sense one that we need to work on.”

I sigh with relief.

She finishes her tea. “Well let’s get started.”

We started with meditation breathing and learning to focus and pull my power in tighter, let it flare bright as I breathe and that was enough well along with getting a book on the nerves and brain with healing.

I only had a vagueish idea of how that all worked and I was surprised at just how far the power electric goes, about how things work in people and animals.

And learning that led to lessons in it and my power with Lady Tatiana that she started to have me training on feeling things.

First with her...her focus and able to call up feelings is amazing.

Then in the suppers and in classes.

Which is why I’m doing better now.

I can feel when Crandall is hating me, wanting to hurt me.

I can feel Bennet and Kenneth coming at me so full of wanting to hurt me for being a woman.

And with my other training with Lady Tatiana I’m getting better at sword play and defending myself.

Physically things are getting easier...in my heart not so much.

In her offices we meditate and then there’s something with control like pushing power through my body for strength in my muscles or nerves for speed or both and then there’s body remembering which is learning sword moves, fighting moves, footwork and using my powers under her instruction.

Two hours every night starting with meditation and ending with it too.

And I’m getting better enough that there’s scary times that I feel hostility aimed at me and it’s hard not to feel hurt...no it’s impossible not to feel hurt by serving porridge to someone you don’t know that radiates that they don’t like you.

And not knowing them, not knowing why...just feeling it.

And being a girl...all these feelings and hurts and it just boils up and pulls me under like I’m being grabbed and drowned.

I’ve never cried so much.

Never cried in the showers of the bath so much.

I’ve never cried so much that it hurt my sides.

And I can’t tell people why, not really.

Lady Tatiana after that first night. “Chrissy you need to keep this power to yourself, if people know you can feel them, feel emotions and thoughts then they will take it wrong. Even those that will be good with you will take this wrong, they will feel vulnerable, compromised and that will lead to fear and fear will lead to anger and even desperate things.”

I could feel her conviction when she said that.

Now that I can feel more...there are people who hate me and fear me just barely knowing about me.

So it’s hard and lonely.
The others help, my fellow pages, the squires I’m housed with but other than saying I’m feeling homesick there’s not much that I can share.

They try though.

Anoelle is sweet and with her charming accent makes me smile a little and usually when I don’t want to. She’s also distracting when we’re in our quarters being very pretty but there’s the fact that she has these great full ripe breasts that she barely covers while we’re alone as women.

Which has parts of me feeling things after Megan i see women differently than I was adapting to. Then there’s the fact that she’s so pretty and curvy that I find myself measuring myself to her and find myself wanting...a little jealous.

She’s so endearing though and not a bit scared of me or too prideful to come to me for help with our lessons.

She also has a pretty big crush over Stormer.

Actually all of us have a crush of kinds on Stormer.

I can admit to that some too.

Raven black haired, grey eyes and so focused.

That’s admirable but it’s also mysterious and off putting when you’d wish he’d look at you. He doesn’t do that in a way that a woman would like. No he looks at you like you’re a person but also like he’s studying you if you catch his interest.

And he’s hated by the snobby types him being a boot-towner and the son of a mercenary.

Foreign at that apparently his last name is from a place called The Shield Isles and they’re like Wolf Islanders. Pirates, raiders, mercenaries but more on the mercenary end than pirates when they show it’s usually with a flotilla according to books I’ve looked at.

And he’s a battleknight candidate so he trains in a rig or rig frame a lot...so when we train and he takes off his shirt it’s very distracting.

Gods and light help me yes after Alaan I have those feelings too.

So more confusion even if it being semi pleasant and sort of fun to talk about.

Kari’s nice but she sort of is unnerved by my power, she’s good until I do something.

Lesley’s fine and reminds me a lot of Nicole but very boy crazy.

Even with Crandell and his entourage.

I mean they all try and the older girls do too but they’re all so busy it’s a quick look in on me usually when I’m crying.

And I set some of them on edge too.

So yes, homesickness is the explanation most of the time.

And even sharing that will set me off sometimes too when I’m already upset from feeling hate multiple times a day.

I miss home.

I miss home, my people, my family, familiar sights, voices...I even miss me.

I miss my friends...Nicole, Jessa, Taylor all busy with things and duties. I haven’t seen them in what feels like forever not even at high-table or the dancing.

After everything is done for the day I throw myself into my studies, into my readings from Lady Tatiana.

That does help as much as anything can.

I remember everything now pretty much that I study and now it’s I will read something new and it’s like one thing new will connect to a few older things or I’ll get connections to things or finally getting something I learned years ago.

Master Quait my Dwarven teacher is aware of my memorization skills and gives me book after book and not all of them Dwarven or strictly so. I’m slowly learning words of all kinds from a book called a dictionary, and dwarves know a great deal of maths.

And that’s helping my other studies.

Which starts sometimes my cycle of getting hated more or over again especially when I’m doing well.

And yes more homesickness, more feeling like a stranger in my body every
time I dress and see myself.

Sigh….

I was doing dishes steam cooking me and everything sticking to my body after the morning rush when another page shows up dressed for the kitchen.

“Lady Tatiana wants you Chrissy.”

“The lady...now?”

“Aye, I’m yer relief.” He shrugs and grabs a box of dishes and I head out and go to her office where she’s waiting with Nicole, Taylor and Jessa.

“Ah Chrissy good, I wanted you here because I have a mission for you four.”

I think the others knew that but I’m still trying to process things like I’m not awake. In truth it’s out of the ordinary. “A mission?”

She nods and points to a map showing the area and then she’s pointing to a part of the coastline. “My post riders here haven’t send word nor bird in weeks and it’s a rough region for ocean raiders. I’m sending Nicole to make contact and I want you on the squad.”

I blink. “Why me, I’m still just barely training.”

Lady Tatiana smiles. “Not so, you’ve real field experience now and you’ve been progressing do to your powers at a rate that has you well past the other pages in a lot of things. Added to your magic you’re an obvious choice for the team.”

“I...oh…” I’m blushing more than pleased.

She gives me a friendly smile and a nod. A servant makes tea and we’re going over things that I had no idea would be needed in a mission. I mean I’m not my sister Liz with all her books of wonder tales but this was nothing like I thought it’d be.

Goods we’d need to take to others from letters to supplies, a healer with us this time a Mistress Marybeth, things soldiers too a full squad and what they’ll need as well. Taylor gets books from the census room and I am in awe of that idea.

Lady Tatiana has books made from the things we did on the way here and others have done with notes on the villages, hamlets and towns along with way stations and things in between from water sources to kingdom hidden supply caches places where there’s orchards and all these things. The towns and such are mapped, homes listed with notes as well.

It’s far from a complete work but the various reports from others have been compiled and we’re all getting ideas of the lay of the land and the folk therein.

We’re a few hours talking and going over things and Lady Tatiana tells stories of some pretty rough encounters out there from brigands to mythical beasts that are apparently real.

“There’s such a thing as frog men?”

She nods sipping tea and eating a dainty sandwich. “Oh aye, Fennidrogo.”

Jessa’s frowning. “Fenni are bad news.”

I’m looking at Taylor and Nicole who shrug.

I say. “I’m still agog at them being real.”

Jessa’s drinking tea and then crunches a rock of sugar. “Oh aye real enough, hard bastards t’kill.”

Lady Tatiana says. “The Fennidrogo are a race from the great ancient wars when the fighting between realms and universes happened like so much of the other things out there. They come from a realm of different evolution to most of us but they have adapted well enough. They’re also alien enough that we’re...humanity and whatnot easy enough prey to kill, raid and even eat.”

“They’re swimmers so they’re strong to begin with but their skin is water ready and rubbery so it’s like light armor and they’re predatory by nature so sharp nails and teeth.”

I say/ask. “Teeth on a frog?”

She says. “What we think frogs look like, but no it’s more like a shark’s mouth.”

She in the end went for a book on them which was fascinating and terrifying with the one thing being in our favor of them being fairly primitive and warm water favoring.

I mention. “Well we’re headed north and west further to the tip of the realms here so the water’s colder. It says here they prefer warmer waters.”

She nods. “Yes so it’s not likely to be the Fenni, but they are out there.”

Oh I’m getting the thought that the middle-kingdoms we so much more secure than anyone home knew. We were so protected and insulated that I had no clue to the things out in the rest of Titan.

In a sad way we were almost due trouble.

Someone asked something and I saw the others getting up so I do too. “Excuse me I was just thinking on things home.”

Nicole rubs my shoulder. “You alright?”

“Yes just thinking yet again how sheltered I grew up.”

Lady Tatiana says. “True but the middle-kingdoms fought their battles long, long ago and are the most settled of the human lands. Growing up there isn’t a bad thing Chrissy.”

“But we should have known these things.”

“Worrying over the near impossible is just going to hurt the things that are needed in the here and now. Even as wild as things are in the wider world these events of creatures and monsters are few and far between mankind interacting with mankind.”

I nod. “So there was no way to expect the attack home.”

Lady Tatiana nods. “Unless your father was everywhere no, this was something that came out of the dark and even as little as we know it smacks of bad politics.”

She looks at me. “I’ve sent letters Chrissy asking about things. Someone will know something and I’ve enough allies that I’ll hear something once they know.”

She slips an arm around my shoulders for a hug. “Go out and eat lunch, do tour few things before coming back and getting ready….actually I have a few things you should have first. You three follow too.”

She starts walking and fast too. In her uniform and armor she’s fast on those long legs of hers despite all of her stunning curves. Only Nicole is able to keep up and the rest of us trail in her wake as we head to a back courtyard to one of the towers and there’s a door there with white paint and a copper plate on it with a blackened heat exposed hand print.

My mother’s tower.

I will say it’s not what I expected a wizard’s tower to be.

It’s tall but it’s round and nothing like I’d been thinking there’s smooth mortar on the whole outside of it and covered in layers of paint and it’s less a tower of a wizard than something I’d seen out of the desert nations and it’s actually lovely with what must be the first few floors without windows but after that there’s these great grand archway windows often of stained glass heading upwards.

It’s quite high too at least a hundred yards high...it tapers as it goes for stability to a top that’s a flat roof.

Lady Tatiana looks at me. “Place your hand on the plate and open the door.”

I’m nervous and I do so and there’s an arc between me and it and I felt something complex happen and I feel the place hum to life with electric power and many moving things inside coming to life.

I look at Lady Tatiana who says. “We’re just visiting; I can enter too as well as a few others she set the spells for. But by and large Chrissy you’re not ready for much of this. I want your bond until I say you won’t come here before me.”

I swallow and nod. “I swear on my blood and my house Lady.”

She’s still looking at me….Oh...oh well it’s that serious.

I take a breath and bring my power up until my hand arcs. “So mote it be.”

With my powers up...I felt that old swear by the powers actually do something...go somewhere.

Oh...well that is far more real than I thought as well.

She gestures for me to open the doors.

Oh...it’s pretty here.

The place isn’t a huge space inside instead it’s halls and rooms and there’s lovely decorated tiled floors and lovely glass and metal electric lamps and sconce like lamps and there’s wooden framed doors and art on the walls and in this room there’s a grand staircase of lovely wood headed further up.

There’s dust here and there but not the amount that I thought that there would be.

Lady Tatiana heads inside towards a room down a hall and opens a door. I feel the brass handle respond to her touch and we’re in a store room?

“This is your mother’s store room for her apprentices.”

“She had apprentices?”

“A few but mostly just students not like a true apprentice. Most of this was for when she found her real apprentice. Some of it is her older gear though she grew past over the years.”

She gestures me and the others inside and there’s whole stacks of crates and boxes under tarps and covers and I’m seeing things I’ve never seen before as well as endless other things until she finds things for us.

Wooden cylinders capped with quartz and copper wires?

She passes me one. It’s a battery...with a quartz simple light that’s meant for hard use and ac switch for the non-magic folks. “Torches, they’re electric torches.”

She nods. “Yes you can feel it?”

“Yes I can charge them but not make them. I have no idea where to start.”

“I think she left books on all of that.”

There’s more with a wand that’s like mine but just a better weapon...four detaching blades on all four sides and inside metal bearings that I can fire with magnetic force.

A rod device that spools rope around it but have a spike or hook that I can fire with magnet force.

A staff that...oh...it has a head that has a small electric maker within its head a thing of copper and wire that spins with my power and things to make either light or unleash arcs of lightning.

I look at Lady Tatiana. “This is a weapon, a powerful one.”

She nods. “In many ways yes, your mother found it was too unwieldy at times and scared folks when she used it.”

“Then why hold it for me?”

“Aurora said it harnessed power well that you didn’t use so much of it and the lighting was easy to aim.”

I...I’m still processing that and she says. “Lightning arcs jump, they have a tendency to follow the rules electric rather than the laws of battle. So better aim would be good for younger apprentices.”

I take all of those at her urging and a few other things like lanterns I can float and use like the electric torches.

An powered saw with a round blade that uses magnet force to spin, another that has a straight blade that goes back and forth, then a whole box of steel and copper wires and things that I can use to use magnet force on.

I take the tools and such in two boxes to take with us and a trio of books that Lady Tatiana passed me to get started on all written in dwarvish runes and one with a lock made by my mother.

“What’s this?”

“A starter grimoire.”

“A starter grimoire? For?”

“Basic spells and cantrips as well as manifestation casting.”

I look at her. “That’s…”

“What I told you before of your other magic, of other magic. This will teach you some of the mystical alphabets and how to construct formulae for making spells.”

I’m looking at the books and they look very complex with the words but also the diagrams within then like some sort of bizarre math codes mixed with geometry. “You think I can do this?”

Lady Tatiana nods and smiles at me. “I think so besides it’s mostly learning the very basics of doing the just the ground work so even if you don’t cast anything there you’re getting a chance to learn and study it. Most of this kind of thing I can’t teach you Chrissy I can’t form the power and I can’t even read the actual spell language so you’ll have to muddle through it on your own.”

“You can’t read it?”

“I’m an adept, while I have magic and I am old enough to be experienced my power is a physical thing it doesn’t leave my body while wizardry and the like casts and forms out into the ether which requires true mage sight to do and adepts don’t have that only mage folk do.”

“Oh…” I feel a little adrift.

She rubs my shoulder. “Have some faith your mother wrote half of this stuff and I helped her square things away here for years so I know what I’m giving you. You can do this.”

I take a breath and square my shoulders. “Okay…this is the real work then.”

She nods. “Yes for you as a mage yes.”

We take the time to do a little cleaning and she orders in some of mother’s servants that had been assigned here to come and help at the same time. They know what to touch and what not to and we’re doing this now so it will be done a little bit for when I come back and can come and spend some more time here.

There’s only seven floors here with some of them actually having some pretty high ceilings and those are the actually close to the top with mother’s library and on the top floor her observatory where she looked at the stars with both telescopes but with other things like mirrors and a huge one in the floor with four huge prisms that are like pillars at all the corners of it.

She has devices everywhere and rooms for devices and I’m utterly lost even if it’s just passing by or through as we’re cleaning I’m as baffled as everyone else.

And there are some rooms with doors that are heavy metal and painted red.

Those none of us touch.

I had to ask. “Why are we leaving those alone?”

Lady Tatiana says. “Those are warded to cause harm; there are things that she alone wished to keep secret for everyone’s good including mine.”

I look at her. “Including you?”

She nods. “I’m a person too and who’s to say there’s something there that might tempt me in ways or in times that I shouldn’t know about.”

“But it’s you castle.”

“I respected your mother’s judgment both as a friend and as a professional. She grew up in her father’s citadel she knows what should be out of reach better than most.”

I look at the doors. “I think I’ll leave those alone for a while.”

She nods. “That’s wise.”

We finish and I head with Nicole, Jessa and Taylor into town we’re given a few hours of liberty to go and have a meal out and we’re talking about my mother’s tower all the way and the things that we seen and what some of them might do.

There’s this feeling of cautious wonder coming from them but not hostility or outright fear.

We actually are following Taylor who’s taking us down into Boot-town.

That’s the dwarven under city named for the boots that the workers had worn as they cut the rock for the city and for all of the sewers and all of the things that you need below a city that I never thought about.

It’s well lit with electric and there’s a smell but it’s actually pleasant instead of dank with the smells of lots of wood being used for construction and heat and there’s all these cooking smells and scents too hinting through the air but they seem to use some kinds of perfume or scented something or other and we end up going through what to me what seems like a labyrinth of the under streets until we come to a place that has this awning canopy as it’s sign and there are all sorts of strange charters written on it in a very foreign language.

I think it is Silk Islander.

Before we go inside I stop them and I exhale and I look at them. “I have to be honest with you.”

They’re looking at me like I’m being strange.

Nicole nods and says. “Okay, please do.”

I blush and I look down and I take another breath and square my shoulders. “I can read people’s feelings.”

They’re looking at me and I can feel some surprise and Nicole feels fine like this was expected and Jessa is surprised and she’s wondering things right off but I can’t tell what and then there’s Taylor who is seemingly getting more and more amused?

And I’m starring at them.

I feel Nicole get it.

She comes over and she hugs me. “It’s alright, we sort expected strange powers and such.”

Jessa says. “We’ll have to check ranges we can use this in the wilds.”

Taylor shrugs opening the door for us. “It’s odd and unexpected but not altogether that unexpected.”

I was in happy tears as my friends led me inside the restaurant.

The tables were low and we sat on woven mats and Taylor ordered from these painted Chaikanese ladies in robes and there were many folk here especially dwarves all eating daintily with these long thin forks with tiny tines and matching spoons unless it was for the broth which had broth spoons.

The things they do with simple noodles and vegetables as well as braised meats and spices are stunning and exotic and it’s a feast.

I’ve had noodles before but ours are different than these, these are delicate and yet they are made into dishes with broth and greens and these thinly sliced vegetables and there’s some met there too and mushrooms and just so many things that really are ordinary for the most part but prepared so differently they’re amazing and interesting.

I like fried rice.

It’s the cereal grain but they literally make it into a think like hash as we would with potatoes using the browned bit of a pan and it’s leftovers and a few vegetables and the like and it’s quite filling and savory.

We eat and we talk and Taylor tells how the Chaikanese folks are allied to the elder races from long back and that they trade heavily with the dwarves who taught them building and other things and the elves that did as well and that their entire nation of The Silk Islanders were once long, long ago refugees like the rest of us but how they came under the protection and guidance of Dragons.

“Dragons?”

He nods. “Aye they’re real.”

“Oh I know they are there’s enough ancient accounts of them but I’ve never heard of them revered like this, usually they’re beasts that ravage the countryside.”

He gestures with a fried dumpling. “Different dragons.”

“Different dragons?” Nicole asks. I’m glad I’m not the only one in the dark.

He eats the dumpling and orders another little pot of more. “Aye from legends told dragons are as varied as the faerie because they are creatures of myth and magic, each one becomes something that follows not just its lineage but it’s region and magic there and it’s temperament.”

Jessa’s looking at him. “Like shifters?”

He shakes his head. “No, it’s more of a slower thing it’s like how animals adapt but with more because of them being dragons. The ones we hear of in the horrible stories are a reflection of us…we’re not a great bunch really and we are part of the environment.”

A dwarf nearby rumbles something through a mouthful of noodles. I catch something about slates?

I look at Taylor and he says in common. “He said from the dragon’s view some of that destruction was them defending their territory from bad neighbors, making a clean slate of their countryside.”

I nod because as much as I’ve read I’ve been learning there are a lot of non-human views out there and they’re perfectly valid ones as well.

And not for the first time have I noticed that Taylor’s not just a keep boy he knows a lot of cultural things and he speaks many dialects and I remember him fighting with his knives and daggers too.

We catch each other’s eyes for a minute and we have this sort of moment where I can almost feel him in a different way but then his eyes crinkle with laughter as Jessa bites into a dumpling filled with soup and squirts Nicole by accident.

We’re there for several hours having food and talking and even trying some seaweed here as both Jessa and Taylor talk about it as a staple out in the coast and I like it.

I don’t love it but I like it well enough.

Dwarves apparently can’t get enough of the stuff and eat it raw, stewed, steamed and dried and I sort of notice there’s several dishes of it on most of their tables.

I drink too and they use these little drinking bowls that have rice wines but also variations on it that are like brandies with plums and apricots and peaches distilled with them and we get well into our cups before we head out and Taylor actually treats and I know it was expensive and I am sober enough to leave eight coppers since I read somewhere that eight is a lucky number with the Chaikanese.

We walk through Boot-town looking at things and wobbling together happily and we see several shops and they’re still open and we pop into a few buying a few cheap odds and ends. I buy some candies wrapped in wax and a file for my nails and this wonderful thing called nail clippers that uses leverage to push down sharp pincers to clip my nails.

Okay the other three say it’s a common enough thing but home it’s done with a sharp knife or sometimes a special knife if you’re getting a barber to do it.

The others buy their things too and we head back after going for sweets and kaffet and drinking and eating as we sober up walking back to the keep.

We stop by my rooms for some things and then we stop by the quarter masters and he’s there himself and he checks out our gear.

Replacing things for a Jessa and Taylor giving Nicole more oil and grease for her Squire’s knight as well as us all several folded oiled tarps and Taylor requests other odds and ends like several bars of flint, a can of lamp oil as well as spikes, mallet, rope lots of rope.

And me he makes sure I have extra socks, and then woolen socks to go with things and extra breeches and shirts and then a heavy woolen sweater with a hood that is long enough to hang past my bottom like a skirt. And he has a long coat that is oiled calfskin with a linen liner and with buttons and buckles with a hood; it has a wonderful number of pockets.

“It makes me look like a magician.”

He nods. “And you are, but moreover it’s a knight or squires style watch coat it’ll keep the weather off of you and it’s warm.”

I thank him and then we go to the armory where I get a sword belt to fit my blade better and myself better and get it fitted right to my watch-coat properly so I know how to wear it all and then I get a few other small things.

A small bodkin, a larger dirk, a folding skinning knife.

Taylor gets a crossbow issued to him one that has a drawing bolt? And he gets a small hip bolt case and a much larger one that’s literally a box?

“That’ll be hard to carry.”

He grins. “One it’s going in the wagons, two it’s resupply, three it’ll be fast loading if we end up in a tight spot and have to fortify ourselves like in a siege or something.”

Nicole gets one too but it’s a massive thing called an arbalest.

I look at her. “Are we expecting a dragon?”

She shakes her head. “No but a ship or ships perhaps.”

It seems like a lot until she and Taylor are talking and I get the idea.

Nicole doesn’t fire; she uses her Squire’sknight to pull the bow back to reload in moments if need be and with Taylor firing it takes on a whole other significance.

Jessa’s the easiest with mostly getting a sharpening of some of her things as well as a travel quiver pack like Taylor she just gets a lot of extra arrowheads.

Then we’re out and headed to meet up with the twelve squad of soldiers assigned to Nicole and again I’m a little awed at her getting the responsibility and Lady Marybeth is meeting us with her apprentices and a healer’s wagon.

Then we do a final check before we head to the Iron Rhino’s docks and we get loaded to go which takes hours and I actually help and not just let the porters or the troops do it.

It’s late or rather really early in the morning when we pull out with the iron rhino on the first run out west of the day here.

I should be tired and exhausted but this is the best that I have felt all week after all the things going on in my head and I’m standing leaning on the doorway of our car looking out as we’re passing through the city and building up speed more and more.