Still troubled by his encounter with Thadden, Dwayne entered the Tower, stepped around the reception desk, and then went downstairs to the basement. As a small flame winked into existence to light the room, he stopped by the workspace he shared with Magdala.
Only a week had passed since he’d last been here, since the night Magdala had offered to make his dream come true, but it felt like years. He should ask Magdala how the project was going. She should have made decent progress by now. After all, she only had professors making demands of her time. If he could just find an hour, he could ask her to lunch and…
“We can’t risk that future,” Lord Gallus had said.
Dwayne wasn’t hoping for anything more. If he tried, he’d have to let his emotions run free, and he could not afford that. Anyway, it was just a meal. They’d shared dozens of meal without anything happening and besides, there would be people around, not like down here in the basement where two people had to sit side by side, their bodies almost touching, each conversation a chance to…
Perhaps it would be safer if he just sent Magdala a note via Miss Lucchesi instead.
Sweeping past the table, Dwayne went to the pedestal, summoned the Terminal Tome with the License Key, and started to flip through the index. Fourth Committee. Fourth Committee. Fourth Committee. Wow, they’d been prolific.
After flipping through several pages, Dwayne finally found it: Sixth Committee – Fluid, Vapors, Gases and Their Myriad Applications.
He tapped the entry. “Show me.”
A block of text appeared.
TITLE: Fluid, Vapors, Gases and Their Myriad Applications
AUTHORS: Sixth Committee (Brooks, Sallow, Loughty and Assc)
STATUS: Collected
STANDING ORDERS: Any copies found outside of Her Majesty’s Library must be destroyed forthwith.
DESCRIPTION: As the precursor to Pennoyer’s Index of Alch. Reac., the text describes the foundational theories essential to the thaumaturgical breakthroughs in agriculture, pharmacology, mining, and textiles that happened during the Latter Golden Age. However, the section of the book that warns of the alchemical effects of certain nQe spells on living beings turned out to have martial applications. One example is a vesicant gas of nitrogen and chlorine admixture that was used at Paecergad on Queen Ella’s orders. The consequences of that event and others resulted in Queen Ella’s successor Queen Lyna ordering the texts wide spread collection and destruction.
Queen Ella and Paecergad sounded familiar. Dwayne dismissed the Tome and went upstairs to the second floor library. With any luck, he’d found what he needed here and not have to deal with Magisterium’s head archivist, who had a habit of shadowing him in the stacks. It didn’t take him long to find a history book, which he could thanked Mei for.
The book’s entry on Paecergad stated that, while Soura had been carving away bits of the Yaniti Empire ever since Queen Rhea ascension to the throne, Paecergad and the rest of the Empire’s desert strongholds were too well garrisoned for Soura to take. To break the stalemate, Queen Ella created the Sixth Committee and ordered it to find a solution. Two years later, it discovered the vesicant and deployed at Paecergad under Queen Ella’s direct oversight. To quote the book, this deployment “resulted in an estimated eighty-seven percent enemy casualty rate and an expeditious surrender.”
Eighty-seven percent. Feeling numb, Dwayne looked up the word “vesicant” in a dictionary.
vesicant n. – A substance that causes blistering of the skin or mucous membrane.
Horrifying images of skin blistering and eyes bleeding screamed through Dwayne’s mind. All that had happened while a queen and her mages watched and waited. There was no way that had happened just at Paecergad. After all, even the names of the other desert fortresses had been wiped from the map.
Having met other mage families at this point, Dwayne wasn’t surprised that the Kalans had had Fluid, Vapors, Gases and Their Myriad Applications in their possession. From their point of view, it was a great addition to the family collection, full of secret tricks to help with agriculture and textiles. They just had to make sure that only a few in the family knew about it, like the family head or any nQe mages born to the family. Dwayne could only hope that the dangerous section had been removed or redacted.
Because that’s what the thieves wanted. It was possible that they were trying to corner the market on carrots or the color periwinkle, but it was hard to imagine either of those were worth breaking into house after house, night after night. No it was delusional to think that the theives who’d stolen texts with mere hints of weapons like this vesicant had such mundane goals.
He had to tell the Queen about this.
After replacing the books on their respective shelfs, Dwayne returned to the basement to find a pen and paper. As he wrote out his report to the Queen, a thought occurred to him: Thadden probably wanted to know about this. However, despite the baron’s stated status as his ally, Dwayne didn’t want to tell him. If pressed, Dwayne could spout excuses like the baron did not really seem interested in magic, had published no work regarding either thaumaturgical theory or practice, had protested Dwayne’s sharing of his own spell vials. The fact that Thadden was a slave owner was a strong reason too, but it, and all the others, were just parts of a simple truth: Dwayne didn’t like Thadden very much.
Luckily, it wasn’t Dwayne’s decision. The Throne’s standing orders were to collect or destroy the book, the effects of those orders were to wipe the existence of Fluid, Vapors, Gases and Their Myriad Applications from the world, and as such only those involved in the collection and destruction, only those who were a part of the Royal Sorcerer’s Office, only Dwayne and Mei, needed to know. Baron Otto Thadden didn’t work for the Tower. If he wanted to know about the book or the vesicant, he’d have to become the Royal Sorcerer and find out himself.
At any rate, Dwayne was done here, so he headed for the door. If he rushed, despite his injuries, he could get to the Magisterium, report to the Queen via windsong messenger, ask about Magdala’s progress via Lucchesi, and be in his seat before Professor Corns shuffled into class.
Admaeus Speaks 