Page 29 of Stars May Burn

Despite the blue glass lamps, the lighting was dim and the windows murky. The workshop was a chaotic arrangement of tables covered with tools and half opened drawers filled with lumps of metal or rocks. In one corner was a furnace and what could have passed as a smithy.

It was the most intriguing place I’d ever entered. I examined some half-formed trinkets. “This is kryalcomy?”

Callum sighed and wiped his hands on a cloth, leaning back on a bench. Impatience was still clear in his stature. “It is.”

I turned the balls and disks around in wonder. How could lifeless lumps of metal form light? Kryalcomy lamps and heaters were the most common usage of the art but I knew it could do more. I also knew any kryalcomy was very expensive.

I turned to my husband’s friend. “How does it work?”

Callum gestured to his workbench where thousands of small pots contained nuggets of metal. “It’s complicated.” His flat tone was intended to end the conversation.

I narrowed my eyes. “Go on.”

He cleared his throat. “Kryalcomy and its related arts are a huge area of study, but I’ll try to give a comprehensive overview that even somebody with no training such as yourself might understand.”

I tried not to bristle and merely raised an eyebrow.

“So, there are four types of metal you need to understand the properties of. First we have kryal.” He picked up a small piece of dull grey metal. “When properly shaped and treated, kryal can attract things to itself. Similar to the way a magnet draws other metal, kryal can draw other things.”

I frowned. “How? How does it attract them?”

Callum snorted. “Do you understand how a magnet attracts things? No. Well you won’t understand this either, so stop asking questions and listen.”

I folded my arms and glared. He ignored me.

“The easiest one is light. Kryal, when heated at the same temperature that turns sand to glass and spread thin, will attract light. It is drawn in one end and out of the other. Just like a magnet, it has two poles.”

He picked up a long wooden rod. Carved into it was a groove containing a thin line of metal, far too fragile to be handled alone. When Callum held the rod up to a lamp, its light dimmed slightly, and light shone from the far end of the metal line. A thin beam of light, completely straight, was visible down the metal.

I frowned. “Why isn’t it glowing? Most kryalcomy objects have a blue or red glow around them. This looks more like a beam.”

Callum gave a theatrical sigh and held up a finger. “What did I say about questions? If you want me to explain, not a single word.” He lowered his voice. “Kryalcomy doesn’t need to glow. It’s merely a requirement of the Maegistrium in Ilustran University, the place kryalcomy originated.”

I opened my mouth, and he made an exasperated noise. “No! Just listen.” He flourished his sleeves as he replaced the wooden pole. “Now, light is the easiest to attract with kryal, but in the last hundred years, we’ve discovered other properties. In its rudimentary forms, heat was a bi-product of light transfer, but in amounts too small to use. With refining, however, we managed to separate the two qualities so we can have light without heat, and—much more difficult—heat without light. You see, enough heat to warm a room would require a blinding amount of light if you didn’t refine it.”

I thought of the soft glowing red light in my heated bath but didn’t interrupt.

“Obviously, with this you can choose to make an area hot or cold, light or dark, depending on the direction of the bar. Anyway, then we discovered how to transfer water and air by heating kryal to different temperatures and adding tiny amounts of other metals to make alloys. Thus forming the four pillars of the foundation of kryalcomy.” He held up his four fingers. “Light, heat, water and air.”

He flourished a grand bow. I didn’t respond as he’d previously requested that I say nothing. He pouted.

“Then we have this metal.” He tossed a nugget of a brighter metal, paler than silver, straight at my face. I caught it. Barely.

Callum grinned. “Turstan. This can store the properties attracted by kryal. By giving it a soft core and a hard shell, you can make it porous by varying degrees, which means you can control the speed or volume it releases the substance into its environment.”

I gave him a blank blink.

“Gah. Don’t worry about what I just said. Just think of this as a storehouse you can fill up with whatever you’ve collected from the kryal. Light or heat, normally. It then slowly releases it.”

He pointed to the glass lamps. “So those are all turstan that have been charged using a kryal lighter. They don’t require any skill to use. They’re just a lump of rock, so anyone can buy or install them.”

I nodded; things were starting to make more sense. “So it’s a piece of turstan that’s heating my bath. One that’s been infused with heat using kryalcomy.”

“Exactly.”

“Then why does it glow?”

“As I said before, in our grand country of Fenland”—I didn’t miss the sarcasm in his voice—“kryalcomy is regulated by the Maegistrium in Ilustran. There are obvious dangers to the art, and kryalcomy is complicated. It takes work to make it safe and accessible to the common man. For many reasons, every kryalcomal device must be stamped as made by an approved artist. And every kryalcomal or turstan device must glow when active so it can’t be hidden. So the turstan in your bath is infused with both light and heat.”

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