Page 19 of The Grip of Death
“I knew it,” I muttered. “She sabotaged us.”
“Are you so sure about that?” He bent closer, peeling back a flap of my boot’s sole. “This piece here could have been shredded by a sharp piece of rock. They’re everywhere around these parts. Jack, this could just be a problem of wear and tear. What if there was no sabotage?”
I glowered down at the ruined boot, more confused than ever.
Was Hecate trying to kill us, or was she really trying to help us after all?
9
The noiseof banging and hammering filled the afternoon, the Black Market’s sun beating hot over the Halls of Making. I breathed in the sweet, balmy air, lulled into a state of calm by these familiar, comforting sounds. This was like a spa to me, the music of artifice and industry. It reminded me of hard work, of family, and home.
Okay. So maybe Hecate wasn’t trying to kill me and Xander, after all. It was still a strange way of expressing her concern to us. Why did she always have to take the weird way out? Then again, what was I expecting from a goddess? And from Hecate, most of all, the creepiest entity we knew despite her being the closest.
It didn’t matter in the end, I knew, because she’d be sure to tell us what was on her mind herself, in her own cryptic, meandering way. Like it or not, Xander and I had permanently attracted the attention and affection of our own fucked-up fairy godmother. Gods forbid if we ever had a baby and forgot to invite Hecate to their first birthday.
I breathed in, expanding my chest, filling my lungs to the brim, and breathed out again, long and slow. Again, this was atime for me to set my mind on more calming and distracting matters. No more of this freaky godmother bullshit for now.
Xander was back home at his own version of a day spa, luxuriating in the shower and no doubt scrubbing himself and steeping his skin in all kinds of expensive potions and lotions. And here I was at the guild, surrounded by tools of all sorts, and I wasn’t just talking about my friends, either.
Only joking, of course. Maybe it was sheer coincidence, but basically all of our friends were at the guild at that very moment.
Preston and Giuseppe were hard at work on the arcane engine, with the occasional bit of friendly feedback from Master Vikhyat. Something that nobody seemed to mind, considering Vikhyat could offer both a strong arm as well as his wealth of knowledge on metals and minerals.
At the end of the day, artificing was really just the art of slotting raw materials in next to each other and hoping for the best. The Gauntlet, for example, was created from the artful fusion of leather, crystals, as well as wiring and mesh made from precious metals, all engineered by an extremely handsome artificer whose name I always forget.
In short, despite specializing in a completely different discipline, Vikhyat’s advice on the arcane applications of metals was always welcome and very much invaluable. And if three brains were willing to work together to bring out the best in the arcane engine — four if you counted yours truly — then who was I to complain?
Count the brawn in there as well, between Preston, Vikhyat, and myself. Hell, Giuseppe wasn’t a slouch in the muscle department, either. Decades of working with tools and heavy machinery had given him a vise-like grip and the kind of weightlifting power you wouldn’t expect in a man of his build.
And a man of his age, either, considering how his life had mostly consisted of eating tons of Mother Dough carbs andwatching the world turn from the comfort of his couch. There was magic in those muscles, I was sure of it.
“You know what’s funny about these schematics?” Giuseppe asked, tightening a nut. “It’s that they look awfully familiar. I don’t know what it is. Maybe because I’ve worked with your mom and dad’s stuff so much in the past.”
I nodded, rapping my knuckles on the engine. “That’s probably it. An illustration is just made up of different shapes, right? There’s only so many ways to draw a rectangle or a circle. Mom and Dad were brilliant, but they didn’t reinvent the wheel. Maybe you just recognized another project of theirs in there somewhere.”
“You’re probably right.” A smile broke across Giuseppe’s lips, his eyes lighting up even as his gaze went distant. “We made dozens of things, you know? Back in the day. And lots of them didn’t even end up working properly. But when something ran the way it should have, the way we expected? It was like making miracles happen, Jack. These aren’t just the Halls of Making. These are the Halls of Making Magic.”
I couldn’t help grinning at Giuseppe. As if I needed to be told why the art of artifice was so incredible, despite all the pain and effort of building things, despite the danger. It was meant to create fantastical effects by bringing unlikely materials together, but here the art of artifice had brought so many strangers together, too.
Not so long ago it would have been bizarre to see Master Lobelia and Master Kaoru chatting and laughing to each other like equals, heads of their respective guilds with long histories of tension and conflict. Niko and Sedgewick were our earliest examples of guild harmony, exactly as Kaoru had pointed out.
And I’d always known she was destined for great things, but I still hadn’t fully processed how our very own Beatrice Rex had risen to a position of guild leadership herself. Sure, right nowshe was only the Seventh Veil, but given enough time I knew she would sail right past all the other veils and rise to become the Master of the House of Needles herself.
Those youngest three had somehow gravitated toward us — Niko, Sedgewick, and Beatrice — right as I’d picked up some tools to join Giuseppe and the others in some good old manual labor. I knew it wasn’t to help out with some elbow grease, either.
Maybe they were hoping to hear some gossip from Giuseppe about the old guilds. Niko had certainly found himself on the old man’s good side, trading his fair share of modern Black Market gossip to pick up snippets of just how much the guilds truly hated each other back in the olden days.
“And I’m sure I don’t need to tell you young ’uns because that sort of nonsense isn’t from too long ago.We even had some of the same masters at the same guilds today. Time was that I couldn’t imagine old Vikhyat here debasing himself by mixing with us artificer lunatics, and sweet Lobelia over there wasn’t nearly as sweet back in the times of the old guild. Begging your pardon, ma’am.”
Our heads all whipped toward the masters in question. Vikhyat blushed bright red through his beard, and Lobelia, despite being half a plant person, still apparently had enough human physiology to flush red herself. They both cleared their throats, both stammered, but Vikhyat spoke first, quivering mustachios and all.
“Well, you see, there were a lot of old prejudices back in those days. A lot of secrecy and distrust. If it wasn’t for young Master Jackson here, we might never have solved the mystery of all those missing diggers from Hammerhearth. Few would listen when I said my people needed justice.”
Vikhyat was talking about Dietrich Sturm from the guild of jewelers, how he’d tried to cover up all those deaths. I loweredmy head and scratched the back of my neck, trying to hide my own blush. “I mean, I wasn’t the only who helped. It was this whole thing. Everyone worked together.”
“Which reminds me of the Chrysanthemyst.” Lobelia squeezed my arm with a smile. “Without you and Xander, we never would have exterminated that particular weed. Speaking of which, where is Xander?”
“At home, taking a shower. I can tell him to head down here after, though. I have no idea what’s going on but it’s like everybody decided to hang out at the guild today. It’s kind of nice.”
