Page 7 of The Grip of Death
The art of artifice was finally generating some much-needed income for the Pryde household. I loved the Gauntlet dearly, and I got a decent amount of use from my boots of very, very slow hovering, but I’d faced facts long ago. They were either too specific or too strange to find their place on the magical market.
The glass phials — and Niko himself, of course — were a blessing. It felt incredible to finally get paid for my work. What an awesome way to raise the profile of artifice in the arcane underground again.
Speaking of which, I’d left Giuseppe at the Halls of Making in good hands — Preston’s hands, that is. Who was better equipped to help the old artificer get situated, find somewhere comfortable to rest his hammer? One of the few perks of joining the new guild in its early days was getting absolutely spoiled forchoice. Each of the three of us could have picked separate offices and workshops in three separate buildings if we felt like it.
Or maybe I just repeated that to myself so I could avoid the bigger, more difficult question of how we were supposed to fill up the rest of the guild to begin with. Surely the old masters had started small themselves, slowly growing the Halls of Making as they attracted more and more apprentices with their great works.
At least we had our honorary members to help welcome Giuseppe. Masters Vikhyat and Lobelia spent enough time at the guild grounds that I would have happily included them as founding members of what future generations might think of as the Halls of Making 2.0.
Every time I loudly, absently wondered whether they weren’t wanted back at their respective home guilds I’d get irritably hushed and shut down. It was sweet, in a way. I liked to think that they liked getting to help us grow, while also getting a bit of vacation time away from their responsibilities.
Oh, and Niko was there, too. Standoffish to start, like always, but too curious and inquisitive to keep himself away from interesting new stories and experiences. As I finally left that day, I caught him and Giuseppe deep in conversation, trading tidbits and anecdotes. Giuseppe lapped up the little droplets of gossip about the other guilds, and Niko gawked and nodded intently as he absorbed stories and legends about the artificers of old.
It made me smile, knowing that we’d bridged the gap between these wildly different generations. It reminded me of what Kaoru had once said, how friendships formed between members of different guilds were always wonderful to see, wearing away at decades of distrust and enmity. Guild affiliation and loyalties didn’t matter. At the end of the day, young Niko and Old Giuseppe were just two artisans who loved their work and loved to talk about it.
The smell of baking bread and sugar wafted toward us on the breeze, a sure sign that we were approaching Mother Dough headquarters. I marveled each time we got a good look at their guild offices, the building itself like something out of a faerie tale. Combine a witch’s hut made out of candy and the coziest grandmother’s cottage, then blow it up a few sizes.
The guild of bakers was as sweet and sugary on the outside as on the inside, which itself was a dangerous honeycomb of some of the very best cake shops and chocolatiers to be found in the arcane underground.Verydangerous, actually, because it was so difficult to walk past one of the displays without stopping to shop, or at least stare through the windows and drool.
And it was in that maze of treats and sweets that we eventually discovered the personal office and workshop of one Lawrence Pryde. Not every member was afforded their own space within Mother Dough HQ, something normally reserved for more valued or experienced artisans. Gertrude Goodness eagerly granting Lore his own workshop showed just how thrilled she was to have him join the guild. I’d said it enough times, but I truly couldn’t be happier for him.
Like many other workshops and laboratories at Mother Dough, Lore’s personal space was easily visible from the corridor. It felt like him, too, all stainless steel and shiny equipment. It reminded me of the appendages that he used to run the Pryde household, and — yep, there it was, snaking by, one of the metallic tentacles that served as his limbs.
Trust Lore to reverse engineer what Octavian Pryde had used to make him mobile. I thought I caught a glimpse of some crystal somewhere in the kitchen as we approached, a sort of secondary mainframe that he could use as a home base away from home.
I opened my mouth to greet him as we drew closer to the door, catching glimpses of his tiny crystalline body zipping back and forth. But we reached the threshold to his workspace and myjaw dropped. It must have been obscured by the curtain on the way in.
“Gods above and below,” Xander breathed, his head tilting back as he took it all in. “No wonder Lore needed all that space.”
A gleaming metal tentacle darted toward the glass door, pulling it open. “Ta-da!” Lore announced, his voice accompanied by a chirping, celebratory fanfare.
It must have been seven, possibly nine layers high. Something about the way he’d stacked the cakes had given the tiers the appearance of an optical illusion, each level connected by what appeared to be miniature staircases that bent at odd angles and circled back on themselves again. A vision in white, this beautiful buttercream ivory tower. And on the very top layer —
“Look, Jack. It’s us!”
Xander pointed at the little cake toppers in matching attire. One had shaggy, curly hair and a scruffy chin. The other had a familiar head of black-and-white hair.
I cocked an eyebrow. “I’m pretty sure my shoulders are broader than that, Lore.”
His crystal pulsed a sunny yellow with every peal of his laughter. “Actually, Jackson, these are printed directly from scans of your bodies. I made sure to pad the shoulders a little for your sake. Not to worry.”
“Ouch. Okay, fine. Maybe it’s just the angle. But Lore, this is incredible. The cake is beautiful. And all those flowers!”
He’d taken the time to pepper this gorgeous monstrosity with buttercream rosettes and lush sprays of black leaves, perfect for the theme. But oh, the flowers. Delicate little things, their curving translucent petals gleaming, each one lovingly sculpted out of what must have been sugar, lending the cake a golden caramelized glow.
“Lore,” Xander breathed. “This is beautiful. It’s better than anything I could have possibly imagined.”
“The final version will be better, I promise,” Lore said. “I only apologize that it hasn’t reached perfection at this point.”
I flung my hand out toward the cake. “Are you seriously saying you aren’t satisfied with this? Lore, it’s flawless.”
His crystal tilted left, then right, the way someone might tilt their head in observation. “Hmm. I’m not so sure. You know, this reminds me of an episode of Dominique and Sable. Dominique was going to marry an elderly oil tycoon. They had the floppiest wedding cake.”
I threw my hands up in exasperation. “What’s it gonna take for you to accept that this is an amazing piece of work as it is? What, do you need your guild master’s stamp of approval, too?”
Just that moment, a certain guild master wandered in through the open doorway. Gertrude Goodness gathered her voluminous skirts close to her body to maneuver the doorframe, her dresses always delightfully reminiscent of sweet and tasty things, like cupcakes, like frosted desserts.
“Gentlemen, so lovely to see you! I had a feeling I’d find you in Lore’s kitchen. Thank you for delivering this last order of — oh. Goodness gracious me.”
