Chapter 9 — Mismeasure

Mira slumped against a tree opposite the one Ness was propped up against, defeated. She tried and failed to come up with any idea that had the slightest chance of working.

((Magic? No choice.)) Mictlan signed to her. Though not normally expressive, he seemed to share her disappointment that the village was unable to help.

“There’s no chance,” Mira shook her head. “It’s too much power; it would definitely kill her, or worse.”

She laughed bitterly.

“The holy grail of sorcery is more power, I never thought I’d have the problem of too much.”

((Wellspring very powerful?))

Wellsprings were the original source of magic; naturally-occurring fissures in the membrane, anchored to the geography. If a familiar was a little rivulet of water, and Ness was a river— then a wellspring was the ocean tide.

“Yeah, well, wellsprings have attenuation towers.”

((So?))

The swordsman had never positioned himself as an expert on the metaphysics of magic; but it was a useless line of inquiry, and Mira’s sense of defeat took on an edge of annoyance.

“Attenuation towers have iron chokes, so unless you have a forge in your pocket or you’ve been hauling around a bunch of iron loops, this conversation is a useless waste of what little time Ness has left.”

She didn’t like that she was venting her anger and frustration at Mictlan; but she supposed if he couldn’t actually hear her tone, perhaps he wouldn’t hold it against her.

“Though we want for a healer, we count a cooper amongst our number,” the woman’s voice said, still out of sight.

She stepped out from behind a tree a few yards away. She was wearing the boxy, sharp-edged garb common to forest villagers; hers was a dark charcoal grey, fine-woven, and well-made. A white tunic was visible through the open collar of her outer coat. Mira guessed she was the settlement’s leader, from the quality and cut of her attire.

Mira blinked at the woman, processing that new information into the beginning of an idea. The clanging of metal and the smell of a charcoal fire finally filtered in to Mira’s conscious mind. Ness had called those out, too, but Mira had forgotten in the rush to find help.

She looked up at the villager.

“I’d need an iron band .. as small as possible, uhm..”

An unbroken loop of pure iron would not allow magic to pass through it; but smelters never produced pure iron, and so in practice, an unbroken band of iron would block most of the magic that tried to pass through it.

“…around my wrist? And then I can draw a normal amount of power from her.”

“Fox smiles on you, outsider,” the cooper stripped off her heavy leather gloves as the small group entered her workshop. She was an impressive figure, shorter than Mira but built powerfully, especially her shoulders and forearms. In more normal circumstances, Mira might’ve been flustered.

One of the villagers carried Ness, and the leader — she said her name was Esq — had escorted them to the cooperage. They had offered to find a bed for Ness, but Mira wouldn’t let them take the girl out of her sight.

“Brandy casks, this week. Small circles.” She held up one of the hoops meant for the small casks; it was about as big around as Mira’s thigh.

“Smaller,” Mira shook her head. She closed her fingers around her wrist, demonstrating. “That one is too big, it’ll still be too much power, and too unstable.”

The cooper frowned, and glanced over toward Esq.

“Smaller can be done, though it requires forging anew, and will consume time and fuel alike.”

The cooper and Esq shared a meaningful look; Mira didn’t quite get the context, but she knew that the price she’d have to pay was ticking higher and higher.

“For time and fuel and metal,” Esq addressed Mira, “we’ll ask the same in kind. It’s weeks’ work for the ground to give up her iron and for our men to tend the charcoal pits.”

Mira frowned, and extracted her coin purse. She shook out the coins she’d taken from the bandit earlier in the week, and showed them to Esq. The forty she had taken plus a few she already had left her with around fifty gold; a healthy sum, by most standards.

“Gold does not suit to band a cask,” the cooper looked over at the offer and shook her head. “And far too little metal, anyway; nor iron.”

The villagers’ insistence on avoiding “commerce” was infuriating; they could often be convinced to consider a trade based on the time involved in building or creating something, but they drew a hard line at currency.

Mira nervously returned the coins to her purse, and untied her knife and scabbard from her belt.

“Steel,” she offered, letting the cooper take the blade and inspect it. It was a nice knife, simple and unadorned, but very well made. She was annoyed at the prospect of giving it up; it had been a recent splurge, and the next few days' or weeks’ camping would be all the more frustrating for want of it. Still, it was worth even less than the gold she had offered, at market. If it meant being able to easily perform magic, it was worth the trade-off.

The cooper nodded to Esq.

“A fine piece, sharp and true, fair balance for half, at least, the cost we’ll pay in service.” She handed the knife back to Mira.

For a people who scorned the notion of profit they drove quite a hard bargain; but they were equally cold toward the notion of charity. The forest village people frowned on ‘profit’, but the notion of equal value was quite subjective, and somehow the uncertainty there always seemed to be to their benefit. Mira did not, in this situation, hold a particularly strong bargaining position; the village could simply turn their backs, while she had no other options.

Mira had no other steel or iron to offer them; she looked over to Mictlan, with his dual swords.

((NO.)) his gesture was immediate and emphatic.

((N. O.)) He spelled it out one letter at a time to emphasize the message.

“It’s the only way. I’ll buy you a new one.”

Mictlan folded his arms across his chest; a very clear indication that he had nothing else to say on the subject.

Mira gave an exasperated growl.

“And a boon.”

Esq’s eyebrows shot up in surprise, as she watched the exchange. The cooper coughed politely; and Mictlan dropped his arms back to his side, blinking. He nodded his agreement, and drew out the smaller of the two swords, offering it to the forgewoman.

“A master’s work,” the cooper assessed the blade. She tested the edge with her finger. “Twice what we ask.”

Mira frowned; the sword was worth much, much more than that; but the cooper was already being difficult with that evaluation. The forest villagers’ demands for ‘fair’ dealing went both ways, and they wouldn’t accept a trade they called unfair, even if it was in their favor.

“Two bands, then. One for each wrist.”

Esq had given them some privacy in her cottage; Ness was lying on the woman’s bed, still unconscious. Mira wasn’t sure, but her breathing seemed shallower and less even.

She and Mictlan sat at a table across from each other. Two heavy iron bands rested on the table between them; they were rough, wrought iron ovals; unpolished, but the cooper had deigned to rasp off any edges too sharp for safety. They would not, however, be comfortable.

((Will it work?))

Mira swallowed nervously.

The two bracers did not take long to forge; it was a matter of little more than re-heating two of the smallest barrel hoops until they glowed a sullen yellow-orange, and hammering them into shape around a smaller part of the cooper’s cone mandrel; then on an anvil to press them into an oval shape.

The hard part was about to come.

“I sure fucking hope so.”

((Not bigger? A little?))

The rings had to be as small as possible, so that they couldn’t tilt off-axis or slide around too much. Either of those would alter the flow of magic through them, and the fluctuations and strangeness of that flow would be almost as bad for spellwork as the unattenuated flood of power would be.

The hard part was that the rings had to be continuous forgings, and snug around the wrist; and that meant Mictlan would have to dislocate Mira’s thumb and slide the band onto her arm. She would be able to draw magic through that injured hand, and heal it; she was lucky that she was not one of those spell-workers that used complex finger gestures to shape magic.

She supposed that if you’re going to cross a river, there’s no sense in only going half-way; Mictlan would force the ring onto one hand, she would heal her hand, and then he would do the other. And then she could heal Ness, and then slap the girl for putting her through all of this hassle.

Or, it wouldn’t work, and she’d have a broken hand on top of her other troubles. She smiled grimly.

“Do it.”

She screamed.