Chapter 9 – Someone I Can Trust
Three days have gone by since we got back from the central district. A lot happened there, and for the moment I’m doing my best not to dwell on that particular incident. No amount of thinking changes it, and what happens will happen! That’s what I’ve been telling myself through three perfectly ordinary days.
And today I’ve come to the workshop, because I’ve decided to tell Marcel about my attributes. Carrying it alone makes me anxious, and hiding it only works until it doesn’t, so it seemed better to say it myself from the start. Besides, Marcel isn’t the sort to look at me like I’m something unnatural. It hasn’t been that long since we met, but he really is a good man.
And if telling him here ends up costing me, then I misjudged somebody and I’ll take my lumps. I walked to the workshop with that settled.
So here we are, sitting across from each other, and now that it’s time to actually say it my nerves have scattered my thoughts everywhere.
Maybe I should drop it after all. No. Marcel’s fine, he’ll be fine… Right. Trust him.
“So, what brings you today? Have you thought up a magic tool?”
“I’ve thought up several, but before that, could I talk to you about my attribute?”
“Your attribute? Healing, wasn’t it?”
“It is, but it turns out I can use the others as well…”
“The others? The others!?”
He came out of his chair shouting. My nerves were already stretched thin, and I flinched hard enough to hop where I sat.
“Ah. Sorry about that. I’m not angry with you, I was startled.”
Hearing that let all the air out of me at once. Thank goodness. No revulsion, at any rate.
“So which of the others can you use?”
“Um. All of them.”
“Wh…”
This time nothing came out at all. He simply stopped, struck dumb where he stood. So using every attribute really is that far outside the normal. Around here, one person means one attribute; the possibility of more than one isn’t even entertained at the church. Which leaves the question of why I can.
Being reincarnated probably has something to do with it, though I still have no idea why I was reincarnated in the first place.
“All of them? Truly!?”
“Yes. Shall I show you?”
“Show me!”
There was something fierce in his face, and it carried me along, so I ran through every attribute for him.
“You’re the Apostle…”
He said that much and froze again. The Apostle? Marcel, please, stop seizing up and explain.
“Marcel. Marcel! Marcel!”
“Ah!? Apostle, I beg your pardon. Forgive me.”
“I’m Leon! I’m nothing like an Apostle!”
“But every attribute…”
“Please, just calm down. I’m Leon.”
He stayed rattled for a while after that, but he came back to himself eventually.
“Forgive me for losing my head. I’d always believed only the Apostle could use every attribute, and it shook me.”
“What is an Apostle, exactly?”
“The Apostle was sent to us by God, and could use every attribute, and held all manner of knowledge. There are records left of an Apostle who walked here several hundred years ago, so they say.”
“There are actual records of that?”
“There are. And since that time, not one person has been able to use more than a single attribute, let alone all of them. Which is why I took you for the Apostle. Are you truly not?”
So somebody like that existed… Am I an Apostle? I can use every attribute, and being reincarnated does mean I know things. But I’ve never met any god, and what I know is half-formed odds and ends. An Apostle, when you get down to it, is somebody who has actually met God.
By that standard I’m not one. I’ve never met God in my life.
“God didn’t send me, and I’m not an Apostle.”
“So it is. A pity. I’d thought that if an Apostle had come again, people’s faith might have risen.”
“Their faith?”
“That’s right. This world worships Micheline, but it’s been several hundred years since the Apostle came, and there’s hardly a soul left who holds any faith at all. My own view is that we ought to hold more of it than we do.”
So the god of this world is called Micheline. And the statue at the church was a goddess, so God here is a woman, which fits. And Marcel is a devout believer. Personally, I’d rather religion here stayed weak. Powerful religion sounds like an enormous amount of trouble.
“How much power does the church have these days?”
“The church has next to none. Every church is run by the state, and nearly everyone working in one draws a state wage.”
“I had no idea.”
The churches are state-run! So they’re churches in name and government offices in fact. Excellent. That kills off almost any chance of religion and politics tearing at each other, which is exactly the sort of mess I don’t want to live through.
“Since I’m not an Apostle, I’m afraid I can’t raise anybody’s faith.”
“Aye, so it is. Well, never mind it. Sorry for taking us off the subject.”
“Not at all. I’m glad to have heard about the church.”
He looked a little let down, but questions of religion get complicated fast and I’d rather not go poking at them clumsily.
“So, about my magic.”
“Aye, that’s where we were. If you’re not the Apostle, then how is it you can use every attribute?”
“That’s exactly what I can’t work out, and it’s what I wanted to ask you. In all of recorded history, nobody but the Apostle has used two or more?”
“Nobody. Not in all of it. I’ve no idea why you can use every attribute, but I’ll tell you this much: you’d do well not to tell a soul.”
“I thought you might say that.”
So I really should keep it buried. Power that outstrips everyone else’s is exactly the sort of thing people start fighting over.
“There may come a day when you have the backing of a strong noble you can trust, and then it might be safe to reveal it. But show it around carelessly and other countries, or dangerous nobles, will start moving to get hold of you or to get rid of you. In the worst case your family becomes the target. Keep it hidden until you hold enough power to shelter them.”
Yikes. I’m still a child, and I have no way of protecting my family. Until I have power of my own, or until I meet a noble I can genuinely trust, this stays buried.
“Which settles it, Leon: you must go to the Royal Academy. If your ability comes out while you’re still a commoner, it’s one of two roads. Either you live out your life as somebody’s kept animal, or some noble decides you’re in his way and you’re gone. But become an official, earn trust, and reveal it then, and there’s a real chance you end up an aide to the king, or a noble yourself. And nobody is made noble without graduating the Royal Academy. So for now, you pass that exam.”
Living out my life as somebody’s kept animal is out of the question. On my own I might be able to run, but I already have too many people here I care about to leave any of them behind.
So the plan is the Royal Academy, and hiding it until I’m an official. No, not until I’m an official. Until I have power, and trust.
“Understood. I hide it for now, and once I have power behind me, then I can say it.”
“That’s it. And I mean nobody.”
“Yes. I don’t want my family anywhere near that kind of danger.”
Marcel and I looked each other in the eye and nodded, and that was that. He really is a good man… I’m glad I brought this to him.
With my attributes settled, I straightened up, because I wanted to talk about magic tools while I was here. If I have to keep every attribute hidden, that may put limits on what I can build.
“Marcel, can I ask you about magic tools too? If I can’t let on that I have every attribute, the one I’ve been thinking about might be impossible.”
“Go ahead. You’re right that we’ll have to be careful in the making of them, so nothing gives you away.”
“That’s what I thought. I’ll be careful.”
“So what did you come up with?”
“A refrigerator. A cold box, for keeping food from spoiling.”
“Ah. That one’s beyond us, I’m afraid. We’ve no way to make ice.”
“About that. I can make ice.”
“You can what!?”
Frozen again. I might be surprising him too much today. I’m starting to worry about his heart.
“Marcel, are you all right?”
“Y-yes. Yes, I’m fine. You’ve done nothing but astonish me all day and I’m worn out with it.”
“Sorry…”
“Never mind. Now, how is it you make ice?”
“I use water magic to make water that’s a hair away from freezing, and then I disturb it, and it turns to ice.”
“Would you do it once for me?”
He handed me a bowl and I filled it with water on the edge of freezing, then jostled the bowl to disturb it, and it froze. Marcel watched, and then his brows drew together and he sank into thought. What was that about? Had I done something wrong?
“Do you think anyone with the water attribute could do that?”
The question stopped me, and I had to actually think about it.
It might work for me because I have modern knowledge and can picture what I want. Whether anyone born here could make it at all is another matter. Although. What if I cast it thinking only water that freezes when disturbed, and nothing more specific? If that worked, then somebody from this world could probably do it too.
“Could I use it once more?”
“As often as you like.”
I took a fresh bowl, and this time I cast while holding nothing in my head but water that freezes when disturbed. It ate roughly five times the mana of the first attempt, but the water came. Had it worked? I picked the bowl up, half afraid of what I might get, and gave it a shake, and the water went to ice all at once.
There it is! An ordinary person might manage this. Though it would take someone with a serious amount of mana.
“Marcel, I think anyone with plenty of mana could do it. You cast while thinking water that freezes when disturbed, and it comes. It takes a lot of mana, so I don’t know what capacity you’d actually need.”
“Your mana capacity is five, isn’t it, Leon. I’ll get someone of the water attribute with a capacity of five to try it.”
Marcel rounding up other people to test it for me is a real kindness. This might make the refrigerator possible after all.
“We’ll test the magic later. Have you settled on a shape for the tool?”
“Roughly, yes! A tall box, with shelves inside, and the ice-making function built into the top of it. The box itself I’d make of ordinary iron rather than magic iron, and only the ice-making part would be the magic tool. What do you think?”
“Good. Magic iron is worth sparing wherever you can. Although if that’s the shape of it, wouldn’t ‘ice maker’ suit it better than ‘refrigerator’?”
He’s right, the magic tool part is an ice maker. And come to think of it, selling it as this makes ice is stronger than selling it as a refrigerator. In which case I could skip the box I’d been planning entirely and sell the magic tool on its own, and let people work out their own uses for it. That’s more useful to more people anyway.
“You’re right. I’ll call it an ice maker. No box, no fixed use, just a magic tool that makes ice. That way everyone can do as they like with it.”
“Aye, that’s the better road. Shall we make one, then?”
He laid magic stone and magic iron out on the desk.
“Do you want to make this one yourself? With a capacity of five, you can work magic iron.”
“Can I!? I’d love to!”
“Then take the magic iron in your hands and picture the shape you want it to become. Once the picture is firm, send your mana into it and it will change to match.”
Bigger ice would melt more slowly, so I settled on a square vessel thirty centimeters to a side, with two sockets for magic stones, and let the mana flow. The magic iron shifted under my hands, and in no time at all there it was, exactly as I’d pictured it.
Magic iron is incredible! Is there anything this stuff can’t be!
“Finished!”
“Why that shape? I’d assumed you would make something along the lines of a faucet. And it looks to have two sockets for magic stones. Why is that?”
“Bigger ice melts more slowly, so I wanted the shape for that. The trouble is that at this size the disturbance doesn’t reach the middle and the ice doesn’t set properly, so I use wind magic to send air at the water from the center and the outside at the same time. That’s what disturbs it.”
I’d made a lot of ice since that first bowl, and the more water there was, the less solidly it set. I never worked out why, but I did find that raising wind from the center and the outside at once freezes it cleanly.
Why that should be, I have no idea. Then again, magic itself runs on principles I don’t understand, so I’ve stopped asking. What matters is what comes out the other end. The fact that magic tolerates a certain amount of winging it is honestly its best feature. It suits me.
“Leon. Putting two attributes into one magic tool has never been done before either. Though I get the feeling that lecturing you about what’s normal is a waste of my breath.”
He was giving me a rather exasperated look. Rude. I am a perfectly normal person! I am, aren’t I? Unless I’ve been off-kilter in this world all along…? I’d prefer to believe I haven’t.
Not entirely satisfied, but willing to let it go, I took the two magic stones from him and poured mana into them while holding the magic in my mind. The wind stone went into its socket first. Something I’d noticed while making all that ice: setting a faint breeze going first and then bringing the water into it is better for mana efficiency and better for the ice. I put my hand inside the box, and there was the breeze. That much worked.
Then the water stone. A few seconds later, ice. I think that’s it!
I pulled the stones out and lifted the ice from the box, and it came out a clean, perfect cube. Look at that. Complete success!
“Marcel, it’s done! What do you think?”
“This is remarkable… Food could be kept through the summer without spoiling. There will be no shortage of people who want one. And this ice looks a good deal finer than what you made in the bowl.”
“It does! Water magic alone, just the water and a shake, gives you slush, or a skin of ice on top and nothing underneath. Raise a faint breeze with wind magic first and bring the water into that, and you get hard, clear ice.”
“Which means someone with a water capacity of five still can’t make ice of this quality alone. They’d have to work with someone of the wind attribute. This may well sell.”
What a relief. Maybe this goes a little way toward paying Marcel back.
“Here’s what I’ll do, Leon. I’ll have someone of the water attribute with a capacity of five confirm the ice can be made, and then I’ll carry this to the royal palace and have it registered. Does that suit?”
“Yes! Ah, but the person testing it, is there no chance he walks off with the idea…?”
“I’ll be asking a friend I trust, so there’s no fear of that. And it’s water and wind together; there’s nobody alive who’ll see it once and reproduce it. I’ll go and register it the same day regardless. There’s nothing to worry about.”
“Then I’m not worried. Please go ahead.”
“Leave it to me. While I’m at the palace I’ll put money into your account, so have a look at it later.”
“Yes! Thank you so much!”
With everything settled I stretched the ache out of myself and looked to the window. It’s that late!? The dinner service is about to start! I shot out of the chair.
“Marcel, I have to go! I’ll be late for the dinner service!”
“Aye. Mind yourself on the way.”
“I will! I’ll come again!”
And with that I flew out of Marcel’s house and ran the whole way home.