Jerryck left the room before Heston could come up with any other crazy things to request of him. He spent the rest of the day in his tower. Every once in a while he skimmed through a book, looking at the process of fog making. Most of the time, he agonized over a response letter to the Gathering.
He had to figure out how to explain why he couldn’t come in person, without talking too much about the trouble their nation was currently having. Then he had to figure out exactly how to address the core issue. In the end, he followed Tajor’s advice, laying out the facts and asking who was spreading rumors about him.
Over the next couple of days, he spent his mornings out in a field practicing making fog. He took care to be in his workroom in time for the noon water test. Some of the off colors weren’t showing as strong as they had at first. That should have been encouraging. Instead, the boys took it as an excuse to complain more than they already were.
They complained incessantly. They whined about having to climb the stairs three times a day. They moaned about getting through the household office to turn in the tested sample. They complained about the noise of rebuilding, and workers being in the way.
It got to the point that Jerryck would just do the test and get rid of them as quickly as possible, barely even looking at the results. The day before he was supposed to make the fog for Heston, the bulk of the workers cleared out before the test. Not even that stopped the complaining. Jerryck dropped in the sugar and then turned immediately back to his books.
“Take it and go,” he said.
“What happened to the other colors?” Zev asked.
Jerryck looked. The colors that were evidence of the magic toxin were absent. Only the colors of the water element and the magic Jerryck had on the sugar remained. He took the cup and peered into it, scrutinizing for any trace of the wrong colors. “Where did you get this water?”
“From the household office,” Zev said.
With the shipments of water coming in from other parts of the country, more people had access. It was possible someone had put clean water in the cup by accident. Jerryck would have to double check. He sent the boys on their way, cheering that they didn’t have to turn in the test. He snagged his supply of magicked sugar and took it with him to Heston’s office.
“I need you to let me into the canal chamber,” Jerryck said to him.
“What for?” Heston shuffled aside whatever paper he’d been working through.
“The water test came out positive,” Jerryck said. “Er… Negative.”
“Which is it?” Heston asked.
“There were no toxins in the water.”
“Double checking is good,” Heston said. “Why don’t you just go to the vats?”
“I don’t like climbing the ladder and the walkway the top. Then I have to lean out over the edge to catch one of the buckets.”
Heston stared at him a moment. Then with a droll tone, he said, “You’d rather climb the stairs all the way down to the canal chamber back up again.”
Jerryck shrugged one shoulder. “It’s no different than what I climb several times a day in my tower.”
“True.” Heston got to his feet. He opened his desk, took out a key, then used it to unlock one of the cabinets. From that, he retrieved a large ring of master keys to the palace’s many locks.
Jerryck followed him down below the palace, through the stone lined passageway to the little door near the entrance to the dungeons, which was the only way to get to the canal chamber. The guards at the dungeon entrance saluted, momentarily showing the palms of their right hands, the fingertips level with the tops of their ears.
Two torch sconces were fastened to the wall on either side of the door. One of them was empty. Heston pointed to it. “Why is one of the torches missing?”
“The pursuivant hasn’t come back up yet from escorting in the change of shift,” one of the guards said.
Heston grunted acknowledgment. He selected a small key on his ring and used it in the lock. He took the torch from the other sconce. Then he gestured for Jerryck to go down the stairs first.
Aside from the narrower, steeper steps, it really wasn’t all that different from descending his tower at night. The torch behind him lit the way just enough. He had no missteps. He navigated the loosely wound spiral down with ease.
About halfway down, probably as many steps as his entire tower, a light came up from below, growing brighter and brighter as it approached. A man toting a large canvas bag rounded up the steps. The stairs were too narrow for him to pass.
Someone spoke from below him. “Why did you stop?”
“The general and the magician are coming down,” the man called back over his shoulder.
“Convenient,” the voice said. The light retreated. “Come back down.”
They continued down to the bottom. Four men had been coming up, not two. Three of them, dressed as workers, stood to one side. Each of them held a full canvas bag. The fourth was the pursuivant, the man Heston had put in charge of running the dungeon and managing any prisoners. He held the torch and called out the orders.
“I was going to send you a page,” he said to Heston. “We’re getting debris in the canal, like there was some big rainstorm up river.”
“That might explain my results,” Jerryck said. “If a storm filled the river, that would clear it out.”
The pursuivant perked up. “Water’s clear?”
“We’re checking,” Heston said as he eyed the canal.
The three men who must have just started their shift stood at the mouth of the tunnel where the canal flowed in from the river. Two of them used long poles with nets on the ends, fishing out bits and pieces of leaves, grasses, twigs, and other debris before they could float close to the buckets on the pulley system that drew the water up to the vats. The third man took everything they fished out, and stuffed it in a bag.
“I’ll send crews to check the grates at either end and clean them out,” Heston said. “That should cut down some of the debris getting through.”
Jerryck knelt by the water flow. He dipped in the tin cup he carried. The pursuivant said, “Careful. I don’t want you falling in again.”
“I’m not falling in,” Jerryck said. He set the cup on the stone floor.
The pursuivant pointed to the dark, arched opening where the water flowed out. “If my men have to go to the downstream grate and fish you out again…”
“I’m not falling in!”
Jerryck hadn’t ever fallen in. That was just what Old Heldavio had told people. He brought Jerryck down to impress him, thinking that if he was awed enough, that might help him to scry. The builders of Coraline Palace had perfectly cut the canal by scrying out its path. It was an engineering feat bragged about even outside the borders of Brend. Jerryck was supposed to scry the grate at the downstream end, and travel the length to the upstream grate. Instead, he accidentally translocated himself to the downstream grate.
He stared hard at the cup, dropping in the sugar. If he concentrated enough on the present, maybe the past would leave him alone for a little while. At least until someone else reminded him of some embarrassment. The cup started glowing with the same colors as the test.
“That’s it then,” he said. “The water’s clean.”
The workers cheered. The three with the netted poles waved them around happily. Heston growled at them and they quickly dipped their poles back down into the water. Everyone else climbed back up the stairs.
-Visit the author at www.authorrebekaholson.com-
-Edited by Philip Athans-
-Artwork by Rachel Bostwick-
