Marten hefted the bizarre brass object up. It vaguely resembled the corpse of an oversized spider, its six legs curled up over its little round body.
‘How much clearance will this need to unfold?’ he grunted.
‘Not so much. It’s only about a meter tall unpacked. Watch out for the groundspikes though. It works like a parasol.’
He nodded and carried it outside. Unfurling it was mechanically simple, if unwieldy. A sweeping glance assured him that there was nobody in a position to watch what they were up to; his own men were occupied with the horses at the third wagon. Opening the flap, he was met with Tabitha’s posterior, less than a foot from his face as he made to climb up. He swiftly looked to his footing on the little ladder, and by the time he was at the top, she had moved around to the other side, and was now slightly flushed.
‘I, uh, I thought without the legs I could drag it over. And then I did. Drag it, I mean.’
He knew she knew he’d seen. Nothing to do but to push onward and pretend otherwise, though.
‘The next piece, then.’
Her poise returned as she showed him how to handle the main body of the machine; the inscription chamber. It was a fist-shaped mass, slightly larger than a man’s head. It was also the heaviest of the three pieces, and without the two large handles, Marten was certain he’d have had serious trouble lifting it by himself. Tabitha followed him out this time, to help him guide the chamber onto the base’s spindle. Once it was properly situated and secure, she gave what appeared to be the control mechanism a few experimental taps.
‘It looks in good shape, just the optical array now. You can’t miss it in the crate, I’ve already unwrapped it.’
Once he had retrieved it, he stood by patiently as she fiddled with something or other on the chamber. After about a minute, she looked up.
‘Sorry, Marten. I got a bit absorbed there. Just slide it onto the rails at the top, there.’
‘Not to worry, Tabitha. I’ve been left standing around carrying heavier things.’
Looking embarrassed by his light rebuke, Tabitha apologised again.
‘It’s fine, really. Definitely the oddest-looking thing I’ve been left holding though.’
And it was. Like the glass from several hurricane lanterns had been stuck together, filled with lenses that ranged from palest blue to a purple that was almost black, adjustable by little rosewood pegs secured into the tube’s mounting. Looking through some of those lenses almost hurt, as if his eyes were being tugged at by a ghost.
‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ she asked, once the array had clicked into place. ‘It’s a wonder of Thaumic engineering, as well as craftsmanship. No time to really marvel at it though, we need a test exposure. Would you like to see how it’s done?’
Her smile at his nod was large and genuine. She drew from her pocket a cylindrical brass object, popped off the cap with a little knife, and pushed it into a socket in the body of the machine, which made a heavy clunking noise. Then she set her eye to the sight at the back of the lens-filled tube and swung the machine around on its mount to face him.
Marten stepped back instinctually, his hand twitching toward the flintlock at his hip.
‘Oh Marten, I’m sorry! You don’t know what it does, of course! It’s just a kind of Luxostat, really quite harmless. Ever have one taken?’
He relaxed. ‘Can’t say I have. This will take a picture of me, then?’
‘In a manner of speaking,’ she began to gabble. ‘Like a Luxostat, it preserves an image of you from an instant of time, but it also transubstates the Thaumic field of the Luxostat’s subject. That part’s simple really, hecatite likes to imprint on what’s nearby, and is simple to stabilize after that impression is taken. That’s why spellcrafters use it to make charms, wardstones, the teaching pillars, and the like. The issue before the Luxostatic technique when looking for specific Thaumic matrixes, however, was that there was no underlying mode of operation for spellcrafters. You can tell what a wardstone does, but not how it does it, you see?’
‘I-’
‘So the idea of rationalising spellcrafting was a non-starter, until the Luxostat. An image made in perfect objectivity, without a mind occupying the point of inscription. No idiosyncratic Thaumic field to navigate, no destructive interference. Then came the optical challenge; how do we make an image that isn’t just drowned out by background field emanations?’
‘I don’t-’
‘Easy! Focus the field, draw the wavelength out and back by compressing or stretching them at their individual frequencies within the resonating chamber!’
‘Tabitha.’
She looked up at him.
‘I mean, uh, it records the Thaumic energy of who or what you point it at.’
‘Simpler, please.’
‘It lets you see magic. If the operator knows what they’re doing, and is in the right frame of mind’
‘Frame of mind?’
‘You have to hold the idea of what it is you want to take the picture of very clearly in your mind, as you focus the lenses. Wyrdglass responds to intent.’
‘Right then. And you say it’s safe?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then let’s get to it. Do I have to do anything?’
‘Just stand still for a moment.’
He stood, watching as she twiddled the little pegs, shuffled her footing, and finally reach for the little lever on the side. As she threw the switch, that sense of discomfort Marten had felt when he’d looked into the wyrdglass returned tenfold, along with the sensation of being crawled over by thousands of ice-cold insects. Only for an instant, though, then the feeling was gone. The machine whirred like a clock with a broken pendulum, rounding off its wind-down with another loud click.
‘It worked!’ Tabitha cried. ‘The afterimage is still in the contact plate, it’s a really good one, come and see!’
Marten made his way over and leaned to look through the little spyhole she had indicated. On a little screen there was a picture of him, surrounded by a violet haze. The rest of the picture was in black and white, from what he could tell.
‘That glow is your Thaumic field, every living thing has one. Yours is surprisingly potent, for a non-spellweaver.’
‘Meaning?’
‘You probably have some innate spellcraft. Little things that might pass off as luck or coincidence. Notice anything like that?’
Marten thought a moment. There was that time last year a bandit he was fighting had drawn a pistol at point-blank range, and the gun had exploded in his own face. And the time his wagon slipped from a washed-out road, and a fallen tree had prevented it from tumbling down a hillside. He told her, and she laughed.
‘Let’s hope that good fortune holds up, Marten. There’s a long road ahead.’
Rainbow Samphire 