Rebel Magisters (Rebel Mechanics #2)(32)
Not that they would have noticed me. All their attention was on Henry, who sat perfectly still. His breath came in short, shallow gasps, and he hadn’t managed to complete his sentence. I thought he looked a little paler than normal, but it was hard to tell under the unusual lighting.
I noticed then a tall, slender woman in a severe gray dress standing by a machine set on a table behind the settee. The machine consisted of tubes through which some glowing material flowed, all coming from and going to a central wooden box with knobs on it. A web of copper wiring surrounded it all. The woman kept glancing between her machine and Henry. I deduced that the machine had something to do with whatever was happening to us.
I soon found that I wasn’t as frozen as I felt. I was perfectly capable of moving normally. Only my magical abilities had been affected, and that had made me feel paralyzed. Forcing myself to move, I bent to pick up my cup and took a sip of chocolate, as though nothing was happening. “What were you saying?” I asked Henry, keeping my voice light and even.
Instead of responding to me, Henry said to Adonis, “You’ve developed some sort of magical dampener.”
The woman turned a knob on her machine and I felt like I could breathe freely again. She stepped forward to address us. “Yes, the machine affects the flow of ether to block the use of magic,” she said, her voice lightly accented. I guessed that she must be a native of one of the African colonies, judging by her accent and dark skin. If our host looked like a painting, she looked like an onyx sculpture given life, with a high forehead and sharp cheekbones. The planes of her face were somewhat softened by the small round glasses she wore.
“Interesting,” Henry said, turning to face her. “And very useful for a conflict against magisters.”
“How did it make you feel?” she asked.
“Like it was more difficult to breathe and move. You did something to the ether, didn’t you? Something that makes it impossible to process into magical energy?”
She smiled, her teeth showing white in vivid contrast to her dark skin. “Exactly! The device sends a current through the ether that makes it magically inactive. This one works at only a short range—perhaps a hundred-foot radius. I have found that it stops magical devices from working, but I was not sure how it worked on an actual magister. Would you mind very much if I activated it again? And then you could try using magic.”
Although I could tell that Henry was intrigued, and I knew he’d happily go along with the test, I was outraged on his behalf. “That’s why you invited us here? You needed a test subject?” I snapped. “Did you consider just asking? Is there something in the Rebel Mechanics’ charter that requires you to recruit assistance under false pretenses?”
Henry turned back to face me. “Verity, it’s all right,” he said. “I don’t mind helping them.”
“That’s my point. You don’t mind. If they’d invited you by saying they needed a magister to test a device, you’d have been happy to help.” Addressing the Mechanics, I asked, “What would you have done if he didn’t want to help after you sprang this on him? What if you’d hurt him?”
“I apologize. I meant no offense,” the inventor said, giving us a slight bow. “I felt it important to the experiment for you not to know what might happen.”
“Athena didn’t mean any harm to your magister friend,” Adonis said, favoring me with a smile that might have made me melt a few months ago before I’d become wise to the Mechanics’ ways. To be perfectly honest, it still gave me a little flutter, and I was sure he’d calculated to get exactly that response. That made me trust him even less.
Henry stood and approached the inventor. “In the future, please just ask me for help directly. You’ll find that I’m generally game for almost anything. But for now, what do you need to me do?”
“First, a control. Is there some bit of magic you can do to demonstrate that your powers are working normally?”
I made sure my magical shielding was intact. One of the first things I’d learned about magic was that a magic user could feel it when someone else nearby was using magic, and it was essential to learn to shield oneself from the sensation, especially if your magical abilities were a dangerous secret.
Henry held out his hand, and his cup of chocolate flew into it. He raised an eyebrow as he took a nonchalant sip. Athena smiled. “So, your abilities are working normally?”
“They appear to be.”
“Now let’s see what happens with the device operating.”
He placed the cup back on the table in front of the settee and returned to his position. I braced myself as Athena turned on the machine and the tubes began to glow. Fortunately, the Mechanics were all too focused on Henry’s reaction to notice what I did because I couldn’t quite stop a small gasp when the machine took effect.
Henry reached out his hand for the cup in the same gesture he’d used before, and I felt the ether becoming excited. It just didn’t seem to work at his command. The cup only twitched slightly. The sense of the excited ether was like pinpricks all over my body, too faint to be truly unpleasant, but strong enough that I was glad I’d known to brace myself or I might have given away my secret heritage.
“You are trying and it is not working?” Athena asked.
“I’m doing the exact same thing I did before, but with different results,” Henry confirmed.